OVER-POPULATION OF THE WEST--HOW PEOPLE FORM THEIR OPINIONS--MR.
SMITHWICK AND JONATHAN PYM--A DEARTH OF FISH.
Left Castlebar with regret and went down to Westport. I find at every
step since I landed the information that in going round Ireland I should
have begun at Dublin. In Dublin I could have procured a guide book. I
have sought for one in every considerable town from Belfast round to the
edge of Galway without obtaining it. If I had started from Dublin I
should have taken a tourist's ticket there. Well, I am not sorry for
that, for it is rather hard on me when I get into the beaten track where
I encounter tourists--some of them are trying specimens of humanity.
However, I am made to feel as if I was patting the wrong foot, instead
of the best foot foremost.
I got into Westport in the fair sunlight in the early part of June.
Between Castlebar and Westport the land is part stony, part bog, part
better land under grass. Mountains with hard names, that one makes haste
to forget, are to be seen all round from whatever side of the car you
look. They are all over--a good deal over--one thousand feet high. A few
lakes are spread out here and there also. I am as ignorant of their
names as of those of the lakes I saw crossing Maine. Westport, like
Castlebar, has a mall. Castlebar mall is a square of grass with some
trees drawn up on one side. It is fenced in with chains looped up on
posts--a fence that nobody minds except to step over and they track the
grass with paths running in every direction. Westport's mall is a long
space with trees standing sentry by a river, walled in as if it were a
canal.
I had a wish to meet with a Mr. Smithwick, a land agent, from whom I
might receive a good deal of information. I had information from himself
that he should be at Newport upon the day after I arrived at Westport. I
fought successfully against myself, and got up at an uncomfortably early
hour and went to Newport by mail car. Newport, Mayo, is six Irish--seven
and a half English--miles from Westport and is at the head of Clew Bay.
The road lies through a nice rolling country, entirely desolate and
empty.
The only passenger by the car besides myself, was a gentleman, English I
presume, who, after he became tired of silence, began a conversation
with me, taking for his subject the over-population of the West. I
looked to the side of the car where we sat--it was a country of fine
grassy hills with not one wreath of smoke curling up from a solitary
chimney as far as the eye could reach. I leaned over the well of the car
and looked to the other side--to the limit of the horizon, behold, the
land was empty of house or home or human being. I looked over the
horses' ears--there was the same scene of utter desolation. I turned
round with difficulty and looked behind us--saw the same grassy hills
swelling up in green silence without man or beast. I said softly, "Lift
up thine eyes, sir stranger, and look northward and southward, eastward
and westward. Is not the land desolate without inhabitant, where then is
the over-population?" The strange gentleman looked, not at the empty
hills and the silent green valleys, but at his fellow-traveller with
emotions of fear. To doubt that this fair and desolate Mayo is over-
populated is to show signs of lunacy or worse. Fenianism, Communism, or
even Nihilism, is possible if there is no lunacy to account for such
strange ideas.
Mildly, but with resolution like Samantha's, I urged on the gentleman to
look at the prospect, and he was like one awakening from a dream, for
the country from Newport to Westport, seven and a half miles, is without
inhabitants. I believe Lord Lucan was chief exterminator over this
stretch of country. Brought up at the little inn at Newport, and the
stranger and I had breakfast together. We conversed about over-
population. He had travelled much, and when he recollected what his eyes
saw instead of what his ears heard of a false cry, he admitted that a
loneliness had fallen upon this part of the west.
After breakfast he went his way, with a new subject for thought, and I,
deserted in a wilderness of a commercial room, took out some paper and
began to write. There was no sound but the steel scratch of a pen that
grew monotonous. After a long time--some hours--of solitude, the door
opened and a gentleman entered with some luggage and a young woman
followed him. I gathered up my scribblings and put them away. The
gentleman took off his overcoat, and shining out of the breast pocket
was a bright revolver. I grew afraid, though, generally speaking, I am
too busy to think of being afraid. There was a trans-Atlantic look about
the gentleman, a Mississippi appearance about the too conspicuous
revolver, and, I admit, I thought of some Fenian leader and wondered
what Stephens was like. I heard the gentleman order lunch and afterward
he left the room.
When he returned he introduced himself as Mr. Smithwick. He was not at
all the kind of gentleman I had expected to see. By some perversity he
had become fixed in my imagination as a very tall gentleman with fair
curled hair. Now this was sheer foolishness, but it had a disastrous
effect on the interview. My mind, instead of gathering itself up into an
attitude for receiving information about the land question, would go off
wool-gathering in speculation whether this was the very Mr. Smithwick or
not. The gentleman said with all politeness that he was willing to give
me all the information in his power on any subject on which I wanted
information.
There is something not canny in the west. I had felt it before, but
never as I did then. I could not possibly disentangle my ideas enough to
be clear as to what information I did want. I was under some spell. I
could only look at Mr. Smithwick, wondering if he was he, and smile at
my own stupidity. Time passes quickly; the gentleman remained but about
an hour and a half at most, and he had to have luncheon out of that and
attend to some little business in town besides. Before I got to be
myself he was gone. We did talk a little about reclaiming bog land. He
put the cost per acre for trenching, laying stones in the drains, sand
and manure, at L21 per acre. Reclaiming bog land has been done by tenant
farmers all over the country, who were evicted afterward when they fell
behind in rent in the bad years, and did not get any compensation for
the land so reclaimed. Mr. Smithwick did not think the relief money in
all cases reached those for whom it was intended; believed it was partly
intercepted on the way. Did not have a high opinion of his countrymen of
the poorer class. Thought them a useless set who did not do the work of
their farms properly; did not even make a drain properly if done for
themselves; made it in a proper manner if made on another man's land,
because there he was overseen, and if he slighted his work he would not
get paid for it. In short, "Paddy anywhere but at home is a splendid
man, but at home he is worthless."
