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The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland

by Norah · English · Gutenberg #6599 · 608,782 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland

Author: Norah


        
Release date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6599]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6599

Credits: Produced by Tonya Allen, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTERS OF "NORAH" ON HER TOUR THROUGH IRELAND ***




Produced by Tonya Allen, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

This file was produced from images generously made available by the
Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions.






THE LETTERS OF "NORAH" ON HER TOUR THROUGH IRELAND,

BEING A SERIES OF LETTERS TO THE MONTREAL "WITNESS"

AS SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT TO IRELAND




COMPLETE LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS TO THE PUBLICATION
OF MRS. McDOUGAL'S LETTERS FROM IRELAND.


Monsignore Farrelly. Belleville, Ont. $ 5.00
Wm. Wilson, Montreal                   10.00
Edward Murphy, Montreal                 5.00
Joseph Cloran,   "                      5.00
Timothy Fogarty, "                      5.00
Robert McCready, "                      5.00
James Stewart,   "                      5.00
T.J. Potter,     "                      5.00
John Mahan, Paris (France)              5.00
Henry Hogan, Montreal                   5.00
Bernard Tansey,  "                      2.00
B. Connaughton,  "                      2.00
F.G. Gormely,    "                      2.00
J.C. Fleming, Toronto                   2.00
C.D. Hanson, Montreal                   2.00
D. McEntyre Jr., "                      2.00
Ald. D. Tansey,  "                      4.00
Wm. Farrell,     "                      2.00
M. Avahill,      "                      2.00
E.P. Ronavae     "                      2.00
Michael Sullivan,"                      1.00
James Guest      "                      2.00
M.P. Ryan        "                      5.00
Joseph Dunn, Cote St. Paul              4.00
Owen McGarvey, Montreal                 5.00
Daniel Murphy, Carillon, P.Q.           5.00
John Kelly        "       "             5.00
C.J. Doherty, Montreal                  5.00
James McCready   "                      5.00
Andrew Colquhoun, Winnepeg              5.00
P. Cuddy, Montreal                      5.00
W.S. Walker  "                          5.00
M.J. Quinn   "                          5.00
Rev. M.J. Stanton, Priest, Westport,
    Ont.                                5.00
E. Stanton, Ottawa                      5.00
J. Fogarty, Montreal                    5.00
P. McLaughlin, Montreal                 3.00
P.J. Ronayne,      "                    5.00
William Redmond,   "                    2.00
J.J. Milloy,       "                    2.00
C. Egan,           "                    2.00
John Cox,          "                    2.00
P.J. Durack,       "                    2.00
John McElroy,      "                    2.00
Michael Fern,      "                    2.00
J.I. Hayes,        "                    2.00
James Maguire,     "                    2.00
J.J. Curran, M.P., "                    2.00
Mrs. McCrank,      "                    2.00
Dr. W.H. Hingston, "                    5.00
John B. Murphy,    "                    5.00
Tim. Kenna,        "                    2.00
Matthew Hicks,     "                    5.00
Patrick Wright,    "                    5.00
Wm. S. Harper,     "                    2.00
Richard Drake,     "                    1.00
James O'Brien,     "                    5.00
H. Hodgson,        "                    2.00
P.A. Egleson, Ottawa, Ont.              5.00
John Keane,       "                     2.00
B.J. Coghlin, Montreal                  5.00
Henry Stafford,    "                    2.00
Mrs. P. McMahon    "                    2.00
P. Cadigan, Pembroke, Ont.              5.00
H. Heaton, Nebraska, U.S.                .50
Thomas Simpson, Montreal                1.00
Alexander Seath,   "                    2.00
M.C. Mullarky,     "                    5.00
John Fahey,        "                    5.00
J.J. Arnton,       "                    5.00
Richard McShane,   "                    2.00
B. Emerson,        "                    2.00
J.D. Purcell,      "                    2.00
W. O'Brien         "                    5.00

(Signed)

W. Wilson

_Treasurer "Norah's Letters" Fund._




A TOUR THROUGH IRELAND




I.

OFF--EXPERIENCES IN A PULLMAN CAR--HOARDING THE "ONTARIO"--THE CAPTAIN--
THE SEA AND SEA-SICKNESS--IMAGININGS IN THE STORM--LANDING AT
BIRKENHEAD.


On January 27th I bade good-bye to my friends and set my face resolutely
towards the land whither I had desired to return. Knowing that sickness
and unrest were before me, I formed an almost cast-iron resolution, as
Samantha would say, to have one good night's rest on that Pulman car
before setting out on the raging seas. Alas! a person would persist in
floating about, coming occasionally to fumble in my belongings in the
upper berth. Prepared to get nervous. Before it came to that, I sat up
and enquired if the individual had lost anything, when he disappeared.
Lay down and passed another resolution. Some who were sitting up began
to smoke, and the fumes of tobacco floated in behind the curtains, clung
there and filled all the space and murdered sleep. Watched the heavy
dark shelf above, stared at the cool white snow outside, wished that all
smokers were exiled to Virginia or Cuba, or that they were compelled to
breathe up their own smoke, until the morning broke cold and foggy.

Emerged from behind the curtains, and blessed the man who invented cold
water. Too much disturbed by the last night's dose of second-hand smoke
for breakfast at Island Pond. The moist-looking colored gentleman who
was porter, turned back to Montreal before we reached Portland. I
strongly suspect that a friend had privately presented him with a fee to
make him attentive to one of the passengers, for he came twice with the
most minute directions for finding the Dominion Line office, at
Portland. Still his conscience was unsatisfied, for finally he came with
the offer of a tumbler full of something he called pure apple juice.
There are some proud Caucasians who would not have found it so difficult
to square a small matter like that with their consciences.

It was pleasant to look at the comfortable homes on the line as we
passed along. Not one squalid looking homestead did we pass; every one
such as a man might be proud to own. All honor to the State of Maine.

The train was three hours late--it was afternoon when we arrived in
Portland. Following the directions of my colored friend, I went up an
extremely dirty stair into a very dirty office, found an innocent young
man smoking a cigar. He did not know anything, you know, so sat grimly
down to wait for the arrival of some one who did. Such a one soon
appeared and took a comprehensive glance of the passenger as he took off
his overshoes.

"Passenger for the 'Ontario,'" explained the innocent young man.

"Take the passenger over to the ship," said the energetic one,
decidedly. "We will send luggage after you. How much have you?"

Explained, handed him the checks, and meekly followed my innocent guide
down the dirty stair, across a wide street, up some dirty-looking steps
on to the wharf where the 'Ontario' lay, taking in her cargo. Large and
strong-looking, dingy white was she, lying far below the wharf.

My guide enquired for the captain, who appeared suddenly from somewhere--
a tall man with a resolute face and keen eye, gray as to hair and
whiskers, every inch a captain. I knew that his face--once a handsome
face, I am sure--had got that look of determination carved into it by
doing his duty by his ship and facing many a storm on God Almighty's
sea. I trusted him at once.

Did not sail through the night as I expected, but were still in Portland
when morning came. We had fish for breakfast; found mine frozen beneath
the crisp brown outside. After breakfast went up on deck. The sky was
blue and bright, the air piercing cold. The town of Portland looked
clean and beautiful in the fair sunlight. It is a place that goes
climbing up hill. The floating ice and the liquid green water ruffled
into white on the crest of the swells, are at play together. The ship
moves out slowly, almost imperceptibly. Portland fades from a house-
crowned hillside into a white line, darkness comes down. We are out at
sea.

The glass has gone down; the storm has come up; the sea tyrant has got
hold of the solitary passenger and dandles her very roughly, singing
"The Wreck of the 'Hesperus'" in a loud bass to some grand deep tune,
alternating with the one hundred and third Psalm in Gaelic. The
passenger holds on for dear life and wonders why the winds sing those
words over and over again.

Sabbath passes, day melts into night, night fades into day, the storm
tosses the ship and sea-sickness tosses the passenger. The captain
enquires, "Is that passenger no better yet?" Comes to see in his
doctoral capacity, looks like a man not to be trifled with, feels the
pulse, orders a mustard blister, brandy and ammonia, and scolds the
patient for starving, like a wise captain and kind man as he is. All the
ship stores are ransacked for something to tempt an appetite that is
above temptation; but the captain is absolute, and we can testify that
eating from a sense of duty is hard work. It was delightful to get rid
of an occasional apple on the sly to one of the ship's boys and be
rewarded with a surprised grin of delight.

It is grand to lie on cushions on the companion-way and watch long
rollers as they heave up and look in at the door-way. They rise rank
upon rank, looking over one another's shoulders, hustling one another in
their boisterous play, like overgrown schoolboys, who will have fun at
whoever's expense. Sometimes one is pushed right in by his fellows, and
falls down the companion-way in a little cataract, and then the door is
shut and they batter at it in vain. Then there is a great mopping up of
a small Atlantic.

The storm roars without, and within the passenger lies day after day
studying the poetry of motion. There is one motion that goes to the tune
of "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," but this rocking is so violent
that as one dashes from side to side, holding on to the bars above and
the edge of the berth, one is led to pity a wakeful baby rocked wickedly
by the big brother impatient to go to play. The tune changes, and it is
"Ploughing the Raging Main," and the nose of the plough goes down too
deep; then one is fastened to the walking beam of an engine and sways up
and down with it. A gigantic churn is being churned by an ogre just
under our head, and the awful dasher plunges and creaks. Above all the
winds howl, and the waves roll, and sometimes slap the ship till she
shivers and leaps, and then the "Wreck of the Hesperus" recommences.
Things get gloomy, the variations of storm grow monotonous, nothing
delights us, no wish arises for beef tea, nothing makes gruel palatable.
Neither sun nor stars have been visible for some days; the only sunshine
we see is the passing smile of the ship's boys, who are almost
constantly employed baling out the Atlantic.

It was the ninth night of storm. They say every ninth wave is larger
than the rest; the ninth night the wind roared louder than ever, the
Almighty's great guns going off. The ship staggered and reeled,
struggling gallantly, answering nobly to the human will that held her to
her duty, but shivering and leaping after every mighty slap of the mad
waves. I got one glimpse at the waves through a cautiously opened door.
I never thought they could climb upon one another's shoulders and reach
up to heaven, a dark green wall of water ready to fall and overwhelm us,
until I looked and saw the mountains of water all around.

Land in sight on the 8th of February, the Fasnet rock, then the Irish
coast; the great rollers drew back into the bosom of the Atlantic: the
winged pilot boats appeared; the pilot climbed up the side out of the
sea; we steamed over the harbor bar and stopped at Birkenhead on the
Cheshire side to land our fellow-passengers the sheep and oxen.

I might have gone up to Liverpool but was advised to remain another
night on board and go direct to the Belfast packet from the ship. I
considered this advice, found it good and took it.




II.

FROM LIVERPOOL TO BELFAST--IRELAND'S CONDITION DISCUSSED--EVICTIONS--A
SUNDAY IN BELFAST.


From Liverpool to Belfast, including a cup of tea, cost in all four
dollars and fifty cents. It seems ridiculous to a stranger that the cars
and cabs always stop at a little distance from the steamers, so as to
employ a porter to lift a trunk for a few yards at each end of the short
journey by cab.

The kind steward of the "Ontario" came over to the packet to look after
his passenger; had promised to see that passenger safely conveyed from
one steamer to the other, but, detained at home by sickness in the
family, came back to the ship a few minutes too late, and then came over
to explain and say good-bye. There could not possibly be a more
courteous set of men than the captain and officers of the steamship
"Ontario."

On the Belfast packet two ladies, one a very young bride on her way from
her home in South Wales to her new home in Belfast, were talking of the
danger of going to Ireland or living in it at the present disturbed
time. A gentleman in a grey ulster and blue Tam o'Shanter of portentous
dimensions broke into the conversation by assuring the handsome young
bride that she would be as safe in green Erin as in the arms of her
mother. Looking at the young lady it was easy to see that this speech
was involuntary Irish blarney, a compliment to her handsome face. "You
will meet the greatest kindness here, you will have the heartiest
welcome on the face of the earth," he continued.

"But there is a great deal of disturbance, is there not?" asked her
companion.

"Oh, the newspapers exaggerate dreadfully--shamefully, to get up a
sensation in the interest of their own flimsy sheets. There is some
disturbance, but nothing like what people are made believe by the
newspaper reports."

Old lady--"Why are Irish people so turbulent?"

Tam O'Shanter--"My dear lady, Ireland contains the best people and the
worst in the world, the kindest and the cruelest. They are so emotional,
so impulsive, so impressible that their warm hearts are easily swayed by
demagogues who are making capital out of influencing them."

Old lady--"Making money by it, do you mean?"

Tam O'Shanter, with a decided set of his bonnet--"Making money of it!
Yes, by all means. They have got up the whole thing to make money. But
here in Belfast, where you are going," with a bow to the bride, "all is
tranquil, all is prosperous. In fact all over the north there is the
same tranquillity, the same prosperity."

Here, a new voice, that of an enthusiastic supporter of the Land League,
joined in the conversation, and the controversy becoming personal the
ladies disappeared into the ladies' cabin. There was an echo of drunken
argument that was likely a continuation of the land question until the
wind increased to a gale. The little boat tossed like a cork on the
waves; there was such a rattle of glass, such a rolling and bumping of
loose articles, such echoes of sickness, above all, the shock of waves
and the shriek of winds, and the land question was for the time being
swallowed up by the storm.

Belfast, with its mud and mist, was a welcome sight. The dirty-faced
porters who lined the quay and beckoned to us, and pointed to our
luggage silently, seemed to be a deputation of welcome to _terra
firma_. At a little distance from the line of porters the jaunting
cars were stationed to convey passengers to the hotel. It did look
ridiculous to see full-grown people take the long way round in this
fashion.

At noon Saturday, the 19th of February, I had the blissful feeling of
rest connected with sitting in an easy chair before a coal fire, trying
to wake up to the blissful fact of being off the sea and in Ireland.

On Sunday it was raining a steady and persistent rain; went through it
to the Duncairn Presbyterian Church because it was near, and because I
was told that the minister was one skilled to preach the gospel to the
poor. Found myself half an hour too early, so watched the congregation
assemble. The Scottish face everywhere, an utter absence of anything
like even a modified copy of a Milesian face. Presbyterianism in Ulster
must have kept itself severely aloof from the natives; there could have
been no proselytizing or there would have been a mixture of faces
typical of the absorption of one creed in another.

Judging from the sentiments I have heard expressed by the sturdy
descendants of King Jamie's settlers, the sympathy that must precede any
reasonably hopeful effort to win over the native population to an alien
faith has never existed here. There is a great social gulf fixed between
the two peoples, with prejudice guarding both sides. The history, the
traditions of either side is guarded and nourished in secret by one,
openly and triumphantly by the other, with a freshness of strength that
is amazing to one who has been out of this atmosphere long enough to
look kindly on and claim kindred with both sides. Still there is a
perceptible difference between these Hiberno-Scotch and their cousins of
Scotland. Their faces have lost some of the concentrated look of a
really Scottish congregation. They are not so thoroughly "locked up;"
the _cead mille failte_ has been working into their blood
imperceptibly. The look of curiosity is kindly, and seems ready to melt
into hearty welcome on short notice.

It is not the minister of the Duncairn Church who preaches, but a
returned missionary, who tells us by what logical hair-splitting in the
regions of Irish metaphysics he confounds Hindoo enquirers after truth,
and argues them into the Christian religion. Pity the poor Hindoos upon
whom this man inflicts himself. In the afternoon I strayed into a small
Sabbath-School where the Bible never was opened; heard a stirring Gospel
sermon at night, and joined in a prayer-meeting and felt better.




III.

BELFAST--TEMPERANCE--"THE EVE OF A GREAT REBELLION"--THE POOR HOUSE--
THE POLICE--COUNTY DOWN--MAKING ENDS MEET--WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO
TURN UP.


Belfast seems a busy town, bustle on her streets, merchandise on her
quays. Did not meet one man on the streets with the hopeless look on his
face of the poor fellow who carried my trunk in Liverpool. There must be
distress however, for the mills are not running full time, and there are
entertainments got up for the benefit of the deserving poor. I saw no
signs of intoxication on the streets, yet the number of whiskey shops is
appalling. Had a conversation with a prominent member of the Temperance
League, who informed me that temperance was gaining ground in Belfast.
"Half of the ministers are with us now; they used to, almost entirely,
stand aloof." But where are the rest?

The land question is the absorbing topic. Every one seems to admit that
there is room for vast improvement in the land laws, that there has been
glaring injustice in the past. They acknowledge that rents are too high
to be paid, and leave anything behind to support the farmer's family in
any semblance of comfort. There is a very strong feeling against Mr.
Parnell among the Protestants of the north. In fact they talk of him
exactly as they did of Daniel O'Connell when in the height of his power.
Many whisper to me that we are on the eve of a great rebellion. One
strong-minded lady who informed me that she had come of a Huguenot stock
talked of the Land Leaguers as if they were responsible for the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes: but she acknowledged that the land
laws were very unjust and needed reform.

Visited the Poor House, a very noble building in well-kept grounds. Went
on purpose to see a sick person and did not go all over it. It was not
the right day, or something. It was very distressing to see the number
of able-bodied looking young men and rosy-cheeked women about the
grounds who begged for a halfpenny, and so many loungers in hall and
corridor--perhaps they were only visitors. If they were inmates there
was plenty of cleaning to be done--the smell in some parts was dreadful.
In the hospital part the floors were very clean, and the head nurse, a
bright, cheery woman, seemed like sunshine among her patients. She
showed us all her curiosities, the little baby born into an overcrowded
world on the street, the little one, beautiful as an angel, found on the
street in a basket. It was very touching to see the beggar mothers
sparing from their own babies to nourish the little deserted waif. A
poor house is a helpless, hopeless mass of human misery.

One thing that impresses a stranger here is the number of policemen;
they are literally swarming everywhere. Very dandified as to dress and
bearing, very vigilant and watchful about the eyes, with a double
portion of importance pervading them all over as men on whom the peace
and safety of the country depend. These very dignified conservators of
the peace are most obliging. Ask them any question of locality, or for
direction anywhere, and their faces open out into human kindness and
interest at once.

Went out into County Down by rail about twenty miles. No words can do
justice to the beauty of the country, the cleanness of the roads, the
trimness of the hedges, and the garden-like appearance of the fields.
The stations, as we passed along, looked so trim and neat. The houses of
small farmers, or laborers I suppose they might be, were not very neat.
Many of them stood out in great contrast as if here was the border over
which any attempt at ornament should not pass.

On the train bound for Dublin was a little old woman travelling third
class like myself, who scraped an acquaintance at once in order to tell
me of the disturbed state of the country. She emphasized everything with
a wave of her poor worn gloves and a decided nod of her bonnet.

"They are idle you know, they are lazy, they are improvident. They are
not content in the station in which it has pleased God to place them. I
know all about these people. They are turbulent, they are rebellious;
they want to get their good, kind landlords out of the country, and to
seize on their property. It is horrid you know, horrid!" and the little
old lady waved her gloves in the air. "If they had a proper amount of
religion they would be content to labor in their own station. I am
content with mine, why not they with theirs? You understand that,"
appealing to me.

"Have you a small farm?" I enquired.

"Indeed I have not," said the little old lady with the greatest disgust,
"I live on my money."

It was quite evident I had offended her, for she froze into silence. As
I left the train at Tandragee she laid her faded glove on my arm and
whispered, "It is their duty to be content in their own station, is it
not?"

"If they cannot do any better," I whispered back.

"They cannot," said the little old lady sinking back on her seat
triumphantly.

It is rather unhandy, that the names of the stations are called out by a
person on the platform outside the cars, instead of by a conductor
inside.

