Robert Goodbody Journal

then collected on a dunghill which was then an open space near Sally Simpson's in Barrack Street. They went in crowds through the streets every evening back and forwards and was called the dunghill parade. But except one or two persons, at least a very few, the whole of the lower order of R. Catholicks that were all deep in the rebellion. A short time before the rebellion in a fight returning from a funeral some person that died in Mountmellick, and was buried near the Heath, them quarrelled on the road home in a house and killed a man. It was afterwards proved on trial by court martial that it originated about the brogue makers and others dividing among themselves the house and business of the house in Mountmellick, of respectable protestants, who were of course to be put out of the way. One of these rebels was the very man John Ryan that escaped hanging. He and another of his trade were disputing which should have my father's tanyard and shop, that Ryan afterwards defrauded me of near £100 between him and his wife, a short time before I quit business in Mountmellick; and after I came t Clara thinking that he was dead, I met him on the footpath opposite my field looking well, and accosted me to help him, but I refused as I have always discouraged persons coming after me, for when I have assistance I found that it only encouraged them to come perhaps repeatedly.

After the rebellion was over it was surprising how soon the respectable people got up their spirits, and perhaps went in some instances, by exuberance of spirit into licentiousness, drinking &c. In the 6th mo.1799 my mother took me t drive her in the chair to Enniscorthy then a year after the battle of Vinegar Hill. When we got near Enniscorthy having lodged the night before at Ballyealey at Betsey Leckey's, but going into the town we could

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