Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/415

 The Story of a Hangwoman By Andrew T. Sibbald WHAT travelers tell of the King of or "Town Hall," its domed steeple Dahomey's Amazonian body visible from afar, and behind it the old guards, gaunt grim viragoes, every one gaol, where Betty ministered, now turned into dwelling houses, whose quaint dark of prodigious strength, courage and fe corridors and strangely shaped rooms I rocity, impresses one with African bar barity more forcibly than perhaps any often longed to explore. Those frown ing walls chilled the soul of more than other institution on the "Dark Conti one Croppy, or Whiteboy, or Ribbonnent." Even among savages, one looks for man, as the case might be. How the poor wretches must have some leaning towards mercy on the woman's part. It is natural to expect a shivered in the cold gray dawn when Pocahontas even on the coast of Guinea, they saw their prison looming dark but the idea of a female executioner, against the sky, heard the doors creak strange and dreadful when narrated in harshly back and clash behind them the annals of an African tribe, becomes with grating of keys, knowing that they horrible, grotesque, incredible, when would never return by the way they transported to a spot within a few hours' came, never feel again the pure, fresh journey of London, England. And yet a air blowing straight from the Atlantic over moor and mountain on their face, hundred and twenty years ago, flour ished in Roscommon, flogged, branded, lifting their floating hair. Most of them hanged, and pocketed fees for such ser were young, many were led into trouble, vices, one whose memory still lingers some deserved their fate, but was not round the old jail and in the minds the thought of grim "Lady Betty" of the peasantry—the famous "Lady enough to chill any man's blood? A woman unsexed, a woman who was said Betty." to revel in the sufferings she inflicted, Roscommon is an eminently uninter an embodied Northern Saga, with all of esting Irish town, romantic as are some the wild and terrible such legends hold. of its legends. It is composed of How she became to be hangwoman straggling streets, a jumble of shops may be briefly narrated. She was of and private houses, large and small, peasant origin, early left a widow with receiving different names throughout one child, a boy, in the latter part of the their length, and forming a figure re eighteenth century. Her disposition was sembling an irregular Z. To the north silent and brooding—what the Irish call are the ruins of a castle, once the strong "dark"—unsociable with her neighbors, hold of a baron of the Pale, often taken having no friends, all her dull affections and retaken before its final destruction. concentrated in her son. She was supe In an opposite direction are those of a Dominican monastery, founded by Felim rior to her class in many ways, could O'Conor in the thirteenth century, and read and write, an unusual accomplish containing his tomb. In the centre of ment in those days, and in these arts the town stands the present Roman she had early instructed the lad. She Catholic Church, once the "Court House" was crushed by bitter, hopeless