The Star of the Sea (46 page)

Saturday, 27 November, 1847
The Twentieth Day
50°10.07′
W
; 43°07.01′
N

O

Earth

unsown.

Ora pro nobis
.

Fountain Sealed.

Ora pro nobis
. Adam’s

Deliverance.
Ora pro nobis
.

Advocate of Eve.
Ora pro nobis
.

Aqueduct of Grace.
Ora pro nobis
.

Bride of the Canticle.
Ora pro nobis
.

Fleece of Heaven’s Rain.
Ora pro nobis
.

Eastern Gate.
Ora pro nobis
. Flower of

Jesse’s Root.
Ora pro nobis
. Undug Well.

Ora pro nobis
. Wedded to God.
Ora pro

nobis
. Lily Among Thorns.
Ora pro nobis
.

Rose Ever Flowering.
Ora pro nobis
. Garden

Enclosed.
Ora pro nobis
. Workshop of the

Incarnation.
Ora pro nobis
. House of Gold.

Ora pro nobis
. Joseph’s Wife.
Ora pro nobis
.

Unploughed Meadow.
Ora pro nobis
. Tower

of Ivory.
Ora pro nobis
. Throne of God.
Ora

pro nobis
. Undefiled.
Ora pro nobis
. Maid

Clothed in Sunlight.
Ora pro nobis
. Throne

of Redemption.
Ora pro nobis
. Surpassing

the Seraphim.
Ora pro nobis
. Treasurehouse

of Sanctity.
Ora pro nobis
. Surpassing Eden’s

Meadows.
Ora pro nobis
. Mirror of Purity.

Ora pro nobis
. Cathedral Unassailable.
Ora

pro nobis
. Spotless Dove.
Ora pro nobis
.

Vessel of Devotion.
Ora pro nobis
. Font

of Virginity.
Ora pro nobis
. Virgin Most

Pure.
Ora pro nobis
. Unlearned in the

Ways of Eve.
Ora pro nobis
. Victor

over the Serpent.
Ora pro nobis
.

Hope of the Exiles.
Ora pro nobis
.

Citadel of David.
Ora pro nobis
.

Queen of Africa.
Ora pro nobis
.

Sisterly Mother.
Ora pro nobis
.

Mary Immaculate Star of the Sea.

Ora pro nobis. Ora pro nobis
.

Mea maxima culpa
.

Ora pro nobis
.

I
N WHICH A
D
OCUMENT
U
NCOVERED BY
A
GENTS OF THE
A
UTHOR IS IMPARTED TO THE
R
EADER
(
WHO WILL SEE WHAT IT
M
EANS)
.

HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY’S ASSIZES:
EXHIBIT 7B/A/11
¹

April 1847
,
Galway
,
to the cptn of the els-be liable men
.

my name is Mary D
****
and i am of a good family. i was marrid to N
*******
M
*****
of A’nagcraomha for near thirteen year and five months until he destroyed his own life and the life of our infant daughter A****
M
***
M
*****
on christmas eve 1845 by drowning
.

i am handing this to a certain man who i know will have knowledge of who to give it to. god send you get it for it needs to be got
.

i am going to america shortly and will never come home again so i want to say what follows and hope ye and yeer men act on it. i know people in this christian county of hypocrites do be slightin about me and spreading slurry and gossip on my name and i am going away so i do not give ‘that’ what is said no more but here is the truth and the full of it
.

when i was nineteen yrs i was promisd to one p**s M***** of A’nagcraomha, only brother of N******* M***** that was once the priest. and as i live, no man ever knew me before that time. the same p**s M***** put me in a certain way and then jaunced off with himself to my great distress. he betrayd me. i was put out of my house by my father for the shame of it and for a time had to go the roads but then i livd with my brother in law and my sister in screeb. and him that ruined me the jolly roving ploughboy
.

his brother N******* was a priest in **** *****. when he heard the condition i was afterbeen put in he came down to see me and said he was very sorry over it and ashamd of his brothers low roguery and falseness to myself. he said he would leave off being a priest and wed me and rare my child if i would have him. at the first i said i would not but he insistd he would do it and did not want any lanna sired by a M***** to be a bastard itself and the mother disgracd. i said it would be wrong for him to do it an it wasnt gods will but he wouldnt be said about leavin off being a priest and he did do that anyway and kept in at me. we were lawfull marrid in the chapel at C**** (my home village) on the ninth of july 1832 and i went up to tully to live with him on his peoples land
.

my child was deliverd lifeless a month after (RIP) but we were afterbeen marrid by then and nothing to be done to cancel it out neither in law nor religion
.

