Just to the west we found our next step. And in true local fashion, it’s beautiful, and entirely devoid of human life at the moment. Also there are a few houses dotting the area, reasonable little places, with people all at work, or tending to chores, or who knows what. It’s a sunny Friday in the spring, it’s a reasonable temperature, and no one is around.
Ballyhiernan Bay consists of a sandy beach, about a mile long, backed by low dunes and protected on its flanks by rocky points to the east and west. Directly through there, though, is the Atlantic Ocean.
The tides were well out, and the beach was pristine. There are cattle and sheep grazing behind us here, but it hasn’t always been as peaceful as all of this. The 3rd Earl of Leitrim, William Clements, a balding many of bushy hair, had all of this in his estate at one time. His family had earned it the old-fashioned way: they’d stolen it decades earlier. Also, he had a thing about assaulting girls and women, supposedly. A real tyrant. His historical pullquote has become Lord Leitrim was not a bad man – if he got his own way. He had a history of evicted people for the slightest reasons. So maybe not a pleasant man. Here, after several previous attempts on his life, the locals got their revenge. In 1878, on a windy, sleet-filled April morning, they ambushed the man’s carriage and killed him and two of his employees. A few people were arrested, one died in jail, no one was ever convicted.
And that wasn’t enough for the locals. A few days later, people tried to capture his hearse. Apparently they wanted to throw his remains into the street. In 1960, a Celtic Cross monument was dedicated to the men who killed the earl, “in the cause against landlordism.”
This took place about 10 miles away. From reading the above account it was not an easy death. But standing there, at the beach, having read the tourist marker, you only know a little a bit about this. The historical signs are selective, and bound by space limitations and public relations considerations because, hey, beach!
Off to the left side of the beach we spent some time among the rocks and the tidal pools that make up a part of the point.
It’s been almost 150 years. You wonder if any of the people living here now are descended from those farmers, or those “patriots.” You wonder if there’s any knowing slaps on the back at the pub. “My great-great-great-great-great grandpa showed him!” With history so deep, some stories would probably sound as if they knew those people, as if they were still looking for clues out on that muddy hill.
I found a piece of rusted angle iron on the beach. I wonder if it means something.
The pebbles were more interesting. I picked up a few and played with them on the way back to the car.
I should have been looking for patriots.
