folks have no idea of preparing for to-morrow. They are almost
entirely destitute of self-reliance. So long as they can carry on from
one day to another they are quite content. The bit of ground they live
on is not half cultivated. In the summer time you may see two or even
three crops growing up together. If they had potatoes on last, they
got them up in the most slovenly way, leaving half the crop in the
ground. They just hoak out with a stick or a bit of board what they
require for that day's food, picking the large ones and leaving the
small ones in the ground. Oats or something else will be seen
half-choked with weeds and the growth from the potatoes so left. The
slovenliness of these people is most exasperating. Of course they are
all Home Rulers in effect, though not in theory. By that I mean that
they have no politics, except to produce politicians by their votes.
They know no more of Home Rule than they know of Heidsieck's
champagne, or Christmas strawberries, or soap and water, or any other
unknown commodity. They are precisely where their ancestors were,
except for the crop of potatoes, which enables them to exist in
greater luxury and with less trouble. Their way is to plant the
potatoes, dig them as required, and live on them either with the aid
of a cow or with the butter-milk of a neighbour who has a cow. No
provision for the future is attempted, because the relatives are sure
to provide for the worn-out and sickly. That shows their
goodheartedness, but it does away with self-dependence. There are some
things so deeply ingrained in the Irish character that nothing and
nobody can touch them. The very priests themselves cannot move them.
Although these people believe that the priests could set them on fire
from head to heel, or strike them paralytic, or refuse them entrance
into heaven, yet the force of habit is so great, and the dread of
public opinion is so powerful, that the people, so long as they remain
in Ireland, will never depart a hair's-breadth from the old ways."
A woman who washed and tidied her children would be a mark for every
bitter tongue in the parish. A striking case came under my own
observation. A woman of the place was speaking most bitterly of
another, and she finished up with,--
"She's the lady all out, niver fear. Shure, she washes and dhresses
the childer ivery mornin', and turns out the girls wid hats on their
heads an' shoes on their feet. Divil a less would sarve her turn! She
has a brick flure to her house, an' she washes it--divil a lie I tell
ye--she washes it--wid wather--an' wid soap an' wather, ivery
Sattherday in the week! The saints betune us an' harm, but all she
wants now is to turn Protestant altogether!"
Four miles away is the village of Carnaun, and there I met Philip
Fahy, with his son Michael, and another young fellow, all three
returning from field work, wearily toiling along the rocky road which
runs through the estate of Major Lobdell. The party stopped and sat
down to smoke with me. The senior took the lead, not with a brogue but
with an accent, translating from the Irish vernacular as he went on.
"Long ye may live! We're glad we met ye, thanks be to God. Yer
honner's glory is the foinest, splindidist man I seen this twinty
year. May God protect ye! 'Tis weary work we does. That foine, big boy
ye see foreninst ye, has eighteenpence a day, nine shillin' a week.
'Tis not enough to support him properly. I have a son in England, the
cliverist lad ye seen this many a day. Sich a scholar, 'twould be no
discredit to have the Queen for his aunt, no it wouldn't. No, he's
only just gone, an' I didn't hear from him yet. I didn't tell ye where
he'd be, for I wouldn't know meself. But me other boys is goin', for
they tell me things will be afther getting worse. God help us, an'
stand betune us an harm! Did ye hear of the Home Rule Bill? What does
it mane at all, at all? Not one of us knows, more than that lump of
stone ye sit on. Will it give us the land for nothin'? for that's all
we hear. We'd be obliged av ye could axplain it a thrifle, for sorra
a one but's bad off, an' Father O'Baithershin says, Howld yer whist,
says he, till ye see what'll happen, says he. Will we get the bit o'
ground without rint, yer honner's glory?"
Philip was dressed for agricultural work in the following style, which
is clearly considered the correct thing in Galway. One tall "top-hat,"
with a long fur like that of a mangy rabbit, waving to the jocund
zephyrs of Carnaun; one cut-away coat of very thick homespun cloth,
having five brass buttons on each breast; breeches and leggings and
stout boots completed the outfit, which fitted like a sentry-box, and
bore a curiously caricatured resemblance to the Court suit of a
Cabinet Minister in full war-paint. The spades with which the
labourers till the ground are strange to the English eye, and seem
calculated to get through the smallest amount of work with the
greatest amount of labour. That they were spades at all was more than
I could make out. "What are those implements?" I asked, to which the
answer came, "Have ye no shpades in England thin!"
