Chapter VIII: Part 8

Mr. Smithwick thought emigration was the remedy for the undeniable poverty of the country, for if the people got their farms for nothing they could not make a living out of them, owing to their shiftless method of farming. I objected that it would be scarcely fair to send their people, who were so useless and helpless, over to be a burden on us, but Mr. Smithwick thought that they would soon come in to our ways, and help themselves, and be not a burden but a help to the community. I found out in conversation with this gentleman that to reach Ballycroy, where he lives, I should have come from Ballina. I seem perversely to take the long way round. Mr. Smithwick kindly explained to me the way I should go to reach Ballycroy by private car. He thought there was so little of interest in that direction that it would hardly repay me for a long tiresome journey, and that Connemara direction was much more full of interest. After his croydon had driven off I began to remember various points on which I should have liked to obtain his opinion that I had never thought of once when I had the opportunity. Perhaps it was the very early drive that had wearied me, but I was dreadfully stupid all through the interview. I had counted a great deal on seeing this man, and I seemed to myself to have gained nothing of facts to which one could refer triumphantly in support of an opinion in consequence of it.

To wake myself up I enquired of the civil landlady if there were any wonderful sights to be seen in the neighborhood within an easy drive. Yes, there was Borrishoole Monastery (the place of owls) and Carrig a Owlagh (rock of the fleet) Castle, one of the strongholds of Granna Uisle Well, got a car and driver and drove off to see these ruins. I was told that no tourist ever visited Newport without going to see them.

As we rattled and jolted over the roughest bit of road which I have yet seen in Ireland, the driver, a dark, keen-eyed man, began to talk of landlords, of the wasting and exterminating Lords Lucan and Sligo. I asked him whom did he think a good landlord. He answered immediately, "Jonathan Pym." "If you think him so good you might say Mr. Pym." "When a man is the best in any way he's too big for Mr.," said the man readily. "I dare say," I remarked, "that this Jonathan Pym is very little better than the rest." "But I say he is," retorted the man fiercely. "Where inside of the four seas of Ireland will you get his aiquil? He bought the land, coming among us a stranger, and he did not raise the rents. The people live under the rents their fathers paid." "Well, that's not much?" "If you were a tenant you would think differently. He took off the thatch of the cabins and put on slates at his own expense: There is not a broken roof on the land that he owns. Every tenant he has owns a decent house, with byre and barn, shed and stable, and he done it all out of the money he had, that never was lifted out of the land, and after all left them in at the ould rents. There has never been wan eviction on his place yet." "Has he been shot at yet?" I enquired innocently. "Arrah, what would he be shot for?" demanded the man, turning his swarthy face and black eyes full on me. "I thought maybe some one might shoot him for fun," I explained, feebly. "Fun!" growled the car-man, "quare fun! If a man is shot or shot at he deserves it richly. He's not a rale gentleman, word and deed, like Jonathan Pym."

The driver continued to praise the wonderful landlord, Jonathan Pym, in a growling kind of tone as if, were I his spouse, he would thwack me well to cure my unbelief, as we jolted over the stones to the ruins of the monastery of owls.

There is a lake, the lake of owls, near this ruin, and in it, it is said, gentlemen anglers can readily obtain leave to fish. I have heard that amateur anglers give the fish they catch to the person who gives the permit, retaining the sport of catching as their share; or if they want the fish paying for them at market price. I think this unlikely, but it may be so nevertheless.

The monastery was once a splendid place, to judge by the remains of the carving on window and arched door. One of the skulls of Grace O'Malley used to be kept here as a precious relic. There was another at Clare Island and I think I also heard of another. It seems some speculative and sacrilegious Scotchman brought a ship round the west coast of Ireland to gather up the bones lying in the abbeys to crush them for manure, and they took the brave sea queen's bones and skull with the rest.

Returned to Newport in a very undecided frame of mind whether to go to Ballycroy or not. There was a Land League meeting to be held there, and I might see that; but then I had been at two Land League meetings, and they are pretty much alike. Of course it is well to see a great assemblage of people, for they always are of interest as showing what condition the people are in, and what sentiments find an echo in their hearts. But the length of the way, the uncertainty of a place to stop at had some weight, and I found myself unable to decide. To clear up my brain I asked for a bit of fish for dinner, but such a thing could not be obtained at Newport. The fish caught there are exported. They might get a fish by going down to the boat for it, and paying dearer for it than the Dublin price. I asked for fish at Westport with the same result. If you mention salmon they will say, "Oh, yes," and if not stopped, rush off and buy a can of American salmon for you. I got something to eat--not fish, and not very eatable--and wrote a little while, with the same stupid sensation bothering me that I had felt during my interview with Mr. Smithwick, and decided to put off all decision and go to bed, which I did.

In the morning, having found that Newport was the nearest point by which to reach Achill Island, I determined to go there, and if I thought I could endure the journey to diverge at Mulrany and drive to Ballycroy on my return from Achill Island.

