Ireland as It Is Part 25

When it comes, you no longer shall lie in a ditch, Every beggar among you at once shall be rich; The hedger and ditcher shall have an estate, And drive his four horses, and dine off his plate.

What! you won't? And your champion in want of a meal, With his coat out at elbows, his shoes down at heel; With his heart all as black as his speeches in print!

Boys, I know what you'll do: you'll just keep back the Rint.

Now down with your cash, never think of the jail, For Erin's true patriots the Virgin is bail; She'll rain down bank notes till the bailiff is blind-- Still you're slack! Then I'll tell you a piece of my mind.

The priest is invoked to compel unwilling subscribers:--

Would you like to be sent, in the shape of a ghost, To be pokered by demons and browned like a toast?

Or be hung in a blaze with a hook in your backs, Till you all melt away like a cake of bees'-wax?

Would you like to be pitchforked down headlong to Limbo, With the Pope standing by with his two arms akimbo?

No matter who starves, plank down on the spot, Pounds, s.h.i.+llings, and pence; we'll take all that you've got.

The poem breathes the true spirit of Separatism-c.u.m-Sacerdotalism.

Newport (Co. Mayo), June 15th.

No. 36.--IRISH IMPROVIDENCE THE STUMBLING BLOCK.

The further journey from Newport to Mulranney on the _Gazette_ special engine was yesterday delayed for a few hours by the announcement that during the night part of the line had sunk into a bog--a circ.u.mstance which might have seemed unusual and ominous to English engineers, but which Mr. Lionel Vaughan Bennett regarded as a mere matter of daily routine, hardly worth more than a pa.s.sing mention. There was nothing for it but to take another walk round Newport, and after further admiring the great wall holding up the embankment opposite the station--a colossal work executed under great difficulties--to look at the surrounding landscape. Those who are interested in engineering may like to know the dimensions of this wall, which is two hundred feet long, thirty-five feet high, and ten feet thick at the base, tapering off to a thickness of five feet at the top, and is built of a fine limestone quarried from the railway cutting a little further out. The view from either of the ridges between which the town is built, is magnificent, mountain, valley, sea, and river contributing to the effect. From one ridge you see Clew Bay and the Croagh Patrick range, with an immense tract of country of varied appearance. From the other, immediately above the station, an enormous valley stretches away to the Bogagh mountain in front and the peaked summit of Lettermoughra on the left. At the latter point of view are some wooden cabins which the Saxon might mistake for pigsties or small cowsheds until he discovered they were inhabited by patriots, keen on Home Rule and charitable coppers. Beware of civility in these parts. From casual pa.s.sers-by it nearly always means an appeal for alms, and after a few days'

experience you are apt to fall into misanthropy. Some of these beggars have a fine dramatic way of opening the conversation. A hale and seemingly able-bodied man of fifty or thereabouts came up carrying a wheel, which he dropped when about ten yards away with the fervently uttered exclamation--

"G.o.d help the poor--owld--man!"

This adjuration falling short of its aim, he came up and asked for "a few coppers," at the same time invoking about sixpennyworth of blessings in advance, a sort of sprat to catch a mackerel.

"Got no coppers," I said, rather impatiently.

"May ye never have one till the day of yer death," said the good old man, this time with an unmistakable accent of sincerity. He hobbled off with the wheel, muttering something which may have been blessings, and a fine healthy young fellow came up. "Good mornin', an' 'tis a foin bit of scenery, but we can't ate it, an' we'd die afore we'd go into the poorhouse, an' a thrifle of money for a dhraw at the pipe would be as welkim as the flowers of May, an' 'tis England is the grate counthry, and thim that was in it says that Englishmen is tin per cint. betther than Irishmen, aye, twinty per cint."--and so forth, and so forth. There were six more applications in a hundred yards, one of them from a well-dressed boy of fourteen or fifteen, who gracefully reclined on a bank with his legs crossed, his arms under his head. Begging to the Irish race is as natural as breathing. They have an innate affinity for blessing and begging, and they beg without need. Anything to avoid work. They are for the most part entirely dest.i.tute of a spirit of independence. They will not dig, and to beg they are not ashamed. According to a Newport authority they are growing worse than ever. While I awaited the fis.h.i.+ng up of the line he said:--

"The conduct of the poorer cla.s.ses is becoming more and more a disgrace to the country. There is poverty, of course, but not so much, nor in so great a proportion, as in England. This line has been in progress for two years and a half, and the people of this district have received many thousands of pounds without any perceptible improvement of position, either as to solvency or personal appearance.