The business end is about two feet long and not more than three inches
broad, with a sort of shoulder for the foot. The handles are about six
feet long and end like a mop-stick, without any crossbar. A slight
alteration would turn these tools into pikes, a much more likely
operation than the beating of swords into plough-shares and spears
into pruning-hooks. Meanwhile the length of the handle keeps the
worker from too dangerous proximity to his work. There is a broader
pattern of blade, but the handle is always of the same sanitary
length. The children of the soil turn it over at a wholesome distance.
They keep six feet of pole between the earth and their nobility. Small
blame to them for that same! Shure the wuruld will be afther thim.
Shure there's no sinse at all, at all, in workin' life out to kape
life in.
"Ah, no," said Misther Fahy. "That tobacky has no strinth in it. We
get no satisfaction out iv it. We shmoked a pipe iv it to make frinds,
but we'd not shmoke another. 'Tis like chopped hay or tay-leaves, it
is. Will we walk back wid yer honner's glory? 'Tis only four miles, it
is. No, we bur-rn no powdher here. But on the other side, above
Athenry, 'tis there ye'll see the foin shootin'. Thims the boys for
powdher an' shot! 'Tis more than nine they shot, aye, and more than
tin it was. An' sarve thim right, if they must turn the people out,
an' have their own way. May the Lord protect ye! May angels make yer
bed this night! Long may ye live, an' yer sowl to glory!"
I had written so far, when glancing through the window, I saw a
familiar form, a rosy, healthy, florid gentleman parading on the lawn
which fronts the Railway Hotel, puffing a cigarette, briskly turning
and returning with something of the motion of a captive lion. I knew
that pinky cheek, I knew that bright blue eye; yet here, in the wilds
of Galway who could it be? He plays with two sportive spaniels, and
cries "Down, Sir, down." Thy voice bewrayeth thee, member for North
Galway! The Parnellitic Colonel Nolan, thou, _in propria persona_.
What makes he here? When the great Bill impends, why flee the festive
scene? I'll speak a little with this learned Theban. I board him, as
the French say. For a moment he regards me with suspicion--with a kind
of vade-in-retro-Satanas air--but presently he goes ahead. A fair at
Tuam, which he never misses. Has paired with somebody, Pierpoint he
thinks is the name. His vote will therefore not be lost to his side.
"Nothing will now be done before Whitsuntide. Both parties will be on
their best behaviour. The Conservatives and obstruction, the Liberals
and closure. Strategy to obtain some show of advantage at the recess
is now the little game. Knows not what will happen _re_ Home Rule. The
English Liberals not now so confident as they were. The Government may
be ruined by liquor. 'Tis the fate of Liberal Governments to be ruined
by drink. The Government of 1874 and the next Liberal Cabinet went to
the dogs on liquor. And if the English people are called upon to give
a verdict on a local option bill, the result is rather uncertain.
Chances perhaps against Mr. Gladstone. The Home Rule question is now
quite worked up. The English people are now satisfied to have Home
Rule, but some intervening question might delay its final settlement.
No, the agitation of the past four or five months had not changed the
position one bit. No amount of agitation would now make any difference
at all."
From the probable wrecking of the Gladstonian Cabinet on "liquor" to
the question of Customs, or, as Colonel Nolan preferred to call it, of
Excise, was but an easy step. By a simple _adagio_ movement I
modulated into the Customs question, mentioning the opinion given to
me by Mr. John Jameson himself. The Colonel did not deny, nor admit,
that the Irish people were excellent smugglers, but thought the fears
of the Unionists exaggerated. He was well aware that smuggling might
be carried on--say, on the coast of Connemara and elsewhere, where
were roads and bays and natural harbours galore, with a wild and
lonely shore far from the centres of Government. Probably at first
some money might be lost that way; some little chinks would doubtless
be found; there would be some little leakage. But suppose an initial
loss of L100,000 or L200,000, it was not likely that such a state of
things would be allowed to continue. As to the argument that the rural
police would not then assist the 1,300 coastguards, who with the
police have been sufficient, there was little or no solidity in this
assumption. The Irish Parliament would order the police to assist, and
if they did not execute their orders, or if they allowed themselves to
be bribed, and the Irish Parliament did not prosecute them for
accepting bribes, then the English Government would step in and put
matters right. This is just a typical Home Rule argument, the
confidence trick all over. The Colonel thought that after a certain
amount of shaking down, everything would work sweetly enough. He said
nothing about the Union of Hearts, nor have I yet heard the phrase
from an Irishman.
