Land hunger is a disease that does not attack the tenants alone. The poor man hungers for land to have the means of living; the rich man hungers for land because it confers rank, power and position. As soon as men have realized fortunes in trade they hasten to invest in land. That is the door by which they hope to enter into the privileged classes. Men accustomed to "cut things fine," in a mercantile way, are not likely to except a land purchase from the list of things which are to pay cent. per cent. The tenant has created a certain amount of prosperity, the new landlord looks at the present letting value of the land and raises the rent. This proceeding extinguishes or rather appropriates the Tenant Right. The landlord thinks he is doing no wrong, for, is he not actually charging less than Lord So-and-so, or Sir Somebody or other? which is perhaps very true. All this time the tenant knows he has been robbed of the result of years, perhaps of generations of hard and continuous labor. It is impossible to make such a landlord and such a tenant see eye to eye.

A gentleman asked a lady of Donegal if she would shut out the landlord from all participation in profits arising from improvements and consequent increase in the value of the land. I listened for the answer. "I would give the landlord the profits of all improvements he actually made by his own outlay; I would not give him the profits arising from the tenant's labor and means." Now I thought this fair, but the gentleman did not. He thought that all profit arising from improvements made by the tenant, should revert to the landlord after a certain time. I could not think that just.

As a case in point, a brother of Sir Augustus Stewart said to a Ramelton tenant:

"My brother does not get much profit from the town of Ramelton."

"He gets all he is entitled to, his ground rent, we built the houses ourselves," was the answer.

These people are safe, having a secure title, not trusting to the Ulster Custom or the landlords' sense of justice.

I have not been much among landlords. I did sit in the library of a landlord, and his lady told me of the excessively picturesque poverty prevailing in some parts, citing as an instance that a baby was nursed on potatoes bruised in water, the mother having hired out as wet-nurse to help to pay the rent. There was no cow and no milk. I had a graphic description of this family, their cabin, their manner of eating. The mother cannot earn the rent any longer and they are to be evicted. I was told they were quite able to pay, but trusting to the Land League had refused.

Naturally what I have seen and heard among the poor of my people, has influenced my mind. I could not see what I did see and hear what I did hear of the tyranny wrought by the late Earl of Leitrim, and the present Captain Dobbing, or walk through the desolation created by Mr. Adair, without feeling sad, sorry and indignant.



XX.

LORD LIFFORD—THE DUKE OF ABERCORN—WHOLESALE EVICTIONS—GOING SOUTH— ENNISKILLEN—ASSES IN PLENTY—IN A GRAVEYARD.

On the banks of the Finn, near Strabane, was born the celebrated hero Finn ma Coul. I think this just means Finlay McDougall, and, therefore, claim the champion as a relative. Strabane lies in a valley, with round cultivated hills, fair and pleasant to the eye, swelling up round it. Near it is the residence of Lord Lifford. I have heard townspeople praise him as a landlord, and country people censure him, so I leave it there. His recent speech, in which he complains of the new Land Bill, that, if it passes into law, it will give tenants as a right what they used to get as a favor from their landlords, has the effect of explaining him to many minds.

Leaving Strabane behind, went down or up, I know not which, to Newtown- Stewart, in the parish of Ardstraw (ard strahe, high bank of the river). In this neighborhood is the residence of the Duke of Abercorn, spoken of as a model landlord.

The Glenelly water mingles with the Struell and is joined by the Derg, which forms the Mourne. After the Mourne receives the Finn at Lifford it assumes the name of the Foyle and flows into history past Derry's walls.

At the bridge, as you enter the town of Newtown-Stewart, stands the gable wall of a ruined castle, built by Sir Robert Newcomen, 1619, burned by Sir Phelim Roe O'Neil along with the town, rebuilt by Lord Mountjoy, burnt again by King James.

Upon a high hill above the town, commanding a beautiful view of the country far and wide, stand the ruins of the castle of Harry Awry O'Neil (contentious or cross Harry), an arch between two ruined towers being the only distinct feature left of what was once a great castle. This castle commanded a view of two other castles, owned and inhabited by two sons or two brothers of this Harry Awry O'Neil. These three castles were separate each from each by a river. Here these three lords of the O'Neil slept, lived and agreed, or quarrelled as the case might be, ruling over a fair domain of this fair country. I do not think the present generation need feel more than a sentimental regret after the days of strong castles and many of them, and hands red with unlimited warfare.

Towering up beyond Harry Awry's castle is the high mountain of Baissie Baal, interpreted to me altar of Baal. I should think it would mean death of Baal. (Was Baal ever the same as Tommuz, the Adonis of Scripture?) In the valley beyond is a village still named Beltane (Baal teine—Baal's fire), so that the mountain must have been used at one time for the worship of Baal. The name of the mountain is now corrupted into Bessie Bell.

In the valley at the foot of the mountain is the grand plantation that stretches miles and miles away, embosoming Baronscourt, the seat of the Duke of Abercorn, and the way to it in the shade of young forests. There are nodding firs and feathery larches over the hills, glassing themselves in the still waters of beautiful lakes. Lonely grandeur and stately desolation reign and brood over a scene instinct with peasant life and peasant labor some years ago. The Duke of Abercorn was counted a model landlord. His published utterances were genial, such as a good landlord, father and protector of his people would utter. Some one who thought His Grace of Abercorn was sailing under false colors, that his public utterances and private course of action were far apart, published an article in a Dublin paper. This article stated that the Duke had evicted over 123 families, numbering over 1,000 souls, not for non- payment of rent, but to create the lordly loneliness about Baronscourt. His Grace did not like tenantry so near his residence. Those tenants who submitted quietly got five years' rent—not as a right, but as a favor given out of his goodness of heart. They tell here that these evictions involved accidentally the priest of the parish and an old woman over ninety, who lay on her death-bed. He had called upon the priest personally and offered ground for a parochial house; he forgot his purpose and the priest continued to live in lodgings from which he was evicted along with the farmer with whom he lodged. Of the evicted families 87 were Catholics and 36 Protestants. If they had been allowed to sell their tenant right they might have got farms elsewhere. Of those cleared off seventeen who were Protestants and six who were Catholics got farms elsewhere from His Grace. Some sank into day laborers, some vanished, no one knows where.

People here say that the reason why there are Fenians in America and people inclined to Fenianism at home is owing to these large evictions— clearances that make farmers into day laborers at the will of the lord of the land. The people feel more bitterly about these things when they consider injustice is perpetrated with a semblance of generosity. Nothing—no lapse of time nor change of place or circumstances—ever causes anyone to forget an eviction. Now they say that the Duke of Abercorn holds this immense tract of country on the condition of rooting the people in the soil by long leases, not on condition of evicting them out; therefore, he has forfeited his claim to the lands over and over again. This article, published in a Dublin paper, was taken no public notice of for a time, but when sharply contested elections came round, the Duke and four others, sons and relations, were rejected at the polls because of the feeling stirred up by these revelations. Such is the popular report of the popular Duke of Abercorn.

Omagh is a pretty, behind-the-age country town. The most splendid buildings are the poor-house, the prison, and the new barracks. The hotels are very dear everywhere; they seem to depend for existence on commercial travellers and tourists. Tourists are expected to be prepared to drop money as the child of the fairy tale dropped pearls and diamonds, on every possible occasion, and unless one is able to assert themselves they are liable to be let severely alone as far as comfort is concerned, or attendance; but when the douceur is expected plenty are on hand and smile serenely.

Left Omagh behind and took passage for Fermanagh's capital, Enniskillen of dragoon celebrity. The road from Omagh to Enniskillen showed some, I would say a good deal, of waste, unproductive land. Land tufted with rushes, and bare and barren looking—still the fields tilled were scrupulously tilled. The houses were the worst I had yet seen on the line of rail, as bad as in the mountains of Donegal, worse than any I saw in Innishowen. I wonder why the fields are so trim and the homes in many cases so horrible. Not many, I may say not any, fine houses on this stretch of country.

Arrived at Enniskillen on market day, towards the close of April. The number of asses on the market is something marvellous. Asses in small carts driven by old women in mutch caps, asses with panniers, the harness entirely made of straw, asses with burdens on their backs laid over a sort of pillion of straw. I thought asses flourished at Cairo and Dover, but certainly Enniskillen has its own share of them. The faces of the people are changed, the tongues are changed. The people do not seem of the same race as they that peopled the mountains of Donegal.

A little while after my arrival, taking a walk, I wandered into an old graveyard round an old church which opened off the main street. Underneath this church is the vault or place of burial of the Cole family, lords of Enniskillen—a dreary place, closed in by a gloomy iron gate. A very ancient man was digging a grave in this old graveyard, sacred, I could see by the inscriptions, to the memory of many of the stout-hearted men planted in Enniskillen, who held the land they had settled on against all odds in a brave, stout-hearted manner. None of the dust of the ancient race has mouldered here side by side with their conquerors. There was a dragoonist flavor about the dust; a military flourish about the tombstones. A., of His Majesty's regiment; B., officer of such a battalion of His Majesty's so-and-so regiment; C., D., and all the rest of the alphabet, once grand officers in His Majesty's service, now dust here as the royal majesties they served are dust elsewhere. Went over to the ancient grave-digger, who was shovelling out in a weakly manner decayed coffin, skull, ribs, bones, fat earth—so fat and greasy-looking, so alive with horrible worms. He was so very old and infirm that, after a shovelful or two, he leaned against the grave side and peched like a horse with the heaves.

