I had an opportunity on the morrow of seeing the handsome weaving of damask. The looms are very complicated and expensive affairs, and do not belong to the weaver but to the manufacturer. The pattern is traced on stiff paper in holes. Was very much interested in watching the process of weaving; of course did not understand it, and therefore wondered over it. The web was two and a half yards wide, was double damask of a fern pattern. The weaver, a young and nice-looking man, with the assured manner of a skilled worker, informed me proudly that he could earn three shillings a day—75 cents. Out of this magnificent income he paid the rent of his house—which was not a palace either—and supported his wife and family. His wife, a pretty and rather refined looking young woman, had a baby, teething sick, in the cradle. It must wail, and mother could only look her love and coo to it in softest tones, for if she took the little feverish sufferer up the pirns would be unwound and the husband's three shillings would have a hole in it, so both wife and baby had a share in the earning of that three shillings—baby's share the hardest of all.
Called in to see another weaver of damask to-day; he could earn fifteen pence a day. He was a melancholy little man, of a pugnacious turn of mind, I am afraid. He said that fifteen pence a day was but little out of which to pay rent and support a wife and family. Thinking of the wife and baby at the other house, we said that seeing the wife wound the bobbins, cooked, kept house, nursed and washed for her family that she earned her full share of the fifteen pence. Would not be surprised to hear that there had been a controversy raging on this very subject before we came in, the man's face became so glum and the woman's so triumphant. It was an enthusiastic blessing she threw after us when we left.
Visited a great thread factory, where the yarn is made ready that is woven into double damask, and thread for all purposes supplied to all parts. In whatever part of Ireland the tall factory chimney rises up into the air the people have not the look of starvation that is stamped on the poor elsewhere. Still, if we consider a wage of seven to twelve shillings a week—twelve in this factory was the general wages—and subtract from that two shillings a week for the house and three shillings a week for fuel the operators are not likely to lay up large fortunes. As they have no gardens to the houses owned by the factory, nor backyard accommodation of any kind, the cleanliness and tidy appearance of houses and workpeople are a credit to them. But when times grow hard, and the mills run half time, and not even a potato to fall back upon, there must be great suffering behind these walls.
There are large schools, national schools, in this village, and the children over ten years of age, who work in the factory, go to school half time. They are paid at the rate of two-pence halfpenny a day for the work of the other half of the day—that is equivalent to five cents. The teachers of the schools informed me that, when the little ones came in the morning, as they did on alternate weeks, that they learned well, but when they came in the afternoon they were sleepy and listless. On that morning they had to rise at five o'clock.
The schools which I have seen in Ireland, for so far, are conducted on the old plan; children learn their lessons at home, repeat them to the teachers in school, who never travel out of record, are trained in obedience, respect to superiors, and in order, more or less, according to the nature of the teacher. They still adhere to the broad sound of A, which has been so universally abandoned on the other side of the water.
The factories at Gilford are very remunerative; great fortunes, allowing of the purchase of landed estates and the building of more than one castlelike mansion have been made in them. From Tandragee to Portadown, in Armagh, which we travelled in a special car, took us through the same green country waving with crops, and in some places shaded heavily with trees. In the environs of Gilford—as if that very clean manufacturing town set an example that was universally followed—all the houses are clean and white as to the outside, further away the dreadful-looking homes abound. Portadown, all we saw of it, just passing through, is a clean and thrifty little town.
We would have liked to linger in Armagh a little while, but we must hurry down to the South. Got a glimpse of Armagh Catholic cathedral—a very fine building, not so grand, however, as the Cathedral at Sligo. Took notice of a very fine memorial window, with the name of Archbishop Crolly on it. I remember him very well, saw him frequently, got a pat on the head from him occasionally. He seemed partial to the little folks, when we played in the chapel yard—a nice place to play in was the chapel yard in Donegal street. He was then Bishop Crolly, and I was a very small heretic, who loved to play on forbidden ground. Walked about a little in Armagh between the trains, saw that there were many fine churches and other nice buildings from the outside view of them, and passed on to Clones. The land as seen from the railway is good in some places, poor in others, but in all parts plenty of houses not fit to be human habitations are to be seen.
Clones is a little town on a hill, with a history that stretches back into the dim ages. It has a round tower that threatens to fall, and will, too, some windy night; an abbey almost gone, but whose age and weakness is propped up by modern repairs, as, they say, the tenure of some land depends on the old gable of the abbey standing; a three-story fort, that, as Clones is built on a hill and the fort is built on Clones, affords a wide view of the surrounding country. Clones has a population of over two thousand, has no manufactory, depends entirely on the surrounding farming population, does not publish a newspaper, and is quietly behind the age a century or two. The loyal people who monopolize the loyalty are in their own way very loyal. It is delightfully sleepy, swarming with little shops with some little things to sell; but where are the buyers? If a real rush of business were to come to Clones I would tremble for the consequences, for it is not used to it.
I was quartered in the most loyal corner of all the loyal places in Clones. Every wall on which my eyes rested proclaimed that fact. Here was framed all the mysterious symbols of Orangeism, which are very like the mysterious symbols of masonry to ignorant eyes. There was King William in scarlet, holding out his arm to some one in crimson, who informed the world that "a bullet from the Irish came that grazed King William's arm." On the next wall is the battle of the Boyne, with some pithy lines under.
"And now the well-contested strand successive columns gain,
While backward James' yielding band is borne across the plain;
In vain the sword that Erin draws and life away doth fling,
O worthy of a better cause and of a nobler king!
But many a gallant spirit there retreats across the plain,
Who, change but kings, would gladly dare that battlefield again."