Part 26

At midnight he was taken from prison, and offered his freedom on condition that he should give information against the leaders at Antrim. He refused; and no amount of pressure could make him yield one inch. They told him he must die; his only request was that he might see his minister, and be allowed to say farewell to his brother, Sam. Sam Neilson expected to share Willie’s fate, but that fact did not prevent him from encouraging Willie to die rather than “inform.” Soon after daybreak the boy was taken to his native village of Ballycarry, there to die. On the way he met his poor mother, who had set out to visit the prison. When she saw him in the midst of the soldiery, she rushed towards him, and while the soldiers tried to separate them he caught her hand, and exclaimed “Oh! my mother!” But they dragged him from her arms. She threw herself at her landlord’s feet, as he rode past, in the midst of the cavalry, begging him to intercede for her boy. His only answer was, “Get out of my way, or I’ll ride over you.” They brought Willie to his mother’s door to execute him there. But, brutes as they were, they saw this would be too iniquitous, and they yielded to the boy’s prayer and took him away to the end of the village. Even then the undaunted boy had leisure of heart to think of his dear ones. He begged that the sacrifice of his life might expiate the offences of his brothers, and that his body should be given to his mother. The soldiers tried to make him use the bandage for his eyes. But he refused with the proud word “that he had done nothing to make him screen his face.” Then, looking as his mother always remembered him afterwards, “very handsome and fair and blooming, with his light hair tossing in the wind, and the open shirt-neck, emphasising the youth of him,” Willie Neilson went forth to his death—for Ireland.

* * * * *

Even in the most tragic moments of our history, a certain sense of humour has never deserted us Irish. It has helped, perhaps, to keep us sane in the midst of our woes; and it has certainly saved us from the deplorable sentimentality, which we find so trying in our Teutonic neighbours (including the Anglo-Saxon) and the emphatic bombast which tinges with insincerity our Latin cousins. We may be sure there was many a ludicrous incident in ’98, as in ’16—and the men and women of ’98 had the same faculty as their descendants of to-day of seeing the humour of the situation. Some of the jokes of ’98 are current to-day—and since laughter is as characteristic of life as weeping, I will end my book with one of them. It comes from the village of Ballyclare, and was first told in print in the _Shan Van Vocht_.

On the morning of the fight in Antrim the wife of Billy Morrison rose early and spread the table with the best in the house for her man’s breakfast. There were fine home-cured bacon, and eggs, and tea, and potato cake and oaten bread. When Billy had done justice to these good things, and had his wife’s assurance that his pockets were full of more of them, for the day’s provisions, he grasped his pike, and rose to go. Then did his _guid wife_, “in lieu of sentimental, or patriotic, or pious admonition,” thus address him in valediction:

“Ye hae got as guid a brekfust as ony mon in Ballyclare; sae kill naebody till they kill you, and then doe for yerself, Billy Morrison.”

One fancies that Billy Morrison gave a good account of himself that day in Antrim town, and did credit, with his strong pike arm, to his wife’s good feeding. And so it has not seemed unfitting to evoke, from the past, her homely sturdy form, and set her even by the side of the tragic figure of Willie Neilson’s widowed mother. For from the sturdiness of the one, no less than from the heroism of the other, proceeds the unconquerable spirit of Ireland.

Finis.

_Printed by_ M. H. GILL & SON, LTD., _Dublin_.

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that: was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); was in bold by is enclosed by “equal” signs (=bold=).