"How much did he get for digging a grave?"

"Sometimes a shilling, sometimes one and six, or two shillings, accordin' as the people were poor or better off."

"How were wages going?"

"Wages were not so high as they had been in the good times before the famine. A man sometimes got three-and-six or four shillings then; now he got two shillings."

"And board himself?"

"Oh, yes, always board himself."

"Some people now want a man to work for a shilling and board himself, but how could a man do that? It takes two pence to buy Indian meal enough for one meal. You see there would be nothing left to feed a family on."

A stout, bare-legged hizzie appeared now, and kindly offered the old man a pinch of snuff out of a little paper to overcome the effects of the smell, and keep it from striking into his heart. This was one errand; to find out who was talking to him was another. She did not; we gave the poor old fellow a sixpence and moved away.



XXI.

ENNISKILLEN MILITARY PRIDE—THE BOYS CALLED SOLDIERS—REMNANTS OF BY- GONE POWER—ISLAND OF DEVENISH—A ROUND TOWER—AN ANCIENT CROSS—THE COLE FAMILY

Owing to the very great kindness of Mr. Trimble, editor of the Fermanagh Reporter, we have seen some of the fair town of Enniskillen. Knowing that Innis or Ennis always means island, I was not surprised to find that Enniskillen sits on an island, and is connected with the mainland by a bridge at either end of the town. Of course, the town has boiled over and spread beyond the bridges, as Derry has done over and beyond her walls. There is a military flavor all over Enniskillen, a kind of dashing frank manner and proud steps as if the dragoon had got into the blood. There is also nourished a pride in the exploits of Enniskillen men from the early times when they struggled to keep their feet and their lives in the new land. They feel pride in the fame of the Enniskillen dragoon, in the deeds of daring and valor of the 27th Enniskilleners all over the world. Enniskillen military pride is closely connected with the Cole family, lords of Enniskillen.

The town is not old, only dating back to the reign of the sapient James the First. Remembrance of the sept of Maguires who ruled here before that time, still lingers among the country people.

Had a sail on Lough Erne at the last of April; tried to find words sufficiently strong to express the beauty of the lake and found none. It is as lovely as the Allumette up at Pembroke. I can not say more than that. The banks are so richly green, the hills so fertile up to their round tops, checked off by green hedges into fields of all shapes and sizes; the trees lift up their proud heads and fling out their great arms as if laden with blessing; the primroses, like baby moons, more in number than the stars of heaven, glow under every hedge and gem every bank, so that though the Lake Allumette is as lovely as Lough Erne, yet the banks that sit round Lough Erne are more lovely by far than the borders of Lake Allumette. They are as fair as any spot under heaven in their brightness of green.

Sailing up the lake or down, I do not know which, we passed the ruins of Portora old castle; ruined towers and battered walls, roofless and lonely. Kind is the ivy green to the old remnants of by-gone power or monuments of by-gone oppression, happing up the cold stones, and draping gracefully the bare ruins.

The Island of Devenish, or of the ox, is famed for the good quality of its grass. Here we saw the ruins of an abbey. It has been a very large building, said to have been built as far back as 563. The ruins show it to have been built by very much better workmen than built the more modern Green Castle in Innishowen. The arches are of hewn stone and are very beautifully done without the appearance of cement or mortar. The round tower, the first I ever saw, was a wonderful sight to me. It is 76 feet high, and 41 in circumference. The walls, three feet thick, built with scarcely any mortar, are of hewn stone, and I wondered at the skill that rounded the tower so perfectly. The conical roof is (or was) finished with one large stone shaped like a bell; four windows near the top opposite the cardinal points. There is a belt of ribbed stone round the top below the roof, with four faces carved on it over the four windows. Advocates of the theory that the round towers were built for Christian purposes have decided that there are three masculine, and one feminine face, being the faces of St. Molaisse, the founder of the abbey; St. Patrick, St. Colombkill and St. Bridget.

Near the round tower is the ruins of what was once a beautiful church. The stone work which remains is wonderfully fine. The remaining window, framed of hewn stone wrought into a rich, deep moulding, seems never to have been intended for glass. It is but a narrow slit on the outside, though wide in the inside. There are the remains of two cloistered cells, one above another, very small, roofed and floored with stone, belonging to a building adjoining the church. Climbed up the little triangular steps of stone that led into the belfry tower, and looked forth from the tower windows over woodland hill, green carpet and blue waters, with a blessing in my heart for the fair land, and an earnest wish for the good of its people.

There is in the old churchyard one of the fair, skilfully carved, ancient crosses to be found in Ireland. It was shattered and cast down, but has been restored through the care of the Government. It is very high and massive, yet light-looking, it is so well proportioned. There are pictures of scriptural subjects, Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, &c., carved in relief over it. Two I saw at Ennishowen had no inscription or carving at all.

The Government has built a wall around these fine ruins for their protection from wanton destruction. It takes proof of the kind afforded by these ruins to convince this unbelieving generation that the ancient Irish were skilled carvers on stone, and architects of no mean order. I have looked into some of what has been said as to the uses for which the round towers were built with the result of confusing my mind hopelessly, and convincing myself that I do not know any more than when I began, which was nothing. I am glad, however, that I saw the outside of this round tower. I saw not the inside, as the door is nine feet from the ground and ladders are not handy to carry about with one.



XXII.

THE EARL OF ENNISKILLEN AND HIS TENANTS—CAUSES OF DISSATISFACTION— SPREAD OF THE LAND LEAGUE AMONGST ENNISKILLEN ORANGEMEN—A SAMPLE GRIEVANCE—THE AGENTS' COMMISSION—A LINK THAT NEEDS STRENGTHENING—THE LANDLORD'S SIDE.

It seems a great pity that the attachment between the Earl of Enniskillen and his tenants should suffer interruption or be in danger of passing away. The Earl, now an old man, was much loved by his people, until, in a day evil alike for him and for his tenants, he got a new agent from the County Sligo. Of course, I am telling the tale as it was told to me. Since this agent came on the property, re-valuation, rent raising, vexatious office rules, have been the order of things on the estate. The result of this new state of things, has been that the Land League has spread among the tenants like wildfire. I did not feel inclined to take these statements without a grain of salt. To hear of the Land League spreading among Enniskillen Orangemen, among the Earl's tenants, of dissatisfaction creeping in between these people historically loyal and attached to a family who had been their chiefs and landlords for centuries, was surprising to me.

To convince me that such was the case, I was requested to listen to one of the Earl's tenants reciting the story of his grievances at the hands of the Earl's agent. It was a sample case, I was told, and would explain why the people joined the Land League. It was pleasant enough to have an opportunity of going into the country and to have an opportunity of seeing the farms and the style of living of the Fermanagh farmers, as compared with the Donegal highlands.

The country out of Enniskillen is very pretty. May has now opened, the hedges have leafed out and the trees are beginning lazily to unfold their leaves. The roads are not near so good as the roads in Donegal, which are a legacy from the dreary famine time, being made then. The hedges are not by any means so trim and well kept as the hedges by the wayside in Down or Antrim. The roads up to the farm houses are lanes, such as I remember when I was a child. The nuisances of dunghills near the doors of the farmhouses have been utterly abolished for sanitary reasons, also whitewashing is an obligation imposed by the Government. For these improvements I have heard the authorities both praised and thanked. In these times of discontent, it is well to see the Government thanked for anything. The country is hilly and the hills have a uniform round topped appearance, marked off into fields that run up to the hill tops and over them and down the other side. There are, of course, mountains in the distance, wrapped in a thick veil of blue haze.

