Monday 31 December 2012

1982 Irish State papers released

Workers' Party sought Irish link to 'red' lobby

From the Irish Times.The State papers of 1982 have been released

Relations with the DUP
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1231/1224328281293.html
The propblems of Irish peace keepers in the lebanon
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1231/1224328281093.html
The Falklands conflict
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1231/1224328280231.html
Scramblers for telephones
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1231/1224328281153.html

I expect a harder line would have been taken over the Falklands, in the ``So you think you've got troubles universe'' Also the Irish would stop doing UN service. Unless they really needed the money

Tuesday 18 December 2012

James Larkin

http://www.thejournal.ie/james-larkin-deportation-1923-710632-Dec2012/

From the Journal

I did not know James Larkin, was imprisoned in America.

Friday 30 November 2012

Rather like Hugh

I have currently moved to Lima, I hope to update, my blog soon

Wednesday 7 November 2012

Yesterday in History

Brother Walfrid
125 years... and still going strong
It was 125 years ago this very day on November 6, 1887 that Celtic Football Club was born. A meeting in the church hall of St Mary’s parish in the Calton established the club, and while those present would have harboured well-intentioned ambitions for the new sporting organisation, none of them could ever have imagined that Celtic would go on to become one of the most famous names in world football.

Now, 125 years later, Celtic remain an important presence in the East End of Glasgow. The club has gone from strength to strength while remaining true to its roots. It is no idle boast to say that it is ‘more than a club’.

And in celebrating the proud and unique history of a club that has, from its inception, always been open to everyone regardless of race, creed or colour, we are reminded of the vision of those men back in 1887 and are proud of everything that has been achieved by the club down through the years.


*****************************************

I wonder what happens to them in the so you think you've go troubles, universe. Again with no Irish famine. No Celtic FC

Sunday 4 November 2012


The Templemore miracles


I came across this today. While reading the Journal.ie. TG4 made a documentary on the subject


Templemore
Above: The improvised altar that had been erected in a yard beside Dwan’s shop, Templemore, 22 August 1920. (National Photographic Archive)











The Devotional revolution ( This is the change in Irish religious practice after the famine, in which the Irish become very observant ultra montane catholics)  meets the Irish revolution

http://youtu.be/aJhXvpzWamw  
An article in the Journal explains more


*******

I wonder if Dan Breen, 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Breen  Set the whole thing up himself. Breen was the most secular of the Irish commanders. Also one of the most aggressive IRA commanders. 




Tuesday 30 October 2012

Irish in the French slave trade

For a description of the Irish in the Caribbean

 http://www.amazon.com/Hell-Barbados-Ethnic-Cleansing-Ireland/dp/0863222870/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363101383&sr=1-1&keywords=to+hell+or+barbados

****

It struck me that the Claddagh ring, was probably made using Peruvian silver. Paid for with the profits of the slave trade. If you have ever seen the TV series Angel. Angel's father is a Galway man.  A wealthy merchant dealing in silks. I presume these silks are either paid for with profits from slaves, or sold on to slave owners. 


H/T the Journal.