They are as ragged as ever, as dirty as ever, and decidedly more dishonest than ever. They are more extravagant in their eating and drinking, and the women spend more in ridiculous finery; but in spite of the wages they have earned, they have not paid their way one bit better than before. They usually sow the land and live on the crops, selling the surplus to pay the rent, which is usually very moderate, and well within what the land will pay. For thirty months many hundreds of them, thanks to Mr. Balfour, have enjoyed an additional income of fifteen s.h.i.+llings a week, but they have not paid their rents any better than before. They have so many people agitating for them, both here and in England, that whatever they do or fail to do, they know they are sure of substantial support. While Irishmen only were working for them, they felt less secure, but now Mr. Gladstone and his following have taken their cause in hand, they feel more sure of their ground, and accordingly they have lapsed into confirmed laziness and dishonesty. They have found out the strength of combination, and the possibility of withholding payment of rent, and year by year they are falling lower and lower. Their morality is sapped at the root. They have the utmost confidence in their clergy, and their conduct being supported, and even advised from the altar, they spend all their money quite comfortably, sure that in case of eviction the country will be up in arms for their a.s.sistance, and that weak but well-meaning English tourists, seeing their apparent condition, will help them liberally. The English tourist has much to answer for. He couples dirt and nakedness with misfortune and poverty, and nine times out of ten he is altogether wrong. People with five hundred pounds in the bank will go about barefoot, unwashed, and in rags. No Englishman can possibly know his way about until he has lived for some time in the country, remaining in one spot long enough to find out the real state of things. He runs about hurriedly from place to place, observing certain symptoms which in England mean undeserved poverty and suffering. His diagnosis would be right for England, but for Ireland it is hopelessly wrong. What he sees is not so often symptomatic of undeserved misfortune, as of laziness, improvidence, and rank dishonesty. The Irish are a complaining people. Self-help is practically unknown among them, at any rate, among the Catholic population. They have reduced complaining to a system, or, if you will, they have elevated it to the level of a fine art. The recent agitations have demolished any rudimentary backbone they ever had, and the No-rent Campaign, with its pleas of poverty and financial inability, has done more to pauperise the people than all the famines Ireland ever saw.

"You can do nothing for them. One great argument for Home Rule is the fact that the people are leaving the country. Best thing they can do.

Let them get to some country where they must work or starve. Then they will do well enough. They work like horses in America, and their native cuteness conies out in trade with surprising results. The Irish race make a splendid mixture, but you must not take them neat. I am looked upon as a monster when I say, Let them go. I think it would be best. Let them clear out of the country, and leave it to people who can make it pay. Let Ireland be populated by Englishmen or Scotsmen, or both, and in twenty years the country would be one of the most prosperous in the world. Those are my opinions, and few Irishmen will gainsay them. They think them cruel, but their truth is generally admitted. Mr. Balfour has helped the people, and in a way which was best calculated to put them permanently on their feet. All to no purpose. You can't go on making lines that will not pay. You can't go on doling out charity for ever. Take the boats, nets, and so on, given to the congested districts. When those are gone you may give them more. The people will be exactly where they were. A few have been taught fis.h.i.+ng, you say. But it will not spread. Those who have learned the art have been taught almost by compulsion, and at the first opportunity they will fall back into their own ways. The farmers will not change their methods. If one among them did so he would be a mark for derision. No Irish villager has the pluck to say, I will do this or that because it is the best thing to do. He must do as the others do, even to planting his farm, selling the produce, and also in disposing of the proceeds. Nowhere is public opinion so powerful, so tyrannical, or so injuriously conservative as in Ireland. I challenge contradiction. Any intelligent Irishman who has lived in an agricultural and Roman Catholic neighbourhood will admit every statement I have made."

