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.
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