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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After a while I came out and went over to the school. There were 78
children present, all girls, all clean and decent. There was one
teacher, a pleasant-faced young woman, who had two monitor assistants.
The order kept was very good, the school furniture neat, a good many
maps on the wall, and the children seemed busy and interested. The
teacher told me that the income of the school, owing to results fees--a
sum paid by Government according to the progress of the pupils, was
sometimes as high as L80 per annum.

After leaving the school, went over to the booths to buy some trifle as
a memorial of Knock. The man in the booth told me I had come from
America. There was another man with his arm in a sling, who had come
from America also. He had come to visit Knock. I asked him if his arm
was better. He said it was, but not entirely well. I asked the man in
the booth if he had ever seen anything. He said that he did not come
there to see anything, but to make a living. He and the American had
both bits of the original plaster, which they showed to me.

The priest of the place was not at home. He lives in a cottage down the
hill a bit, in sight of the church. I had seen all there was to be seen,
so I made my purchase and bid good-bye to Knock, and drove back to
Claremorris.

Claremorris is a nice enough little town, very quiet, as if not much of
any great work was going on. Where there are factories I notice the
people step quickly and look straight ahead. Over towns which depend on
the trading of the country round there is an air of repose and leisure.
I did not see much of Claremorris, for I soon left it behind in going to
Ballinrobe by car.

The land here seems very rich. I remarked this to my travelling
companions, who told me that I was on the rich plains of Mayo. The
fields are large and well cultivated. There were no signs of the abject
poverty, wee, stony fields, horrible rookeries of houses that exist in
the shadow of the Ox hills. Not that the houses of the laborers here
were good; for that, a good, decent laborer's house, I have not yet seen
in Ireland, except on Mr. Young's Galgorm estate. They may exist on
other estates, I dare say they do, but I have not seen them. This
country over which we were travelling was as rich with round-headed
trees and wide meadows as a gentleman's park. The road, a particularly
meandering one, passed through Hollymount--a lovely place--and through
Carrowmore, my companions telling me of the landlords and the tenants as
we drove along. The rent was high and hard to make up, the turf far to
draw, that was all. There was no account of vexatious office rules or
special acts of tyranny related to me at all.

Ballinrobe, on the river Robe, is near Lough Mask, and is another quiet,
pretty, leisurely little town. I was troubled with neuralgia and did not
see much of it. Opposite the hotel was the minister's residence, amid
gardens, all shut in behind a stone wall high enough for a rampart.
Through an archway from the street was the church where he ministered,
sitting meditating among the tombs. I wandered into this place one day
on my way to the post-office. Noticed the great number of the name of
Cuffe who were buried there. Cuffe is the family name of Lord Tyrawley.

The Catholic church sits back from the street a good way and the ground
before it is laid out in flowers. There are some images of saints
through the grounds, which are set in arches of rock work, over which
climbing plants are trained. There is also a community of Christian
Brothers, who have a school here. Their building had so much glass in
front, with so many geraniums in flower, a perfect blaze of them behind
the glass, that it looked like a conservatory.

Left Ballinrobe behind and drove to Lough Mask Castle, where the
celebrated Captain Boycott managed to kick up such a fuss. We passed a
couple of iron huts occupied by policemen, who came out to look at us. I
may as well mention that after I left Ballinrobe I found that the driver
was more "than three-quarters over the bay." He had a way of talking to
himself on the land question, of Captain Boycott, Lord Mountmorris and
Lord Ardilaun, that was not pleasant to listen to, especially as he
spiced his monologue with many words that savored strongly of brimstone.
I was not without hope that the fresh air might dissipate the fumes of
liquor from his brain as we drove along. I had the more hope of this as
I could see that he was a habitual drinker, poor man, as his face but
too plainly testified. Drink is universal here, as medicine a universal
remedy, as a daily, almost hourly, stimulant for young, and old, rich
and poor, man and woman. They tell me that Scotland is worse; if so,
Scotland should be prayed for. I confess that I have not seen much
drunkenness. I saw very few that I could call drunk, but it is constant,
steady, universal, or almost so, sipping and tippling.

XLII.

LOUGH MASK CASTLE--CAPTAIN BOYCOTT AND HIS POLICY--LORD MOUNTMORRIS.

