For example, after being denounced by three men who desired a share of the £5 bounty upon the heads of priests, Augustinian Friar William Tirry was arrested at Fethard while vested for Mass on Holy Saturday, 25 March, 1654.
On 26 April, he was tried by a jury and a panel of Commonwealth judges, including Colonel Solomon Richards, for violating the Proclamation of 6 January 1653, which defined it as high treason for priests to remain in Ireland.
According to Donal O'Sullivan, O'Donnell had two companions awaiting the rope with him and that their heads were posthumously severed from their bodies and displayed spiked upon the prison gates.
"The Gaol of Cluain Meala," a highly popular and often sung English translation of the lyrics, was made by County Cork poet, Jeremiah Joseph Callanan (1795-1829).
[5] In contrast to nearby St. Joseph's Industrial School, Ferryhouse, which had been initiated by Arthur Moore, a local Nationalist and Catholic M.P., the Borstal was promoted by the Unionist and Protestant M.P.
[7] The institution was modelled on an innovative approach to young-offender reform then being developed at a similar facility at the town of Borstal in England.
The Prevention of Crime Act 1908 envisaged that youths aged between 16 and 21 who were charged with serious offences could undergo a programme of discipline intended to rehabilitate them, segregated from the influence of adult prisoners.
One week later, 17 of the boys escaped, and on the night of 4 November, the town was suddenly abandoned by the Free State forces and occupied the following day by Republicans.
This Borstal system came to an end in 1956 when St. Patrick's Institution was transferred to a disused section of the Women's Prison at Mountjoy Jail.