Books: The Letters of Norah on her Tour Through Ireland

M >> Margaret Dixon McDougall >> The Letters of Norah on her Tour Through Ireland

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It is spring weather and spring work is going on. Men are putting out
manure, carrying it in creels on their backs. Asses are the prevailing
beasts of burden, carrying about turf in creels or drawing hay--a big
load to a small ass. Men and women and children are out planting
potatoes in patches of reclaimed bog. Very few cattle are to be seen
compared to the extent of the grazing lands.

The formation of rock here in the mountain tops has a resemblance to the
fortification-looking rocks at McGilligan, but they are neither so lofty
nor so abrupt. In one place there was a mighty cleft in the rock, as if
some giant had attempted to cut a slice off the front of the rock and
had not quite succeeded. I was told by my driver that an old man lived
in the cleft behind the rock; it was said also that a ghost haunted it.
I wonder if the ghost makes poteen.

Apart from the condition of the country and the poverty of the people a
drive through the long glen of Glenade on a pleasant day is delightful.
The hills swell into every shape, the houses--if they were only good
houses--nestle in such romantic nooks, and the eternal mountains rising
up to the clouds bound the glen on each side. I saw one house made of
sods, thatched with rushes, that was not much bigger or roomier than a
charcoal heap. I would have thought it was something of that kind only
for the hole that served for a chimney.

The people are very civil, and if they only knew what would please you,
would say it whether they thought it or not. If they do not know what
side you belong to, no people could be more reticent.

The Land League is very popular. Since the Land League spread and the
agitation forced public attention to the extreme need of the people many
landlords have reduced their rents. Lord Massey is a popular landlord;
anything unpopular done on his estate, Mr. LaTouche, his agent, has laid
to his door.

XXVI.

TENANTS VOLUNTARILY RAISING THE RENT TO ASSIST THEIR LANDLORDS--
BEAUTIFUL IRISH LANDSCAPES--CANADIAN EYES--RENTS IN LEITRIM--THE
POTATO.

Determined, if possible, to hear something of the landlord's view of
the land question, I wrote to Mr. Corscadden, the so unpopular landlord,
asking for an interview. This gentleman, some time ago, moved the
authorities to erect an iron hut for the police at Cleighragh, among the
mountains that garrison Glenade. There had been an encounter there, a
kind of local shindy, between him and his tenants, when they prevented
him from removing hay in August last. The police came in large numbers
to erect the hut, but it could not be got to the place, for no one would
draw it out to Glenade.

Mr. Corscadden bought this small parcel of land at Glenade from a Mr.
Tottenham; not the unpopular Tottenham, but another, much beloved by his
people. He lived above his income, and was embarrassed in consequence.
His tenants voluntarily raised the rents on themselves for fear he would
be obliged to sell the land, and they might pass into the hands of a bad
landlord. They raised the rent twice on themselves, and after all he was
obliged to sell, and the fate they dreaded came upon them; they passed
into Mr. Corscadden's hands.

During the famine this part of Leitrim got relief from the Mansion House
Fund. Mr. Corscadden never gave a penny; never answered a letter
addressed to him on the subject.

Having posted my letter I went out among the people who were, or were to
be, evicted in the country around Kiltyclogher, (church of the stone
house, or among the stones). We left the bright green fields that belt
around Manor Hamilton and the grand trees that overshade the same green
fields, and drove up among the hills, in a contrary direction from
Glenade. A beautiful day, warm and pleasant, shone upon us; the round-
headed sycamores are leafed out, and the larch has shaken out her
tassels, the ditch backs are blazing with primroses and the black thorns
are white with bloom, and there are millions of daisies in the grass. We
passed over some good land at the roadside, some green fields in the
valleys, but there is a very great deal of waste and also of barren
land. A great deal of the tilled land is bog, a good deal of the waste
land is shallow earth overlying rocks, some is cumbered with great
boulders, and rough with heather and whins.

My companion, a lady active in the Ladies' Land League, thought it good
land and worth reclaiming if let at a low rent. I, looking at it with
Canadian eyes, would not have taken a gift of it and be bound to reclaim
it. If I rented a few acres of those wild hills, and rooted out the
whins and raised and removed the stones, I would think it unjust to
raise the rent on me because of my labor.