THE IRISH HOLD a unique place in the history of the trans-Atlantic slave
trade, white Europeans who were both slaves and slavers, depending on which way
the political and economic winds were blowing from the seventeenth century
onward.
> Transported to the West Indies as indentured labour after the Cromwellian
conquest or enthusiastically profiting from the inhuman triangular trade between
Europe, Africa and the Sugar Islands, cast as victims and villains as
circumstances changed. And over two two centuries of the Atlantic slave trade,
Irish merchants, seamen and financiers built vast dynastic fortunes at home and
abroad.
> The many Haitians and West Indians who trace their ancestry back to Africans
transported on Irish-owned slave ships are living proof that the Irish have not
always been the victims of history.
> And it was the Irish slaving clans of Nantes in France, descendants of the
Wild Geese, who effectively ran the trade in humans for the French nobility.
> One Irish soldier turned pirate and saver, Philip Walsh of Ballynacooly in the
Walsh Mountains in Co Kilkenny, was present at the signing of the Treaty of
Limerick on 3 October 1691, which marked the end of the Williamite War and the
scattering of thousands of exiled Irish soldiers and commanders across the sea
to the continent or west to North America.
> "A personal taxi service for the Stuarts"
> Walsh senior, together with his son Antoine, commanded the ship that carried
the defeated King James II from Kinsale in Co Cork to France after the Battle of
the Boyne. The family were a sort of personal taxi service for the Stuarts
during their ill-fated adventures: Philip's son Antoine Vincent was the
owner/operator of the armed frigate Doutelle, the ship that landed Charles
Stuart, James II's son and the `Young Pretender', in Scotland in 1745 in his
doomed bid for the throne.
> Philip had settled in St Malo in Brittany (where Anthony or Antoine was born
on 22 January 1703) and looked at start-up opportunities in the burgeoning
Atlantic slave trade. Philip Walsh was a shipbuilder, merchant and at times a
daring and ruthless privateer or licensed pirate for the French crown, with free
rein to attack and capture British shipping in the English Channel while the two
great European powers were at war. He sailed fast, heavily-armed, but relatively
small ships such as Le Curieux under letters of marque from the French crown.
> Philip Walsh would venture far in search of a prize, on one occasion taking
two ships, the Ruby and Diligent into the Indian Ocean and on another, sailing
Le Curieux around Africa and to the mouth of the Red Sea to attack Dutch-owned
coffee stores in Moka in the Yemen. On that raid against the largest coffee
market on the coast of Arabia, the Irish corsair captain plundered an estimated
1,500 tonnes of the highest quality coffee beans. Philip, who married an Irish
woman called Anne White and had ten children, died on a later voyage to Africa.
> It was left to one of his sons, Antoine to get the real family business –
slaving – off the ground.
>

> By the early 1700s, the French port of Nantes, with a large, close-knit and
hard-working Irish slave-trading community, became the chief slaving port for
the kingdom of Louis XIV, the Sun King. It was said that half of the ships that
sailed out of Nantes at the time were owned or stocked by Irish merchant
families, including the Joyces, Walshes, MacCarthys, O'Sheils, Sarsfields and
O'Riordans. Manufactured goods, guns, textiles, liquor and knives, were brought
from Nantes to the Slave Coast, exchanged for slaves who were transported to the
French colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti)
where they were sold for sugar and tobacco, which then returned to Europe.
> The Irish merchants built fine homes on the ÃŽle Feydeau, which still stand
today, but the profits were spread far beyond Nantes: they made fortunes for the
ports of Bristol, Liverpool and Amsterdam. To their great credit, the merchants
of Belfast, under the future United Irishman William Putnam McCabe, refused to
take part in the inhuman slave trade. However, the merchant princes of Cork,
Limerick and Waterford profited by victualling the ships, feeding the slavers
and slaves alike to great reward and family fortune. Huge family fortunes were
built in Cork, the city centre was rebuilt and some of those dynasties that were
built on the backs and bellies of millions of slaves are still with us today.
And so it went on for decades, with the wealth of nations and Empires built up
on unimaginable human misery.
> Antoine Walsh was, until he was comfortable enough to retire to an office job
on land, a slave ship captain. The voyage, from France to East Africa and then
across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, was long and perilous and those making it
faced everything from disease and foul weather to the possibility of piracy and
mutinous human cargoes.
> "From slave-ship captain to slave merchant"
> By the early 1730s, Walsh had seen enough of the disease ridden coast of East
Africa and the dangers of the middle passage and promoted himself from
slave-ship captain to slave merchant.
> Antoine had been lucky enough to avoid the bloody below-decks uprisings that
claimed the lives of many slavers, including some of his employees and
relatives. In 1734, the slave ship L'Aventurier, outfitted by Walsh's
father-in-law Luc O'Shiell (a former Jacobite officer), spent nearly four months
moving up and down the West African coast, looking for slaves.
> At Ouida (also called `Whydah' by the slavers) on the coast of Benin, the
captain (a J. Shaughnessy) went ashore to trade, leaving Barnaby O'Shiell,
Antoine's teenage brother-in-law, in command of a crew laid low by fever and
dysentery. The slaves took their chance and broke free, cutting the
barely-conscious pilot's throat and locking the other invalid sailors below
hatches. It was up to young Barnaby to rally the five sailors who could carry a
gun and in the ensuing fight to regain the ship; two crewmen and forty slaves
were killed. In commercial terms, they had lost one-sixth of the cargo and
Captain Shaughnessy was forced to tie up at Ouida until he had collected 480
native men, women and children to transport in chains to Saint-Domingue and
Martinique. Both Barnaby and Shaughnessy survived to have careers as slaver
captains for Antoine.
> Antoine Walsh would suffer a major setback after 1748 when he attempted to
monopolise the French-East African slave trade – his business rivals forced him
out and he left France to manage the family slave plantations in Sainte Domingue
(Haiti), where he died in 1763.
> Ten years earlier, in 1753, Antoine had been enobled by King Louis XV of
France and the family estates on the lower Loire were consolidated by Royal
letters-patent into the "Comte de Serrant." The Walshes were henceforth Comtes
de Serrant.
> The exiled Irishman had personally bought and sold over 12,000 African slaves
and launched 40 cross-Atlantic slave voyages. He was the greatest – or worst –
of the Irish-Nantes slavers, far outstripping rivals such as the O'Riordan
brothers, Etienne and Laurent, who had family back in Derryvoe, Co Cork. The
Roches, originally from Limerick, where their extended clan included Arthurs and
Suttons, managed a mere 11 slave voyages with around 3,000 slaves.