The manufacturing town of Gilford is a pretty, clean, neat, little place
clustered round the mills and the big house, like the old feudal
retainers round the castle. Here, as in Belfast, a certain amount of
distress must exist, for the mills are not running full time.

The wages of a common operative here is twelve shillings (or three
dollars) per week. If they have a family grown up until they are able to
work at the mills, of course it adds materially to the income. Girls are
more precious than boys, I have heard, as being more docile and easier
kept in clothing. They can earn about half wages, or six shillings (one
dollar and a half) per week. Rents are about two shillings (or half a
dollar) per week. It takes one and sixpence for fuel. A young family
would keep the parents busy to make ends meet in the best of times. In
case of the mill running short time I should think they would
persistently refuse to meet. No signs of distress, not the least were
apparent anywhere. The mill hands trooping past looked clean, rosy and
cheerful, and were decently clad. The grounds around the factory were
beautiful and very nicely kept, and beautiful also were the grounds
about the great house. I felt sorry that there were no little garden
plots about the tenement houses occupied by the operatives; so when hard
times come they will have no potatoes or vegetables of their own to help
them to tide over the times of scant wages. How I do wish that the
large-hearted and generous proprietors of these works could take this
matter into consideration.

People waiting at the station talked among themselves of hard times, of
farms that were run down, that would not yield the rent, not to speak of
leaving anything for the tenants to live on. There was no complaint made
of the landlords; the land was blamed for not producing enough. Of
course, these people ought to know, but the fields everywhere looked
like garden ground. The only symptoms of running down that I could see
were in some of the houses, two-roomed, with leaky-looking roofs and a
general air of neglect. I must own, however, that houses of this
description were by far the fewest in number. At one station where we
stopped, one respectable-looking man asked of another, "Have you got
anything to do yet, Robert?" "Still waiting for something to turn up,"
was the answer. This man was not at all of the Micawber type, but a
well-brushed, decent-looking person with a keen peremptory face,
evidently of Scottish descent. A group of such men came on the train,
whose only talk was of emigrating if they only had the means.

I have heard a great deal of talk of emigration among the people with
whom I have travelled since I landed, but have not heard one mention of
Canada as a desirable place to emigrate to. The Western States, the
prairie lands, seem to be the promised land to everyone. One of these
would-be emigrants took a flute out of his pocket and played the Exile
of Erin. The talk of emigration stilled and a great silence fell on them
all. There were some soldiers on the car, young men, boys in fact, who
seemed by the heavy marching order of their get-up to be going to join
their regiment. Some of them struggled mannishly with the tears they
fain would hide. Truly the Irish are attached to the soil. 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. Hand-loom weaving seems doomed to follow hand-spinning
and become a thing of the past. Weavers some time ago had a plot of
ground which brought potatoes and kale to supplement the loom, and on it
could earn twelve shillings a week. But alas! while the webs grew longer
the price grew less and they are in a sad case.

I called, with a friend, on some of these weavers: one, an intelligent
man, with the prevailing Scotch type of face. We found him, accompanied
by a sickly wife, sitting by a scanty fire, ragged enough. This man for
his last web was paid at the rate of twopence a yard for weaving linen
with twenty hundred threads to the inch, but out of this money he had to
buy dressing and light, and have some one, the sickly wife I suppose, to
wind the bobbins for him. He must then pay rent for the poor cabin he
lived in, none too good for a stable, and supply all his wants on the
remainder.

Another weaver told me that all this dreary winter they had no bed-
clothes. They think by combining together they will be able to obtain
better prices; but they are so poor, the depression in the trade is such
a fearful reality that I am afraid they cannot combine or co-operate to
any purpose. However, people in such desperate circumstances grasp at
any hope.

It is wonderful with what disfavor some of these people receive a hint
of emigration. It seems like transportation to them. Truly these Irish
do cling to the soil.

The weavers seem to blame the manufacturers for the reduction of wages.
They complain that the trade is concentrated into a few hands; that
therefore they cannot sell where they can sell dearest, but are obliged
to take yarn from a manufacturer and return it to him in cloth. They
complain that he still further reduces the poor wage by fines. As many
of these have only a hut but no garden ground, they have nothing to fall
back on. There are many suffering great want, and with inherited Scotch
reticence suffering in silence. There may be some injustice and some
oppression, for that is human nature, but the hand-loom weaving is
doomed to disappear, I am afraid.

There are some complaints of the high price of land here, and of the
hard times for farmers, but there is no appearance of hard times.
Laborers are cheap enough. One shilling a day and food, or ten shillings
a week without food, seems to be the common wage. The people of Down and
Antrim, as far as I have gone, are rampantly loyal to Queen and
Government and to all in authority. If a few blame the manufacturers, or
think the land is too dear, the large majority blame the improvidence of
the poor. "They eat bacon and drink tea where potatoes and milk or
porridge and milk used to be good enough for them." It is difficult to
imagine the extravagance.

I went through part of the poor-house in Ballymena. It is beautifully
clean and sweet, and in such perfect order out and in that one is glad
to think of the sick or suffering poor having such a refuge. What fine,
patient, intelligent faces were among the sufferers in the infirmary.
The children in the school-room looked rosy and well-fed, and the babies
were nursed by the old women. So many of them--it was a sad sight
indeed.




V.

ONE RESULT OF THE COERCION ACT--THE AGRICULTURAL LABORERS IN DOWN AND
ANTRIM--WHISKEY--RAIN IN IRELAND--A DISCUSSION ON ORANGEISM.


It is the eighth of March. The weather remains frightfully inclement;
the snow and sleet is succeeded by incessant rain storms. The Coercion
bill has become law and even in the north there seems a difference in
the people. There is a carefulness of expressing an opinion on any
subject as if a reign of governmental terror had begun. The loyalty
always so fervent is now intense and loud. The people here think that
there is an epidemic of unreasonableness and causeless murmuring raging
at the south and west.

In all that I have seen in Down and Antrim, the agricultural laborers
seem to be never at any time much above starvation; any exceptionally
hard times bring it home to them. In cases of accident, disease, or old
age, they have no refuge but the workhouse. There is a constant
struggle, as heroic in God's sight as any struggle of their Scottish
ancestors, to escape this dreaded fate. When it does overtake them,
however, the beggar nurses wait upon the sick beggars with a tenderness
that is inexpressibly touching.

Emigration is impossible to the laborer or the hand-loom weaver. They
have no money, they have nothing to sell to make money, and they are
utterly unwilling to be torn from the places where they were born to be
expatriated as beggars, and as beggars set down upon a foreign shore. I
am literally giving utterance to the opinions expressed to me.

I have heard these people loudly accused of extravagance; on enquiry was
told that they bought American bacon and drank tea, whereas, if thrifty,
they would be content with potatoes and buttermilk, or ditto and stir-
about. As the cow has disappeared, and potatoes have been known to fail,
I did not see the extravagance so clearly as I saw the parsimony that
would grudge the hard-worked laborer or the pale over-worked weaver any
nourishment at all.

The charge of spending on whiskey seems more likely by the frightful
amount of whiskey shops. Ireland's whiskey bill is going up into
somewhere among the millions. It is a fearful pity that this tax on the
industry and energy of the people could not be abolished. Truth compels
me to add that faces liquor-painted abound most among the well-dressed
and apparently well-to-do class whom one meets on the way.

The tenant-farmers, in some cases, complain of their rents, and would
complain more loudly but for fear of being classed with the Land League,
for they in the north are intensely loyal. As for the mere laborer, no
one seems to consider him or think of him at all.

The weather has been so inclement, the days all so much alike, rain,
hail, snow, sleet, high winds, and we were so busy coughing that the
days slipped by almost unnoticed. Refusing the tempting offer of a free
trip to see the beauties of Glengarriff, through the medium of a heavy
rain we started for Derry by train. Ah! it does know how to rain in
Ireland. Such a downpour, driven aslant by a fierce wind, so that,
disregarding the thought of an umbrella, we held on to the rail of the
jaunting car and were driven in the teeth of the tempest, smiling as if
we enjoyed it, up to the station.

Both sides of the road at the station were crowded with men in all sorts
of picturesque habiliments. If it had been near the poor-house we would
have thought that the population was applying for admittance _en
masse_. As it was, seeing the station likewise crowded, the platform
beyond crammed, all eager, expectant, waiting on something, we thought
it was some renowned field preacher going to give a sermon, or a
millionaire going to give largess. Not a bit of it. It was some person,
idle and cruel, who was bringing a couple of poor captive deer to be
hunted, and the hounds to hunt them, and the immense crowd represented
the idle and cruel who had assembled to get a glimpse of this noble and
elevating diversion. If it were possible for the deer and the man to
change places the crowd would be still more delighted.

Leaving Ballymena behind we panted through a completely sodden country.
Everything was dripping. In many places the waters were out, and the
low-lying lands were in a flood. Potatoes in pits linger in the fields,
turnips and cabbages in the rows where they grew, bearing witness that
even the last hard winter was many degrees behind the winters of Canada.
The land on this road is not so good as what I left behind; therefore
there were few gentlemen's houses, and the small farmhouses wore the
usual poverty-stricken and neglected appearance. There were more waste
hillsides devoted to whins, and flat fields tussocked with rushes as we
swept on through the dripping country, under the sides of almost
perpendicular rocks, down which little waterfalls, like spun silver,
fell and broadened into bridal veils ere they reached the bottom. Then
along the historical Foyle, "whose swelling waters," rather muddy at
this season of the year, "roll northward to the main," and so following
its windings and curvings we flashed into Derry.




VI.

THE HILLS OF LOUGH SWILLY--TENANTS' IMPROVEMENTS--A MAN-OF-WAR AND MEN
OF LOVE--THE PIG--RAMELTON--INTELLIGENT ROOKS--FROM POTATOES AND MILK
TO CORNMEAL STIRABOUT AND NOTHING--MILFORD--THE LATE LORD LEITRIM'S
INJUSTICE AND INHUMANITY--ACCOUNT OF HIS DEATH.


On the 14th March we left Derry by train, crossing from the banks of the
Foyle to Lough Swilly. Got on board a little steamer, marvellously like
an American puffer, and panted and throbbed across the waters of the
Lough. The sun shone pleasantly, the sky was blue, which deserves to be
recorded, as this is the very first day since I arrived in Ireland on
which the sun shone out in a vigorous and decided manner, determined to
have his own way. We have had a few--a very few--watery blinks of sun
before, but the rain and sleet always conquered. Sailed up among whin-
covered mountains, with reclaimed patches creeping up their sides, and
pretty spots here and there, with handsome houses, new and fresh
looking, built upon them. It is an inducement to merchants and others to
build their brand new houses here, that the air is fresh and pure, the
scenery grand and beautiful and the salt water rolls up to the foot of
the rocks.

It was pointed out to me by a friend, that these mountain-side farms
were reclaimed, by great labor I'm sure, by the tenants, trusting to the
Ulster custom, but the landlords, knowing that custom was not law, then
raised the rents upon them. If they could not, or were not willing to
pay the increased rent, increased because of their own labor, they could
leave; others would rent the places at the increased figure. "As for
you, ye shiftless, miserable tillers of the soil, ye can go where you
like; emigrate if you can; get you to the workhouse or the grave if you
cannot." It is hard to believe that this could be done, or has been done
lawfully again and again. If it is true it spoils the comfort of looking
at the pleasant homes built upon reclaimed spots. We look more kindly on
the cottage homes nestled among nooks of the hills.

The sky did not cloud over again, it remained blue and bright and coaxed
the waters of Lough Swilly to look blue and bright also. Flocks of white
sea gulls dipped, darted and sailed about in an abandonment of
enjoyment. Flights of ducks rose on the wing and whirled past.

We sailed between two forts that frown at one another in a grim and
desolate manner at Rathmullen. Was informed that a man-of-war ordinarily
lay at anchor in this Lough to keep half an eye on things in general,
and poteen, I suppose, in particular. It was complained that the blue
jackets, finding these mountain girls sweet and pretty, and easy to
keep--for since cows are become such a price, a good one, not one of the
bovine aristocracy, but a commonly good one, being value for L20, the
damsels of the hills are accustomed to "small rations of tea and
potatoes"--the sailors marry them, "and that," said my informant, "makes
servant girls scarce about here."

I did not sympathize properly with this complaint. I was glad to hear
that any form of humanity in this island is scarce. I hoped the blue
jackets were happy with their Irish wives, for a Liverpool sailor
lamented in my hearing that the girls of seaport towns did not often
make good sailors' wives. Let us hope that they did better who chose
among the wild hills of Lough Swilly.

I am told that another cherished institution of Ireland is passing away--

  "The pig that we meant
   To drynurse in the parlor to pay off the rent."

The pig is becoming an institution of the past. I was told by a
gentleman of the first respectability in Derry, that sucking pigs are
sold in that market for thirty shillings. These would be precious to the
peasant if he had them, but he has not, nor means to get them. This
great resource for paying the rent is gone.

Up the Lough we sailed into beautiful Ramelton, an exceptionally pretty,
clean little place, boasting of a very nicely kept hotel. The scenery
all around is delightful. Across the Lannon River, on the banks of which
is one of the principal streets, is a lofty ridge crowned with grand
trees. The Lannon runs into Lough Swilly, and is affected by the ebb and
flow of the tide. The trees on the ridge are tenanted by a thriving
colony of rooks, very busy just now with their spring work. Two
delightful roads, one above another, run along the brow of the hill
under the shade of the trees.

I discovered that rooks know a great deal; that there is infinite
variety of meaning in their caw. The young couples who are starting
housekeeping have not only to provide materials and build their homes,
but to defend their property at every stage from the rapacity of their
neighbors. They have also to build in such a manner as to satisfy the
artistic taste of the community. I saw an instance of this during a
morning walk. Five rooks were sitting in judgment on the work of a young
and thoughtless pair of rooks, I suppose. The work was condemned, the
young couple were evicted without mercy and the nest pulled to pieces by
the five censors with grave caws of disapprobation, while the evicted
ones flew round and showed fight and used bad language. The Coercion Act
was not in favor among the black coated gentry of the air.

It has fallen like a spell over Ireland though, and evictions are
hurried through as if they thought their time was short. People are
afraid to speak to a stranger.

I have succeeded in obtaining introductions, which I hope will give me
an entrance into society in Donegal.

Was driven by my new friends over a part of Lord Leitrim's estate, and
through his town of Milford. The murdered Earl has left a woeful memory
of himself all over the country side. He must have had as many curses
breathed against him as there are leaves on the trees, if what
respectable people who dare speak of his doings say of him be true,
which it undoubtedly is. Godly people of Scottish descent, Covenanters
and Presbyterians, who would not have harmed a hair of his head for
worlds, have again and again lifted their hands to heaven and cried.
"How long, Lord, are we to endure the cruelty of this man?"

One case (which is a sample case) I will notice. In the plantation of
Scottish settlers in the North it seems that either for company or
mutual protection against the dispossessed children of the soil, the
farmhouses are built together in clachans or little groups. After a
lapse of years these clachans in some cases expanded into small towns.
The people built houses and made improvements on their holdings, paying
their rent punctually, but holding the right to their own money's worth,
the result of years of toil and stern economy under the Ulster custom.
In this way the greater part of the town of Milford sprung into
existence.

One John Buchanan, a Presbyterian of Scottish descent, son of
respectable people who had lived on this estate for generations, was
employed in the land office of the Earl of Leitrim over twenty years.
This man trusting to the Ulster custom, and the honest goodness of the
old Earl, grandfather of the present Earl, a good landlord and a just
man, by all accounts, invested his savings in building on the site of
the old farmhouse in Milford a block of buildings--quarrying the stone
for them--consisting of two large houses on Main street, and the rest
tenement houses on Buchanan street. He improved his farm by reclaiming
land, making nice fields out of bog.

When the good Earl died and the late Earl came into possession, he
immediately raised the rent to nearly double what was paid before,
making John Buchanan pay dearly for his improvements. John Buchanan died
rather suddenly, leaving a widow and five children. The widow in her
overwhelming grief was visited by Lord Leitrim personally. He told her
with great abuse and outrageous language, that she had no claim whatever
to a particle of the property, "she did not own a stone of it." The
widow, worn and nervous with the great trouble she had passed through,
was unable to bear this new trouble; his Lordship's violence gave her a
shock from which she never recovered. He then sent his bailiffs and put
her and her children out; put out the fires, as taking possession, and
re-let the place to her, again doubling the rent. Her eldest son, a
young lad, boiling with wrath over the wrong done and the language used
to his mother, went to his aunt, living at some distance, and besought
her to send him out of the country, lest he should be tempted to take
vengeance in his own hand. His aunt seeing this danger, fitted him out
from her own pocket, and the poor lad, his mother consenting, was
expatriated out of harm's way to far Australia.

The widow never recovered the shock which Lord Leitrim had given her. It
was aggravated by despair at seeing all the savings of her husband's
lifetime appropriated by the strong hand, and her children left
destitute. She was also in debt to the value of L600 for building
material for an addition built to the house and some office houses,
built later on, some time after the rest of the property. This debt of
L600 wore on her. She had no means of payment; all her means were
swallowed up in this property. The creditors could not collect it off
the property, it was not held liable for the debt, neither was Lord
Leitrim, who had seized the property. Her sense of honesty and the honor
of her husband's name made her fret over this debt. The doctor had
declared her illness heart disease brought on by a shock, and her death
imminent. To soothe her mind her sister again came forward and out of
her own pocket paid the money. The widow died and was buried. Their only
relative tried what the law would do to redress the grievances of the
orphans. The presiding judge, the chairman of the quarter sessions,
lifted up his hands saying, "Must I issue a decree that will rob these
helpless orphans." The decree was issued, and the children ejected
without a farthing of compensation. To leave no stone unturned, the
children went in a body to Lord Leitrim to ask, as justice had been
powerless, for mercy from him. He ordered his servant to put them out.
At the time these orphans were turned out of the house their father
built, there was not a farthing of rent due, all had been paid up at the
unjust Earl's own estimate.

This case had been heard by the Royal Commissioners sent to enquire into
these things, but it appears that there is no law to redress a tenant's
wrong. This occurred under the tenant custom of Ulster.

I drove round this fine property in Milford. It was pointed out to me
that almost all the houses in the town were acquired by Lord Leitrim, by
the strong hand, in the same way. Passed the house from which the
Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Mr. White, was evicted. It was his own
private property. It stands windowless and roofless, a monument to the
dead earl. The priest of the parish had no house of his own; he was a
boarder with one of his flock, who had built himself a house in the time
of the good earl. When Lord Leitrim fancied that he had cause of quarrel
with the priest he obliged his tenant to put him out, on pain of losing
the house which he had built. After he had got rid of priest and
minister, he built a little Episcopal Church, that the people might
worship at his shrine. The little church stands empty now. The graveyard
about this little church was a rocky corner with little soil. The
minister ventured to request that the people might have leave to draw a
little clay from a hill nearby, to cover the bodies interred there, as
there was not soil enough. "I'll not give a spoonful; let their bones
bleach there," said the earl.

During the life-time of the good earl, the people being encouraged to
improve their lands, crept up the mountain side, reclaiming whatever
land they could. I have seen some of these portions, and noticed how
they had got up close to the rocks, by using the spade where the plough
would not go. They cleared off the whins of the mountain; they drained
the bogs. They made kilns and burned lime for top-dressing. When the
wicked lord came into possession he not only raised the rent on the
tenants' improvements, but built a kiln of his own, and burned lime,
forbidding them to use theirs, compelling them to buy from him at his
price. He would not even allow them to make manure of the floating sea-
weed that drifted in from the sea.