Later in the day I laid these observations before three Irish gentlemen dining at the Mulranney Hotel. All three readily and fully concurred, and there can be no doubt that these sentiments will be unanimously confirmed by any competent tribunal in or out of Ireland, Such being the case, the absurdity of the Home Rule agitation becomes evident at once.

At last the sportive young engine whose playfulness and prankishness were mentioned in my last, came whinnying up, harnessed to an empty truck in which was a bench with a green cloth, emblematic of Ireland.

This was better than convulsively clinging to the engine while she madly careered along narrow and dizzy precipices, every kick threatening to be your last, and emerging from the fiery ordeal, begrimed and swarthy, your knees half cooked by the engine fire. All this happened on my journey from Westport to Newport, but now the truck promised Sybaritic luxury, and if the rail should again give way, if the bog-hole, "still gaping to devour me, opened wide," I should at least disappear with dignity, should take my _holium c.u.m dignitatis_ in a truck, on a green-covered seat, and with the consciousness that I was doing something to fill up the gap, to solace the aching void in Ireland's bosom. Away we went, thundering along between the quivering bogs, as through a land of brown-black calves'-foot jelly. The line itself is sound, well-made and firm. I had this from Mr. Hare, engineer of the Board of Works, who said that Mr. Worthington's railways have an excellent name for solidity and thorough, conscientious work. Mr. Hare was formally taking over the last bit of line, that between Mulranney and Achil Sound, with which the Midland and Great Western Company will at present have nought to do. The company will work from Westport to Mulranney, although some portions of the line have a gradient of one in sixty, and the directors are shy of anything steeper than one in a hundred by reason of the wear and tear involved to rolling stock and permanent way by gradients requiring so much brake power. But the last seven miles they decline to touch on the terms offered by the Government at present. No doubt the line will be worked, and by the company aforesaid, but the contracting parties are for the moment at a deadlock. No line between Mulranney and the Sound could possibly pay. England is building Irish railways to give the people a chance, as the splendid quays of Newport, Limerick, and Galway were built.

Nothing, or next to nothing, is done on these quays. The Channel, as it is called at Newport, is a fine expanse of water about one hundred and twenty yards wide, leading through Newport Bay directly into the Atlantic. Only one boat, I was told, comes into the port. I saw it there, unloading a hundred and eighty tons of Indian corn--a Glasgow vessel, the Harmony, a sailer, which had taken three weeks to the voyage, which a steamer easily runs in thirty six to forty hours.

Galway was busier, but not by Irish enterprise, and Limerick was mostly fast asleep. The people cry aloud and shout for quays, harbours, piers, and railways; and when they are built they ask for something else. They are without the faculty of industrial enterprise.

They are always waiting for weather, wind, and tide. They lack resourcefulness, energy, invention. When the flour mills ceased to pay they had no notion of using the buildings and water-power for some other purpose. When the Coventry ribbon trade went to the dogs the people found salvation in bicycles. If Coventry had been in Ireland the people would have starved and murmured to the end of time.

Two miles out we came to Deradda, where eighty men were at work. Next came Sh.e.l.logah and the squeamish bit of bog. A number of men were busy on the line, and right in front of us was a gap in the rails, the platelayers laying the steel for dear life while the engine came up.