The house to which I was bound was, like most of the farm houses, long, narrow, whitewashed, a room at each end and the kitchen in the middle. I will now let the farmer tell his grievances in his own words. He is about sixty years of age, a professor of religion of the Methodist persuasion, an Orangeman, and a hereditary tenant of Lord Enniskillen, and now an enthusiastic adherent of the Land League. "In 1844 I bought this farm—two years before I was married. There is 17-1/2 acres. I paid L184 as tenant right—that is, for the goodwill of it. The rent was L19 7s 4d. I should have gone to America then; it would have been better for me. I have often rued that I did not go, but, you see, I was attached to the place. My forbears kindled the first fire that ever was kindled on the land I live on. I held my farm on a lease for three lives; two were gone when I bought it. I have been a hard-working man, and a sober man. There is not a man in the country has been a greater slave to work than I have been. I drained this place (fetches down a map of the little holding to show the drains). It is seamed with drains; 11 acres out of 17-1/2 acres are drained, the drains twenty-one feet apart and three feet deep. Drew stone for the drains two miles, L100 would not at all pay me for the drainage I have done. I built a parlor end to my house, and a kitchen; also, a dairy, barn, byre, stable and pig house. Every year I have bought and drawn in from Enniskillen from sixty to one hundred loads of manure for my farm; this calculation is inside of the amount. I have toiled here year after year, and raised a family in credit and decency. When the last life in my lease died, my rent was immediately raised to L27 10s. I paid this for a few years, and then the seasons were bad, and I fell behind. It was not a fair rent, that was the reason I was unable to pay it. I complained of the rent. I wanted it fixed by arbitration; that was refused. I asked for arbitration to decide what compensation I had a right to, and I would leave; that was refused too. I was served with a writ of ejectment. The rent was lowered a pound at two different times, but the law expenses connected with the writ came to more than the reduction given. I had the privilege, along with others, of cutting turf on a bog attached to the place at the time I held the lease; that was taken from us. We had then to pay a special rate for cutting turf, called turbary, in addition to our rent. So that really I am struggling under a higher rent than before, while I have the name of having my rent lowered: I once was able to lay by a little money during the good times; that is all gone now. I am getting up in years. If I am evicted for a rent I cannot pay, I cannot sell my tenant right; I will be set on the world at my age without anything. I joined the Land League. At the time of an election it was cast up to Lord Enniskillen about taking from us the bog. It was promised to us that we should have it back, in these words: 'If there is a turf there you will get it.' After the election we petitioned for the bog, and were refused. We were told our petition had a lie on the face of it. It is the present agent, Mr. Smith, that has done all this. He is the cause of all the ill- feeling between the Earl of Enniskillen and his tenants. He has raised the rents L3,000 on the estate, I am told. He gets one shilling in the pound off the rent; that is the way in which he is paid; so it is little wonder that he raises the rents; it is his interest to do so."

I listened to this man tell his story with many strong expressions of feeling, many a hand clench, and saw he was moved to tears; saw the hereditary Enniskillen blood rise, the heart that once throbbed responsive to the loyalty felt for the Enniskillen family now surging up against them passionately. I thought sadly that the loss was more than the gain. Gain L3,000—loss, the hearts that would have bucklered the Earl of Enniskillen, and followed him, as their fathers followed his fathers, to danger and to death. I decided in my own mind that Mr. Smith's agency had been a dear bargain to the Enniskillen family. "The beginning of strife is like the letting out of water; therefore, leave off contention before it be meddled with."

After I had listened to the farmer's wrongs and heard of others who also had a complaint to make, I was obliged to think that their case was not yet so hard as the case of those who suffered from the eccentricities of Lord Leitrim. Still, it is a hard case when we consider that the man's whole life and so much money also sunk in rent, purchase, improvements, and when unable to pay a rent raised beyond the possibility of paying, to lose all and begin life again without money or youth and hope, at sixty years of age. People with exasperated minds are driven to join the Land League, in hope that union will be strength, and that ears deaf to petition of right will grant concessions to agitation.

I began to feel afraid that I was hearing too much on one side and too little on the other, and I requested to be introduced to some who had ranged themselves on the side of the landlords. I was, as a consequence, introduced to several gentlemen at different times, but I got no light on the subject from any of them. They were so very sure that everything was just as it should be, and nothing short of treason would induce any one to find fault. Still when the question was asked squarely, "Are there no reasons for wishing for reform of the land laws?" the answer was, "We would not go quite so far as that?" There was a vague acknowledgment that, generally speaking, some reform was needed, and yet every particular thing was defended as all right on the whole, or not very far wrong.



XXIII.

A MODEL LANDLORD—ERIN'S SONS IN OTHER LANDS.

I have, at last, heard of a model landlord; not that I have not heard of good landlords before, as Mr. Humphreys and Mr. Stewart, of Ards, in Donegal. I have seen also the effects of good landlordism. When passing through the Galgorm estate I saw the beneficial changes wrought on that place by Mr. Young; but I have heard of many hard landlords, seen much misery as the result of the present land tenure, and I did feel glad to hear men praising a landlord without measure. It was a pleasant change. This landlord who has won such golden opinions is Lord Belmore, of Castle Coole. "The Land League has gained no adherents on his estate," says one to me, "because he is such a just man. He is a man who will decide for what he thinks right though he should decide to his own hurt. Eviction has never occurred on his place; there is no rack rent, no vexatious office rules."

As I have listened to story after story of tyranny on the Leitrim estate, so here I listened to story after story of the strict justice and mercy of Lord Belmore. His residence of Castle Coole is outside of Enniskillen a little, and is counted very beautiful. Of course I went to get a peep at it, because he is a lord whom all men praise. "His tenants," said one, "not only do not blame him but they glory in him. Why should they join the Land League? They get all it promises without doing so." As we drove along I heard his justice, his sense of right, his praise, in short, repeated in every way possible. I have noticed about this lord that to mention his name to any one who knows him is quite enough to set them off in praise of him. As he is not an immensely wealthy peer, but has been obliged to part with some of his property, it is the more glorious the enthusiastic good name he has won for himself.

We drove across a long stretch of gravel drive through scenery like fairyland. A fair sheet of water lay below the house, bordered by trees that seemed conscious of their owner's renown by the way they tossed their heads upward and spread their branches downward, as saying, "Look at us: everything here bears examination and demands admiration." Swans ruffled their snowy plumage and sailed with stately bendings of their white necks across the lake. Wild geese with the lameness of perfect confidence grouped themselves on the shore or played in the water. Coots swam about in their peculiar bobbing way, as if they were up to fun in some sly manner of their own. Across the lake were sloping hills rising gently from the water arrayed in the brightest of green. Grand stately trees stood with the regal repose of a grand dame, every fold of their leafy dress arranged with the skilful touch of that superb artist, Dame Nature.

My driver, with a becoming awe upon him of the magnificent grounds, the stately house and the high-souled lord, drove along the most unfrequented paths, and we came, in the rear of the great house, to a quaint little saw-mill in a hollow, a toy affair that did not mean business, but such as a great lord might have as a proper appanage to wide land and as a convenience to retainers.

After some whispered consultation with the man in charge, it was certified that we might drive round, quite round the castle, and, favored by fortune, might chance to see the housekeeper and get permission to see the inside of the house. I knew the house was very nice by intuition; it was very extensive, and I was sure held any quantity of pleasant and magnificent rooms; but someway I did not desire to go through it. I should have liked to have seen its lord, this modern Aristides, whom I was not tired of hearing called the just. The lord with the cold stately manner, but the heart that decided matters, like Hugh Miller's uncle Sandy, giving the poor man the "cast of the bauk," even to his own hurt.

We drove down the broad walk just out of sight of the extensive gardens and conservatories, between trees of every style of magnificence down to the lodge gate which was opened to us promptly and graciously. You can always judge of a lord by the courtesy or the want of it in his retainers. Indeed I believe that even dogs and horses are influenced by those that own them, and become like them in a measure. I waft thee my heart's homage, lord of Castle Coole! Thy good name, thy place in the hearts of thy countrymen, could not be bought for three thousand pounds sterling wrung "by ways that are dark," from an exasperated tenantry. The drive back to Enniskillen with another suggestive peep at the lake was delicious and enjoyable.

In Enniskillen I wandered into the Catholic church, the only church I could wander into without a fuss about getting the key. It is grand, and severely plain in the absence of pictures and ornaments.

I am told there was a good deal of distress in the County Fermanagh, and that they obtained relief from the Mansion House Fund and from the Johnston Committee Fund. This Johnston was a Fermanagh man, and has risen to wealth in the new world under the Stars and Stripes. The sons and daughters of Ireland do not forget, in their prosperity on far-off shores, the land of their birth and of their childhood's dreams.

Like the daisies on the sod, With their faces turned to God, Their hearts' roots are in the island green that nursed them on her lap.

Suffering from want in those hard times must have been comparatively slight in Enniskillen, as the local charity was strong enough to relieve it, I was informed by an Episcopal clergyman.



XXIV.

SELLING CATTLE FOR RENT—THE SHADOW OF MR. SMITH—GENERATIONS OF WAITING—UNDER THE WING OF THE CLERGY—A SAFE MEDIUM COURSE—THE CONSTABULARY—EXERTIONS OF THE PRIESTS—A TERMAGANT.

Hearing that there was a great disturbance apprehended at Manor Hamilton, in the County Leitrim, and that the military were ordered out, I determined to go there. I wanted to see for myself. I put on my best bib and tucker, knowing how important these things are in the eyes of imaginative people. Arrived at the station in the dewy morning, and found the lads whom I had seen carrying their dinners at the Redoubt drawn up on the platform under arms. How, boyish, slight and under-sized they did look, but clean, smart and bright looking, of course. Applied at the wicket for my ticket, as the 'bus man was eager to get paid and see me safely off. The ticket man told me curtly I was in no hurry, and shut the wicket in my face. The idea prevails here, except in the cases of the local gentry who are privileged, and to whom the obsequiousness is remarkable, that the general public, besides paying for their accommodation, ought to accept their tickets as a favor done them by the Company. This stately official at last consented to issue tickets; as I had not change enough to pay I gave him a sovereign, and, not having time to count the change, I stuffed it into my portmonnaie and made a rush for the cars as they snorted on the start.