Went to see the place where Lord Leitrim was done to death. Looked down
on Milford Bay, dotted with little treeless and shrubless islands. Round
it are round-shouldered hills, brown and bare now--purple with heather
bells in summer time, I dare say. On a point stretching out into this
bay stands his residence, Manor Vaughan. The road leading from Manor
Vaughan to Milford is screened by a plantation of trees. On the opposite
side of the bay the hills are really mountains. The murderers crossed
the bay, tied their boat to a stone, and waited in the plantation. Lord
Leitrim, with his clerk, was driven along on one car, followed by
another containing his servants. His car, somewhat in advance, went
slowly up a little hill. Those lying in wait fired; the driver fell
dead. Lord Leitrim was wounded; he jumped off on one side, the clerk on
the other. He had pistols but they were in the car; he retreated, trying
to defend himself as they poured on him shot after shot. Those in the
other car, instead of coming up, stopped in mortal terror. The clerk,
only slightly wounded in the ear, ran to them, exclaiming, "They are
killing Lord Leitrim, they have killed me," and dropped dead with
nervous terror. The assassins had poured in all their shot, still the
Earl was not dead. He might yet have been saved if there had been any
one to help him. What must his thoughts have been in that supreme
moment. They beat the life out of him, he defending himself to the last.
They cut loose their boat, rowed across the bay, cast it adrift, took
the mountains and escaped.

The Earl fell, his head in a little pool of water. The country people
coming in to Milford town passed by with white faces on the other side;
no one lifted his head, no one looked to see if life was extinct. At
length the constabulary came, and the remains of the dreaded lord were
carried in a cart into Milford. There was a _post mortem_
examination; part of his poor remains was buried in the graveyard of the
little church which he built, and a load of the clay he refused to his
tenants brought to cover it. His name will long linger in evil fame
among the mountains and deserts.

It is but just to the memory of this man to say, that some, who with
good reason abhor his memory, do not believe that charges of gross
immorality made against him were true. Others who think themselves
equally well informed hold a contrary opinion. To think of mentioning
all I have heard of his oppressive injustice would be impossible. I was
told that when news of his death came into certain places, men clasped
hands and drank one another's health as at a festival; that pious people
thanked God for the deliverence, who abhorred the means by which it came
about.

I saw among the hills three nice farms, which a well-to-do farmer bought
and improved, and finally bequeathed to his three sons. One died and the
Ahab-like Earl took possession. Wishing to evict another for the purpose
of throwing two farms into one, he offered the farm to the remaining
brother in addition to his own. The man refused to ruin his brother. The
Earl, to punish him, raised his rent from L35 to L70. Griffith's
valuation of this farm is L29 5s. Another eviction from Milford was so
pitiful in its cruelty that the compassion of the country was aroused,
and a home bought by subscription for the old people. I saw the property
from which these people were evicted in Milford, a valuable row of
houses.

The present Earl acknowledged the justice of the claim of John
Buchanan's children, and spoke of restitution, but his agent, on whom
the mantle of the late Earl had fallen, persuaded him against it, as
nearly all the property in Milford town had been acquired in the same
way. "Making restitution to one would open up the question of the
others, and could not be afforded."




VII.

IRISH COLD AND CANADIAN COLD--EVIDENCES OF THE FAMINE--PREPARING FOR
THE IRISH LAND BILL--THE BAD PEOPLE OF DONEGAL--INFLUENCE OF THE BALLOT
ON LANDLORDS--A MOUNTAIN STORM--A "BETTER CLASS" FARMER'S HOME.


To make excursions to a short distance from this pretty town of
Ramelton and to return again has been my occupation for the last week.
It was arranged that on Monday, March 21st, I was to go with some kind
friends to see life up among the mountains of Donegal, but down came
another storm. Snow, hail, sleet, rain, hail, sleet and rain again.
Storms rule and reign among these hills this March, destroying all
prospect of March dust I am afraid. Nothing could be done but wait till
the storm was over, going to the windows once in a while to watch the
snow driving past, or to notice that it had changed to sleet or rain.

The mountain tops are white again, and look wild and wintry. To-day it
rains with a will. The cold here at present is more chill and
penetrating than Canadian cold. I have put on more, and yet more
clothing, and I am cold. Many, very many, people during the past dreary
winter have had no bed-clothes at all.

I am afraid from what I see and hear that the famine was more dreadful
here in Donegal than we in Canada imagined. Plenty of people even now
are living on Indian meal stirabout, without milk or anything else to
take with it. This, three times a day, and thankful to have enough of it
to satisfy hunger. It was pitiful to see little children and aged women,
with but thin clothes on, walking barefoot through the snowy slush of
yesterday.

My attention was drawn to a ballad singer, almost blind, "whose looped
and windowed raggedness" was picturesque. His dreary attempts at singing
with his teeth chattering, the rain and sleet searching out every corner
of his rags, was pitiful. He was hardly able to stand against the
cutting wind. I sent out and bought his ballad as an excuse to give him
the Queen's picture. The songs were clever for local poetry. They were
treasonous too, but then loyalty is the song of the well fed, well clad,
well-to-do citizen. Treason and wretchedness fit well together, in a
helpless, harmless way.

Your London correspondent of February 11th remarks, "Even Ireland has
nothing left but to settle down and attend to putting in the crops."
This is an English and comfortable view--the remark of a man who was not
there to see. It is far otherwise here in County Donegal. Evictions are
flying about as thick as "the leaves of the forest when autumn hath
flown." This wild second winter is the time selected for these
evictions. Every local paper has notices of evictions here and there.

They tell me that the reason of the great number of evictions at present
is to prevent the wretched tenants from having any benefit under the
promised Land Bill. If they are evicted now and readmitted as
caretakers, they can be sent off again at a week's notice and have no
claim under the Ulster custom for past improvements. I think any candid
person can see that these people are not in a position to pay back rent,
or even present rent at the high rate to which it is raised. In some
instances they are not able to pay any rent at all. There had been some
years of bad seasons ending in one of absolute famine.

The report of the Relief Committee for northern Donegal was published on
28th of October, 1880. I met with a member of that Committee, which was
composed of sixteen Protestants and eleven Catholics, including the
Catholic Bishop of Raphoe and the Presbyterian member of Parliament.
This gentleman informed me that food was given in such quantities as to
preserve life only. Seed was also given. Many people of respectable
standing, whose need was urgent, applied for relief secretly, not
wishing their want to be known. Helped in this careful way the amount
given, exclusive of expenses, in North Donegal was L33,660.17.1, of
which amount the New York _Herald_ gave L2,000, besides L203 to an
emigration fund enabling 115 persons to leave the country. Surely we
must think that before these people applied for public charity--and
every case was examined into by some of the Committee or their agents--
they had exhausted all their means, and sold all they had to sell. How,
then, could they possibly be able to pay back rent in March, 1881?

In the middle of my letter I got the long-waited-for opportunity to
leave Ramelton behind and go up into the Donegal Hills.

The environs of Ramelton are wonderfully beautiful, sudden hills, green
vales, lovely nooks in unexpected places, waters that sparkle and dash,
or that flow softly like the waters of Shiloh, great aristocratic trees
in clumps, standing singly, grouped by the water's edge, as if they had
sauntered down to look about them, or drawn up on the hill-side many
deep, stretching far away like the ranks of a grand army. All that these
can do to make Ramelton a place of beauty has been done. It is hemmed in
by hills that lie up against the sky, marked off into fields by whin
hedges, till they look like sloping chequer-boards. Beyond them, in
places, tower up the mountain-tops of dark Donegal, crusted over with
black heather, seamed by rift and ravine, bare in places where these
rocks, those bones of the mountains, have pushed themselves through the
heather, till it looks like a ragged cloak. The sun shines, the rooks
flap busily about, as noisy as a parliament, the air is keen, and so we
drive out of Ramelton.

The sky was blue, although the wind was cold, and it was blowing quite a
gale. We had not left the town far behind when the storm recommenced in
all its fury. The hail beat in our faces until we were obliged to cover
up our heads. Finally the pony refused to go a step farther, but turned
his obstinate shoulder to the storm and stood there, where there was no
shelter of any kind, and there he stood till the storm moderated a
little, only to recommence again. Up one hill, down another, along a
bleak road through a bog, past the waters of Lough Fern, up more hills,
round other hills, across other bleak bogs, the little town of
Kilmacrennan, up other hills, the storm meanwhile raging in all its fury
until we drew up on the lee side of a little mountain chapel.

The clergyman, who happened to be there, received us most courteously,
and conducted us to his house. We were offered refreshments, and treated
with the greatest kindness. Owing to this priest's courtesy and kindness
I was provided with a room in the house of one of his parishioners, a
mountain side farmer.

I parted with my friends with great regret. They returned to Ramelton
through the storm, which increased in fury every moment. I, in the safe
shelter of the farmhouse, looked out of the window, hoping the storm
would moderate, but it increased until every thing a few yards from the
house, every mountain top and hill side were blotted out, and nothing
could be seen but the flurrying snow driven past by the winds.

I have now left the Presbyterians of the rich, low-lying lands behind,
and am up among the Catholic people of the hills. I have felt quite at
home with these kindly folk. They remind me of the kindliness of the
Celtic population of another and far-off land. I like the sound of the
Irish tongue, which is spoken all around me. I feel quite at home by the
peat fire piled up on the hearth. The house where I am staying is that
of a farmer of the better class. A low thatched house divided into a but
and a ben. The kitchen end has the bare rafters, black and shining with
concentrated smoke. The parlor end is floored above and has a board
floor. Among the colored prints of the Saviour which adorn the wall are
two engravings, in gilt frames, of Bright and Gladstone, bought when the
Land Bill of 1870 was passed.

This Bill, by the way, has been evaded with great ease, for the law
breakers were the great who knew the law, and the wronged were the poor
who were ignorant of it. The farmer's wife could not do enough to make
me welcome. She had the kind and comely face and pleasant tongue that
reminded me of Highland friends in the long ago. Their name of Murray,
which is a prevalent name on these hills, had a Highland sound. Feeling
welcome, and safe under the care that has led me thus far, I fell asleep
in the best bed, with its ancient blue and white hangings, and slept
soundly.

These people are very thrifty. The blankets of the bed were homespun;
the fine linen towel was the same. 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.

The tenant has no voice in the bargain. He has no power to be one party
to a contract. This irresponsible power of an autocrat over serfs of the
soil is bad for both parties. I will try to tell these people's side of
the question as nearly in their own words as I can.

When the native population was driven off the good valley lands to the
hills of Donegal during the confiscation times, they built their cabins
in groups, like the Scotch _clachans_, for company, perhaps even
for protection. Each man broke up, clearing off stones and rooting up
whins, the best patch within his reach. He ditched and drained pieces of
low-lying bog, and paid for what he cultivated, all the rest being
common.

By what title the Clemens of Leitrim got lordship over the wild hills as
well as the fat lowlands I cannot tell; but all the country here, for
miles and miles, up hill and down vale, is his. The people have
absolutely no rights, far as the land is concerned.

The first move towards this dreadful state of things was called
"Squaring the farms." This was done to compel the people to pay for the
wild as well as the cultivated lands. Under the old system a man might
have a few goats or sheep, or a heifer, on the hills, and, if his crop
was not good, or a hail storm threshed out his oats, he could sacrifice
these to pay the rent. When the farms were squared each man drew lots
for his new holding. I am speaking of Lord Leitrim's estate. This was a
hard decree, but the tenant had no alternative but to submit. A man
often found himself squared out of the best of his clearing, squared out
of his cabin and all accommodation for his cow or horse, and squared on
to a new place without any house on it at all.

I made particular enquiry if Lord Leitrim had ever made any allowance or
compensation to a man deprived of the house, which he or his fathers had
built, after this summary fashion. No compensation. Every fixture put
upon the land belonged to the landlord absolutely.

"Was there ever any help allowed to a man in building a new house?"

"In a very few instances a man got a door and a couple of window-sashes
as a charitable assistance, not by any means as a compensation."

After some time the wild mountains, where there was nothing but rocks
and heather, were fenced off. Before this the goats and sheep grazed up
there. A new office rule made the price for a sheep or goat picking a
living among the heather. It was one shilling and sixpence for a sheep
with a lamb at her foot, and other animals in proportion. Still the
wretched men of the hills struggled to live on in the only homes they
had, or had ever known. Then the rents were raised. In one instance from
L3 11s 4d to L6 5s for 6 Irish acres, the increased value being the
result of the man's own hard labor. In another instance from L1 9s 4d to
L13. Another office rule charges five shillings for the privilege of
cutting turf for fuel even if cut on the little holding for which he is
paying rent.

Now, when every nerve was strained to pay this rack rent, and cattle
were high in price, if the unfortunate tenant failed, why, he was
evicted. He might go where he liked, to the workhouse or the asylum, or
the roadside, his little clearing would make pasture, and this, at the
price of beef cattle, would be still more profitable. For any landlord
in this part of Donegal to speak of freedom of contract is a fallacy. It
does not exist.

The oppression at present exercised by Captain Dopping on the Leitrim
estate, which he can carry out safely under the protection of bayonets,
would raise up Judge Lynch in America before three months. Lately, the
people told me, he visited the farm-houses in person, pulled open the
doors of the little room that the better class strive to have, without
permission asked, and walked in to inspect if there were any signs of
prosperity hidden from the eye that might warrant further extortion.
This act was resented with a feeling that found no relief in words. I
noticed that there was no word of complaint or denunciation anywhere.
Facts were stated, and you understood by glance and tone that the time
for mere complaint was past.

I was taken to see a paralytic schoolmaster who had dared to build a
room next to the school-house out of which he was helped into school
every morning, for he could teach, though he had lost the use of his
limbs. No sooner did Lord Leitrim know this than he had the paralytic
carried out and laid on the road, and the room which he had built with
his earnings and the help of his neighbors, was pulled down--not one
stone was left upon another. He then lost his situation which was his
living. I can hardly bear to describe this man's dwelling in which I
found himself, his wife, four children and the cow. The winds of the
mountain and the rains of heaven equally found their way in. His wife
teaches sewing in the school at a salary of L8 per annum. This, with
other help from the Rev. Mr. Martin, formerly Episcopal Rector of
Kilmacrennan, who got the wife the post of schoolmistress, has kept
these people alive. The father has not seen the sky since he was evicted
in 1870. At present there is a writ of ejectment on the house for L9 of
back rent, and he is sued for seed, got in the time of scarcity.

The house is horrible--there are boards with some straw on them over the
beds. The children are very pretty, and as hardy as mountain goats. The
father was quite an educated man, to judge from his speech. 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. Not only did the man who did not doff his hat to the landlord
stand in danger, but the man who did not uncover to his lowest under-
bailiff. One exaction after another, one tyranny after another has dug a
gulf between landlord and tenant that will be hard to bridge. I saw a
stone house used as a barn. Lord Leitrim made the man who built it, who
had got permission to build from the good Earl, tear down the chimney
and make an office-house of it, on pain of eviction. He must continue to
live himself in the hovel. Another widow woman, evicted for not being
able to pay her rent, had the roof torn off her house, but has a place
like a goose pen among the ruins, and here she stays. Every day rides
out Capt. Dopping with his escort of police, paid for by the county, and
evicts without mercy. Since the eyes of the world have been drawn to
Ireland by the proceedings of the Land League none have been left to die
outside. The tenants are admitted as caretakers by the week, but the
eviction, I am told, extinguishes any claim the poor people might have
under the Ulster Custom.

I have seen nothing yet to make me think I was in a disturbed country
except meeting Captain Dopping and his escort, and seeing white police
barracks and dandy policemen, who literally overrun the country. It
carries one's mind back to the days of bloody Claverhouse or wicked
Judge Jeffries to hear and see the feelings which the country people--
Catholic as well as Protestant--have towards the memory of the late
Earl. "Dear, the cup of his iniquity was full, the day of vengeance was
come, and the earth could hold him no longer," said a Protestant to me.

"It was bad for the people, whoever they were, that took vengeance out
of the hands of the Almighty, but many a poor creature he had sent out
of the world before he lay helpless at the mercy of his enemies," said
many an orthodox person to me. One poor girl on that dreadful day
thanked God that the oppressor was laid low. Her mother evicted, had
died on the roadside exposed to the weather of the hills, her brother
went mad at the sight of misery he would almost have died to relieve but
could not, and is now in the asylum at Letterkenny. One can imagine with
what feeling this desolate girl lifted her hands when she heard of the
murder, and said, "I thank Thee, O Lord."

What kind of a system is it that produces such scenes, and such
feelings? It is a noticeable fact how many there are in the asylum in
Letterkenny whose madness they blame on the horrors of these evictions.
Wise legislation may find a remedy for these evils, but the memory of
them will never die out. It is graven on the mountains, it is stamped on
the valleys, it is recorded on the rocks forever.




IX.

ALONG A MOUNTAIN ROAD--WHY THE RENT WAS RAISED--TURNING FARMS INTO
PASTURES--ST. COLOMBKILL--IRISH HOSPITALITY--A NOTABLE BALLAD.


The twenty-sixth of March rose sunny and cold, and I decided to hire a
horse and guide to go to Derryveigh, made memorable by Mr. John George
Adair. The road lay through wild mountain scenery. Patches of cultivated
fields lay on the slopes; hungry whin-covered hills rose all round them,
steep mountains rank upon rank behind; deep bog lands, full of
treacherous holes, lay along at the foot of the mountain here and there.
The scenery is wild beyond description, not a tree for miles in all the
landscape.

On some of the lower hills men were ploughing with wretched-looking
horses. Men were delving with spades where horses could not keep their
footing. The houses were wretched, some only partly roofed, some with
the roof altogether gone and a shed erected inside, but for the most
wretched of all the hovels rent is exacted.

Every bit of clearing was well and carefully labored. The high, broad
stone fences round hillside fields were all gathered from the soil.

At one place, I was told that the brother of the occupant had sent him,
from America, money to make the house a little more comfortable. He
roofed it with slate. The rent was raised from L2 9s 4d to L13 10s. I
may remark here that the tenants complain that the present Earl, through
his agent, Capt. Dopping, is even more oppressive in a steady, cruel
manner than the late Earl.

The late hard times--the cruel famine--has led to the sacrifice of all
stock, so that some of these people have not a four-footed beast on
their holding.

As we wound along among the hills my guide spoke of getting another man
to accompany us, who was well acquainted with the way to Derryveigh, and
we stopped at his place accordingly. He came to the car to explain that
he was busy fanning up corn, or he would be only too glad to come. In a
subdued whisper he told my guide of Capt. Dopping having been at his
house, with his bailiffs and body-guard of police--threatening the wife,
he said. He then told of the sacrifices he had made of one thing and
another to gather up one year's rent. He had to pay five shillings for
cutting turf on his own land, and one shilling for a notice served on
him. Poor little man, he had a face that was cut for mirthfulness, and
his woefulness was both touching and amusing. So we left him and went
our way.

Along the road, winding up and down among the hills, by sudden bogs and
rocky crags still more desolate and lonely looking, we came upon a
cultured spot, now and then, where a solitary man would be digging round
the edges of the rocks. Again we were among wild mountains heaving up
their round heads to the sky and looking down at us over one another's
shoulders. It brought to my mind the Atlantic billows during the last
stormy February. It is as if the awful rolling billows mounting to the
sky were turned into stone and fixed there, and the white foam changed
into dark heather. After driving some time the landscape softened down
into rolling hills beautifully cultivated, and sprinkled here and there
with grazing cattle.

We are coming to Gartan Lake, and where there is a belt of trees by the
lake shore stands the residence of Mr. Stewart, another landlord. He,
when cattle became high-priced, thought that cattle were much preferable
to human beings, so he evicted gradually the dwellers who had broken in
the hills, and entered into possession, without compensation, of the
fields, the produce of others' toil and sweat. His dwelling is in a
lonely, lovely spot, and it stands alone, for no cottage home is at all
near. He has wiped out from the hill sides every trace of the homes of
those who labored on these pleasant fields and brought them under
cultivation. Since the Land League agitation began he has given a
reduction of rents, and the whole country side feel grateful and
thankful.