We slackened speed, but made no stop, and the last rail was finally bolted as we ran upon it. Carefully and gingerly we pushed along, my triumphal chariot in front of the engine, over the s.h.i.+vering embankment, on each side of which were deep-cut channels which seemed to have been hewn through acres of Day and Martin's blacking, so jetty and oily seemed this Irish bog. The subsidence of yesterday had forced the boundary walls of the line into wide semicircles, and it seemed likely to be touch-and-go with the engine, truck, and your humble commissioner. I took a last look at the landscape, and made a final note, but, while inly wondering whether I should be ultimately consumed in the form of peat or dug up and exhibited to future ages as a bog-preserved brutal Saxon, with a concluding squash we pa.s.sed the rotten spot, and it was permissible to breathe again. "We prefer it to sink at once," said Mr. Bennett. "Then we know the 'hard' is not far off, and we can fill up till the line becomes solid as a rock. When it goes down by degrees, sinking a foot to-day and a foot to-morrow, we find our work more difficult. We never leave a bad bit till we are a.s.sured, by careful examination and severe and repeated tests, that all is solid and secure." He told me how much earth had been dumped on this spot, which, like the soft place mentioned in my last, has given Mr. Balfour's _proteges_ a world of employment. I forget the quant.i.ty, but it sounded like an island or a small range of mountains. Soon on the left we saw the great expanse of Clew Bay, with its three hundred and sixty-five considerable islands, nearly all with cottages, cattle, and pasture, but without a tree. The Yankee breezes blew refres.h.i.+ngly, and the scenery around became of wildest grandeur. High mountains hemmed us in on every side, rising one over another, huge ma.s.ses of rock impending over untrodden pa.s.ses, unknown to any guide-book, and leading no man knows whither. Some mountain sheep on the line scaled the embankment and leaped the five-foot wall like squirrels. Then a group of obstinate black cattle, one of which narrowly escaped sudden transformation into beef. Then the station of Mulranney, or rather its site, for the foundations are not yet dug out. Some neat wooden cottages attested the contractor's care for his workmen, and the beautiful bay with its extensive sands and lovely surroundings came into view far below. A steep descent brought us to the hotel, an unlicensed house kept by a Northern Protestant. A quaint and charming place, known and prized by a select few. The Board of Works gave Mulrannoy a pier, but the whole bay boasted only a single boat. The people make no use of their pier. It stretches into the sea in a lonely, melancholy way, and, so far as I could see, without a boat near it, without a soul upon it or within half-a-mile. The Mulranians cannot do anything with the pier until they get Home Rule. In Limerick one day I saw a dead cat before a cottage door, in a crowded part of Irishtown. A week later p.u.s.s.y was diffusing an aromatic fragrance from the self-same spot. The denizens of this locality are waiting for Home Rule. They cannot move their dead cats while smarting 'neath the cruel English yoke.

The Home Rulers of Mulranney are not original. They say the same things over and over again, merely echoing what they have been told by others. They believe that their country has unlimited good coal, and that the English Parliament prevents the mines being sunk for fear of losing Irish custom. "We wish it were trap," said Mr. Bennett. "We are always looking for it, but although we have made a million's worth of railway, we have never seen a vestige of coal. It is safe to say that there is no coal in Ireland, except in one or two well-known spots, where it exists, and is mined, in small quant.i.ties." Another enlightened Irishman, of wide experience in many lands, expressed the conviction of the majority of his countrymen that the proposed Parliamentary change will never take place.

"The thing is too ridiculous to be possible. The respectable portion of the community were alarmed at first, as well they might be, knowing as they do precisely what it means. But as time went on that alarm has to a great extent subsided, not, as some will say, because the people are in any degree reconciled to the idea, but purely and simply because they see that the bill must perish when exposed to the light of criticism. The people as a whole do not want the bill. The poorer cla.s.ses do not know in the least what it means, nor what all the bother is about. They are told that they will be hugely benefited, but n.o.body can tell them how. Of course they vote for Home Rule, because in these parts the priest stands at the door of the polling booth and tells them as they go in how they are to vote. He also questions them as they come out, and they know beforehand that he will do so, and act accordingly. They dare not tell him a lie, for fear of spiritual trouble. They believe that the priest has their eternal future in his hands, and this belief is encouraged by the well-known argument used by the Roman Catholic clergy, a very familiar phrase in Ireland, "You must do as I tell you, for _I_ am responsible. G.o.d will require your soul of _me_ at the day of judgement!" What can the poor folks do?

Even the higher cla.s.ses are not exempt from this superst.i.tious fear.