Well, my Jehu did sober up considerably before we halted at the
entrance gates of Lough Mask Castle. The sharp hi! hi! of the driver
brought out the gate keeper, a poor looking and sour looking woman, who
admitted us into the drive which lay through some fields and beside some
young plantations. In one place the driver pulled up, our way lay
through a large field divided by the road into two unequal parts.

He told me to look round me, which I did. "On one side here, were the
dragoons; their horses were picketed here; on the other side was the
infantry. It was awful weather. What them men and their horses stood of
hardships and misery no tongue could tell. The dragoons marched down
here, looking fine and bowld, their horses were sleek and fat and
shining, when they marched away they wor staggering with the wakeness
and the men wor purty wilted looking. He made them believe he needed
protection." This with a growl that had depths of meaning in it.

"He's coming back here again. Out among nagurs or anywhere else he could
not find them to put up with him like ourselves." Of course I omit the
strong words that were used as garnishing. I must own that this was the
first time that any carman had used profane language before me--and it
wasn't himself was in it at all at all but the whiskey. "The soldiers,
whin they wor here," continued the old man, "cut down the trees of the
plantation for firing. That went to his heart, it did. How could they
help themselves, I'd like to know? Sure they would have perished with
the cowld and the wet among the pelting of the snow and the sleet.
Wherever they are this blessed day they don't admire the memory of
Captain Boycott. What I like is behaviour in aither man or baste, and
Captain Boycott had no behaviour. They killed a sheep to ate, or maybe
two, and sorra a blame to them. It was ate or die wid them; but ye see
the gallant Captain didn't like it." About this time a volley of
anathemas was poured out against the absent Captain.

During all this we were sitting on the car viewing the field where the
bivouac had been. A policeman with a questioning look on a pleasant face
came along from the great house with a tin pail in his hand. "What have
you got in the can!" asks this inquisitive car driver. "Milk," responded
the policeman. "You would have got no milk at the big house in Captain
Boycott's time."

"Oh; yes, I would," said the other, "when I paid for it." I did not like
to question this man, for he did swear so, but I ventured to ask if Mrs.
Boycott were equally as much disliked as her husband. "Never heard a
word against her in my life. The people had no reason but to like her.
Hard word or hard deed she left no memory of behind her."

We drove past the residence where Captain Boycott lived, a fine spacious
house finished in plaster to imitate stone. The grounds near the house
were nicely laid out, but that is the universal rule in Ireland. Drove
through a gateway into the yard. In a stable loft in the yard some
policemen were lodged. The driver hallooed at them, and one came down
the stone steps to see what protective duty was asked of him. I asked
him to show me the ruins, and he complied in the kindest manner. Across
the barnyard and through a shed we made our way into the castle ruins.
There are many nooks and crannies, as is the case in these ancient ruins
generally, but the main body of the castle was divided into two large
apartments, with the roof on the floor of course. I noticed the track of
recent fire along the old walls. He said it was made by the officers who
were down there on protective service for Capt. Boycott. They had one
apartment and cooked there, and the police the other. These quarters
open to the sky, and having stones on the floor, did not look
comfortable.

We went up the circular stairs to the ramparts at the top. There is a
walk round the top behind the battlements. Looking down at the remains
of a fireplace in what was a lofty second story, my guide told me there
was a name and a date there. The name Fitzgerald, I forget the date; so
this must have been one of the Geraldine castles.

There is a fine view from the battlements. Lough Mask, which is very
shallow here, a little water and a great many stones overtopping it in
profusion, lies before us, and an extensive country, partly fertile, in
round hills and green valleys, partly crusted over with stones.

A policeman, not my guide on this occasion, told me, illustrative of the
disposition of Captain Boycott, that the hut in which the police were
sheltered was very damp--water, in fact, was running on the floor under
their bed. They had a small coal stove, and on the coal becoming
exhausted before they got a further supply, one of the men being down
sick, they ventured to ask Captain Boycott for the loan of a lump or two
of coal to keep their stove going till their supplies were received, and
he refused them. They were obliged to protect his ass and water cart
down into the lake to draw water from out beyond the edge where the
water was deep, and, therefore, could be dipped up clean. He would not
allow them to get any of the water for their own use after it was drawn,
or lend them the ass to draw for themselves. They had either to wade out
in the lake or dip up as they could at the edge. I made a slight mistake
in saying that the castle was entirely roofless; there was part of an
arched roof where the fire had been. I asked the policeman if they had
any night patrol duty now. Oh, yes, he said, we patrol every night,
although we never see anything worse than ourselves.