There is no solitude so great that we do not meet bailiffs at their
duty, or policemen on the prowl.

We are now nearing Derryveigh. There are two lakes lying along the
valley connected with a small stream. My guide informed me that both
lakes once abounded with salmon. The celebrated St. Colombkill was born
on the shores of the Gartan Lake. Being along the lake one day he asked
some fishermen on the lower lake to share with him of the salmon they
had caught. They churlishly refused, and the saint laid a spell on the
waters, and no salmon come there from that day to this. They are
plentiful in Upper Gartan Lake, and come along the stream to the
dividing line, where the stream is spanned by a little rustic bridge;
here they meet an invisible barrier, which they cannot pass. I told my
guide in return the story of the Well of St. Keyne, but he thought it
unlikely. So there is a limit to belief.

Since Mr. Adair depopulated Derryveigh, and gave it over to silence, the
roads have been neglected, and have become rather difficult for a car.
The relief works in famine time have been mainly road-making, and there
are smooth hard roads through the hills in all directions, so the people
complain of roads that would not be counted so very bad in the Canadian
backwoods. However, the difficulty being of a rocky nature, we left the
car at the house of a dumb man, the only one of the inhabitants spared
by Adair. He and his sister, also dumb, lived together on the mountain
solitudes. She is dead, and a relative, the daughter of one of the
evicted people, has come to keep house for him. He made us very welcome,
seeing to it that the horse was put up and fed with sheaf oats. I and my
guides, for we were now joined by the man who had had the oats to fan--
he had got his brother to take his place and came a short cut across the
hills to meet us--so we all three set out to walk over Derryveigh.

It was a trying walk, a walk to be measured by ups and downs, for the
Derryveigh hamlets were widely scattered. There they were--roofless
homes, levelled walls, desolation and silence. And it is a desolation,
indeed. Broken down walls here and there, singly and in groups, mark the
place where there was a contented population when Mr. Adair bought the
estate. He had made plans for turning his purchase into a veritable El
Dorado. The barren mountains are fenced off, surely at a great expense,
that no sheep or lamb might bite a heather bell without pay. It was to
be a great pasture for black-faced sheep. The sides of the mountains,
which are bog in many places, are scored with drains to dry up the bog
holes and give the sheep a sure footing. I did not see many sheep on the
hill or many cattle on the deserted farms. It is an awfully lonesome
place; desolation sits brooding among the broken-down walls. My guide, a
lonesome-looking man, enlivened our way by remarks like these: "This was
a widdy's house. She was a well-doin' body." "Here was a snug place.
See, there's the remains of a stone porch that they built to break off
the wind." "That was Jamie Doherty's, he that died on the road-side
after he was evicted. You see, nobody dare lift the latch or open the
door to any of the poor creatures that were put out."

And this has been done; human beings have died outside under the sky for
no crime, and this under the protection of English law. Many of these
people lost their reason, and are in the asylum at Letterkenny. Some are
still _coshering_ here and there among their charitable neighbors,
while many are bitter hearted exiles across the sea. After walking up
and down amid this pitiful desolation, and hearing many a heart-rending
incident connected with the eviction, a sudden squall of hail came on,
and we were obliged to take shelter on the lee side of a ruined wall
till it blew over. To while away the time one of the guides told me of a
local song made on the eviction, the refrain being, "Five hundred
thousand curses on cruel John Adair."

Across the Gartan Lake we could see from our partial shelter the point
to which Mr. Stewart wasted the people off his estate. Mr. Stewart's is
a handsome lonely place, but when one hears all these tales of
spoliation it prevents one from admiring a fine prospect. "He is dealing
kindly with the people now," said my guides, "whatever changed his heart
God knows."

The shower being over we returned to the house of the dummy. In our
absence dinner had been prepared for us. She had no plates, but the
table on which she laid oat cakes was as white as snow. She gave us a
little butter, which, by the signs and tokens, I knew to be all she had,
boiled eggs, made tea of fearful strength, and told us to eat. My guides
enjoyed the mountain fare with mountain appetites. I tried to eat, but
somehow my throat was full of feelings. I had great difficulty to make
this mountain maid accept of a two shilling piece for her trouble. We
returned by the way we came to a point where we had a view of a rectory
which was pointed out to me as the abode of another good rector. These
people do seem to feel kindness very much. Here we took another road to
visit Glenveigh and see Adair's castle. On the way we were informed by a
woman, speaking in Irish, that a process-server near Creeslach was fired
at through the window of his house. He had been out serving processes,
and was at home sitting with his head resting on his hand. Three shots
were fired, two going over his head and one going through the hand on
which his head was resting. Two men are taken up to-day.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have secured a copy of the ballad referred to by our guide, which
records the desolation of Derryveigh. All such actions are celebrated in
local poetry; but this is one of the fiercest; you can publish it if you
think best:--

DERRYVEIGH.

  "The cold snow rests on levelled walls, where was a happy home,
   The wintry sky looks down upon a desolate hearthstone.
   The hearth by which the cradle song has lulled our infant's sleep,
   Is open to the pitying skies that nightly o'er it weep.
   There is rippling in the waters, there is rustling through the air,
   Five hundred thousand curses upon cruel John Adair.

  "It is not we that curse him, though in woe our sad heart bleeds,
   The curse that's on him is the curse that follows wicked deeds.
   He suspected and he punished, he judged, and then he drew
   The besom of destruction our quiet homesteads through;
   So it's rippling in the waters, it is rustling through the air,
   Five hundred thousand curses upon cruel John Adair.

  "We little dreamed upon our hills destruction's hour was nigh,
   Woe! Woe the day our quiet glens first met his cruel eye!
   He coveted our mountains all in an evil hour,
   We have tasted of his mercy, and felt his grasp of power;
   Through years to come of summer sun, of wintry sleet and snow,
   His name shall live in Derryveigh as Campbell's in Glencoe.

  "A tear is on each heather bell where heaven's dew distils,
   And weeping down the mountain side flows on a thousand rills;
   The winds rush down the empty glens with many a sigh and moan,
   Where little children played and sang is desolate and lone.
   The scattered stones of many homes have witnessed our despair,
   And every stone's a monument to cruel John Adair.

  "Where are the hapless people, doomed by John Adair's decree?
   Some linger in the drear poor-house--some are beyond the sea;
   One died behind the cold ditch--back beneath the open sky,
   And every star in heaven was a witness from on high.
   None dared to ope a friendly door, or lift a neighbor's latch,
   Or shelter by a warm hearthstone beneath the homely thatch.

  "Beside the lake in sweet Glenveigh, his tall white castle stands,
   With battlement and tower high, fresh from the mason's hands;
   It's built of ruined hearth stones, its cement is bitter tears,
   It's a monument of infamy to all the future years,
   He is written childless, for of his blood no heir
   Shall inherit land or lordship from cruel John Adair.

  "His cognizance the bloody hand has a wild meaning now,
   It is pointing up for vengeance to Cain-like mark his brow,
   It speaks of frantic hands that clasped the side posts of the door;
   Pale lips that kissed the threshold they would cross, oh, never more.
   The scattered stones of many homes, the desolated farms,
   Shall mark with deeper red the hand upon his coat of arms.
   The silver birches of Glenveigh when stirred by summer air
   Shall whisper of the curse that hangs o'er cruel John Adair."




X.

WHY THE RENT IS RAISED--THE HISTORY OF AN EVICTION FROM ONE OF THE
EVICTED--A DONEGAL CONGREGATION--A CLIMB TO THE TOP OF DOONHILL--DOON
HOLY WELL--MAKING THE BEST OF A STRANGER.


In the silence of the night when sleep would not come, and when my
imagination rehearsed over and over again sights I had seen and tales I
had heard, I made an almost cast-iron resolution to escape to the estate
of Stewart of Ards and have one letter filled up with the good deeds of
a landlord. Alas for me! another storm, a rain storm, and a touch of
neuralgia conspired to keep me "ben the house" in the little room upon
the mountain side. One can weather snow or hail easier than a mountain
rain storm. The rain is laden with half-melted snow, and the wind that
drives it is terribly in earnest.

It is one queer feature of this mountain scenery, the entire absence of
trees. The hills look as if the face of the country had been shaved. Up
the hill sides the little fields are divided off by high, broad stone
fences, the result of gathering the stones out of the fields. The bog
land to be reclaimed requires drains three feet deep every six feet of
land.

To trench up a little field into ridges six feet apart, to gather stones
out of a little field sufficient to surround it with a four feet high
stone fence, to grub out and burn whins, to make all the improvements
with your own labor, and then to have your landlord come along with his
valuator and say, "Your farm is worth double what you pay for it; I can
get thirty shillings an acre for it," and to raise the rent to its full
value, which you must pay or go out. This sort of thing is repeated, and
repeated, in every variation of circumstances and of hardship, and the
people submit and are, as a whole, quiet and law-abiding.

I was called out of my little den to see a woman, one of the evicted
tenants of Mr. Adair. She was on her way to Letterkenny to see her son,
who is in the asylum since the eviction. It was hard enough to wander
through the ruins and hear of the eviction scenes from others, but to
sit by the turf fire and listen to one who had suffered and was
suffering from this dreadful act, to see the recollection of it
expressed in look and tone was different. This woman--husband dead, son
in the asylum--was a decent-looking body in cloak and cap, with a
bleached face and quiet voice.

"We were all under sentence of eviction, but it was told to us that it
was for squaring the farms. Then we were warned to pay in the half-
year's rent. It was not due till May, and we had never been asked to pay
the rent ahead of us before. But the landlord was a new one, and if he
made a rule, why, we must obey him; so we scraped up and sold this and
that and paid it. If we had known what was coming we might have kept it,
and had a penny to turn to when we were out under the sky. It was to get
the rent before he turned us out that he made that plan. We were put out
in the beginning of April; our rent was paid up to May. Oh, I wish, I
wish that he had driven us into the lake the day he put us out. A few
minutes would have ended our trouble, but now when will it end! I have
been through the country, my lady, and my boy in the asylum ever since."

Went to the Catholic chapel up here in the mountains. It was quite
convenient to my lodging. It is a very nice building with a new look. I
was surprised to see such a fine building in the mountains, for, owing
to the poverty of the people, there were no chapels at all in some
places a little time ago. Mass was celebrated in _scalans_, a kind
of open sheds, covered over head to protect the officiating priest from
the weather, while the people clustered round in the open air. When I
spoke of the nice appearance of the chapel I was told that the children
of these hills scattered through the United States, Canada, New Zealand
and Australia, had helped in its building. There were between seven and
eight hundred people present. There were no seats on the floor of the
chapel. I could not help admiring the patient, untiring devotion of
these people, and the endurance that enabled them to kneel so long. The
prevailing type of face is eminently Scottish, so is the tone of voice,
and the names, Murrays, Andersons, and the like.

Were it not for the altar and the absence of seats I could have imagined
myself in a Glenelg Presbyterian congregation. The Irish spoken here,
and it is spoken universally, has a good deal of resemblance to Glenelg
Gaelic. I was surprised at how much I understood of the conversations
carried on around me. The women, too, in their white caps, with their
serious, devotional comely faces, reminded me of faces I have seen in
dear old Glengarry.

There were not half a dozen bonnets in the whole congregation--snow-
white caps covered with a handkerchief for the matrons. They wore cloaks
and shawls, and looked comfortable enough. I saw some decent blue cloth
cloaks of a fashion that made me think they had served four generations
at least. The lasses wore their own shining hair "streeling" down their
backs or neatly braided up; abundant locks they had, brown color
prevailing. Fresher, rosier, comelier girls than these mountain maidens
it would be hard to find.

The men's clothing, though poor, and in some instances patched in an
artistic fashion, was scrupulously clean. In the congregation were some
young men well dressed, bold and upright, whose bearing, cut of
whiskers, and watch chains, showed that they had lived among our trans-
Atlantic cousins of the great Republic.

The priest of the hills is the one man whom these people trust. The
prevailing type of landlord has been their enemy and oppressor. The
priest has been friend, counsellor, sympathizer, helper, as well as
clergyman, and so he is _soggarth aroon_.

The storm continues at intervals. I get one clear, cold bit of fair
weather to climb to the top of Doune hill, where the Ulster kings used
to be crowned, a sugar-loaf shaped hill with the top broken off, rising
in isolated grandeur up high enough to give one a breather to get to the
top.

The weather returned to its normal condition of storm, and I was shut up
again. I became a little homesick, had the priest to tea, and enjoyed
his conversation very much, but he had to go off in the storm on a sick
call. A priest in these mountains has not the easiest kind of life in
the world.

Illusions took possession of my brain. I fancied myself a great queen,
to say the least of it. A whisper got among the hills that a great
American lady with unlimited power had come seeking the welfare of the
country, and so any amount of deputations wafted on me. I will give a
few specimens.

Two men to see my lady in reference to a small still that had been
misfortunately found on the place of an old man upward of eighty. He was
fined L12, and would my lady do anything?

Two women under sentence of eviction, my lady (I saw the place of one of
these, the roof was on the floor, and a little shelter was in one corner
like the lair of a wild beast, and here she kept possession in spite of
the dreadful Captain Dopping; the agent). Would my lady send out their
two daughters to America and place them in decent places?

And here was old Roseen, old and miserable, without chick or child, or
drop's blood belonging to her in the wide world, and would my lady
remember her?

Here's the crature of a widow from the mountain with four small
children, and no man body to help her with the place, and not a four-
footed beast on it belonging to her; all went in the scarcity; would my
lady look to her a little, sure she was the neediest of all?

And here was the poor cripple boy that his reverence was so good to,
&c., &c., &c., in endless file.

Nothing kept this over-dose of "my lady" from going to my head like
Innishowen poteen, but the slenderness of my purse. Determined at last,
warned by my fast-collapsing _portmonnaie_, to refuse to see any
more deputations and keep ben-the-house strictly. A cry arose that
Captain Dopping and his body-guard, on evictions bent, were coming up
the hill. I rushed out, mounted a ditch of sods for one more look at the
little tyrant of their fields. As I stood shading my eyes with my hand
and looked across at the dreaded agent, a plaintive "my lady," bleated
out at my side, drew my eyes down. It was a woman; she did not speak any
more, but looked, and that look drew out my fast collapsing purse. I
walked slowly into the house, determined to escape from the hills while
I had the means left of escaping.




XI.

THE JAUNTING CAR--SCENERY IN DONEGAL--MOUNTAIN PASTURES--A VISIT TO
GLENVEIGH CASTLE.


I have returned to pleasant Ramelton, and will write my visit to
Glenveigh Castle from here. This town will always be a place of
remembrance to me on account of the Christian kindness, sympathy,
encouragement and counsel which I have received in it.

It was my great good fortune to get an introduction to Mr. and Miss
McConnell, a brother and sister, who are merchants in this place. They
are of the stock of the Covenanters, a people who have left the stamp of
their individuality on the piety of the North of Ireland. Sufferers
themselves from Lord Leitrim's tyranny and greed, they sympathize with
other sufferers, and sympathize with me in my work to a greater extent
than any others since I left home. I can say with feeling, I was a
stranger and they took me in.

I have been driven in many directions sight-seeing in their cosy little
pony carriage. It is a nice little two-wheeled affair. I believe the
orthodox name of it is a croydon. It carries four, who sit back to back,
while the back seat turns up when not wanted. It was in quite a
different trap that I rode in on my visit to Glenveigh. During my
journey there we talked, my guide and I, of what constitutes a good
landlord. It was a negative sort of goodness which he expected from the
good landlord--"that he would not harry the tenants with vexatious
office rules; that he would let them alone on their places so long as
they paid their rent; that he would not raise the rent so that all grown
on the land would be insufficient to pay it." Since the Land League
agitation some landlords have granted a reduction of rents, and some
have even given a bag of potatoes for seed as a gift to the poorer
tenants.

The road to the new castle leads through scenery of grand mountain
solitudes, treeless, houseless and silent. Our road wound in a
serpentine fashion among the mountains. The drains that regularly score
the foggy mountain sides produce a queer effect on the landscape.

As we wound along the serpentine road nearing the castle, the hills
seemed to get wilder and more solemn. No trace of human habitations, no
sound of human life, treeless, bare, silent mountains, wastes of black
bog, rocks rising up till their solemn heads brushed the sky,--Irish
giants in ragged cloaks of heather.

At last we came in sight of Loughveigh lying cradled among the rocks,
and got a glimpse of the white tower of Glenveigh Castle. There is a
small skirting of wood near the castle where the silver barked birch
prevails from which the glen takes its name, interspersed with holly
trees, which grow here in profusion, and some dark yews, prim and
stately, drawn up like sentinels to guard the demesne.

No place could be imagined more utterly alone than Glenveigh Castle. The
utter silence which Mr. Adair has created seems to wrap the place in an
invisible cloak of awfulness that can be felt. Except a speculative rook
or a solitary crane sailing solemnly toward the mountain top, I saw no
sign of life in all the glen. Owing to the windings of the road it
seemed quite a while after we sighted the top of the tower before we
entered the avenue which sweeps round the edge of the lake shore, and
finally brought us to the castle. The castle stands on a point
stretching out into the lake. Opposite, on the other side of the lake, a
steep, bare, dark rock rises up to the dizzy height. It is the kind of
rock that makes one think of fortified castles, and cities built for
defence, that ought to be perched on a summit, but Glenveigh Castle
should be a lady's bower, instead of a fortalice. Behind the castle the
mountain slopes are clothed with young trees. The castle itself is a
very imposing building from the outside; grand, strong, rather
repellant; inside it has a comfortless; ill-planned, unfinished
appearance. The mantel-piece of white marble with the Adair arms carved
on it--the bloody hand, the motto _valor au mort_, the supporters
two angels--lies in the hall cracked in two. A very respectable
Scotchman, a keeper, I suppose, showed me over the building. He must
enjoy a very retired life there, for in all the country for miles there
is not a human habitation except the police barrack that looms up like a
tall ghost at the other end of the lake.

As we drove home through the mountains I noticed that Mukish wrapped
herself in the misty folds of her veil. Soon after the storm rolled down
the mountain sides and chased us home.




XII.

GOOD-BYE TO RAMELTON--ON LOUGH SWILLY--A RUINED LANDLORD--FARM STOCK VS.
WAGES--A GOOD LANDLORD--A REMINDER OF CANADA--MOVILLE--PORT-A-DORUS
ROCKS--ON GOOD TERMS WITH THE LANDLORD.


Left Ramelton at seven o'clock Monday morning, April 4th, the hoar-
frost lying white on the deck of the little steamer. The cabin was black
with smoke that would not consent to go in the way it should go, so one
had to be content with the chill morning, the hoar frost and the deck.

We steamed up past the town of Rathmullen with the two deserted forts
grinning at one another.

Two women of the small farming class were, like myself, sitting close to
the machinery to get warm. They were gravely discussing the value of a
wonderful goose owned by one of them. I do not think the owner of a fast
horse could go into greater raptures or more minute description of his
good points than these two ladies did about the goose. One declared that
she had been offered eight shillings ($2) for the goose and had refused
it. This is one proof of the high figure at which all animals, birds and
beasts, common to a farm are held. Although this goose was exceptionally
valuable, yet a goose is worth five shillings or $1.25.

