castlebar was my first jail. i was more fortunate than many who were swept-up during those days. i was at least accorded a prison-cell.
compared with these things, which i learned afterwards, my condition was kingly. i was treated as an ordinary criminal.
the events of the day had presumably come with too great a shock to make much effect, for i was all the time strangely unperturbed and calm. it was only when all my things had been taken from me and i was placed in a reception-cell that the reaction came. a reception-cell is about two-thirds the size of an ordinary cell, with only a small window, and very dark. its only furniture is a little stool. when the door clanged against me and the key grated in the lock, an almost overpowering desire came on me to shout aloud and batter on the door with [17]my fists. that was succeeded by a feeling of utter helplessness. tears had need to be controlled. i remember resolving never to permit the caging of a bird, although that had always been a principle with me. for now the principle took a new and poignant shape.
i was left there an hour or so (time ceased to count when emotion became so much more heavily charged) before being removed to my allotted cell. castlebar jail is constructed like the letter v. the building runs down each side of the v, with a high wall connecting the base, thus making a triangle of the whole. each wing contains one line of cells, on each of the two floors, in the outer wall. the space included in the triangle is open to the sky, is floored with flints (up through which two daisies nevertheless grew), and is used as a special exercise yard. the main large yard lies beyond the left wing. two distinctive features of castlebar jail stand out in my memory as contrasted with the english jails i was to visit. the english jails were built of red brick, warm to the eye. castlebar jail was built of grey granite, cold and forbidding, like a dungeon. on the other hand, the cells and passages of the english jails were floored with stone, whereas castlebar jail was [18]floored with timber. i was to appreciate the virtue of this later. one other difference is worthy of note. all the english jails were of considerable size. castlebar jail is quite small. the difference is noteworthy because it signified a difference in the number of criminals expected, and in fact, as i learnt while there, castlebar jail had been specially re-opened because of the rising-out.
the reception cell in which i had been placed lay on the ground floor of the right-hand wing, near the entrance at the apex. my appointed cell was on the first floor of the left-hand wing, near the base. there i saw for the first time, what was later to become a familiar sight in other places—the equipment of a cell. in the far left-hand corner stood the bed-board, raised on end against the wall, with blankets draped over it. at its base was coiled the mattress. in the middle of the right-hand wall stood the little table, with a stool beside it; and on the wall hung a copy of the prison rules.
a cheerless morning, a cheerless experience, and a cheerless abode. even grimness, that faithful consolation in adversity, was hard to summon. i put down my bed-board and stretched the mattress upon it, wishing to forget [19]everything in sleep. but in a short while the warder passing on his round looked through the spyhole in the door. the key grated in the lock, and i was roughly told to put up the board at once and to arrange the things as i had found them. no bed-board was allowed to remain down after five o’clock in the morning or to be put down before half past eight at night.
the warder was a dark-visaged man, with a harsh northern accent. he shouted when he spoke as though he addressed a herd of cattle. he was a fair specimen on the warder side of an inhuman system, and one could imagine from his manner the men whom he was accustomed to handle. one could imagine, too, the soulless beings prisoners must inevitably become under such a man and with such surroundings. either they must become meek and cringing, or, in the effort to defy so abject a fate, they must become turbulent and violent. the former meant a life of peace; the latter meant a life of ceaseless torture; but the latter was at any rate a more honourable estate. after shouting threats and abuse at me with which the whole prison resounded—after informing me that he would soon dress me into shape, grand and all as i was—the [20]warder went out, leaving me feeling as though i had been pitched into a cesspool.
yet his visit was salutary. it whipped one out of one’s misery, and gave one something to fight for. i turned to the rules on the wall and read them carefully and completely. the jail having been newly re-opened, the governor was a chief warder acting as governor. (this i afterwards perceived, for i did not then know the distinction between chief warders and governors.) later in the morning he entered to give me my instructions for the day; and when he did so, i had sufficiently mastered the section relating to “prisoners awaiting trial” to interrogate him on its application to myself. i claimed the right to books, to tobacco, to daily newspapers, to daily letters out and in, to daily visitors, to my own meals ordered from the town, and to getting another prisoner, if i so wished it, to clean out my cell each day.
whatever was there to be claimed, i claimed. at first he sought to put me by. but when i compelled him to an admission that i was at least a “prisoner awaiting trial” then i claimed the fulfilment of the rights accorded to that type of prisoner. it required some address [21]at first to get him to converse, for the usual method was harshly and instantly to strike down any attempt at conversation. it was necessary at first, quite casually and calmly, to ask an interpretation of the rules; and then, once the net of discussion was cast, it was not so difficult to hold him in its toils.
he looked at me as though he wished he had removed the troublesome rules. “you forget,” he said, “these aren’t ordinary times. you are under martial law now. the soldiers are the masters of us all now, so they are. i amn’t very sure that i know where i am myself. rules don’t apply now. nothing applies. i get my instructions from day to day. they might take you out to-morrow morning and shoot you, so they might, and nobody to save you. isn’t the whole of the city of dublin in ruins? i cannot give you but what i’m bid, and those rules don’t relate to you—they don’t relate to anybody.”
he granted me permission, however, to send out for my meals, if i so wished it, and to write one letter each day, on a sheet provided for that purpose. as a tally against the failure of my other rights he agreed that i might keep my bed-board down for certain hours of the day [22]a concession that very much perplexed my northern warder.
i learnt from the other prisoners afterwards that this governor was very rough and harsh with them. at first he was so with me; but finally he shewed me as much kindliness as was possible under the circumstances. he did so in a strange way. he would enter my cell and shout at me as harshly as at any; and then he would close the door, sit on my stool, and begin to talk quite humanly. such conversations would conclude as brusquely and sharply as they began. thus a certain kinship emerged between us. we were both irishmen, with a stranger’s martial hand against us both, thrusting me into jail, and abrogating his rules. in that mood he always spoke to me as one fellow-countryman might to another of some unintelligible foreigner that had come into our land; and then he would remember that he was leagued with the foreigner, whereas i was pledged against him, when he would make some curt remark and leave me.
