The Terry Alts

Fundamentally the Terry Alts - an offshoot of the Ribbon Society - was an organisation against rack-renting and evictions. As it developed it also affected to be a political society for national purposes as well as dictating its orders and enforcing by its vengeance the employment and dismissal of workmen, stewards, and even domestic servants. It would seem to have been wholly confined to small farmers, cottiers, labourers, and in the towns to small shop-keepers, particularly small publicans, in whose houses the "lodges " were held. Its documents, correspondence, rules and passwords show the greatest illiteracy. The construction and management on the other hand, exhibit cleverness, activity, vigilance and resource. The Catholic priests denounced the organisation from the altar and refused the sacraments to members. Under no circumstances would a Protestant be admitted to membership as the body was exclusively Catholic. The general features of the oath seemed to be to keep the secrets of the society, implicit and blind obedience to its officers, willingness to assemble and to carry out commands "at two hours' notice," and to assist any fellow-member being beaten or ill-treated.

It is one of the evils of oath-bound secret societies of this kind where implicit obedience to secret leaders is sworn that they may become associations for the carrying out of mere personal vengeance. There was a period when Terry Alt outrages in county Galway had conceivable provocation, but there came a time when they sickened the public conscience by their wantonness. The vengeance of the organisation was ruthless. The excessive penalties, the uncalled for severity of the law as administered at the time, the vengeful spirit in which they were inflicted had much to do in driving the rural population into this lawless state. From 1835 to 1855 the Terry Alt organization was at its greatest strength. By 1860 it gradually disappeared from the County Galway. For a while it had adapted itself to the necessities of the class from which its rank were recruited, and affected to right the wrongs of tenants and farm labourers against landlords and bailiffs, but as a healthier public opinion grew up it ceased to exist.