Good Fairy warns the tenant to remove his crops lest the Demon
Landlord should seize upon them--the tenant being of course transmuted
into Harlequin and the landlord into Clown--this would be funny
enough; but it is difficult to see how the everyday business of life
could be carried on under such conditions. The case of Miss Gardiner
against Thomas Browne is one purely of hide and seek. When he owed two
years' rent he begged for time on account of two bad crops. When he
was threatened with eviction he begged time to get in his crop. It was
given to him. It is quite easy to understand that a tenant who has
been thirty years on a little holding thinks himself entitled to great
lenity, especially if his rent has been raised during that period,
and, as this man asserts, his "turbary" rights restricted, and every
kind of privilege reduced. But it has been said by a great literary
and social authority that there are such things as limits. Now this
man, Browne, feeling that he had an execution hanging over him,
contrived to temporise until his grain and potatoes were secured, and
then, aided by the accident of a sick wife, defied the law. The house
was full of people, a doctor said that the woman could not be removed,
and the sub-sheriff, backed by fifty policemen, could make nothing of
the business without incurring the odium of tearing a sick woman from
her bed. He offered the irreconcilable Browne the offer of accepting
the ejectment and remaining in the house as "caretaker," but the
tenant was staunch and would make no terms. The consequence is that
when Miss Gardiner again attempts to evict him she must incur the
considerable cost of a new writ. The condition of affairs now is that
a tenant owing three years' rent, and not having paid a shilling on
account, simply defies the landlord and remains in his wretched
holding, having possibly--for the Irish are an intelligent as well as
good-humoured people--the proceeds of his miserable little harvest to
live upon through the winter months. Mr. Browne is, I doubt me, not
very rigid as to his duties, and takes but an imperfect view of
financial obligations; but he is horribly poor, nevertheless, and is
as much a type of his class as Miss Gardiner of hers.
V.
FROM MAYO TO CONNEMARA.
LEENANE, _Tuesday, Nov 2._
The meeting which took place on Sheehane Hill was only remarkable as
affording an additional proof of the extraordinary faculty of
selection possessed by Western Irishmen. Whether they intend to shoot
a landlord or merely to hold a meeting to bring him to his bearings,
they choose their ground with equal discrimination. In the former case
a spot is selected at the descent or ascent of a hill, so that the
carriage of the victim cannot be going at a sufficient pace to defeat
the marksman's aim, and a conveniently protected angle, with
facilities for escape, is occupied by the ambuscade. In the latter,
either a natural amphitheatre or a conspicuous hill is pitched upon
for the gathering. To the picturesque Mayo mind a park meeting on a
dead flat would be the most uninteresting affair possible unless
vitality were infused into the proceedings by a conflict with the
police, which would naturally atone for many shortcomings. The
meeting at Tiernaur was held in the midst of magnificent scenery, and
that on Sheehane was equally well selected. From the top of the hill,
which is crowned by a large tumulus, the country around for many miles
lay spread like a map; and, what was of more immediate importance, the
small additional hill afforded a convenient spot for posting the
orators and displaying the banners of the various organizations
represented at the meeting. The demonstration, however, could hardly
be represented as successful--not more than a thousand persons being
present. It was weary waiting until the proceedings commenced, the
only diversion being provided by a hare which got up in an adjacent
field. In a moment greyhounds, bull-dogs, terriers, and mongrels were
in pursuit, followed by the assembled people. The hare, however,
completely distanced both dogs and spectators, and was in comparative
safety several fields away from the foremost greyhound, when she
doubled back in an unaccountable manner, and ran into the midst of the
crowd, who set upon her with sticks, and killed her in the most
unsportsmanlike manner. A man next held poor puss over his head as if
she were a fox, and a voice went up "That's the way to serve the
landlords." This ebullition was followed by shouts of "Down wid 'em!"
and the meeting on Sheehane became more cheerful. It was recollected
that O'Connell once held a meeting on the same spot, and that the
hare and the meetings were both mentioned by the prophet Columbkill.