XXXIX.

BY THE SHORE OF CLEW BAY--ACROSS ACHILL ISLAND--A LONELY LOVELY RETREAT.

The drive from Newport, Mayo, to Mulrany was very pleasant. The roads winds along Clew Bay, that bay of many islands, for quite a distance. Clew Bay was resting, calm as a mirror, blue and bright, not a lap of the wave washed up on the shore of Green island or Rocky Point the day we drove past. No fisher's boat divided the water with hopeful keel. The intense solitude of bays and inlets as well as the loughs looks like enchantment. It reminds one of the drowsy do-nothingness of "Thompson's Castle of Indolence," only here the indolence is not the indolence of luxurious ease but of hunger and rags. If the knight of arts and industry will ever destroy monopoly, and these silent waters will be alive with enterprise:

"When many fishing barks put out to fish along the coast."

there will be a happy change in the comfortless cabins that dot the shores of Clew Bay.

The islands of Clew Bay, being treeless and green, have a new look, as if they had just heaved up their backs above the waters and were waiting for the fiat that shall pronounce them good. I looked with longing eyes in the direction of Clare Island, that has one side to the bay and one side to the broad Atlantic which lies between me and home. On Clare Island is the remains of Doona Castle, the principal stronghold, of the heroic Grace, where she held the heir of Howth captive till ransomed, and till his father learned to understand what _Cead mille failte_ means at dinner time.

Here, by Tulloghan Bay, I was told to look across the bay, where the heather-clad mountains rise above the broad heather-clad bog, where the road to Ballycroy winds along between the bay and the mountains, past houses of mortarless stone, hard to be distinguished from the heath; for over there in a certain spot occurred the shooting affray which has made young Mr. Smith, the son of the then agent for the Marquis of Sligo, a man of renown.

The hard feeling between the exterminating Marquis, the agent who executed his will and the tenantry was intense. Four men were lying in wait here with the intention of shooting Mr. Smith, who was expected to pass that way. He drove along accompanied by his son. The would-be assassins fired; they were concealed above the road; the shots passed harmlessly over the heads of the two Smiths. Young Mr. Smith, who is an exceptionally good shot--can hit a small coin at an immense distance-- saw the men run and fired after them, killing one, fired again, wounding another, and would have fired again, but was prevented by his father.

Young Mr. Smith is quite a hero among the people on this account. There is an expressed regret that Mr. Smith the elder interfered to prevent the young marksman from shooting them all; very few would blame him if he did, as the men, though too nervous to do harm, lay in wait for the purpose of murder. Still it is revolting to hear people in cold blood regret so heartily that there was not more bloodshed.

The scenery--as scenery--was as grand as bare heathery mountains and wide desolate waters could make an almost treeless solitude, but viewed as a home for human beings, viewed as land that has rent and taxes and existence to be carved out of it, it has a hopeless look.

The houses are something dreadful, to consider them in the light of human habitations. Limestone does not abound here, and therefore the houses of the poorer sort are built like a cairn or a fence of loose stones without mortar. When the Atlantic winds sweep in here in winter time, the crevices in these houses will be so many chinks to whistle through. God pity the poor!

The people along the road here had a thrifty look; the men wore homespun coats; the pinned-up dresses of the women showed petticoats which were homespun of warm madder red, well dyed, good and comfortable looking. Of course the majority of the women were barefoot, but they were used to it.

At Molraney we stopped to deliver mails. In these cases the passengers sit on the car in the street, while the driver hands in the mail, gossips awhile, goes into the convenient "licensed to sell" for a taste of something, and the police saunter down for the mail and look you over, judiciously but not offensively, and at last you make another start.

Arrived at the Sound, you find a nice-looking hotel for such a remote place. There is any amount of liquor to be got: you can also get the never-varying chop or steak served up with another variety of miserable cooking, but you cannot get a bit of fish any more than if the sea were five hundred miles off instead of lapping on the rocks less than a perch away. Was pulled across the Sound by two young girls, who handled the big oars as if they were used to them, and urged the boat with its load of men across the green waters very swiftly with their strong white arms. As we neared the island of Achill trees were conspicuous by their absence, and purple heather was plentiful.

Achill island is a treeless place. There are mountains beyond mountains lying against the sky, heather clad or mossgrown; there are small lakes lying at the foot of mountains or between mountains; there are dreary expanses of bog stretching for miles on each side of the road between us and the mountains, and rising out of the bog are wee bits of fields and most horrible habitations. We passed the plantation, noticeable because there is not another, that Mr. Pike has coaled to flourish round his fine house. There are dark green firs, feathery light green larches, birches, and other trees that dress in green only when summer comes; great clumps of laurel and rhododendron, the latter one mass of blossoms that almost hide the leaves beneath their rosy purple. Mr. Pike has already made for himself a delicious looking home amid this barren waste. It enriched our eyes to look at it.

