These labourers work for the small farmers from April to November; and between the autumn and the spring their wives and daughters knit, and by the Baron’s Court machinery are enabled to dispose of, nearly twenty thousand pairs of woollen socks. The yarns are brought from Edinburgh to the store-house at Baron’s Court. Thither every Wednesday come the knitters. Mrs. Dixon weighs the hanks of yarn, and gives them out.
On the following Wednesday the knitters reappear, each with her bale of stockings or socks. These are again weighed, and the knitters receive their pay according to the weight, quality, and size of the goods. In some families there are four, five, or six knitters. All these people, with four or five exceptions, are small cottars living on wretched little mountain farms, not on the Duke of Abercorn’s property; and but for this industry they would be absolutely without employment all the winter through.
Some of them come from a distance of twelve or fourteen miles, and but for this resource would literally starve. They are nearly all of them Catholics, and the Protestants here being Unionists, they are probably Nationalists. About three hundred knitters in all are employed. In the year 1886-87 the orders given for Baron’s Court work enabled Mrs. Dixon to pay out regularly about five pounds a week, not including casual private orders. For the current year the orders have been much larger, and the expenditure proportionally greater. Mrs. Dixon’s storehouse was full of goods to-day. The long knickerbocker stockings which she showed us were remarkably good, some in “cross-gartered” patterns, handsomer, I thought, than similar goods in the Scottish Highlands—and all of them staunch and well-proportioned.
For socks such as are supplied to the volunteers and the troops the War Office pays 8-3/4d. a pair.
It was pleasant to learn from Mrs. Dixon that these people thoroughly appreciate the spirit which prompted and still directs this enterprise. Last spring when the Duchess was thought for a time to be hopelessly ill, a young girl came down to Baron’s Court weeping bitterly. On her arm was a basket, in which were two young chanticleers crowing lustily. The poor girl said these were all she had, and she had brought them “to make soup for the Duchess, for she heard that was what the great people lived on, and it might save her life.”
This afternoon I went over by the railway to Derry with Lord Ernest to attend a meeting there. The “Maiden City” stands picturesquely on the Foyle, and has a fine, though not large, cathedral of St. Colomb, restored only last year, of which it may be noteD that the work never was undertaken while the Protestant Church of Ireland was established by law, and has been successfully carried out since the disendowment of that Church. The streets were white with snow, but the meeting in the old Town Hall was largely attended. It was, in fact, a sort of Orange symposium—tea being served at long tables, and the platform decorated with a pianoforte. The Mayor of the city presided, and between the speeches, songs, mostly in the Pyramus or condoling vein, were sung by a local tenor of renown. It was very like an American tea-fight in the country, and the audience were unquestionably enthusiastic. They quite cheered themselves hoarse when Lord Ernest Hamilton reminded them that he had made his first political speech in that hall on a “memorable occasion,” when, being an as yet unfledged Parliamentarian, he had taken a hand in a successful attempt to prevent the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. Dawson, from making a speech in Derry. One of my neighbours, a merchant in the city, told me that a project is afoot for tearing down the old hall in which we met “to enlarge the street,” but he added that “the people of Derry were too proud of their history to allow it!”
I understood him to say it is one of the very few buildings in Derry which witnessed the famous siege, and the breaking of the boom.
We left the “revel” early, caught a fast train to Newtown-Stewart, and returned here an hour ago through a driving snowstorm, most dramatically arranged to enhance the glow and genial charm of our welcome.
BARON’S COURT, Saturday, Feb. 11th.—All the world was white with snow this morning. Alas! for the deluded birds we have been listening to for days past; thrushes, larks, and as, I believe, blackbirds, though there is a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird sing before the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. Valentine’s Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors this morning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy of a girl, with her groom, went off like mad across country on her pony, “Guinea Pig,” to fetch the mails from Newtown-Stewart.
Not long after breakfast came in from Letterkenny Sergeant Mahony of the constabulary, on whose testimony Father M‘Fadden was convicted. We had heard at Letterkenny that he was now on leave at Belfast, and Lord Ernest had kindly arranged matters so that he should come here and tell us his story of Gweedore.