Madam, - In his Irishman's Diary of December 17th Kevin Myers denies the historical truth of the drowning of tenants evicted from a Gore-Booth estate. But the ship in the ballad to which Mr Myers refers was not the Pomana, which did ply the seas safely, but an unregistered "coffin ship" called the Pomano:
"Our rent was paid, we were not afraid,/ But still we were forced to go/ When they banished the Seven Cartrons,/ Aboard of the Pomano. . .The ship she was a rotten one, The truth to you I tell,/ And they sunk her on the Corraun Rock/ Right under Lissadell. . ."
The lines refer to the "shovelling out" by Sir Robert Gore- Booth, in 1839, of his tenants from the townland of Ballygilgan, Co Sligo. The episode lives on in infamy.
There is to this day a place near Ballygilgan called "Cat's Corner". It earned its name at the time of the evictions when, it is said, the cats of the area gathered there, also homeless. Folk memory recalls that, desperate with hunger, their piteous cries could be heard for miles around as they sought vainly for something to eat or someone to feed them. - Yours, etc.,
JOE McGOWAN, Mullaghmore, Co Sligo.