Mr. Pike and Mr. Stoney, of the castellated new building down at the edge of Clew Bay, have the distinction of being the most unpopular landlords in this part of the country. After we passed Mr. Pike's place there were no more trees. The houses are very bad indeed; the cattle in the pasture are of the small native breed, and have little appearance of milk; the sheep are very miserable and scraggy. I have often heard of Cook's recipes saying, "Take the scrag end of a piece of mutton." These recipes must have emanated from Achill Island, where the mutton must be pretty much all scrag.

After we drove a long way--what appeared a long way--I do not believe they measure all the crooks and turns this most serpentine of roads into the miles--we passed establishment of lay brothers called the Monastery. There is quite a block of white buildings, and a good many reclaimed fields, green with the young crops, lie in the valley below them. There is a bell in a cupola that will call to work and worship, and a chapel where they meet to pray. The valley where their fields lie stretches to the sea, and in the bay lay a smack of some kind by which they trade to Westport. They labor with their own hands, so have not the name of employing any laborers, but have the name of dispensing charity. I should have liked to see the buildings and the brethren, but did not make the attempt.

At length we came to Dugart, the Missionary settlement. A little row of white-washed houses on one side of a street that ran up hill, another row of whitewashed houses that ran along the brow of the hill at a right angle. Slieve Mor behind towering up between the village and the sea; below the hill at the foot of another mountain is the rectory, beside it the church, both having a trimming of young trees; some good fields, the best I have seen in Achill, and a pretty garden lie round both rectory and church. This is the mission village of Dugart.

At the corner where the two rows of whitewashed houses meet is the Post Office. As we drove up there was a gentleman with a northern kindliness in his face, a long brown beard, an unmistakable air of authority, whom we found out was the rector of Achill. After introduction and some conversation, he kindly invited me to the rectory after I had brushed off some of the dust of travel.

The Dugart hotel possesses a large collection of stuffed sea birds, the proprietor having taste and skill in that direction, and I was enabled to take a nearer view of specimens of the birds that sail and scream round the Achill mountains, eagles and gulls, puffins and cormorants, than I would otherwise have done. After a little rest and refreshment I walked down the hill to the lonely, lovely rectory in the valley below.

There is a solidity about a stone house, stone porch and stone wall in every part of Ireland; a strength that makes one think how easily a house could be turned into a fortalice at a short notice.

I confess I liked this rector, so tall and stately, with his long beard, grave, kindly face, northern speech, penetrating look, with a certain air of authority as became a pastor in charge. When he asked me pleasantly if I had come as a friend, I thought at once of the Bethlehem elders to Samuel, "Comest thou peaceably?" I think I almost envied this man his position, the power which he holds as a leader to be a patriot worker for the good of his countrymen and countrywomen on the barren isle of Achill.

We walked upon the shady path that leads from rectory to church, under green arches of leafage, in the real dim religious light which grand cathedrals only imitate. There is a nice useful garden on one side of the path, stocked with things good for food and pleasant to the eye. Along one side is a hedge eight feet high of fuschia growing thus in the open air, proving that it is possible to turn sheltered spots of barren Achill into nooks suggestive of Eden.

The little church to which this romantic path brought us was such a church as one might snuggle down in to learn the way to Zion, and enjoy the comfort of the old, old story. This mission was begun by the Rev. Edward Naugh, I believe, in the famine time. It invaded the island with bread and the Bible. I hear that it has done much good, chiefly, I believe, in educating and emigrating the people.

The village of the mission opposite the rectory has two schools, an inn or hotel, a co-operative store, a post-office, some dwellings of coastguard's men and other official and semi-official people, the agent over the mission property for one. A little further away on the sea sands is a miserable collection of cabins inhabited by the people. There were some poor-looking farmhouses dotting the mountain side.

As far as I could learn there was no industry on Achill Island but tilling their miserable crofts. The fishing was monopolized by one man, a Mr. Hector, a Scotchman. The people as far as I could learn had no boats fitted for deep sea fishing and the coast fishing was monopolized. They are said to be lazy, unthrifty, unenergetic. I enquired a little about this and it seemed to me as if there was a door locked and barred between them and any field for the display of energy with hope--without an atmosphere of hope, energy is a plant that will not thrive. It is hope, and nothing but hope, that nerves the backwoods settler of Canada to do battle with summer heat and winter snow, with the inexorable logic of circumstances, and he conquers because he has hope. Over every peasant holding in Ireland of the western part there is written, "Here is no hope." The superior mind looks upon the peasantry as minors who are not able to judge for themselves, who need to be tied down with office rules, and held in by proprietory bit and bridle. They admit, that they do well in the free air of Canada, but they contend that thrift, forethought, frugality is produced in them by desperation. I see desperation all round here producing a recklessness and despair. I know that hope is the star that shines for the backwoods Canadian to light him to competence.