Left Lough Mask, its castled ruins and modern mansion behind us, and
drove through the gates again. I felt convinced that the people were not
filled with an unreasoning hate against Captain Boycott. They thought
they had reason, deep reason, and they scrupulously excepted Mrs.
Boycott from any censure bestowed on him.

Along the road we drove, until from an eminence we could see Lough Mask
in its beauty, with its bays and islands spread out beneath us. This
view gave us a part of the Lough where the water covers the stones. This
particular evening the water was as calm as a mirror and as blue as the
sky above it, and the trees on the hills and bays around it in their
greenness and leafiness, round-headed and massive, were all bathed in
sunlight. We came to fields a little more barren-looking, where bare
stone fences took the place of the rich hedgerows, turned up a road that
lay between these stony ramparts, and drove along for a little time.

I was wondering in my own mind about Captain Boycott. Did he, in his own
consciousness, think he was doing right in his system of fines? He knew
how small and miserable the wages were: he knew of the poor, comfortless
homes and the "smidrie o' wee duddy weans" that depended on the poor
pennies the father brought home; he knew that he came out well fed and
leisurely to find fault with a peasant who was working with a sense of
goneness about the stomach. Did he think that increasing the hunger pain
would make him more thoughtful, more orderly? Would he have done better
if he had been suddenly brought to change places with his serf? If he
could not help fining the people until he fined off the most of their
wages, were they to blame for refusing to work for him? Was the
Government right in taking his part when it had neither eye nor ear for
his people's complaint? I was questioning with myself in this helpless
fashion, when I heard my driver inquire in Irish of a bare-footed
country girl if we were near the spot where Lord Mountmorris was
murdered.

This question, and the surprise with which I became aware that I
understood it, made me forget Captain Boycott for the time being and
wake up to the present time. We had stopped our car and were waiting on
the girl's answer, which she seemed in no hurry to give. At length
lifting a small stone she threw it on the road a car's length behind us,
answering in Irish that there was the spot where he was found. The
murderer was hidden in the field opposite. The road was bare of the
shelter of hedge or ditch, bush or tree. It was late; he was coming home
alone, his police escort for some reason were not with him that
particular night. Lord Mountmorris was murdered, and some one has a mark
on his hand that all the water of the Lough will not wash off.

We drove along the road, a bleak and bare road, with a hill on one side
of it and a steep slope down on the other, until we came to a small
plantation, a lodge gate, and drove up an avenue with small plantations
of young trees here and there, some grass lands, a few beasts grazing
about, some signs of where flower beds and flower borders had been
better cared for once on a time than now, and came to a comfortable,
roomy square house finished in plaster. This was castle something, the
residence of the late Lord Mountmorris. With a blessing, content and
three hundred a year one could fancy that person sung of by Moore, "With
the heart that is humble," being able to make out life nicely here. When
a man has a title to his name with all the requirements which it implies
and demands, one could imagine a constant and wearing struggle going on.

I have earnestly and constantly sought to find a reason that could
possibly irritate an ignorant and exasperated peasant to the point of
taking the life of this man, I have found none. He was unhappily
addicted to drink, it is said, but he must have had a large majority of
the inhabitants of Ireland of all creeds and classes on the same side
with him in this, to judge by the number of houses licensed to sell
liquor to be drunk on the premises which are required for the drouthy
part of the population. He is accused of having warped justice to favor
his friends in his capacity of magistrate. I have heard that accusation
brought against other magistrates again and again, who were not
molested. He is said to have boasted when _fou_ that he was a spy
for the castle authorities, and could have any of them he chose to point
at taken up. This was mere bluster, I suppose. There does seem no reason
why the poor man should be cut off in the midst of his days by a guilty
hand, for there is no record of any tangible injury which he had done to
any man. Here on the spot where he fell, among the common people, I did
not hear anything that seemed to give a reason for any hatred that would
lead to murder being entertained against the deceased nobleman.

