Landlords or Their Land Agents' Approval Necessary to Marriages.—Within my personal recollection in this part of the country tenant-farmers had to go to the landlords or their agents or secretaries and get their landlord's approval of their sons' and daughters' marriages. If a farmer's son got married and the landlord or his agent was not consulted in his case, he would have to canvass for great influence when it would be time for him to become tenant, and even then he would stand great danger of never being accepted. The parents of the parties to be married would pretend to their landlord's agents that, owing to the holding being small or the quality of the land bad, they received a very small fortune. Castle Gregory was about the first place which I noticed to rebel against the system. Whenever a landlord, his agent or secretary passed by, the custom was to lift the hat off the head. Tenant farmers or any member of their families not doing so were looked upon very unfavorably thereafter. With the Land League, these customs rapidly began to decline.
La Varaha na Feir, or The Killing of People in Dingle by the Military.—It appears a fierce encounter took place between soldiers and civilians in upper Main Street and Goat Street, Dingle, resulting in the killing of several persons. I regret I have forgotten grandmother's story in which was given the date, loss of life and circumstances that led to it.
Lieth Broath, or Quirn.—This is a kind of hand millstone for grinding corn which formerly could be found in almost every house in the barony, but at present has almost entirely disappeared.
Middlemen and the Conacre System.—Middlemen were landlords between the head landlords and the cultivators. Head landlords with large properties, wishing to live away in some other country, divided their properties and let them to persons called "middlemen." The middleman divided his portion and sublet the same at about treble the rent he was paying his head landlord. A third middleman would parcel his up into small divisions and sublet at an enormous profit. With a string of middlemen between the head landlord and the cultivator, an acre let by the head landlord to his immediate lessor for five shillings per acre might cost the cultivator five pounds. But that was not the worst. Very often a man was required to pay two or three times for the same patch of ground—even the man paying for his little "hundred" of ground had sometimes to pay twice for his little patch of potatoes—because two men would be claiming title to the land. Then there was the usual staff of office men, rent warners, bog rangers, bailiffs and under-strappers who claimed tributes as well as the middlemen. Tenants were called upon to cut, save and draw home corn, hay, turf and sea manure for nothing, leaving the women and children attend to the tenant's own crops. Whether the middlemen were of Irish descent or foreign, Catholic or Protestant it did not matter much to the tenant, as they were nearly all oppressors of the worse kind imaginable.[6]
The middleman of the Eighteenth Century were the very scum of society and the seeds of immorality. They destroyed and brought to sorrow most young girls that put any confidence in them or entered their service. Parnell's land agitation destroyed the last of them.
Molly McGuires.—This name was given to three secret societies The first was an Irish secret society, formed in or about the year 1833, in the Barony of Farney Co., Monogham, Ireland, to co-operate with the Ribbon-Men, and was called after C. McGuire, a leader in the Irish wars of 1641. The object of this society was to resist the distraining of cattle for rent, then common with landlords and middlemen. At that time very often a poor tenant had to pay five or six times for the same piece of ground, for which he had already paid his immediate lessor, because the immediate lessor, or landlord failed to pay one of the middlemen or landlords over him. (See [Middlemen].) Distraining a tenant's cattle, impounding them, and selling them at auction before his eyes, in the name of British law and justice, for another man's debts, of which he had no knowledge or control and provided no legal remedy, to him appeared a wicked law. The McGuires applied the most desperate remedies available. Disguised as women, they rescued the cattle, flung boiling water and porridge on bailiffs, clubbed and stoned process servers, broke the locks on the pounds and released the cattle.
The activities of this society were confined to Ireland. Dressing in women's clothing caused the name "Molly" to be given to them.
As other new tenant-league societies grew up, they began to decline about the year 1856.
The second and next Molly McGuires was an Irish-American secret society, with many branches in the coal mine districts of Pennsylvania, U. S. A. This society took the name of the Irish society, but these societies had no other connection whatsoever with each other, only in name. The first qualification required by the American society was that its members should be Irishmen by birth, or descent, and also Catholics. This society took an active part in politics, and had its secret signs and passwords conveyed to them from England, through a Board of Erin. For being a secret organization, the Catholic Church declared against its members.
From amongst the local branches of the society in the anthracite coal mines of Northeastern Pennsylvania another notorious secret criminal inner ring of Molly McGuires was formed. They converted the local branches of the Molly McGuires, for their own protection, against the encroachments of English miners (Cousin Jacks and Cousin Germans included), on their jobs. Many of these Irish miners, previous to their coming to America, worked in the coal mines in England. In the latter country they received very poor treatment. They left that country carrying with them a deep hatred for anything that was English. Through secret societies, churches and lodges, to which bosses and superintendents belonged. English miners were making their way in amongst the Irish miners and Irishmen discharged. This was the start of the trouble. Soon the Molly McGuires by violence, conducted secretly, started at getting rid of superintendents, bosses and police hostile to them. In face of their condemnation by their church, they went forward, the most religious dropping away from the society.