The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell Vol - I

a&. 34] CORK COUNTY ELECTION 219
Patrick Street. I never will forget his opening words. They acted like an electric shock on the excited people. He said, in slow and measured language, with a deep pause after each word: " Citizens of Cork. This is the night before the battle. To your guns then/' It was quite evident that we had all Cork with us, and that there was no fear of Parnell at the election next day.
6 At breakfast on Monday morning Parnell decided to nominate Mr. Kettle for the countyl; the nomination was to be on that day from ten to twelve o'clock at the Court House. The difficulty was to get a nomination paper without disclosing what we were about. So I wrote out the form of nomination on an ordinary sheet of iiotepaper. Then the difficulty was to get ten county electors to sign it, as the city liberties extend seven or eight miles around the city. As twelve o'clock was the latest hour fixed for receiving nominations, we were hard pressed for time. I suggested that I should get a county list of voters, and with it proceed to the corn and butter markets, where numbers of county farmers usually were. Accordingly we drove off to the corn market, and every man we saw with a frieze coat we asked his name and where he was from, and then looked out for the name in the list of voters, and, on finding it, got the man to sign the nomination paper. At the corn market we only got a few names; we then drove to the butter market, where we got some farmers from Castletown Bearhaven, and some from Chaiie-ville, and different other parts of the county. Then we drove to the Court House, where Kettle and Parnell missed each other, and as the last moment for lodging the
1 The Home Rule candidates already nominated were Shaw and Colonel Colthurst.