A keen observer resident at the Athenry Hotel says:--"Of those who
come here the proportion against Home Rule is not less than twenty to
one. Now mark my figures, because they are based on careful notes
extending over the last six months. When you have all the money in the
country, and all the best brains in the country, against the bill,
what good could the bill do if it became law? And while I can see, and
all these people can see, no end of risk, disturbance, upset, loss,
ruin, and everything that is bad, we cannot see anything at all to
compensate for the risk. Nobody can put his finger on anything and
say, 'There, that's the advantage we'll get from the bill.' 'Tis all
fancy, pure fancy. Ireland a nation, and a Roman Catholic nation, is
the cry. We may get that, but we'll be bankrupt next day. 'Tis like
putting a poor man in a grand house without food, furniture, or money,
and without credit to raise anything on the building. There now, ye
might say, ye have a splendid place that's all your own. But wouldn't
the poor man have to leave it, or die of starvation? Of course I wish
to respect my clergy, but I think they should not interfere with
politics."
Colonel Nolan said to me: "The priests wield an immense, an
incalculable power. All are on the same path, all hammer away at the
one point. It is the persistency, the organisation, that tells. In
some cases they have been known to preach for a year and a half at a
stretch on political subjects. What is going to stand against that?"
With these golden words I close my letter. The priest holds the
sceptre of the British Empire. Circumstances have placed in his hands
an astonishing opportunity. Nearly every priest in Ireland is using
his supernatural credit with one solitary aim. We know their
disloyalty, we know they are no friends of England--we know their
influence, their organisation, their perseverance, their
unscrupulousness, their absolute supremacy in Ireland--and it is high
time that England asked herself, in the words of Colonel Nolan--
"What is going to stand against that?"
Athenry (Co. Galway), May 6th.
No. 20.--RELIGION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE IRISH QUESTION.
Tuam has two cathedrals but no barber. You may be shriven but you
cannot be shaved. You may be whitewashed but you cannot be lathered.
"One shaves another; we're neighbourly here," said a railway porter.
They cut each other's hair by the light of nature, in the open street,
with a chorus of bystanders. The Tuamites live in a country of
antiquities, but they have no photographer. Nor could I find a
photograph for sale. The people are sweetly unsophisticated. A
bare-footed old lady sat on the step of the Victoria Hotel, sucking a
black dhudeen, sending out smoke like a factory chimney, the picture
of innocent enjoyment. The streets were full of pigs from the rural
parts, and great was the bargaining and chaffering in Irish, a
language which seemed to be composed of rolling r's and booming
gutturals. A sustained conversation sounds like the jolting of a
country cart over a rocky road, a sudden exclamation like the whirr of
a covey of partridges, an oath like the downfall of a truck-load of
bricks. I arrived in time for the great pig fair, and Tuam was very
busy. It is a poor town, of which the staple trade is religion. The
country around is green and beautiful, with brilliant patches of gorse
in full bloom, every bush a solid mass of brightest yellow, dazzling
you in the sunshine. Many of the streets are wretchedly built, and the
Galway Road shows how easily the Catholic poor are satisfied. Not only
are the cabins in this district aboriginal in build, but they are also
indescribably filthy, and the condition of the inmates, like that of
the people inhabiting the poorer parts of Limerick, is no whit higher
than that obtaining in the wigwams of the native Americans. The hooded
women, black-haired and bare-footed, bronzed and tanned by constant
exposure, are wonderfully like the squaws brought from the Far West by
Buffalo Bill. The men look more civilised, and the pig-jobbers, with
their tall hats, dress coats, and knotty shillelaghs, were the pink of
propriety. Now and then a burst of wild excitement would attract the
stranger, who would hurry up to see the coming homicide, but there was
no manslaughter that I could see. A scene of frantic gesticulation
near the Town Hall promised well, but contrary to expectation, there
was no murder done. Two wild-eyed men, apparently breathing slaughter,
suddenly desisted, reining in their fury and walking off amicably
together. An Irish-speaking policeman explained that one having sold
the other a pig the buyer was asking for twopence off, and that they
now departed to drink the amount between them. People who had done
their business went away in queer carts made to carry turf--little
things with sides like garden palings four or five feet high. Three or
four men would squat on one, closely packed, looking through the bars
like fowls in a hen-coop. The donkeys who drew these chariots had all
their work cut out, and most of their backs cut up. The drivers laid
on with stout ash-plants, sparing no exertion to create the donkey's
enthusiasm. Prices ruled low. "'Tis not afther sellin' thim I am,"
said a peasant who had got rid of his pigs, "'tis bestowin' thim I
was, the craythurs. The counthry is ruinated intirely, an' so it is.