In spite of my determination, made amid the smoke and filth of the third-class cars between Omagh and Strabane, I took a third-class car, and to my agreeable surprise it was clean, and I had it to myself. We steamed out of Enniskillen, all the workers in the fields and the people in the houses dropping their work to stare at the cars, crowded with soldiers, that were passing. I had a letter of introduction to an inhabitant of Manor Hamilton, as a precaution. We passed one of the entrances to Florence Court, the residence of the once-loved Earl of Enniskillen. When I understood that this nobleman was up in years, his magnificent figure beginning to show the burden of age, and that he was blind, I felt a respectful sympathy for him, and wished that the shadow of Mr. Smith and his three thousand of increase of rent had never fallen across his path. After passing the road to Florence Court, when the train was not plunging through a deep cut, I noticed that the land did not, all over, look so green or so fertile as in the farther down North. There was much land tufted with rushes, much that had the peculiar shade of greenish brown familiar to Canadian eyes. There were many roofless cottages standing here and there in the wide clearings. There were bleak bogs of the light colored kind that produce a very worthless turf, that makes poor fuel.

At one of the way stations, a decent-looking woman came into the compartment where I sat. Divining at once that I had crossed the water, she spoke pretty freely. Their farm was on a mountain side. It had to be dug with a spade; horses could not plough it. The seasons had been against the crops for some years. Yes, their rent had been raised, raised at different times until it was now three times was it was ten years ago. She was going to the office to try to get some favor about the rent. They could not pay it and live at all, and that was God's truth. Had no hope of succeeding. Did not believe a better state of things would come without the shedding of blood. "Oh, yes, it is true for you, they have no arms and no drill, but they look to America to do for them what they cannot do for themselves. Oh, of course it should be the last thing tried, but generations of waiting was in it already, and every hope was disappointed some way." The laws got harder and the crops shorter, that was the way of it.

Arrived at Manor Hamilton, every male creature about congregated with looks of wonder to watch the military arrive. They were a totally unexpected arrival, and caused the more sensation in consequence. There were none to answer a question until these boyish soldiers had been paraded, counted, put through some manoeuvres of drill, and then "'bout face and march" off. They seemed so alive, so eager for fun, so different from the stolid-faced veteran soldier that I hoped inwardly that to-day's exploits would not deepen into anything worse than fun.

When they tramped off, carrying their young faces and conscious smiles away from the station, I found a porter to inform me that Manor Hamilton was a good bit away. As there was no car I must walk, and a passing peasant undertook to pilot me to the town. Passed a large Roman Catholic church in process of erection. It will be a fine and extensive building when finished. They were laying courses of fine light gray hewn stone rounded, marking where the basement ended and the building proper began. Such a building, at such a time, is one of the contradictions one sees in this country.

Stopped at a hotel and was waited on by the person to whom my letter of introduction was directed, who introduced me to some other persons, including some priests. It was ostensibly an introduction, really an inspection. Only for this introduction I should not have got admittance into the hotel. People were arriving from every quarter. I stood at an upper window watching the people arrive in town. The first band, preceded by a solemn and solitary horseman, consisted of a big drum beaten by no unwilling hand, and some fifes. They played, "Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching," with great vim. The next detachment had a banner carried by two men, the corners steadied by cords held by two more. It was got up fancy, in green and gold, a picture of Mr. Parnell on one side, and some mottoes on the other. "Live and let live," was one. The band of this company, some half-dozen fifers, were dressed in jackets of green damask rimmed with yellow braid, and had caps made of green and yellow, or green and white, of the same shape as those worn by the police. The operator on the big drum had a white jacket and green cap. He held his head so high, his back was so straight, his cap set so knowingly on one side, he rattled away with such abandon, and looked as if he calculated that he was a free and independent citizen, that I guessed he had learned those airs and that bearing in classic New York. The next detachment had a brass band and some green favors and a green scarf among them.

One of the clergy to whom I was introduced, volunteered to show me to a position from which I would safely see the whole performance, which was the auction of cattle for rent—I was quite glad to have the kind offices of this gentleman, as without them I would have seen very little indeed. As I passed down the street under the wing of the clergy, I was amused at the innocent manner in which a half-dozen or so would get between his reverence and me, blocking the way, until they understood I was in his care, when a lane opened before us most miraculously, and closed behind us as the human waves surged on.

The police officers and men were patient and polite to high perfection. We made our way to the Court House, where the soldiers were drawn up inside, crowding the entrance hall and standing on the stairs. It was thought the sale would be in the Court House yard, in which case the official offered me a seat on the gallery. As the building was low, the long windows serving for both stories, it would be only a good position if the cattle were auctioned in the Court yard. This had been done before, and would be prevented if possible this time, as it was too private a proceeding. Meanwhile I sat in the official room, the kitchen in short, and waited looking at the peat fire in the little grate, the flitches of bacon hanging above the chimney, the canary that twittered in a subdued manner in its cage, as if it felt instinctively the expectant hush that was in the air.

It was decided to hold the sale on the bridge, so I was piloted through the military, through a living lane of police, through the surging crowd, to a house that was supposed to command the situation, and found a position at an upper window by the great kindness of the clergyman who had taken me in charge.

It is something awful to see a vast mass of human beings, packed as closely as there is standing room, swayed by some keen emotion, like the wind among the pines. It is wonderful, too, to see the effects of perfect discipline. The constabulary, a particularly fine body of men, with faces as stolid as if they were so many statues, bent on doing their duty faithfully and kindly. They formed a living wall across the road on each side of an open space on the bridge, backs to the space, faces to the crowd, vigilant, patient, unheeding of any uncomplimentary remarks.

The cause of all this excitement was the seizure of cattle which were to be sold for rent due to Cecil White, Esq., by his tenants, at the manor of Newtown.

The crowd here was far greater than at Omagh the day of the Land League meeting. The first roll of the drum had summoned people from near and far in the early morning. I am not a good judge of the number in a crowd, but I should say there were some thousands, a totally unarmed crowd; very few had even a stick. There were few young men in the crowd— elderly men and striplings, elderly women and young girls, and a good many children, and, of course the irrepressible small boy who did the heavy part of the hissing and hooting. These young lads roosted on the Court House wall, on the range wall of the bridge so thickly that the wonder was how they could keep their position. The crowd heaved and swayed at the other end of the bridge, a tossing tide of heads. The excitement was there.

I could not see what was going on, but a person deputed by the clergyman before mentioned, came to bring me to a better station for seeing what was going on at the other end of the bridge. The crowd made way, the police passed us through, and we got a station at a window overlooking the scene. Out of the pound, through the swaying mass of people, was brought a very frightened animal. If she had had no horns to grip her by, if she had had the least bit of vantage ground to gather herself up for a jump, she would have taken a flying leap over the heads of some and left debtor and creditor, and all the sympathizers on both sides behind her, and fled to the pasture. She was held there and bid for in the most ridiculous way. All that were brought up this way were bought in and the rent was paid, and there the sale ended

There might have been serious rioting but for the exertions of the Catholic clergy. Members of the Emergency Committee were particularly liable to a hustling at least. The least accidental irritation owing to the temper of the crowd would have made them face the bayonets with their bare breasts. The police were patient, the clergy determined on keeping the excitement down, and all passed off quietly enough. There were a few uncomplimentary remarks, such as addressing the police as "thim bucks" which remark might as well have been addressed to the court house for any effect it had. There were a few hard expressions slung at Mr. White which informed all who heard them that Mr. White was cashiered from the army for flogging a man to death, that he had well earned his name of Jack the flogger, &c.

The crowd dispersed from the bridge. The youthful military passed on the march for the train to return to their barracks, the crowd, now good- natured, giving them a few jokes of a pleasant kind as they passed; the soldiers looking straight ahead in the most soldierly manner they could assume, but smiling all the same, poor boys, for surely compliments are better than hisses and hoots.

I never heard a sound so dreadful as the universal groan or hoot of this great crowd. There was some speaking, a good deal of speaking, from the window of the hotel, praising the crowd for their self-control, and advising them to go home quietly for the honor of the country and the good cause.

After the sale, the three bands and the great crowd, paraded the streets. The cattle were brought round in the procession, their heads snooded up for the occasion with green ribbon. I do not think the cattle liked it a bit; they had had a full share of excitement in the first part of the day.

The most active partisan of the Land League was an elderly girl. She was the inventor and issuer of the most aggravating epithets that were put into circulation during the whole proceedings. Her hair was dark and gray (dhu glas), every hair curling by itself in the most defiant manner. The heat of her patriotism had worn off some of the hair, for she was getting a little bald through her curls—such an assertive upturned little nose, such a firm mouth, such a determined protruding chin. This patriot had a short jacket of blue cloth, and could step as light and give a jump as if she had feathered heels. She reminded me of certain citizenesses in Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities." May God of His great mercy give wisdom and firmness to the rulers of this land.



XXV.

THE LABORING CLASSES IN MANOR HAMILTON—THEIR HOMES—LOOKING FOR HER SHARE—CHARGES AGAINST AN UNPOPULAR LANDLORD.

I called upon a clergyman in Manor Hamilton in pursuit of information as to the condition of the laboring class. Manor Hamilton is a small inland town, depending solely on agriculture. Want of work is the complaint. Out of work is the chronic state of things among the laboring population. A few laborers are employed on the Catholic church in process of erection. The railway is newly finished between Enniskillen and Manor Hamilton. While it was being made it supplied work to a great many. Rail communication with the rest of the country must be a benefit to the town and the surrounding country.

