Kidnapping-in Ireland.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 7, 22 December 1869, Page 7

Kidnapping-in Ireland.

Those strange stories of kidnapping I 1 hitherto confined to the region of the I nursery, but to which recent occurrences I ;h>ye : given a graver import and wider cirI dilation, have received a striking and well. 1 corroboration in an event ■Pit has just happened in the district of The other night a farmer r- named John M'Carthy, residing at a place' called Inn Ferry, eight miles from Cahereiveen, retired to rest at his usual hour, his bed occupying one end of the sleeping apartment, and that of three of his children—aged respectively, five, four, and ' three years—being placed at the other end immediately beneath a little window opening on pivots. At an advanced hour of the night Mr M'Carthy was aroused from sleep by the screaming of the child of four, ' and, inquiring what was the matter, Was told by the little fellow that a man was trying to take, him away. The father., having removed the child to his own bed, tried to persuade him that he had only dreamed, when the eldest boy, from the opposite bed, said, " Oh, no, father, somebody was trying to take Shawneen away." Almost immediately after the father was again on his feet, in response to a pierc- - ing shriek from the eldest boy, whom, on looking towards the children's bed, he plainly saw lifted up bodily to the bottom of the window by a hand thrust in from without. To rush towards the window was the work of an instant, when the child was at once dropped between the bed and the wall, and M'Carthy, looking through the window, perceived three men beating a hasty retreat. His first impulse was to give them chase, but he was reutrained by his wife, who pointed out to him the folly of such a proceeding on the part of a single, half-dressed, and unarmed man. Shortly after, accompanied by some of his neighbours, whom he roused up, he made a thorough search of the neighbourhood, but with no results further than the discoveiy of some shoe prints I leading from the house along the sandy I beach in the vicinity. The marks were of shoes different from those worn by the peasantry, being of a lighter kind, and without nails.— Cork Examiner.