A laborer's wages is two shillings, without food, so it would take him
two and a half days' work to earn a goose, a day's work to earn a hen or
a duck, fifteen days' work to earn a suckling pig, nearly four months to
buy the cheapest cow; always considering that he has food to support him
while so earning. I have heard poor men blamed for not raising stock.
When the price of stock is considered, and that a small field for
grazing purposes is rented at L8, I confess I wonder that any poor man
has a cow. If he has, butter is now thirty cents per pound in this
locality, and a cow is therefore very valuable.

Before I leave bonnie Ramelton behind altogether, I must say that it has
been in the past fortunate in a landlord. Old Sir Annesly Stewart, lord
of this fair domain at one time, invariably advised his tenants who
purposed to build houses, to secure titles first, saying, "Do not trust
to me, I am an old man and will soon pass away: who knows what manner of
man may succeed me? I will give a free farm grant, equivalent to
guarantee deed, I am told, to anyone wanting to build." So the owners of
houses in Ramelton pay ground rent, while at Milford, Kilmacrennan and
Creaslach the strong hand has seized the tenants' houses without
compensation. It is said that the present owner of old Sir Annesly's
estate, who is not a lineal descendant, however, feels as Bunyan
describes the two giants to feel, who can grin and gnash their teeth,
but can do no more.

All this and more I hear, as the sun comes up and the frost disappears,
and we sail over bright waters. One might enjoy sailing over Lough
Swilly, the whole of a long summer day. Everything pleasant comes to an
end, and we land at Fahan, and while waiting for the train my attention
is drawn to the fair island of Inch, with its fields running up the
mountain side, and the damp black rocks through which the railway has
cut its way at Fahan. The train comes along, and we go whirling on past
Inch, Burnfoot Bridge, and into Derry. A Presbyterian doctor of divinity
is in our compartment, and some well-to-do farmers' wives, and again and
yet again the talk is of the land and the landlords. Instance after
instance of oppression and wrong is gone over.

But Derry reached, I must say good-bye to some agreeable travelling
companions, and take the mail car to Moville for a tour round
Innishowen; Innishowen, celebrated for its poteen; Innishowen, sung
about in song, told about in story.

  "God bless the dark mountains of brave Donegal,
   God bless royal Aielich, the pride of them all--
   She sitteth for ever a queen on her throne,
   And smiles on the valleys of green Innishowen.
   A race that no traitor or tyrant has known
   Inhabits the valleys of green Innishowen."

From Derry to Moville is, as usual, lovely--lovely with a loveliness of
its own. Fine old trees, singly, in groups, in thick plantations;
beautiful fields; level clipped hedges; flowers springing everywhere,
under the hedges, in little front gardens, up the banks. The land is
dreadfully overrun with gentry's residences fair enough to the eye, some
of them very beautiful, but one gets to wonder, if the land is so poor
that it is spueing out its inhabitants, what supports all these?

The wide Lough Foyle is in sight of the road most of the way, and a sea-
bound steamer carries me away in thought to Canada. The air is nipping
enough to choke sentiment in the bud. It is bitter cold, and I have the
windward side of the car, and shiver at the nodding daffodils in
blooming clumps at every cottage as we pass along. There are some waste
unreclaimed fields, and the tide is out as we drive along, so that long
stretches of bare blue mud, spotted with eruptions of sea weed, fit well
with the cold wind that is enjoying a cutting sweep at us. Then we come
again to trim gardens and ivy garnished walls. The road follows the
curves of the Lough, and we watch the black steamers ploughing along,
and the brown-sailed little boats scudding before the breeze.

The Lough is on one side, and a remarkable, high steep ridge on the
other, yellow with budded whins, green with creeping ivy, and up on the
utmost ridge a row of plumed pines. When I noticed their tufted tops
standing out against the sky, I felt like saying, "Hurrah! hurrah for
Canada!" the pines did look so Canadian looking. I soon was recalled to
realize that I was in my own green Erin, and certainly it is with a cold
breath she welcomes her child back again.

We knew we were nearing Moville: we saw it on a distant point stretching
out into the Lough. I forgot to mention that the land began to be full
of castles as we drove along the road. We passed Red Castle and White
Castle and when we reached Moville, Green Castle was before us a few
miles further down. Further down I wished to go, for a very distant
relative was expecting me there--Mr. Samuel Sloan, formerly of the Royal
Artillery, who had charge of Green Castle Fort for years; but now has
retired, and lives on his own property. I like people to claim kindred
with me; I like a hearty welcome, the _Cead mille faille ghud_,
that takes you out of hotel life and makes you feel at home. I was so
welcomed by my distant kinsman and his excellent wife that I felt very
reluctant to turn out again to hotel life.

Next day after my arrival we got a car and made an excursion down along
the coast to Port-a-dorus. I thought I had seen rocks before, but these
rocks are a new variety to me. They occur so suddenly that they are a
continual surprise. Along the coast, out in the water, they push up
their backs in isolated heaps like immense hippopotami lying in the
water, or petrified sharks with only a tall serrated back fin visible.
There would occur a strip of bare brown sand, and outside of that row
upon row of sharp, thin, jagged rocks like the jaw teeth of pre-Adamite
monsters. In other places they were piled on one another in such a
sudden way, grass growing in the crevices, ivy creeping over them, the
likeness of broken towers and ruined battlements, that one could hardly
believe but that they were piled there by some giant race.

When we had driven as far as the car could go we left car and driver,
and scrambled over the rocks like goats. Rocks frowned above us, between
us and the sky, rocks all round in black confusion. As we climbed from
slippery rock to slippery rock, over long leathery coils of thick sea
weed, like serpents, on, on through the _Dorus_ to the open sea,
noticing the dark passages, the gloomy caves, the recesses among the
cliffs, the narrow passes, where one could turn to bay and keep off
many, it was natural to think of rebels skulking here, with a price on
their heads, after the '98, or of lawless people stilling illicit
_poteen_ to hide it from the gaugers. Sheltered by the rocks of
Port-a-dorus, I could enjoy the sea air flavored with essence of sea
weed. We watched for a while the waves playing about the rocks and
washing through the door in innocent gambols. This sportfulness did not
impose upon me nor the rocks either, for the marks of the Atlantic in a
rage were graven on their brows in baldness and in wrinkles.

Along the road as we drove back I noticed the white cottages of coast
guardsmen who have married the maidens of the hills. They were there in
their patches of ground, delving with the spade, scattering sea weed
manure, the landlords here allowing them to gather all the sea weed that
drifts to their shores. Decent looking men these, in their blue uniforms
and thoughtful sea-beaten faces, with hardy little children around them,
playing or helping. The rocks rise among the fields with the same
startling abruptness as they do along the shore, looking still more like
ruins of old castles. Round these rocks and among them, in every nook
and cranny where there is a spadeful of earth, is delved carefully by
these mountain husbandmen.

As I looked at the rocks and crags, and the workers among them, I could
hardly help thinking they dearly earned all that grew upon them,
although there would be no half-yearly rent hanging over them. In one
little clearing some children were scattering manure. One, a sturdy
little maiden, but a mere baby of about seven years of age, had a fork
cut down to suit her size, and was handling it with infantile vigor,
laying about her with great vim. It was such a comical sight that we
stopped the car to watch her. As soon as she saw she was watched, she
dropped the fork and scampered off to hide. A pretty little child, hardy
and healthy and nimble as a goat.

Of course on this coast there are tall, white light houses, two of them
keeping guard over the rocks. Here and there are coast guard stations,
white and barrack-like, only holding blue jackets instead of red or
green.

The tenants along here praised their landlords. One of them, the Marquis
of Donegal, was spoken of as a merciful lord all through the hard years.
He had forgiven them rent which they could not pay, and lowered the rent
when they did pay, returning them some of the money, and the poor people
spoke of him with warm gratitude.

I notice that the people here have a good many sheep. They are not so
very wretched as the mountaineers I saw in northern Donegal. Poor they
must be, to dig out a living from among these rocks and keep up a lord
besides, but their lord has had a more human heart toward them than
other lords over whose lands I have been.




XIII.

GREEN CASTLE--A LOOK INTO THE FORT--THE OLD AND THE NEW--MARS IN
WAITING--A KIND WORD FOR THE LANDLORDS--IN TIME FOR AN EVICTION--FEMALE
LAND LEAGUERS--THE "STUPID" IRISH--THE POLICE.


Went on an exploring expedition to the ruins of Green Castle. One
authority told me it had been the castle of the chief of the clan
Doherty, once ruling lord here in the clannish times. Another equally
good authority told me it was built by De Burgo in the sixteenth century
to hold the natives in awe. Whoever built it, the pride of its strength
and the dread of its power have passed away forever. It is a very
extensive ruin and covers a large tract of ground. It looks as if three
solid, high, square buildings were set, not very regularly, end to end,
the outer wall of one built in a semi-circle, and towers raised at every
corner and every irregularity of the wall. Of course the roof was on the
floor, turrets and towers have lost part of their height and stand, rent
and ragged, tottering to their fall.

A good deal is said about the Norman style of arch and the Saxon style
of arch found in old buildings. I am convinced that the arches of Green
Castle, and its architecture generally, had been formed on the pattern
of the rocks at Port-a-dorus and the other heaps along the coast. The
same massiveness, the same wedge-like stones piled together to form
arches prevail in both.

Seaward the castle sits on a steep rock, like the rock on which Quebec
sits for height, but cleaner scarped, and more inaccessible I should
think. To stand on the shore and look up, the castle seems perched on a
dizzy height, its ruined battlements and broken towers rising up into
the sky. The pretty green ivy forms a kindly hap and a garment of
beauty, both for rock and ruin. Long live the ivy green.

There is a clean, smooth new fort standing beside the ruined old castle
like a prosperous, solid, closely-shaven, modern gentleman beside
dilapidated nobility. Its fat, broad tower looks strong enough and solid
enough and grim enough for anything. Inside of the fort everything is
clean, regular and orderly, as becomes a place under the care of British
soldiers. The house, or quarters I suppose they should be called, are
clean and bright, whitewashed (I almost said pipe-clayed), to the
highest point of perfection. There are fortifications above
fortifications here, and plenty of cannon pointed at an imaginary foe.
There are cannon balls in scientific heaps waiting to be despatched on
errands of destruction. Long may they wait.

I saw the outside of the magazine, cased over with so many feet--oh, a
great number--of solid masonry, padded over that with a great many feet
of earth, containing a fabulous amount of powder--tons and tons of it.
Saw also the slippers which the worshippers of Mars put upon their
martial feet when they enter into his temple--slippers without a
suspicion of shod, hob nail or sparable, with which the heels of the
worshippers of Ceres in this country are armed. If any one of these
intruded on this domain sacred to Mars, he would in his indignation gift
them with the feathered heels of Mercury and send them off with an
abrupt message for the stars.

Had a great desire to go up to the top of the great tower and see what
could be seen from it. I was informed, delicately, that in these
disturbed times it was not thought best to admit strangers. The lonely
martello tower on the opposite sands was pointed out to me, sitting
mistress of desolations in the shadow of the rocks of MacGilligan. I was
informed of the money's worth of pile work, thousands upon thousands of
pounds sterling, on which this ugly and useless tower is sitting. As I
walked around the outside of the fort landward and seaward, I think it
quite possible to take it. I make this spiteful remark because I did not
get into the tower.

On the opposite shores of the lough at the inland end of the range that
rose above and behind the martello tower where it slopes down, I saw the
rocky figure of a woman, gigantic, solemn, sitting with her hands on her
knees looking southward. Looking for what--for the slowly approaching
time of peace, plenty and prosperity, of tardy justice and kindly
appreciation? The cost of tower and fort would give Innishowen a peasant
proprietary, loyal, grateful and loving, that would bulwark the lough
with their breasts. Burns is true--a patriotic, virtuous populace forms
the best "wall of fire around our much-loved isle."

It is not easy to get up and leave Green Castle, and the friends there
who made me feel so pleasantly at home; but hearing of evictions that
were to take place away in the interior of Innishowen, I bid a reluctant
good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Sloan at Green Castle, and hiring a special car
set off in the direction of Carndonagh. The road lies between mountains.
The valley through which the road threads its way is varied enough; in
parts bog of the wildest, and barren-looking fields sloping up to as
barren, rocky mountains in their tattered covering of heather, black in
its wintry aspect as yet--mountain behind mountain looking over one
another's shoulders ever so many deep with knitted brows, wrinkled into
deep gullies. One of these mountains (Sliabh Sneach, snow mountain)
deserves its name; snowy is its cap, and snow lingers in the scarred
recesses running down its shoulders. We passed fair, carefully cultured
farms and farm houses, spotlessly white under the shade of trees. Other
farms meeting these ran up far on the mountain side. The white houses,
with which the mountain sides are plentifully dotted over, show very
plainly, and are rather bare-looking and unsheltered among the dark
heather. There are more dwellings on the same space in Innishowen among
the hills than in the parts of the Donegal mountains where I have been.
The people seem better off and more contented. Many of them have a kind
word for their landlords.

In no part of Innishowen that I saw is the same wretchedness and misery
apparent as I saw in "northern Donegal." There is, there must be a less
crushing set of office rules. As an instance of this, the car driver
informed me that the high, utterly heath-clad mountains were allowed to
the people for pasturage, with very little if anything to pay. This
accounts for the number of sheep I saw trotting about with lambs at
their feet, twins being the rule and even triplets far from uncommon. My
informant told me that lambs in early autumn were worth from thirty-five
shillings to two pounds when fit to kill. I thought this a fabulous
price, but it was confirmed to me by a cattle dealer on the train from
Derry to Limavady. If a small farmer had many lambs to sell, he would
have material help in making up the rent. My driver had three acres of
land; he told me if he owned it out and out, after he got it paid for,
he could lived comfortably. He had two horses and a car, and let out his
car for hire. I considered that if he got much call for his car he might
do that--a special car for four or five miles costing $1.25, and if the
driver is a hired man he often depends on his chance, so there must be
25 cents for him also.

It is very necessary, if one wants to see anything of the country to get
off regular routes at regular times, so posting becomes a necessity.

Suddenly we became aware of a great crowd assembled at a group of small
houses a little off the public road, and turned our horse's head in that
direction. There were a great many cars--well there might be, for there
were seventy police on the ground, under the command of a police officer
named McLeod. There was an immense crowd of people, who were entirely
unarmed, not even a shillelagh among them; but if knitted brows and
flashing eyes mean anything, there were men there capable, if any
incident set pent-up rage free, to imitate the men of Harlech, who, with
plaided breasts, encountered mail clad men. A large proportion of the
crowd were women and girls, for there is a flourishing branch of the
Ladies' Land League here.

The tenants to be evicted were, some of them, tenants of the Rev.
William Crawford. I was told by what seemed good authority that the
tenants did not owe much rent, but were pressed just now to punish them
for joining the Land League. It was believed that the tenants were able
to pay, but there was a strike against what they believed exorbitant
rent. The evictions were to demonstrate the landlord's power to compel
them to pay. There was a great crowd.

The policemen were formed in fours, and the crowd howled and hooted as
they proceeded to the first house, McCallion's. The policemen took up a
position convenient to the house, and a few were stationed at the door.
The under sheriff was on the spot.

The little cottage was neat and tidy, white-washed of course. I was not
inside; I did not like to go; those who were said it was very clean and
neat. A room with a few ornaments, a table and some chairs, and a
kitchen with its dresser and table, and a few chairs and stools. The
rent was L14 6s. The tenant stated that he objected to pay the rent on
account of it being too high. The family were sad-looking, but were very
quiet. A paper was presented to him to sign, acknowledging himself a
tenant at will, and promising to give up the holding on demand; on
signing the paper, he got a respite of six months.

The crowd then went to the house of James McCauley, when the same form
was gone through and the same respite granted.

The next house was John Carruthers'. Here the crowd were very much
excited, the women screeched, the men howled, and the poor constabulary
came in for unlimited hooting.

The next place was the joint residence of Owen and Denis Quigley, joint
tenants of a little patch. The cottage is in a gulley on the mountain
side, about a mile of crooks and turns from John Carruthers' house. The
crowd was very large that was gathered round the door. As the police
came up how they did howl! How they did shout, "Down with Harvey (the
agent), and the Land League for ever." Some of the women declared
themselves willing to die for their country.

Another man was evicted, a tenant of Mr. Hector McNeil. The rent here
was L22 3s and the valuation L18 10s. Like the rest he said he could not
pay it because it was too high.

At the next place a young lady Land Leaguer delivered a speech--Mary
McConigle, a rather pretty young girl. Her speech was a good deal of
fiery invective, withering sarcasm and chaff for the police, who winced
under it, poor fellows, and would have preferred something they could
defend themselves from--bayonets, for instance--to the forked lightning
that shot from the tongue and eyes of this female agitator. Whatever
would be the opinion of critics about it, Mary McConigle voiced the
sentiments of the people and was cheered by the men and kissed by the
women. There were a good many speeches made at different times.

Father Bradley, a tall, sallow young priest with a German jaw, square
and strong and firm, spoke very well, swaying his hearers like oats
before the wind. He praised them, he sympathized with them, he
encouraged them, putting golden hopes for the future just a little way
ahead of them, but through it all ran a thread of good advice to them to
be self-restrained and law-abiding. I think I rather admired Father
Bradley and his speech. I had a little conversation with him afterward.
He said the lands were really rented too high, too high to leave for the
cultivator of the soil anything but bare subsistence in the best of
years; and when bad years followed one another, or in cases of sickness
coming to the head of the family, want sat down with them at once.

Mr. Cox, the representative of the Land League, was also there, and made
a speech. He and some gentlemen of the press arrived in a car with
tandem horses. Such grandeur impressed upon the people the belief that
they were connected with law and landlords, so, in enquiring the way,
they found the people very simple and ignorant. When they came where
roads met they were at a loss to know how to proceed, and a countryman
whom they interrogated was both lame and stupid; when he knew, however,
who Mr. Cox was, he recovered the use of his limbs and brightened up in
his intellect in a truly miraculous manner. There were other speeches
during the forenoon of the evictions from Father O'Kane, the gentle
little priest of Moville, Mr. McClinchy, the Poor Law Guardian, and
others.

The greatest success of the day as to speech-making was, after all, the
speech of Mary McConigle, to judge of its present effect--no one else
was kissed. The gist of most of the speeches which I heard, or heard of,
was, advising to hope, to firmness, to stand shoulder to shoulder, and a
counsel to be law-abiding, wrapped up in a little discreet blarney.

As we drove away in the direction of Carndonagh we passed on the way a
wing of the Ladies' Land League, marching home in procession two and
two. A goodly number of bareheaded sonsie lasses, wrapped in the
inevitable shawl; rather good-looking, healthy and rosy-cheeked were
they, with their hair snooded back, and gathered into braids sleek and
shining. Brown is the prevailing color of hair among the Irish girls in
the four counties I have partly passed through. These Land League
maidens reminded me of other processions of ladies which I have seen
marching in the temperance cause. They were half shame-faced, half
laughing, clinging to one another as if gathering their courage from
numbers.

Carndonagh, which we reached at last, is another clean, excessively
whitewashed little town, straggling up a side hill, with any amount of
mountains looming up in the near distance.

A little after we arrived the Carndonagh contingent of the police on
duty at the evictions came driving in, horses and men both having a
wilted look. The drivers came in for some abuse as they took their
horses out of the cars on the street. One old man could not at all
express what he felt, though he tried hard to do so, and screeched
himself hoarse in the attempt.

The police, as they alighted down off the cars, made for their barracks--
a tall white house standing sentry at a corner. As one entered, a
little child toddled out to meet him with outstretched arms. He stopped
to kiss and pet the child, looking fatherly and human. I am sure the
little kiss was sweet and welcome after the howls and hoots of the crowd
and the sarcastic eloquence of Miss McConigle. I pity the police; they
are under orders which they have to obey. I have never heard that they
have delighted in doing their odious duty harshly, and the bitter
contempt of the people is, I am sure, hard to bear.