The hopes nourished by the Land League prevent the people from sinking into despair or rousing to desperation. "Have the laboring class any garden ground to their homes?" I asked. "No. You would not like to see their homes. They are not fit for anyone to go into," was the answer. It is good sometimes to look at what others are obliged to endure.

Having provided myself with infinitesimal parcels of tea and sugar for the very aged or the helplessly sick, I set out with the clergyman and went up unexpected lanes and twisted round unlikely corners, dived into low tenements and climbed up unreliable stairs into high ones. One home, without a window, no floor but the ground, not a chair or table, dark with smoke, and so small that we, standing on the floor, took up all the available room, paid a rent of $16 per year, paid weekly. The husband was out of work, the wife kept a stall on market days, and sold sweets and cakes on commission.

Another hovel, divided into two apartments like stalls in a horse stable, a ladder leading up to a loft where an old gate and some indescribably filthy boards separated it into another two apartments, accommodated four families. The rent of the whole was $52 per year, paid weekly. One of the inmates of this tenement, an old, old man, whose clothing was shreds and patches, excused himself from going into the workhouse by declaring that there were bad car-ack-ters in there, while he and his father before him were ever particular about their company.

Children, like the field daisy, abound everywhere. In one hovel a brand new baby lay in a box, and another scarcely able to walk toddled about, and a lot more, like a flock of chickens, were scattered here and there. In one of these homes a small child was making a vigorous attempt to sweep the floor. On asking for her mother, the little mite said, "She is away looking for her share." This is the popular way of putting a name on begging.

One inhabitant made heather brooms, or besoms, as they are called here. He goes to the mountain, cuts heather, draws it home on his back, makes the besoms, and sells them for a halfpenny apiece.

In one hovel a little boy lay dying of consumption—another name for cold and hunger—his bed a few rags, a bit of sacking and a tattered coat the only bed-clothes. "I am very bad entirely, father," was the little fellow's complaint. I stood back while the father talked to him, and it was easy to see that he had well practised how to be a son of consolation. It was a cold windy day, and the wind blew in freely through the broken door. Surely, I thought, the workhouse would be comparative comfort to this child; but it seems that the whole family must go in if he went. The saddest consideration of all is the want of work—excitement like what is in the country now must be bad for idle and hungry men.

Mr. Corscadden and Mr. Tottenham, the contractor for the railway, are the two landlords who are most unpopular. Mr. White, one of those who had the cattle seized for rent, is also unpopular, very. Mr. Corscadden is a new landlord, comparatively speaking; was an agent before he became a proprietor. He is at open war with his tenantry. He requires an escort of police. His son has been shot at and missed by a narrow enough shave, one ball going through his hat, another grazing his forehead. This is coming quite nigh enough. Some buildings on his property in which hay was stored were burned—by the tenants, thinks Mr. Corscadden; by the Lord, say the people. I hope to see Mr. Corscadden personally, so I have made particular enquiries as to what he has done to deserve the ill- feeling that rages against him.

The chief charges against Mr. Corscadden are wasting away the people off the land to make room for cattle and black-faced sheep; taking from the people the mountain attached to their farms which they used for pasture, and then doubling the rent on what remained after they had lost part.

The land out by Glenade (the long glen) is very poor in parts. The amount of cultivated fields does not seem enough to supply the inhabitants with food. The country has in a large degree gone to grass. There is also a suspicion of grass on the mountain sides which are bare of heather and whins. They say the grass is sweet and good, and that cattle flourish on it, but the improved quality of stock and milch cows require additional tub feed to keep them in a thriving condition. There are some rich-looking fields, but the most of the land has a poverty- stricken look and the large majority of the houses are simply abominable.

It is spring weather and spring work is going on. Men are putting out manure, carrying it in creels on their backs. Asses are the prevailing beasts of burden, carrying about turf in creels or drawing hay—a big load to a small ass. Men and women and children are out planting potatoes in patches of reclaimed bog. Very few cattle are to be seen compared to the extent of the grazing lands.

The formation of rock here in the mountain tops has a resemblance to the fortification-looking rocks at McGilligan, but they are neither so lofty nor so abrupt. In one place there was a mighty cleft in the rock, as if some giant had attempted to cut a slice off the front of the rock and had not quite succeeded. I was told by my driver that an old man lived in the cleft behind the rock; it was said also that a ghost haunted it. I wonder if the ghost makes poteen.

Apart from the condition of the country and the poverty of the people a drive through the long glen of Glenade on a pleasant day is delightful. The hills swell into every shape, the houses—if they were only good houses—nestle in such romantic nooks, and the eternal mountains rising up to the clouds bound the glen on each side. I saw one house made of sods, thatched with rushes, that was not much bigger or roomier than a charcoal heap. I would have thought it was something of that kind only for the hole that served for a chimney.

The people are very civil, and if they only knew what would please you, would say it whether they thought it or not. If they do not know what side you belong to, no people could be more reticent.

The Land League is very popular. Since the Land League spread and the agitation forced public attention to the extreme need of the people many landlords have reduced their rents. Lord Massey is a popular landlord; anything unpopular done on his estate, Mr. LaTouche, his agent, has laid to his door.



XXVI.

TENANTS VOLUNTARILY RAISING THE RENT TO ASSIST THEIR LANDLORDS— BEAUTIFUL IRISH LANDSCAPES—CANADIAN EYES—RENTS IN LEITRIM—THE POTATO.

Determined, if possible, to hear something of the landlord's view of the land question, I wrote to Mr. Corscadden, the so unpopular landlord, asking for an interview. This gentleman, some time ago, moved the authorities to erect an iron hut for the police at Cleighragh, among the mountains that garrison Glenade. There had been an encounter there, a kind of local shindy, between him and his tenants, when they prevented him from removing hay in August last. The police came in large numbers to erect the hut, but it could not be got to the place, for no one would draw it out to Glenade.

Mr. Corscadden bought this small parcel of land at Glenade from a Mr. Tottenham; not the unpopular Tottenham, but another, much beloved by his people. He lived above his income, and was embarrassed in consequence. His tenants voluntarily raised the rents on themselves for fear he would be obliged to sell the land, and they might pass into the hands of a bad landlord. They raised the rent twice on themselves, and after all he was obliged to sell, and the fate they dreaded came upon them; they passed into Mr. Corscadden's hands.

During the famine this part of Leitrim got relief from the Mansion House Fund. Mr. Corscadden never gave a penny; never answered a letter addressed to him on the subject.

Having posted my letter I went out among the people who were, or were to be, evicted in the country around Kiltyclogher, (church of the stone house, or among the stones). We left the bright green fields that belt around Manor Hamilton and the grand trees that overshade the same green fields, and drove up among the hills, in a contrary direction from Glenade. A beautiful day, warm and pleasant, shone upon us; the round- headed sycamores are leafed out, and the larch has shaken out her tassels, the ditch backs are blazing with primroses and the black thorns are white with bloom, and there are millions of daisies in the grass. We passed over some good land at the roadside, some green fields in the valleys, but there is a very great deal of waste and also of barren land. A great deal of the tilled land is bog, a good deal of the waste land is shallow earth overlying rocks, some is cumbered with great boulders, and rough with heather and whins.

My companion, a lady active in the Ladies' Land League, thought it good land and worth reclaiming if let at a low rent. I, looking at it with Canadian eyes, would not have taken a gift of it and be bound to reclaim it. If I rented a few acres of those wild hills, and rooted out the whins and raised and removed the stones, I would think it unjust to raise the rent on me because of my labor.

It is admitted by all who know anything of the matter, that the tenants have reclaimed what land is reclaimed. Rent in County Leitrim has been raised from L24,990 to L170,670 within the last eighty years, and is L34,144 above the Government valuation.

We called at the house of a tenant farmer who had been evicted for non- payment of rent, and was back as a weekly tenant. He was putting in some crop, working alone in the field. He came to speak to my companion. He had got no word from the landlord as to whether he would put in any crop or not. He was in sore anxiety between his fear of offending the landlord, and the fear of doing anything against the rules of the Land League. His little boys were putting out manure in creels, carrying it on their shoulders. He had no means of paying rent. If he were forgiven the rent due and a year's rent to come, he might then be in a position to resume paying rent. This is my own opinion. The poor man himself was sorely perplexed and cast down. A thin, white, helpless-looking man. The terrors of the eviction had taken hold of his wife, who was sickly. The only hope they had was that God would bless the potato crop, for they had secured Champion potatoes for seed.

The potatoes that used to flourish in Ireland forty years ago, have entirely passed away. Even the Champion potato is not very good. The skin is thick and has a diseased appearance and the potato has black spots on the outside. I think the land is suffering from an overdose of such manure as they apply here, and the leaf mould is entirely exhausted. Of course this is the opinion of one who knows nothing of farming.