This article was published in the Journal.ie

In the sleeping under the cross universe. The main characters all support slavery. Hugh may own some slaves. Part of his inheritance, from Karoline.  Juan despises slaves. Mirroring the Irish immigrants conflict with African Americans in the US




Memoir suggests British army at opening shots of Civil War

Memoir suggests British army at opening shots of Civil War

I would point out first that the account has strange entries.
Secondly Collins had fired on the Four Courts by the time, they British regulars were used.

Its also interesting to wonder where the guns and gunners where earlier? at Pettigo perhaps?

http://sleepingunderthecross.blogspot.co.uk/p/ogegg-lahh-nahhh-erinnnn.html


Sunday 21 October 2012

US paper on the Anglo Irish war

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a523173.pdf

Per Defending Ireland there was an Irish military mission to the US Army education system

http://www.amazon.com/Defending-Ireland-Irish-State-Enemies/dp/0199242690/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363101721&sr=1-1&keywords=defending+Ireland

See my Volunteers of Ireland, for more US involvement in the aftermath of the Irish war

Paper on the Anglo Irish war

Friday 19 October 2012

An account of Kinsale in 1514

From a European source

So that most young women and girls have their chests naked to the waist; it is as common there to see or touch the breast of a girl or woman, as it is to touch her hand. And so, there are as many different fashions and customs as there are countries. Over here we would mock this because it is not the usual custom,except in secret when Robin and Marian are in an amorous embrace.
There I saw all sorts of breasts according to age. There I saw nipples of girls aged twelve years; afterwards the nipples that they have when they are fourteen or fifteen years old, until they begin to develop in size and shape. Also I saw some completely developed, so very round and pert that it was a pleasure to see them, as here have the marriageable girls of eighteen years and above. I also saw all sorts of tits, middle sizes, big, shapely and in the open hand one would call them firm but yielding. And I saw some so disgusting and unsavoury that I marvelled where the little children could receive their daily nourishment. Also I saw others which were not at all worth looking at, so ugly and wrinkled were they and only deserve the name of flaccid udders.

**********

I am not sure what is being described here. This is from an Imperial (Holy Roman Empire) traveller to Ireland. Possibly he is describing the brothels of Kinsale. Or he has been riding about the country side, and is seeing Irish women working in the fields. There was a moral panic in Victorian times, about women working half nude in gangs, in the field. If the men, are away attending cattle or sitting about at home. Then there is not so much need to be modest.

Or it may indicate slave girls. I would assume the warfare of the heartland sent many people to the ports. 

Tuesday 16 October 2012

October 16h, 1908.