I did not see any of the mission tenants in Achill. I saw nothing but what lay on the surface. I have no doubt that the mission has done good in many ways, great good. I am sorry, however, that they lost the opportunity of testing the capabilities of the islanders to flourish as peasant proprietors; it is not always well for the church to have vineyards and oliveyards, manservants and maidservants. It is well sometimes for the church to come down like her Master and to be alongside of the discouraged mortal who has toiled through a lifetime and caught nothing but hunger and rags, to share with them the toil and want.

XL.

REMEMBRANCES OF THE GREAT FAMINE--THE "PLANTED" SCOTCH FARMERS--A BEAUTIFUL EDIFICE.

On my return from Achill Island I decided that I would not take another post car drive to Ballycroy, and returned to Mulraney again along the same road in the shadow of the mountains. On to Newport we drove, back over the road winding along the side of Clew Bay, and across the head of the bay through the lonely country leading back to Westport.

The driver, a weather-beaten man in a weather-worn drab coat, entertained me with tales of the clearances made in the famine time that left the country side so empty. It is hard to believe that ever human beings were so cruel to other human beings in this Christian land, and that it passed unknown, or comparatively unknown, to the rest of the world.

This man told, with a certain grim satisfaction, of what he called God's judgments which had fallen on "exterminators." The common people of the West have a firm belief that God is on their side, no matter what trouble he allows to come over them. "Sure I do feel my heart afire, when gintlemen sit on my car driving through this loneliness an' talk of over-population. Over-population! and the country empty!" I wish I could remember all this old man said, but I can only recall snatches here and there.

It is most amazing to think that, when the world at large was sending help to save the Irish people alive in the awful visitation, so many were throwing their tenants out on the road to die. And these people had by hard toil won a living here and paid rent. Every rood of this land, every cabin had helped to swell princely revenues, until the finger of God came down in famine, and then, when the revenue stopped, there was no pity, and it seemed to these poor people that there was no one that regarded them. I do not wish to ever come to that time of life when I can hear of the scenes that wasted this country without feeling a passion of sorrow and regret.

I spoke of these things to a worthy gentleman resident in another part of the country and he brushed it aside as if it were a fly, saying, "Oh, that is long past, thirty years and more." Memory is very strong among people who seem to have little to look forward to--the past seems the principal outlook. Every incident of the French landing here so far back as '98 is told to me in the West here with a freshness of detail as if it happened a few years ago; one can imagine, therefore, how the cruel evictions of the famine time fit themselves into the memory of the people, especially as the rush of fresh evictions are awaking all the horrors of the past.

It seemed a gloomy satisfaction to this man to tell over what he considered God's judgments which had fallen on exterminators. He pointed out to me many who seemed doomed to be the last of their race.

At last we passed the long, dead wall which encloses the magnificent demesne of the Marquis of Sligo and drew up at Westport once more. The local papers which await me are full of Miss Gardner and her war with her tenants--more evictions, emergency men from Dublin to hold possession--and all the rest. I was introduced by a Protestant clergyman to a gentleman connected with the executive of the law for a quarter of a century. He knows the heartrending inner history of legal eviction. This gentleman has a wonderful tenderness in his heart for Miss Gardner. "Sure she grew up among us. The other one (Miss Pringle) found her as kindly a woman as was on God's earth and has made an ogre of her."

I will give an extract or two out of the softest part of the statement he has drawn up for me.

He tells of a landlord who evicted whole townlands in 1847. He hated the people because the famine swept over them. He became possessed with the same ideas as other landlords of the period, whose income had diminished through the visitation of God, that if the present possessors were rooted out and depopulated lands planted with Scotchmen, their skill and capital would prevent a recurrence of famine.

Now it is a fact freely attested to me by clergymen of different denominations that the planted people of Mayo required help, and help to a very large amount to keep them from starvation during the last scarcity. On many estates in Mayo and the adjoining parts of Sligo the Protestant population would have died of hunger but for the large help given both denominationally, and otherwise. They could not have seeded their grounds but for seed freely given them. Fields in Mayo this season are lying bare because the wretched people are not able to get seed to put in the ground. Some of the planted people complained to me that though when they settled on their present lands they got them cheap, two shillings and sixpence an acre for wild land, yet as they improved their land the rent was raised to five, to seven and six, to fourteen, and now to over a pound an acre. These men also complained that they could not possibly exist at all during these last seasons and pay the rent which was laid on them in consequence of the improvements done by their own labor. I find by the most conclusive proof that a difference of religious belief did not enable the settlers any more than the natives to pay a rent that could not be produced from the soil. The desire to change the nationality and religion of his tenants was so strong in one landlord that, in the words of my informant, "A scene of ruthless havoc began among his tenantry. To stimulate the slowness of the crowbar brigade he was known to tear down human habitations with his own hands." I remember these poor people standing in the market in those dark days of famine, having their bits of furniture for sale on the streets, and there were none to buy. I have heard the wailing of men, women and children on the coach-top day after day, when these fortunate unfortunates were escaping from their native land forever. I saw those who could not go in the agonies of death in the fever sheds. These scenes happened over thirty years ago, but they will never be forgotten. Four large townlands, on which eighty homes had been, became a wilderness of grass and rank weeds. No Scotch were forthcoming for the wrecked farms. There was a Nemesis in store for him. His day of eviction came about, and in his trouble his tenants saw retribution. As charity kept some of his tenants alive, so he also was indebted to the charity of friends, and passed away to meet his tenants at a bar where high blood or aristocratic connections do not sway the Judge who sits on the throne of justice, nor does party prejudice blind his eyes.