By the holy poker of Methesulum, the prices we got this day for
lowness bangs Banagher, an' Banagher bangs the divil."
The Tuamites spare a little time for politics and boycotting. The
public spirit and contempt for British law are all that could be
desired by Irish patriotism. Mr. Strachan has recently bought some
land. The previous owner, Mr. Dominick Leonard, brother of Dr. Leonard
of Athenry, and of Judge Leonard of London, had raised money on the
property, and failed to pay interest or principal. An English
insurance company determined to realize, and the affair went into the
Land Court, Mr. Strachan buying part of the estate for L2,765. It was
easy enough to buy, and even to pay, but to get possession was quite
another thing. Precise information is difficult to get, for while some
decline to say a word, others are mutually contradictory, and a State
Commission would hardly sift truth from the confusing mass of details,
denials, assertions, and counter-assertions. This much is clear
enough. A tenant named Ruane was required to leave a house, with
ground, which he had held on the estate bought by Mr. Strachan. He had
paid no rent for a long time. Of course he refused to leave, and, a
decree having been obtained, he was duly evicted. But, as Lady de
Burgho said, evictions do no good. When the officers of the law went
home to tea, Mr. Ruane went home also, breaking the locks, forcing the
doors, reinstating himself and his furniture, planting his Lares and
Penates in their old situations, hanging up his caubeen on the
ancestral nail, and crossing his patriotic shin-bones on the familiar
hearth. Pulled up for trespass, he declared that if sent to prison
fifty times he would still return to the darling spot, and defied the
British army and navy--horse, foot, and artillery--ironclads, marines,
and 100-ton guns, to keep him out. For three acts of trespass he got
three weeks imprisonment. The moment he was released Mr. Ruane walked
back home, and took possession once again. There he is now, laughing
at the Empire on which the sun never sets. When a certain bishop read
"Paradise Lost" to a sporting lord, the impatient auditor's attention
was arrested by some bold speech of Satan, whereupon he exclaimed
"Dang me, if I don't back that chap. I like his pluck, and I hope
he'll win." Something like this might be said of Ruane.
And Ruane will stick to his land. A public meeting held on Sunday week
determined to support him, and to show forth its mind by planting the
ground for him. Mr. Strachan seems to have seen the futility of
looking to the law, on the security of which he invested his money.
Too late he finds that his savings are not safe, and he endeavours to
make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. He has offered Ruane
five acres of land and a house, and Ruane would have accepted with
thanks had he been allowed. But he went to a meeting in some outlying
village, and received his orders from the Land League. For, be it
observed, that the people of these parts speak of the Land League as
existing in full force. Ruane declined the handsome offer of the
kind-hearted Strachan. Ruane will hold the house and land from which
he has been evicted, _because_ he had been evicted, and that the
people may see that they have the mastery. Ruane would prefer the
proffered land, but private interests must give way to the public
weal. England must be smashed, treated with contumely; her laws, her
officers, her edicts treated with contempt, laughed at by every naked
gutter-snipe, rendered null and void. That this can be done with
perfect impunity is the teaching of priests, Fenians, Nationalists,
Federationists--call them what you will--all alike flagrantly disloyal
to the English Crown. Not worth while to differentiate them. As the
sailor said of crocodiles and alligators, "There's no difference at
all. They're all tarnation varmint together."
Mr. Strachan is boycotted, and goes about with a guard of three
policemen. What will happen from one day to another nobody can tell.
