“Dean Bermingham, who was moved to the chair by Mr. Peter Dwyer, V. C., P. L. G., seconded by Mr. A. Mohan, P. L. G., took as the text of his speech the resolutions recently forwarded to Mr. Shirley and the curt reply received. These resolutions, which we have already published, called for an abatement in the rents owing to the bad prices and partial failure of the harvest, and requested the landlord to take advantage of the new Land Act to have the evicted tenants on his estate reinstated. Dean Bermingham sent a courteously worded letter to Mr. Shirley with the resolutions; but the only reply received was an acknowledgment from Mr. Gibbings, the agent, a gentleman referred to by Mr. Daly, M. P., in his speech as ‘a mere day-servant, a fellow employed at thirty shillings a week.’ The Dean trenchantly described the answer as cold, curt, callous, and heartless. He humorously suggested that though Mr. Shirley might not be expected to treat with courtesy the parish priest of Carrickmacross, he might have shown a little politeness to a brother landlord. He (Dean Bermingham) is not the owner of as many broad acres, but he is the owner of as fine a castle—the ancient residence of the Earl of Essex, from whom the Shirleys are descended, and from whom they inherit their Farney estate. He got that castle honestly—he didn’t get it from old Queen Bess; and he was proud of owning the ancient stronghold of the McMahons, and having converted it to a better use than ever it was put to before. The Rev. chairman referred to the fact that while he threw open Bath walk to the public, admission to the Shirley demesne is by ticket, which people have to go to the agent to procure; and when he recently went and asked for this permission for the convent children for one day, he was bluntly refused.”
That is enough to show my readers, that notwithstanding all the Tenant-right bills that England has passed for Ireland during the past fifty years, England, and England’s lords hold Ireland to day with as tyrannous a control as they have held it—every day of the past seven hundred years.
And by the bye, ’tis no harm to remark here, that whatever differences there may be between the Fenians and the priests, the priests don’t forget to remind us occasionally of our history, and of how we were murdered, plundered and pauperized by the English robbers. Whenever they preach a good sermon on the life of the Church in Ireland, they have to remind us of this. Some of us blame the priests for not taking up the sword and fighting against England. ’Tis our place to do that. ’Tis their place to do as they are doing. But we shirk our part of our duty, by going around the world preaching against England, on the anniversary of every day on which Englishmen murdered Irishmen.
If we were the men that we ought to be, we would be doing something to have “vengeance wreaked on the murderer’s head,” instead of hugging to ourselves the satisfaction that we are doing all that belongs to Irish patriots to do, by celebrating those days, in singing “High Upon the Gallows Tree,” and “The Glories of Brian the Brave.”
But I have not done with Kerry yet. I was speaking of it when Father Bermingham’s speech about the Essex-Shirley invasion took me into the northern County. Another of those invaders of the time of Queen Bess got into the southern County. His name was Petty. He came in as an English government surveyor, and when he had done his work, he had surveyed into his own possession all the lands of the O’Sullivans, the O’Conners, the O’Connells, the O’Moriartys, the O’Donoghues, and other Irish clans. From that Petty comes to us this Marquis of Lansdowne, who has his English title to the town of Kenmare and all the townlands around it. The Lansdowne of my day, hearing of the “good” work that Trench was able to do, brought him from Monaghan to Kerry, and gave him carte blanche to go on with his “improvements” there. Trench went at his work with a will. He thought the people were too numerous in the land, and commenced rooting them out. Cromwell, two hundred years before that, brought ship-masters from England; shipped the Irish, men, women, and children, to the Barbadoes, and had them rented out, or sold as slaves. Trench brought his ship-masters from England, and shipped the Kerry people to the Canadas—in ships that were so unfit for passenger service that half his victims found homes in the bottom of the sea.
Then, to boycott the Scriptural permission to “increase and multiply,” he issued orders that no people should marry on the estate without his permission; that holdings should not be divided, nor sub-divided; that any son to whom he gave permission to marry, and whom he recognized as the tenant in possession, should not give shelter to his father or mother, or to the father or mother of his wife. What wonder is it that the Kerry people regarded Trench with a holy hatred? What wonder if they would be glad that somebody would “trench” him?
In reading the history of France, and of what the “nobles” of France were for some centuries preceding the time of Napoleon, I couldn’t help thinking of the kinship in manners and mind that seemed to be between them and the English “nobles” in Ireland. French history says, that the French noble would come home from a day’s hunting; his boots would be wet; his feet would be cold; he would order that one of his retainers be slain, and his body slit; then, he would put his naked feet into the bowels of the dead man that they might get warm there. Also that the French “noble” on many estates claimed the right of honeymoon with every woman who got married on his estate. I am not saying that Trench or his “noble” Lansdowne went so far; but there was one of those English “nobles” slain in Leitrim or Donegal a dozen years ago, whose character came very near the mark, and to which account his death is credited.
I now come back to Skibbereen for a while. During a few seasons of my time there, I used to take a hand at making what are called Skellig lists. These are rhyming productions that are gotten up in the south-western towns of Ireland after Ash-Wednesday—descriptive of the pilgrimage to the Skellig rocks of the young people who were eligible for marriage, but who didn’t get married the preceding Shrovetide. On Shrove-Tuesday night the little boys go around to the houses with tin whistles, kettle drums, and baurauns, drumming them away to Skellig’s, making much such a racket as the youngsters make in America on New Year’s night or Thanksgiving night. For dabbling in the idle diversion of making those Skellig lists I got the name or fame of being the poet-laureate of the locality.
And yet I cannot leave my ‘box of literature’ without saying something more about it. It became the library of my boyhood days and nights. There were all kinds of books in it; books of piety, books of poetry, books of love, languages, history, war, and romance. “Hell Open to Sinners—Think Well On It,” was a terror-striking book. “The Glories of Mary,” must be a touching book; reading it used to start tears to my eyes.