Passed another house, a widow's, who has been evicted. The family had been put out and the official went to get some water to quench the fire; all the little household belongings were scattered about. Putting out the fire and fastening up the door were the last acts of the eviction. While the official's back was turned, the widow slipped in again, and was fastened up in the house, the children being outside. Her sons are a little silly. The children camp outside and she holds the garrison inside. She thinks the Land Bill or the Land League, or something miraculous will turn up to help her if she keeps possession for a while. Fear that she has done wrong and laid herself open to some greater punishment, and excitement have blanched her face. In the dim evening she sits at the window inside; the children have a gipsy fire and sit under the window outside. When the gloaming has passed and dark night settled down, the police come over from the barracks to see if any of the children have gone in beside the mother. This would be taking forcible possession, and some other process of law would be possible. To make assurance sure, the policeman puts his head close to the window, sees the widow's white face and wild eyes sitting in the dark alone, and the children sitting under the window, and then the party, with something like tears in their eyes, something very like pity in their hearts, go back to the barracks.

I wonder how these things will end. It is not stubbornness, but helplessness and despair that makes them cling so to their homes, combined with an utter dread of the disgrace and separation involved in going to the workhouse. I listened to one tale after another of harassment, misery and thoughtless oppression in Kiltyclogher till my heart was sick, and I felt one desire—to run away that I might hear no more. I applied the traditional grain of salt to what I heard, but could not manage to add it to what I saw.

Mr. Tottenham rules part of Kiltyclogher. This man has a very evil name among the tenants. Reclamation of land by very poor people is a very serious matter. Not only do the bogs require drains twenty-one feet apart and three deep (I have seen the people in the act of making such drains again and again); not only do the surface stones require to be gathered off, but great stones and immense boulders that obstruct the formation of the drains, have to be removed, and as they have no powder for blasting, they take the primitive method of kindling great fires over the rock and splitting it up that way, so that their husbandry is farming under difficulties. As the Fermanagh farmer said, they put their lives into it.

In the long ago the landlords of Ireland, though extravagant, were not, as a class, unkindly, but their waste involved the land, and their absenteeism prevented any thoughts for the benefit of the country ever occurring to them.

The commercial spirit has invaded the aristocracy and men have begun to see visions of redeeming their lands from encumbrances and to dream dreams of still greater aggrandizement, all to be realized by commercial tact in raising the rents and abolishing the long-suffering people who could not be squeezed any farther. It was then that the beginning of the present desperate state of things was inaugurated. I do not think the landlords deliberately meant to oppress. I think they looked to the one thing, raising their rental, increasing their income, and went over everything, through everything to the desired end. They have succeeded in making a wide separation between the land-holding and land-tilling classes. It will be a difficult matter to bring them together again.



XXVII.

A HARD LANDLORD INTERVIEWED—CONFLICTING STATEMENTS—COLD STEEL.

The morning after our return to Manor Hamilton, Mr. Corscadden called on me in response to my note asking for an interview. I had formed a mental picture of what this gentleman would be like from the description I had heard of his actions. I found him very different. An elderly man, tall, gray-haired, soft-spoken, with a certain hesitation of manner, dressed like a better class-farmer, eyes that looked you square in the face without flinching, and yet had a kindly expression. This was Mr. Corscadden. I need not say he was not the man I expected him to be.

He, very kindly indeed, entered into an explanation of his management of this property since it fell into his hands. He mentioned, by the way, that he was a man of the people; had risen to his present position by industry and stern thrift; what he had he owed, under the blessing of God, to his own exertions and economy. He declared that he ruled his conduct to his tenants by what he should wish to be done to himself if in their place.

He then took up the case of one tenant, James Gilray, who waited on him to enquire, "What are you going to do with me?" This man, according to Mr. Corscadden's statement, owed three years' rent, amounting to L30; owed L15 additional money paid into the bank for him; owed L6 for a field, "for which I used to get L11 to L12." "Now," said Mr. Corscadden to him, "what do you want?" "I want," said the man, "to have my place at the former rent." "Do you," said Mr. Corscadden, "want your land at what it was 118 years ago? Land has raised in value five times since then." There is here a wide discrepancy between this statement of Mr. Corscadden's and the statement of another gentleman—not a tenant—who professed himself well acquainted with the subject. He said that before Mr. Corscadden bought the land the tenants had voluntarily increased the rent on themselves twice, for fear of passing out of the hands of the man they knew into the hands of a stranger; so that it was under a rack rent when Mr. Corscadden bought it.

Another case referred to by Mr. Corscadden was that of a man to whom he had rented a farm of 20 acres at L16. He got one year's rent; two and a half years were due, when he served a writ of ejectment. Mr. Corscadden said to this man; "You are a bad farmer and you know it. You have about L150 worth of stock; I will give you L40; leave my place and go to America. He took the money," said the old gentleman pathetically, "and did not go to America, but rented another farm. The woman at Glenade whom you went to see I have kept—supported—for years. Her husband did not pay his rent, and I gave him L10 to pay his passage to America. He is a bad man. It is rumored that he has married another woman; his wife never hears from him."

"It is wonderful, Mr. Corscadden," I remarked, "when you are so kind that you have such a bad name as a landlord. Mr. Tottenham and you are the most unpopular landlords in Leitrim."

"I do not know why; I act as I would wish others to do to me. I do not forget that I have to give an account to the Holy One."

"You are accused of wasting away the tenants, because cattle and sheep are more profitable than people."

"I transferred two to places down near the sea and gave them better land than I took from them. I have been speaking about the others whom I paid to remove."

"People complain that you took the mountain pasture from the tenants and then raised the rent of the remainder to double of what they had paid for all."

"Not double, nearly double. As to the mountain, I called them together and proposed taking the mountain, as they had nothing to put on it; they had not a beast. They consented, at least they made no objections. I wanted the mountains for Scotch sheep. I put on about a hundred; there are few to be seen now; they have disappeared."

He then mentioned the shooting at his son, the burning of the office houses with hay and potatoes stored there, the trouble he had had about the police hut which the constabulary had drawn to Glenade that morning.

"That will cost the country as much as L500," said Mr. Corscadden. "They are unthrifty in this country, they eat all the large potatoes, plant all the little runts, till they have run out the seed." (Alas, what will not hunger do!) "They come into market with their butter in small quantities, wasting a day and sacrificing the butter." (Need again: time is wasted here, for labor is so plentiful and men are so cheap that time has no value in their eyes.)

I asked Mr. Corscadden what he thought would be a remedy for this dreadful state of things. He did not see a remedy except emigration. Mr. Corscadden took his leave politely, wishing me a pleasant tour through my own country. I have as faithfully as possible recorded Mr. Corscadden's side of the story. The tenant's side I have softened considerably, and omitted some things altogether to be inside of the mark. One thing I forgot to mention: Mr. Corscadden said that the tenants might raise a couple of pigs or a heifer and pay the rent and have all the rest to themselves.

I said, "When these bad years ending in one of positive famine have stripped the poorer tenants bare, and pigs are so dear, where could a poor man get thirty shillings to buy a sucking pig or buy provender to feed it?" This is true, the first step is the difficulty. They might do this, or this, or this, and it would be profitable, but where are the means to take the first step? It is easy to stand afar off and say, be economical, be industrious, and you will prosper. In the meantime pay up the back rent or get out of this and give place to better men. They tell me that Mr. LaTouche charges the poor creatures interest on all the back rent. Some who have paid their rent here did not—could not—raise it on their farms, but got it from friends in America.

Mr. Corscadden asked me in the course of our conversation what I would consider a fair rent. I said I would consider the rent fair that was raised on the land for which rent was paid, leaving behind enough to live on, and something to spare, so that one bad season or two would not reduce the tenant to beggary.

The fact of the matter is, and I would be false to my own conscience if I hesitated to say it, these people have been kept drained bare; the hard years reduced them to helpless poverty, and now the only remedy is to get rid of them altogether. The price of these military and police, the price of these special services rendered to unpopular landlords to aid them in grinding down these wretched people, spent to help them would go far to make prosperity possible to them once more. If they had a rent they could pay and live, the millstone of arrears taken from about their necks, I believe they would become both loyal and contented. Empty stomachs, bare clothing, lying hard and cold at night through poverty is trying to loyalty.

The turbary nuisance is the great oppression of all. Want of food is bad, but want of fuel added to it! Forty years ago renting land meant getting a bit of bog in with the land. When there is a special charge for the privilege of cutting turf and the times so hard there is much additional suffering.

In the famine time people getting relief had to travel for the ticket, travel to get the meal, and then go to gather whins or heather on the hills to cook it, and the hungry children waiting all the time. A respectable person said to me the famine was worst on respectable people, for looking for the red ticket and carrying it to get meal by it was like the pains of death.

Wherever I went through Leitrim I saw people, scattered here and there, gathering twigs for fuel or coming toward home with their burden of twigs on their backs. I declare I thought often of the Israelites scattered through the fields of Egypt gathering stubble instead of straw. A tenant who objects to anything, who is not properly obedient and respectful, can have the screw turned upon him about the turf as well as about the rent.



XXVIII.

THE MANOR HAMILTON WORKHOUSE—TO THE SOUTH AND WESTWARD—A CHANGE OF SCENERY—LORD PALMERSTON.

