A Book for Irishmen to Read.

Recollections of Troubled Cimes in Irish Politics.

By T. D. SULLIVAN.

Crown 8vo.

Cloth, 3s. 6d.

"The volume will be read with interest by all who are concerned with political life in the Emerald Isle.”—Dundee Advertiser.

'For those who desire a brightly-written survey of the varying phases of the Nationalist movement in Ireland during the past sixty years there is nothing better than Mr. T. D. Sullivan's book."-Pall Mall Gazette.

"This is a chatty and interesting volume, written in an anecdotic style, and covering a period which goes back sixty years. As a repository of anecdote, of descriptions of events and men during stirring times, we must award the book high praise."-Irish Times.

His style is lucid and concise, his tone is moderate, and he has a gift for apt quotation, of pungent political verse and amusing anecdote.”—Literary World. Mr. Sullivan's volume must be read to understand aright the Irish question of to-day. To Irish people it will not only have a value, but a fascination."— Reynolds' Newspaper.

A New Edition in Paper Covers will shortly be issued by the Publishers.

SEALY, BRYERS & WALKER, MIDDLE ABBEY STREET, DUBLIN,

Bantry, Berehaven

AND

The O'Sullivan Sept.

B

CHAPTER I.

ANTRY Bay comes in for honorable mention at an early period of Irish history. It is recorded that its shores were the first landing place of the adventurers who came from Spain under the command of Queen Scota, widow of Milesius, and captained by her sons. In a note to an edition of Smith's History of Cork published by Guy and Co. of that city, we read:

Ancient accounts differ much from each other, some making only three sons of Milesius to land in Ireland; but the landing of these, as well as of Partholanus, they all place in the Bay of Bantry, which they call Inber Sceine.

Bearhaven is said to have come by its name in this way-An Irish chief named Owen the Splendid, having been defeated in a great engagement by "Conn of the Hundred Battles," fled to Spain, where he married the King's daughter, Beara. Returning after the lapse of some time at the head of a powerful force, his vessels put into a commodious harbour on the south-west coast

B

of Ireland, with which he was so pleased that in honour of his wife he called it Bearhaven. The haven in later times gave its name to the extensive district now known as the barony of Beare.

The Bay is a great inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, about 28 miles in length, varying in width from five to eight miles, free of shoals or rocks in any way perilous to navigation, and of great depth. On its northern shore are three harbours, Berehaven, Adrigoole, and Glengarriffe, with Bantry harbour on its eastern or landward end. Two islands, like great breakwaters, make and shelter the harbours of Berehaven and Bantry. Sir George Carew, in his "Pacata Hibernia" thus describes the place:

The haven of Beare is situated twelve miles to the northward of that promontory or foreland, so well known by the name of Mizzenhead, or Carrowhead. That which we properly call Berehaven is the sea which entreth between the great island (before mentioned) and the main, or country called Beare, or O'Sullivan's country. At the entrance of the harbour it is not above a musket-shot over, I mean from the castle of Dunboy to the great island; being entered, the tides are slack, good anchorage, and convenient places to bring ships on ground, smooth water, five fathoms deep at low water mark. Towards the north end it groweth much larger, at the least a league over, and of capacity sufficient to contain all the ships of Europe.

The writer, it will be observed, calls the district "O'Sullivan's country," and as such it was then known, and had been known for a long period. But it was not the native ground of the Sept; they came from a district in Tipperary, from the neighbourhood of Knockgraffan, Clonmel, and thereabouts, where they had been lords of the soil, but whence they were dislodged by the spreading power of the Anglo-Norman invaders. Then they moved south and joined their Milesian kinsmen in the wide district in which was comprised the southwestern parts of Cork and Kerry. There the sept segregated into two great divisions, separated by a range of

mountains; on the northern or Kerry side of the line was the O'Sullivan Mor tribe, on the southern, or Cork side, along the shores of Bantry Bay, were the O'Sullivans Beare.

Whether this settling down of the newcomers was peaceably effected or not does not clearly appear from the record; but the resistance, if any, to their intrusion must have been only slight and desultory. The over-lord of those districts-and of a much wider extent of territoryat that time was the MacCarthy Mor. The O'Sullivans came in under his sovereignty, so to say, and like the other septs under his almost nominal headship, they undertook to pay him his customary tributes-to furnish him with a prescribed number of fighting men for his service in time of war, and with a stipulated amount of supplies for himself and his followers whenever he had occasion to go on hostings or visitations through his territory. Anti-Irish writers refer to those "cuttings and closherings" of the Irish chiefs on their clansmen as if they were tremendous exactions-an intolerable burden; but they were nothing of the kind. The clansmen lived in rude plenty; they did not lack food or clothing; there were no evictions for non-payment of rent-and no shootings of landlords. They loved their chiefs, to whom they paid a moderate amount of tribute in money as well as in kind, but nothing comparable to what is extracted from their class in our time by Irish landlords and England's ingenious system of taxation.

The town of Bantry, we are told in some old topographical works, was formerly called Ballygobbin ; other accounts state that at a more remote period its name was just what it is to-day-" Bean-traigh,"the white strand. In the time of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, son-in-law of the "Lord Protector," had a fortification erected about a mile to the south-west of the present town. A number of the small traders

of Bantry, thinking they could do better business in the vicinity of the fort, built some houses there, which came to be called Newtown," but after some time both the fort and the new settlement were deserted and the traders returned to their old location by the water's edge.

Several projects for the construction of new forts at Bantry and Berehaven were devised from time to time by the English governors at Dublin Castle, and recommended to the higher authorities in London, but they were not carried out. In the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the reign of William and Mary, published in 1906, we get a specimen document in the following letter :

1694, April 10, Dublin Castle.

The Lords Justices of Ireland to Sir John Trentchard.

Experience every day shows us how well some forts (now demolished) were placed; and how much it would contribute to the public peace and safety if they were restored. The town of Bantry is seated in the bottom of a large and well frequented bay and in the borders of Bearhaven, Glanaroghty and Muskerry, where for nearly twenty miles there are no Protestant inhabitants. This is a den of Tories who molest the country round about here ; the Popish natives harbour them, and, corresponding with the French privateers, betray to them merchant ships, so that within these two years above twenty ships have been taken from thence by the privateers, The wisdom of former times built a fort in this place, by which that wild and rebellious country was kept in awe by a small garrison. And the Irish, when it came into their hands in 1698, demolished it, that it might no longer be a bridle upon them. The re-building of this fort nearer to the sea than it was, will secure those ships which shelter there, prevent this correspondence with France, unkennel those thieves that from thence do so much mischief, and every year save more than the whole charge will come to.

The reader will notice the assumption in this paperwhich indeed runs through all the Anglo-Irish literature of the time, official and unofficial-that the only people