It is admitted by all who know anything of the matter, that the tenants
have reclaimed what land is reclaimed. Rent in County Leitrim has been
raised from L24,990 to L170,670 within the last eighty years, and is
L34,144 above the Government valuation.

We called at the house of a tenant farmer who had been evicted for non-
payment of rent, and was back as a weekly tenant. He was putting in some
crop, working alone in the field. He came to speak to my companion. He
had got no word from the landlord as to whether he would put in any crop
or not. He was in sore anxiety between his fear of offending the
landlord, and the fear of doing anything against the rules of the Land
League. His little boys were putting out manure in creels, carrying it
on their shoulders. He had no means of paying rent. If he were forgiven
the rent due and a year's rent to come, he might then be in a position
to resume paying rent. This is my own opinion. The poor man himself was
sorely perplexed and cast down. A thin, white, helpless-looking man. The
terrors of the eviction had taken hold of his wife, who was sickly. The
only hope they had was that God would bless the potato crop, for they
had secured Champion potatoes for seed.

The potatoes that used to flourish in Ireland forty years ago, have
entirely passed away. Even the Champion potato is not very good. The
skin is thick and has a diseased appearance and the potato has black
spots on the outside. I think the land is suffering from an overdose of
such manure as they apply here, and the leaf mould is entirely
exhausted. Of course this is the opinion of one who knows nothing of
farming.

Passed another house, a widow's, who has been evicted. The family had
been put out and the official went to get some water to quench the fire;
all the little household belongings were scattered about. Putting out
the fire and fastening up the door were the last acts of the eviction.
While the official's back was turned, the widow slipped in again, and
was fastened up in the house, the children being outside. Her sons are a
little silly. The children camp outside and she holds the garrison
inside. She thinks the Land Bill or the Land League, or something
miraculous will turn up to help her if she keeps possession for a while.
Fear that she has done wrong and laid herself open to some greater
punishment, and excitement have blanched her face. In the dim evening
she sits at the window inside; the children have a gipsy fire and sit
under the window outside. When the gloaming has passed and dark night
settled down, the police come over from the barracks to see if any of
the children have gone in beside the mother. This would be taking
forcible possession, and some other process of law would be possible. To
make assurance sure, the policeman puts his head close to the window,
sees the widow's white face and wild eyes sitting in the dark alone, and
the children sitting under the window, and then the party, with
something like tears in their eyes, something very like pity in their
hearts, go back to the barracks.

I wonder how these things will end. It is not stubbornness, but
helplessness and despair that makes them cling so to their homes,
combined with an utter dread of the disgrace and separation involved in
going to the workhouse. I listened to one tale after another of
harassment, misery and thoughtless oppression in Kiltyclogher till my
heart was sick, and I felt one desire--to run away that I might hear no
more. I applied the traditional grain of salt to what I heard, but could
not manage to add it to what I saw.

Mr. Tottenham rules part of Kiltyclogher. This man has a very evil name
among the tenants. Reclamation of land by very poor people is a very
serious matter. Not only do the bogs require drains twenty-one feet
apart and three deep (I have seen the people in the act of making such
drains again and again); not only do the surface stones require to be
gathered off, but great stones and immense boulders that obstruct the
formation of the drains, have to be removed, and as they have no powder
for blasting, they take the primitive method of kindling great fires
over the rock and splitting it up that way, so that their husbandry is
farming under difficulties. As the Fermanagh farmer said, they put their
lives into it.

In the long ago the landlords of Ireland, though extravagant, were not,
as a class, unkindly, but their waste involved the land, and their
absenteeism prevented any thoughts for the benefit of the country ever
occurring to them.

The commercial spirit has invaded the aristocracy and men have begun to
see visions of redeeming their lands from encumbrances and to dream
dreams of still greater aggrandizement, all to be realized by commercial
tact in raising the rents and abolishing the long-suffering people who
could not be squeezed any farther. It was then that the beginning of the
present desperate state of things was inaugurated. I do not think the
landlords deliberately meant to oppress. I think they looked to the one
thing, raising their rental, increasing their income, and went over
everything, through everything to the desired end. They have succeeded
in making a wide separation between the land-holding and land-tilling
classes. It will be a difficult matter to bring them together again.

XXVII.

A HARD LANDLORD INTERVIEWED--CONFLICTING STATEMENTS--COLD STEEL.