We turned away from the house and grounds, and I felt sad enough when we
passed the place where he lay in the dark night amid bare, barren
loneliness until the alarm was given. Heath in full blossom of purple
clung to the ditch back, foxglove in stately array nodded at us from
above, flowers that creep and flowers that wave were springing
everywhere, the rains of heaven had washed off the red stain, but I
could not shut my eyes to it. I saw the human body, dignified into
something awful by the presence of death, lying there waiting for the
hands that were to take it up reverently, and bear it away for
investigation and burial. I saw the dyed stones of the road that will
never lose the mark of guilt that colored them with the blood shed
there.

Lord Mountmorris' residence was a nice, roomy house. All these houses
are called castles, and castles they are compared with the cabins. The
land around it did not seem very good. There was something pathetic in
the evident attempt to keep up lordly state on a poor income and off
poor soil. Happy America, whose people are not compelled by the
inexorable logic of circumstances to be lords, but can be plain farmers.
It is really a hard thing to be a lord sometimes, when a place is sunk
with mortgages, and burdened with legacies and annuities, and no means
of redemption but the rents and these stopped.

We drove back the way we came. Ascending the hill we met a little beast,
so small, so black and shaggy, that I thought at first it was one of our
Canadian black bears. I asked what it was, and--laughing at my
ignorance--the man told me that it was a Highland Kyloe, one of the
famous black cattle that I have heard so much about, but had never seen
a specimen of the breed before. It would have been big for a bear, but
certainly was small for a cow, while a goat has the appearance of giving
as much milk.

XLIII.

CONG

The land as we neared Cong, between Cong and Lough Mask, as seen from
the rather roundabout road we travelled, has a very peculiar appearance.
It is stony with a very different stoniness from any part of Ireland
which I had seen before. In some places the earth, as far as the eye
could reach, was literally crusted with stone. The stone was worn into
rounded tops and channelled hollows, as if it was once molten, like red
hot potash, and every bubbling swell had become suddenly petrified, or
as if it had once been an uptilted hillside over which a rapid river had
fallen, wearing little hollows, and sparing rounded heights as it dashed
over in boiling fury for ages, accomplishing which result it deserted
this channel; and through some internal movement the bed of the torrent
was levelled into a plain. Some agency or other has worn this solid rock
into a truffle pattern that is very wonderful to see. Over all this part
the stony formation recurs again and again. A person remarked to me that
it looked like the bottom of a former ocean. Judging by the marks worn
into the stone I should say it was not a pacific ocean.

We came to a blacksmith's shop with the arch of the door formed into a
perfect horse-shoe; this, I was told, was the boundary line between Mayo
and Galway. In a few minutes we stopped before the "Carlisle Arms," in
the little village of Cong. Cong village is not very large, and has not
a wealthy appearance. There is a look generally spread over the people
who come in to trade as if their fortune was as stoney as their fields.

I had not been long in the "Carlisle Arms" before my attention was
called to certain framed mementos that hung round the room. By some of
these mementos hung the tale as to how Cong hotel came to be named the
"Carlisle Arms." On a certain occasion, when the then Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland, the Earl of Carlisle, was making some sort of progress through
Ireland, he proposed stopping at the hotel at Maam, a hotel under the
thumb of the late Lord Leitrim, who had some pique at the Lord
Lieutenant, which determined him to order under pain of the usual
penalty that there be no admittance to the Viceroy of Ireland at this
hotel. His Lordship for once felt the power of a text of Scripture, and
sent orders that from the highways and hedges they should be compelled
to come in; that his house should be filled to the entire exclusion of
Her Majesty's representative. Lord Carlisle did not, like Mr. Goddard
the other day at Charleville, proffer money, or take any steps to try
the lawfulness or unlawfulness of this proceeding, but, having sent a
courier to precede him, hurried on to Cong, and conferred the
distinction of his presence on that hotel. That the proprietors did
their best to entertain him I have no doubt, speaking from experience.
That he appreciated their efforts he has left on record in a neat
acknowledgement, which hangs above the mantlepiece framed and glazed, as
Uncle Tom desired to do with his letter from Massa George. The Lord
Lieutenant's photo hangs there too, in a nice frame, as a memento of his
having been received at Cong when refused at Maam. Also he consented
that the hotel should be known as the "Carlisle Arms" henceforth. I
wonder very much that there was not at least as much public indignation
felt against Lord Leitrim or the innkeeper whom he influenced when he
refused shelter to Her Majesty's representative here, the head of the
executive, as is now expressed against this hotel-keeper, who refused to
receive Mr. Goddard. I suppose the cases are different someway.