They may be more or less freethinkers--freethinking is common among educated Catholics who are yet compelled by custom to conform to the outward observances of their faith--but yet, when the pinch comes, they are influenced by the prepossessions of their childhood and environments, and they mostly vote as they are told. They dread to offend the priest, though not to the same extent as the poor peasantry, who believe that confession of a wrong vote would entail the refusal of extreme unction, and that this would mean untold and endless torture in the world to come. And the priests preach politics every Sunday. The people like it better than the old style of Instruction. They call their sermons Instructions, you know, and they instruct the people to some tune. No doubt they have a right to persuade their flocks to follow a certain course. The temptation to preach something which at once catches the people's attention and furthers their own views is very great, and perhaps excusable. But is their teaching designed or calculated to suit England? The English may not understand the Irish question, but they may be sure that whatever suits the Papal power does not suit them. The modern Irish priest is a sworn foe to England. It cannot be otherwise. He springs from the small farmer cla.s.s, which has sworn to extirpate landlordism, which, to their minds, is synonymous with British rule. The English Parliament, hoping to win over the farmers, who are the strength of Ireland, has made one concession after another, with what result?

Absolutely none. The property of the landlord has been sacrificed bit by bit, in fruitless endeavour to please these people, who are more discontented than ever. And so they will continue to be as long as discontent pays. In Ireland the landlord is nothing, the tenant is everything. The policy of England with regard to Irish landlords reminds me of the man who, having to dock a dog's tail, cut off half-an-inch every day to gradually accustom him to the loss, and to minimise the 'suffering of the baste.'"

You can go nowhere in Ireland without meeting an Ulsterman. There was one at Mulranney. You may know them by their accent, by their size, by a general effect of weight, decision, and determination. They are mostly big men, large-boned and large-limbed, of ruthless energy, of inexhaustible vitality. They are demons in argument, tenacious and crus.h.i.+ng. They bowl straight over-hand and dead on the middle stump.

The lithe and sinuous Celt is no match for them. No matter how he twists and turns they grab him up, and, will he, nill he, fix him in front of the argument. They are adepts in cornering an opponent by keeping him to the point. You cannot catch them napping, and you cannot turn their flank. They are contented enough, except that they sigh for more worlds to conquer. They delight in difficulties, and demolish Home Rulers with a kind of contempt as if the work were only fit for children. They seem to be fighting with one hand, with great reserve of power, and, after doubling up an opponent, they chuck him over the ropes, and look around, as if, like Oliver, asking for "more." My Mulranney friend said:--

"Bull confessedly does not know what to do, and he calls in two sets of Irish experts (we'll say) and asks for their opinions. One set of Irishmen never quarrel with anybody and always pay their debts. The other set quarrel with everybody and don't pay what they owe. One set are successful in everything, the other set are successful in nothing.

One set have always been friendly and helpful to Bull, the other set have always been unfriendly and obstructive to him. He proposes to reject the advice of the successful, amicable, helpful men, who have always stuck up for him, and to follow the advice of the quarrelsome, unsuccessful, unfriendly men, who have always spoken ill of him and have spent their energies in trying to damage him. Bull must be a fool--or rather he would be if he meant to act in this foolish way. He will not do so; that can never be. But why waste so much time?"

I submitted that this waste was due to Mr. Gladstone, and not to England at all. He said--

"There is no England now. There's nothing left but Gladstone."

Of course he was wrong, but the mistake is one that under present circ.u.mstances any loyal Irishman might easily make.

Mulranney (Co. Mayo), June 17th.

No. 37.--ON ACHIL ISLAND.

The final spurt from Mulranney to Achil Sound was pleasant, but devoid of striking incident. This part of the line is packed and ballasted, and the _Gazette_ engine sobered down to the merely commonplace, dropping her prancing and curveting, with other deplorable excesses of the first two runs, and pus.h.i.+ng my comfortable truck with the steadiness of a well-broken steed. No holding on was required, as we ran between the two ranges of mountains which guard the Sound, and along the edge of a salt-water creek, which seemed to be pus.h.i.+ng its investigations inland. Barring the scenery the ride became uninteresting by its very safety. The line for the most part is based upon the living rock, and there were no exciting skims over treacherous bogs, no reasonable chance of running off the line, no ups and downs such as on our first flight were remindful of the switchback railway, no hopping, jumping, or skipping. Anybody could have ridden from Mulranney to Achil. There was no merit in the achievement. All you had to do was to sit still and look about. You could no longer witch the world with n.o.ble truckmans.h.i.+p. We ran over a bridge built to replace one washed away by a mountain torrent. The engineer who constructed the first had failed to realise that the tinkling rivulet of summer became in winter a fiercely surging cataract. The Achil Mountains loomed in full view, Croaghaun to the left, Sliebhmor (p.r.o.nounced Slievemore) the Great Mountain, in front, with many others stranger still of name. Then the Sound came in sight, with the iron viaduct-bridge which has turned the island into a peninsula. Then the final dismount, and a scramble among rusty rails, embankments, sleepers, and big boulders strewn about in hopeless chaos. Then the little inn, with a stuffed fox and a swan in the porch. A glance at the day-before-yesterday's paper, which has just arrived, and is considered to serve up news red-hot; and then invasion of the island.

