 he
Irish highwaymen who lived mostly over the later half of the eighteenth
century may be regarded as a more commercialised version of the Irish Rapparees.
The Rapparees were mainly dispossessed landowners who had to make way for
a newer set of Crown favourites and adventurers. This forced the
dispossessed landowners to take to the woods and hills with as many followers
as they could muster and wreak vengeance on the new set of landlords and
other landowners. The Rapparees in their campaign against the new
set of Planters and the English Crown flourished mainly from the collapse
of the 1641 rebellion to the middle of the eighteenth century.
 The
highwaymen who followed them could be called more proletarian in origin
and outlook. Many of them had gained a knowledge of firearms through
membership at one time or association with English military or militia
units. Some highwaymen carried out raids and holdups of mail coaches
singly while other operated with a small band of followers rarely exceeding
half a dozen. To the latter category belonged Captain Gallagher,
the famous highwayman. He was a native of Bonniconlon but spent part
of his youthful days with an aunt in the townland of Derryronane, Swinford,
near the wood of Barnalyra.
When
he decided on a freebooting career he picked three or four companions.
Equipped with fast horses and the erratic blunderbusses of the period,
they ranged over all east Mayo and parts of south Sligo and west Roscommon.
In addition to the holding up and robbing of the mail coaches, they raided
the houses of landlords and other wealthy people. 
On one occasion, they raided the home of a particularly hated landlord
in Killasser, and in addition to seizing all his silver and other valuables,
they compelled him to chew up and swallow eviction notices he had prepared
for half a dozen of his tenants. After some narrow escapes from the
English soldiers, Captain Gallagher’s luck finally ran out. He was
spending a quiet Christmas recovering from illness in a friend’s house
in the parish of Coolcarney or Attymass among the foothills of the Ox Mountains.
A jealous neighbour of his host a man whom Captain Gallagher had formerly
helped, sent a message to the commanding officer of the Redcoats in Foxford
that Captain Gallagher was staying in a house beside his in Attymass.
he
officer sent messages to the military stationed in Ballina, Castlebar and
Swinford for assistance before attempting the capture. With a force
of nearly two hundred men, the Redcoats surrounded the house. Being
ill and in order to save his host and his family, the highwayman surrendered
with out resistance. He was rushed to Foxford and after a hasty
sham trial was sentenced to be hanged and taken to Castlebar to have the
sentence carried out. Questioned before mounting the scaffold, the
Captain asserted that all his treasure was hidden under a rock in Barnalyra.
Hearing this, the officer in charge hastily carried out the execution and
then dashed towards the wood of Barnalyra with a hand-picked squad of cavalry.
Doubtless, visions of new-found wealth or rewards from the Crown helped
to hurry them on. When they reached Barnalyra they found to their
dismay not the few rocks they had visioned but countless thousands of rocks
of all shapes and sizes. After some days’ search, all they found
was a jewel-hilted sword.
Possibly
the puzzle about the location of Captain Gallagher’s treasure may never
be solved. Some people believe that his confession was made in the
hope that he would be taken to Barnalyra to point out the rock in question.
He knew that his companions were staying in a hideout on the Derryronane-Curryane
border close to the wood and he may have had hopes of a rescue attempt
by them. |
Submitted
by:
Eithne
Gallagher
Tales from
the
West of Ireland
by Sean Henry
Published by
The Mercier Press Ltd. 1980
|
"Michael,
I have
visited your Clann O'Gallchobhair page often and I have also enjoyed reading
about Yahoodi on the Gallagher Surname List. Some years ago
I came across a story about a Captain Gallagher, that you might be interested
in, it is from a book called "Tales from the West of Ireland" by Sean Henry.
In the story it mentions an area called Barnalyra, this is roughly where
Knock Airport is now built. Have you ever visited the Leitrim-Roscommon
Web page, they have a database of the Griffith Valuation and also the 1901
Census, mainly for the west Roscommon and east Mayo areas -- there
are a lot of Gallagher's here also.
Regards,
Eithne
Gallagher
Sligo,
Ireland.
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