The evils of the ‘Devil’s Brew’ in Mayo recalled
by Tom Gillespie
ON this date 92 years ago - June 17, 1933 - The Connaught Telegraph published an article on the evils of poteen making, which was prominent at the time, and asked: ‘How long will it be before Ireland is rid of the Devil’s Brew – poteen’.
The report read: It is well named and takes a toll which only the devil would think of demanding.
A few months ago (early 1933) a young boy was left in charge of a ‘run’ out in the wild country north of Easkey. He could not resist the temptation to try the brew. After all, he had been for a long time hearing older and ‘wiser’ men than himself talk of the wonderful properties of poteen.
So he tried it. Next morning they found him dead - killed by the pernicious drink.
And what of the young married man - his wife had given birth to a son a few days before - who plunged 300 feet to his death over a cliff in Co. Mayo.
The gardaí found his mangled body on the rocks one morning. Halfway up the cliff they discovered a secret still. He had either been going to or returning from the still when he fell. His wife is in the poorhouse now. His child is ‘a pauper’s son’.
Then there’s the story - similar tragedies have no doubt occurred many times - of the man returning home from a successful ‘run'. He slipped from the stepping stones across a tiny stream. He was too drunk to save himself from falling, and too drunk to get up where he had fallen. He was found drowned in 10 inches of water.
Many other stories even more tragic can be told. All can be verified in a dozen districts.
Relentless, incessant warfare has been for years waged by the authorities against the evil traffic. It is a warfare in which no quarter is given, none asked.
The Garda Síochána, who carry on this war in the beautiful, green wilderness that is western Ireland, have the most perilous job in the service.
They are the hunters.
Sometimes they are almost the hunted, for the men they seek are ruthless and vicious in a corner as their confreres, the ‘beer barons’ of America.
For every member of the gardaí there are 400 people in the poteen country. Their difficulties are legion. Is it small wonder then that of the hundreds of thousands of gallons of Devil’s Brew produced in the illicit stills of the west country the seizures made are but a minute percentage of the total.
Nevertheless, pressure from the small forces of law and order has steadily driven the traffic out of most populous districts, away from the middle-west and south-west, and across the bleak country to the extreme west. Farther still, the traffic has fled to the islands off the wild and rugged coast.
The gardaí will not stop until the traffic has been flung into the ocean.
The greatest handicap is the silence of the people - the misplaced loyalty for those who carry on the trade which was developed generations ago.
So the gardaí must resort to the same methods as the distillers. They must move silently, secretly. They must lay hidden for many hours after early afternoon, and ‘go into action’ under cover of darkness.
Always they are on alert. Their search for the still is unceasing. Many times have gardaí been hoodwinked by stories of fictitious stills. Many times, too, have they learned of a still and then swooped down on it through the mountain mists to find only a smouldering fire, the remains of an amateurish still, and the birds flown.
But they are winning this war against the traffickers.
If only people realised the dangers they run in drinking the Devil's Brew. The distillers are already aware of the penalties that await them if they are caught. The ingredients include treacle, brown sugar, white sugar, barley, molasses, malt, syrup, oats, with yeast or hops for fermentation. But the distillers are not too scrupulous.
They expedite fermentation with coper sulphate, paraffin, or even carbine of calcium! The resulting brew is terrifically potent. The Americans call it ‘rot-gut’. Whiskey is a baby’s beverage compared with it.
The profits of the poteen distillers would make the ‘beer barons’ green with envy.
Four stone of treacle, two stone of brown sugar and one pound of yeast will produce 20 gallons of wash and more than five gallons of poteen. They sell the stuff for about 30/- a gallon.
The stronghold of the nefarious traffic is Donegal. Of the 732 seizures made in all Ireland last year (1932), 302 of them were made in Donegal. All the Donegal traffickers are concentrated in the Buncrana district.
Buncrana is the base of the peninsula that reaches up the most northerly point of Ireland - Malin Head.
Thus the seat of the evil is in the widest, most isolated, and difficult country of Erin.
Co. Mayo is the second worst poteen country in Ireland. There were 224 seizures there last year (1932). Again there is a concentration of the traffic, for it is almost entirely confined to the country from Ballina to Belmullet, in the extreme north of the county.
Then comes Galway with 135 seizures in 1932. Again there is the same concentration of secret stills, most of them being located in southern Connemara, between Roundstone, Clifden and across to Lough Corrib and down to Spiddal.
And so along the rugged west coast, in hidden caves, in caves which go deep into the heart of the cliffs, in all sorts of secret place where detection is next to impossible, for the gardaí are not supermen.
The gardaí learn, however, many things. They know that the Devil’s Brew lays hold of a man, of a family, of a district, like a plague. They find a man paralytic drunk - maybe they find his corpse, or his murdered wife and children.
They act swiftly, and in districts where they come across these tragedies they root out the stills and dynamite them. Thus, they carry on the war, stamping out every semblance of the traffic that comes to their knowledge.
And they are winners. They are driving the traffickers into the wilderness, and the further they go the greater the difficulty of distributing the finished product.