His wife
teaches sewing in the school at a salary of L8 per annum. This, with
other help from the Rev. Mr. Martin, formerly Episcopal Rector of
Kilmacrennan, who got the wife the post of schoolmistress, has kept
these people alive. The father has not seen the sky since he was evicted
in 1870. At present there is a writ of ejectment on the house for L9 of
back rent, and he is sued for seed, got in the time of scarcity.
The house is horrible - there are boards with some straw on them over the
beds. The children are very pretty, and as hardy as mountain goats. The
father was quite an educated man, to judge from his speech. I, who was
well clothed, shivered at the hearth, but want and nakedness stayed
there constantly. If this poor man were put in the poor-house, he would
have to part from the faithful wife and sweet children; but that is the
doom that stares him in the face.
The longer I stayed among the hills the more I became convinced that the
people had strained every nerve to pay what they considered unjust and
extortionate rents. They worked hard; they farmed hard; they wore poor
clothing; they left their hill and went over to Scotland or England, at
harvest time, to earn money to pay the rent. "And we were not considered
as kindly, or as much respected, as their hogs or dogs," said a farmer
to me. There was nothing left after the rent for comfort, or to use in
case of sickness; they always lived on the brink of starvation.
"Why did you not refuse to pay these increased rents when they were put
upon you first? You should have refused in a body, and stood out," I
said to one man. "Some could do that, my lady, but most could not. At
first I had the old people depending on me, and I could not see them on
the hillside; now I have little children, and the wife is weakly. And
there were many like me, or even worse."
Now consider some of the office rules. My lord had a pound of his own:
for a stray beast, so much; for a beast caught up the mountain without
leave, eviction; for burning the limestone on your own place instead of
buying it at the lord's kiln, eviction; for burning some parings of the
peat land, the ashes of which made the potatoes grow bigger and drier,
eviction. Not only did the man who did not doff his hat to the landlord
stand in danger, but the man who did not uncover to his lowest under-
bailiff. One exaction after another, one tyranny after another has dug a
gulf between landlord and tenant that will be hard to bridge. I saw a
stone house used as a barn. Lord Leitrim made the man who built it, who
had got permission to build from the good Earl, tear down the chimney
and make an office-house of it, on pain of eviction. He must continue to
live himself in the hovel. Another widow woman, evicted for not being
able to pay her rent, had the roof torn off her house, but has a place
like a goose pen among the ruins, and here she stays. Every day rides
out Capt. Dopping with his escort of police, paid for by the county, and
evicts without mercy. Since the eyes of the world have been drawn to
Ireland by the proceedings of the Land League none have been left to die
outside. The tenants are admitted as caretakers by the week, but the
eviction, I am told, extinguishes any claim the poor people might have
under the Ulster Custom.
I have seen nothing yet to make me think I was in a disturbed country
except meeting Captain Dopping and his escort, and seeing white police
barracks and dandy policemen, who literally overrun the country. It
carries one's mind back to the days of bloody Claverhouse or wicked
Judge Jeffries to hear and see the feelings which the country people -
Catholic as well as Protestant - have towards the memory of the late
Earl. "Dear, the cup of his iniquity was full, the day of vengeance was
come, and the earth could hold him no longer," said a Protestant to me.
"It was bad for the people, whoever they were, that took vengeance out
of the hands of the Almighty, but many a poor creature he had sent out
of the world before he lay helpless at the mercy of his enemies," said
many an orthodox person to me. One poor girl on that dreadful day
thanked God that the oppressor was laid low. Her mother evicted, had
died on the roadside exposed to the weather of the hills, her brother
went mad at the sight of misery he would almost have died to relieve but
could not, and is now in the asylum at Letterkenny. One can imagine with
what feeling this desolate girl lifted her hands when she heard of the
murder, and said, "I thank Thee, O Lord."
What kind of a system is it that produces such scenes, and such
feelings? It is a noticeable fact how many there are in the asylum in
Letterkenny whose madness they blame on the horrors of these evictions.
Wise legislation may find a remedy for these evils, but the memory of
them will never die out. It is graven on the mountains, it is stamped on
the valleys, it is recorded on the rocks forever.
IX.
ALONG A MOUNTAIN ROAD - WHY THE RENT WAS RAISED - TURNING FARMS INTO
PASTURES - ST. COLOMBKILL - IRISH HOSPITALITY - A NOTABLE BALLAD.
The twenty-sixth of March rose sunny and cold, and I decided to hire a
horse and guide to go to Derryveigh, made memorable by Mr. John George
Adair.