A few hookers are anch.o.r.ed near the swivel-bridge of the viaduct, in readiness for their cargoes of harvesters for England and Scotland, and now and then big trout and salmon throw themselves in air to see what is going on in the world around them. A group of men who are busily engaged in doing nothing, with a grace and ease which tells of long experience, manifest great interest in the stranger, whom they greet civilly and with much politeness. Men, women, and children are digging turf in a bog beside the road. All suspend operations and look earnestly in my direction. This is one of the amenities of Irish life.

Driving along a country road you see men at work in a field. They stop at the first rumble of the car, and leaning on their spades they watch you out of sight. Then they resume in leisurely style, for work they will tell you is scarce, and, to their credit be it observed, they show no disposition to make it scarcer still. They husband it, h.o.a.rd it up, are not too greedy, leave some for another day. They dig easily, with a straight back, and take a long time to turn round. The savage energy of the Saxon is to them unknown. Why wear themselves out? "Sweet bad luck to the man that would bur-rst himself as if the wuruld wouldn't be afther him. Divil sweep the omadhaun that would make his two elbows into a windmill that niver shtops, but is always going. Fair an' aisy goes far in a day. Walkin' is betther than runnin', an' standin' is betther than walkin', an' sittin' is betther than standin', an' lyin' is betther than any o' thim. Twas me owld father said it, an' a thrue wurud he shpoke, rest his sowl in glory."

The Achil folks are ardent politicians. They have been visited by Michael Davitt, Dr. Tanner, and others, and most of the population, all the Catholics in fact, became members of the Land League. The area of the island is about forty thousand acres, a vast moorland, with miles of bog, and hills and mountains in every direction. There are also several large lakes, which abound with white trout. The cultivated portions of the land only seem to dot the great waste, which nevertheless supports a population of some five thousand persons. The houses are mostly filthy, the people having cattle which live with the family. I approached a house to make inquiries, and was driven from the open door by the smell issuing from the interior. The next was sweeter, having perhaps been more recently cleaned out. Only one room, with a big turf fire, creating an intolerable atmosphere. A bed filled one-third of the floor, most of the remainder being occupied by two cows. A rough deal table near the bed comprised the furniture, and visitors, therefore, must sit on the sleeping arrangement. A civilised Irishman said:--"Two cows, two clean cows only, and you're surprised at that! Where have you been? Where have you been brought up? Let me tell you something, and when you get to Dugort ask the doctor there whether I am correct. A family not far away were stricken down with typhus fever. The people are mostly healthy and strong, although living under circ.u.mstances which would soon kill people not used to them, or not enjoying the same splendidly pure air. Well, the poor folks, eight of them, were all down at once, and no wonder, for when I visited them I never saw such a sight in my life. There were three in one bed in one corner, three in one bed in another corner, and two in shake-down beds on the floor. In the same room were a mare and foal, three cows, one pig under a bed, and a henroost above, on the ceiling. What would the sanitary authorities of Birmingham say to that menagerie in a sick room? Somebody wrote to the Local Government Board, and the Board referred the matter to the Poor Law Guardians. But the Guardians themselves kept cattle in their houses. It is the prevailing custom. Wherever you go in Achil, you will find cattle in the houses, along with the family, sharing the same room. The people cannot be moved from this custom. A large landowner built some good cottages for them, and offered them rent free, on condition that they would not live with the cattle. The people would not accept, so they got the houses at last on their own terms, and took the cows with them as before. They say that the cows enjoy the warmth and give better milk. They also say that the big turf fire stands them in lieu of feed to some extent. The Achil folks are hopeless in the direction of improvements. They have had the Protestant Colony at Dugort before them for more than sixty years--a well-housed, well-clad community, living clearly and respectably, paying their way, and keeping at peace with all men, but they have not moved an inch in the same direction. They bury their dead in the old savage way, without any funeral rites, except such as the relatives may have in their minds. The priest says no prayer, reads no service, does not attend in his official character, unless specially engaged and paid. Usually he does not attend funerals at all, although he may sometimes join the procession as a mark of respect. And the weddings are arranged in a way you might think barbarous. A young man fancies a girl he sees at ma.s.s, or at a funeral. He gets a bottle of whiskey and goes to see the father, who nearly always wishes to get the daughter off his hands, without any regard whatever for the poor girl's feelings. I was present at one of these negotiations. 'What will you give with her?' said the young fellow, a boy of eighteen or so. 'Three cows and a calf,' said the father. 'So-and-so got three cows and a calf and a sheep.' said the suitor. The father pondered a bit, but eventually, not to be behind, conceded the sheep. The lover tried a bit further. Somebody else had three cows and a calf and a sheep and a lamb, but the old man stood firm, and the bargain was struck, with mutual esteem, after several hours' haggling and a second bottle of whiskey. I called in the evening to learn the girl's fate. She had been two years in service and had got unorthodox notions. She screamed with affright when the father brought the fellow forward and told her what was arranged. She had seen him before, but had never spoken to him, and the sight of him had always been most repugnant to her. She ran away into the bogs, but the country was up, and she was soon found. Then after a sound beating she was handed over to the ardent swain along with the cows, and so forth, nominated in the bond.