When Miss Gardner came of age it took all the property of her father to pay the money secured to her by her mother's settlement, and she entered into possession in his stead. Like Queen Elizabeth, whom Miss Gardner greatly resembles, she had in her youth known troubles; sympathy for these trials, so well known to the peasantry, made them receive her with open arms and open hearts. In the interval between Miss Gardner entering into possession and her coming under the influence of Miss Pringle she set herself to repair the havoc made by her predecessor, and was the idol of her tenantry. She was near neighbor to the model farm and orphanage presided over by the Scotch ladies. Philanthropy collected the vast sums which bought and stocked the model farm at Ballinglen. When their mode of managing matters there could be no longer hidden from the Presbyterian Church which they misrepresented, the mission came out largely indebted to these ladies. It took all the stock to pay off its indebtedness to one lady, and the farm itself to pay the other. It is the lady who got the farm as her share, that lives with Miss Gardner, and gets the credit of her every unpopular act. She has divided between her and her only friend in the dark days. This Scotch hag found her a kind-hearted woman, and has made her into an ogre. Some of this communication, the hardest of it, I shall reserve, also several confirmatory anecdotes given me at Westport.

In mercy to the readers, I will only say that Miss Gardner has intense courage and an intellect of masculine strength, and resembles Queen Elizabeth in more ways than one. It is a great pity that she has not Queen Bess's popularity or her care for her people.

Westport, when I have time to look at it, is a very pretty town. Its buildings, its hotels and the warehouses on the quay look as if it once had an extensive and flourishing trade, or was prepared for and expecting it. There was, I am told, once a flourishing linen trade here, but it has gone to decay. The town is in a little hollow, with pleasant tree-crowned green hills rising all round it; at one side is the demesne of the Marquis of Sligo, which is open to the public. These grounds extend for miles, and are as beautiful as gorgeous trees, green grass, dark woods, waters that leap and flash, spanned by rustic bridges, can make them. There are winding walks leading through the green fields, under trees, into woods, up hill and down, into shady glens, where you might wander for miles and lose yourself in green-wood solitudes. Crowds of Westport folk, in the calm evening, saunter through the grounds and enjoy their beauty.

The little town has a subdued expression of prosperity. You feel conscious that some business is going on that enables the inhabitants of the town to live comfortably and to dress respectably. You hear of the mills of the Messrs. Livingstone, of their business in trading and land- owning, until you are convinced that they are the centre round which this little world revolves.

I had a lady pointed out to me here as being in such embarrassed circumstances, owing to the non-payment of rent, that her son was obliged to join the police force to earn a living. I heard also great sympathy expressed for another gentleman in Dublin who has many sons, whom he has brought up to do nothing, and who has been reduced by the strike against rent to absolute poverty. I am told that banks in Dublin are glutted with family silver left as security for loans. These people are to be pitied, for poverty is poverty in purple or in rags; but when poverty comes to actual want, it is still more pitiful.

XLI.

GOING TO ENGLAND FOR WORK--CANADA AND AMERICA.

I have been going against the stream on my travels. I am reminded, incessantly that I should have begun at Dublin. Going backward, as I am doing, the orthodox route is to Leenane, passing Erriff and the Devil's Mother, but the regular cars were not yet running, I was told, nor were they likely to run this summer, as, owing to the exaggerated reports of outrage, tourists are not expected in any numbers. Was persuaded to take a special car to go by Leenane round the coast. Would have liked to do so, but not to bear all the expense myself. The further west the more expensive the car, I find. Instead, I returned to Castlebar, and on to Balla. Balla is the small town where the Land League was born.

