If we can credit “Jeremiah McNeilly, Constable,” the “good people” have been playing fantastic tricks in the County Tyrone. A decent man and his wife have been almost driven out of their humble home by invisible foes, whose weapons of warfare were clods of turf. Having a lively recollection of the deception practised upon members of the Constabulary by the “witch” at Carrick, we cannot give our unfeigned assent to the story elsewhere told by a credulous constable.
Belfast Newsletter, 13th March 1865.
Spiritualism in Tyrone.
The following wonderful story appears in a letter addressed to the Tyrone Constitution. Our contemporary states that it reached him at the time of its date, and has been held over until now. He adds: – “As it has created considerable curiosity in the neighbourhood of the occurrence, we have been requested to publish it. We therefore give the communication of the constable as it came to us. There is not the least doubt as to its authenticity.”
The writer proceeds, saying: – I send you the following details of the most curious case that ever came under my notice, and for its authenticity I could supply abundant evidence, who were eye-witnesses to the greater portion hereinafter mentioned. The scene of the occurrence is the townland of Lenagh, about one and a-half miles from Mountfield. Here an honest, respectable man, named Peter McCrory, occupies a house, in which he resides, with a mountainous farm of land attached. Approximating to the dwelling-house there is one of those large mountain breaks usual in such places. The situation of the house is lonely, as his nearest neighbour is a quarter of a mile distant. McCrory is a married man, and the only persons residing in the house with him are his wife and a small female child, about seven years old. McCrory and his wife were never blessed with any family of their own, and live comparatively comfortable.
Some time in the harvest of last year Peter’s cat was, one fine morning, non est, but returned in the month of November, and was observed to be most ravenous and vicious; after taking some food it lay down for an unusually long time on a frock coat, and when removed therefrom it again disappeared, but not without force being found necessary. After the removal of the animal the coat was discovered to be full of vermin of different hue; from this time, up to a recent date, the house was polluted with them. The roof of the house and all the interior was similarly situated, baskets full having been swept together and burned. This obnoxious nuisance having been got rid of, everything seemed in its usual way until Thursday night last.
As the family, composed as before mentioned, were sitting round the fire, some invisible person threw some turf clods at them, but nothing more than the clods were resorted to on this night; but the attack was renewed on the following morning, in clear daylight, with greater violence. Some bricks were lying at the corner of the kitchen fire, and these were thrown from all angles of the house at the inmates, until they were reluctantly obliged to beat a retreat.
In the course of some time Peter returned and again joined his usual avocations, when a man entered the house on private business named Jemmy Carland, to whom all the particulars were realted. Jemmy, not believing it a feasible story, shouted out at the top of his stentorian voice – “Why the h-ll don’t they clod me now?” The words were hardly expressed when poor Jemmy received one, two, three blows of stones on his back. This poor man picked up the stones, left them alongside the fire, and, as he himself says, precipitately left for home, not again to return for some time. On this night Peter’s wife and little girl joined issue with Jemmy, and remained at her neighbour’s all night.
– I should here remark that during the female’s exit they were assailed on their entire route by some invisible parties keeping up stone throwing, and most particularly directed against the younger female, Peter keeping close and covering their rear, as it appears up to this period he was less obnoxious than the females. Peter returned, and was determined to maintain his position, exclaiming aloud, “Whatever you are, if I have injured you, in the name of God speak, and I will make any reparation required;” but to this there was no response. However, Peter was possessed of strong nerves, and remained alone in the house on Friday night, except the early part, when a strong body of the neighbours collected, but returned to their homes before midnight. All passed off quietly save some slight symptoms unworthy of notice.
At an early hour on Saturday morning Mrs McCrory and the little girl returned. Peter placed a pot of water on the fire for the purpose of making their breakfast, and it appears the moment the females arrived hostilities again began. The little girl was, from the effect of a blow of a hard turf, thrown into a tub of water. Nothing very material after this occurred until the evening, when a regular hand-to-hand fight took place between the invisible parties, on the one side, and Peter, supported by his family, and a man named McBride, who casually happened to be on the spot, on the other.
Peter brought in a quantity of turf for the Sabbath’s use, piling them opposite the kitchen fire where the persons named above were sitting. Suddenly, and in the presence of all, the turf were all thrown at Peter, striking him about the breast. Peter, in retaliation, flung every one of them back from whence they came, exclaiming he would not be banished from his home.
After these occurrences, Peter’s wife and little girl went to bed, but the latter kept constantly shouting that they were biting her. On examination five pins, three inches long, were found in the bed, some of them having penetrated the flesh of the little girl. The latter is left and peace is restored.
The above are the principal headings, not exaggerated, ad I am fully confident no human being is behind the screen in this case; and if you consider it worth the perusal of your readers, you are at liberty to use it.
Jeremiah McNeilly, Constable. Mountfield, Feb 15, 1865.
P.S. – The vermin mentioned in this document were very large, some the size of small seed potatoes, and covered over with a woolly substance.
Londonderry Sentinel, 14th March 1865.