Mr. Smithwick deplored the present agitation among the people; deplored
it as an agitation got up, not for people's benefit, but to feather the
nests and fill the pockets of agitators. He informed me that he himself
had to carry a pistol wherever he went. In speaking of rents Mr.
Smithwick informed me that the lands were really rented low; that the
people could pay, and were quite able to pay, were it not for the advice
of agitators; said he was getting no rent at all these years. The total
cessation of rent coming in was a great deprivation to landlords, who
depended on their rents for the means of living.
Mr. Smithwick thought emigration was the remedy for the undeniable
poverty of the country, for if the people got their farms for nothing
they could not make a living out of them, owing to their shiftless
method of farming. I objected that it would be scarcely fair to send
their people, who were so useless and helpless, over to be a burden on
us, but Mr. Smithwick thought that they would soon come in to our ways,
and help themselves, and be not a burden but a help to the community. I
found out in conversation with this gentleman that to reach Ballycroy,
where he lives, I should have come from Ballina. I seem perversely to
take the long way round. Mr. Smithwick kindly explained to me the way I
should go to reach Ballycroy by private car. He thought there was so
little of interest in that direction that it would hardly repay me for a
long tiresome journey, and that Connemara direction was much more full
of interest. After his croydon had driven off I began to remember
various points on which I should have liked to obtain his opinion that I
had never thought of once when I had the opportunity. Perhaps it was the
very early drive that had wearied me, but I was dreadfully stupid all
through the interview. I had counted a great deal on seeing this man,
and I seemed to myself to have gained nothing of facts to which one
could refer triumphantly in support of an opinion in consequence of it.
To wake myself up I enquired of the civil landlady if there were any
wonderful sights to be seen in the neighborhood within an easy drive.
Yes, there was Borrishoole Monastery (the place of owls) and Carrig a
Owlagh (rock of the fleet) Castle, one of the strongholds of Granna
Uisle Well, got a car and driver and drove off to see these ruins. I was
told that no tourist ever visited Newport without going to see them.
As we rattled and jolted over the roughest bit of road which I have yet
seen in Ireland, the driver, a dark, keen-eyed man, began to talk of
landlords, of the wasting and exterminating Lords Lucan and Sligo. I
asked him whom did he think a good landlord. He answered immediately,
"Jonathan Pym." "If you think him so good you might say Mr. Pym." "When
a man is the best in any way he's too big for Mr.," said the man
readily. "I dare say," I remarked, "that this Jonathan Pym is very
little better than the rest." "But I say he is," retorted the man
fiercely. "Where inside of the four seas of Ireland will you get his
aiquil? He bought the land, coming among us a stranger, and he did not
raise the rents. The people live under the rents their fathers paid."
"Well, that's not much?" "If you were a tenant you would think
differently. He took off the thatch of the cabins and put on slates at
his own expense: There is not a broken roof on the land that he owns.
Every tenant he has owns a decent house, with byre and barn, shed and
stable, and he done it all out of the money he had, that never was
lifted out of the land, and after all left them in at the ould rents.
There has never been wan eviction on his place yet." "Has he been shot
at yet?" I enquired innocently. "Arrah, what would he be shot for?"
demanded the man, turning his swarthy face and black eyes full on me. "I
thought maybe some one might shoot him for fun," I explained, feebly.
"Fun!" growled the car-man, "quare fun! If a man is shot or shot at he
deserves it richly. He's not a rale gentleman, word and deed, like
Jonathan Pym."
The driver continued to praise the wonderful landlord, Jonathan Pym, in
a growling kind of tone as if, were I his spouse, he would thwack me
well to cure my unbelief, as we jolted over the stones to the ruins of
the monastery of owls.
There is a lake, the lake of owls, near this ruin, and in it, it is
said, gentlemen anglers can readily obtain leave to fish. I have heard
that amateur anglers give the fish they catch to the person who gives
the permit, retaining the sport of catching as their share; or if they
want the fish paying for them at market price. I think this unlikely,
but it may be so nevertheless.
The monastery was once a splendid place, to judge by the remains of the
carving on window and arched door. One of the skulls of Grace O'Malley
used to be kept here as a precious relic. There was another at Clare
Island and I think I also heard of another. It seems some speculative
and sacrilegious Scotchman brought a ship round the west coast of
Ireland to gather up the bones lying in the abbeys to crush them for
manure, and they took the brave sea queen's bones and skull with the
rest.
Returned to Newport in a very undecided frame of mind whether to go to
Ballycroy or not. There was a Land League meeting to be held there, and
I might see that; but then I had been at two Land League meetings, and
they are pretty much alike. Of course it is well to see a great
assemblage of people, for they always are of interest as showing what
condition the people are in, and what sentiments find an echo in their
hearts. But the length of the way, the uncertainty of a place to stop at
had some weight, and I found myself unable to decide. To clear up my
brain I asked for a bit of fish for dinner, but such a thing could not
be obtained at Newport. The fish caught there are exported. They might
get a fish by going down to the boat for it, and paying dearer for it
than the Dublin price. I asked for fish at Westport with the same
result. If you mention salmon they will say, "Oh, yes," and if not
stopped, rush off and buy a can of American salmon for you. I got
something to eat--not fish, and not very eatable--and wrote a little
while, with the same stupid sensation bothering me that I had felt
during my interview with Mr. Smithwick, and decided to put off all
decision and go to bed, which I did.
In the morning, having found that Newport was the nearest point by which
to reach Achill Island, I determined to go there, and if I thought I
could endure the journey to diverge at Mulrany and drive to Ballycroy on
my return from Achill Island.