"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

I boarded some days at a castle, the residence of a gentleman who formerly belonged to one of the learned professions. Had his tenants been paying rent, it is possible that I should not have been received as a boarder. To this castle I went by rail. On the way I saw soldiers, of course, but they were so common that I hardly noticed them. The castle was a handsome stone building in a grove. The wall of the old part measured six feet in the embrasures of the windows. The new part measured three feet. I was shown into a great parlor, barely furnished, with a turf fire in the grate. It was in June. I call my host Mr. Loftus. The family were Protestant and Conservative, holding to the Church of Ireland, as the Episcopal Church is called since its disestablishment.

The tenants of Mr. Loftus sent a delegation to him. They offered rent on the basis of Griffith’s valuation, which Mr. Loftus declined. He offered to allow them about one-fourth of the proposed reduction, or over sixteen per cent. on the rate of rent. But they went away without accepting his offer. Not to receive his rents was inconvenient for him, to say the least, as he had annuities to pay and bills to meet. Here I may add that a lawyer in Cork told me that the present unsettled state of affairs puts everybody on his guard against spending money, and so the laborers suffer. Some landlords have gone without their rent for two years, perhaps longer. Thus the bottom seems to be dropping out of society.

Another peculiarity in Irish affairs is the subletting of land; thus I heard of a farmer who has three landlords above him. To begin at the top, Mr. Prior lets land to the Osbornes, who get it from him on a perpetual lease for two shillings and sixpence per acre. The Osbornes let land to Daniel McBride, who has bought out a lease, but who has to pay also ten shillings and three pence per acre. Daniel McBride has other occupations, and does not work the land himself, but rents to a farmer, who takes a portion of the land, and pays McBride seventeen shillings per acre. As said farmer holds thirty-six acres, possibly he has one or two laborers’ houses which he rents out to men who would thus have four landlords above them.

To return to Mr. Loftus, the gentleman with whom I boarded. He spoke to me of the condition of the laborers in this district, which is but a poor one. It is natural for the aristocracy to look at this point, when farmers who are refusing them rent are themselves receiving rent from laborers. “The farmers of this country,” said Mr. Loftus, “are the worst in the world. They drive the laborers very hard, and treat them badly. Often they do not give them a house fit to put a pig into. The houses are roofed with sods, as they want the straw for farming purposes. Nearly all the poor people lie on straw beds, and it is hard to get straw from the farmers. They allow the laborer about one-fourth of an acre for his potato-patch, and charge him rent of from two pounds to four pounds, sometimes in advance. The laborer’s wages may be counted at one shilling a day the year round, and as his wife works in harvest, we may reckon hers at sixpence a day for six months. I speak only of my own neighborhood. I do not know the rates in others. There is near here a cluster of about a dozen cabins, all upon one farm. They are mud-walled and wretchedly roofed. A quarter of an acre of miserable boggy land is set apart for each tenant, and there is a large pool of stagnant water opposite each house. The tenant pays in advance three pounds and ten shillings yearly. The farmer sometimes makes the whole rent of his farm by what he receives from these people. I think the place a nuisance, and liable to breed a fever. None of these houses have windows, and many have no doors, except bunches of furze. The walls are propped up on the outside with pieces of bogwood to keep them from tumbling down.”

The laborer, having no outbuildings, must necessarily protect his precious domestic animals under his own roof. Most laborers have a goat, and the poorest have poultry, but since the potato famine pigs have not been kept as before. Sometimes, however, there is a donkey.

“The children of the laborer,” said Mr. Loftus, “go to the national school until they are about twelve years old. In most cases they go winter and summer without shoes and stockings. The laborer takes great pride and pleasure in being able to send his children to school. Laborers go to mass on Sunday, and in the afternoon may often be seen in the house, or beside a ditch, reading a newspaper. After mass they play ball in parties against each other, or have a fiddler and dance on the green or under trees. And they play cards, especially in Dublin county, where you can see them on Sundays playing on the banks of the ditches,”—i.e., under shelter of a wall.

“What games do they play?” I asked.

“Forty-five and spoil five,” he replied.

The laborer has no political privileges. Unless he pays a rent of over five pounds he pays no poor-rates, and no other taxes except the county or grand jury cess, and for malicious injuries, such as burnings. He pays this tax, but is not allowed to vote. “Would you put us under the Papists?” once cried an Irish Protestant on the question of universal suffrage.

On one occasion, when Mr. Loftus’s man was driving for me, he spoke of the desire or the efforts of the laborer to keep his little family together, for in the unions or poor-houses the sexes are separated. Mr. Loftus pointed out to me a building which he called the curse of the country. It is a union. “Children,” he said, “brought up there are well fed, and idle, and never want to work.” The number of these houses and the amount of money paid to sustain them seem almost incredible. Mr. Loftus’s district is very heavily taxed, about five shillings in the pound, or twenty-five per cent. on the valuation of a man’s annual income. The farmer pays this rate, but the landlord allows him half. The county of Cork, with a population of about five hundred thousand, has sixteen poor-houses. The one in Mr. Loftus’s district contains about four hundred inmates, and the one in Cork over one thousand. The Cork poor-rate amounts to from two and one-quarter to four shillings a pound annually on every pound valuation of houses and lands, but the valuation for taxes is only about sixty per cent. of the annual income.