Satanic pranks in Tyrone – Curious letter of a policeman.
We copy from the Tyrone Constitution a singular letter written by a Police Constable, named Jeremiah McNeilly, and detailing a number of what, in America, would be termed ‘Spiritualistic’ phenomena, which, it appears, have been lately witnessed in the dwelling-house of a Peter McCrory, in the townland of Lenagh, near Mountfield, county Tyrone.
The story of the cat, her mysterious absences, and the extraordinary vermin, covered over with a “woolly substance,” and reaching, in some instances, the size of “small seed potatoes,” wears an apocryphal aspect, and it is a pity that Jerry, the policeman, did not gather up a box-full of these reptiles, or whatever else they were, and send them for examination to some scientific naturalist. In this case, it is possible that an important addition might have been made to our knowledge of Irish zoology, as it is not exactly credible that either Satan or the cat had manufactured these living, jumping “seed-potatoes” for the sole purpose of plaguing Peter McCrory. As the letter alluded to is dated so recently as the middle of last month, it is possible that a specimen or two may still be lurking about the premises, and a scientific examination might lead to interesting results.
As to the “clodding” of turf and similar articles by invisible hands, this is a piece of mischief which can be done without any physical help from the Evil One, though we would by no means ignore his moral agency in the transaction. The truth is, that the policeman, instead of hastily taking for granted the supernaturalism of the affair, ought to have communicated with his superior officer, and to have represented the expediency of sending a regular detachment of constabulary to watch, and, if necessary, to make excavations in and about the house, so as to ascertain whether the disturbing “spirits” at work were not in reality subterranean. In every case of this description there is always prima facie ground of suspicion that material devils have something to do with material phenomena, such as the “clodding” of turf at people, and it is only after every possible examination has been made that any other conclusion can be thought of.
It is curious that when Jemmy Carolan challenged the spirits to a “clodding match,” the missiles struck him on the “back,” never in front so as to reveal the hands that threw them; and the farther circumstance that when Peter McCrory’s wife, with the little girl, was on her way to a neighbour’s house for a night’s lodging, the stones aimed at them came from behind, where Peter, who was less “obnoxious” to the spirits than the females were, steadily kept between them and harm by way of a body-guard along the road! We do not insinuate that Peter would do anything so unhandsome as to “clod” his own wife away to take refuge in a strange house at night; but the recorded position of Peter at the time of the accident may be properly noticed as an element in the affair.
Our Irish fairies are currently supposed to be the souls of the Tuath de Danaan, or other early aborigines, who were addicted to magic, and similar unlawful pursuits, and whose semi-materialized spirits have been condemned to dwell in mounds, “forths,” caves, and solitary places, keeping watch over the gold which they had buried in the earth during life, and if living men or women happen, even by chance, to disturb the place of any of these hoarded treasures, they are instantly driven away by invisible attacks such as those which lately befel Peter McCrory.
Should any more of these annoyances occur, the police would do well to make effectual searches both above and below ground in all directions, and if a “crock of gold” do not turn up, the probability is that something valuable will, in any event, be discovered.
Londonderry Standard, 15th March 1865.
… These constabulary, it would appear, are rather a credulous race. Another member of the force has just come forward to vouch for the perfect authenticity of a witch story of the most ridiculous character. The scene of the miracle was the county of Tyrone. “Jeremiah McNeilly, Constable, Mountfield,” apprises us that great wonders have been occurring in his immediate neighbourhood, and that there is no doubt whatever as to the facts. Peter McCrory, we are informed, is “an honest, respectable man,” and we have the remarkable circumstance that he lived in a house – a house “with a mountainous far of land attached.” The situation of the house is lonely, as befitteth the tale, and is a quarter of a mile distant from human habitation. When we add, in the words of Constable McNeilly, that “approximating to the dwelling house there is one of those large mountain breaks usual in such places,” we complete the description of the spot where McCrory dwelt. “McCrory,” as the constable goes on to relate, “is a married man, and the only persons residing in the house with him are his wife and a small female child, about seven years old.” Now, lest the cursory reader might imagine that the small female child, aged seven, was the daughter of Mr and Mrs McCrory, Constable McNeilly hastens to aprise mankind that “McCrory and his wife never were blessed with any family of their own,” but that, notwithstanding, they “live comparatively comfortable.”
Although the McCrory family consisted of only three human beings, the constable introduces us to another member of the household which plays a conspicuous part in the narrative. This is the cat. Before going any further, let us state that we have all these particulars gravely set forth in the newspaper to which Constable McNeilly, bursting with the bigness of the news, disclosed the marvels that he had seen. Some time in the harvest of last year, the McCrory cat was what the constable calls “non est,” which here signifies that she wasn’t at home. Following the fashionable usage, the cat seems to have treated herself to a lengthened autumn excursion, and it was November before she found it convenient to return. When she did come back, her condition suggested the inference that she had been staying at dirty lodgings. She was, as Cousin Feenix would say, in “the devil of a state.” Her fur was highly populated, and the small animals polluted the house to an extent which Constable McNeilly describes with some particularity, but which we prefer to omit. However, the lively cat was driven away, the house was purified; and so ends the first chapter of this strange eventful history. The feline parasites, we may venture to remark, were very peculiar in quantity and quality; and, therefore, as Constable McNeilly would give us to understand, the vermin were supernatural.