The morning after our return to Manor Hamilton, Mr. Corscadden called
on me in response to my note asking for an interview. I had formed a
mental picture of what this gentleman would be like from the description
I had heard of his actions. I found him very different. An elderly man,
tall, gray-haired, soft-spoken, with a certain hesitation of manner,
dressed like a better class-farmer, eyes that looked you square in the
face without flinching, and yet had a kindly expression. This was Mr.
Corscadden. I need not say he was not the man I expected him to be.

He, very kindly indeed, entered into an explanation of his management of
this property since it fell into his hands. He mentioned, by the way,
that he was a man of the people; had risen to his present position by
industry and stern thrift; what he had he owed, under the blessing of
God, to his own exertions and economy. He declared that he ruled his
conduct to his tenants by what he should wish to be done to himself if
in their place.

He then took up the case of one tenant, James Gilray, who waited on him
to enquire, "What are you going to do with me?" This man, according to
Mr. Corscadden's statement, owed three years' rent, amounting to L30;
owed L15 additional money paid into the bank for him; owed L6 for a
field, "for which I used to get L11 to L12." "Now," said Mr. Corscadden
to him, "what do you want?" "I want," said the man, "to have my place at
the former rent." "Do you," said Mr. Corscadden, "want your land at what
it was 118 years ago? Land has raised in value five times since then."
There is here a wide discrepancy between this statement of Mr.
Corscadden's and the statement of another gentleman--not a tenant--who
professed himself well acquainted with the subject. He said that before
Mr. Corscadden bought the land the tenants had voluntarily increased the
rent on themselves twice, for fear of passing out of the hands of the
man they knew into the hands of a stranger; so that it was under a rack
rent when Mr. Corscadden bought it.

Another case referred to by Mr. Corscadden was that of a man to whom he
had rented a farm of 20 acres at L16. He got one year's rent; two and a
half years were due, when he served a writ of ejectment. Mr. Corscadden
said to this man; "You are a bad farmer and you know it. You have about
L150 worth of stock; I will give you L40; leave my place and go to
America. He took the money," said the old gentleman pathetically, "and
did not go to America, but rented another farm. The woman at Glenade
whom you went to see I have kept--supported--for years. Her husband did
not pay his rent, and I gave him L10 to pay his passage to America. He
is a bad man. It is rumored that he has married another woman; his wife
never hears from him."

"It is wonderful, Mr. Corscadden," I remarked, "when you are so kind
that you have such a bad name as a landlord. Mr. Tottenham and you are
the most unpopular landlords in Leitrim."

"I do not know why; I act as I would wish others to do to me. I do not
forget that I have to give an account to the Holy One."

"You are accused of wasting away the tenants, because cattle and sheep
are more profitable than people."

"I transferred two to places down near the sea and gave them better land
than I took from them. I have been speaking about the others whom I paid
to remove."

"People complain that you took the mountain pasture from the tenants and
then raised the rent of the remainder to double of what they had paid
for all."

"Not double, nearly double. As to the mountain, I called them together
and proposed taking the mountain, as they had nothing to put on it; they
had not a beast. They consented, at least they made no objections. I
wanted the mountains for Scotch sheep. I put on about a hundred; there
are few to be seen now; they have disappeared."

He then mentioned the shooting at his son, the burning of the office
houses with hay and potatoes stored there, the trouble he had had about
the police hut which the constabulary had drawn to Glenade that morning.

"That will cost the country as much as L500," said Mr. Corscadden. "They
are unthrifty in this country, they eat all the large potatoes, plant
all the little runts, till they have run out the seed." (Alas, what will
not hunger do!) "They come into market with their butter in small
quantities, wasting a day and sacrificing the butter." (Need again: time
is wasted here, for labor is so plentiful and men are so cheap that time
has no value in their eyes.)

I asked Mr. Corscadden what he thought would be a remedy for this
dreadful state of things. He did not see a remedy except emigration. Mr.
Corscadden took his leave politely, wishing me a pleasant tour through
my own country. I have as faithfully as possible recorded Mr.
Corscadden's side of the story. The tenant's side I have softened
considerably, and omitted some things altogether to be inside of the
mark. One thing I forgot to mention: Mr. Corscadden said that the
tenants might raise a couple of pigs or a heifer and pay the rent and
have all the rest to themselves.