In the compartment to which I was consigned there were some gentlemen, for gentlemen and ladies of very great apparent respectability do travel in the cars devoted to the humbler people; there were also some respectable looking laborers who were going over to England to look for work. A discussion arose in our compartment as to what constituted politeness. One gentleman defined it as ceremonious manners, the result of early training; while another objected that that was only the veneer of manners, as all true politeness arose from the heart. I listened awhile and then spoke across the seat to a decent, dejected looking man with a little bundle beside him tied up in a blue and white check handkerchief. "Yes, he was going to England to look for work; many had to go for the work was not to be had at home." "The rents were so high, and the taxes, what with one thing and another, there was a new cut always coming heavier than the last." "The people are being crushed out of the country very fast, and that was God's truth." "And you are from America? It is a fine country they say. I would be there long ago but for the heavy care I have here that I can neither take with me nor leave behind." "Yes, I go over to England every year. For a good many years past I have always worked for the same man, ever since I went there first." "It grows harder to live in Ireland every year."

I told this man amid the craned necks and open mouths of his companions, some of the advantages of Canada as a home. I do not know why it is that the people know so little of Canada. I was listened to with exclamations of "Well, well!" "Boys a boys!" "Dear O dear!" "Hear that, now! A man might live there!"

Getting at last across the Mayo plains to Claremorris, I parted from my acquaintances with many a "God bless you," while many hands lifted out my travelling bags. At Claremorris a car man asked if I was a pilgrim for Knock which was the first intimation that I had that I was in the vicinity of Knock. Hired this car man, who was also owner of the car, to drive me there. I have always heard that those born on Christmas Day are privileged to see apparitions. I have not yet come into that part of my inheritance, but do not know how soon I may.

On the way, which led through a well-cultivated, fertile country, waving with trees, and showing glimpses of great houses peeping out among them, the driver asked me if I had ever heard of Captain Boycott. I said there were few who had not. "He used to live in that house up there; he was agent in this part of the country, but he left us, thank God." "What made people dislike him so?" "Because he was the height of a great tyrant." "Come now, what did he do?" "Everything he could do to oppress the creatures who were in his power. I have known a man come home to his little family with three shillings for his week's wages, all the rest scratched off him in fines. If you have a family yourself you will understand what their living would be when they paid the rent of the cabin. A man dazed with hunger would not have all his wits about him and there would be more fines. In that way the mane hound got his work done for half price, and ground the life out of the people. There was no word of an emergency man to pity or help them. God help us; how true it is that the help does not go where the want is."

We got to Knock, a country church in a country place. Alighted, and while the carman tied his horse I looked round me. There was an enclosure round the chapel. At one side was a row of wooden booths, where relics, beads and trinkets were sold. On the other side of the enclosure was a school for girls. It was at the end of the church where the apparition is said to have appeared that we entered. All the plaster on this end was removed by devotees. In the spot where the apparition was said to have been seen, there was a life-size statue of the Virgin in plaster. All over the gable were strips of wood cleated on, behind which were ranged walking-sticks and crutches in regular order till the whole gable was covered. There was a long frame-work of wood about twelve feet long and three broad, also filled with crutches and walking- sticks.

As I stood looking, the car man came in after tying his horse, and knelt down on the damp earth before the Virgin's shrine and repeated a prayer. He was not ashamed to practice what he believed before the world and in the sight of the sun. When his prayer was over he joined me, and drew my attention to the number of crutches and sticks left behind by those who were benefited. I pointed out to him a very handsome black-thorn stick among the votive offerings, and asked him would it be a sin to steal it, as black-thorns were in demand over the water. He told me if I did that whatever disease was laid down there by the owner of the stick would cleave to me. I thought of Gehazi and restrained my hands from stealing the black-thorn. There is one nice characteristic of a genuine Irishman, he can take a joke.

There were many masons working at an enlargement of the church. We went in. It had an earthen floor, and there were many people kneeling on it at their prayers. Some were silently making the stations of the cross, others, a large number, were reciting the rosary aloud under the leadership of a young woman, who repeated one part, when they all answered in concert. The windows were darkened by the scaffolding and building outside, and as I sat there seeing and hearing, looking toward the altar, in the shadow of a pillar I saw a hand steal out. I own I was startled; but when my eyes got accustomed to the gloom, I saw it was a man at the top of a ladder quietly painting away as if the church were empty.

After a while I came out and went over to the school. There were 78 children present, all girls, all clean and decent. There was one teacher, a pleasant-faced young woman, who had two monitor assistants. The order kept was very good, the school furniture neat, a good many maps on the wall, and the children seemed busy and interested. The teacher told me that the income of the school, owing to results fees--a sum paid by Government according to the progress of the pupils, was sometimes as high as L80 per annum.

After leaving the school, went over to the booths to buy some trifle as a memorial of Knock. The man in the booth told me I had come from America. There was another man with his arm in a sling, who had come from America also. He had come to visit Knock. I asked him if his arm was better. He said it was, but not entirely well. I asked the man in the booth if he had ever seen anything. He said that he did not come there to see anything, but to make a living. He and the American had both bits of the original plaster, which they showed to me.

The priest of the place was not at home. He lives in a cottage down the hill a bit, in sight of the church. I had seen all there was to be seen, so I made my purchase and bid good-bye to Knock, and drove back to Claremorris.

