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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In the morning the melancholy waiter who set my little breakfast at one
end of a desert of a table in a dusty wilderness of a room, commenced
bemoaning over the poverty of the country. It was a market morning and
there were many asses, creels and carts with fish drawn up in the market
place. I ventured to suggest a fish for breakfast, which was an utter
impossibility. Cahir has a handsome old castle standing close to its
main street which is still inhabited.

We dropped down by rail through Clonmel to Waterford, our companions by
the way being all returning tourists, English and Welsh people over for
a holiday to see the disturbances in Ireland, which they had always
missed seeing some way. We amused ourselves in drawing comparisons
between the lines of rail in Ireland and those in other countries to the
total disparagement of Irish railways. They spoke of the railways in
England and Wales, and I exalted Canadian railways.

Waterford seemed a pretty, lively, bustling town. The river seemed alive
with boats; there was a good deal of building going on near the depot,
and the people had a step and an air as if they had something to do and
were hurrying to do it. It looked very unlike its ancient name, which
was, I am told, the Glen of Lamentation. Tales still linger here of the
sack of Waterford by Strongbow and his marriage to Princess Eva, and of
the landing here of Henry the Second when he came to take possession.

From Waterford up through Kilkenny in the sunshine, wondering to see hay
still being cut in September. Heard no word of Kilkenny black coal or
Kilkenny marble and passed on to Bagenalstown in Carlow and up through
Kildare to Dublin.

The days were passing so swiftly away that there was but a little time
to see Dublin sights; the question was, therefore, what to see and what
not to see. Owing to the kindness of Miss Leitch, an art student, I had
the privilege of half an hour in the Academy. Having so little time I
spent it all before Maclise's picture of the marriage of Strongbow and
Princess Eva and in a small way understood how a great painter can tell
a story. The museum of Irish antiquities was the next place. I wanted to
see the brooch of Tara and saw it, but I was not prepared to see so many
reliques of gold and silver telling their own tale of the grandeur of
the native rulers of the Ireland of long ago. The ingenuity shown in the
broad collars of beaten gold which made them be alike fitted for collar
or tiara was surprising. The shape of the brooches and cloak clasps are
so like the Glenelg heirlooms which I saw in Glengarry families that the
relationship between the clans of the Highlands and the Irish septs is
quite apparent. There was quite a large room entirely devoted to gold
and silver ornaments. One side was given up to gold collars, neck
ornaments, bracelets, armlets and cloak clasps, all of gold. There was
another cabinet of rings of various kinds. Some of the rings and
bracelets are quite like modern ones. Saint Patrick's bell was another
object of great interest to me. It was plain and common-looking,
evidently for use, shaped a good deal like a common cow bell. I liked to
think how often it had called the primitive people to hear God's message
of mercy to them from the lips of his laborious messenger. Beside it
stood the elaborate case which the piety of other ages manufactured for
the bell. It is such an easy matter to deck shrines and garnish the
sepulchres of the righteous when they are gone past the place where the
echoes of man's praise can reach. It is easier than hearing and obeying
the message which they carry. We were given a powerful magnifying glass
to inspect the workmanship of the shrine that held the bell, but my
thoughts would turn back to the plain common-looking bell itself. Still
I did admire the exquisite workmanship of the shrine, which could only
be fully appreciated when seen through the magnifying glass. It required
the magnifying glass also to fully bring out the richness of the
delicate tracery on the brooch of Tara. There were in another room quite
a number of short swords of cast bronze similar to the one presented to
me in Mayo. Some of them had been furbished up till they looked like
gold. There were some specimens of the bronze chain mail used by the
ancient Irish, and the foot covering, which they wore a good deal like
Indian moccassins, answering exactly to the description given by Scott
in the notes to the Lady of the Lake, of the kind of brogans of the dun
deer's hide which shod the fleet-footed Malise, messenger of the fiery
cross. There was also a woollen dress found in a bog, which was exactly
shaped like a modern princess dress. I was sorry I had only one poor
sixty minutes to carry off all my eyes could gather up in that time of
these reliques of ancient Ireland. I would recommend any one who cares
for the ancient history of Ireland to study these records of the past.
What we see affects us more than what we hear.

DUBLIN--HOME AGAIN.