October 16h, 1908

From the Irish times, today in history section.  Remember Hitler was a frustrated Painter. Collins really wanted to be Banker...We all are living in our own alternate histories

Saturday 13 October 2012

Meanwhile in another univers, Chapter 20 point 2

The word went round each house and hearth. The wine sinks, the pot houses of the port all were informed. Housewives standing about at the bakers, shared the word with maids. Children added it to their games. Amongst the mules and horses of the great port.The tidings where shared. However as usual, the beasts kept their counsel. The intelligence reached even the loneliest and meanest shepherd boys on the sea of grass.
The Wild Irish were going to Lima, they were going to meet with the Viceroy!

Outside the house of the O Neill there were often a groups of people. Hawkers, and idlers. People coming to do business with the O Neill, sell him a prize mare, or petticoats for his maids and daughter. Others sort introduction to a prince of the Earth. They sort to break bread, and fill there cups with him. Some fancied that they make make a match between the prince and their daughters. A title even an Irish one. Even one to lands, which where lost to heretic swords, was still coveted.


Higgins salutes Argentina disapora

Higgins salutes Argentina disapora

The Irish president touring South America, saluted the Irish disapora there.
The Duggans, were one of the leading lights of the IRB at one time. Indeed there was a plan for Devalera to tour South America after his his visit to the USA.

See

http://www.amazon.com/Wherever-Green-Worn-Story-Diaspora/dp/1403960143/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363102114&sr=1-1&keywords=Wherever+green+is+worn

But with all Coogans books...Take it with a pinch of salt

Friday 12 October 2012

Higgins makes visit to Argentina

Higgins makes visit to Argentina

An Irish leader, in Argentina, I wonder would Hugh approve of either? A Mechanic, and a woman, discussing the affairs of one the royal's realms?

Friday 24 August 2012

Irish political poster in 1918



Something that would interest Hugh?

Thursday 23 August 2012

So you think you've go troubles

Original item, was written several years ago. I have updated it, in part for clarity and consistency. I have purged a lot of the capital letters. I have also adjusted things. In part to reflect some more reading.  I know more about Donegal's role in the Irish civil war, for example
I am aware of Exercise Armageddon. At the time, the information would still have been covered by the Republic's 30 year rule. I have borrowed some peoples ideas, for the many discussions of if Lynch had invaded.

Best

Crazy

Wednesday 22 August 2012

Today in Irish History

22 August 1922 Michael Collins killed in Ambush


Friday 10 August 2012

Battle of Vinegar hill, renactment



Of course does  not happen in the Sleeping under the times universe. Wexford, becomes as planted as Down, and North Armagh. I should do an AH on 1798 one day

Tuesday 7 August 2012

Monday 6 August 2012

The Great O'Neill

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-ONeill-Biography-1550-1616/dp/0802313213

I was reading this. I was pleased to note, that Mountjoy when he was in service with Essex, did suggest taking the Army sent to Ireland, back to London, to confront Elizabeth

**********


Thursday 12 July 2012

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

There was a noise;  his eyes were opened.  The girl  had come into the room, to start a fire.  The girl, was taking her time, damn her.  She managed to prove a match to her task, and a fire crackled away.  His maid , moved to reach under the bed.
``Wait outside, a moment, until I call  for you''
He clambered out of bed, and lifted his nightshirt, thank God. Thank God, and his blessed mother.
The deed was done.
``Maria’’
The wretched girl, returned, and the chamber pot vacated. 
Oh, he had supped too much last night.  It felt like he was wearing a cap of sandstone. Oh sweet Jesus. Oh St Patick, st Peter and all the saints! Why did he do that? Why? Oh he would need, to use the chamberpot again in a moment.  He was a fool. He was of the blood, and a father.  Speaking of such,  he went over to the chest, and fetched up a coat, and placed it over his shirt.  He would have to get round to hiring himself, a proper manservant.  The house was unbalanced, and it was not seemly to have to many maids, about. He should marry again, and let his lady take the household under her charge. But, before that, opening the door,  he set off into the world. A fool, and a sot, he may be but, not a laggard.  Maria, returning the chamberpot. Oh wait, did she empty it, or did she just walk outside. With Maria, you could never be certain. Confronted by her lord, and master Maria was the honest and honourable daughter of a man, who had served his father, and her grandfather had fought beside the O Neills at Yellow Water, one presumes her kinfolk were more vigorous stopped as still as a plains deer. Nodding he told, her he was going to see his daughter, and she was to set out his clothes, and than come to the nursery.
He would have to find, a match for Maria, when he was sober. She had served him well and honestly. Her reputation and his patience needed to be sated. The heir of Conn of a hundred battles stopped, outside a door.  A door like any other in house, yet the heir of Kings would tread more lightly here, than if he was in the castle of the Regent.  Or at the mercy of the Moors.....  With the delicacy of a surgeon he eased the door  a touch...