Since I last mentioned Mr. Blood, of Ennis, that most estimable
gentleman has been again fired on, this time at a range of 400 yards,
and when guarded by the four policemen who accompany him everywhere.
Three shots were fired, and the police found an empty rifle cartridge
at the firing point. A Protestant in Tuam said to me:--
"Home Rule would mean that every Protestant would have to fly the
country. Why should there not be a return to the persecutions of years
ago? When first I came to the place the Protestants were hooted as
they went to church, and I can remember seeing this very Strachan
going to worship on Sunday morning, his black go-to-meeting coat so
covered with the spittle of the mob that you would not know him. His
wife would come down with a Bible, and the children would run along
shouting 'Here comes mother Strachan, with the devil in her fist.'
Why, the young men got cows' horns and fixed them up with strings, so
that they could tie them on their foreheads. Then with these horns on
they would walk before and behind the Protestants as they went to
church or left it, to show that the devil was accompanying them. They
always figure the devil as being horned. One of the little barefooted
boys who ran after these Protestants is now a holy priest in Tuam. And
what the people were then, so they will be now, once they get the
upper hand. The educated Catholics are excellent people, none better
anywhere, none more tolerant. Nothing to fear from them. But how many
are there? Look at the masses of ignorant people around us. The
density of their ignorance is something that the people of England
cannot understand. They have no examples of it. The most stupid and
uninformed English you can find have some ray of enlightenment. These
people are steeped in ignorance and superstition. Their religion is
nothing but fetichism. Their politics? well, they are blind tools of
the priests: what else can be said? And the priests have but one
object. In all times, in all countries, the Roman Catholic Church has
aimed at absolute dominion. The religious question is at the bottom of
it all."
No matter where an educated Irishman begins, that is where he always
ends. Catholics and Protestants alike come round to the same point at
last, though with evident reluctance. The Protestant Unionists
especially avoid all mention of religion as long as possible. They
know the credal argument excites suspicion. They attack Home Rule from
every other point of view, and sometimes you think you have
encountered a person of different opinion. Wait till he knows you a
little better, has more confidence in your fairness, stands in less
fear of a possible snub. Sooner or later, sure as the night follows
the day, he is bound to say--
"The religious question is at the bottom of it all."
The people of Ireland do not want an Irish Parliament, and the failure
of the bill would not trouble them in the least. They do not care a
brass farthing for the bill one way or the other. The great heart of
the people is untouched. The masses know nothing of it, and will not
feel its loss. They are in the hands of priests and agitators, these
poor unlettered peasants, and their blind voting, their inarticulate
voice, translated into menace and mock patriotism. Everybody admits
that the people would be happy and content if only left alone.
Half-a-dozen ruffians with rifles can boss a whole country side, and
the people must do as they are told. They do not believe in the
secrecy of the ballot. They believe that the priests by their
supernatural powers are able to know how everybody voted, and I am
assured on highly respectable authority that the secrecy of the ballot
in Ireland is, in some parts, a questionable point. At the same time,
there is everywhere a strong opinion that another election will give
very different results in Ireland. And everywhere there is a growing
feeling that the Bill will not become law. This explains the slight
rise in the value of Irish securities.
Just outside Tuam I came upon a neatly built, deep-thatched villa,
with a flower garden in front, a carefully cultivated kitchen garden
running along the road, trim hedges, smart white palings, an orchard
of fine young trees, a general air of neatness, industry, prosperity,
which, under the circumstances, was positively staggering. I had
passed along a mile of cabins in every stage of ruin, from the
solitary chimney still standing to the more recent ruin with two
gables, from the inhabited pig-sty to the hut whereon grew crops of
long grass. I had noted the old lady clad in sackcloth and ashes, who,
having invested the combined riches of the neighbourhood in six
oranges and a bottle of pop, was sitting on the ground, alternately
contemplating the three-legged stool which held the locked-up capital
and her own sooty toes, immersed in melancholy reflections anent the
present depression in commercial circles. The Paradisaic cottage was
startling after this. I stopped a bare-legged boy, and found that the
place belonged to a Black Protestant, and, what was worse, a
Presbyterian, and, what was superlatively bad, a Scots Presbyterian.
Presently I met a tweed-clad form, red-faced and huge of shoulder,
full of strange accents and bearded like the pard. Berwickshire gave
him birth, but he has "done time" in Ireland.