A Lady in Defiance
Dec 1, 20101 min
My whole extended family lives in Ireland and I go back and forth a lot,
and this past summer one of my cousins sat me down and told me that the
house my grandmother lives in actually contains the body of a British
soldier in its foundations. Back before the Easter Rising and revolutions
for independence, sometime around the turn of the century, my great
grandparents were building a new house. Only the foundations were set while
they remained in their small cottage. During this time the British
controlled Ireland, and one of the rules was that Irish people couldn’t
possess guns. Black and Tans (British soldiers sent to Ireland to control
its people) would travel around and could do what they like with the Irish.
They had been known to shoot the men they found with weapons, so there was
a lot of fear associated with them. One night a black and tan came to the
house and ordered them to let him in so he could search the house. There
were guns in the house so apparently, my great grandfather shot and killed
the soldier, rather than be killed himself, and that night they buried him
in the foundations of the house so no one would uncover the body. No one
came looking for the missing soldier, and the house was built up around
him. Apparently, this is the reason the fireplace is off-center, because
the body lies in the middle.
Una Sammon