Oh

She was beautiful, she was sleeping thank, you Jesus. Standing sentinel over her crib, there was her nurse. Snoring softly, well, that was alright. Karoline, had been exhausted after her confinement.  His nurse, had spoken of a banshee that wailed and wailed. That kept vigil over the dead…
Perhaps not, that was ill done
His daughters nurse had woken.  She blushed, and smiled. She was pretty.
It was perhaps a little unseemly;  He would wait until there was a chaperone, and he had to use the privy anyway.  He could see, someone pissing against the wall, in the courtyard. Blessed Mother
Galego
The fool, was punished, and the lord of manor, went to his privy.
Maria was waiting outside. His Guardian angel was less proximate.
I will see my daughter. You will accompany me, he may well have asked, the sun to rise tomorrow.
His daughter, was awake, and
Oh
Oh she was so beautiful, oh she was immaculate. Oh the world was made new.
She was radiant. Everything, was good, and warm again.
She had her mother’s eyes. They were dark, and rich like two bowls of chocolate.  She gurgled, as he spoke to her. To his pretty pretty daughter.  His light
He felt richer, than the King of Spain. More blessed then the Holy Father himself.
Now he told her, the news that had laid on his heart  ```I am going to Lima.
I am going to meet the Viceroy, and
The Viceroy? 
Maria,  gasped out loud.  `` 
``It is fine. Thank you Maria''
Of all his house hold,  the nurse,  stood alone. His father, had  a nickname, for them.  How had he translated it, to Karoline, it was either she herself, or herself alone.  Juan was half convinced the poor girl, was a witch. The serving girl, that Juan believed he was courting behind his master back,  held no such doubts.  The Portugese sections of the port, said that the Wilde Irish, had a witch, that drank the blood of the dead,  at Midnight at Midsummer. Which surely must confuse the devils, as Midsummer in the Port was not Midsummer in Rome. Alas such scepticism, was a lonely virtue.  The rumour and reputation of the Wild Irish withch started fights in the winesinks and taverns. Juan had stabbed a man, for less. 
The Wild Irish witch  was nothing but, a country girl. A refugee, among the thousands who had clambered upon land in the port.  Her family had been indentured into the Americas, on a French ship. Her parents, had not survived long after the journey. She had been crying, in Irish outside the warehouse, where her family had slept, among the hides and fleeces.  In fact crying would have been an understatement. The lass  had been bawling, but it had saved her. Hugh’s father had heard, it in the street while he had ridden down to port for news of their kin, who were campaigning with his Majesty against the Moors. .  The orphan had been inconsolable, and her tears had moved his Father's heart.  Their great house had been empty since Hugh’s mother had passed. So his father took her into his service. Well of sorts, she did not toil nor, did she spin, if one was totally honest. She was nothing more than a honest country girl. Of  whom  the fate had been either fortunate or capricious with. Yet, men slighted her. There was those who would forever see a witch.
If only her parents, had lived a little longer though.  She was dutiful, and modest, enough. She was somewhat familiar, however Hugh’s father, had said it was the way that women were in Ireland, before they had left. After all, had it not been a woman whose will and whims, that brought the foreigners, to their ancient homeland.  In her heart of hearts, Hugh knew, she thought she was somewhere, in the lands beyond the West.

She was right, he supposed. She was here,  in the housewith the descendent, of her peoples Kings. She ate meat every day, and slept on a good bed. Strong men, guarded her door and person, and she prayed in a Chapel embellished with marble and gold.
``I must go to Lima, I must speak with the Viceroy. You will keep my daughter, safe until I return, will you do that for me?'' 