XIV.

THE PEASANTRY--DEARTH OF CAR DRIVERS--A PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER'S OPINION
OF THE LAND LAWS--PADDY'S LAZINESS--ILLICIT WHISKEY.


After dinner at Cardonagh, went down to the establishment of Mrs. Binns,
an outlying branch of the great factory of Mr. Tillie, of Derry. Saw the
indoor workers, many in number and as busy as bees. Some of them were
very, very young. Mrs. Binns informed me that the times were harder in
this part of the country than a mere passer-by would ever suspect; that
the clothing to be worn when going out was so carefully kept, from the
ambition to look decent, that they appeared respectable, while at the
same time sorely pinched for food. The employment given in this factory
is all that stands between many households and actual want. The machines
here are not run by steam, but by foot power. I noticed weary limbs that
were beating time to work! work! work! Mrs. Binns, a kind motherly
woman, spoke earnestly of the industry, trustworthiness, self-denial,
loyal affection for parents, and general kindliness that characterized
the Irish peasantry.

This testimony to the qualities of the Roman Catholic peasantry has been
the universal testimony of every employer who spoke to me on the
subject. I have met with those who spoke of the native Irish, as they
spoke of the poor of every persuasion, as lazy, shiftless and
extravagant. These people talked from an outside view, and looked down
from a certain height upon their poorer neighbors. Invariably I found
the most favorable testimony from those who came into nearest contact
with these people. As far as personal danger is concerned, having
neither power nor inclination to oppress the poor of my people, I feel
free to walk through the most disturbed districts as safely as in the
days of Brian Boru.

To come back from that stately king down the centuries to the present
time, I had intended to go from Carndonagh to Malin, and afterward to
Buncrana, and from thence to Derry, having nearly gone round Innishowen.
But this was not to be. Regular mail cars did not run on the days or in
the direction in which I wished to go. I deliberated with myself a
little, heard the comments of the people on the events of the day--the
regrets that a greater force had not gathered and a greater
demonstration been made. The women especially who had been forced to
remain at home on the occasion of to-day regretted it very much. My car-
man must return home to plough on the morrow; could not by any means go
any further with his car just at present. I do think he is afraid.
Another car in this little place is not to be had in the present state
of police demand, for they are going out for further evictions on the
morrow.

I retained the car and driver I had brought with me, and returned to
Moville. My driver, a rather timid lad, told me he would not like to
drive the police to these evictions and then return after dark the same
way; he would be afraid. He would not drive the police, he said, on any
account; he thought it wrong to do so. I noticed that, on pretence of
showing me more of the country, he brought me back to Moville another
way. Whether he thought I was likely to be taken for Mrs. Doherty, of
Redcastle, who was one of the evicting landholders at the present time,
or only for a suspicious character, I cannot say.

I was very glad afterward that I had not been able to carry out my
original intention of going to Malin, for some of the evictions there
were of a most painful character. It was better that I was spared the
sight. In the case of a Mr. Whittington, whose residence, once the
finest in that locality, is now sorely dilapidated, his wife, with a new
born babe in her arms, and a large family of little children around her,
were evicted. Is there not something very wrong when such things can be?
Of course, when the bailiff carried out the furniture to the the
roadside he was jeered and hooted at.

All the sympathy of the press is on the side of the landlords, and none
but the very poor, who have suffered themselves, have pity, except of a
very languid kind, for scenes such as this.

There are evictions and harassments flying about, as thick as a flight
of sparrows through Innishowen at present.

At Moville I had the pleasure of an interview with the Rev. Mr. Bell,
the Presbyterian minister of that place. He has studied the subject of
the land laws in general and as they affected his own people in
particular. Mr. Bell admits that there is great injustice perpetrated
under the Land Law as it stands; that the Land Law of 1870 gave relief
in many instances, and was intended to give more, but that numerous
clauses in the bill made it possible to evade it, and it was evaded by
unscrupulous men in many cases. "The necessity of a large measure of
land reform, we admit," he says; "we must get this by constitutional
means. Real wrongs must be redressed by agitating lawfully,
persistently, continually and patiently, till they are redressed
constitutionally. We must remain steadfast and never give in, but never
transgress the law in any case or take it into our own hands. The
Parnell agitation goes beyond this, and when they travel out of the safe
path of using constitutional means, into something that leads to
confiscation of property and robbery of landlords, and a concealed
purpose, or only half concealed, of separation from England, we cannot
follow them there."

Mr. Bell instanced many cases of gradual prosperity and attainment of
wealth among his flock, but they were exceptional cases, and there were
better farms in the case for one thing, and leasehold tenure for
another, combining with their industry and thrift to account for the
success.

I had conversation with another gentleman of this congregation, who,
like many others, believed firmly in Paddy's laziness and carelessness
at home. I am very tired of these statements, for any one can see the
thrifty way mountain sides, scraps amid rocks, strips of land inside the
railway fences, and every spade breadth is cultivated. It is not fair
for a man who has means to judge a poorer man from the outside view of
his case. There was a strange inconsistency in this gentleman's
opinions, for while he declared laziness to be the cause of poverty and
not the oppression of rent raised above value, yet when peasant
proprietorship was mentioned as a remedy, he declared he would not take
the farms as a gift and try to raise a living out of them.

I heard some lament the prevalence of stilling illicit whiskey in
Innishowen. The excuse for doing so was to raise money for help in the
prevailing poverty. They said the manufacture on the hills, whiskey
being so easy to be had, nourished drinking customs among men and women
alike, and what was made one way was lost one hundred-fold in another. A
priest, recently deceased, a certain Father Elliott, had devoted talents
of no mean order and great loving-kindness to the work of stemming this
great evil. At his funeral there were between three and four thousand
members of the temperance bands, which were the fruit of his labors. He
died of typhus fever, and I heard his name mentioned with respectful
regret by all creeds and classes.




XV.

A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST--THE DERRY OF TO-DAY--PURCHASING TENANT
RIGHTS--NIBBLING AT THE TENANT RIGHT--INSTANCES OF HARDSHIP--"LIBERTY OF
CONTRACT."


At Moville I heard that there were some who had become peasant
proprietors by purchasing out and out their holdings, and that they had
bitterly repented of so doing; for they had tied a millstone about their
necks. I was advised to go to Limavady and see the Rev. Mr. Brown, who
had made the purchase for these people, and knew how the bargain was
turning out.

I was still at Moville. I was to return to Derry by boat, a much
preferable mode of travelling to the post car. I mistook the wharf.
There are two, one hid away behind some houses, one at the Coast Guard
Station standing out boldly into the water. I walked over to the most
conspicuous wharf and had the pleasure of hearing the starting bell ring
behind me, and seeing the Derry boat glide from behind the sheltering
houses and sail peacefully away up the Foyle like a black swan. Why do
they paint all the steamers black in this green Erin of ours? Well, as
my belongings were on board, there was no help for it but to take a
special car and go after my luggage, a long, cold drive to Derry. So
much for being stupid.

I have been in Derry for some time. At different times I have tried to
admire it, and it is worthy of admiration; but some way it is a little
difficult to think up thoughts as one ought to think them. Thoughts will
not come to order. Besides, Derry "is an old tale and often told."

Still, it is an event in one's life to go round the old Derry walls.
Owing to the kindness of Mr. Black, I have had that sensation. The
gateways, without gates now of course, look like the arches of a bridge,
and the walls like streets hung up out of the way. When one looks
through a loop hole or over a parapet, there does a faint remembrance
come up, like a ghost, of the stirring times that have wrapped
themselves in the mist of years, and slid back into the past. I stood
over the gates--this one and that one--trying to look down the Foyle
toward the point where the ships lay beyond the boom, and to fancy the
feelings of the stout-hearted defenders of Derry, as they watched with
hungry eyes, and waited with sinking hearts but unflinching courage on
the relief that the infamous Colonel Kirk kept lying, a tantalizing
spectacle, inactive, making no effort of succor. But the houses are
thick outside the walls, and shut up the view and choke sentiment. Of
course I was in the cathedral, and looked at the rich memorial windows
that let in subdued light into the religious gloom. Saw the shell which
was thrown over with terms of capitulation, sitting in a socket on a
pillar in the cathedral like a dove on its nest. It might tell a tale of
what it saw in its flight through the air from one grim bank to the
other, but it maintains a blank silence.

Of course I looked up at Walker on his monument, and went home to read
Professor Witherow's book on the siege, which was kindly presented to me
by Mr. Black, and to listen to people who scruple not to say that the
monument, like the London monument of the great fire as described by
Pope,

  "Like a tall bully lifts its head and lies."

The moderns are plucking some of the feathers of glory from the wings
fame gave to Walker. That is the way the fame of one generation is
served by another.

Derry seems a very prosperous old maid, proud of her past, proud of her
present. The great industry of Derry is shirt making. Was over the
largest factory, that of Mr. Tillie, whose branch factory I saw at
Carndonagh. This factory employs about twelve hundred hands. These work
people were more respectably dressed than any operatives I have seen in
Ireland. They all wore bonnets or hats; the mill people at Gilford and
Ballymena went bareheaded or with a shawl thrown over the head. In the
present woeful depression of the linen trade, it is cheering to look at
this busy hive of industry. The shirts are cut out by machinery, the
button holes are machine made and the machines are run by steam, a great
relief to the operatives. This industry has prospered in Mr. Tillie's
hands. He is also a landed proprietor. His own residence, Duncreggan, is
very beautiful, and the grounds about it are laid out in fine taste.

There are now many other factories in Derry, but this is the largest.
There was an effort to begin ship-building here, but it was defeated by
the parsimony of the London companies, which are extensive landlords in
Derry, and would not give a secure title to the necessary land; so
Belfast is the gainer and Derry the loser by so much.

Was a Sunday in Derry. She has got faithful watchmen on her spiritual
walls. Visited a large living Sabbath-school in connection with Mr.
Rodgers' church. Had the privilege of a class, and found that the little
maidens had an appreciative knowledge of their Bibles. I hear that there
is considerable religious earnestness in Derry, especially among the
young men.

From Derry I ran down to Limavady to have an interview with the Rev. Mr.
Brown anent the purchases made by tenants and how they were getting
along afterward. Went down in the evening train. Behold, there was no
room for me in the inn, and there was no other hotel in the little town.
This was not so pleasant. Had a letter of introduction to a person in
the town; made a voyage of discovery; found out his residence, and he
was not at home. Obtained a guide and went to the Rev. Mr. Brown's--a
good _bittie_ out in the environs; found him just stepping on a car
to leave for a tenant right meeting. Got a recommendation from him to a
private house where I might, could, would or should get accommodation
for the night, and made an appointment with Mr. Brown for the morrow.

I may here remark that the residence of the Rev. Mr. Brown is both
commodious and elegant. As a rule the ministry are comfortably and even
stylishly housed in the North.

The next day had an interview with Mr. Brown, a frank, able and
communicative man. Under his agency the people had bargained for a part
of the Waterford property from the Marquis of that ilk. "The Marquis was
a good and generous landlord; all his family, the Beresfords, were good
landlords." I had heard that said before. There were reasons why the
Marquis was willing to sell, and the tenants were eager to buy. It was a
hard pull for some of them to raise the one-third of the purchase money.
They paid at the rate of thirty years' rent as purchase money. They are
paying now a rent and a half yearly, but hope is in the distance and
cheers them on. So if they have a millstone about their necks, as my
Moville friend insinuated, it will drop off some day and leave them free
for ever. Some of them have already paid the principal.

The Marquis got such a high price for his land that he only sold two-
thirds of the estate, retaining the rest in his own hands, and raising
the rents. Some two or three of the purchasers had a good deal of
difficulty in raising their payments, but Mr. Brown has no doubt they
will eventually pull through.

I heard again and again, before I met with Mr. Brown, of Limavady, that
it was about thirty years since the tenants of the rich lands of the
Ulster settlement began to feel the landlords nibbling at their tenant
right. The needy or greedy class of landlords discovered a way to evade
the Ulster custom, by raising the rents in such a way as to extinguish
the tenant right in many places. For instance, a tenant wished to sell
his interest in a certain place. The agent attended the sale to notify
parties wishing to buy that rent would be doubled to any new tenant and
there was no sale, for the place was not worth so much. The tenant's
right was more than swallowed up by the increase of rent. This was done
so successfully that were it not for the Act of 1870, there would be no
trace of the Ulster custom left.

It has been the custom from the plantation times to let the tenants
build, clear, fence, improve, drain, on lands let low because they were
bare of improvement. The difference between what the land was worth when
the tenant got it, and what generations of thrifty outlay of time and
the means made it was the tenant's property, and the Ulster custom
allowed him to sell his right to his improvements to the highest bidder.
On some lands the tenant right was much more than the rent, as it should
be when it was made valuable by years and years of outlay; but
landlords, pinched for money, or greedy for money, naturally grudged
that this should be, and set themselves by office rules to nip and pick
the tenant right all away.

One great difference between the men of the lowland farms and the
Donegal Celt of the hills is that they have felt and treasured up the
remembrance of injustice since the settlement. Their lowland neighbors
never began to sympathize with them until they knew how it felt
themselves. In speaking of injustice and cruelty toward the hill
tenants, I was often told, "Oh, these things are of the past," they
occurred thirty years ago. How philosophically people can endure the
miseries they do not feel. The sponge has not been created that will
wipe off the Donegal mountains the record of deeds that are graven
there.

To come back to tenant right, an office rule was made giving the out-
going tenant three years' rent, in some cases five years' rent for his
claim on the farm, and "out you go." Mr. McCausland, whose estate joins
Limavady, gave three years' rent. Since the Land Act of 1870, and since
the eyes of the world have been turned on the doings of Ireland, he has
allowed something more for unexhausted manuring. He has also advanced
money to some extent for improvements, adding five per cent, not to the
loan, but to the rent, thus making the interest a perpetual charge on
the property. Landlords in Donegal did the same with the money they got
from Government to lend to the people--got it at one and a half per cent
from Government, re-lent it at five per cent, making the interest a
perpetual rent charge.

  "When self the wavering balance shakes
  'Tis rarely right adjusted."

The tenants, I think, are naturally averse to borrowing money which
brings interest in perpetuity over them, and enables the landlord to
say, "I made the improvements myself." Into these improvements enters
the tenant's labor, as well as the perpetual interest.

A good man, a minister, not Mr. Brown, reasoned with me that the
landlord was sleeping partner with the tenant, that he gave the land,
the tenant the labor, and both should share the profit of improvement.
If the land was rent free I could see that partnership just, but as long
as a man paid the rent value of the land as he got it, the improvement
made by his labor and means through the slow years should be his own. I
might think differently if I had an estate with daughters to portion,
sons to establish in life, a castle to build, a fine demesne to create,
or even a gambling wife or horse-racing sons tugging at my purse
strings.

Whatever good and sufficient reasons may be found for skinning eels
alive, nothing will ever reconcile the eels to it.

The companies of Derry, who are great landlords there, the Fishmonger's
company, the Mercers, &c., are following suit with the rest in evading
the Ulster Custom. It is thought, as these companies never observed the
conditions upon which these grants were made to them, but held them
merely to make money of them, they should be compelled to sell to the
tenants. I agree with this. Still, if the same rule of non-fulfilment of
obligation were laid to private landlords there would be compulsion of
sale there too. The companies on the whole get the name of being better
landlords than private individuals, and are more liberal to their
tenants. In cases of hardship the managers for the companies, not the
companies themselves, get the blame.

The great complaint is the landlord's power to raise the rents as often
as he pleases. When a landlord appoints a valuator, the latter
understands what he is to do and why he was appointed. The tenant has no
say in this matter. Where is the freedom of contract of which so much is
said? This arbitrary power of raising the rent at will irresponsibly and
thus confiscating the tenant's rights, the people who are affected by
the wrong with one voice declare must cease to exist.

Instances were given me by Mr. Brown, who, by the way, had just come
home from giving his testimony before the Bessborough Commission. A man
named Hamilton Stewart was put out of his place, receiving three years'
rent as compensation. His predecessors had bought the tenant right of
the place; he had improved it after it fell into his hands. All his
rights, including the purchase money paid, except the three years' rent,
were confiscated.

Another case he mentioned as happening on the estate of one Major Scott.
A tenant, one John Loughrey, was lost in the river. His widow died in a
few months afterward, leaving two little boys absolutely orphans. Their
uncle, who lived near, offered to manage the place for the boys and to
pay the rent till one of them came of age. Answer--"No, we cannot allow
minors to hold land on our estate." Very much against the wishes of the
uncle he was obliged to fall in with this landlord's arrangement, and
five years' rent were laid down as a settlement of the case by Mr. King,
the agent. The boys' uncle thought it a great hardship to have to give
up the place the boys' father had improved, for he was a thrifty man,
had some money, and was able to improve. When the five years' rent was
counted out on the table, Mr. King said to the boys' uncle, "That is the
money coming to the boys, count it." He counted it and said, "This is
five years' rent certainly." "Now," said Mr. King, "there is a bad house
upon the farm; it is not in as good repair as I would like and I would
like a good house upon it. I will take L100 of this money and with it I
will build a house upon the place." He took L100 of the five years' rent
and built a house that was never inhabited. The children never got this
money back. This case was referred to again and again in public meetings
and other places till Mr. King was obliged to make an effort to explain
it away. The children's uncle was rich, and they thought that,
therefore, the orphans need not get all the money. Mr. Brown knew this
case intimately, as the drowned man, his widow, and orphans were members
of his congregation. This is liberty of contract.

The argument that the children had relatives comparatively rich was the
same argument as Captain Dopping used as a reason for not restoring what
was robbed from the Buchanan children--their relatives were rich and
therefore they did not need it. Now, what person who was touched with a
trial like this would not consider this freedom of contract absolute
robbery. In the case of the Loughrey children there had been no
agreement or shadow of an agreement with the drowned man to keep up the
house, and the house was as good as any of the neighboring houses--a
good substantial farm house. This case was brought before the
Bessborough Commission.




XVI.

REMEMBRANCES OF "THE LONG AGO"--A SOAP AND WATER REMEDY NEEDED--SPOILING
FOR A FIGHT.


After I had seen Mr. Brown, and heard how well his new proprietors were
getting along, and had given attention to the complaints of those who
were not yet peasant proprietors, I made a sudden determination to run
over to Grace Hill for Easter and rest among my ain folk. Was not very
well and as home-sick for Canada as an enthusiastic Irishwoman could
afford to be.

Found a package of letters and papers from home awaiting me and felt
better after reading them. Made an effort for old times' sake to be at
all the meetings on Easter Sunday and enjoyed them all, seasoned with
early recollections. The quaint Litany held heartfelt petitions for me.
The love feast with its tea and buns so noiselessly served, brought back
many a pleasant memory. Even the minister's face, son of parents much
beloved, had a special power of recalling other days. I felt as if in a
dream when I sat in Grace Hill church among the people, in the place to
which I have so often desired to return. I have felt as if, were I to
turn my head as I used naughtily to do when a child, I should see the
dear Miss Borg, sitting on the foot-board--a raised seat running along
the front wall of the church when it had an earthen floor--her sweet
face tinted with autumn red, bearing sweetly and graciously the burden
of consecrated years. What a spot of memories is the "God's Acre" on the
hill to me, surrounded by solemn firs, shaded by spreading sycamores.

Rose up in the morning and left Grace Hill behind me once more. Passed
into Derry and found that veteran maiden lady quite well, with a small
stir on her streets caused by the Land League meeting. Heard no one
speak of it at all, no more than if it had not been, while I waited some
hours for the Omagh train.

