The hangman Darby Grahan was some time later stoned to death by an outraged crowd in county Kilkenny for having hung Fr. Nicholas Sheehy.
Local folklore has it that on Thomas Maude's death, the horses refused to pull the hearse with his coffin. The horses had to be unyoked and estate workers pulled the hearse to the graveyard. The Maudes were soldiers who received vast estates in the Cromwellian settlement.
Fr. Nicholas Sheehy was brought up by his mother's people, the Powers of Bawnfune, near Newcastle on the Tipperary and Waterford border. His mother was Marguerite Power, b. 1789, m. 1817, d. 1849. "The Gorgeous Countess of Blessington" was a daughter of this family, and her mother Eleanor was a daughter of Edmond 'Buck' Sheehy. Fr. Nicholas' father was Francis, son of John of Drumcollogher. His sister Catherine Burke (nee Sheehy) had his gravestone erected. His brother, William of Baunefoune, died in 1775. The burial place of the Sheehy's was in the old church of Kilronan.
The Sheehy or MacSheehy family belonged originally to Drumcollogher, Co. Limerick. They were an old family of warriers, the retainers of the Earl of Desmond title of the Fitzgerald earldom of Munster.
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