Colonial Times 19th October, 1841 p4(abridged)
Photo: mistagregory
Wikimedia Commons
The effects of the thunderstorm on Thursday week were severely felt in Ireland. At Limerick, a woman was killed by lightning while sitting at the fire with her husband. Three persons lost their lives in Galway. Houses and cattle were injured at Marlborough; five cows and a horse belonging to one man were killed.
A person living at Tallaght gives the following account of the tremendous phenomena witnessed there :
“A convulsion took place about three o’clock this morning at Old Bawn, Tallaght; the earth trembled as if it was only held by suspension; the houses rocked most frightfully, as if inclined to bury the inmates; when on a sudden the heavens opened to the eye as one mass of living fire. Immediately after the elements grumbled and sent forth their awful noise, which was loud and terrific. The lightning, or some other uncontrollable power, tore up a part of the road, small at top and opened as it sunk to the form of a balloon, well worth seeing.”
The Burren and Beyond 