We thought you might like to see this story that was written by Mary's Aunt many years ago and passed on to her from her cousin.
When I was between eight or nine years old, I was holidaying at my maternal grandmother's house. She lived in a quiet back road between two villages, Oylegate and Ballymurn. One sunny day in early July 1916 I was playing outside when I heard two big lorries coming along. (Margaret was born in 1907 so she would have been about 8 years old)
They were full of soldiers. I climbed onto the big yard gate to watch them go by. The first lorry passed with great speed, but the second lorry stopped and one of the soldiers asked for a rose. I counted the soldiers and gave each one a rose. They were delighted and they laughed and lifted me up on the step of the lorry. I saw all the guns and I must have pulled a face. One of them said, "Ah leave her down, she is frightened."
I went in and told my grandmother what I had done and she said, "it's a good job your grandfather didn't catch you." He was a rose fanatic. He had all sorts of roses around the house.
The next thing I remember is she called me over to sit down by her side on the rug by the fireplace. "You know" she said, "you are descended from an English soldier and an Irish mother."
"Some time before the battle of Vinegar Hill in 1798 there was a skirmish between the English soldiers and the Irish. One day an old ginger haired man named John Redmond was crossing the bridge of Enniscorthy. A group of soldiers stopped him and asked him some questions, but it seemed that they were not satisfied with the answers he gave, so they put him up against a wall to shoot him. One soldier stepped forward and said to his comrades "please don't shoot that man, he is so like my own father." The old man turned to the soldier and shook his hand and said," if you ever want for anything or shelter, call to Redmonds of Tirraheen, better known as Redmonds of the mossy bogs."
Nothing was heard from either until one day there was a skirmish between some soldiers and a group of the Irish. Some of the soldiers were killed and wounded. The young soldier that saved the old man was wounded in the top of the shoulder.
...some missing lines of text.....
... some months there before going back to London. When he arrived in London he went to a place to get something to eat. When he sat down at a table, he looked around at the place. He spotted 3 girls sitting at a table across from him and they seemed to be watching him. Eventually one of them got up and walked over to him and said, "are you John Hall?" "No" he said.
She pulled down his collar, saw the scar and said "you are John Hall." He admitted he was.
Then she said, "I am Anne Redmond" the old man's daughter who was nursing in a London hospital. They got married some time later and came to live in Ireland but he had to leave Ireland during the Emmet Rising in 1803. He went to America but what happened to Anne I don't know or how many children they had but their daughter married a man named Kirwan and her daughter was the grandmother that told me this story only weeks before she died aged 75.
John Hall married Anne Redmond 1800? - In England.
?Kirwan married ?Hall 1820?
Bridget Kirwan (the storyteller b1841?) married John Kehoe - date unknown at present.
Margaret Kehoe married William Flynn (Mary's grandfather) 1906
Margaret Flynn (b 1907) married John McCormack.
So does anyone have any links here?