To my friend, Councillor Leitch, one of the many successful men who have
migrated from the Moravian settlement of Grace Hill, I had expressed a
wish to see the face of Jonathan Pim, the landlord of whose goodness I
heard so much in the neighborhood of Clew Bay. Through Mr. Leitch's
kindness I obtained a seat in the gallery of the round room of the
Mansion House where the meeting was held to consider the advisability of
holding an exhibition of Irish manufactures. It was expected that I
should see Mr. Jonathan Pim at this meeting, but he was not there; he
was represented by his son. It was something for my backwoods eyes to be
privileged to see this grand room, built, I hear, for the reception of
His Gracious Majesty King George the Fourth when he made his visit to
Ireland, called the "Irish Avatar." At one side of the round room was a
sort of dais, on which was a chair of state that, I suppose, represented
a throne. Round the gallery were hung shields, containing the coats-of-
arms of the worshipful the Lords Mayor of Dublin. The chair was occupied
by the present Lord Mayor, a very fine-looking gentleman who became his
gold chain of office well.

The day before I had been taken by Mrs. Leitch to an academy of arts and
industry. For some reason of alterations and repairs there was no
admission beyond the vestibule. In this entrance hall were specimen
slabs and pillars of all the Irish marbles, which were there in as great
variety as in Shushan the palace. There was the marble of Connemara in
every shade of green, black marble of Kilkenny, red marble of Cork, blue
credited to Killarney, I think, and many, many others. I think there was
hardly a county in Ireland unrepresented. I do think that among all this
wealth of marbles the Irish people might gratify their most fastidious
taste without sending to Italy. I saw a good many productions of Irish
industry, but they seem always confined to the localities which produce
them. You see things in shop windows ticketed Scotch and English, but,
until this new movement began, nothing marked Irish. Yet Limerick laces
might tempt any fine lady, as well as Antrim linens and Down damasks.
There is also Blarney tweed of great cheapness and excellence, Balina
blankets, and the excellent Claddagh flannel.

If there were enterprise as well, and a desire to patronize home
industries, I think the chimneys of factories now silent and idle might
smoke again. I particularly noticed in every corner of Ireland where I
have been that where I saw the tall chimneys of factories in operation I
did not see barefoot women with barefoot asses selling ass loads of turf
for threepence.

I left Dublin--really, I may say, an almost unseen Dublin--behind me and
turned my face Belfastwards.

Drogheda is the last place of which I have taken any notes. I was a day
or two there. In fact I was more than a few days, but was confined to my
room by a severe neuralgia most of the time. There is a fine railway
bridge here, lofty enough for schooners to sail under. The land on both
sides of the river is like a garden, and is devoted to pleasure grounds
in the usual proportion. I was wishful to see the very spot on the banks
of the Boyne where James and William fought for a kingdom long ago. As I
looked at the fair country checked off into large fields by green
hedges, at the waving trees of enclosed pleasure-grounds, I recalled
King William's words about Ireland, "This land is worth fighting for,"
and I thought he was right.

The Boyne is but a small river, no wider than the Muskrat at Pembroke,
but deep enough to carry schooners a little way up. There is a canal
beside it, and it was full of barges carrying coal and other things.
Near to Drogheda town, in the suburbs, is a bridge over the Boyne. I
crossed it looking for the locality of the battle. Meeting a clerical-
looking gentleman, I enquired if he could point out to me where the
battle of the Boyne was fought. This gentleman, who was a Franciscan
friar, directed me to keep along the road by the river bank, when I
would come to another bridge and the monument beside it. "It stands
there a disgrace to Drogheda and a disgrace to all Ireland," he said. He
showed me the new Franciscan church, a very grand cut stone building.
There is also a Dominican church, and an Augustinian, besides two
others, and there was the foundation stone of still another to the
memory of that Oliver Plunket, Catholic archbishop and primate of
Ireland, put to death in the time of Titus Oates. I was informed that
the proportion of Catholics to Protestants in Drogheda is six to one.

Walking through Drogheda on market day I did not see one barefoot woman
in the crowd; all were pretty well dressed and well shod. The asses were
sleek and fat, shod and attached to carts. How different from Ramelton,
Donegal, Manor Hamilton, Leitrim, Castlebar or Mayo, where straw
harness, lean asses and hungry, barefoot women abound. The land is good
round Drogheda, and there is manufacturing going on. This makes the
difference.