Before leaving Manor Hamilton, I determined to see the poor-house, the last shelter for the evicted people. I was informed that it was conducted in a very economical manner. It is on the outskirts of the town. On my way there I went up a little hill to look at a picturesque Episcopalian church perched up there amid the trees, surrounded by a pretty, well-kept burying-ground. The church walls were ornamented with memorial slabs set in the wall commemorating people whose remains were not buried there. A pretty cottage stood by the gate, at the door of which a decent-looking woman sat sewing. I addressed a few questions to her as to the name of the pastor, the size of his flock, &c. Her answers were guarded—very.

I made my way down the hill, and over to the workhouse. The grounds before the entrance were not laid out with the taste observable at Enniskillen. Perhaps they had not a professional gardener among their inmates. At the entrance a person was leaning against the door in an easy attitude. I enquired if I might be allowed to see through the workhouse. He answered by asking what my business was. I informed him that I was correspondent for a Canadian newspaper. He then enquired if the paper I wrote for was a Conservative paper. I replied that I would not describe it as a Conservative paper, but as a religious paper. He then said the matron was not at home, and I prepared to leave. I enquired first if he was the master. He replied in the affirmative, and then said he would get the porter to show me round. "You will show her through," he said, to a stout, heavy person sitting in the entry.

This gentleman, who brought to my mind the estimable Jeremiah Flintwinch, accordingly showed me through the building. We passed the closed doors of the casual ward, where intending inmates were examined for admittance, and casuals were lodged for the night. Every door was unlocked to admit us and carefully locked behind us, conveying an idea of very prison-like administration. The able-bodied were at work, I suppose, for few were visible except women who were nursing children. There was a large number of patients in the infirmary wards. One man whose bed was on the floor was evidently very near the gate we all must enter. He never opened his eyes or seemed conscious of the presence of a stranger. I noticed a little boy lift the poor head to place it easier. I saw no one whom I could imagine was a nurse. The kindness and tenderness of the beggar nurses in the sick wards of the workhouse at Ballymena struck me forcibly. The absence of anything of the kind struck me forcibly in Manor Hamilton.

The children in this workhouse were pretty numerous. They demanded something from me with the air of little footpads. The women were little better. I was told, pretty imperatively, to look in my pockets. One woman rushed after me half way up stairs as if she would compel a gift. Coming back with my throat full of feelings, I was directed to a little desk behind the door, where lay the book for visitors: I was shown the place where remarks were to be entered. I wrote my name standing, as there was no other way provided. I was hardly fit to write cool remarks. The locked doors, the nurses conspicuous by their absence, the importunate beggars, the absent matron, the whole establishment was far below anything of the kind I had yet seen in Ireland. One woman had made her appearance from some unexpected place, and explained to me with floury hands, that if she were not baking she would herself show me through the house.

I think it is hard for struggling poverty to go down so far as to take shelter in the workhouse. It must be like the bitterness of death. I cannot imagine the feeling of any human beings when the big door clashes on them, the key turns, and they find themselves an inmate of the workhouse at Manor Hamilton. I do not wonder that the creatures starving outside preferred to suffer rather than go in. When I returned to the entrance the master had been joined by some others who were helping him to do nothing. He asked me over his shoulder what I thought of the house. I answered that it was a fine building, and walked down the avenue, wishing I was able to speak in a cool manner and to tell him what I thought of the house and of his management of the same.

Left Manor Hamilton on the long car for Sligo. The long car is the unworthy successor of the defunct mail coach of blessed memory. It is an exaggerated jaunting car arranged on the wheels and axles of a lumber waggon and it is drawn by a span sometimes; in this case, by four horses. A female was waving her hands and shouting incoherent blessings after us as we started. It might be for me or it might be for the land agent, who sat on the same side. I smiled by way of willingness to accept it, for it is better to have a blessing slung after one than a curse or a big stone.

Our road skirted Benbo (the hill of cattle), sacred now to rabbits and hares and any other small game that can shelter on its bald sides. Up hill and down hill, between hills and around hills, mountains of every shape and degree of bareness and baldness looking down at us over one another's shoulders as we drove along. An ambitious little peasant clung on behind with his hands, his little bare feet thudding on the smooth road and over the loose layer of sharp stones that lay edge upwards in places. He thought he was taking a ride. We passed small fields of reclaimed bog, where ragged men were planting potatoes in narrow ridges. We passed the brown fields where nothing will be planted; passed the small donkeys with their big loads; passed green meadows on a small scale; in places here and there, passed the houses, dark, damp and unwholesome, where these people live.

After we had rumbled on for some miles, enjoying blinks of cold sunshine, enduring heavy scudding showers, the landscape began to soften considerably. The grass grew green instead of olive, and trees clustered along the road. Umbrageous sycamores, claiming kindred with our maples, began to stand along the road singly and in clusters. We were still in a valley bounded by mountains, but the hill-sides waved with dark green and light green foliage, where the fir stretched upward tall plumes and the larch shook downward tasseled streamers. The green of the fields became greener and richer, the dark sterile moss-covered mountains retreated and frowned at us from the distance; we were leaving the hungry hills of north Leitrim for the pleasant valleys that lie smiling around Sligo.

The trees grew larger, the sycamores massed together in their full leafiness, bringing visions of a sugar bush in the time of leaves; they were mingled with the delicious green of the newly-leaved beech. The round-headed chestnuts, with their clustered leaves, were covered with tall spikes of blossom like the tapers on an overgrown Christmas tree. The ash and oak are shaking out their leaves tardily; the orchards are white with the bridal bloom of May. The fields are flocked with myriads of happy eyed daisies, the ditch backs glowing with golden blossoms. My eyes make me wealthy with looking at beauty.

We are nearing the town, for the woodland wealth is enclosed behind high walls. Grand houses peep from among the branches; trim lodges, ivy- garnished, sit at the gates, glimpses of gardens are seen, all the wealth of leafage and blossoming that fertility spreads over the land when spring breathes is here. In a glow of sunshine after the rain— smiles after tears—we enter Sligo.

We draw up in the open street, everyone alights from our elevation as they can. No one takes notice of any other by way of help. Each gets off and goes his several way. The land agent, who has sat in high-bred silence all the way, pays his fare and goes off on the car that awaits him. The rest disperse. I pay my fare. The driver asks to be remembered. I mentally wonder what for. I paid a porter to place my bag on the car. I got up as I could, I scramble down as I may. I will pay another porter to take me to a hotel. The driver's whip takes as much notice of me as he does. Why in the world should I remember him? It is part of a system of imposition and it would be rank communism to find fault, so I remember him; he thanks me, and this little game of give and take ends.

Installed in the Imperial Hotel I send off my one letter of introduction, which remains. Discover the post office, find no letters, return and sit down to write across the water. The lady proprietor of the Imperial Hotel has been across the Atlantic and has a warm feeling toward the inhabitants of the great republic; she shares the benefit of this feeling with the wandering Canadian and takes us out to see Sligo.

Gladly do we lay down the pen to look Sligo straight in the face. Sligo looks nice and clean. Belfast is large, prosperous, beautiful; but many of her fine buildings and public monuments look as if they required to have their faces washed, but Sligo buildings are fair and clean. We pass a rather nice building, suppose it a school, but we are informed it is the rent-office of the late Lord Palmerston. That astute nobleman showed his usual good sense, if it was his choice, to own lands in the sunny vales of Sligo instead of the hungry hills of Leitrim. If some have greatness thrust upon them, some in the same way inherit lands. Out of the town we went, and climbed up a grassy eminence; with some difficulty got upon the "topmost tow'ring height" of an old earthwork—blamed on the Danes of course; everything unknown is laid on them. The square shape, the remains of the ditch that surrounds it look too much like modern modes of fortification not to have a suspiciously British look. Of course we are both delightfully ignorant on the subject.

The scenery from our elevated position is glorious. At our feet Sligo, all her buildings, churches and convents white in the sunshine, around her the fairest of green fields; the blue waters of Lough Gill sparkling and glancing from among trees of every variety that in spring put on a mantle of leaves. On every side but the gate of the west through which we see a misty glance of the far Atlantic, Sligo has mountains standing sentry around her. One, Knock-na-rea, is seen from a great distance, a long mountain with a little mountain on her breast. The bells were chiming musically, the sound floating up to where we stood. Below us, on the other side of the old earthwork, a little apart from one another, stood two great buildings, that are so necessary here, the poor-house and the lunatic asylum. These magnificent and extensive buildings must have cost an immense sum. The asylum has been enlarged recently, as the freshly-cut stone and white mortar of one wing testified.

As I looked, a band struck up familiar airs. We saw them standing in a field beside the asylum. I was told that the band was composed of patients. This made the music more thrilling. When they struck up "Auld Lang Syne," or "There Is no Luck About the House," there was a wail in it to my ears, after home, happiness and reason. We got down from our high position and came home by another way, passing through some of the poorer streets of Sligo, which are kept scrupulously clean. Even here women and girls were gathering sticks to cook the handful of meal. The poor are very poor on the bare hills of Leitrim, or in this green valley of Sligo.



XXIX.

ON LOUGH GILL—TWO MEN—STAMPEDE FROM SLIGO—THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN.

