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The Irish have always been known to possess some of the best storytellers in the world.
And, it is also often said that the best stories are nearly always true.
So if you like stories, then you’ll be intrigued by the murderous tale of how two brothers that came to lay side by side in the old graveyard in Ardmore.
It was written in September 1845 and appeared in Frazers Magazine For Town And County.
“Before we leave this crowded cemetery, look at those two remarkably long graves close together, not far from the entrance to St. Declan’s tomb. There lie two brothers, once exceedingly tall, fine young men — but they were murderers, convicted and executed, though the bead- stone merely tells us that John and James Fuge departed this life April 15th, 1805, aged twenty-five and twenty- seven years.
Their victim had offended them by taking ground from which some of their family had been ejected for non-payment of rent. His self-constituted judges and executioners went to his house, armed, and with their faces blackened, at an hour when they expected to find him alone and murdered him in cold blood, and retired in full confidence of impunity; they were apparently unseen by all, save the Almighty. They had forgotten Him, but he had prepared a witness against them. A little girl, who had seen their approach through a window, and was alarmed at their blackened faces, had just time to spring into a large chest and pull down the lid before they entered. The chest was not shut close, and she was enabled undiscovered to see the deed of blood, to observe the remarkable stature of the perpetrators, and to note in particular that one of them had lost a front tooth. Her subsequent evidence occasioned their apprehension and conviction.”
I don’t know about this one but I am trying to figure if my great-grandmother Johanna Cronican (married a Mulcahy) of Grainge/Ardmore was the wife of a “small farmer Cronican” published in an 1855 annal who was murdered by a Conway because of a dispute about cattle wandering onto the farm.