I will never get up along the Boyne at this rate. I went along the south
side and, hearing the cheery clack of a loom, went into a cottage to see
the weaver, a woman. She was weaving canvas for stiffening for coats.
Could make threepence a yard, which was better pay a good deal than the
Antrim weavers of fine linen make. She was much exercised in her mind
against Mr. Vere Forster, who helps young western girls to emigrate to
America, confounding him with the infamous wretches who decoy girls to
France and Belgium. I tried to set her right, to explain matters to her,
but I am afraid that I did not succeed in convincing her.

The land on both sides of the Boyne is dotted with houses and filled
with people, so the country looks more cheerful than in empty Mayo or
Roscommon. I spoke to a farmer who was looking hopefully at a large
field of oats, and asked him what rent he paid. Owing to his nearness to
Drogheda he paid L7 per acre. "How can you pay it?" I asked. "I can pay
it in good years well enough," he said. "What have you left for
yourself?" "I have the straw," he answered. I walked on and got weary
enough before I came to the iron bridge and the monument. The monument
has a very neglected, weather-stained appearance. Where Duke Schomberg
was said to have fallen there was a growth of red poppies. I plucked
some as a memorial of the place. I returned by the Meath side along a
lovely tree-shaded road.

Some work-people explained to me that the late severe winters had
destroyed the song birds of Ireland. I did not hear one lark sing in all
the summer since I came. These working people were all anxious to
emigrate if they had some means, and listened eagerly to the advantages
of Canada as a place for settlement.

I was one Sabbath day in Drogheda, and attended service in the
Presbyterian church there, which was opposite the spot where the great
massacre of women and children took place in Cromwell's time. This was
eagerly pointed out to me. The congregation was very small, not half
filling the church.

Between Dublin and Belfast I had as travelling companion a Manchester
merchant, who had run over during his holidays to have a peep at the
turbulent Irish. He had been in Ireland for a few weeks, and had visited
some cabins and spoken to some laborers, and had settled the matter to
his own satisfaction. "The ills of Ireland arise from the inordinate
love of the soil in the Irish, and their lower civilization. For
instance, an English farmer in renting a farm would consider how much
would support his family first, and if the landlord would not accept as
rent what was left the bargain would not be struck. The Irish farmer
would think first how much he could give the landlord, and would
calculate to live somehow, not as any human beings should live, but
somehow on the balance."

This was his theory. He denounced in no measured terms the union of
Church and State, blaming this for the prevalent unbelief.

In many parts of Ireland I have been taken for some one else. I have had
secrets whispered to me under the mistake that I was somebody else, and
words of warning given that were of no use to me, but the funniest of
all was on my way from Dublin to Belfast. At a station in Down, I think,
a gentleman got into our compartment who was in the good-natured stage
of tipsyness. He seemed to labor under the impression that I had, in
company with my brother, canvassed eagerly for Colonel Knox at the
Tyrone election. He felt called upon to tell me some home truths, the
bitterness of which he qualified with nods and smiles. "We bate your
Colonel Knox, mem, in spite of you and your brother. Thank God for the
ballot, mem, we can vote according to our own consciences, mem, not as
we're told as it used to be, mem. You and your party think you have all
the sense and learning and religion in Ireland, mem. All your religion
is in your song, 'We'll kick the Pope before us.' All your learning,
mem, is to hold up King William a decent man and abuse King James at the
Orange meetings in Scrabba where your brother speaks. You and your kind
need to know nothing but what happened in '98 and only one side of that.
What happens in '81, mem, you hold your noses too high to notice." In
this manner my tipsy friend ran on until the train stopped at Lisburn,
when he left with a parting benediction. "God bless you, mem, you're
better natured than I thought you were. May you go to heaven and that's
where your brother won't go in a hurry."

I had to go to Liverpool to catch the ship and so had to forego seeing
many things in Belfast which I had hoped to see. It was with some
gladness I saw the ship "Ontario" again. Having arrived before the other
cabin passengers I took the opportunity of going over the steerage with
Mr. Duffin, the excellent chief steward. The quarters for steerage
passengers were on the same deck as the saloon, as lofty and as well
ventilated. The berths were arranged in groups with an enclosed state
room to each. Single men by themselves, families by themselves, single
women by themselves and foreigners by themselves, every division having
their own conveniences for cleanliness and comfort. I am sure the
arrangements for steerage passengers on the "Ontario" would have
gladdened the heart of Miss Charlotte O'Brien.

