Disturbed Ireland

by Bernard H. Becker

The excellent woman, whose house was converted into military quarters, is by no means rich. Her late husband was in the office of a neighbouring landlord, and would appear to have been just getting on in the world when he died. He certainly lived in a house properly so called; not a house in the Irish meaning of the word, which includes a Connemara cabin. It is only one storey high. The ground floor is occupied by two parlours, a kitchen, and offices; the bedrooms being upstairs. There are curious signs of better times about the place. My bed was far too short, but by the side of it was an old-fashioned square pianoforte. There was no carpet on the floor, but the lamp was a very good one, and well trimmed. The fire was entirely of turf, but of enormous size, and on the mantelpiece were some excellent photographs. Hens clucked as they hopped on to the table, and a red-headed colleen was perpetually chasing a cat of almost equally ruddy hue, but everybody was mightily civil and kindly. The room was full of peat-smoke, but the eggs were undeniably fresh; so that there were compensations on every side. The widow, her step-daughter, and the colleen before mentioned did all the work. They made my bed, what there was of it, they tended the fire with unflagging zeal, they brought water in very limited quantity for the purposes of ablution, they dried my boots and clothes with almost motherly care and tenderness when I came in out of the pouring rain. In fact, nobody could have been kinder or more attentive, and when Major Coghill was laid up by his accident their sympathy was almost overwhelming. Yet I believe that we annoyed them and deranged the tenor of their lives by our matutinal habits. Perhaps they might have been strong enough to resist my desperate efforts to get a cup of tea at some time before nine o'clock in the morning, but the officers' servants were too strong for them. They came and knocked the house up betimes, and then the bustle of the day began.

Now, I have been assured by the Irish priests and people that whatever faults your Commissioner may have, prejudice against Ireland and the Irish is not one of them. But at the risk of being thought a censorious Saxon I must confess that I am quite at issue with Western Ireland on the question of early rising. It is impossible to get anybody out of bed in the morning except the Boots at an hotel, and then the chances are that no hot water is to be obtained.

A housemaid in one of the Mayo hotels on coming up to make a fire complained bitterly, not of the toil of coming up stairs, but of the early hour of ten, and do what I would I could get nothing done earlier. On another occasion I was told that people out West rose late because the "day is long enough for hwhat we have got to do." I retorted that they did not do it, but fear that my remark was put down to prejudice. It is not my function to indulge in sweeping assertions, but if I were asked why the Western people do not prosper I should be inclined to reply—Because they will not turn out early in the morning.

But they are pleasant people in Ballinrobe nevertheless. Our widow never complained of our unearthly hours any more than we did of the turf smoke which communicated a high flavour to all our habiliments. The widow, although not rich, is evidently "snug" in her circumstances. She has a farm or two, part of which is underlet of course. This is another peculiarity of Irish life very remarkable to the stranger. Everybody seems to do work by deputy. A proprietor of a landed estate, not worth a thousand pounds a year when interest is paid on the various mortgages, would never think of being his own agent—that is doing his own work on his own estate. Not at all. He employs an agent who, thinking him rather small fry, neglects him or hands him over to the bailiff, who again transfers him to his "headmen," so that three people are paid for looking on before anybody does anything. This practice also may be in part the cause of the decay of the wild West.

I have been so far particular in my remarks concerning the Ballinrobe widow, in order to compare the inland standard of comfort with that prevailing on the sea-coast. Just before the Ulster invasion as it is called here, I was induced to go to Omey Island. It is a place of evil repute for poverty, but is as healthy as it ought to be, having the blue Atlantic for one lung and the brown hills of Connemara for the other. It is one of those interesting islands which become peninsulas at low tide, a charming natural feature making it a matter of tidal calculation whether one can drive on board of them or not. It is not as bad as Innishark, which requires a trained gymnast to effect a landing, for it only needs nimbleness of brain instead of that of limbs.