N******* M***** was an honest and sober man but we did not live
as man and wife for many years. it was partly that my husband was oftentimes not well and feeble enough in himself and partly that the natural feelings were not there between us. there was sometimes unhappiness between us in the house over it but sometimes there was not. in the end of it i went to a priest Father Fagan and my sister about it and they said i was not been fair be my husband to deny him what was right and also there would be nobody for to carry on his land an we had no issue. we began to live as man and wife then. in 1843 i learnd that i was expecting an event and our child was born in janary 1844. we were quiet enough together at that time. my husband had a great longin to be a father and was the gentlest ever and loving kind. he had me destroyed with flowers and combs, the ribbons he got me would go around the world. he was like a woman itself with the child. he could not do enough for the child so he couldnt. those that call him madman or fool are not one bit fair to him. he was never that way until driven it by the cruelty of another
.

in september of 1844 his brother p**s M***** came back from wherever he was and began into torturin us. though he was after abandonin me and had no right on me at all he was seethin jealous now. the first thing he done was come back onto our land and say the half of it was his own in law and custom and he couldnt be put off it or he would tell the county we were after robbing him of his homeland and blacken us. he wrote a letter to cmmndr blake and said he was entitled to be on the land and would be able to pay a better rent for it than we could ourselves. he put up a cabin for himself on the land and would not go away from it. every time i came out of the house he would be stood there and he looking at me in a certain way improper and looking hateful at his own brother and the innocent child. he would come up and look in through the window of our house at night and i undressing myself. his face would come up at the window. one time i saw him watching in at us when my husband and myself were together in a natural way. all the unhappiness came back in to the house. he killed a cow belongen to us i believe. he thrished up our potato beds and ruind them. he tore down a haggard my husband made and a wall he made to bounden our plot of the land from his own half of it. there was no piece for us. when his brother my husband was off away at his work he would come up on me and say he still desird me and loved me in soft words. he is the same coaxing liar and false deceiver he always was before with a coying tongue but a black heart. he would talk the rain out of wetting him so he would
.

once and once only when my husband was away from the house and we
were not getting on well together i was weak which i will rue all my days and gave into him p**s M***** i mean to my shame. he gave me whiskey first. he said he would help me with a sup for the child if i did it and he would leave off from sneaping my husband. it is my own fault and sin what i did but also he took an advantage of the feeling that was between us before as young people. afterward he tortured me for it and said he could gain me any time he wanted. he broke my life on me, bad scran to that creepin judas
.

he was forever saying he would tell my husband about it. he spoke improperly to me about it. some things he did i cannot even say them. he would wait until he knew my husband was there and then make sighs as those which happen between a woman and her man at certain times and he lairing at me. once he took certain womans garments of mine off the gorse where they were drying and waited until my husband was coming up the boreen to pull them out his pocket. he skithered about the townland and told the neighbours my child was not the lawful breed of my husband at all but a tinkers bastard or an englishmans. as true as i live that is a lie what he said. my husband and himself had a fight over it. my husband nearly put him into his grave for himself and it is only the pity he didnt
.

when the blight came on the crop the summer forelast he would not help us. he himself was all right because he had money go leór
²
he was after getting on his travels some way and i think he is a thieving weasel anyway who never has want of money or finery or maybe he is a landlords lackey in secret or a castle bloodhound. i would put no slyness nor trickery past that fox so i wouldnt. he is the jesus Christ of trickery, it is said by some of the people that he is a driver-out-man or a bailiff in secret. he had food in rakes when my eanling was hungry, to some he says he is a liable man and to others a friend of landlords and sheriffs. he will tell any lie. he will swear a hole in a skillet if he thinks it will put money in his way. we were evicted by cmndr blakes agent in Ottober 1845 for not paying of the rent, a driver-man came down from Galway with fifteen peelers to bate us out of it. they bet my husband in front of myself and his own child while his brother watched. they laddered him. all the while they milled him the driver-man was saying do you see this now, M
*****.
do you see this you dirty scullions pig. here is a bating you will never forget not so long as you live. isn’t that right now. answer me pig. and they made him say yes that was right, and that he was a pig, and would not lay off of him till he did say that. he was never the same
after the bating he got that time, it was hag-seeds they were, not natural men. they broke him that day
.