"They marry early or go to America. The boy is usually seventeen or eighteen, the girl fifteen or sixteen. I have known girls marry at thirteen. Not long ago a boy I knew well, a mere weakling, unable to do even a boy's work, got married. He was seventeen, or nearly seventeen, but he didn't look it. They believe that their poverty, such as it is, is due to the predominance of England. Their hatred of the English is very p.r.o.nounced, but a casual visitor will not see it.

He has money to spend, and they flock round him in a friendly way. But let him live among them! They tried to boycott the Protestant settlement, and if their priests had ruled on that occasion they would have starved us out or would have made things so unpleasant that we must have left the field. That was during the Land League agitation.

The Protestants declined to join and vengeance was declared, but Bonaventure, head of the monastery, forbade it. He is a splendid fellow, not like the ordinary priests at all. So they were saved. But let this change come about, once let that bill become law, and all Protestants must leave the island, must give up the land they have tilled and tended until it is like a garden, and seek their fortunes elsewhere. That is a certainty. Ask everyone you meet, and you will find that each will say just the same thing."

A smart car driver, named Matthew Henay, was dubious as to the benefits accruing from Home Rule. His driving was a study, and his conversations with Maggie, his little mare, were both varied and vigorous. "Now me little daughter, away ye go. That's the girl now. Me little duck, ye go sweetly. There's the beauty, now. Maggie me love, me darlint, me pride; ye know ivery word I spake. Yes, she does, Sorr.

She ondhershtands both English an' Irish. I can dhrive her in both, but I have an owld woman o' me own that can only dhrive her in Irish.

Home Rule will do no good at all. Twinty years I wint to England to harvest, an' eighteen iv it to the same masther an' on the same farm.

An' ye don't get me to belave all I hear widout thinkin' a bit. An' I say, get out o' that wid yer talk o' mines an' factories, an' rubbish.

Where's the money to come from? says I. That's what n.o.body knows.

Sure, we'd be nothin' widout England. A thousand goes from this part every year, an' even the girls brings back ten to fifteen pounds each.

That's all the circulation of money we have. An' as all we get's from England, I say, let us stick to England, but n.o.body agrees wid me.

There's the girl, now. Away ye go, me little duck, me daughter, me beauty, me--bad luck to ye, _will_ ye go? What are ye standin' there for? Will ye get out o' that, ye lazy brute? Take that, an' that, an'

_that_, ye idle, good-for-nothin', desavin', durty daughter of a pig.

_Now_ d'ye ondhershtand who's masther, ye idle, skulkin', schamin', disrespictable baste?"