The longer I stayed among the hills the more I became convinced that the people had strained every nerve to pay what they considered unjust and extortionate rents. They worked hard; they farmed hard; they wore poor clothing; they left their hill and went over to Scotland or England, at harvest time, to earn money to pay the rent. "And we were not considered as kindly, or as much respected, as their hogs or dogs," said a farmer to me. There was nothing left after the rent for comfort, or to use in case of sickness; they always lived on the brink of starvation.
"Why did you not refuse to pay these increased rents when they were put upon you first? You should have refused in a body, and stood out," I said to one man. "Some could do that, my lady, but most could not. At first I had the old people depending on me, and I could not see them on the hillside; now I have little children, and the wife is weakly. And there were many like me, or even worse."
Now consider some of the office rules. My lord had a pound of his own: for a stray beast, so much; for a beast caught up the mountain without leave, eviction; for burning the limestone on your own place instead of buying it at the lord's kiln, eviction; for burning some parings of the peat land, the ashes of which made the potatoes grow bigger and drier, eviction. Not only did the man who did not doff his hat to the landlord stand in danger, but the man who did not uncover to his lowest under- bailiff. One exaction after another, one tyranny after another has dug a gulf between landlord and tenant that will be hard to bridge. I saw a stone house used as a barn. Lord Leitrim made the man who built it, who had got permission to build from the good Earl, tear down the chimney and make an office-house of it, on pain of eviction. He must continue to live himself in the hovel. Another widow woman, evicted for not being able to pay her rent, had the roof torn off her house, but has a place like a goose pen among the ruins, and here she stays. Every day rides out Capt. Dopping with his escort of police, paid for by the county, and evicts without mercy. Since the eyes of the world have been drawn to Ireland by the proceedings of the Land League none have been left to die outside. The tenants are admitted as caretakers by the week, but the eviction, I am told, extinguishes any claim the poor people might have under the Ulster Custom.
I have seen nothing yet to make me think I was in a disturbed country except meeting Captain Dopping and his escort, and seeing white police barracks and dandy policemen, who literally overrun the country. It carries one's mind back to the days of bloody Claverhouse or wicked Judge Jeffries to hear and see the feelings which the country people— Catholic as well as Protestant—have towards the memory of the late Earl. "Dear, the cup of his iniquity was full, the day of vengeance was come, and the earth could hold him no longer," said a Protestant to me.
"It was bad for the people, whoever they were, that took vengeance out of the hands of the Almighty, but many a poor creature he had sent out of the world before he lay helpless at the mercy of his enemies," said many an orthodox person to me. One poor girl on that dreadful day thanked God that the oppressor was laid low. Her mother evicted, had died on the roadside exposed to the weather of the hills, her brother went mad at the sight of misery he would almost have died to relieve but could not, and is now in the asylum at Letterkenny. One can imagine with what feeling this desolate girl lifted her hands when she heard of the murder, and said, "I thank Thee, O Lord."
What kind of a system is it that produces such scenes, and such feelings? It is a noticeable fact how many there are in the asylum in Letterkenny whose madness they blame on the horrors of these evictions. Wise legislation may find a remedy for these evils, but the memory of them will never die out. It is graven on the mountains, it is stamped on the valleys, it is recorded on the rocks forever.
IX.
ALONG A MOUNTAIN ROAD—WHY THE RENT WAS RAISED—TURNING FARMS INTO PASTURES—ST. COLOMBKILL—IRISH HOSPITALITY—A NOTABLE BALLAD.
The twenty-sixth of March rose sunny and cold, and I decided to hire a horse and guide to go to Derryveigh, made memorable by Mr. John George Adair. The road lay through wild mountain scenery. Patches of cultivated fields lay on the slopes; hungry whin-covered hills rose all round them, steep mountains rank upon rank behind; deep bog lands, full of treacherous holes, lay along at the foot of the mountain here and there. The scenery is wild beyond description, not a tree for miles in all the landscape.
On some of the lower hills men were ploughing with wretched-looking horses. Men were delving with spades where horses could not keep their footing. The houses were wretched, some only partly roofed, some with the roof altogether gone and a shed erected inside, but for the most wretched of all the hovels rent is exacted.