During the famine time a large sum of money was voted, partly by
Government, partly from the county taxes, for Relief Works. It was
determined to make a canal to connect Lough Corrib and Lough Mask. The
canal was made at the expense of much blasting, much building of strong
and costly stone work. If they could only have resurrected the famous
Irish architect _Gobhan Saer_, he would have advised making a well-
cemented bottom for the canal considering that a subterraneous river
runs from one lake to the other under it. They did not do this, however,
and when the grand canal was finished and the water let on the bottom
fell out in places and the waters fell through to their kindred waters.
The next famine they will require to dig and blast downward and still
downward till they find the underground river and the runaway water.
Coming past the costly and well-built bridge which spans the almost dry
stream that pours into the leaky canal somewhere, I saw some women round
a hollow in the stream that retained a little water. They were rinsing
out some woollen stuffs after dying them blue. They had warm petticoats
of madder red, and I was glad to see them look so comfortably clad and
thrifty.

After returning to the hotel I was waited on by an elderly lady of the
peasant class, a woman over eighty years of age. She had for sale some
pillow lace edging of her own manufacture, which she offered at
threepence per yard. This was the way she made her living, paid her rent
and kept herself out of the workhouse. The lace was pretty and very
strong. She generally succeeds in disposing of it to lady tourists.

There were some lady tourists as well as gentlemen staying at Cong. They
were on pleasure bent, and had been dreadfully annoyed and disgusted in
Galway at the heartbreaking scene attending the departure of some poor
Irish emigrants. They are unreasonable in their grief, and take parting
as if it were death; but it is as death to many of the aged relatives
who will see these faces whom they love no more. I could not help
thinking how differently people are constituted. When I saw the
streaming eyes, the faces swollen with weeping, and heard the agonized
exclamations, the calls upon God for help to bear the parting, for a
blessing on the departing, I had to weep with them. These people were
all indignation where they were not amused. The old women's cries were
ill-bred howlings to their ears, their grief a thing to laugh at. They
made fun of their dress--how they were got up--as if their dress was a
matter of choice; grew indignant in describing their disgust at the
scene. Ah, well, these poor mountain peasants were not their neighbors,
they were people to be looked at, laughed at, sneered at, and passed by
on the other side; but I--these people are my people and their sorrow
moveth me.

XLIV.

THE ASHFORD DEMESNE--LORD ARDILAUN--LOUGH CORRIB.

The Ashford demesne affords walks or drives for miles. Everything that
woods and waters, nature and art can do to make Ashford delightful has
been done. I got a companion, a pretty girl, a permit from some official
who lived in a cottage at Cong, and set out by way of the Pigeon Hole to
see at least part of the place.

I may as well mention here how surprised we were to hear the Antrim
tongue from the recesses of the cave, and to find a group of strangers
exploring on their own account. They were working men who had come from
Belfast to work for Lord Ardilaun, and were making the most of a holiday
before they began. I was very much surprised to see men from Antrim,
where the wages are much higher than here, come down to work in the west
where labor is so cheap, and want of work the complaint.

To show how cheaply men work here, I may mention that being at a village
which lies outside of Lord Ardilaun's demesne, but on his estate, I was
standing on the road and a clergyman was talking in Irish to a man who
was employed at mason work in repairing the wall, a small quiet looking
man who did not stop work as he talked. Of course I could not understand
more than the scope of their discourse, but I understood distinctly one
question asked; "How much do you get for a day's work?" "One shilling
and two pence a day." "Without food of course?" "Of course." I had
heard in the North that casual laborers get two shillings a day there,
but they do not get two shillings when employed constantly. The laborers
on one well-managed estate which I have been over in Antrim are paid ten
shillings a week, and pay one shilling a week out of that for their
cottages, which are kept in good repair at the expense of their
employer. Of course these men must have been workmen skilled in some
particular work, or they would not have come from the wages of the North
to the West to work at the common rate of wage going here, which I am
told is at the highest seven shillings a week and rent to pay out of
that. Of course, when masons are paid one and twopence, laborers will be
paid much less.

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