The Legend of the Phantom Highwayman Read online

  MERCIER PRESS

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  Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.

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  First published in 1983 by The Children’s Press, an imprint of Anvil Books

  This edition published by Mercier Press, 2011© Tom McCaughren, 1983, 1991, 2011

  ISBN: 978 1 85635 802 6

  Epub ISBN: 978 1 85635 963 4

  Mobi ISBN: 978 1 85635 960 3

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ‘There he is!’ he heard a voice shout. He tried to run, but somehow the road seemed to get steeper and steeper and he didn’t have the strength to climb it. It was like a nightmare. Next moment, he felt a hand grabbing him by the shoulder, and he knew he was caught.

  It was then that the strangest thing of all happened.

  As Tapser looked up, he saw the phantom highwayman above him, blunderbuss in hand. And from afar he seemed to hear a voice say, ‘Stand and deliver!’

  ‘Hugh Rua,’ he gasped sickly to himself.

  ‘Stand and deliver!’ he seemed to hear the phantom figure say again.

  Tapser’s head was spinning. He felt an arm going around him, and a cool breeze on his face as he was carried through the night, holding on for dear life behind the phantom rider. The cape was flapping in his face and he reached up to brush it away but lost his grip and found himself falling, falling, falling …

  ‘Tapser,’ he heard a voice saying.

  He looked up. Someone was bending over him and a coat was brushing his face. He pushed it aside and saw the dark figures of the phantom highwayman and his horse rearing up into the night sky …

  INTRODUCTION

  During the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries, when the stagecoach services were spreading throughout Ireland, highwaymen were a serious problem. Sometimes operating in groups, sometimes alone, they would appear on lonely country roads to hold up coaches at pistol point and rob the passengers.

  Posters were put up offering rewards for information leading to the capture of the highwaymen, and various steps were taken to protect passengers. Soldiers on horseback escorted coaches through remote mountain areas and other places where highwaymen were likely to strike. At first the mail coaches carried one armed guard, but by the turn of the nineteenth century they had started to carry two. In 1808, passengers on the Dublin to Cork route were assured that a newly acquired coach was copper-lined and therefore bulletproof!

  In spite of such precautions, some travellers continued to find themselves looking down the barrels of the pistols of highwaymen ordering them to, ‘Stand and deliver, your money or your life.’ In 1827, for example, a £50 reward was offered for information about the person or persons who had attacked the Dublin to Cork mail coach and fired a shot, the contents of which, to quote the poster, ‘passed through the hat of one of the passengers’.

  The robbing of travellers, of course, didn’t begin with the stagecoaches. Many a luckless person was waylaid and robbed in the days when the only way to get around was by foot or on horseback. Indeed, there was a time when it was usual for people intending to go on a journey to make their will, in case they might meet an untimely end at the hands of a robber.

  Some of the more notable highwaymen were people who had fought for one lost cause or another, while some had been dispossessed of their lands. Inevitably, a number have been portrayed as Robin Hood characters who robbed the rich to help the poor. Many others, it must be said, had no such pretensions, and whether they were local heroes or common criminals, highwaymen were hunted relentlessly by the authorities, and most of them met the same fate – death by hanging.

  Since this book was first published in somewhat shorter form in 1983, many young readers have asked me if Hugh Rua, the legendary figure in the story, was a real highwayman. Well, all I can say is, he could have been! However, all the other highwaymen mentioned did exist.

  Thomas Archer, for example, was a fugitive from the 1798 rebellion. For two years his bands of ‘brigands’ as they were called, roamed the Ballymena area of County Antrim where this book begins.

  There’s a story in Old Ballymena, a collection of articles originally published in the local Observer newspaper in 1857, that shortly before Archer’s capture he had murdered a loyalist farmer with whom he had had a violent row ‘on the public road’.

  Some years ago I heard a similar story from a neighbour of mine in Ballymena, Mr William Rodgers, on whom the character Mr Stockman in this book is based. Mr Rodgers, who was in his eighties at the time, said his grandfather told him he knew Archer. He also told him how a local farmer had recognised the highwayman at Kilrea Fair. The farmer threatened to tell the Redcoats, as the British soldiers were known, and that night Archer arrived at the man’s home where he shot and killed him.

  While the name of the farmer given in the two accounts is different, they seem to relate to the same incident, and Mr Rodger’s account, which he confirmed to me shortly before he died, suggests a motive for the murder.

  A coach similar to the Londonderry Mail, which features in this book, may be seen in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra, Holywood, County Down, and a visit to the museum is recommended.

  My interest in stagecoaches and the idea for this story go back to my boyhood days in Ballymena. My father, who worked for Ballymena Borough Council, told me about the coaches and how, on their journeys from Belfast to Derry, they would have come up through Coach Entry, where the council stabled some of its horses, and then on to the Old Coach Road near our home.

  Coach Entry, incidentally, is off Castle Street, where Archer was born, and opposite a large Norman mound called the Moat, where he was hanged.

