A quiet cross, the scene of great happenings

Cavanman's Diary

In thick, freezing fog, like we’ve had this week, nothing is as it seems. So it goes with history. You must strain your eyes to see.

A narrow drain, about six feet wide and a couple deep, runs under the road at Treehoo Cross. Where it comes from, where it runs to, I don’t know.

We sometimes climbed down to it in the mornings, waiting for Tommy McCaul’s bus, up to a dozen of us laden with what felt like a hundred-weight of school books.

A few times, we ventured into the drain and under the little bridge; the sound of a lorry passing overhead was deafening.

The recent cold weather reminded me of these mornings. Kicking a frozen football, which felt like a rock. Breaking the ice in the puddles. Skidding, sliding, warm breath billowing away into the ether.

Now, I pass by and the sheugh is all overgrown and ugly (unlike us, of course). I can’t imagine children playing in it. But the cross hasn’t changed much otherwise.

It lies exactly three miles from Redhills, Scotshouse and Ballyhaise, exactly eight from Cavan, Clones, Cootehill, Belturbet and Newtownbutler. The four intersecting roads could take you anywhere.

Where the name ‘Treehoo’ comes from is a bit of a mystery. In the Ordnance Survey Parish Namebooks from the 1830s, the word is spelled Troighthiu and a note mentions “feet” (“troig” meant foot in old Irish). The note also remarks that is an “odd name”.

I like that last part. One definition of “odd” is “different to what is usual or expected”; I can’t think of a better description of what appears to the uninitiated to be just a sleepy crossroads, a rustic landmark on the road to somewhere else.

Because this cross has been the scene of great happenings, high drama. That little stone wall has seen it all, heard even more. Traffic accidents. Arrests. Fights. The odd courting couple.

How many locals, going to work or a match or for a drink stood here, waiting for a lift, before we all got rich and spoiled and had our own cars? How many farmers, indeed generations of farmers, stopped here, knowing someone would be along shortly for a chat?

There is an old shop in the middle of the cross; it was closed long before my time but the building remains. It was once a hub of small commerce.

One time, 100 years ago or was it 1000, two teenage boys were sent to fetch whiskey for a funeral and, on the way home, ducked in behind the shop to try it out. Local lore says they were missing for two days before a search party found them, drunk as lords.

If that sounds like something from a movie script, well, our little cross has been in a Hollywood production – the final scene of the Run of the Country features a beautiful aerial view, in the days before drones took the charm out of such shots. And, in 1967, the cross even made it to the houses of the Oireachtas.

Tom Fitzpatrick, TD, who was reared three miles away, asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs if he would provide a public telephone kiosk at Treehoo Cross, “which is in the centre of a thickly populated area and is some miles from a public telephone”.

A terrific exchange followed between Paddy Lalor, TD for Laois-Offaly, Fitzpatrick and then, interrupting with a brilliantly droll putdown, Labour TD for Dublin Central, Frank Cluskey.

Deputy Lalor: “A kiosk is not warranted in this area.”

Deputy Fitzpatrick: “On what grounds does the Parliamentary Secretary think that a kiosk is not warranted in the area?

Deputy Cluskey: “No votes!”

(The exclamation mark is mine. My friends, who accuse me of gilding stories, will tell you that is usually the case...)

“My information is that the Treehoo Cross area is thinly populated and that there is no concentration of houses there at all,” Lalor continued, dismissing the idea out of hand. Little did Paddy know the concentration of characters…

As it turned out, though, the phone box was installed and lasted a couple of decades before, one wild summer’s night, it underwent what doctors call “a sudden terminal event”.

There is one thing, though, that makes our cross unique, to my knowledge, in the region. A murder, in the still of the morning.

There was a killing, grisly and shocking enough to be documented by the newspapers in England, at this quiet crossroads in a corner of Cavan, a few miles from Fermanagh and Monaghan.

Two hundred years ago next March, the Times of London carried the following gory tale, under the heading “MOST FRIGHTFUL MURDER”.

“On the 5th inst., on the lands of Trihou, three miles from Redhills, in the county of Cavan, a most cruel murder was perpetrated. The victim was Thomas Beatty, an amiable young man, about 20 years of age, son to John Beatty, a constable.

“They were usually entrusted with the collection of the county cess [this meant a local tax and came from the word ‘assessment’], and more moderate and deserving men in their situation were never known.

“Unfortunately, there was some misunderstanding among the tenants, some of whom not only refused to pay, but were prepared to resist any who should enforce it. The poor young man above-mentioned, advancing incautiously, was assailed by two men and four women, armed with the shafts of spades, prepared for the purpose.

“One of the men, coming behind poor Beatty, struck him to the ground, when they all fell furiously upon him. On the father's attempting to save him, they left the son, and began at him; and while they were thus engaged, a woman observing the son revive a little, struck him on the head with a loy-shaft and fractured his skull: then they all ran off.

“The agonised father carried his almost lifeless son into a field, and ran for assistance; the best medical aid was procured, but all in vain, he lived in great agony for three days, and expired, lamented by all who knew him.

“The ruffian who first struck him ran to a house, and swore he had 'sent a Protestant to hell!' The poor young lad was a member of the Belturbet Infantry, and remarkable for his loyalty and good conduct. A Coroner's Inquest was held on the body, who returned a verdict accordingly.”

So, you see, Treehoo Cross, a deeply rural milestone on the road, is not so ordinary after all.

On the morning of the murder, the commotion would have been heard around the neighbouring townlands, ringing across Brockley, Mullaghloher, Neddiagh, Claragh, Conaghoo, Drumcarn and Mullacroghery. Murder most foul, a woman delivering the fatal blow.

Imagine the scene. Were they speaking Irish? Which were louder, the victory whoops or the sobs of the bereaved? Did the victim deserve it? The answers are lost in time, missing in history. Nothing is as it seems.

March can be bitterly cold. Maybe Beatty’s blood stained the white frost at the crossroads. Maybe it spilled into that narrow drain. Six feet wide, two feet deep.

The water keeps on flowing, under the bridge and away.