PROPOSALS of marriage have been made under odd circumstances but surely none so odd as those in which Father Mogue Kearns received such a proposal in 1798.
Father Kearns had gone into hiding after the Battle of Clonard, Co Meath, during the uprising. When the militia captured him, writes James Robinson, he was tied and placed on his horse and roped to a tree. The militia party repaired for refreshment and left him to hang, when his horse would move. Every time the horse moved Fr Kearns was heard to exclaim `Whoa Boby if ye gang - I'll hang!'
"Two Robinson girls witnessed this scene from a nearby home and one offered to free him - if he'd marry her. He refused the offer stating that he was a Catholic priest and prevented from getting married. She did release him, however."
Fr Kearns's escape was short lived: He was later captured, tried, and hung, drawn and quartered at Blundell wood near the town of Edenderry. No room for error there.
Actually, Mr Robinson writes, this was the third attempt to hang Fr Kearns, described as a man of huge physical proportions. "Fr Kearns had taken part in the French Revolution and had escaped death when the post from which he was suspended buckled under his weight and he escaped being hanged in 1789."
Whatever Father Kearns may have thought of the Robinson girls and their views on how to get a husband, he can thank them for helping to keep his memory alive.
His story is a small fragment - literally a footnote - in The Robinsons of North Kildare, by Mr James Robinson. The great thing about this book for those of us who are not Robinsons - and a great many of us are not - is that its author is a man who does not believe in letting a good story pass him by.
Bodkin's hand
One example is the affair of Bodkin's hand in Galway in 1838. Mr Robinson got the account from a document in a solicitor's archive. It appears to have been written by a man who had got a contract to repair the cut stone in the Protestant Church of St Nicholas in Galway which had, at one time, been a Catholic church.
One of the vaults was said to contain the body of a Father Bodkin who, when he was forced to hand the keys of the church over to the Protestants, is said to have prayed: "My God, that my hand may not decay until the keys of this church be restored to the proper owners."
As the workmen approached the vault, people began to gather in the church. The author of the document descended into the vault first. "I found the body of a man, all perfect, except his toes."
For days, crowds of people visited the church to see the body. Then consternation: one morning it was discovered that someone had cut off Father Bodkin's right hand.
The workmen, afraid of being blamed for what had happened, and of incurring the wrath of the crowd, accused the sexton, Henry Gaddy, who got the key every night, of being involved in the desecration.
He, naturally, denied any complicity - "whereupon some of the workmen took hold of him, and said that if he would not tell what he knew about the desecration, they would drag him to the bridge and throw him into the river; he still persisted, but they commenced to drag him along to carry their threat into execution.
Mr Gaddy sensibly confessed that he had given the key to a Mr Murray and a Dr McSweeney. He also confessed to giving the key to "parties" who had tried to destroy the body with lime and vitriol but who had managed only to discolour it.
Dr McSweeney, upon being confronted by the author of the document, confessed that he "had sent it to Mr Murray's pawn office."
Mr Murray agreed to give the hand to the parish priest, Father Roche, who in turn agreed to return it to its resting place.
Finally the hand, and the rest of Fr Bodkin, both very much the worse for the wear, were put into a new coffin (the fourth that had been "worn out" by the remains, it was said) which was sealed up in the vault.
The Bodkins are related to the Robinsons which is why the story is in the book.
Enough of this grisly stuff. Here, for the benefit of students resentful of their lot in life, is an extract from a letter by 17 year old John Robinson, a pupil at Fishamble Street Academy, Dublin, to his parents in Cornamuckla, Co Kildare in October 1785:
Slow boat to Salamanca
"I keep good hours and I seldom let them see me idle, which are the principal things. The Devonshire, where we continued about two days when a favourable breeze arising we put to sea again but with no better luck than before for we no sooner got clear of the rocks which are very numerous there than a tempest arising which drove us immediately back to Ireland but to what part of it I certainly cannot tell for neither the Captain nor the pilot themselves knew where we were only just to guess, the wind changing we were drove to France." A master of the long sentence, it would seem.
John Robinson was later appointed to the parish of Clonegal, Co Carlow, to which his journey, this time from Cornamuckla, seems to have been perilous in its own way, as he wrote to his father in 1796: "I arrived in this town on the evening of the day I left you without any other accident than the danger of getting my neck broke several times by the stumbling of my mare; once in particular I confess my life was in imminent danger. Since my arrival she is beginning to follow the humours of her dam by stopping.
Clearly an unsatisfactory vehicle; and in a postscript he reports a further, greater sin of the horse: "I forgot to tell you that my mare tossed Mr Purcell and confined him to bed for some time."
If it is borne in mind that Mr Purcell was the parish priest and was 77 years of age, one will appreciate the extent of the new curate's embarrassment. Mind you, Mr Purcell lived to be 92.
The Robinsons originated in Scotland and may have come to Ireland as mercenaries. The book covers the history of the family and descendants of Daniel McRobin in the Broadford area of Co Kildare but, as should be clear by now, it covers a great deal more as well. Full of illustrations and well produced, it is published by McRobin Publications at £20.
The mornings are beginning to grow very cold. We cannot get to the fire. Therefore you would do me an infinite piece of service if you could procure a big coat for me and a pair of shoes which I want very much. My shoes are tattered very much and I cannot have them to be mended on account of my being trusting to them. Be pleased to send the shoes as soon as possible you can.
Two years later he set off on a very long journey to Salamanca in Spain to train for the priesthood.
"I am sure there is no one breathing has ever been attended with worse luck at sea than I," he wrote to his father from Bilbao.
"In six days after we left London we got within 15 leagues of Bilbao but a most sudden and terrible hurricane arising we were driven in less than 20 hours to Torbay, a bay of the English Channel on the coast of