XXXII.
THE STORY OF AN EVICTION.
On the 20th of May I received a whisper of an eviction that was to occur up in the neighborhood of the Ox Mountains. Great opposition was expected, and therefore a large force of police was to be there. I procured a car, and in company with the local editor went to see. The landlord of this property is an absentee; the agent—a Mr. Irwin—lived in a pleasant residence which we passed on our way. We noticed that it was sheepshearing time at his place, and many sheep were in the act of losing their winter covering.
After we left Ballina behind, and followed in the wake of the police for some time, we seemed to have got into the "stony streak." Such land! Small fields—pocket handkerchiefs of fields—the stones gathered off them built into perfect ramparts around them! I enquired of one gentleman what was the rent exacted for this land so weighted down with stones—for in addition to the high, broad fences surrounding the little fields some of them had cairns of stones built up in the middle of them. He said thirty shillings an acre ($7.50); asked another who said fifteen ($3.75). I fancy one would need to see the office receipts to know correctly.
There is little cultivation in this part of the country. Hopeless- looking ragged men, and barefoot ragged women, were at work in the fields; little ragged children peeped from the wretched houses at the police as they passed. And indeed they were a fine squad of broad- shouldered, good-looking men, heavily-armed, marching along, square and soldier-like, with a long, swinging step that goes over the ground quickly.
We followed them up a stone-fenced lane just wide enough for the car to pass. As we went along, men working at building a stone wall, looked at the procession with a cowed frightened look. Our carman gave them the "God save you" in Irish, and in answering they turned on us surely the weariest faces that ever sat on mortal man. The lane becoming narrower, we soon had to leave the car and follow the police on foot through a pasture sprinkled with daisies.
Suddenly we saw the police scatter, sit down on the ditch and light their pipes, throw themselves on the grass, group themselves in two's and three's here and there. The end of the journey was reached.
We looked round for the wild men of Mayo from whom the bailiff, sub- sheriff, and agent were to be protected, who were, I was told, to shed rivers of blood that day. They were conspicuous by their absence. There were three or four dejected-looking men standing humbly a bit off, three women sitting among the bushes up the slope, that was all. The house where the eviction was to be held was a miserable hovel, whose roof did not amount to much, sitting among untilled fields, with a small dung heap before the door. It was shut up, silent and deserted.
The bailiff, a gentleman who, if ever he is accused of crime, will not find his face plead for him much, broke open the door and began to throw out the furniture on the heap before the door. Here are the items: One iron pot, one rusty tin pail, two delf bowls,—I noticed them particularly, for they rolled down the dungheap on the side where I stood,—one rheumatic chest, one rickety table, one armful of disreputable straw, and one ragged coverlet. This was supposed to be the bed, for I saw no bedstead; there was no chair, no stool, or seat of any kind. The sub-sheriff with the bailiff's assistance fastened the door with a padlock. He handed the agent a tuft of grass as giving him possession, and the eviction was over.
The agent—a large-featured man—seemed undecided as to whether he would view the transaction in a humorous light or as a scene where he was chief sufferer. He came forward and offered some rambling remarks addressed to nobody in particular. He drew our attention to the condition of the roof which needed renewing, to the fields that were uncropped. This was certainly shiftless, but when he mentioned that the man had gone to England "in the scarcity" to look for work, and was lying sick in an English hospital, we did not see how he could help it. He told us how bad the man was; how he pitied his wife, who was, he said, worse than himself. She was not present, being from home when her poor furniture was pitched out. He lamented over the fact that this man had sent him nothing of his wages, while another man had sent him as much as thirty pounds. He then went into details of these evicted tenant's married life; how his wife and he lived, and how they agreed; and rambled off into general philosophic remarks rather disagreeable and nasty.
No one seemed to pay any attention, although he looked from one to another for an answering smile of appreciation to his funny attempts to justify himself and amuse his hearers. Some one asked him how much rent was due; he said ten or eleven years. Two years were due, as we found by the law papers on returning to Ballina. He then made an attack on the poor men standing there, asking why they were not at home working, and telling them what they should be doing. While he lectured these men in a joking voice, he turned his eye from one to another of those present as if he were seeking for applause.
These men, not heeding the agent, were presenting a petition to the sub- sheriff. I drew near to learn what it was. They were thin, listless looking witted men. One could not help wondering when they had last eaten a square meal. Half-starved in look, wretched in clothing, stood like criminals awaiting sentence, with dreadfully eager eyes and parched lips that would not draw together over their teeth, before the plump rosy sub-sheriff. They asked for some meal on credit which the sub- sheriff refused. I asked them if they owed any rent. No, they did not owe a penny of rent, they said. Remember there was only one harvest between them and the famine year. They had also put in the crops in their little holdings, they said, "but as God lives we have neither bite nor sup to keep us till harvest time." The sub-sheriff asked why they did not go to a certain dealer. They said the terms were so hard that they could never pay him. "How much would keep you till the crops come in," he asked. Two hundred of Indian meal for each they said. Finally he promised them one hundred each on credit, even if he had to pay it out of his own pocket. "That is what you will have to do," said the agent.
We left and drove home. We saw the police, hot and tired, march past to their barracks after our return. These men had a long march, loaded down with arms to protect the bailiff, the stalwart agent, the rosy sub- sheriff from a crowd of five hunger-bitten peaceable men and three ragged women. The whole crowd might have been put to flight by any one of the three with one hand tied behind him.
I forgot to mention that the agent offered to one of the women there all the tenant's poor things that were thrown out, which was an honest and honorable proceeding on his part, and very generous.