Scathlan 2

TUAIRISC 0 A. M. SULLIVAN Seo a leanas cuntas fforshuimiuil 6 lamh A. M. Sullivan a bhf ag cosaint Phadraig Uf Dh6naill ag an triail i Londain agus a rinne gach iarracht fianaise ar bith a chuideochadh lena chas a fhail. Duine acu sin a d'fheadfadh an Dalach a shabhail Siubhan Nf Ghallch6ir - agus is suimiuil a bhfuil le ra aige faoin ar dhuirt sf leis an Ghinearal Pryor agus leis fein i rith na trialach. Is maith is fiu a bhfuil anseo a leamh mar gur gaire go m6r don fhfrinne a bhfuil ann n6 na scealtaf go leir a scabadh faoin Dalach ina dhiaidh sin. Well, it's not a cheerful story for the beginning of the new year, and there are many considerations that make me personally averse to its narration. But I do feel strongly that it ought to be told as one that rebounds tp the credit of the Irish peasantry and the honour of the Irish name. Pat O'Donnell is in his grave. Within the dismal cells of Newgate in unconsecrated ground, close by the pirates of the "Flowery Land", this killer of an impertinent murderer has been consigned to an ignominous sepulchre. But the .fate he dreaded most was happily averted. The death he suffered he from the outset contemplated with cheerful composure. He recoiled with horror and shame and pain from the idea of being regarded as a ~oldblooded, calculating murderer. He contemplated with a sort of · pride the idea of dying for the unpremeditated and, as he contended, justifiable act, which in effect executed the verdict and sentence of the civilised world and avenged justice, human and divine. The all penetrating enquiries of the Crown, previous to the trial, brought to light the fact (which otherwise overwhelming testimony would have proved) that O'Donnell knew nothing of Carey's presence as such on Kilfaun's Castle. He had as little purpose in tracking and assailing that bloodstained monster as he had of deposing the king of Ashantee. This, however, was not the story of the London press. For months before the trial with brutal recklessness of all decency and justice the London penny-a-liners plied the public with harrowing details of O'Donnell's sleuth-tracking movements. They said he tracked his victim from Dublin: that he got on board a ship at Dublin and called out to this confederate: "It is all right - they are here". That he signalled to somebody at Gravesend: that he watched the shore boats at Dartmouth and so on. This rotten reporting was arrant falsehood from beginning to end as the government satisfied themselves. For O'Donnell never was in Dublin in all his life, and he sailed in the Kilfauns Castle having booked with a German shipping agent, who told the Scotland Yard detectives the whole proceeding I There was, as I have said, one episode of the O'Donnell trial which it seems to me ought not to go untold. Sir Walter Scott has. made the name of Jeannie Deans immortal as that of a Scottish maiden who would not save her fiancee from the scaffold by a false oath. Fact is often stranger than fiction. I know for certain that a simple Donegal peasant girl, called Susan GaJlagher, has outrivalled the Scottish heroine in her anguish and sacrifice, her devotion and truth. 51