From the Irish village of Castlewarren in the 1850s to Lanesboro, Minnesota, The Irish Rebel follows the life of Edward Ruth. A story of survival, love, war, and life fashioned around a historical framework, this fictionalized account portrays the hardships of Ireland and provides a glimpse of the American Civil War through the eyes of an immigrant. Based on writings from his great-great-grandfather's journey, author Peter L. Crawley has portrayed Ruth's struggle to extricate himself from the bogs of starvation and cultural ambivalence to make a name for himself as a dentist in his new country, while he tries to prove himself worthy for the hand of one Irish maiden. The journey takes him from Ireland during "The Times of Troubles," with England's insensitive colonial policies, to the American Civil War and Morgan's Raiders, led by the infamous John Hunt Morgan. The Irish Rebel tells the tale of the striking similarity between the American Civil War and England's disgraceful disavowal of Irish Home Rule. This novel provides a vivid account of that historical period as portrayed by one who has Gaelic blood in him as well as a sentimental dose of unflappable Irish wit.

The Irish Rebel

The Journal of My Great-Great-GrandfatherBy Peter L. Crawley

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Peter L. Crawley
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-2831-2

Chapter One

    The western state of Minnesota-May, 1893

    Catching it up like a song forgotten,
    Filled the air with the Rebel Yell.
    The last war cry of the land of the cotton.

    Till all the resonant fibers of pines
    Every power of sound enlarging
    Rang with the thrill of a shout

    That never sprang from alright
    But the terrible lines
    Of the dauntless grayness fiercely charging

    Echoes it back from the mountain's brow
    From tallest pines and stunted sages
    A shout that shall echo through future ages:
    'To lower the flag is treason now—
    From Appomattox on and forever

    H. W. Taylor

"I say, damn them—damn them all to hell!" Coming as it did on the heels of a most rigorous Roman Catholic and apostolic Latin mass, was all the impetus I needed to look around, wondering if indeed the Apocalypse was now upon us. Or, at least a severe heavenly reprimand was due at any moment. Perhaps, in the form of an impending run on the bubbly, gas-induced liquid everyone around these parts called a "cherry soda" that was my one weekly indulgence, since spring had returned to the Midwest.

The younger man next to me muttered the above blasphemous sentence to no one in particular, as we cleared the big brass framed doors of St. Patrick's Catholic Church in downtown Lanesboro, Minnesota. I moved aside to let him pass into the springtime weather first. An extended gesture I hoped, of an older man being polite to another man quite a few years younger, and not out of fear of being verbally lambasted as I had just witnessed. Still, his exhortation that someone be given a free and everlasting ride to Hades, kept drifting back to me over the pregnant morning air. He might have been one of those holier than thou ex-"Yankees", the way he kept twisting his elongated, crushed, slightly-dimpled-on-the-crown, black, felt hat back in forth, in evident frustration. This he did, while at the same time declaring that a particular person or group had done him an irreparable harm, and therefore should be punished. It struck me that all this time, his pestiferous attitude conjured up the image of one who was destined to submit to inquisitional measures. On the other hand, what was evidently more likely given his stocky and menacing manner, to possibly mete them out. Finally, and indeed what was probably akin to the beatific truth more than anything else on this magnificent, Midwestern, springtime morning was the fact this young man owned a ticket to a boxing match. Which he just found out he could no longer attend. Or, if he did attend the boxing match, it was with the threat of religious excommunication hanging over his head. It was that simple and unequivocal.

I assumed his theological dilemma was due to the fact that our parish priest, right before giving out his benediction at the ten o'clock mass that morning had made a very important announcement to all of his parishioners. His announcement consisted of declaring the upcoming, bare-knuckled, match-fight between our very own hometown hero, "Fightin'" Jim Sweeney and some monster of a backwoods Georgia man, as off-limits to any practicing Catholics such as ourselves. Our parish priest I suppose, didn't want to see us encouraging the conduct of someone, who earned his daily bread traveling the countryside living off wagers. And those wagers consisted of betting he could knock the daylights out of any man who could don a pair of pants without pissin' in them first. You see, Father Helmut Guber doesn't exactly see things the same way you and I might see things. First off, just like our parish's patron saint, Father Guber is from someplace other than Minnesota, and in particular the ex-Holy Roman Empire. Where, and from what I have been told, unless you are wearing a hair vest, chewing locusts, and on your swollen knees a good six to eight hours a day in prayer.... Well then, you might just as well forget the idea that one is "saved". The "one" in mind of course, is yours truly, along with the rest of our dubious and apparently unrepentant congregation. Indeed, from what has been preached to me by Father Guber, as well as from what I have been able to surmise on my own, the conclusion is quite upsetting. For it seems to me, during the last dozen or so years that I have been a parishioner at St. Patrick's, I've been taught there is still a fifty-fifty chance that I won't make it to any celestial paradise. This morbid conjecture is based solely on my self-indulgent, almost heretical practice of using snuff more or less on a daily basis.

You can be a member of good standing in the Father Matthew's Total Abstinence Society. Make a point of giving a plate of food out the back door to the hungry traveler stopping through our lonely town. Even take time out to visit the saintly man who is in prison for setting fire to Killiwick's Apothecary shop. While in prison, he admittedly set fire because he'd refused to allow his youngest daughter to go a-courting with the son of that "Orangeman" Killiwick. Still in all, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans to our saintly priest. He'll call the shots concerning our collective spiritual welfare, and nowhere on his list of anointed things to do is there the least mention of assisting at boxing shows. Even though, most of us are pretty sure "Fightin'" Jim Sweeney can just about lower the boom, on any Southern straggler, who comes to Lanesboro, Minnesota claiming otherwise.

The only time I saw our priest close to being enthralled by my attitude was the curious moment when I'd stayed up all night assisting in a difficult birth. Being a dentist by trade, and with Dr. Fount gone over to St. Paul's for a bladder and spleen convention, I had no choice in the matter. Thus, he mistook the bags under my eyes to be the result of some sort of mystical hallucination, or even revelation for that matter. As such, Father Guber kept coming up to me at five minute intervals during the poor child's emergency baptism (she miraculously came through after having the umbilical cord twisted this way and that around her neck) asking if I'd seen an angel, and if I had ... was the Kaiser by any chance with him?

I have no doubt that our parish priest is a fine and holy man. It's just that as a close-to-being-retired parishioner I'm worried. I am more than a little concerned that my final debt as a salvation-bound Catholic is to be a last, all-out crusade to free the Holy Land one more time. And this all to be led by none other than our own Father Guber, perhaps with the concordance and fidelity of ravaging Templar Knights hiding out somewhere in the simmering back country of Minnesota.

Now, I am by no means a rabid boxing enthusiast. Except for the few times my older brother, Paul Francis Daniel was inclined to illustrate a black and blue tattoo around one or both of my eyes. This he did for some insalubrious remark I made concerning his carrot-colored hair. Nonetheless, it isn't to be that even the weighted remarks of such a holy man as our own...