  It was when I was working as a young reporter in Ballymena that I first came across the practice of poteen making, which also features in this story. Poteen is a kind of whiskey: it’s home-made and it’s illegal as the law only allows whiskey to be made in licensed distilleries. I remember covering a number of prosecutions against poteen makers when I travelled to the Glens of Antrim with my friend, solicitor Jack McCann, to attend hearings of the local court. Later, as I pursued my journalistic career in other parts of the country I found that poteen making wasn’t confined to County Antrim!

  As a boy I also visited the glens, gazing in wonder at the sheer beauty of what the glaciers had left behind. Sometimes I would be going with my parents or other members of my family to the ‘shore’ as the seaside there is called. On other occasions I might be lucky enough to be accompanying Mr Rodgers when he was delivering confectionery to shops in the glens. The delights of such a journey in a van full of sweets and chocolate are obvious, and there was great competition to see who would be allowed to go with him. As a result, he was never short of willing hands when it came to loading his van from the storeroom on his farm or collecting supplies from Giffin’s Sweet Factory on the Waveney Road in Ballymena. I hope young readers will enjoy my account of the ‘sweet run’ and the adventure it leads them to in what I have called The Legend of the Phantom Highwayman.

  Tom McCaughren

  2011

  1. HEARING THINGS

  From
the darkness of his bedroom, Tapser listened to the babble of voices in the kitchen. He had gone to bed early as he was getting a lift to the glen with Mr Stockman next day, and was lying wondering what his visit was going to be like. He loved those seemingly rare occasions when Mr Stockman took the day off from farming to deliver sweets to small shops along the mountains and in the glen. The sweet run they all called it, and a sweet run it was in every sense of the word. He was also looking forward to seeing his cousin Cowlick again. They always had great fun together. Last year, when Cowlick had visited him, they had helped to solve the mystery of the Legend of the Golden Key. That was a great adventure, and he wondered if they would find anything exciting to do in the glen. Suddenly, as he lay and thought about these things, he became aware of what one of the neighbours was saying …

  ‘That may well be, but the glensfolk say there’s something funny going on.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Mr Stockman.

  ‘Ah, wouldn’t you know, the quare stuff of course.’

  ‘Not to mention Hugh Rua,’ said another. ‘They say he’s been seen again.’

  ‘Aye,’ laughed Tapser’s father, ‘it wouldn’t do if you ran into the phantom highwayman.’

  ‘Och now,’ said Mr Stockman, ‘I never met a man yet that saw a phantom.’

  ‘If there’s no such thing,’ said the second man, ‘what does the ballad mean? How does it go now?’

  Tapser then heard him singing:

  ‘Stand and deliver,’ said Hugh Rua

  ‘Stand and deliver, do or die …’

  He stole a coach-and-four

  So they hung him on the moor.

  But they say his spirit still rides in the glen …

  ‘There you are,’ said Tapser’s father. ‘Somebody must have seen him.’

  ‘Well, if anyone asks me to stand and deliver,’ joked Mr Stockman, ‘all he’ll get is a delivery of sweets.’

  They all laughed at that, and Tapser sat up and rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t believe his ears. He wanted to hear more but knew if he went into the kitchen they would probably change the subject, so he slipped out of bed and listened at the door.

  ‘If anyone stops you, it’s more likely to be the police,’ said the first man.

  ‘What for?’ asked Mr Stockman.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you, to see who’s smuggling the quare stuff.’

  Tapser was dying to hear more, but the men went on to talk about the barley crop and the price it would fetch. He got back into bed and snuggled under the duvet. Thoughts of highwaymen and smugglers filled his mind. What did they mean by ‘the quare stuff’ he wondered? And what was all this about a phantom highwayman? Was there really something going on in the glen, or was this just another of their ghost stories? The trouble was he never really knew when they were serious.

  There was great excitement next morning as last-minute preparations were made for the journey. Tapser’s mother was fussing around wondering if there was anything they had forgotten to pack. Even his collie, Prince, was excited, almost as if he knew what was happening. Then Mr Stockman called to say he was about to load the van and would Tapser give him a hand. Tapser, of course, was only too delighted.

  The sweet store was like an Aladdin’s cave, and Tapser and his friends always felt privileged any time they were allowed into it. Not because they got any sweets there – it wasn’t until they were on their way to the glen that they got those. It was simply the smell of the store, a sweet musty odour that appealed to their nostrils and to their imaginations so much. It was a smell like honeysuckle, a smell that was the essence of bulls’ eyes and toffees and sticks of pink rock and chocolate and lollypops, and all the other sweet things they wanted to buy in the shops but could seldom afford. It was a smell that held the magic of promise.

  ‘Now, Tapser,’ said Mr Stockman, nodding to the deep shelves along one wall. ‘We’ll take the jars first, and be careful you don’t drop them.’

  He handed down a big glass jar of barley sugar, and Tapser, hugging it as he would a baby in case he might drop it and ruin the trip, gingerly stepped around the tea chests and boxes that were piled about the store, and made his way out to the van.

  Soon the van was loaded with a mouth-watering selection of all that was in the store, including jars of butterscotch, acid drops and clove rock, not to mention cardboard boxes, the contents of which could only be imagined. Tapser took his place in the front passenger seat, Prince hopped in and sat between his legs, and, with his mother shouting after him not to forget to do this and not to forget to do that, the blue van rounded the pillars at the foot of the lane, and headed up the hill towards the Old Coach Road.