Of the speeches it need only be said that what they lacked in elegance
was made up in violence. The speeches made in the North were oddly
designated "seditious," and every kind of reprisal was hinted at in
the event of Mr. Parnell being arrested. If he were seized, not a
landlord in Ireland would be safe except in Dublin Castle. This kind
of thing, accompanied by shouts of "Down wid 'em!" at every mention of
the abhorred landlords, became very tedious, especially in a high wind
and drifting rain. The meeting gradually became thinner and thinner,
and finally faded out altogether. It is quite true that such
gatherings may have a powerful effect upon the vivacious Celt, but if
so, it is quite beneath the surface, for the people seemed to take
little interest in the proceedings. To all outward show the oratory at
Sheehane produced no more serious impression than that at Tiernaur on
the preceding Sunday. Yet there is something in the air, for the first
thing I heard on returning to Westport was that Mr. Barbour's
herdsman, who lives at Erriff Bridge, had been warned to leave his
master's service. The "herd" (as he is called here, as well as on the
Scottish border) is in great alarm. He cannot afford to leave his
place, for it is his sole means of subsistence, and if turned out in
the world the poor fellow might starve. Now it is a disagreeable thing
to think you will starve if you leave, and be shot if you remain at
your work; but I hear that the "herd" has asked for protection and
will try to weather it out. His master, Mr. Barbour, and Mr. Mitchell
hold each about half of the great farm formerly held of Lord Sligo by
Captain Houstoun, the husband of the well-known authoress. Large
numbers of black-faced sheep and polled Galloways are raised by Mr.
Barbour, who lives at Dhulough, in the house formerly occupied by
Captain Houstoun.
I have just come from Westport to this place, the mountain scenery
around which is magnificent. On the lofty heights of "the Devil's
Mother," a famous mountain of this country, the sheep are seen feeding
almost on the same level as the haunt of the golden eagles who breed
here regularly. I believe that the valley of the Erriff was once well
populated, but that after the famine the people were cleared off
nearly 20 square miles of land to make way for the great grazing farm
now divided between two occupants. As I have stated in previous
letters, the resentment of the surrounding inhabitants at this
depopulation of a vast tract of country is ineradicable. In the
wretched huts which appear at wide intervals on the sea-shore the
miserable people sit over the fire and talk of the old times when they
might go from Clifden to Westport and find friends nearly everywhere
on the road, while now from the last-named place to this--a distance
of 18 Irish miles--the country is simply wild mountain, moor, and
bog, bating the little Ulster Protestant village, not far from
Westport (a curious relic of '98), a few herds-men's huts, and the
police-station at Erriff Bridge. To those who, like myself, love
animals, the drive is by no means uninteresting. As the car jolts
along past "Hag's Valley," a dozen curlews take wing, and a little
further on the shrill cry of the redshank strikes on the ear. Now and
then a hare will start among the bent-grass, while aloft the falcon
rests poised on her mighty wing. But saving these wild animals, the
beautiful blackfaced sheep, and black Galloway calves, the country has
no inhabitants. What little was once cultivated has reverted to rough
pasture, covered with bent or sedge and a little grass, or to bog
impassable to man or any creature heavier than the light-footed fox,
who attains among these mountains to extraordinary size and beauty.
But hares and grouse, and even stray pheasants from Mr. Mitchell
Henry's woods at Kylemore, will not convince the fragment of
population around the great grazing farms that things are better now
than of yore; and there is some reason for believing that disturbance
is to be apprehended in this part of the country. The warning to Mr.
Barbour's unfortunate herd can hardly be a separate and solitary act
of intimidation and oppression. The work of one herd is of no great
matter. But the distinct warning given to the poor man at Erriff
Bridge to give up his livelihood on the first instant is possibly part
of a settled scheme to reduce great grazing farmers to the same
condition as landlords. They are to be frightened away, in order that
squatters may pasture their cattle on "the Devil's Mother," as the
Tiernaur people have done theirs on Knockdahurk. Nothing would
surprise me less than a strike against anybody in this neighbourhood.
