Denis Browne
“There is a tree near Denis Browne’s house that used to be used for hanging men in the time of ’98, he being a great man in that time, and High Sheriff of Mayo, and it is likely the gentlemen were afeared, and that there was bad work at nights. But one night Denis Browne was lying in his bed, and the Lord put it in his mind that there might be false information given against some that were innocent. So he went out and he brought out one of his horses into the lawn before the house, and he shot it dead and left it there. In the morning one of the butlers came up to him and said, ‘Did you see that one of your horses was shot in the night?’ ‘How would I see that?’ says he, ‘and I not rose up or dressed?’ So when he went out they showed him the horse, and he bade the men to bury it, and it wasn’t two hours after before two of them came to him. ‘We can tell you who it was shot the horse,’ they said. ‘It was such a one and such a one in the village, that were often heard to speak bad of you. And besides that,’ they said, ‘we saw them shooting it ourselves.’ So the two that gave that false witness were the last two Denis Browne ever hung. He rose out of it after, and washed his hands of it all. And his big house is turned into a convent, and the tree is growing there yet. It is in the time of ’98 that happened, a hundred years ago.”