Recently, a young girl named Catherine Cafferby, of Belmullet, in County Mayo—the pink of her father’s family—fled from the “domestic service” of a landlord as absolute as Lord Leitrim, the moment the poor creature discovered what that “service” customarily involved. The great man had the audacity to invoke the law to compel her to return, as she had not given statutable notice of her flight. She clung to the door-post of her father’s cabin; she told aloud the story of her terror, and called on God and man to save her. Her tears, her shrieks, her piteous pleadings were all in vain. The Petty Sessions Bench ordered her back to the landlord’s “service,” or else to pay five pounds, or two weeks in jail. This is not a story of Bulgaria under Murad IV but of Ireland in the reign of the present sovereign. That peasant girl went to jail to save her chastity. If she did not spend a fortnight in the cells, it was only because friends of outraged virtue, justice, and humanity paid the fine when the story reached the outer world.
These iniquities have taken place in christian lands[35] and these nefarious outrages upon women have been enforced by the christian laws of both church and state. The degradation and unhappiness of the husband at the infringement of the lord’s spiritual and temporal upon his marital rights, has been depicted by many writers but history has been quite silent upon the despair and shame of the wife.[36] No hope appeared for woman anywhere. The Church which should have been the great conserver of morals dragged her to the lowest depths through the vileness of its teachings and its priestly customs. The State which should have defended her civil rights followed the example of the church in crushing her to the earth. Christian laws were detrimental to woman in every relation of life.
The brilliant French author, Legouve,[37] gives from among the popular songs of Brittany during the fourteenth century, a pathetic ballad, “The Baron of Jauioz,” which vividly depicts the condition of the peasant women of France at that date. In the power of the male members of her family over her, we also find an exact parallel in the condition of English women of the same era. The moral disease thus represented being due to the same religious teaching, the change of country and language but more fully serves to depict the condition of woman everywhere in christendom at this period.
BRETON BALLAD OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. THE BARON OF JAUIOZ.
I.
As I was at the river washing,
I heard the sighing of the bird of death.
“Good little Jina, you do not know it, but
you are sold to the Baron of Jauioz.”