This train, like all third-class trains, which I have yet seen,
including one second-class train, by which I travelled a little way, was
extremely filthy. One would think a little paint or even soap and water
were contraband of war as far as these cars are concerned. After
steaming a short distance the solitary lamp went out for want of oil.
When the cars were stopped at the next station we were told to go into
another compartment that had a lamp--they never seemed to think for a
moment of replenishing with oil the lamp in the compartment where we
were. The compartment into which we were moved was pretty full already.
A good many were smoking strong tobacco, some were far gone in the tipsy
direction, one of whom was indulging very liberally in profanity. I was
the only woman in the compartment; but my countrymen, as always, were
polite, inconveniencing themselves for my accommodation. Even the
profane person made a violent effort to curb his profanity when he
noticed me.

A good many of these persons were going to the Land League meeting. One
respectable man spoke to me of the high rate of land and the miseries of
the poor, but acknowledged that there were wealthy farmers in Tyrone. He
recommended me to a nice quiet hotel near the railway, but it being late
and I feeling a little strange, went to the best hotel in the town, the
"White Hart," where I was received with uncommon kindness and attention,
and allotted a quiet, comfortable bedroom away from the noise of the
street.

In preparation for the Land League meeting the next day the following
lively placard was posted in Omagh:

"A general public meeting, with bands and banners, of the Tyrone Orange
Leaguers against the murderous, blood-stained, seditious Popish League,
commonly called the Irish National Land League, will be held in Omagh on
Thursday, April the 21st, 1881, to consider the terms of the Land Bill,
and transact other necessary business. A protest will be made at this
meeting against the introduction of the principle among the Protestant
people of Tyrone that it is good to murder Protestants under the guise
of a Land Reform cry. The Land Leaguers have proved themselves murderers
and robbers! Why allow the system to be introduced into Tyrone? They are
boasted rebels. The swindler Parnell stated in his speech in Cincinnati,
'We will not be satisfied till we have destroyed the last link which
keeps Ireland bound to England.' It is now sought to have this disloyal
society and association of murderers established in Omagh. They tried in
Dungannon first, but the Orangemen frustrated the design. The Orangemen
of Omagh and neighborhood know well how to shoulder their rifles. Let
them be ready. Trust in God and keep your powder dry! No peace with
Rome. No surrender. By order of the Committee."

This proclamation was pulled down by the police, but people seemed to
expect a faction fight. There was a great force of constabulary in town,
and military also. It was pointed out to me how skilfully they were
posted, the military entirely out of sight, but in readiness. There were
twos and threes here and there, lounging about apparently, but with eyes
alert and watchful.




XVII.

HONORED AS MISS PARNELL--A LAND LEAGUE MEETING--AN EXPENSIVE DOCUMENT--
THE LAND LAW DISCUSSED.


In the morning a good many police were scattered about the corners, but
no massing of them. All the fiery placards had completely disappeared. I
was a little astonished at the scrupulous courtesy with which I was
treated, a guide volunteering to show me the place of meeting. Found out
afterward that when I arrived at the hotel I was mistaken for Miss
Parnell, and felt highly flattered. Omagh was quiet enough; no more stir
than would be likely for a fair or market day. No sign or sight of a
counter Orange demonstration. The meeting was held in a field on the
outskirts of the town, on the property of a gentleman, whose name I
forget, but who was described as a very good, kind and considerate
landlord.

On the highest ground in the field a rather slenderly put up platform
was erected, while farther back and lower down a large tent was pitched
for the banquet which was to follow the speechifying. The platform,
slightly railed in and protected by a primitive gate, was furnished with
two tables and a number of chairs. As soon as I came near the platform a
gentleman opened the little gate which admitted into the sacred
enclosure and invited me to a seat on the platform. I accepted gladly,
for I was very tired. Not knowing the mistake under which the people
labored, I wondered at the respectful attention that was directed to me.
Groups of people came and stared at me through the board enclosure, to
go away and be succeeded by other groups, mostly ladies of the country-
bred kind. Finally I drew my chair to the back of the platform to be
more out of the way, and sat there watching the crowd gather.

The crowd was assembling slowly in dozens and half dozens straggling
along, no great enthusiasm apparent at all. The great majority wore
corduroys of a great many varieties of color and states of preservation
or dilapidation. The irrepressible small boys were clustering over the
slight fence that surrounded the platform, crawling under it, roosting
on top of it, squatting round my chair and smiling up at me as if they
expected a universal pat on the head.

The time for the meeting arrived, and with it a squad of reporters, who
monopolised one table, all the chairs but one, and proceeded to make
themselves at home, producing their pencils and note books in a
business-like manner. The crowd clustered at the back of the platform
began to fling jokes from one to the other about penny-a-liners. Two
policemen, one tall, blonde, pleasant featured, one short, dark and
rosy-cheeked, arrived next with their note books and pencils. There were
a few more policemen at the entrance gate into the field, one soldier
standing carelessly on the road, an unconcerned spectator to all
appearance.

Presently the straggling crowd began to concentrate round the platform.
The women who were peeping into the tent and the men who were helping
them forsook that pleasing occupation and made for the platform at a
double quick trot. Many voices said, "yon's them." Looking along the
road toward the town black with the coming crowd, I saw a waggonette
drawn by four horses, gallant greys, coming along at a spanking pace.

The crowd around me disputed whether the driver was able to bring his
four in hand safely through the rather narrow gate, which involved a
sharp turn, but he did, and drew up inside with a flourish, to the great
admiration of all. The gentlemen came on the platform, Mr. Dillon, a
half dozen or so of priests and some other gentlemen. There was a goodly
number of people assembled; still not as many as I expected to see.
There were not many thousands at all. The faces of the crowd were not by
any means so fine as the faces of the Donegal peasantry. They were mixed
faces, all but a few seemed simple country people, some of the heavy,
low English type, some keen and Scotch, some low Irish. The women were
not so fair skinned and rosy as the mountain lasses. There were a good
many ladies and gentlemen present. I do not think all who were present
were in favor of the Land League, by the remarks which reached me, but
the large majority were. As none of the gentlemen speakers spoke to me
when they came on the platform, I lost my prestige at once.

The first speakers, not accustomed to pitch their voices so as to be
heard by a crowd, were quite inaudible where I sat. On the contrary,
every word Mr. Dillon said was distinct and clearly audible. He has a
clear voice, pleasant to listen to after those who preceded him. He is
tall, slim, rather good-looking, very black hair, which he wears long,
and which was so smooth and shining that it made him look like an
Indian, and truly he is as well made, lithe and nervous-looking as one.
His manner is cold and clear and self-repressed; not a word but tells.
His speech was exactly the same as he gave in Derry. He did not approve
of the Land Bill--and I had thought it so good--but he pointed out a
great many defects in it. Faults I never should have suspected to be
there, were picked out and brought to view.

A very telling speech was made by a dark, thin, wiry man named O'Neil.
His speech dealt with the hardships which they had passed through owing
to excessive rents and hard years of poor crops. He spoke what the
people felt, for many a voice chorused, "True for you; we know that
well." In the middle of the speeches the platform prepared to break
down, but only collapsed in the middle and fell half way and stopped.
Two of the priests spoke also, and spoke well to judge by the people's
applause. No one spoke in favor of the Bill.

I thought as I sat there of the remark made to me by a Catholic
gentleman of Innishowen, who said: "The Irish people have hoped in vain
so long, have been deceived so often, that it is hard now to win their
confidence." The more I move through the country the more I believe
this. Mr. Dillon was the idol of the assembly, that was easy to be seen.
A few words with him, a touch of his hand, was an honor. He apologized
for Mr. Parnell's absence, who being elsewhere could not possibly be at
Omagh that day. I left before the meeting was over.

As far as I hear from the Common people themselves, they think the law
and the administrators of it sympathize with the landlords only, and let
that sympathy influence their decisions. They are, therefore, very
averse to go to law to obtain what they consider justice from a
landlord.

Another great complaint that I hear again and again is the expense
attendant on a transfer of property. As an instance, a little property
of the value of a hundred pounds changed hands when I was in Ramelton.
The deed of transfer was a parchment as big as a table-cloth, and cost
L10.




XVIII.

IRISH HUSBANDRY--A DESCRIPTION OF LORD LEITRIM--ABOVE AND BELOW THE
SALT--LANDLORD AND TENANT


The valley through which the railway passes from Derry to Omagh is one
long stretch of beauty, fertility and careful tillage. Every field,
whatever its shape, is cultivated up to the fence and into the corners
with a mathematical nicety. The regular fields, the green separating
ditches with their grassy covering, the hills cultivated to the very
tops, and the trees growing here and there all over made a landscape
that should delight the heart of a farmer. Whenever I come to careless
husbandry, I will be sure to record it. I have seen nothing of the kind
yet on mountain side or valley. I do not wish to fling a rose-colored
veil over everything because it is Irish.

The country is simply beautiful--no works can do justice to it. Still
there are some things one could find fault with freely. Between Omagh
and Strabane I took a third-class car. It was dirty, of course, horribly
dirty, but, as Mrs. McClarty said, "the dirt was well dried on," and it
was almost empty, so I entered. At a way station a great crowd, great
compared to the size of the compartment, came surging in. Every man had
a clay pipe, every man had a supply of the most villanous tobacco. I do
not wonder the Government taxes such tobacco, that it has to be sold by
license--some would not grieve if the duty were prohibitory.

Soon matches were struck, a tiny flash and a fusilade of reports like
toy pistols--all matches here go off like that. Every man began to smoke
for dear life, and smoked furiously with great smacks and puffs. And the
floor! when the mud of many days that had hardened and dried there was
moistened again by tobacco juice! Soon the compartment was filled with
smoke, there was literally nothing else to breathe. The car began to
heave about like a ship at sea. Fortunately we stopped at a station and
some on board got out, so that there was an opportunity of getting close
to the door and letting down the glass and a faint was prevented.

It was not pleasant to sit there craning one's neck round to breathe at
the window, for the seats ran lengthways of the carriage, and keeping
all crushed up to keep out of the way of a cross fire of tobacco juice
from the opposite benches. Made a vow there and then against third-class
carriages.

When the train stopped at Strabane was quite dizzy and sick and took
refuge in the first 'bus, which 'bus belonged to that superfine
establishment, the "Abercorn Arms." Was informed that the late Lord
Leitrim had stopped there a day or two before his death on his way to
Manorvaughan. "Stopped in this very room," said my informant. "He left
here on the Sabbath day in his own carriage for Manorvaughan; he had not
much reverence for the day. He was a very old man, walked lame with one
leg, had a fiery face and very white hair. I did think they might have
respected his gray hair. He had not long to live anyway, they might have
spared him." He rested one day at Manorvaughan, the next day he set out
for Milford and was killed.

"Why did they murder him?"

"They said he was a cruel landlord. Yes, a very bad landlord they said
he was. He was very impatient to get away from here that morning. He
little thought he was hurrying to his death."

From Strabane took the Finn Valley Railway, and went off on a voyage of
discovery to Rusky.

From Killiegordon took a first class ticket, as the distance was short,
to see what first-class passengers enjoyed. There is a great difference
indeed between first and third. Third-class is a penny a mile, first is
two pence half-penny; third is simply horrible with filth, first is as
luxurious as carpets, curtains, cushions, spring seats and easy chairs
can make it. There is not nearly so much difference in price, as
difference in style. As a first-class passenger I was assisted in and
out, and the door held open for me; as third or second-class one can get
in or out as they please for all the officials care. There is a very
wide difference in every respect between those above and those below the
line which separates "gentry from commonality." Of course I am using
local words. Gentry are expected to have a well-filled and an open hand.
If they have not both, what business have they to set up for gentry?
Popular opinion thinks of them as Carleton's hedge scholar expressed
himself, "You a gentleman? No, nor one of your breed, seed or generation
ever was, you proctoring thafe you!"

Now the line of demarcation between the people trained by ages to stand
with open hand expecting a gift, and those to whom a gift is an insult
is hard to find sometimes. A young lad, a sharp boy, had been my guide
to two or three places and carried my bag for me. I offered him pay, for
pay had been expected from me by every one with whom I came in contact
from the moment I landed. Tears came into the poor lad's eyes with
mortified anger. One feels bad to hurt anyone's feelings, and between
those who have a desire for a gift and are hurt if they do not get one,
and those to whom offering a gift is the worst form of insult, one is
sometimes puzzled to know what to do.

I find a very strong feeling in some places where I have been in
connection with the contempt which some owners of the soil feel for the
cultivators of it. A landlord--lately an attorney in a country town--
who has succeeded, most unexpectedly, to a great estate, takes no pains
to conceal the contempt in which he holds his tenants. He sauntered into
a shop, also the post-office of the town, and in the course of
conversation informed them that his tenantry were a lazy lot of
blackguards. Two of his tenants were present standing in the shop. He
did not know them, but they knew him. To the eyes of an outsider like
myself the tenants seemed the more gentlemanly of the two parties. This
gentleman, it was explained to me by his tenants, was not a specimen of
the usual landlord, who, whatever the fault of the land law might be
which they believed in and ruled their conduct by, they were gentlemen
who would not degrade themselves by such an utterance.

The idea is brought forward to me again and again that the best landlord
clings to the power to oppress, absolute unquestioned power to do as he
likes with his tenantry though he might never exercise it. The
Protestants of Derry, Donegal, Tyrone, farmers with whom I have had the
opportunity to converse, all refer to this fact. The good landlord
considers it an infringement of his rights as a landlord, to take away a
power he is too kind to use, although he will admit that some have used
it unmercifully.

A recent speech of Lord Lifford's complains that things are now claimed
as a right that used to be regarded as a favor on the part of the
landlords. There is a strong, deep feeling among the best of the tenants
against such utterances as these and the spirit behind them.




XIX.

LANDLORD AND TENANT--THE LAND QUESTION FROM BOTH SIDES.


As far as I have travelled yet, in the mountains of Donegal, through
Derry, Antrim, Tyrone and Down, I have seen no trace of what Dr.
Hepworth lays to the charge of the Irish--laziness, never cultivating a
holding up to the line or into the corners. What excited my wonder again
and again, is the fact that up to the boundary ditch or hedge, into the
corners, up to the very edge of the rocks the tillage extended. I saw
men dig up little fields entirely with the spade among the sudden rocks
of Port-a-dorus. Some of the patches a horse with a plough attached
could not turn in, yet they were tilled; there was not a spade's breadth
left in any corner. And they paid high rent for this ground, rocks and
all. They fell behind in famine time--not so very far--and humbly
grateful were they for the help that came from outside in that time, and
a mercy that forgave a little of the rent. I saw men digging on the
mountain-side on the Leitrim estate, and wondered how they could keep
their footing. As far as I have seen, it is a slander on the people to
say they are averse to labor. On the contrary, they are very laborious,
and singularly uncareful for their personal comfort. I heard a fellow-
countryman at Moville talk of Paddy's laziness. I pointed out to him how
carefully mountain-side and rough bog were cultivated. He admitted it,
but spoke of want of rotation of crops and absence in many instances of
fall-ploughing. This, I humbly consider, is want of skill, or maybe want
of means--not laziness.

Every one says that the country depends almost solely on agriculture;
agriculture rests on farm labor; farm labor pays rents high enough to
produce periodical famine. The L90,000 rental of one estate, the L40,000
of another, is all produced by these lazy people. If there were any spot
so rocky, so wild, that it was under no rent, one might think them lazy
if they failed to make a living out of it, but they make a living and
help to support a landlord, too, out of these rocks and morasses. I hope
to see life farther south, and see if these lazy people exist there.
They do not exist in the north so far as I have seen.

It seems to me that the tenant-farmers have been out of sight
altogether. Now they have waked up, and there is no power to put them to
sleep again. I am more than astonished to find not one intelligent
person to defend the Land laws. There is no possibility of understanding
previous apathy from an American standpoint unless we think of the
thoughtlessness with which the Indians have been treated. The
thoughtless landlord has looked upon his own needs according to the
requirements of his station, not thinking whether the tenant could pay
so much or not, and, whether, if the rent was raised, it left the means
of existence behind. I met with very estimable people, who were taking a
very high rent; higher than any man could honestly pay, and at the same
time laughing at the poverty-stricken devices of their tenants. They did
not think.

It must be borne in mind that there was a famine in the land but a short
time ago, that these thousands and thousands of people who are under
eviction now have no money and no place to go to but the ditch-back, or
the workhouse. The workhouse means the parting with wife and children.
These things must be taken into consideration, to understand the
exasperation of mind which is seething through the whole country.

I do not think the people here, generally speaking, have any idea of the
amount or intensity of hidden feeling. I confess it frightens me. I
stayed in a country place for a week. I boarded with a family who were
much better off than their neighbors. They were favorites at the office
of the landlord, and paid him their rent punctually. I often sat at the
kitchen hearth as neighbor after neighbor came in in the evening and
told in Irish the tale of some hard occurrence that had taken place. I
understood enough to guess the drift of the story. I understood well the
language of eye and clinched hand with which my host listened. The
people who suffered were his people; their woe was his; he felt for them
a sympathy of which the landlord never dreamed; but he never said a
word. I thought as I sat there--silent too--that I would not like to be
that landlord and, in any time of upheaval, lie at the mercy of this
favorite tenant of his.

They talk of agitators moving the people! Agitators could not move them
were it not that they gave voice to what is in the universal heart of
the tenantry.

A gentleman connected with the press said to me to-day: "The fact is
that any outrage, no matter how heart-rending, committed by a landlord
upon his tenantry is taken little notice of--none by Government--but
when a tenant commits an outrage, no matter how great the provocation,
then the whole power of the Government is up to punish."

One great trouble among the people is, they cannot read much, and they
feel intensely; reading matter is too dear, and they are too poor to
educate themselves by reading. What they read is passed from hand to
hand; it is all one-sided, and "who peppers the highest is surest to
please."

The ignorance of one class, consequent upon their poverty, the
insensibility of another class, are the two most dangerous elements that
I notice. It is easy to see how public sympathy runs, in the most
educated classes. There is great sympathy, publicly expressed, for
Captain Boycott and his potatoes; for Miss Bence-Jones, driven to the
degrading necessity of milking the cows; but I have watched the papers
in vain for one word of sympathy with that pale mother of a family, with
her new-born infant in her arms, set upon the roadside the day I was at
Carndonagh. Policemen have been known to shed tears executing the law;
bailiffs have been known to refuse to do their duty, because the
mother's milk was too strong in them; but the public prints express no
word of sympathy.

In the papers where sympathy with the people is conspicuous by its
absence, there will be paragraph after paragraph about prevention of
cruelty to animals. I had the honor of a conversation with a lady of
high birth and long descent, and, as I happen to know, of great kindness
of heart, a landlady much beloved by a grateful and cared-for tenantry.
I remarked to her that justice seemed to me to be rather one-sided:
"There is much difference unavoidably between one class and another, but
there are three places where all classes should stand on an equality--
on a school room floor, in a court of justice, in the house of God." "I
would agree with you so far," said the lady, "that they should be on a
level when they come before God." I am sure there would be no agitation
nor need of coercion if all the landladies and landlords were like this
kind-hearted lady in practice.

Another instance of kindly thought on the part of another landlady. The
famine left many a poor tenant without any stock at all; every creature
was sacrificed to keep in life. This lady bought cows for her tenants
who were in this sad plight. She left the cows with them until a calf
grew up into a milking cow; then the cow was sold to pay the landlady
the money invested. If the cow sold for more than was paid for it the
balance was the tenant's, and he had the cow besides. "Thus," said the
lady to me, "I benefitted them materially at no expense of money, only a
little." This lady, who claims and receives the homage of her tenants
for the ould blood and the ould name, has by these acts of inexpensive
kindness, chained her tenants to her by their hearts. "It's easy to
see," said one to me, "that the ould kindly blood is in her."

