Ulster, as a whole, has had more evictions, pending the Land Bill, than
any other of the provinces.
It is true that she has more people to
evict. Her rent-roll during the last-eighty years has risen from
L124,481 to L1,440,072. One million, three hundred and fifteen thousand
five hundred and ninety one pounds of a rise.
XLVII.
THE CENTRAL COUNTIES - SOME SLEEPY TOWNS.
Away from the North once more, this time direct southwards; paused on
the Sabbath-day in the neighborhood of Tandragee, and went to a field-
meeting at a place called Balnabeck - I wonder if I spell it right? This
gathering in a church-yard for preaching is held yearly as a
commemoration service because John Wesley preached in this same
graveyard when he made an evangelistic tour in Ireland. Although this is
only a yearly service, and a commemoration service of one whom the
people delight to honor, they made it pretty much a penitential service.
There were no seats but what the damp earth afforded, no stand for the
officiating minister but a grave; it was not, therefore, a very
attentive congregation which he addressed. The speaker, a Mr. Pepper,
had emigrated from thence when a lad to America. He now returned to the
people who had known him in earlier days. It was certainly listening
under difficulties, and we were obliged to leave, by limb-weariness,
before the service was over.
I had an opportunity on the morrow of seeing the handsome weaving of
damask. The looms are very complicated and expensive affairs, and do not
belong to the weaver but to the manufacturer. The pattern is traced on
stiff paper in holes. Was very much interested in watching the process
of weaving; of course did not understand it, and therefore wondered over
it. The web was two and a half yards wide, was double damask of a fern
pattern. The weaver, a young and nice-looking man, with the assured
manner of a skilled worker, informed me proudly that he could earn three
shillings a day - 75 cents. Out of this magnificent income he paid the
rent of his house - which was not a palace either - and supported his
wife and family. His wife, a pretty and rather refined looking young
woman, had a baby, teething sick, in the cradle. It must wail, and
mother could only look her love and coo to it in softest tones, for if
she took the little feverish sufferer up the pirns would be unwound and
the husband's three shillings would have a hole in it, so both wife and
baby had a share in the earning of that three shillings - baby's share
the hardest of all.
Called in to see another weaver of damask to-day; he could earn fifteen
pence a day. He was a melancholy little man, of a pugnacious turn of
mind, I am afraid. He said that fifteen pence a day was but little out
of which to pay rent and support a wife and family.
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