Paddy at Home ("Chez Paddy")

by baron de E. Mandat-Grancey

But when any one enters them the impression is quite changed. We must first remark that the Irish are extremely prolific. Most families include six or seven children, yet as a rule the houses have only one room, ten or eleven yards long by five or six wide.

To enable the whole family to sleep there they formerly resorted to very original arrangements. In one corner there was a great heap of reeds; in the evening they spread them out for a bed; the man and wife slept in the middle; the smallest boy by his father’s side, the youngest girl by her mother, and so on until they reached the eldest, who occupied the two extremities next to the pigs, who are always allowed inside. If they offered hospitality to a stranger, and this frequently occurred, the pigs were pushed a little further away. This was called sleeping “straddogue.”

It appears that this rather primitive couch is still used in many houses. But moralists have some reason to say that luxury is penetrating everywhere. In all the cottages that I have yet visited, the inhabitants have already mounted one step on the ladder of comfort. I have always seen one, and sometimes two beds, but never more. When there is only one bed, the father, mother, and daughters sleep side by side at one end; the sons at the other. When there are two, the parents and daughters occupy one, and the sons repose on the other. The pigs had also profited by this innovation; they sleep under the bed, and the hens generally perch above it. I have never seen such arrangements even amongst the savages on the African coast.

This system, deplorable from a human point of view, seems, on the contrary, to have the happiest effect on the development of the intellectual and affectionate qualities of the pig. To him is confided the education of the children, who, almost naked, play in the mud outside the cottage. I saw two this morning, nearly of the same age, a little boy and a little girl, sleeping in the glare of the sun, their heads comfortably resting on the side of a great sow. The latter was evidently quite conscious of her important charge. When I advanced she first moved her ears, then uttered some little grunts, intended to herald the approach of a stranger, but she did not move for fear of awaking the two children. A little further on three others, of four and five years old, were filling an old tin box with dirty water, which they afterwards poured over their legs, with great satisfaction. Their guardian lying full length in the pool, watched this innocent amusement from one corner of her eye, and seemed to take extreme pleasure in it.

What have all these people to live on? And here I must assert that they have no appearance of suffering. The race is not remarkable for physical beauty. But though they are ragged and half naked, they do not look famished with hunger as the people do at Dublin. The children are very fat. We are now at the commencement of the hay season, but yet all the men seem idling about the cottages. The Colonel assures me that many of them have money deposited in the banks, and that it is not rare to see a man living like those whom I have visited give his daughters when they marry a dowry of 40l. or 50l. each. Where do they get all this money, besides the sums they spend? More than a shilling a day is never paid for a man’s labour. The mystery is explained to me by the information that in a few days they will all go to England to assist in the harvest and hop-picking, and they live in idleness through the rest of the year on the money then made. Formerly, part of it went to pay the rent; but those good times are quite past now.

I have already had one long discussion with the Colonel. He says that the land is good. I persist in considering it very indifferent as a rule; moreover, the climate is very bad. Vegetation is so backward that haymaking has scarcely commenced. They never secure more than one crop. The bad weather comes too soon for it to be possible to get any aftermath. I have not yet seen a field of wheat. When it was grown, the harvest was rarely successful. I had the curiosity to visit a large garden which has some reputation in the county, for the owner sells the produce of it. I am certain that it is fully three weeks behind Normandy, and even more behind the suburbs of Paris. In my garden in the Avenue Friedland, the rhododendrons have flowered a month ago. Here they are just opening. It is the 6th of July, yet there are scarcely any strawberries. The gardener proudly showed me a cherry-tree, which, thanks to an excellent situation, has already some ripe fruit! They are being sold at 1s. 6d. per pound to a dealer, who retails them at 2s. 1d.!

How can agriculture prosper under such circumstances? Owing to the Gulf Stream, the winter is not severe; but how can the poor work in January and February? Yesterday we sat down to dinner at eight o’clock. We left it soon after nine, and it was broad daylight. The lamps were still unlighted. I therefore conclude that in six months it will be dark until nine o’clock in the morning, and we are in the South of Ireland. What must it be in the North? And what is a day’s labour worth if it only contains five or six working hours?

After lunch, the Colonel took me for a drive. We first went ten or twelve miles to visit Sir Croker Barrington’s beautiful seat. The Castle is placed in the midst of a lovely park; it is modern, but it has several towers, machicolations, and battlements, which give it a look of feudal ferocity, completed by four or five old cannon, placed like a battery on the terrace which overlooks the road we drove up by. Alas! they did not suffice to intimidate the Land Leaguers of the neighbourhood; for one morning, three or four years ago, they came in broad daylight and organised a battue in the park. They killed all the deer without any one daring to oppose them. The deer have since been replaced, and we have even seen some of them. But what was done at Sir Croker Barrington’s is repeated, more or less, in all directions, on a smaller scale. In many counties it is now impossible to preserve at all. Poaching is openly carried on.

“We ourselves, the landlords, are now the game,” said the Colonel in a melancholy tone, “and for us there is no close season.”

However, sometimes the game resists. The instance of a Mr. Carden was quoted to me, who at last succeeded in getting the best of the whole population.