A drain properly if done for
themselves; made it in a proper manner if made on another man's land,
because there he was overseen, and if he slighted his work he would not
get paid for it. In short, "Paddy anywhere but at home is a splendid
man, but at home he is worthless."
Mr. Smithwick deplored the present agitation among the people; deplored
it as an agitation got up, not for people's benefit, but to feather the
nests and fill the pockets of agitators. He informed me that he himself
had to carry a pistol wherever he went. In speaking of rents Mr.
Smithwick informed me that the lands were really rented low; that the
people could pay, and were quite able to pay, were it not for the advice
of agitators; said he was getting no rent at all these years. The total
cessation of rent coming in was a great deprivation to landlords, who
depended on their rents for the means of living.
Mr. Smithwick thought emigration was the remedy for the undeniable
poverty of the country, for if the people got their farms for nothing
they could not make a living out of them, owing to their shiftless
method of farming. I objected that it would be scarcely fair to send
their people, who were so useless and helpless, over to be a burden on
us, but Mr. Smithwick thought that they would soon come in to our ways,
and help themselves, and be not a burden but a help to the community. I
found out in conversation with this gentleman that to reach Ballycroy,
where he lives, I should have come from Ballina. I seem perversely to
take the long way round. Mr. Smithwick kindly explained to me the way I
should go to reach Ballycroy by private car. He thought there was so
little of interest in that direction that it would hardly repay me for a
long tiresome journey, and that Connemara direction was much more full
of interest. After his croydon had driven off I began to remember
various points on which I should have liked to obtain his opinion that I
had never thought of once when I had the opportunity. Perhaps it was the
very early drive that had wearied me, but I was dreadfully stupid all
through the interview. I had counted a great deal on seeing this man,
and I seemed to myself to have gained nothing of facts to which one
could refer triumphantly in support of an opinion in consequence of it.
To wake myself up I enquired of the civil landlady if there were any
wonderful sights to be seen in the neighborhood within an easy drive.
Yes, there was Borrishoole Monastery (the place of owls) and Carrig a
Owlagh (rock of the fleet) Castle, one of the strongholds of Granna
Uisle Well, got a car and driver and drove off to see these ruins. I was
told that no tourist ever visited Newport without going to see them.
As we rattled and jolted over the roughest bit of road which I have yet
seen in Ireland, the driver, a dark, keen-eyed man, began to talk of
landlords, of the wasting and exterminating Lords Lucan and Sligo. I
asked him whom did he think a good landlord. He answered immediately,
"Jonathan Pym." "If you think him so good you might say Mr. Pym." "When
a man is the best in any way he's too big for Mr.," said the man
readily. "I dare say," I remarked, "that this Jonathan Pym is very
little better than the rest." "But I say he is," retorted the man
fiercely. "Where inside of the four seas of Ireland will you get his
aiquil? He bought the land, coming among us a stranger, and he did not
raise the rents. The people live under the rents their fathers paid."
"Well, that's not much?" "If you were a tenant you would think
differently. He took off the thatch of the cabins and put on slates at
his own expense: There is not a broken roof on the land that he owns.
Every tenant he has owns a decent house, with byre and barn, shed and
stable, and he done it all out of the money he had, that never was
lifted out of the land, and after all left them in at the ould rents.
There has never been wan eviction on his place yet." "Has he been shot
at yet?" I enquired innocently. "Arrah, what would he be shot for?"
demanded the man, turning his swarthy face and black eyes full on me. "I
thought maybe some one might shoot him for fun," I explained, feebly.
"Fun!" growled the car-man, "quare fun! If a man is shot or shot at he
deserves it richly. He's not a rale gentleman, word and deed, like
Jonathan Pym."
The driver continued to praise the wonderful landlord, Jonathan Pym, in
a growling kind of tone as if, were I his spouse, he would thwack me
well to cure my unbelief, as we jolted over the stones to the ruins of
the monastery of owls.
There is a lake, the lake of owls, near this ruin, and in it, it is
said, gentlemen anglers can readily obtain leave to fish. I have heard
that amateur anglers give the fish they catch to the person who gives
the permit, retaining the sport of catching as their share; or if they
want the fish paying for them at market price. I think this unlikely,
but it may be so nevertheless.
The monastery was once a splendid place, to judge by the remains of the
carving on window and arched door. One of the skulls of Grace O'Malley
used to be kept here as a precious relic.