If one may judge by the language used yesterday at Westport Fair, at
which I was glad to discover more outward evidence of prosperity than
had yet come under my observation in this part of Ireland, the
landlords and their agents are determined to make another effort to
get in their rents in January. Their view of the case is that the law
must assist them: but whatever abstract idea of the majesty of the law
may exist elsewhere is obviously foreign to those parts of Connaught
which I have visited. It is urged day after day upon me by high as
well as low, that if Sir Robert Blosse and Lord De Clifford can get in
their rents without "all the king's horses and all the king's men,"
other landlords must try to do the same. To prevent misconception, I
will aver, even at the risk that I may seem to "protest too much,"
that this argument is not thrust upon me by the Land League, but by
persons who are proprietors themselves. It is held ridiculous, in this
section of the country, that enormous expense should be thrown upon
the county in order that the rents of certain landlords may be
collected. There is, it must be admitted, a rational indisposition in
the West to ascribe any particularly sacred character to rent as
distinguished from any other debt. This is an agreeable feature in the
Irish character. In some other countries there prevails a preposterous
notion that rent must be paid above and before all things, as a
species of solemn obligation. Until the other day there prevailed in
Scotland the almost insane law of hypothec, which allowed a landlord
to pursue his tenant's goods even into the hands of an "innocent
holder." But there is no argument in favour of the landlord which any
other creditor might not advance with equally good reason. The
butcher, the baker, the clothier, as well as the farmer, the dealer in
feeding-cake and manure, have claims quite as good as that of the
landlord, and, as they think, a great deal better. Tradesmen who have
fed and clothed people, and others who have helped them to fatten
their land and their cattle, think their claims paramount. It is of
the nature of every creditor to think he has the right to be paid
before anybody else. But the landlord, probably because landlords made
the law, such as it is, has a claim which he can enforce, or rather
just now seeks to enforce, by the aid of armed intervention. The civil
bill creditor can only levy execution where anything exists to levy
upon; but the landlord can turn his tenants out of doors and put the
key in his pocket--that is, theoretically. But, it is argued, if this
cannot be done without the aid of an army, it would be better for the
majority of peaceable inhabitants if it were left alone. It is not
easy to predict the state of popular feeling here in January next; but
it is quite certain that attempts to evict, if made now, would be met
by armed resistance. I have already stated that Mayo is armed to the
teeth, and I have good reason for believing county Galway to be in a
similar condition. This being fairly well known on the spot, it is
quite easy to understand how any resolution to commence a landlords'
crusade is received by the public.
LETTERFRACK, CONNEMARA, _Wednesday._
At this pretty village, in the most beautiful part of the West of
Ireland, I hear that the disinclination to pay rent and the desire to
"hunt" grazing farmers out of the country have spread to the once
peaceful region of Connemara. Three years ago crime and police were
alike unknown. The people were poor, and preserved the sense of having
been wronged. But theft and violence, saving a broken head now and
then, were unknown.
Within the last two years a great change has come over this remote
corner of Ireland. Police barracks have made their appearance, and
outrages of the agrarian class have become disagreeably frequent.
Formerly cattle and sheep were as safe on the mountain as oats in the
stackyard. Now nobody of the grazing farmer class is entirely free
from alarm. At any moment his animals may be driven into the sea or
his ricks fired. The population, if not so fully armed as that of
Mayo, is arming rapidly. To my certain knowledge revolvers and
carbines are being distributed among the peasantry of Connemara
proper. This district--which including within its limits the pretty
village I write from, as well as Clifden and Ballynahinch, lies mainly
between the seashore and a line drawn from Leenane to Carna--has,
during the last twelve months become disturbed in such wise that it is
impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact that here, as in Mayo, a
sort of dead set is being made against grazing farmers. It is true
that life is not taken, and, it may be added, not even threatened in
Connemara proper, but outrages of a cowardly and destructive kind are
common. During last winter an epidemic of destruction broke out, the
effect of which may be seen in the large amount added to the county
cess to give compensation to the injured persons. The grand jury has
levied altogether between seven and eight hundred pounds more than
usual. So ignorant or reckless are the destroyers, that they take no
heed of what is well understood in other places; to wit, that the
amount of the damage done is levied upon the adjacent townlands. Thus
the addition to the county cess in Lettermore is 10s. 11½d. in the
1l.; in Carna, 8s. 9½d.; and in Derryinver, 8s. 7½d.--a cruel
additional burden on the ratepayer. Some of the items are very large.