  Tapser, of course, could hardly contain his curiosity about the phantom highwayman. He didn’t want to ask straight out and let Mr Stockman know he had been listening to them the night before, but as they turned onto the Old Coach Road, he got an idea.

  ‘Why do they call this the Old Coach Road?’ he asked.

  ‘Because that’s exactly what it is,’ explained Mr Stockman. ‘In olden days this was the main road from Belfast to Ballymena, Ballymoney and on to Derry. Of course it wasn’t a good tarmacadam road like it is now. There were no motorcars and no railways, and the only way of getting from one place to another, unless you walked or had a horse, was by stagecoach.’

  ‘But I thought they only had stagecoaches in the Wild West,’ said Tapser.

  Mr Stockman shook his head and watched the road in front of him. ‘Not at all. Sure they had coaches in this part of the world long before they had them in America.’

  ‘But why did they call them stagecoaches?’ asked Tapser.

  ‘Because they did the journey in stages, I suppose. You can just imagine what some of the roads were like in the days before Mr McAdam thought of a way of making better ones.’

  ‘Who was Mr McAdam?’

  ‘John Loudon McAdam. He was a Scottish engineer who came up with the idea of giving the roads a harder, smoother surface. That’s why it’s called tarmacadam. Before that it was rough going, and as well as picking up passengers, the coachman had to stop here and there to feed and water the horses or get a fresh team.’

  Tapser could just imagine it, for in the sweet store he had often admired a picture in which the driver of a cart had stopped at the river in Ballymena to allow his horse to have a drink. In the background was the old spinning mill. Mr Rodgers had told him that in years gone by, when the farmers of the area had grown flax for making linen, the picture had been an advertisement for the Braidwater Spinning Company.

  As they passed under the motorway and drove towards the Antrim mountains, Mr Stockman continued, ‘Of course, the highways the stagecoaches used are only the byroads of today.’

  ‘Why did they call them highways?’ asked Tapser.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know … probably because they were always higher than the fields.’

  ‘And is that where the highwaymen got their name?’

  ‘That’s right – from robbing coaches on the King’s highway.’

  ‘Boy, they must have been exciting times.’

  ‘Aye, and dangerous.’

  ‘You mean, because of the highwaymen?’

  Mr Stockman nodded. ‘There was a famous highwayman here in the Ballymena area, you know.’

  Tapser looked at him to see if he was serious.

  ‘There was. His name was Thomas Archer. He was a fugitive from the 1798 rebellion.’

  The road to the village of Broughshane branched off to the right, and Mr Stockman continued, ‘The United Irishmen had marched on Ballymena from Broughshane. They laid siege to the Town Hall, or the Market House as it was called then, and after a battle, set fire to it. Some of the defenders, a small group of yeomen and loyalists, were killed during the battle or done to death afterwards.’

  Mr Stockman changed gear as they went uphill. ‘However, the rebel victory was short-lived. When the rising was defeated up in Antrim town, the troops arrived in Ballymena. The rebels
were forced to retreat and some of them were hanged on top of the Moat for all to see.’

  Tapser was trying to imagine the scene on top of the Norman fort they called the Moat – a large mound which was now a children’s playground – when Mr Stockman added, ‘Then they cut off their heads and stuck them on pitchforks on the parapet of the Market House as a warning to others never to do the like again.’

  Tapser shivered at the thought.

  ‘The last man to be executed,’ continued Mr Stockman, ‘was Archer, the outlaw. When the rebellion broke out, he deserted from the Antrim militia and joined the rebels. Afterwards he went on the run and became known as the Brigand of Ballymena.’

  ‘Would you call him a highwayman then?’ asked Tapser.

  ‘Well, he certainly carried out a lot of robberies, and he was said to be very daring. Sometimes he would disguise himself as a woman, and with his blunderbuss hidden under his cloak, visit his parents up in Castle Street.’

  ‘What’s a blunderbuss?’ asked Tapser.

  ‘It was like a single-barrelled shotgun, only shorter, and it widened out at the end like a trumpet. Anyway, as I was saying, he was supposed to be very daring. But he was also a very violent man, and him and his gang murdered a loyalist farmer up near Glarryford. Soon after that he was captured and hanged on the Moat like the others.’

  ‘Did they cut off his head too?’

  ‘I don’t know. But like many another highwaymen, his body was put in irons and left hanging there until it was only a skeleton.’

  ‘What other highwaymen?’ asked Tapser, hoping Mr Stockman would tell him about Hugh Rua.

  ‘Well, there was Captain Brennan on the Moor as he was known, down in Tipperary. The same thing happened to him.’

  They were well on their way now.

  ‘And what about the glens?’ asked Tapser. ‘Did they have a highwayman?’

  Mr Stockman smiled and nodded. ‘Of course they did – and still have, by all accounts. His name is Hugh Rua.’

  ‘What do you mean “still have”? Sure highwaymen lived hundreds of years ago. You’re after saying so yourself.’