An elegy on the death of Fr Nicholas Sheehy

The subject of the elegy below, Fr Nicholas Sheehy (Nioclás Mac Síthigh), was found guilty of murder at a trial in Clonmel, County Tipperary, and was hanged, drawn and quartered on 15 March 1766. The inscription on the memorial tomb marking his grave,which is still visible today in Shanrahan cemetary outside Clogheenin south Tipperary, states that the priest was thirty-eight years of age at the time of his death. He was thus born in 1728 or 1729, and his birth place, although not definitive, appears to have been at Fethard, County Tipperary. He descended from prominent, well-to-do Catholic families, his paternal forebears being the Mac Sheehys of Drumcollogher, County Limerick, while those on his maternal side were the Powers of Bawnfoun, County Waterford. A cousin, Edmund (‘Buck’) Sheehy, was a Catholic landowner on the Butler (Cahir) estate who, incidentally, was himself convicted of murder and executed on 3 May 1766.