What a wonderful article! Thank you. Mary Heaphy <tipwex@eircom.net> wrote: A TIPPERARY TENANT,S TRIUMPH. There is not in any of Charles Levers rollicking notion of Irish life and character anything more thoroughly racy of the soil than is to be found in the facts which bring to an end a remarkable chapter in the strange eventful story of the Ireland of to-day. It is the stirring story of the Kilburry eviction. The scene of this true tale of life in Ireland in this year of grace is laid, very appropriately, in a romantic Tipperary valley. Here dwelt on a large farm the Meagher family of the respectable farming class. Representatives of this family had been in the place for generations as tenants holding a lease. Things went on comfortably with them until the hard times came. The rent fell into to arrears, year by year ; the landlord was pressing for his money; the tenant couldn't or wouldn't give it to him ; then the landlord wanted his land, and this the tenant resolutely refused to yield. Now a fierce struggle commenced for the possession of the land, the owner had the power of the law on his side, and the tenant had popular sympathy and practical support on his. The landlord brought his forces on the ground in the shape of the Sheriff, Bailiff, and Police. The tenant garrisoned his house with neighbours, and barricaded it so securely that the small legal force dare not attempt to take the place by storm. The Sheriff discreetly retired from the field. The Kilburry contest had now attracted the attention of the landlords and tenants throughout the country. It was regarded as a test case, and, accordingly, was watched with excited interest by the two classes, now face to face in open war. Here was a landlord who couldn't get either his rent or his land. Here was a tenant who defied the law and the landlord. A second descent was made on the tenant's house, in the rich vale under the shadow of Slievenamon. This time a powerful force of police invested the place, and a resident magistrate came out with the Riot Act in his pocket. The garrison in the house was likewise a large one ; a determined crowd of men and women was there, armed with all kinds of weapons, from a revolver to a rolling-pin, and. for the purpose of harassing the enemy there was a large supply of boiling water on the premises. The sheriff knocked at the door and demanded possession in the name of her most gracious Majesty Queen V Victoria. A shower of boiling water from an upper window answered him in the negative in a very practical fashion. Then the resident magistrate rode up to the fortress, with the Riot Act in his hand, ready for reading, and called upon the garrison to surrender or take the consequences, which he warned them would be serious. The garrison, represented by a young peasant in a flannel jacket, appeared at a window, said something unparliamentary about the Riot Act, and told the magistrate to take the place if he was able. Two scaling parties, composed of men of the Royal Irish Constabulary, were told off to attempt to effect an entrance through the windows, front and rear, while the main body of the forces battered at the doors with the butts of their rifles. The scaling parties found it hot work between boiling water and bludgeons and pitchforks, pokers, scythes, and reaping-hooks. A dozen constables took a long ladder and, rushing at the hall-door with it as a battering-ram, made a breach in the outworks through which the invading force swarmed. The garrison retreated up-stairs, and made a stand on the first landing ; driven from this, they retreated to the next landing, and there made another obstinate stand. By this time one of the scaling parties succeeded in entering through a back window, and the end of the fight was that the garrison was overpowered and made prisoners of war. They were handcuffed and led away captives. Now, the indignation meetings set in. Fierce demonstrations were held in the neighbourhood, at which a solemn vow was made that the farm from which Meagher was evicted should be allowed to waste until he was restored to possession. It was thoroughly under stood that the man who would take that farm, or work upon it in any way, for the benefit of the landlord or of himself, would do so at the risk of his life. No man took that risk. As soon as Meagher, his wife, and his retainers were liberated on bail to take their trial at the ensuing Assizes, a band of masked men, armed, accompanied him to his old home at night ; expelled the caretaker who was put in charge by the landlord, having previously sworn him not to undertake that sort of work any more, and reinstated Meagher in possession, swearing him to hold it against all comers. Here, now, was the landlord exactly in the position in which he found himself at the commencement of hostilities. Again the landlord put the legal machinery at work for the purpose of again expelling this terrible tenant. Blood was up to fever heat on both sides now. The farmhouse was put in a condition, within and without, to resist a prolonged siege ; it was amply provisioned, and was garrisoned by a band of braves who threw themselves, heart and soul, into the work. The crops on the farm were now ripe, and needed cutting. One bright moonlight night a swarm of peasantry came on the ground, and next day, as if by magic, that farm was bare ; the crops had been cut down by hundreds of reaping-hooks and scythes, and carried away to neighbouring barns. This extraordinary harvesting feat was, of course, accomplished in the interest of the tenant who was fighting his landlord. If a novelist were writing on imaginary incidents like these, he would find it absolutely necessary to wind up with a tragedy. There wouldn't seem to be any other natural way out of it. If he had a literary daring to make all these desperate doings end up not in a fierce and fatal fight for that farm, but in a jolly drinking bout on the spot by the contending forces, at which the landlord and the sheriff and the resident magistrate and the police were " toasted "in champagne, he would surely be consumed by the critics for constructing an outrageously improbable denouncement. Yet this, and much more! was what really did happen, in fact. It came about in this way :Through the instrumentality of the friends of landlord and tenant, a treaty of peace was signed on the following terms : One of the two years' rent due by the tenant to be forgiven ; the annual rent of the farm to be permanently reduced from £512 to £400 per annum ; the landlord to expend £300 on such improvements in drainage as the tenant may determine on. The tenant appears to have the better end of the peace compact, which, probably, the landlord was induced to accept on the principle of " anything for a quiet life." The last chapter in this remarkable drama is the strange one. The scene is laid in the same farmhouse in the rich Tipperary Valley. The dramatis persona are, as before, the tenant, his wife, and his followers ; the sheriff, the agent, and the magistrate, and the police. This time, however, the sheriff and his forces are not scaling the walls of the besieged dwelling, or battering at its barricaded doors. They are seated in the best parlour at the hospitable board of the tenant, on. which a champagne luncheon is spread. Mrs. Meagher, the tenant's wife, is doing the honours of the house, supported at the foot of the table by her husband. This party, so very strangely mixed, is gathered to celebrate the signing of the treaty of peace above mentioned. They have a good time of it. Instead of the crack of a rifle there is heard the pleasant popping of champagne corks. Everybody s health is drank in sparkling wine, and there is much spontaneous speechifying. The tenant proposes the health of the Landlord, the gent responds in suitable terms, and then rises and proposes the health of the hostess and the host. The latter, visibly affected, expresses acknowledgments for his wife and himself. The tenant asks the company to drink in bumpers to the health of the sheriff- the man who had the boiling water thrown over him during hostilities. The sheriff, a gushing little man, with his hand pressed to his 1eft ribs, protests that he is now enjoying the happiest moment of his life ; special bumpers are swallowed in compliment to the magistrate and to the police. When the feast was ended a local brass band escorted the guests to the railway station.- Dublin Letter in the Times. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to COTIPPERARY-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message