There have been many humble petitions for reduction of rent; many have
been granted, more have been refused. The reasons given in one case
were, a ground-rent, a heavy mortgage, an annuity, and legacies. The
question whether one set of tenants was able to meet all these burdens,
not laid on by themselves mind, and live, never was taken into
consideration for a moment.

When I arrived in Ireland, I met with an English gentleman who took a
lively interest in the purpose for which I crossed the sea, namely, to
see what I could see for myself and to hear what I could hear for myself
on the Land Question. He volunteered a piece of advice. "There are two
different parties connected with the Land Question, the landlords and
the tenants. They are widely separated, you cannot pass from one to the
other and receive confidence from both. If you wait upon the landlords
you will get their side of the story; but, then, the tenants will
distrust you and shut their thoughts up from you. If you go among the
tenants you will not find much favor with the landlords. You must choose
which side you will investigate."

Considering this advice good, I determined to go among the people and
from that standpoint to write my opinions of what I saw and heard. I
made up my mind to tell all I could gather of the opinions and
grievances of the poor, knowing that the great are able to defend
themselves if wrongfully accused, and can lay the land question, as they
see it, before the world's readers.

I hear many take the part of the landlords in this manner: "You are
sorry for the tenants, who certainly have some cause of complaint; can
you not spare some sympathy for the landlords who bought these lands at
a high figure, often borrowing the money to buy them and are getting no
return for the money invested?"

Land hunger is a disease that does not attack the tenants alone. The
poor man hungers for land to have the means of living; the rich man
hungers for land because it confers rank, power and position. As soon as
men have realized fortunes in trade they hasten to invest in land. That
is the door by which they hope to enter into the privileged classes. Men
accustomed to "cut things fine," in a mercantile way, are not likely to
except a land purchase from the list of things which are to pay cent.
per cent. The tenant has created a certain amount of prosperity, the new
landlord looks at the present letting value of the land and raises the
rent. This proceeding extinguishes or rather appropriates the Tenant
Right. The landlord thinks he is doing no wrong, for, is he not actually
charging less than Lord So-and-so, or Sir Somebody or other? which is
perhaps very true. All this time the tenant knows he has been robbed of
the result of years, perhaps of generations of hard and continuous
labor. It is impossible to make such a landlord and such a tenant see
eye to eye.

A gentleman asked a lady of Donegal if she would shut out the landlord
from all participation in profits arising from improvements and
consequent increase in the value of the land. I listened for the answer.
"I would give the landlord the profits of all improvements he actually
made by his own outlay; I would not give him the profits arising from
the tenant's labor and means." Now I thought this fair, but the
gentleman did not. He thought that all profit arising from improvements
made by the tenant, should revert to the landlord after a certain time.
I could not think that just.

As a case in point, a brother of Sir Augustus Stewart said to a Ramelton
tenant:

"My brother does not get much profit from the town of Ramelton."

"He gets all he is entitled to, his ground rent, we built the houses
ourselves," was the answer.

These people are safe, having a secure title, not trusting to the Ulster
Custom or the landlords' sense of justice.

I have not been much among landlords. I did sit in the library of a
landlord, and his lady told me of the excessively picturesque poverty
prevailing in some parts, citing as an instance that a baby was nursed
on potatoes bruised in water, the mother having hired out as wet-nurse
to help to pay the rent. There was no cow and no milk. I had a graphic
description of this family, their cabin, their manner of eating. The
mother cannot earn the rent any longer and they are to be evicted. I was
told they were quite able to pay, but trusting to the Land League had
refused.

Naturally what I have seen and heard among the poor of my people, has
influenced my mind. I could not see what I did see and hear what I did
hear of the tyranny wrought by the late Earl of Leitrim, and the present
Captain Dobbing, or walk through the desolation created by Mr. Adair,
without feeling sad, sorry and indignant.




XX.

LORD LIFFORD--THE DUKE OF ABERCORN--WHOLESALE EVICTIONS--GOING SOUTH--
ENNISKILLEN--ASSES IN PLENTY--IN A GRAVEYARD.


On the banks of the Finn, near Strabane, was born the celebrated hero
Finn ma Coul. I think this just means Finlay McDougall, and, therefore,
claim the champion as a relative. Strabane lies in a valley, with round
cultivated hills, fair and pleasant to the eye, swelling up round it.
Near it is the residence of Lord Lifford. I have heard townspeople
praise him as a landlord, and country people censure him, so I leave it
there. His recent speech, in which he complains of the new Land Bill,
that, if it passes into law, it will give tenants as a right what they
used to get as a favor from their landlords, has the effect of
explaining him to many minds.

Leaving Strabane behind, went down or up, I know not which, to Newtown-
Stewart, in the parish of Ardstraw (_ard strahe_, high bank of the
river). In this neighborhood is the residence of the Duke of Abercorn,
spoken of as a model landlord.

The Glenelly water mingles with the Struell and is joined by the Derg,
which forms the Mourne. After the Mourne receives the Finn at Lifford it
assumes the name of the Foyle and flows into history past Derry's walls.

At the bridge, as you enter the town of Newtown-Stewart, stands the
gable wall of a ruined castle, built by Sir Robert Newcomen, 1619,
burned by Sir Phelim Roe O'Neil along with the town, rebuilt by Lord
Mountjoy, burnt again by King James.

Upon a high hill above the town, commanding a beautiful view of the
country far and wide, stand the ruins of the castle of Harry Awry O'Neil
(contentious or cross Harry), an arch between two ruined towers being
the only distinct feature left of what was once a great castle. This
castle commanded a view of two other castles, owned and inhabited by two
sons or two brothers of this Harry Awry O'Neil. These three castles were
separate each from each by a river. Here these three lords of the O'Neil
slept, lived and agreed, or quarrelled as the case might be, ruling over
a fair domain of this fair country. I do not think the present
generation need feel more than a sentimental regret after the days of
strong castles and many of them, and hands red with unlimited warfare.

Towering up beyond Harry Awry's castle is the high mountain of Baissie
Baal, interpreted to me altar of Baal. I should think it would mean
death of Baal. (Was Baal ever the same as Tommuz, the Adonis of
Scripture?) In the valley beyond is a village still named Beltane (Baal
teine--Baal's fire), so that the mountain must have been used at one
time for the worship of Baal. The name of the mountain is now corrupted
into Bessie Bell.

In the valley at the foot of the mountain is the grand plantation that
stretches miles and miles away, embosoming Baronscourt, the seat of the
Duke of Abercorn, and the way to it in the shade of young forests. There
are nodding firs and feathery larches over the hills, glassing
themselves in the still waters of beautiful lakes. Lonely grandeur and
stately desolation reign and brood over a scene instinct with peasant
life and peasant labor some years ago. The Duke of Abercorn was counted
a model landlord. His published utterances were genial, such as a good
landlord, father and protector of his people would utter. Some one who
thought His Grace of Abercorn was sailing under false colors, that his
public utterances and private course of action were far apart, published
an article in a Dublin paper. This article stated that the Duke had
evicted over 123 families, numbering over 1,000 souls, not for non-
payment of rent, but to create the lordly loneliness about Baronscourt.
His Grace did not like tenantry so near his residence. Those tenants who
submitted quietly got five years' rent--not as a right, but as a favor
given out of his goodness of heart. They tell here that these evictions
involved accidentally the priest of the parish and an old woman over
ninety, who lay on her death-bed. He had called upon the priest
personally and offered ground for a parochial house; he forgot his
purpose and the priest continued to live in lodgings from which he was
evicted along with the farmer with whom he lodged. Of the evicted
families 87 were Catholics and 36 Protestants. If they had been allowed
to sell their tenant right they might have got farms elsewhere. Of those
cleared off seventeen who were Protestants and six who were Catholics
got farms elsewhere from His Grace. Some sank into day laborers, some
vanished, no one knows where.

People here say that the reason why there are Fenians in America and
people inclined to Fenianism at home is owing to these large evictions--
clearances that make farmers into day laborers at the will of the lord
of the land. The people feel more bitterly about these things when they
consider injustice is perpetrated with a semblance of generosity.
Nothing--no lapse of time nor change of place or circumstances--ever
causes anyone to forget an eviction. Now they say that the Duke of
Abercorn holds this immense tract of country on the condition of rooting
the people in the soil by long leases, not on condition of evicting them
out; therefore, he has forfeited his claim to the lands over and over
again. This article, published in a Dublin paper, was taken no public
notice of for a time, but when sharply contested elections came round,
the Duke and four others, sons and relations, were rejected at the polls
because of the feeling stirred up by these revelations. Such is the
popular report of the popular Duke of Abercorn.

Omagh is a pretty, behind-the-age country town. The most splendid
buildings are the poor-house, the prison, and the new barracks. The
hotels are very dear everywhere; they seem to depend for existence on
commercial travellers and tourists. Tourists are expected to be prepared
to drop money as the child of the fairy tale dropped pearls and
diamonds, on every possible occasion, and unless one is able to assert
themselves they are liable to be let severely alone as far as comfort is
concerned, or attendance; but when the _douceur_ is expected plenty
are on hand and smile serenely.

Left Omagh behind and took passage for Fermanagh's capital, Enniskillen
of dragoon celebrity. The road from Omagh to Enniskillen showed some, I
would say a good deal, of waste, unproductive land. Land tufted with
rushes, and bare and barren looking--still the fields tilled were
scrupulously tilled. The houses were the worst I had yet seen on the
line of rail, as bad as in the mountains of Donegal, worse than any I
saw in Innishowen. I wonder why the fields are so trim and the homes in
many cases so horrible. Not many, I may say not any, fine houses on this
stretch of country.

Arrived at Enniskillen on market day, towards the close of April. The
number of asses on the market is something marvellous. Asses in small
carts driven by old women in mutch caps, asses with panniers, the
harness entirely made of straw, asses with burdens on their backs laid
over a sort of pillion of straw. I thought asses flourished at Cairo and
Dover, but certainly Enniskillen has its own share of them. The faces of
the people are changed, the tongues are changed. The people do not seem
of the same race as they that peopled the mountains of Donegal.

A little while after my arrival, taking a walk, I wandered into an old
graveyard round an old church which opened off the main street.
Underneath this church is the vault or place of burial of the Cole
family, lords of Enniskillen--a dreary place, closed in by a gloomy
iron gate. A very ancient man was digging a grave in this old graveyard,
sacred, I could see by the inscriptions, to the memory of many of the
stout-hearted men planted in Enniskillen, who held the land they had
settled on against all odds in a brave, stout-hearted manner. None of
the dust of the ancient race has mouldered here side by side with their
conquerors. There was a dragoonist flavor about the dust; a military
flourish about the tombstones. A., of His Majesty's regiment; B.,
officer of such a battalion of His Majesty's so-and-so regiment; C., D.,
and all the rest of the alphabet, once grand officers in His Majesty's
service, now dust here as the royal majesties they served are dust
elsewhere. Went over to the ancient grave-digger, who was shovelling out
in a weakly manner decayed coffin, skull, ribs, bones, fat earth--so fat
and greasy-looking, so alive with horrible worms. He was so very old and
infirm that, after a shovelful or two, he leaned against the grave side
and _peched_ like a horse with the heaves.

"How much did he get for digging a grave?"

"Sometimes a shilling, sometimes one and six, or two shillings,
accordin' as the people were poor or better off."

"How were wages going?"

"Wages were not so high as they had been in the good times before the
famine. A man sometimes got three-and-six or four shillings then; now he
got two shillings."

"And board himself?"

"Oh, yes, always board himself."

"Some people now want a man to work for a shilling and board himself,
but how could a man do that? It takes two pence to buy Indian meal
enough for one meal. You see there would be nothing left to feed a
family on."

A stout, bare-legged hizzie appeared now, and kindly offered the old man
a pinch of snuff out of a little paper to overcome the effects of the
smell, and keep it from striking into his heart. This was one errand; to
find out who was talking to him was another. She did not; we gave the
poor old fellow a sixpence and moved away.




XXI.

ENNISKILLEN MILITARY PRIDE--THE BOYS CALLED SOLDIERS--REMNANTS OF BY-
GONE POWER--ISLAND OF DEVENISH--A ROUND TOWER--AN ANCIENT CROSS--THE
COLE FAMILY


Owing to the very great kindness of Mr. Trimble, editor of the
Fermanagh Reporter, we have seen some of the fair town of Enniskillen.
Knowing that Innis or Ennis always means island, I was not surprised to
find that Enniskillen sits on an island, and is connected with the
mainland by a bridge at either end of the town. Of course, the town has
boiled over and spread beyond the bridges, as Derry has done over and
beyond her walls. There is a military flavor all over Enniskillen, a
kind of dashing frank manner and proud steps as if the dragoon had got
into the blood. There is also nourished a pride in the exploits of
Enniskillen men from the early times when they struggled to keep their
feet and their lives in the new land. They feel pride in the fame of the
Enniskillen dragoon, in the deeds of daring and valor of the 27th
Enniskilleners all over the world. Enniskillen military pride is closely
connected with the Cole family, lords of Enniskillen.

The town is not old, only dating back to the reign of the sapient James
the First. Remembrance of the sept of Maguires who ruled here before
that time, still lingers among the country people.

Had a sail on Lough Erne at the last of April; tried to find words
sufficiently strong to express the beauty of the lake and found none. It
is as lovely as the Allumette up at Pembroke. I can not say more than
that. The banks are so richly green, the hills so fertile up to their
round tops, checked off by green hedges into fields of all shapes and
sizes; the trees lift up their proud heads and fling out their great
arms as if laden with blessing; the primroses, like baby moons, more in
number than the stars of heaven, glow under every hedge and gem every
bank, so that though the Lake Allumette is as lovely as Lough Erne, yet
the banks that sit round Lough Erne are more lovely by far than the
borders of Lake Allumette. They are as fair as any spot under heaven in
their brightness of green.

Sailing up the lake or down, I do not know which, we passed the ruins of
Portora old castle; ruined towers and battered walls, roofless and
lonely. Kind is the ivy green to the old remnants of by-gone power or
monuments of by-gone oppression, happing up the cold stones, and draping
gracefully the bare ruins.

The Island of Devenish, or of the ox, is famed for the good quality of
its grass. Here we saw the ruins of an abbey. It has been a very large
building, said to have been built as far back as 563. The ruins show it
to have been built by very much better workmen than built the more
modern Green Castle in Innishowen. The arches are of hewn stone and are
very beautifully done without the appearance of cement or mortar. The
round tower, the first I ever saw, was a wonderful sight to me. It is 76
feet high, and 41 in circumference. The walls, three feet thick, built
with scarcely any mortar, are of hewn stone, and I wondered at the skill
that rounded the tower so perfectly. The conical roof is (or was)
finished with one large stone shaped like a bell; four windows near the
top opposite the cardinal points. There is a belt of ribbed stone round
the top below the roof, with four faces carved on it over the four
windows. Advocates of the theory that the round towers were built for
Christian purposes have decided that there are three masculine, and one
feminine face, being the faces of St. Molaisse, the founder of the
abbey; St. Patrick, St. Colombkill and St. Bridget.

Near the round tower is the ruins of what was once a beautiful church.
The stone work which remains is wonderfully fine. The remaining window,
framed of hewn stone wrought into a rich, deep moulding, seems never to
have been intended for glass. It is but a narrow slit on the outside,
though wide in the inside. There are the remains of two cloistered
cells, one above another, very small, roofed and floored with stone,
belonging to a building adjoining the church. Climbed up the little
triangular steps of stone that led into the belfry tower, and looked
forth from the tower windows over woodland hill, green carpet and blue
waters, with a blessing in my heart for the fair land, and an earnest
wish for the good of its people.

There is in the old churchyard one of the fair, skilfully carved,
ancient crosses to be found in Ireland. It was shattered and cast down,
but has been restored through the care of the Government. It is very
high and massive, yet light-looking, it is so well proportioned. There
are pictures of scriptural subjects, Adam and Eve, David and Goliath,
&c., carved in relief over it. Two I saw at Ennishowen had no
inscription or carving at all.

The Government has built a wall around these fine ruins for their
protection from wanton destruction. It takes proof of the kind afforded
by these ruins to convince this unbelieving generation that the ancient
Irish were skilled carvers on stone, and architects of no mean order. I
have looked into some of what has been said as to the uses for which the
round towers were built with the result of confusing my mind hopelessly,
and convincing myself that I do not know any more than when I began,
which was nothing. I am glad, however, that I saw the outside of this
round tower. I saw not the inside, as the door is nine feet from the
ground and ladders are not handy to carry about with one.




XXII.

THE EARL OF ENNISKILLEN AND HIS TENANTS--CAUSES OF DISSATISFACTION--
SPREAD OF THE LAND LEAGUE AMONGST ENNISKILLEN ORANGEMEN--A SAMPLE
GRIEVANCE--THE AGENTS' COMMISSION--A LINK THAT NEEDS STRENGTHENING--THE
LANDLORD'S SIDE.


It seems a great pity that the attachment between the Earl of
Enniskillen and his tenants should suffer interruption or be in danger
of passing away. The Earl, now an old man, was much loved by his people,
until, in a day evil alike for him and for his tenants, he got a new
agent from the County Sligo. Of course, I am telling the tale as it was
told to me. Since this agent came on the property, re-valuation, rent
raising, vexatious office rules, have been the order of things on the
estate. The result of this new state of things, has been that the Land
League has spread among the tenants like wildfire. I did not feel
inclined to take these statements without a grain of salt. To hear of
the Land League spreading among Enniskillen Orangemen, among the Earl's
tenants, of dissatisfaction creeping in between these people
historically loyal and attached to a family who had been their chiefs
and landlords for centuries, was surprising to me.

To convince me that such was the case, I was requested to listen to one
of the Earl's tenants reciting the story of his grievances at the hands
of the Earl's agent. It was a sample case, I was told, and would explain
why the people joined the Land League. It was pleasant enough to have an
opportunity of going into the country and to have an opportunity of
seeing the farms and the style of living of the Fermanagh farmers, as
compared with the Donegal highlands.

The country out of Enniskillen is very pretty. May has now opened, the
hedges have leafed out and the trees are beginning lazily to unfold
their leaves. The roads are not near so good as the roads in Donegal,
which are a legacy from the dreary famine time, being made then. The
hedges are not by any means so trim and well kept as the hedges by the
wayside in Down or Antrim. The roads up to the farm houses are lanes,
such as I remember when I was a child. The nuisances of dunghills near
the doors of the farmhouses have been utterly abolished for sanitary
reasons, also whitewashing is an obligation imposed by the Government.
For these improvements I have heard the authorities both praised and
thanked. In these times of discontent, it is well to see the Government
thanked for anything. The country is hilly and the hills have a uniform
round topped appearance, marked off into fields that run up to the hill
tops and over them and down the other side. There are, of course,
mountains in the distance, wrapped in a thick veil of blue haze.

The house to which I was bound was, like most of the farm houses, long,
narrow, whitewashed, a room at each end and the kitchen in the middle. I
will now let the farmer tell his grievances in his own words. He is
about sixty years of age, a professor of religion of the Methodist
persuasion, an Orangeman, and a hereditary tenant of Lord Enniskillen,
and now an enthusiastic adherent of the Land League. "In 1844 I bought
this farm--two years before I was married. There is 17-1/2 acres. I paid
L184 as tenant right--that is, for the goodwill of it. The rent was L19
7s 4d. I should have gone to America then; it would have been better for
me. I have often rued that I did not go, but, you see, I was attached to
the place. My forbears kindled the first fire that ever was kindled on
the land I live on. I held my farm on a lease for three lives; two were
gone when I bought it. I have been a hard-working man, and a sober man.
There is not a man in the country has been a greater slave to work than
I have been. I drained thi

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