I said, "When these bad years ending in one of positive famine have
stripped the poorer tenants bare, and pigs are so dear, where could a
poor man get thirty shillings to buy a sucking pig or buy provender to
feed it?" This is true, the first step is the difficulty. They might do
this, or this, or this, and it would be profitable, but where are the
means to take the first step? It is easy to stand afar off and say, be
economical, be industrious, and you will prosper. In the meantime pay up
the back rent or get out of this and give place to better men. They tell
me that Mr. LaTouche charges the poor creatures interest on all the back
rent. Some who have paid their rent here did not--could not--raise it on
their farms, but got it from friends in America.

Mr. Corscadden asked me in the course of our conversation what I would
consider a fair rent. I said I would consider the rent fair that was
raised on the land for which rent was paid, leaving behind enough to
live on, and something to spare, so that one bad season or two would not
reduce the tenant to beggary.

The fact of the matter is, and I would be false to my own conscience if
I hesitated to say it, these people have been kept drained bare; the
hard years reduced them to helpless poverty, and now the only remedy is
to get rid of them altogether. The price of these military and police,
the price of these special services rendered to unpopular landlords to
aid them in grinding down these wretched people, spent to help them
would go far to make prosperity possible to them once more. If they had
a rent they could pay and live, the millstone of arrears taken from
about their necks, I believe they would become both loyal and contented.
Empty stomachs, bare clothing, lying hard and cold at night through
poverty is trying to loyalty.

The turbary nuisance is the great oppression of all. Want of food is
bad, but want of fuel added to it! Forty years ago renting land meant
getting a bit of bog in with the land. When there is a special charge
for the privilege of cutting turf and the times so hard there is much
additional suffering.

In the famine time people getting relief had to travel for the ticket,
travel to get the meal, and then go to gather whins or heather on the
hills to cook it, and the hungry children waiting all the time. A
respectable person said to me the famine was worst on respectable
people, for looking for the red ticket and carrying it to get meal by it
was like the pains of death.

Wherever I went through Leitrim I saw people, scattered here and there,
gathering twigs for fuel or coming toward home with their burden of
twigs on their backs. I declare I thought often of the Israelites
scattered through the fields of Egypt gathering stubble instead of
straw. A tenant who objects to anything, who is not properly obedient
and respectful, can have the screw turned upon him about the turf as
well as about the rent.

XXVIII.

THE MANOR HAMILTON WORKHOUSE--TO THE SOUTH AND WESTWARD--A CHANGE OF
SCENERY--LORD PALMERSTON.

Before leaving Manor Hamilton, I determined to see the poor-house, the
last shelter for the evicted people. I was informed that it was
conducted in a very economical manner. It is on the outskirts of the
town. On my way there I went up a little hill to look at a picturesque
Episcopalian church perched up there amid the trees, surrounded by a
pretty, well-kept burying-ground. The church walls were ornamented with
memorial slabs set in the wall commemorating people whose remains were
not buried there. A pretty cottage stood by the gate, at the door of
which a decent-looking woman sat sewing. I addressed a few questions to
her as to the name of the pastor, the size of his flock, &c. Her answers
were guarded--very.

I made my way down the hill, and over to the workhouse. The grounds
before the entrance were not laid out with the taste observable at
Enniskillen. Perhaps they had not a professional gardener among their
inmates. At the entrance a person was leaning against the door in an
easy attitude. I enquired if I might be allowed to see through the
workhouse. He answered by asking what my business was. I informed him
that I was correspondent for a Canadian newspaper. He then enquired if
the paper I wrote for was a Conservative paper. I replied that I would
not describe it as a Conservative paper, but as a religious paper. He
then said the matron was not at home, and I prepared to leave. I
enquired first if he was the master. He replied in the affirmative, and
then said he would get the porter to show me round. "You will show her
through," he said, to a stout, heavy person sitting in the entry.