Monday 9 April 2012

Chapter 19


The navigator raised his hand, and called for one of the hands, to fetch something from the cabin. The sailor returned on deck, a moment later with the spy glass. There were birds swooping down, over the water, somewhere to the west. Was that the port or the starboard side? Juan had forgotten. It had been explained to him twice and he felt no need to imitate Peter.  In fact the proud Galician was sure that the Portuguese made it up, as they went along.   The company of Irlandessa that made up this ship’s company became aware of their nerves. They remembered that they were aboard a ship, and a long way, from home, at least they could still see land. Like a drunkard, stumbling homeward they stayed close to that which was sturdy and solid
One of the fishermen, walked to the Navigator who was the viceroy for the Portuguese Ship master, and whispered something to him.
The Navigator turned to Juan and bid him, join him.  For an instant Juan thought, should he draw his sword?  No!  If those blackguards had  wanted him, dead, it would have been well done by now.  They had after had to put up with the sworn men of the O Neill, for more time, than cut throats patience would stand.  Honest men suffered a noisy fool, with a hangover Juan reasoned.
Juan frowned and strained his eyes, there was something bobbing up and down on the horizon. The Navigator handed the spy glass over to the horseman. Juan, there was an arm, grey and bloated, on a bit of wood.  There were sea birds, diving into the horizon.
The Navigator spoke to the fisherman, quickly. Than he shouted to the sails, and after the sails had been scolded. The word was sent to the helmsmen. For a moment, the deck of the little ship was like an artillery piece in the middle of a siege, or like a comic opera. Everyone had their part to play. The ship, began to tack slowly.  Ever so slowly, it moved away from the land, and Juan, felt his hand on his dagger.
For a moment, Juan considered that the little ship was the size and weight of a small chapel. The helmsmen and the winds were moving it.  Unlike the chaos of a storm, the west wind was moving their craft with direction and discipline. It was a tornado, held in yoke, to a band of fishermen and sailors. No one’s first choice, an afterthought and a purse of silver, and yet they moved easier, than a team of oxen.
The Navigator, eye was at the spyglass again. Again he insisted that Juan share the vision.
There was a body, floating in the sea, face down, and a barrel, and several planks. Pieces of parchment lurked under the surface.
What had come to pass?  For a moment, Juan felt, a sudden stab of fear. ``Our Dons? ‘’ The Galician hold on his tongue suddenly became  a touch weaker and demanded an answer
``No, no. 
They are up wind. We have changed course, and we would have heard, if not seen, the fate of the IIasper. A ship to be destroyed like this must mean a storm, or a battle. The sky has been clear. The Captain the most   sober.  The Salve Regina remembered, when we sight land
Thus we should have shared their fate. The storms, do not respect rank. ‘’
The Heretics? Ventured the Galician.

