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The Letters Of "Norah" On Her Tour Through Ireland By Margaret Dixon Mcdougall - Page 20 of 208 - First - Home

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I Am Afraid From What I See And Hear That The Famine Was More Dreadful Here In Donegal Than We In Canada Imagined.

Plenty of people even now are living on Indian meal stirabout, without milk or anything else to take with it.

This, three times a day, and thankful to have enough of it to satisfy hunger. It was pitiful to see little children and aged women, with but thin clothes on, walking barefoot through the snowy slush of yesterday.

My attention was drawn to a ballad singer, almost blind, "whose looped and windowed raggedness" was picturesque. His dreary attempts at singing with his teeth chattering, the rain and sleet searching out every corner of his rags, was pitiful. He was hardly able to stand against the cutting wind. I sent out and bought his ballad as an excuse to give him the Queen's picture. The songs were clever for local poetry. They were treasonous too, but then loyalty is the song of the well fed, well clad, well-to-do citizen. Treason and wretchedness fit well together, in a helpless, harmless way.

Your London correspondent of February 11th remarks, "Even Ireland has nothing left but to settle down and attend to putting in the crops." This is an English and comfortable view - the remark of a man who was not there to see. It is far otherwise here in County Donegal. Evictions are flying about as thick as "the leaves of the forest when autumn hath flown." This wild second winter is the time selected for these evictions. Every local paper has notices of evictions here and there.

They tell me that the reason of the great number of evictions at present is to prevent the wretched tenants from having any benefit under the promised Land Bill. If they are evicted now and readmitted as caretakers, they can be sent off again at a week's notice and have no claim under the Ulster custom for past improvements. I think any candid person can see that these people are not in a position to pay back rent, or even present rent at the high rate to which it is raised. In some instances they are not able to pay any rent at all. There had been some years of bad seasons ending in one of absolute famine.

The report of the Relief Committee for northern Donegal was published on 28th of October, 1880. I met with a member of that Committee, which was composed of sixteen Protestants and eleven Catholics, including the Catholic Bishop of Raphoe and the Presbyterian member of Parliament. This gentleman informed me that food was given in such quantities as to preserve life only. Seed was also given. Many people of respectable standing, whose need was urgent, applied for relief secretly, not wishing their want to be known. Helped in this careful way the amount given, exclusive of expenses, in North Donegal was L33,660.17.1, of which amount the New York _Herald_ gave L2,000, besides L203 to an emigration fund enabling 115 persons to leave the country.

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