To George J. Robinson was awarded 181l. for seventy-six sheep and two
rams "maliciously taken away, killed, maimed, and destroyed." To
Hamilton C. Smith three separate awards were made--28l. for four head
of cattle driven or carried out to sea and drowned; 21l. for fourteen
sheep maliciously driven off and removed; and again 17l. 10s. for
fourteen sheep similarly treated. Houses and boats have been burned,
and even turf-ricks destroyed. The object in all cases seems to have
been to "hunt" the injured persons out of the country in order that
the neighbours might turn their cattle on to his grazing land, as has
been done in Mayo. In one conspicuous case these tactics have proved
successful. Michael O'Neil was awarded 120l. "to compensate him for
ninety-six sheep, his property, maliciously taken or carried away and
destroyed, at Tonadooravaun, in the parish of Ballynakill." This sum
is levied off the fourteen adjacent townlands, among which is the
unlucky Lettermore, just quoted as paying an enormous addition to the
county cess. Michael O'Neil, who appears to have been a respectable
man, not otherwise objectionable than as the tenant of more grazing
land than was considered his share by his neighbours, has received his
120l., and is so far reimbursed; but he thought it better to obey the
popular will than to attempt to stand against it, and gave up his farm
accordingly. Such deeds as the frightening of "decent people" out of
Connemara by maiming cattle and burning houses, which must be paid for
by the offending districts, speak more distinctly than any words could
do of the ignorance of this part of the wild West. So wild is it that
although the Roman Catholic clergy of Connemara adhere to the
elsewhere-obsolete practice of holding "stations" for confession,
there are many dwellers on the mountain who have never received any
religious instruction. Chapels are few and remote from each other, and
even the "stations" kept for the purpose of getting at the scattered
population only attract those dwelling within reasonable distances.
The poor mountaineers in the neighbourhood of the Recess Valley and
away over the hills seldom go far enough from home to rub shoulders
with civilisation. Many of them have never seen bigger places than
Letterfrack and Leenane, and those perhaps not fifty times in their
lives.
The islanders of Clew Bay are almost as difficult to assist and to
improve as the highlanders of Joyce's country, Southern Mayo, and
Great and Little Connemara; but for an opposite reason. The latter are
thinly scattered on the fringe of the grazing farms, while the former
are crowded together on islands inadequate to support them. This
question of space assumes a curious importance in Ireland owing to
the want of other industry than such as is intimately connected with
the land. With the exception of a few manufacturing districts in
Ulster, which is altogether another country from Connaught, there are
no industries in Ireland independent of the produce of arable land and
pasture. What is to be enjoyed by the people must be got out of the
land, and this in a country where nobody will turn to and work hard as
a cultivator so long as he can graze, "finish," or "job" cattle,
sheep, or horses. I was citing to a Mayo-man this defect of the
so-called farmer, and was at once met by a prompt reply. The tendency
to graze cattle, which is not hard work, and to "gad" about to cattle
fairs, which are esteemed the greatest diversion the country affords,
is an indication of the distinct superiority of the quick-witted Celt
to the dull Saxon hind. An Irish peasant cultivator is a being of
greater faculty of expansion than Wessex Hodge. He is profoundly
ignorant and absurdly superstitious, but he is naturally keen-witted,
and his innate gifts are brightened by contact with his fellow man. He
is not a ploughman, for he often cultivates with the spade alone, and
he has, besides his oats, his potatoes, his cabbages, and mayhap a few
turnips, and a variety of animals, all of which he understands--or
misunderstands. If a holder of twenty or thirty, or, still better,
forty acres, he will have a horse, a cow, a beast or two, a few sheep,
and some turkeys and geese. It is possible to have all these on
fifteen acres or less of fairly good land, and then the Western
peasant cultivator becomes a many-sided man by dint of buying and
selling stock--that is, he acquires the sort of intelligence possessed
by a smart huckster. This is held to be cleverness in these parts, and
undoubtedly gives its possessor a greater "faculty of expansion" than
the career of an Essex or Wessex ploughman or carter. But what is
peculiarly pertinent to the burning question of peasant cultivators
and proprietors is the tendency, perpetually visible in the Western
Irishman, to fly off at a tangent from agriculture to grazing.