This gentleman, who brought to my mind the estimable Jeremiah
Flintwinch, accordingly showed me through the building. We passed the
closed doors of the casual ward, where intending inmates were examined
for admittance, and casuals were lodged for the night. Every door was
unlocked to admit us and carefully locked behind us, conveying an idea
of very prison-like administration. The able-bodied were at work, I
suppose, for few were visible except women who were nursing children.
There was a large number of patients in the infirmary wards. One man
whose bed was on the floor was evidently very near the gate we all must
enter. He never opened his eyes or seemed conscious of the presence of a
stranger. I noticed a little boy lift the poor head to place it easier.
I saw no one whom I could imagine was a nurse. The kindness and
tenderness of the beggar nurses in the sick wards of the workhouse at
Ballymena struck me forcibly. The absence of anything of the kind struck
me forcibly in Manor Hamilton.

The children in this workhouse were pretty numerous. They demanded
something from me with the air of little footpads. The women were little
better. I was told, pretty imperatively, to look in my pockets. One
woman rushed after me half way up stairs as if she would compel a gift.
Coming back with my throat full of feelings, I was directed to a little
desk behind the door, where lay the book for visitors: I was shown the
place where remarks were to be entered. I wrote my name standing, as
there was no other way provided. I was hardly fit to write cool remarks.
The locked doors, the nurses conspicuous by their absence, the
importunate beggars, the absent matron, the whole establishment was far
below anything of the kind I had yet seen in Ireland. One woman had made
her appearance from some unexpected place, and explained to me with
floury hands, that if she were not baking she would herself show me
through the house.

I think it is hard for struggling poverty to go down so far as to take
shelter in the workhouse. It must be like the bitterness of death. I
cannot imagine the feeling of any human beings when the big door clashes
on them, the key turns, and they find themselves an inmate of the
workhouse at Manor Hamilton. I do not wonder that the creatures starving
outside preferred to suffer rather than go in. When I returned to the
entrance the master had been joined by some others who were helping him
to do nothing. He asked me over his shoulder what I thought of the
house. I answered that it was a fine building, and walked down the
avenue, wishing I was able to speak in a cool manner and to tell him
what I thought of the house and of his management of the same.

Left Manor Hamilton on the long car for Sligo. The long car is the
unworthy successor of the defunct mail coach of blessed memory. It is an
exaggerated jaunting car arranged on the wheels and axles of a lumber
waggon and it is drawn by a span sometimes; in this case, by four
horses. A female was waving her hands and shouting incoherent blessings
after us as we started. It might be for me or it might be for the land
agent, who sat on the same side. I smiled by way of willingness to
accept it, for it is better to have a blessing slung after one than a
curse or a big stone.

Our road skirted Benbo (the hill of cattle), sacred now to rabbits and
hares and any other small game that can shelter on its bald sides. Up
hill and down hill, between hills and around hills, mountains of every
shape and degree of bareness and baldness looking down at us over one
another's shoulders as we drove along. An ambitious little peasant clung
on behind with his hands, his little bare feet thudding on the smooth
road and over the loose layer of sharp stones that lay edge upwards in
places. He thought he was taking a ride. We passed small fields of
reclaimed bog, where ragged men were planting potatoes in narrow ridges.
We passed the brown fields where nothing will be planted; passed the
small donkeys with their big loads; passed green meadows on a small
scale; in places here and there, passed the houses, dark, damp and
unwholesome, where these people live.

After we had rumbled on for some miles, enjoying blinks of cold
sunshine, enduring heavy scudding showers, the landscape began to soften
considerably. The grass grew green instead of olive, and trees clustered
along the road. Umbrageous sycamores, claiming kindred with our maples,
began to stand along the road singly and in clusters. We were still in a
valley bounded by mountains, but the hill-sides waved with dark green
and light green foliage, where the fir stretched upward tall plumes and
the larch shook downward tasseled streamers. The green of the fields
became greener and richer, the dark sterile moss-covered mountains
retreated and frowned at us from the distance; we were leaving the
hungry hills of north Leitrim for the pleasant valleys that lie smiling
around Sligo.

The trees grew larger, the sycamores massed together in their full
leafiness, bringing visions of a sugar bush in the time of leaves; they
were mingled with the delicious green of the newly-leaved beech. The
round-headed chestnuts, with their clustered leaves, were covered with
tall spikes of blossom like the tapers on an overgrown Christmas tree.
The ash and oak are shaking out their leaves tardily; the orchards are
white with the bridal bloom of May. The fields are flocked with myriads
of happy eyed daisies, the ditch backs glowing with golden blossoms. My
eyes make me wealthy with looking at beauty.

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