Another conclusion drawn from my personal intercourse with the Irish peasant was that nothing is to be got out of him by bullying and everything by gentle means. If you arrive at an inn and proceed, as do the English everywhere, to assume a harsh and arrogant tone, you will experience the greatest difficulties in obtaining even meagre fare in return for your money. They will pretend they have nothing in the house, that they are not in the habit of receiving travellers, and such like stories. If, on the contrary, you at once proclaim yourself delighted with the country, its manners and its inhabitants; if you risk a compliment to the hostess or a gentle pinch to the children’s cheek, the whole house is yours. They will instantly wring the neck of the solitary chicken promenading in front of the house; they will exhibit clean table-linen; they will rush to the neighbour and borrow a salad or some fruit; they will even unearth from some dark corner a bottle of old port. If you give this impromptu supper only half the praise it deserves, you may count on a luxurious breakfast for the next morning. These poor people are thus made. Their heart is warm; their sensibilities are quick. The least thing discourages them; the least thing electrifies them. In contradiction to the Anglo-Saxon serf, who despises his master if he treat him with gentleness, Paddy prefers a gracious word to all the guineas in the kingdom. The philosophical reason for the failure of the British in Ireland (and elsewhere) is perhaps chiefly to be found in their general want of human sympathy. The Englishman speaks too often like a slave-driver when he should speak like an elder brother.
The Plain.
The plains of North Kerry must be classed among the best land in the isle. This is not saying that they are first-class. But they evidently only need some outlay in drainage and manure and a few modern improvements in culture to rival our Normandy pastures. It is above all a land of grazing fields and butter; the grass in the meadows is green and luxuriant; the cows look strong and well. It is evident that the least effort would be sufficient to make agricultural enterprise a thriving business. But carelessness and want of thrift are plainly shown on all sides. Everywhere dung hills, placed just in front of the cottage doors, pour into the ditch the clearest of their virtue. The gardens are ill-kept, the fields transformed into bog for want of a drain seventy feet long. One sees oats so invaded by thistles that it must be a sheer impossibility to get the grain out. In other fields oats rot standing, because no one takes care to cut them in time. Nowhere is any sign shown of vigorous enterprise or activity. Not only do routine and sloth reign all over the country, but one might be tempted to believe in a general conspiracy for wasting the gratuitous gifts of Mother Nature without any profit to anybody.
Yet the country looks relatively rich. The peasantry have good clothes, they despise potatoes, eat bread and meat, drink beer or tea, send their children to school, and appear peculiarly wide awake to their own interests. Are they really, as they declare, unable to pay their rents? That is possible, for the principal products of the country—corn, oats, barley, butter, beef, and mutton, wool and potatoes—have undergone for the last three years a considerable depreciation, estimated at from 15 to 35 per cent. But this depreciation is evidently not felt by a diminution of comfort for the rural populations, here at least. The contrary might even be admitted. In any case there is evidently no question of a crisis of famine such as has so often been seen in this island for the last fifty years. The malady is something else. It is the malady of a people to whom it has been repeated for half a century that the land they live on has been stolen from them by strangers; a people who rightly or wrongly believe this to be the case; a people who have entered, under the direction of a central committee of politicians, on a regular struggle with the landlords; who profit by all economical incidents, especially the fall of prices, if not openly to denounce the treaty, at least to refuse to execute its articles.
A few facts noted in passing will explain the situation better than all discourses.
A large dairy farm, the finest I have yet seen in the country. The buildings are new, the fields covered with thick dark grass. I number sixty-five cows. All the dairy appointments are handsome and well-kept. The farmer looks prosperous. Clearly he lives at ease, judging by the furniture of the house, the quality of his clothes, by the very liberality with which he receives us, and by the brandy which he offers us (he is a friend of my guide). His rent is £100 a year. He does not mean to pay his next term. (I don’t think I will pay this gale.) His landlord offers to him the sale of his land for a sum of eighteen years’ rent, according to the official plan. If he followed that system all he would have to do would be to pay annually during forty-nine years the sum of £78, less by nearly a third than the present farm rent; he would then become a proprietor. He refuses. Why?
“Indeed?” he says, with a wink, “engage myself for forty-nine years!... Why! I shall have the land for nothing in two or three years!...”
Another well-to-do farmer driving in a dog-cart with his two daughters. The trap is new, the harness smart, the horse strong and well groomed. The damsels wear Dublin hats and white woollen dresses not unfashionable in cut.