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The Letters Of "Norah" On Her Tour Through Ireland By Margaret Dixon Mcdougall - Page 5 of 106 - First - Home

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I Could Not Help Wondering If These Lads Were Ordered To Foreign Service, And On What Soil They Would Lay Down Their Heads To Rest Forever.

Two persons near by, conversing in low tones on the state of the country, drew my attention to them.

One was a sonsie good-wife with any amount of bundles, the other a little old man with a face of almost superhuman wisdom.

"The country will be saved mem, now; when the Coercion Bill has passed the country will be saved," said the old man.

"There's a great deal too much fuss made about everything," remarked the good-wife. "Look at that boy ten years old taken up, bless us all! for whistling at a man."

"Did you take notice, mem, that the whistling was derisive, was derisive, it was derisive. That is where it is, you see," said the old man with a slow, sagacious roll of his head.

"I would not care what a wee boy could put into a whistle: it was awfully childish for a man and a gentleman to take up just a wean for a whistle."

"You see mem, they have to be strict and keep everything down. The Government have ways of finding out things; they know all though, they don't let on. There will be a bloody time, in my opinion."

Oh, the wisdom with which the old man shook his head as he said this, adding in a penetrating whisper, "The times of '98 over again or worse."

IV.

LOYALTY IN THE "BLACK NORTH" - GENTLEMEN'S RESIDENCES - A MODEL IRISH ESTATE - A GOOD MAN AND HIS WIFE - VISITING THE POOR.

Down in the North the loyalty is intense and loud. An opinion favorable to the principles of the Land League it would be hardly prudent to express. Any dissatisfaction with anything at all is seldom expressed for fear of being classed with these troublers of Ireland.

The weather is very inclement, and has been ever since I landed. Snow, rain, hail, sleet, hard frost, mud, have alternated. Some days have been one continuous storm of either snow or sleet.

The roads through Antrim are beautifully clean and neat, not only on the line of rail but along the country roads inland. The land is surely beautiful, exceedingly, and kept like a garden. The number of houses of some, nay of great, pretensions, is most astonishing. Houses set in spacious and well-kept grounds, with porter lodges, terraced lawns, conservatories, &c., abound. They succeed one another so constantly that one wonders how the land is able to bear them all, or by what means such universal grandeur is supported. There is an outcry of want, of very terrible hard times, but certainly the country shows no signs thereof. The great wonder to me is where the laborers who produce all this neatness and beauty live? Where are the small farmers on whom the high rent presses so heavily? Few houses, where such could by any possibility be housed, are to be seen from the roadside. There are so very few cottages and so very many gentlemen's houses that I am forced to believe that the peasantry have almost entirely disappeared. Yet I know there must be laborers somewhere to keep the place so beautiful,

Ballymena, always a bustling place, has spread itself from a thriving little inland town into a large place of some 8,000 inhabitants. Notwithstanding the depression in the linen trade, this town presents a thriving, bustling appearance as it has always done. The number of whiskey shops is something dreadful. The consumption of that article must be steady and enormous to support them. There is squalor enough to be seen in the small streets of this town, but that is in every town.

The public road from Ballymena to Grace Hill passes through the Galgorm estate which passed from the hands of its last lord, through the Encumbered Estates Court, into the hands of its present proprietor. On this estate a most wonderful change has been effected, and in a short space of time to effect so much. During the old _regime_, and the good old times of absentee landlordism, squalor and misery crept up to the castle gates. The wretchedness of the tenants could be seen by every passer-by. The peasantry tell of unspeakable orgies held at the castle even upon the Sabbath day. The change is something miraculous. The waste pasture-like demesne is reclaimed and planted. The worst cabins have entirely disappeared; the rest are improved till they hardly know themselves.

They match the new cottages for which the proprietor took a prize. These little homes with their climbing plants, their trim little gardens, look as if any one might snuggle down in any of them and be content. The castle itself looks altered; it has lost its grim Norman look, and stands patriarchal and fatherly among the beautiful homes it has created.

Not far from the castle gate is a pretty church and its companion, an equally pretty building for the National School. I enquired of several how this great improvement came about; the answer was always the same, "The estate passed into the hands of a good man who lived on it, and he had a godly wife." Passing the pretty little church I heard the sound of children's voices singing psalms, and was told that the daughter of the castle was teaching the children to sing; I noticed _In Memoriam_ on a stone in the building, and found that this church was built in memory of the good lady of the castle, who has departed to a grander inheritance, leaving a name that lingers like a blessing in the country side. So the old landlord's loss of an estate has been great gain to this people.

It is in the country parts, more remote from the public eye, that one sees the destitution wrought by the depression in the linen trade. People there are struggling with all their might to live and keep out of the workhouses.

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