Claremorris is a nice enough little town, very quiet, as if not much of any great work was going on. Where there are factories I notice the people step quickly and look straight ahead. Over towns which depend on the trading of the country round there is an air of repose and leisure. I did not see much of Claremorris, for I soon left it behind in going to Ballinrobe by car.

The land here seems very rich. I remarked this to my travelling companions, who told me that I was on the rich plains of Mayo. The fields are large and well cultivated. There were no signs of the abject poverty, wee, stony fields, horrible rookeries of houses that exist in the shadow of the Ox hills. Not that the houses of the laborers here were good; for that, a good, decent laborer's house, I have not yet seen in Ireland, except on Mr. Young's Galgorm estate. They may exist on other estates, I dare say they do, but I have not seen them. This country over which we were travelling was as rich with round-headed trees and wide meadows as a gentleman's park. The road, a particularly meandering one, passed through Hollymount--a lovely place--and through Carrowmore, my companions telling me of the landlords and the tenants as we drove along. The rent was high and hard to make up, the turf far to draw, that was all. There was no account of vexatious office rules or special acts of tyranny related to me at all.

Ballinrobe, on the river Robe, is near Lough Mask, and is another quiet, pretty, leisurely little town. I was troubled with neuralgia and did not see much of it. Opposite the hotel was the minister's residence, amid gardens, all shut in behind a stone wall high enough for a rampart. Through an archway from the street was the church where he ministered, sitting meditating among the tombs. I wandered into this place one day on my way to the post-office. Noticed the great number of the name of Cuffe who were buried there. Cuffe is the family name of Lord Tyrawley.

The Catholic church sits back from the street a good way and the ground before it is laid out in flowers. There are some images of saints through the grounds, which are set in arches of rock work, over which climbing plants are trained. There is also a community of Christian Brothers, who have a school here. Their building had so much glass in front, with so many geraniums in flower, a perfect blaze of them behind the glass, that it looked like a conservatory.

Left Ballinrobe behind and drove to Lough Mask Castle, where the celebrated Captain Boycott managed to kick up such a fuss. We passed a couple of iron huts occupied by policemen, who came out to look at us. I may as well mention that after I left Ballinrobe I found that the driver was more "than three-quarters over the bay." He had a way of talking to himself on the land question, of Captain Boycott, Lord Mountmorris and Lord Ardilaun, that was not pleasant to listen to, especially as he spiced his monologue with many words that savored strongly of brimstone. I was not without hope that the fresh air might dissipate the fumes of liquor from his brain as we drove along. I had the more hope of this as I could see that he was a habitual drinker, poor man, as his face but too plainly testified. Drink is universal here, as medicine a universal remedy, as a daily, almost hourly, stimulant for young, and old, rich and poor, man and woman. They tell me that Scotland is worse; if so, Scotland should be prayed for. I confess that I have not seen much drunkenness. I saw very few that I could call drunk, but it is constant, steady, universal, or almost so, sipping and tippling.

XLII.

LOUGH MASK CASTLE--CAPTAIN BOYCOTT AND HIS POLICY--LORD MOUNTMORRIS.

Well, my Jehu did sober up considerably before we halted at the entrance gates of Lough Mask Castle. The sharp hi! hi! of the driver brought out the gate keeper, a poor looking and sour looking woman, who admitted us into the drive which lay through some fields and beside some young plantations. In one place the driver pulled up, our way lay through a large field divided by the road into two unequal parts.

He told me to look round me, which I did. "On one side here, were the dragoons; their horses were picketed here; on the other side was the infantry. It was awful weather. What them men and their horses stood of hardships and misery no tongue could tell. The dragoons marched down here, looking fine and bowld, their horses were sleek and fat and shining, when they marched away they wor staggering with the wakeness and the men wor purty wilted looking. He made them believe he needed protection." This with a growl that had depths of meaning in it.

"He's coming back here again. Out among nagurs or anywhere else he could not find them to put up with him like ourselves." Of course I omit the strong words that were used as garnishing. I must own that this was the first time that any carman had used profane language before me--and it wasn't himself was in it at all at all but the whiskey. "The soldiers, whin they wor here," continued the old man, "cut down the trees of the plantation for firing. That went to his heart, it did. How could they help themselves, I'd like to know? Sure they would have perished with the cowld and the wet among the pelting of the snow and the sleet. Wherever they are this blessed day they don't admire the memory of Captain Boycott. What I like is behaviour in aither man or baste, and Captain Boycott had no behaviour. They killed a sheep to ate, or maybe two, and sorra a blame to them. It was ate or die wid them; but ye see the gallant Captain didn't like it." About this time a volley of anathemas was poured out against the absent Captain.

