Collectanea. 495
attacked by Conor O'Brien, who fell mortally wounded but would not surrender. His servants brought him back, nearly dead, to his wife at Lemaneagh. " She neither spoke nor wept," but shouted to them from the top of the tower, — " What do 1 want with dead men here?" Hearing that he was still alive, she nursed him tenderly till he died. Then she put on a magnificent dress, called her coach, and set off at once to Limerick, which was besieged by Ireton. At the outposts she was stopped by a sentinel, and roared, and shouted, and cursed at him until Ireton and his officers, who were at dinner, heard the noise and ■came out. On their asking who was the woman, she replied, —
- ' I was Conor O'Brien's wife yesterday, and his widow to-day."
- ' He fought us yesterday. How can you prove he is dead ? "
" I'll marry any of your officers that asks me." Captain Cooper, a brave man, at once took her at her word, and they were married, so that she saved the O'Brien property for her son, Sir Donat."
Lady Chatterton's account in 1839 ^^ tallies with that above. She says that Ireton sent five of his best men, disguised as sportsmen, to shoot Conor O'Brien, and one of them succeeded in wounding him. Mary captured and hanged the man, called her sons and advised them to surrender to the Parliament, and set off in her coach and six as described above, the rest of the tale being closely like the Carnelly version.
At Lemaneagh it is added that one morning, after her marriage to Cooper, they quarrelled while he was shaving, and he spoke slightingly of Conor O'Brien. The affectionate relict, unable to bear any slur on the one husband she had loved, jumped out of bed and gave Cooper a kick in the stomach from which he died.^^
At Carnelly, in 1873 ^"d later, it was told that Maureen Rhue was taken by her enemies, after killing the last of her 25 husbands, and was fastened up in a hollow tree, of which the site and, I think, the alleged roots were still shown. Her red-haired
I'So Mrs. Stamer of Carnelly and others down to 1883. The tale was generally known to the various O'Briens and MacNamaras, and was kept alive by Maura's portrait still at Ennistymon, and a copy of it at Dromoland.
'^^ Rambles in the South of Ireland, vol. ii., p. 183.
19 So Dr. G. U. MacNaniara.
