XL.
REMEMBRANCES OF THE GREAT FAMINE—THE "PLANTED" SCOTCH FARMERS—A BEAUTIFUL EDIFICE.
On my return from Achill Island I decided that I would not take another post car drive to Ballycroy, and returned to Mulraney again along the same road in the shadow of the mountains. On to Newport we drove, back over the road winding along the side of Clew Bay, and across the head of the bay through the lonely country leading back to Westport.
The driver, a weather-beaten man in a weather-worn drab coat, entertained me with tales of the clearances made in the famine time that left the country side so empty. It is hard to believe that ever human beings were so cruel to other human beings in this Christian land, and that it passed unknown, or comparatively unknown, to the rest of the world.
This man told, with a certain grim satisfaction, of what he called God's judgments which had fallen on "exterminators." The common people of the West have a firm belief that God is on their side, no matter what trouble he allows to come over them. "Sure I do feel my heart afire, when gintlemen sit on my car driving through this loneliness an' talk of over-population. Over-population! and the country empty!" I wish I could remember all this old man said, but I can only recall snatches here and there.
It is most amazing to think that, when the world at large was sending help to save the Irish people alive in the awful visitation, so many were throwing their tenants out on the road to die. And these people had by hard toil won a living here and paid rent. Every rood of this land, every cabin had helped to swell princely revenues, until the finger of God came down in famine, and then, when the revenue stopped, there was no pity, and it seemed to these poor people that there was no one that regarded them. I do not wish to ever come to that time of life when I can hear of the scenes that wasted this country without feeling a passion of sorrow and regret.
I spoke of these things to a worthy gentleman resident in another part of the country and he brushed it aside as if it were a fly, saying, "Oh, that is long past, thirty years and more." Memory is very strong among people who seem to have little to look forward to—the past seems the principal outlook. Every incident of the French landing here so far back as '98 is told to me in the West here with a freshness of detail as if it happened a few years ago; one can imagine, therefore, how the cruel evictions of the famine time fit themselves into the memory of the people, especially as the rush of fresh evictions are awaking all the horrors of the past.
It seemed a gloomy satisfaction to this man to tell over what he considered God's judgments which had fallen on exterminators. He pointed out to me many who seemed doomed to be the last of their race.
At last we passed the long, dead wall which encloses the magnificent demesne of the Marquis of Sligo and drew up at Westport once more. The local papers which await me are full of Miss Gardner and her war with her tenants—more evictions, emergency men from Dublin to hold possession—and all the rest. I was introduced by a Protestant clergyman to a gentleman connected with the executive of the law for a quarter of a century. He knows the heartrending inner history of legal eviction. This gentleman has a wonderful tenderness in his heart for Miss Gardner. "Sure she grew up among us. The other one (Miss Pringle) found her as kindly a woman as was on God's earth and has made an ogre of her."
I will give an extract or two out of the softest part of the statement he has drawn up for me.
He tells of a landlord who evicted whole townlands in 1847. He hated the people because the famine swept over them. He became possessed with the same ideas as other landlords of the period, whose income had diminished through the visitation of God, that if the present possessors were rooted out and depopulated lands planted with Scotchmen, their skill and capital would prevent a recurrence of famine.
