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32
MUNSTER
England to crush out Irish trade, contraband was
almost the one outlet for Irish commerce. If Irishmen
wanted to export the wool of their sheep, the
hides of their cattle, the meat that they salted, all
this traffic was by law forbidden. Such laws make
smuggling necessary and beneficent, and the O'Sul-
livans on the south of the Kenmare River,
O'Connells on its northern shore, brought
like the
in their
cargoes of wine, tobacco, silks, and laces, and sent
back ships laden with wool. With those cargoes
went out too that other contraband, the supply of
officers and men for the Irish brigade. The English
landlord-settler was the representative of English law,
and between him and the O'Sullivans conflict was
certain. In 1754, Murtagh Oge O'Sullivan shot the
Puxley of that day. Law was moved to great efforts,
and two months later the O'Sullivan was surrounded
in his house at the village of Eyeries, and, after a
desperate resistance, driven out of it by
fire: he tried
to cut his way out but was shot down in escaping.
That was a great day for the law, and they towed
O'Sullivan's body by a rope at the stern of a king's
ship to Cork, where they cut his head off and spiked
it over the city gate.
Irish memory keeps vividly the detail of such
events, and you can find men in that district to tell
you the whole as if it had happened yesterday. I