I speak for myself, and I know I speak the sentiments of all the cabin
passengers, when I say that nothing could exceed the provisions made for
our comfort, or the courtesy and kindness shown by the captain and
officers of the "Ontario" to us all, both in saloon and steerage. In
conversation on board these sentiments came up often, and with
enthusiasm, and captain and crew, and the stout ship met with no
measured praise.

Before retiring behind the curtain to shake hands with sea-sickness
again, we had a long, fond look at the land we were leaving. Liverpool
had receded into a long, low line of twinkling lamps. My thoughts went
through the mist to the land of my own people now passing through the
throes of a great change.

Erin, beloved and beautiful, once more
The time of parting comes to thee and me;
The sad delight of pilgrimage is o'er,
And voices call to me across the sea.

In Canada the magic summer shines,
A purple haze upon the mountain broods,
The soft warm breeze is whispering through the pines.
And leaping waters thunder through the woods.

September radiance tints the forest grand,
The maples are aflame upon the hills;
From bursting barns plenty smiles o'er the land,
Where the tall farmer owns the soil he tills.

Erin, thy robe of green is dewed with tears,
Fields outrage-stained, thy west wind thick with sighs,
Thou that hast walked with woe down through the years,
Weighted with all the wrongs of centuries.

Erin, beloved with love akin to pain,
Through woe and outrage, turbulence and strife,
Thou shalt arise and enter once again
Into a higher, freer, glorious life.

A LAST WORD--THE CAUSE OF IRELAND'S TROUBLES.

Because I have had the privilege of being Irish correspondent for the
Montreal _Witness_ for a time, I think it right to explain to you
the change which travelling through my native country has produced in my
sentiments and the convictions forced upon me.

Brought up in the North of Ireland in a purely Hiberno-Scotch
neighborhood, I drank in with my native air all the ideas which reign in
that part of Ireland. The people with whom I came in contact were
Conservatives of the strongest type; from my youth up, therefore, I had
the cause of Ireland's poverty and misery as an article of belief. I
never dreamed that the tenure of land had anything to do with it.
Landlords were lords and leaders, benefactors and protectors to their
tenants in my imagination.

I changed my opinion while in Ireland, and now I believe that the land
tenure is the main cause of Ireland's miseries.

English history is pretty much a history of struggles against monopolies
of one kind and another. There is no monopoly, it seems to me, which
bears such evil fruit as the monopoly of all the land of a country in
the hands of a few. It is bad for the country, bad for the people, and
bad for the landlords, whether the monopolists are honorable companies,
a landed aristocracy, or an ecclesiastical corporation. God's-law, which
is the law of our faith, shows plainly how the Great Lawgiver regards
the monopoly of land by the care which He took to have a direct interest
in the land of Canaan by personal inheritance for every Jew. To guard
against the might of greed, to prevent the poor of the land, touched by
misfortune or snared by debt, from sinking into farm laborers or serfs
of the soil he instituted the year of jubilee when every man returned to
his inheritance.

I first thought over these things in connection with the land question
in Ireland when travelling there and seeing the evils arising from the
existing tenure of land. I met with testimony everywhere of how often
and how fatally the will of a lord interfered to prevent prosperity.
There might have been a seam of coal opened in Antrim but for one
landlord. In the present depressed state of the linen trade what a boon
that would have been to the country. There might have been ship-building
on the Foyle, to the great benefit of Derry and her people, but for the
absentee landlords, the London companies. Donegal might have had a coal
mine opened, but the landlord would neither open it himself nor let
anyone else do it, and yet the great want of Donegal is employment for
her people.

I did not think for a moment that the landlords of Ireland were, as a
rule, naturally worse than other men, but they have too much power, and
when "self the wavering balance shakes, it's rarely right adjusted."

I blame the system, not the men. There were and are landlords in Ireland
too noble to abuse their power, of which class the Earl of Belmore is an
illustrious example; but these men are noble in spite of the system
which afforded every facility for the enormities of Lord Leitrim.