I was a little disappointed that I was getting no information on any side of the question of the day, and my letters which were to be sent to Sligo not coming to hand, I was advised to go down the beautiful Lough Gill to Drumahaire to see the ruins of Brefni Castle, the place from which the fair wife of the O'Ruarke, Prince of Brefni, fled with McMurrough, which was the cause of the Saxon first gripping green Erin. I thought I might as well, and set out to walk to the boat landing, a good billie out of Sligo, along the street, past small tenement houses inhabited by laborers, who do not always obtain work, past the big gloomy gaol, past the dead wall and the high bank on the top of which goats are browsing, down to the landing beside the closely-locked iron gate, and the little lodge sitting among the trees behind it, belonging to the property of a Captain Wood Martin. Had the felicity, while yet some way off, of seeing the shabby little boat cast off the rope and puff herself and paddle herself slowly off down the lake.

Coming back a very pretty girl electrified me by informing me that I was from America. She advised me to take a small boat and have a sail on Lough Gill, for I would always regret it if I did not see its beauty when I had the opportunity. In her excessive kindness she introduced me to a river maiden, strong and comely, who would row me about with all kindness for a small consideration. Prudently discovered what the consideration was to be, and then gave in to the arrangement.

The water nymph had been away gathering sticks; she had to empty her boat and I waited a little impatiently, a little ruefully. The boat was big, clumsy and leaky, but the girl was eloquent and eager to persuade me it was a fast and comfortable boat. She produced an ancient cushion from somewhere; there was a clumsy getting on board, and she pushed off. We went sailing down among the swans, the coots and the rushes, and passed little tree-laden islands, hooped with stone wall for fear they might be washed away. The sun shone pleasantly, the swans floated on majestically, or solemnly dived for our pleasure, the coots skimmed about knowing well we had not often enjoyed the pleasure of watching them. The grand woods that encompass the residence of Wynne of Hazelwood spread out over many, many acres, caught the sunlight on one side. The broad green meadows of Captain Wood Martin lying among the trees looked like visions of Eden on the other. My river maiden discovered to me a swan's nest among the reeds; told me stories of the fierceness of brooding swans, and offered to get me a swan's egg for a curiosity, nevertheless.

Remarking to her that Captain Wood Martin kept his grounds locked up very carefully; enquired what should happen if we drew ashore and landed on his tabooed domain. The water maiden said one of his men would turn us out. Enquired if he was a good landlord. "Oh, sure he has ne'er a tenant at all at all on his whole place; it does be all grazing land. He takes cattle to graze. He charges L2 a year for a yearling and L5 a year for a four-year-old, and he has cattle of his own on it." How do you know the price? "Sure I read it on the handbills posted up."

Looking at the other side of the glorious lake, at the long thicket of trees that shades the demesne that Wynne of Hazelwood keeps for his home and glory, stretching over miles of country; saw the little grey rabbits, more precious than men in my native land, that were hopping along, after their manner, quite a little procession of them, at the edge of the bush; and said, "What kind of a landlord does Wynne of Hazelwood make?" "Is it Mr. Wynne, ma'am? Oh, then, sure it's him that is the good landlord and the good man out and out. He is a good man, a very good man, and no mistake." "Why, what makes you think him such a good man?" "Because he never does a mane or durty action; he's a gentleman entirely." "Come now, you tell me what he does not do; if you want me to believe in your Mr. Wynne, tell me some good thing he has done." "I can soon do that, ma'am," said my water maiden. "Last winter was a hard winter; the work was scarce, and the poor people would have starved for want of fire but for Mr. Wynne of Hazelwood." "He let you gather sticks in his woods, then?" "He did more than that; he cut down trees on purpose for the people, and we drew them over the ice, for the lough was frozen over. We had no fire in our house all last winter, and it was a cold one, but what we got that way from Mr. Wynne." Mr. Wynne's eloquent advocate rowed along the lake close in shore, for fear of any doubt resting on my mind, and showed the stumps of the trees, cut very close to the ground, a great many of them indeed, as a proof of Mr. Wynne's thoughtful generosity.

We rowed along over the laughing waters among the pretty islands, and finally pulled ashore on the Hazelwood demesne and landed. We walked round a little bit, filling our eyes with beauty; feloniously abstracted a few wild flowers and a fir cone or two, and reluctantly left Hazelwood. Now this gentleman was not a perceptible whit the poorer for all the cottage homes that were warmed by his bounty—yes, and hearts were warmed, too, through the dreary winter. "Blessed is he that considereth the poor." There is riches for you—oh master of Hazelwood!

The emigration from Sligo amounts to a stampede now. How many more would leave the island that has no place for them, if they only had the means?

I missed that Drumahaire boat no less than three times—that is, she was either gone before the time when she was said to go, or was lying quietly at the wharf, having made up her mind not to stir that day. She seemed to have no stated time for going or coming, or if she had, to keep it as secret as an eviction, for no one could be found to speak with certainty of her movements. When disappointed for the third time, my very kind friend, Mrs. O'Donell, of the Imperial Hotel, took me on her own car to Drumahaire. We drove completely round lovely Lough Gill, seeing it from many points of view. Sligo is not altogether a garden of Eden, for we passed a great deal of poor stony barren land here and there during this journey. Like all hilly land, there are pretty vales among the hills and fair, broad fields here and there, but there is much barren and almost worthless soil.

Now, there is one thing that has struck me forcibly since I came to Ireland. I saw it in Down, Antrim, Derry, Donegal, wherever I have been as well as in Sligo. The poorer and more worthless the land, there were the tenants' houses the thickest. The good land has been monopolized to an immense extent for lands laid out for grandeur and glory—and they are grand and gloriously beautiful. Then pride and fashion demand that the mountain commons be reserved for game, that is, rabbits. A man must have extensive wilds to shoot over, so the poor laborers are huddled into houses—awful hutches without gardens, and the poor farmers are clustered on barren soil, trying to force nature to allow them to live after paying the rent.

We got to Drumahaire, stopped at a dandy iron gate beyond which the turrets of Brefni Castle were waving funereal banners of ivy, entered and found ourselves in a private domain. Here in the shadow of the old castle was the handsome modern cottage, extensive and stylish, inhabited by Mr. Latouche, the agent so much dreaded, so much hated in Northern Leitrim. This is the gentleman who is accused of charging the tenants 10s. 6d. for potatoes which the landlord sent down to be given to the tenants at five. If racking the tenantry is the condition on which he gets this lovely home, it is a temptation certainly. We felt as if we were in the wrong place, as, after glancing at the handsome cottage, the trim lawn fringed with shrubbery and then at the ruins we took the lower walk hoping to get round under the shelter of some trees to the ruins. A small river brawled over the stones below—far below where we were walking. A detached portion of the ruins sitting on a rock overlooked both us and the river. Was it in any part of this building that the naughty lady watched for her lover?

A little further on we looked down some steps into gardens stretching along beside the river—gardens blazing with flowers and sweet with blossomed fruit trees. It was so unexpected, so splendidly beautiful, it surpassed a dream of fairy-land. We passed on, saw a shadowy lady among the flowers on the lawn, knew it was the wraith of the unhappy and guilty Dearvorgill. Stole out of the farther gate—at least I did— feeling naughty and intrusive. Found ourselves in the clean little town of Drumahaire, a pretty little village, straggled over a hillside among the trees.

Went into a shop to enquire for the veritable Brefni Castle. A sad and hungry-looking man scenting a possible sixpence started forward as guide. He piloted us back by the way we came into the ruins we had passed. Was determined to see visions and dream dreams amid these historical ruins. Alas, it was a disgraceful failure. Not only was the back of the modern tyrannical cottage laid up against the tyrannical castle of history, but the ancient and modern were dovetailed into one another, trying to bewilder you as to where ancient history and legend ended, and modern anecdote began. We looked into the great hall with its deep fire-place at the side, and upwards where another stately apartment had once been, a lofty presence room over the great hall, but the week's wash of the La Touches was flapping in the wind that moaned through the deserted halls of the O'Ruarke. Looked into a tower to find a peat stack, climbed over a load of coal to see the withdrawing room of the departed, but not forgotten great lady, or the kitchen that cooked for the men-at-arms, who waited on the lord's behest. Peeped into a turret and was insolently asked what we meant by a splendid but ill-tongued peacock; admired the ivy green that happed the bare walls and noticed that the chickens roosted there in its shelter.

We drove home by another way, among gay, green woods under the shelter of mighty rocks, passed more ruins. We stopped to examine these older ruins of the ancient O'Ruarkes. A Milesian gentleman showed us through them. It is the correct thing to have a ruin on your place; it is a kind of patent of gentility. If a banshee could be thrown in along with a ruin, a new man would give a great price for an old place. But banshees are getting scarce and decline to be caught. This ruin has been patched over, clumsily but earnestly, so that hardly a speck of the original ruin is left. It was delightful to listen to our Milesian guide. My companion was bound to get some information out of him. He was cautious, not knowing who we were or what design we might have to entangle him in his talk; he was determined that he would not give the desired information. He conquered. The ruins were not worth sixpence altogether to look at, but I gave him sixpence as a tribute to genius. And so in the dim evening we drove back to Sligo.