While that zealous and hard-working young minister of the gospel, Father Rhatigan, was saying mass, and visiting that part of his flock congregated at Claddaghduff Chapel, I made my way over the intermittent isthmus of dry, hard, fine sand. It was an agreeable change from the road, which for some distance had lain over a "shaved bog"—that is, a locality from which the peat had been cut away down to its rocky bed. For some distance nothing was visible but stones, on which the rain came plashing down like a cataract. But the aspect and situation of Omey Island are such as to suggest to the speculative mind another and better Scheveningen without anything between it and Labrador. The island is not, however, purely sandbank, as Scheveningen appears to be, for it has a nucleus of rock, the sand being a later accumulation, every year increasing in volume, after the manner observed in Donegal, or as stones are amassed at Dungeness. I had heard wild stories of Omey Island, of troglodytes, hungry dwellers in rocky seaside caves, and rabbit-people burrowing in the sand. As Maundeville observes, "Verilie I have not seen them," but I can quite understand how the story was spread.

Over against the inhabited part of the island is what is now a mere sandbank. It is now covered with sand, and not a soul dwells thereon. But there were people there once who clung to their stone cabins till the sand finally covered them; so that they might fairly be described as dwellers or burrowers therein. At last their cabins became sanded up, and the poor folk moved to their present situation. Now I have seen superb potatoes grown literally in the sand at Scheveningen, and was not surprised to hear that Omey Island was once so famous for the national staff of life that few cared to grow anything else. But there are difficulties everywhere, and it is parlous work to break up ground at Omey. There is too much fresh air; for it blows so hard that people are afraid to disturb the thin covering of herbage which overspreads the best part of the island. "If ye break the shkin of 'um, your honour, the wind blows the sand away and leaves your pitaties bare. And, begorra, there are nights when the pitaties thimselves 'ud be blown away."

Statements like this must always be taken at a reduction, but, judging from my own experience, Omey is a "grand place for weather entirely." Half of the island is rented by a considerable farmer, for these parts. He pays a hundred pounds a year for his farm at Omey, and a hundred and fifty for another cattle farm up on the hills. When I said he "pays," I am not at all sure whether he has paid up this year or not, but he has flocks and herds, and of course is a responsible tenant. Yet he lives with his family in but a "bettermost" sort of cabin. His wife treated me most hospitably; in fact, she paid me too much honour, for she insisted that I should not sit round the fire with the countryfolk, but occupy the best parlour, a room large enough, but blackened with smoke, and unutterably depressing, despite the cabinet pianoforte opposite the fireplace. Musical instruments of torture appear to be considered a necessary mark of competence in Western Ireland, just as a big watch-chain is in certain parts of England. Not a soul on Omey Island could play the pianoforte, thank heaven; so it remained with its back against the wall, as mute evidence of solvency. There was no carpet on the floor, which was of a fine dirt-colour, and the chickens, ducks, and geese circulated freely about.

Here now was a man paying, or promising to pay, 250l. a year in rent, and who yet seemed to have not the faintest idea of comfort. It should be recollected that my visit was paid on a Sunday, when his family would be seen at their best; but the girls were running about with bare feet and dirty faces, and the neighbouring gossips, also barefooted and dirty beyond all imagination, were hanging round the fire, talking amongst themselves about the stranger, and half mad with curiosity concerning him. The farmer lived, it is true, in a wild place; but sand is so clean a thing in itself that it is a mystery how his tribe of children got so abominably dirty.

The drive homeward past Streamstown was wet enough, but still interesting in many ways. In no part of Ireland has the curse of middlemen been felt more severely than in Connemara. The middleman is specially abhorrent to the people when he is one of themselves. He is "not a gentleman, sure," is a deadly reproach in this part of the country. Practically he is objectionable because, being one of the people, he is aware of their tricks and their ways, and suspects them as they hate and suspect him. What would be urbanity on the part of the real "masther" is in the middleman viewed as deceit. The sharp tone of command endurable in a superior is resented when employed by a person of low origin. And it would seem that middlemen are not as a race persons of agreeable character. All the old rags of feudalism which have hung about Connemara long after their annihilation elsewhere, have been saved wherever it was possible by the middleman.