The Mistress's Dress Was Home-Made,
And So Was The Cloth Of Her Husband's Clothes.
In noticing this I was
told that where they could keep a few sheep the people were better off,
but it was harder now to keep sheep than formerly.
VIII.
THE HILL COUNTRY OF DONEGAL - ON THE SQUARE - OFFICE RULES
Left up among my country people in this hill country of Donegal, I set
myself to see and to hear what they had to say for themselves or against
their landlords. In the pauses of storm I walked up the mountains to see
the people in their homes. I seem to have lost the power of description.
I will never think of scenes I saw there without tears. I never, in
Canada, saw pigs housed as I saw human beings here. Sickness, old age,
childhood penned up in such places that one shuddered to go into them.
Now, mark me! every hovel paid rent, or was under eviction for failing
to pay.
The landlord has no duties in the way of repairing a roof or making a
house comfortable. Such a thing is utterly unknown here. To fix the
rent, to collect the rent, to make office rules as whim or cupidity
dictates, to enforce them, in many instances with great brutality, is
the sole business of the landlord; and the whole power of the Executive
of England is at his back. This is not a good school in which to learn
loyalty. Submission to absolute decrees or eviction are the only
alternative.
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