Very
few horses are to be seen in the hands of country people. Their trading
is on a decidedly small scale. The number of women who attend market
barefoot is the large majority. The ancient blue cloth cloak is the
prevailing hap. Upon a day my friend and I went out to see the glories
of Ballintubber Abbey. It was not possible for him to go in plain
clothes so soon again; so I had the appearance of an obnoxious lady of
the land, protected by a member of the force.
We drove out of Castlebar some seven or eight miles in the opposite
direction from where Pontoon Bridge lies. Our road lay for miles through
the country wasted of inhabitants by the Marquis of Sligo after the
great famine. Here and there a ruin where a cabin has been speaks that
it was once inhabited. The people tell that Lord Sligo's people were
rented the land in common by the settlement. All but two of one
settlement had paid; as those two could not pay, the whole were evicted.
My informant thought the settlement deserved eviction when they did not
subscribe and pay for the two who could not pay. He never seemed to
think they might not be able to do so, nor that it was cruel to evict
all for the sake of two.
Lord Lucan made a great wasting also at that time. Between the land near
the town devoted to private demesnes, laid out for glory and beauty, and
the lands wasted of inhabitants, you can travel miles and miles on more
than one side of Castlebar and see scarcely a tenant; a herd's cabin, a
police station, being the only houses. As soon as we come to barren land
over-run with stones, tenant houses become thicker.
We passed a cabin of indescribable wretchedness; a woman who might have
sat for a picture of famine stood at the door looking at us as we
passed. She had a number of little children, of the raggedest they were,
around her. Some time ago the father of these scarecrows was suspected
of having stolen some money, and a posse of the much enduring police
were sent out to search in the dead of the night. The family were in
bed. The bed was a few boards laid on stones, on which was spread a
little green hay, and among the loose hay they slept. The terror of the
little creatures pulled out of bed, while the wretched lair was searched
and they stood on the floor naked and shivering, was described to me by
one who assisted at the search. The bed was overturned, but the money
was not found. We drove on through the "stony streak" out to a clearer
grass country to Castle Bourke, a lonely looking ruin sitting among her
own desolations.
