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.
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