Now it is a fact freely attested to me by clergymen of different denominations that the planted people of Mayo required help, and help to a very large amount to keep them from starvation during the last scarcity. On many estates in Mayo and the adjoining parts of Sligo the Protestant population would have died of hunger but for the large help given both denominationally, and otherwise. They could not have seeded their grounds but for seed freely given them. Fields in Mayo this season are lying bare because the wretched people are not able to get seed to put in the ground. Some of the planted people complained to me that though when they settled on their present lands they got them cheap, two shillings and sixpence an acre for wild land, yet as they improved their land the rent was raised to five, to seven and six, to fourteen, and now to over a pound an acre. These men also complained that they could not possibly exist at all during these last seasons and pay the rent which was laid on them in consequence of the improvements done by their own labor. I find by the most conclusive proof that a difference of religious belief did not enable the settlers any more than the natives to pay a rent that could not be produced from the soil. The desire to change the nationality and religion of his tenants was so strong in one landlord that, in the words of my informant, "A scene of ruthless havoc began among his tenantry. To stimulate the slowness of the crowbar brigade he was known to tear down human habitations with his own hands." I remember these poor people standing in the market in those dark days of famine, having their bits of furniture for sale on the streets, and there were none to buy. I have heard the wailing of men, women and children on the coach-top day after day, when these fortunate unfortunates were escaping from their native land forever. I saw those who could not go in the agonies of death in the fever sheds. These scenes happened over thirty years ago, but they will never be forgotten. Four large townlands, on which eighty homes had been, became a wilderness of grass and rank weeds. No Scotch were forthcoming for the wrecked farms. There was a Nemesis in store for him. His day of eviction came about, and in his trouble his tenants saw retribution. As charity kept some of his tenants alive, so he also was indebted to the charity of friends, and passed away to meet his tenants at a bar where high blood or aristocratic connections do not sway the Judge who sits on the throne of justice, nor does party prejudice blind his eyes.
When Miss Gardner came of age it took all the property of her father to pay the money secured to her by her mother's settlement, and she entered into possession in his stead. Like Queen Elizabeth, whom Miss Gardner greatly resembles, she had in her youth known troubles; sympathy for these trials, so well known to the peasantry, made them receive her with open arms and open hearts. In the interval between Miss Gardner entering into possession and her coming under the influence of Miss Pringle she set herself to repair the havoc made by her predecessor, and was the idol of her tenantry. She was near neighbor to the model farm and orphanage presided over by the Scotch ladies. Philanthropy collected the vast sums which bought and stocked the model farm at Ballinglen. When their mode of managing matters there could be no longer hidden from the Presbyterian Church which they misrepresented, the mission came out largely indebted to these ladies. It took all the stock to pay off its indebtedness to one lady, and the farm itself to pay the other. It is the lady who got the farm as her share, that lives with Miss Gardner, and gets the credit of her every unpopular act. She has divided between her and her only friend in the dark days. This Scotch hag found her a kind-hearted woman, and has made her into an ogre. Some of this communication, the hardest of it, I shall reserve, also several confirmatory anecdotes given me at Westport.
In mercy to the readers, I will only say that Miss Gardner has intense
courage and an intellect of masculine strength, and resembles Queen
Elizabeth in more ways than one. It is a great pity that she has not
Queen Bess's popularity or her care for her people.
Westport, when I have time to look at it, is a very pretty town. Its buildings, its hotels and the warehouses on the quay look as if it once had an extensive and flourishing trade, or was prepared for and expecting it. There was, I am told, once a flourishing linen trade here, but it has gone to decay. The town is in a little hollow, with pleasant tree-crowned green hills rising all round it; at one side is the demesne of the Marquis of Sligo, which is open to the public. These grounds extend for miles, and are as beautiful as gorgeous trees, green grass, dark woods, waters that leap and flash, spanned by rustic bridges, can make them. There are winding walks leading through the green fields, under trees, into woods, up hill and down, into shady glens, where you might wander for miles and lose yourself in green-wood solitudes. Crowds of Westport folk, in the calm evening, saunter through the grounds and enjoy their beauty.
The little town has a subdued expression of prosperity. You feel conscious that some business is going on that enables the inhabitants of the town to live comfortably and to dress respectably. You hear of the mills of the Messrs. Livingstone, of their business in trading and land- owning, until you are convinced that they are the centre round which this little world revolves.
I had a lady pointed out to me here as being in such embarrassed circumstances, owing to the non-payment of rent, that her son was obliged to join the police force to earn a living. I heard also great sympathy expressed for another gentleman in Dublin who has many sons, whom he has brought up to do nothing, and who has been reduced by the strike against rent to absolute poverty. I am told that banks in Dublin are glutted with family silver left as security for loans. These people are to be pitied, for poverty is poverty in purple or in rags; but when poverty comes to actual want, it is still more pitiful.