SNAKES IN IRELAND.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2061, 19 June 1890, Page 4

SNAKES IN IRELAND.

[From the Chicago News]. From Ireland comes the news that snakes have appeared in that country. About five years ago an American showman named Wilson landed his show at Queenstown, and gave exhibitions up through Ireland with more or less success. In Tipperarv Mr Wilson got very drunk and attempted to clean out his own show. The constabulary force sought to interfere, an'l. Mr Wilson turned out all the wild animals. For three years no trace of the den of snakes let loose on that memorable night could be found. Two years ago people in the neighborhood of Amraurrh began to miss poultry and pigs, and presently fiom Castleraine, a town twelve miles distant, came word that his satanic majesty bad begun operations in that locality, his victims in this instance and in this place being sheep, not poultry and pigs. Detectives were , brought from Dublin, and in the | course of a fortnight reported to their employers that the depredations of Castleraine and Amraugh had indeed beeu committed by serpents, the detectives themselves having seen and watched the same upon three distinct occasions seize, kill, and carry off their prey. The serpents were described as dark of color and fully fifteen feet in length. They killed, their victims by coiling about their bodies. The story was discredited until a correspondent of the Freeman's Journal recalled the circumstances that the numerous and divers species of snakes which had escaped from Wilson's show about three years before had never been captured. Then of a sudden the mystery was cleared up, and bands for the extermination of the monsters were speedily organised among the revengeful peasantry. Three of the snakes were shortly thereafter seen, pursued, and killed in the hog east of Amraugh ; the largest of the snakes measured four feet; in the maw of each was found a pullet. About a month thereafter a fourth snake was killed near Castleraine; this snake upon being cut open was found to contain many little snakes, which immediately glided into the grass and escaped before the astonished rustics could apprehend them, Subsequently, stimulated by the advertised reward of half-a-crown and a special dispensation for every snake, alive] or dead, the country people caught "eleven of the smaller snakes—none measuring more than seven inches in length. 'I hen the snakes seemed to disappear, and, no further depredations being noted, the excitement gradually died out. But it is now reported after a lapse of two years, that snakes have suddenly appeared at and around Ballangal, an agricultural region thirty miles north of Castleraine, the country seat of the Earl of Densloe. These snakes are of a strange species ; though none have been captured, they are said to be of enormous length, breath, thickness, voracity, and ferocity, and to make a noise when moving like the clatter of dice in a box; they kill by biting, and they have created great havoc among the flocks of the Duke as well as in the coops and sties of the peasantry, ' Simultaneously serpents similar to the Amraugh and Castleraine vermins have appeared still further to the eastward, and have caused such a panic that the country folks are afraid to veature out of doors after nightfall. The theory is that in five years the' reptiles let- loose by the wretched Wilson during his ribald drunken frenzy have multiplied so numerously that a militant union of Church and Bt&te will be necessary to restore the island to the virgin condition in which the good St. Patrick left it...