The navigator frowned, and looked away; he bit his lip, and shared his mind.
``They were engaged in their work; long before your master, surprised them upon the strand. They may have fallen upon a ship leaving the port. This is all that remains, though I would rather God grant, that one of our ships has surprised them’’
The ship as one made the sign of the cross. The company hoping that there petition would find an audience and a response, in heaven. 
The hands returned to the if not earthly usual works, they struggle with the anchor. They strained and sweated. Anchor and chain, were soon submerged. The hands clambered aboard a small row boat, and made, there way, towards the horizon.  The ships company, now waited.
 Someone dived overboard, to fetch a barrel, from the drink. The barrel, rode high, on the water, and he lifted it easily, as he was pulled aboard. He shivered, and thanked, the Navigator for the sea cloak, and cup he was soon presented with.
 They all crowded around the barrel. It was wine, Spanish wine, and almost empty.
The navigator, nodded towards Juan, and banged on the barrel. ``An empty canteen, cavalier, observed the navigator such would mean the end of the days ride for a horseman.  An empty barrel spells the end of voyage for a seaman’’
The garrulous Navigator words meant that the ship, was from the North, it was Spain. It had been close to the end of its journey when it met its cruel fate.
``Take heart from one thing. This is not our masters and friends ship. ‘’
The oarsmen had stopped there little boat. The Hands had a name for it, the Pinnacle.. The crew of little boat, were bringing something back, into their little boat. It was heavy, and the boat sat low, in the waves as it returned back to the ship.  The Navigator handed to Juan, the spyglass. There was a chest, a good, chest, aboard, the boat.
There was little talk, as the oarsmen returned.  A score of men, kept their eyes, on the chest, as they winched it aboard. Half a score, sought cloaks, and a place by the fire.
He would never complain about the smell of horses again.
It had been floating, it was not coin or plate that was inside than. They took a few moments, to jerry the lock off, the sea chest. The lock was still fast even being lost upon the brine had not been enough for it to weaken in its duty.
There were papers. A chest full of papers, letters for the governor, from Madrid. The seal of the holy office was unbroken. Juan crossed himself. The heretics would not have spared anyone they caught on a ship with the inquisition aboard. There would have been no mercy. No quarter!
All was not lost, the Navigator said.  Speaking grimly, sooner we will get into port the better. This has turned out to be a black day, for us all Irlandessa and Portuguesa.
Juan agreed. They Men of the O Neill began prayers for the repose of the souls of their lost comrades.  Over the rigging and sails, he could hear, the sailors and fishermen join in the requiem.  The next day, the Galician went to mass, for their souls. Sitting across from the Portuguese men, sailors and merchants, and their wives and children.. Juan prayed not without sincerity for the souls of men, he would never meet.  Gabriella received a piece of silver for a candle. She did not quarrel or sigh about this expenditure.   After the mass had ended., Juan   rode off, with his Captain and waited outside of the house of the Governor
There was spits and sighs of rain, all day. Juan sheltered against the horse.  A boy came out, and lit them a crude brazier, he received a copper and honest thanks. The young Don, stayed behind closed doors. The Governor, had pressed one of his household to stand outside, to act as sentinel. The discussions were not for the laity, or commons.  About an hour later an emissary from the Portuguese joined the heir of Conn, and the representative of the Kingdom of Spains. The representative from Lisbon was an older man. Juan had recognised, from after the fire. The Portuguese  as befits a  Gentleman had arrived with a manservant to, yet he given the Galicain the courtesy of a Nod, and was replied with a polite bow.  The Portugese servant took his place on the opposite side of the door. Juan would captured for his House, the dextrous side.  His counterpart stood sinister , silent as the grave . With no tobacco and knowing better to wander off, Juan spent an hour staring at his horses hooves.  The Horseman checking and then, rechecking the equines feet for signs of illness, or some  other trouble that lurked between hoof and shoe. . A task he had been entrusted with as a boy, and would do until he was feeble.   Homer did not record who fed the horses of Achilles while he quarrelled with Agamemnon, someone had to. If the Myrmidon had taken his counsel there would be no Homer.
A trio of horses, clattered up the street  breaking Juan’s caravan of thought. Three horses..two greys and a brown mare. They were well looked after and well-bred animals. These were slowly followed by a few well-dressed servants walking behind them on foot. The party was led by a husband and wife. The pair, had reaped their harvest of children, and now waited patiently for winter.. Juan, remembered them from somewhere, guests of the master? Or devotees at one of the better chapels in Buenos Aires The whole procession was respectable, very respectable. When he married Gabriella he should have to travel in such a manner. The last of the sacraments was represented too. The party was accompanied by   a friar, as old as Abraham, himself, slightly behind them on a mule.
The caravan was completed by another old woman, in windows black, upon a quiet mare, by her side there was a blonde lady. Younger than her companion Gabriellas age.  She held no mystery to Juan. The Galician recognised her. While his heart was beating he would never forget her. The night of the great fire, a madman had lunged at the master, and this was his deliverer.  It was her with the silk, and horse pistol, her with the impeccable manners, and deadlier aim.
The lamps were being lit, when the Master brought the news
We are going to Lima, 

Sunday 22 January 2012

Reminder

Its easier. to read the blog backwards

Thursday 19 January 2012

Interruption 19-1-2012

I will now be posting, various Irish Alternate History stories. Alongside this blog.

Thank you