On to Newport we drove, back
over the road winding along the side of Clew Bay, and across the head of
the bay through the lonely country leading back to Westport.
The driver, a weather-beaten man in a weather-worn drab coat,
entertained me with tales of the clearances made in the famine time that
left the country side so empty. It is hard to believe that ever human
beings were so cruel to other human beings in this Christian land, and
that it passed unknown, or comparatively unknown, to the rest of the
world.
This man told, with a certain grim satisfaction, of what he called God's
judgments which had fallen on "exterminators." The common people of the
West have a firm belief that God is on their side, no matter what
trouble he allows to come over them. "Sure I do feel my heart afire,
when gintlemen sit on my car driving through this loneliness an' talk of
over-population. Over-population! and the country empty!" I wish I could
remember all this old man said, but I can only recall snatches here and
there.
It is most amazing to think that, when the world at large was sending
help to save the Irish people alive in the awful visitation, so many
were throwing their tenants out on the road to die. And these people had
by hard toil won a living here and paid rent. Every rood of this land,
every cabin had helped to swell princely revenues, until the finger of
God came down in famine, and then, when the revenue stopped, there was
no pity, and it seemed to these poor people that there was no one that
regarded them. I do not wish to ever come to that time of life when I
can hear of the scenes that wasted this country without feeling a
passion of sorrow and regret.
I spoke of these things to a worthy gentleman resident in another part
of the country and he brushed it aside as if it were a fly, saying, "Oh,
that is long past, thirty years and more." Memory is very strong among
people who seem to have little to look forward to - the past seems the
principal outlook. Every incident of the French landing here so far back
as '98 is told to me in the West here with a freshness of detail as if
it happened a few years ago; one can imagine, therefore, how the cruel
evictions of the famine time fit themselves into the memory of the
people, especially as the rush of fresh evictions are awaking all the
horrors of the past.
It seemed a gloomy satisfaction to this man to tell over what he
considered God's judgments which had fallen on exterminators.