The evil of the Land Tenure is intensified by the fact that one class
makes laws for another, and that the same class has all the executive of
these laws under their control. There was no power in the law to protect
the inhabitants of Milford when the earnings and savings of their whole
lives, and the private property of their minister were confiscated by
the strong hand, and some were reduced in consequence to beg their
bread. The law, planned expressly to be an expensive luxury, was only
for the rich, and was known to the poor, if they dared to contend with
their landlord, as an engine of oppression. The judge who gave the award
in Mrs. Auldjo's case knew better than anyone else the cost of Irish
law, and that the award he gave her under the Act of 1870 was a
defeating of the intentions of the law, as it was really less than the
law costs. His award added insult to injury to a woman who was a widow,
and wantonly ruined in fortune because she dared to contend with a lord.
The same spirit of partisanship invented the infamous Grand Jury system.

After I left Antrim, while travelling through the wilds of Donegal, the
glens of Leitrim, and all through beautiful and desolate Mayo, I
wondered over the absolute power which was left in the hands of the
landholders and the great gulf which separated them from the land-
tilling class. Public opinion, which they control, seems to have
absolutely no sympathy with the common people when they were behind in
their rents, although they were emerging from a period of agricultural
distress, culminating in absolute famine. I watched the papers, I took
good heed to the conversation that went on around me, and saw or heard
no expression of sympathy when events took place which, I had thought,
impossible under British law.

When Mrs. Whittington, of Malin, was put out in the wild March weather,
with a child three days old in her arms and a flock of six around her, I
looked for some one to raise a voice of protest, but there was not a
whisper. When a landlord's official forced his way past husband, doctor
and nurse, to the bedside of Mrs. Stewart, to order her to get out of
bed to go to the workhouse, bringing on fits that caused the death of
her babe and nearly cost her her life, I watched eagerly for some voice
to say this should not have been done, but there was none. I have heard
of retreating armies stopping and hazarding battle, rather than forsake
a childing woman in her extremity, in countries not boasting of so
enlightened a government as our own. I had so gloried in the British
Constitution, its justice, its mercy! I waited to see what the law would
do in this case. All the facts were admitted in court, yet this man, who
forgot that he, too, was born of a woman, was triumphantly acquitted and
not one word of disapproval appeared in any public print that I saw.

I have often come home after seeing that on the side of the oppressor
was power--the power of bayonets--and that the poor had no helper, until
I could not sleep for pain and could only cry to our Father--theirs and
mine--How long, Lord, how long!

A friend described to me quite gaily a scene at the Castlebar workhouse
during the last famine, when the starving creatures coming for relief
surged round the workhouse gate and pressed and hustled and trampled
down one another, how the police standing ankle deep in mud had to lay
about them with their batons, and the poor creatures were sent home
again, and yet again, until they would learn to keep order--keep order--
and they were starving!

A lady in Clones, who was talking to me on Sabbath School work and
missionary enterprise in a highly edifying manner, could only express
her surprise about the poor of her own people who were doomed to the
poor house, that they did not go in at once without struggle or fuss.
And yet she had been a mother, and must have known what parting with
children meant to a mother's heart. For my part I sympathized with that
mother of whom I read in the papers, who was taken before a magistrate
and sentenced for making a disturbance in the workhouse when she heard
the master beating her child.

I wondered much at a noble and high-minded Irish gentleman who feels
strong sympathy with the Oka Indians, who, in speaking to me of a man
caught in company with another fishing by night, thereby transgressing
the law, and was deliberately shot down by the agent of the property,
expressed his regret that the other had not been also shot. Hardening
the heart I hold to be one of the very apparent effects of the land
system.

Another evil is the encouragement of unutterable meanness; a meanness
that allows rich men to manage to extract under pressure gratuitous work
out of these poor people. No one needs to be told that the Irish peasant
is worse fed, worse clothed, worse housed than any peasant in Europe,
yet gentlemen will take from these gratuitous work, and see so little to
be ashamed of in the transaction as to write about it over their own
signature, as Ernest Cochrane did in the columns of the _Witness_.
I have heard of miles of separating fence being made, in this way, of
walls being built and even of monuments being erected "in memoriam" in
the same way. I was told of a noble lord having brought a gentle
pressure to bear on his Irish tenants to cause them to subscribe over
and above their rents for the benefit of those who were suffering from
an accident in his English collieries.

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