My thanks indeed to the Press Ombudsman John Horgan, a distinguished newspaper historian, for launching my latest tome last night and being very generous indeed in his comments.

I’d just like to clarify that the book has no canine content whatever and that Parnell did not, in fact, have a rottweiler. He was the owner of a red setter called Grouse. I realize this entirely jeopardizes the credibility of the volume.  The confusion is caused by my puerile attempted homage to the title of Roy Jenkins’s book on the House of Lords Mr.Balfour’s Poodle. Should any rottweiler lovers purchase a copy, assuming it reveals the truth about the relationship between the great Irish nationalist leader and their favourite breed of dog, I will be happy to reimburse them the cost of the paperback. If you bought the hardback you’re on your own. I’m not made of money and you should have checked the index for dog references first.

I would also like to apologize to all rottweilers for the invidious comparison with the Parnellite newspaper United Ireland. Rottweilers are soft, cuddly, pliable and docile when compared with United Ireland. The photographs below clearly illustrate this.

Nowadays a Tory is someone who sits on the government benches at Westminster. But three hundred years ago, before the term acquired its political connotation a Tory was a very different class of bandit entirely.

There was a man lived in the north, a hero brave and bold

Who robbed the wealthy landlords of their silver and their gold

He gave the money to the poor, to pay their rent and fee

For Count Redmond O’Hanlon was a gallant rapparee.

Thus begins Tommy Makem’s account of one of the most illustrious and iconic thieves in 17^th century Ireland, Redmond O’Hanlon, the infamous Tory, highwayman, raparree or highway robber. Over the years O’Hanlon has acquired the characteristics of a Robin Hood and a Michael Dwyer – a fervent nationalist who believed in the re-distribution of wealth, other peoples. He was, of course, neither a nationalist or a socialist – the concepts being entirely unknown when he was in his pomp.

O’Hanlon, whose family had been wealthy Gaelic landowners before the intervention of Oliver Cromwell and others, was probably born in the vicinity of Slieve Gullion in South Armagh, and probably in the vicinity of 1640. Like so many members of the old Irish Catholic nobility he saw service in the armies of the King of France and returned to Ireland at the time of the restoration of King Charles II to the English throne. The resumption of the monarchy led to no similar improvement in the fortunes of the O’Hanlon clan so Redmond took to the hills to earn his living off the fortunes of those he saw as having dispossessed his family, the Anglo-Irish nobility.

His operation was rather more sophisticated than simply standing in the middle of what passed for 17^th century roads and hollering ‘Stand and deliver, your money or your life’ in the style of Adam Ant. He made quite a good living from a primitive protection racket. Those who paid him off were to be immune from the depredations of any of the raparees in his north Louth-south Armagh bailiwick. Should the local tories baulk at Redmond’s racket there was a simple ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy. Anyone caught robbing one of O’Hanlon’s protectees was first warned off, thereafter they were fined for a second offence, and finally, if they did it again, they were murdered.

Naturally enough the authorities disapproved of this primitive pax Redmondica or perhaps tax Redmondica is more appropriate, and sent troops after him to pierce his protective mantle. O’Hanlon used a number of wily evasion techniques to elude capture, the most celebrated being the practice of reversing his horse’s shoes to send pursuers in the wrong direction. He was also known to reverse his and his accomplices clothing, revealing on the inside a red-coat lining that was good enough to confuse the gullible.

An inability to track Redmond resulted in the price on his head being raised consistently and repeatedly, leading to open season for a new breed of opportunist, the ‘Tory hunter’. This was a class of Wild West bounty hunter except six thousand miles to the east, two centuries earlier and with an Irish accent. When not pursuing Redmond with a view to claiming the considerable reward on his head planter families like the Cootes, of Cootehill in Co.Cavan kept their hands in by hunting and killing Catholic priests for pocket money.

Predictably the death of Redmond was an inside job. He was betrayed and shot by a kinsman Art McCall O’Hanlon who was in it for the reward. Pour encourager les autres Redmond’s head was placed on a spike outside Downpatrick jail after Art imitated nature and succumbed to the blandishment of piles of money.

Redmond O’Hanlon, Tory, raparee, extortionist and folk hero died 333 years ago on this day.

Born in 1818, a native of Ballyroney Co. Down and the son of a Presbyterian minister, Thomas Mayne Reid was an adventurer before he became a highly successful writer. His father intended him for the Church, but like a lot of sons Reid had ideas of his own. Despite spending four years training to be a minister he failed to graduate and follow his father’s footsteps. 

He entered the USA via New Orleans in 1840 and quickly became involved in the activities of hunters and fur traders. He lasted six months in Louisiana and was, so the story goes, forced to leave the state for refusing to horsewhip a slave. He later set one of his books, the anti-slavery novel The Quadroon, in the South.  While living in his next port of call, Philadephia, and working as a journalist, he became a drinking companion of Edgar Allen Poe. The great American mystery writer later remarked of the Irishman’s conversational talents that he was ‘a colossal but most picturesque liar. He fibs on a surprising scale but with the finish of an artist.’

 He fought in the Mexican–American War, where he was double-jobbing as he was also covering the conflict for a New York newspaper as its war correspondent.  Reid was badly wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec, where the Mexican defenders of the town included members of the famous San Patricio battalion, Catholic Irishmen fed up with nativist anti-Catholicism who had switched sides to fight with Mexico. Reid was promoted while most of the surviving San Patricios were hanged.

 After spending just over a decade in the USA, mostly in the West, he returned to Europe and began to harvest his American experience as a writer. There is, however, scant evidence that he ever actually spent much time in that part of the world where much of his work is located, the American west. Between 1848 and his death in 1883 he wrote more than seventy adventure novels and, ironically as an Irishman writing mostly in Britain, played a huge part in the mythologising of the West, even amongst Americans. Theodore Roosevelt was an avid fan of Reid’s novels as a young boy and later went in search of the West that Reid wrote about. If he didn’t actually find it he certainly pretended to.

 Reid cultivated a rather foppish appearance. He liked to wear lemon yellow gloves and clothes that were guaranteed to attract attention. He also wore a monocle, giving rise to the myth that he had a glass eye. Almost inevitably the story is told that when Reid and some other authors once met for a drink the Irishman’s glass eye fell into his beverage and had to be fished out.

 The thrust of his approach to the West can be gauged from the titles of some of his more famous novels, many of which did not actually appear in American editions until well after his death. The Scalp Hunters, written in 1851, was one of his earliest and most successful efforts. Other classic ‘dime novels’ included The Headless Horseman written in 1866, later read enthusiastically in a Russian translation by a young Vladimir Nabokov. It doesn’t, however, appear to have greatly influenced Lolita.  In all Reid wrote 75 novels as well as numerous short stories.

 Thomas Mayne Reid, novelist and teller of tall tales was born one hundred and ninety six years ago on this day.