Michael Lahy was a proper bastard

Michael Lahy was a bastard to the womenfolk in his family. While he was a freedom fighter in Ireland (a terrorist in "W's" dictionary) and a hardy pioneer in Australia (see my next blog, LAHY'S STORY) he was a spiteful and jealous old man. His daughter Mary ran off with a cousin and eloped to the Tamworth district (Ausralia's answer to Nashville Tennessee and my hometown). Lahy was bitter that she had defied himand left her a shilling (10¢) inhis will. His wife Mary Anne who had borne 8 of his children (burying a couple) and worked like a slave in a two room cottage, bringing up kids, fending off aborigines, dealing with the crowds of gold miners who dug shafts on Uamby, catering to the constant stream of guests Michael entertained. She was quite a woman. And he was a jealous husband. I have a copy of his will and he stipulated that if she married after his death, she was to be kicked off the farm. Irish catholic men were sanctimonious pricks, cruel to their children, cold and distant with their women, self indulgent to the extreme, and paranoid that they might lose control. I know because my great grandfather was a pioneer who enslaved his children as free workers onhis farm. The boys would be locked in a garret with no food for long periods as punishment - his saintly wife would smuggle small snacks to them, risking the old bastard's wrath. The boys ran away to the wars and the girls joined the Church as nuns in the order of the brown St Joseph's - founded by Australia's only saint Mary McKillop. All the men bar my grandfather became alcoholics and died young, wasted, dislocated and lost. The Nuns became blissful sisters in Christ, working in the Order as teachers, with Sister Bede rising to a level of management. But Grandfather Kelly was a bastard, so said my Mother. Who's going to dispute my dead Mother's word on the matter? I know she was right because I was once an Irish catholic patriarch and a proper bastard to boot. I know Lahy's type.