According to an ancient and indurated belief in all this section of
the country, animals ought to get fat on the pasture provided by
nature. I am told that thirty years ago there was not a plough in
existence from Westport to Dhulough, and that the turnip was an
unknown vegetable in Connemara. The notion of growing turnips and
mangolds in a country made for root crops was at first not well
received. "Bastes" had done hitherto on the rough mountain pasture
"well enough;" which signified that no properly fatted animal had ever
been seen around the Twelve Pins.
Now that the Connemara man here and there has been taught to grow root
crops for cattle he begins to yield, and feeds his beasts, sometimes,
on roots instead of sedge. Thus far he has become a cultivator; but I
have my doubts whether the hard work of tillage suits him well. To get
good crops off a little farm is an undertaking which requires
"sticking to work." It is not so pleasant by a great deal as looking
at cattle and taking them to market. Hence the tilled part of an Irish
farm in the West nearly always bears a very small proportion to that
under pasture. It is only quite recently that artificial feeding for
cattle has been resorted to, and compelled the farmer to grow root
crops. Perhaps, in the present condition of the market for beasts and
grain the nimble-minded Celt is hitting the right nail on the head,
and cattle and dairy farms are the future of the agriculturist, who
will compete against American meat with English produce fed upon
English grass and roots, and upon maize imported from the New World. I
prefer, however, to leave this possibility for the discussion of Mr.
Caird and Mr. Clare Read, and to confine myself to the fact that the
Western cultivator is far less a farmer than a cattle-jobber or
gambler in four-legged stock.
The poor inhabitants of the islands between this place and Achill
Point cannot certainly be accused of a tendency to gad about. Almost
everybody blames their dull determination to remain at home. They are,
I doubt, neither good fishermen nor good farmers--at least, I know
that they neither catch fish nor pay their rent. Neither on Clare
Island, Innishark, Innisbofin, nor Innisturk is there any alacrity in
making the slightest attempt to satisfy the landlord. That these
little tenants are only removed by a hairsbreadth from starvation at
the best of times will be gathered from the facts that Clare Island
with 4,000 acres, some of which is let at 10s. per acre, with common
grazing rights "thrown in," is called upon to support nearly seven
hundred souls. A glance at the picturesque outline of the island will
tell of the proportion of "mountain," that is moor and bog, upon it,
and it is at once seen that unless there is either good fishing or
some other source of supply the land cannot keep the people. No better
proof can be given than that of the greatest tenant, who pays 55l. a
year for some five hundred acres. In Innisbofin and Innishark are at
least 1,500 individuals, nearly all very small tenants, either on the
brink of starvation or pretending to be so. It is nearly as impossible
to extract any rent from them as from the twenty-three families on
Innisturk, an island belonging to Lord Lucan, whose rents are farmed,
so far as Innisturk is concerned, by Mr. MacDonnell, the sub-sheriff,
who is said to have a bad bargain. Lord Lucan, of course, receives his
150l. yearly from his "middleman," who is left to fight it out with
the people, and get 230l., the price at which the land is let, out of
them, if he can. Just now he is getting nothing, and the situation is
becoming strained. The people pay no rent, the sub-sheriff, is not
only losing his margin of profit but cannot get 150l. a year out of
them. They said they liked him well enough but would not pay a
"middleman's" profit, whereupon he offered to take the exact amount
he contracts to pay to Lord Lucan, and forego his profit altogether;
but this proposition, after being received with some amusement, was
not declined exactly, but, in American language, "let slide." And
nothing has been or can be done. For if it were attempted to evict the
Innisturk people the evictors would be accused of hurling an entire
population into the sea.