During all this we were sitting on the car viewing the field where the bivouac had been. A policeman with a questioning look on a pleasant face came along from the great house with a tin pail in his hand. "What have you got in the can!" asks this inquisitive car driver. "Milk," responded the policeman. "You would have got no milk at the big house in Captain Boycott's time."

"Oh; yes, I would," said the other, "when I paid for it." I did not like to question this man, for he did swear so, but I ventured to ask if Mrs. Boycott were equally as much disliked as her husband. "Never heard a word against her in my life. The people had no reason but to like her. Hard word or hard deed she left no memory of behind her."

We drove past the residence where Captain Boycott lived, a fine spacious house finished in plaster to imitate stone. The grounds near the house were nicely laid out, but that is the universal rule in Ireland. Drove through a gateway into the yard. In a stable loft in the yard some policemen were lodged. The driver hallooed at them, and one came down the stone steps to see what protective duty was asked of him. I asked him to show me the ruins, and he complied in the kindest manner. Across the barnyard and through a shed we made our way into the castle ruins. There are many nooks and crannies, as is the case in these ancient ruins generally, but the main body of the castle was divided into two large apartments, with the roof on the floor of course. I noticed the track of recent fire along the old walls. He said it was made by the officers who were down there on protective service for Capt. Boycott. They had one apartment and cooked there, and the police the other. These quarters open to the sky, and having stones on the floor, did not look comfortable.

We went up the circular stairs to the ramparts at the top. There is a walk round the top behind the battlements. Looking down at the remains of a fireplace in what was a lofty second story, my guide told me there was a name and a date there. The name Fitzgerald, I forget the date; so this must have been one of the Geraldine castles.

There is a fine view from the battlements. Lough Mask, which is very shallow here, a little water and a great many stones overtopping it in profusion, lies before us, and an extensive country, partly fertile, in round hills and green valleys, partly crusted over with stones.

A policeman, not my guide on this occasion, told me, illustrative of the disposition of Captain Boycott, that the hut in which the police were sheltered was very damp--water, in fact, was running on the floor under their bed. They had a small coal stove, and on the coal becoming exhausted before they got a further supply, one of the men being down sick, they ventured to ask Captain Boycott for the loan of a lump or two of coal to keep their stove going till their supplies were received, and he refused them. They were obliged to protect his ass and water cart down into the lake to draw water from out beyond the edge where the water was deep, and, therefore, could be dipped up clean. He would not allow them to get any of the water for their own use after it was drawn, or lend them the ass to draw for themselves. They had either to wade out in the lake or dip up as they could at the edge. I made a slight mistake in saying that the castle was entirely roofless; there was part of an arched roof where the fire had been. I asked the policeman if they had any night patrol duty now. Oh, yes, he said, we patrol every night, although we never see anything worse than ourselves.

Left Lough Mask, its castled ruins and modern mansion behind us, and drove through the gates again. I felt convinced that the people were not filled with an unreasoning hate against Captain Boycott. They thought they had reason, deep reason, and they scrupulously excepted Mrs. Boycott from any censure bestowed on him.

Along the road we drove, until from an eminence we could see Lough Mask in its beauty, with its bays and islands spread out beneath us. This view gave us a part of the Lough where the water covers the stones. This particular evening the water was as calm as a mirror and as blue as the sky above it, and the trees on the hills and bays around it in their greenness and leafiness, round-headed and massive, were all bathed in sunlight. We came to fields a little more barren-looking, where bare stone fences took the place of the rich hedgerows, turned up a road that lay between these stony ramparts, and drove along for a little time.

I was wondering in my own mind about Captain Boycott. Did he, in his own consciousness, think he was doing right in his system of fines? He knew how small and miserable the wages were: he knew of the poor, comfortless homes and the "smidrie o' wee duddy weans" that depended on the poor pennies the father brought home; he knew that he came out well fed and leisurely to find fault with a peasant who was working with a sense of goneness about the stomach. Did he think that increasing the hunger pain would make him more thoughtful, more orderly? Would he have done better if he had been suddenly brought to change places with his serf? If he could not help fining the people until he fined off the most of their wages, were they to blame for refusing to work for him? Was the Government right in taking his part when it had neither eye nor ear for his people's complaint? I was questioning with myself in this helpless fashion, when I heard my driver inquire in Irish of a bare-footed country girl if we were near the spot where Lord Mountmorris was murdered.

This question, and the surprise with which I became aware that I understood it, made me forget Captain Boycott for the time being and wake up to the present time. We had stopped our car and were waiting on the girl's answer, which she seemed in no hurry to give. At length lifting a small stone she threw it on the road a car's length behind us, answering in Irish that there was the spot where he was found. The murderer was hidden in the field opposite. The road was bare of the shelter of hedge or ditch, bush or tree. It was late; he was coming home alone, his police escort for some reason were not with him that particular night. Lord Mountmorris was murdered, and some one has a mark on his hand that all the water of the Lough will not wash off.