Let a child or an old person eat ever so little in the year, his food cannot but represent a value. Let that value be £4. Can six acres of mountain ground managed without skill or manure, render five, six, ten times £4 a year, and a rent in addition of five to six pounds? It is sheer impossibility.
A few examples.
James Garey, fifty years old, married, four children. Nominal rent £5 14s. Two cows, one pig, eight chickens. About six acres of land. Cultivates only part of it, about three acres, where he grows potatoes; the remainder is pasture. Sold this year thirty shillings’ worth of butter; ate his potatoes from first to last; has not paid a farthing to his landlord for the last four years. Owes £6 to the draper-grocer; would never be able to pay his taxes if two of his children, who are out in domestic situations, did not send him the necessary amount to prevent execution.
Widow Bridget Molony, sixty years old; five children; seven acres of land. Nominal rent £6 12s. Four cows, an eighteen-month-old calf, two pigs, twenty chickens. Sold £3 10s. of butter this year, £2 oats, 15 shillings potatoes, and a pig for £3; just sent a calf to market, offering it for £1 15s.; did not find purchaser. Thinks herself relatively lucky, as she is owing only two years’ rent to her landlord. Two of her children have situations at Liverpool, and help her to pay the taxes.
Thomas Halloran, forty years. Three children, eight acres of land; rent £6 15s. Two cows, fifteen sheep, a pig, an ass, twelve chickens. Sold during the year ten shillingsworth of butter and ten sheep at twelve shillings a head. Has paid nothing to landlord since November, 1884.
Michael Tuohy, seventy years old, three children, four grandchildren. Nine acres of land, £7 rent. A cow and five hens. Can no longer afford a pig. Sold only fifteen shillingsworth of butter this year, and had to get rid of two cows out of three to pay the ten per cent interest of a debt he has contracted with the National Bank. Owes four years’ rent to his landlord; hopes that his son, who has emigrated to the United States, will send him the money for the taxes; if the son doesn’t, he cannot see any way to save the last cow.
Examples of that description could be multiplied ad infinitum; they are, so to say, the rule in the mountainous districts, where the holdings are for the most part beneath £10 rent, and totally unequal even to sustain the farmer.
Glenbeigh, between Kilarglin and Cahirciveen. This place was the theatre of several deplorable scenes in January last, on Mr. R. Winn’s property. That property, very extensive, but consisting of poor, not to say totally barren land, was put down at £2000 on the valuation roll. The aforesaid rent not having been paid during four or five years, the owner was of course in very strait circumstances; he had to go to some Jews, who substituted themselves in his place, and undertook to enforce payment. But the extreme poverty of the tenants proved even stronger than the energetic tribe. In consequence of the gradual subdivision of the land, they had come to hold diminutive scraps of it such as could not even grow the potatoes sufficient for their sustenance. After various judicial skirmishes, the plain result of which was to establish the utter incapacity of the peasants to give a penny, the council of creditors resolved in the depth of winter to undertake a wholesale campaign of evictions. Seventy-nine writs of ejectment were issued, and soon after the under-sheriff, backed by a strong detachment of mounted constables, arrived to evict the wretched families.
The operations began at a certain Patrick Reardon’s, on a literally barren land, for which he was expected to pay £4 10s. a year. He was the father of eight children, but did not even possess a pig, not a pair of chickens. The furniture consisted of a bed, a rickety table and a kettle. Squatting on the ground with his whole family, according to the time-honoured custom, he waited for the executors of the law. Requested to pay, he answered that he possessed not one farthing; he was then informed that they were going to set fire to his cabin, in order to oblige him to evacuate the premises. The act soon followed the threat. A lighted match applied to the thatched roof, and in a few minutes the whole was in conflagration. All the neighbouring populations, who had run on to the scene of the tragedy, saluted the dreadful deed with hooting and execration.