He is a year and a half behind in his rent, and
likely, after all his toil and struggle, to be set on the roadside with
the rest. He has no bog near, there is none nearer than over five miles,
except some belonging to Miss Gardiner. Of course that mild and sober
spinster that will not oblige her own tenants has nothing in the way of
favor for outsiders. It took him twelve days last year to make
sufficient turf to keep the hearth warm. He went to the bog in the
morning on his breakfast of dry stirabout, with a bit of cold stirabout
in his pocket to keep off the hungry grass, as the peasant calls
famished pains, and walked home to his dry stirabout at night, having
walked going and coming eleven Irish miles over and above his day's
work. He drew home seventy ass loads of turf at the rate of two loads
per day - twenty-two Irish miles of a walk. Let Christians imagine this
man at his toil in his thin clothing, poor diet and bed of straw with
scanty coverlet, toiling early and late to pay an unjust rent. Often
after his hard day's work he has gone out at night with the fishers and
toiled all night in hopes of adding something to his scanty stores. Said
the landlord, "The vilest criminal could not have a harder life than
this God-fearing uncomplaining peasant. What I tell you I drew from him,
for he made no complaint." "You have a hard life of it, my man," said
the landlord to him. He was not his tenant. "Well, sir, sure God is good
and knows best," was the man's answer.
I was very much astonished at this gentleman's narrative and his other
admissions, and I ventured to enquire for my own satisfaction had he
made restitution to the tenants. "Have you, sir, restored what you have
robbed?" I did not suggest the four-fold which is the rule of that Book
which we acknowledge as a guide and law-giver. "I am doing so," he
replied, and he handed me a printed address to the tenants, offering
twenty-five percent reduction on arrears, if paid within a certain time.
Now, I was very much interested in this gentleman and in his opinions,
but I could not bring myself to agree with him that this was
restitution. However, I state the matter and leave it to that
enlightened jury, the readers of the _Witness_, "too large to pack
at any rate," and let them give their decision. I think myself that a
little of the Sermon on the Mount, applied conscientiously, would be
good for those who hold the happiness of Ireland in their hands. When
justice becomes loud-voiced and likely to pass into vengeance, they talk
of giving a little as charity.
XXXII.
THE STORY OF AN EVICTION.
On the 20th of May I received a whisper of an eviction that was to
occur up in the neighborhood of the Ox Mountains. Great opposition was
expected, and therefore a large force of police was to be there. I
procured a car, and in company with the local editor went to see. The
landlord of this property is an absentee; the agent - a Mr. Irwin - lived
in a pleasant residence which we passed on our way. We noticed that it
was sheepshearing time at his place, and many sheep were in the act of
losing their winter covering.
After we left Ballina behind, and followed in the wake of the police for
some time, we seemed to have got into the "stony streak." Such land!
Small fields - pocket handkerchiefs of fields - the stones gathered off
them built into perfect ramparts around them! I enquired of one
gentleman what was the rent exacted for this land so weighted down with
stones - for in addition to the high, broad fences surrounding the little
fields some of them had cairns of stones built up in the middle of them.
He said thirty shillings an acre ($7.50); asked another who said fifteen
($3.75). I fancy one would need to see the office receipts to know
correctly.
There is little cultivation in this part of the country. Hopeless-
looking ragged men, and barefoot ragged women, were at work in the
fields; little ragged children peeped from the wretched houses at the
police as they passed. And indeed they were a fine squad of broad-
shouldered, good-looking men, heavily-armed, marching along, square and
soldier-like, with a long, swinging step that goes over the ground
quickly.
We followed them up a stone-fenced lane just wide enough for the car to
pass. As we went along, men working at building a stone wall, looked at
the procession with a cowed frightened look. Our carman gave them the
"God save you" in Irish, and in answering they turned on us surely the
weariest faces that ever sat on mortal man. The lane becoming narrower,
we soon had to leave the car and follow the police on foot through a
pasture sprinkled with daisies.
Suddenly we saw the police scatter, sit down on the ditch and light
their pipes, throw themselves on the grass, group themselves in two's
and three's here and there. The end of the journey was reached.
We looked round for the wild men of Mayo from whom the bailiff, sub-
sheriff, and agent were to be protected, who were, I was told, to shed
rivers of blood that day. They were conspicuous by their absence. There
were three or four dejected-looking men standing humbly a bit off, three
women sitting among the bushes up the slope, that was all.