The second part of the performance, as the showmen phrase it, consisted of everybody being pelted with clods of turf. Of course, if the McCrorys had only taken to the pastime of pelting each other in this way, there would have been nothing remarkable in the fact; but Constable McNeilly tells us that, while the turf-clods fell thick and hit hard, they were thrown by nobody. We mean, nobody of this earth. Not created men, but spirits, black, white or grey, were those who propelled the enchanted turf towards the shoulders and faces of the innocent McCrorys. They threw more than turf at them.
Long ago we used to read how an honest farmer once found a schoolboy on his apple tree, stealing the fruit – or, as Constable McNeilly would say, animo furandi – and how he pelted the lad with grass and clods so ineffectively that he was eventually obliged to try what virtue there was in stones. In the same way, the spirits ultimately resorted to brickbats.
Listen to this extract from McNeilly’s History of the Miraculous McCrorys. “As the family,” writes the gifted historian,”composed as before mentioned, were sitting round the fire, some invisible person threw clods of turf at them; but nothing more than the clods were resorted to this night. But the attack was renewed on the following morning, in clear daylight, with greater violence. Some bricks were lying at the corner of the kitchen fire, and these were thrown from all angles of the house at the inmates, until they were reluctantly obliged to beat a retreat.”
Constable McNeilly, remembering – as one of our old nightwatch used to remark of himself – that he belongs to the military profession, is most particular in detailing the several strategic movements of the combatants. The McCrorys beat a retreat. Then Peter McCrory, having allowed the enemy as much time as would probably suffice to throw them off their guard, advanced to reconnoitre. The strategem was successful. He and his domestic force gained the house once more, and promptly subsiding into peaceful habits, Peter “joined his usual avocations.” While he was thus pursuing his usual avocations, a new actor appeared upon the scene. Constable McNeilly gives the name of the stranger – Jemmy Carland. This Jemmy Carland is represented by the constable as entering the house “on private business.”
The moment Jemmy Carland sits down, Peter McCrory becomes possessed with the story-telling spirit of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. He insists on narrating to Jemmy the whole of the marvellous tale. Despite the possible urgency of his private affairs, Jemmy, like the wedding guest, in the poem, “cannot choose but hear,” while Peter tells him all about it, including the incident which reminds one of “how slimy things did crawl, with legs, upon the slimy sea.” Jemmy listened in silence to the end. He was not startled. He heard of the cat, and was not appalled. He heard of the clods, and did not sink into earth. When he spoke at last, it was with the blasphemous scorn of an unbeliever. His words deserve to be recorded. What he said, we are expressly assured, was “shouted out at the top of his stentorial” – not stentorian – “voice.” “Why the hell,” said Jemmy Carland, “don’t they clod me now?” Mark what followed. “The words were hardly expressed,” writes Constable McNeilly, “when poor Jemmy received one, two, three blows of stones on his back. The poor man picked up the stones, leaving them alongside the fire, and, as he himself says, precipitately left for home, not again to return for some time.” Mrs McCrory, and the small female child, aged seven, were terribly frightened. Constable McNeilly mentions that “they joined issue with Jemmy” – he means to convey that they participated in his apprehensions, but the words used express exactly the reverse – “and remained at her neighbour’s all night.”
On their way to this neighbour’s house, the party walked in Indian file, “Peter keeping close and covering their rear;” but the spirits rained stones upon them during the entire journey. But Peter, if we are to trust the statement of Constable McNeilly, is a man of “strong nerves,” so he went back to his own house, and determined to confront his persecutors. Arrived at the house, he addressed the spirits in almost the precise words which a friend of ours is said to have addressed one night to a goat that was looking over a graveyard wall. That is to say, “Whatever you are, if I have injured you, in the name of God, speak!” But the spirits disdained him with silence.
Of the concluding chapter of these spiritual exploits our space warns us to dispose briefly. We must, therefore, content ourselves with stating that the turf-throwing was renewed, and the small female child, aged seven, knocked into a tub of water; that Peter, having provided a quantity of turf by way of ammunition, had a hand-to-hand encounter, if we may so put it, with his hidden enemies, and, in fighting phraseology, gave as good as he got; and that, when “Peter’s wife and little girl went to bed,” the small female child already described “kept constantly shouting that they were biting her.” To prevent misconception, it may be well to explain that “they” meant a quantity of “pins, three inches long,” which the spirits had considerately placed in the bed to torture the small female child.
The narrative stops here. So do we. All we care to add is that, as Constable McNeilly seems to believe all this, and is “fully confident that no human being is behind the screen in this case,” we are a little concerned for the health of that excellent officer.
The Londonderry Journal, 15th March 1865.