"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

An intelligent Protestant, to whom I read this statement, made some corrections. He said that the landlord would only endorse for the rent, and the money-lender would charge ten or fifteen per cent.

I cannot substitute a name for that of my next witness. It is too well known, having been mentioned in Parliament. John Coppithorne is a Methodist. In politics, a Conservative. He says that if poor Beaconsfield were in there would not be any of these disturbances. He has a shop. He is a dyer, coloring frieze for country-folks. He rents several acres of land, and, finally, unfortunately for him, he lets “cars,” or keeps a small posting establishment. It is on account of letting vehicles to the police that he is boycotted. He has lived for fifty-two years in the town of Skibbereen, in the southwest, near Cape Clear. Skibbereen is the terminus of the railroad, but beyond lies Skull, the residence of Father Murphy. Father Murphy is a quiet Catholic priest. One day a police-officer went into his house to get him to use his influence with the people. But Father Sheehy was already in jail, and the people, seeing the policeman, flew to the idea that Father Murphy was to be apprehended. A riot impended, and a message was sent to Skibbereen for a reinforcement of police. Not many police-officers were there, but they sent as many as they thought they could spare, and unfortunate John Coppithorne let them have cars to convey them, having no idea that the people would break out as they did. Mrs. Coppithorne was extremely alarmed when the mob attacked their house. They began about nine P.M., and continued at intervals until daylight, or about half-past two. It was not alone the breaking of windows, doors, and shutters which was alarming, but the accompanying sounds. The women were dreadful, howling and laughing. They brought stones in their aprons and encouraged the men. Horns were blown all night on the surrounding hills,—conch-shells and cows’ horns. The military arrived by special train at three A.M., “and their arrival was as grateful as at Lucknow,” said Mrs. Coppithorne.

At an early hour of the night some of the mob suggested to the priest that if the armed police were withdrawn they themselves would disperse. The stipendiary magistrate agreed to the proposition. The stipendiary, or paid magistrate, commands the armed forces, soldiers and police, in case of riot. So the police withdrew to barracks, and the mob took the priest on their shoulders and carried him home. The magistrate retired to his hotel, and then the mob came back in double force. Having before confined their efforts to the upper windows, they now attacked the doors and shutters below, and plundered the shop.

After all it was a false alarm, as Father Murphy was not apprehended. Tears came into Coppithorne’s eyes when I asked him the amount of his losses. I hear that he claims damages to the extent of eight hundred pounds. He says that his business, worth perhaps two hundred pounds a year, is almost entirely ruined. Sometimes the people will come creeping in, perhaps with a permit to get frieze left to be dyed before the riot. There was a man in the shop while I was there, who wanted some frieze which some one had left for a petticoat. He had lost the ticket. The clerk declined to let him have it. “Only that the book was torn,” he said, “I could let you have it.” So the inconvenience of tearing books is not all on one side.

John Coppithorne is familiar with the pecuniary condition of the farmer. We could hardly expect him to be prejudiced in the farmers’ favor. It is therefore remarkable that he confirms the report of the desperate condition of many of them. Of working farmers around him, he estimates that ten per cent. have barns. About fifty per cent. sell their hay. Then horses and cows are fed in the winter on the young shoots of the furze, chopped up for the purpose. (It is like donkeys eating thistles.) Fifty per cent. of the farmers sell their straw, and buy guano and phosphates. These are the small, unthrifty farmers. The large ones buy these, and use barn-yard manure also. But about fifty per cent. are never forehanded enough to be able to make manure in the winter sufficient to keep their land up to the standard. Poor creatures that have only a few acres can be seen going security for each other in the spring to buy guano for their potato ground. They live on potatoes, fish, milk, and Indian meal gruel.

About the same percentage sell all their grain to meet their rent and pressing demands, and then buy, often on credit, to feed themselves and animals. They buy their seed grain on credit at a high rate, paying, if they pay at all, after the next harvest. Legal process is not infrequently used to oblige them to pay. If money had not been sent into Ireland, and relief afforded by benevolent persons, half of the farmers would not have had seed potatoes in the spring of 1880.

Others at Skibbereen said that the competition is too great when farms are to be rented, and some farms are entirely too small to support a family, even if they had them rent free. Near the sea-coast an existence can be eked out by fishing, but there are many in Ireland cultivating five acres or less.

During my visit to Skibbereen I saw a funeral. The corpse was followed by wailing women, for this old custom still prevails. They buried the body at the graveyard of the abbey, an old ruin, where the dead were buried coffinless during the famine. It was so desperate that these people, who have so great a regard for funeral observances, would bury their dead, in some cases, in fields near the houses, and the parish cart went round and took up dead bodies that were buried in trenches. This great famine was caused by the potato-rot. A gentleman told me that at that time nineteen-twentieths of the people rarely ate bread.

But whether Ireland has not long been subject to famines is to me a question. Within two or three years we have seen one averted by liberal contributions, and there was one in 1822, or twenty-five years before the great potato famine just mentioned.

While in the county Cork I met another person well qualified to speak of the condition of farmers. Michael McBride’s occupations were multifarious. He kept a shop, and a public-house distinct from it. He farmed many acres of land in different tracts. He sold his cattle at the fair. A public-house is a drinking-place, but McBride said that he drank no liquor himself. He was not a member of the Land League. He turned out a tenant and suffered by the League. While we talked in a retired corner of his “public,” he occasionally spoke in a loud voice, as though for others to hear, in this manner: “England is getting sixteen million pounds a year out of this unfortunate country, and plunging people into jail under the coercion act for saying nothing but the truth.”