The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland Part 4

The late hard times--the cruel famine--has led to the sacrifice of all stock, so that some of these people have not a four-footed beast on their holding.

As we wound along among the hills my guide spoke of getting another man to accompany us, who was well acquainted with the way to Derryveigh, and we stopped at his place accordingly. He came to the car to explain that he was busy fanning up corn, or he would be only too glad to come. In a subdued whisper he told my guide of Capt. Dopping having been at his house, with his bailiffs and body-guard of police--threatening the wife, he said. He then told of the sacrifices he had made of one thing and another to gather up one year's rent. He had to pay five shillings for cutting turf on his own land, and one shilling for a notice served on him. Poor little man, he had a face that was cut for mirthfulness, and his woefulness was both touching and amusing. So we left him and went our way.

Along the road, winding up and down among the hills, by sudden bogs and rocky crags still more desolate and lonely looking, we came upon a cultured spot, now and then, where a solitary man would be digging round the edges of the rocks. Again we were among wild mountains heaving up their round heads to the sky and looking down at us over one another's shoulders. It brought to my mind the Atlantic billows during the last stormy February. It is as if the awful rolling billows mounting to the sky were turned into stone and fixed there, and the white foam changed into dark heather. After driving some time the landscape softened down into rolling hills beautifully cultivated, and sprinkled here and there with grazing cattle.

We are coming to Gartan Lake, and where there is a belt of trees by the lake sh.o.r.e stands the residence of Mr. Stewart, another landlord. He, when cattle became high-priced, thought that cattle were much preferable to human beings, so he evicted gradually the dwellers who had broken in the hills, and entered into possession, without compensation, of the fields, the produce of others' toil and sweat. His dwelling is in a lonely, lovely spot, and it stands alone, for no cottage home is at all near. He has wiped out from the hill sides every trace of the homes of those who labored on these pleasant fields and brought them under cultivation. Since the Land League agitation began he has given a reduction of rents, and the whole country side feel grateful and thankful.

There is no solitude so great that we do not meet bailiffs at their duty, or policemen on the prowl.

We are now nearing Derryveigh. There are two lakes lying along the valley connected with a small stream. My guide informed me that both lakes once abounded with salmon. The celebrated St. Colombkill was born on the sh.o.r.es of the Gartan Lake. Being along the lake one day he asked some fishermen on the lower lake to share with him of the salmon they had caught. They churlishly refused, and the saint laid a spell on the waters, and no salmon come there from that day to this. They are plentiful in Upper Gartan Lake, and come along the stream to the dividing line, where the stream is spanned by a little rustic bridge; here they meet an invisible barrier, which they cannot pa.s.s. I told my guide in return the story of the Well of St. Keyne, but he thought it unlikely. So there is a limit to belief.

Since Mr. Adair depopulated Derryveigh, and gave it over to silence, the roads have been neglected, and have become rather difficult for a car.

The relief works in famine time have been mainly road-making, and there are smooth hard roads through the hills in all directions, so the people complain of roads that would not be counted so very bad in the Canadian backwoods. However, the difficulty being of a rocky nature, we left the car at the house of a dumb man, the only one of the inhabitants spared by Adair. He and his sister, also dumb, lived together on the mountain solitudes. She is dead, and a relative, the daughter of one of the evicted people, has come to keep house for him. He made us very welcome, seeing to it that the horse was put up and fed with sheaf oats. I and my guides, for we were now joined by the man who had had the oats to fan-- he had got his brother to take his place and came a short cut across the hills to meet us--so we all three set out to walk over Derryveigh.

It was a trying walk, a walk to be measured by ups and downs, for the Derryveigh hamlets were widely scattered. There they were--roofless homes, levelled walls, desolation and silence. And it is a desolation, indeed. Broken down walls here and there, singly and in groups, mark the place where there was a contented population when Mr. Adair bought the estate. He had made plans for turning his purchase into a veritable El Dorado. The barren mountains are fenced off, surely at a great expense, that no sheep or lamb might bite a heather bell without pay. It was to be a great pasture for black-faced sheep. The sides of the mountains, which are bog in many places, are scored with drains to dry up the bog holes and give the sheep a sure footing. I did not see many sheep on the hill or many cattle on the deserted farms. It is an awfully lonesome place; desolation sits brooding among the broken-down walls. My guide, a lonesome-looking man, enlivened our way by remarks like these: "This was a widdy's house. She was a well-doin' body." "Here was a snug place.

See, there's the remains of a stone porch that they built to break off the wind." "That was Jamie Doherty's, he that died on the road-side after he was evicted. You see, n.o.body dare lift the latch or open the door to any of the poor creatures that were put out."

And this has been done; human beings have died outside under the sky for no crime, and this under the protection of English law. Many of these people lost their reason, and are in the asylum at Letterkenny. Some are still _coshering_ here and there among their charitable neighbors, while many are bitter hearted exiles across the sea. After walking up and down amid this pitiful desolation, and hearing many a heart-rending incident connected with the eviction, a sudden squall of hail came on, and we were obliged to take shelter on the lee side of a ruined wall till it blew over. To while away the time one of the guides told me of a local song made on the eviction, the refrain being, "Five hundred thousand curses on cruel John Adair."

Across the Gartan Lake we could see from our partial shelter the point to which Mr. Stewart wasted the people off his estate. Mr. Stewart's is a handsome lonely place, but when one hears all these tales of spoliation it prevents one from admiring a fine prospect. "He is dealing kindly with the people now," said my guides, "whatever changed his heart G.o.d knows."

The shower being over we returned to the house of the dummy. In our absence dinner had been prepared for us. She had no plates, but the table on which she laid oat cakes was as white as snow. She gave us a little b.u.t.ter, which, by the signs and tokens, I knew to be all she had, boiled eggs, made tea of fearful strength, and told us to eat. My guides enjoyed the mountain fare with mountain appet.i.tes. I tried to eat, but somehow my throat was full of feelings. I had great difficulty to make this mountain maid accept of a two shilling piece for her trouble. We returned by the way we came to a point where we had a view of a rectory which was pointed out to me as the abode of another good rector. These people do seem to feel kindness very much. Here we took another road to visit Glenveigh and see Adair's castle. On the way we were informed by a woman, speaking in Irish, that a process-server near Creeslach was fired at through the window of his house. He had been out serving processes, and was at home sitting with his head resting on his hand. Three shots were fired, two going over his head and one going through the hand on which his head was resting. Two men are taken up to-day.

I have secured a copy of the ballad referred to by our guide, which records the desolation of Derryveigh. All such actions are celebrated in local poetry; but this is one of the fiercest; you can publish it if you think best:--

DERRYVEIGH.

"The cold snow rests on levelled walls, where was a happy home, The wintry sky looks down upon a desolate hearthstone.

The hearth by which the cradle song has lulled our infant's sleep, Is open to the pitying skies that nightly o'er it weep.

There is rippling in the waters, there is rustling through the air, Five hundred thousand curses upon cruel John Adair.

"It is not we that curse him, though in woe our sad heart bleeds, The curse that's on him is the curse that follows wicked deeds.

He suspected and he punished, he judged, and then he drew The besom of destruction our quiet homesteads through; So it's rippling in the waters, it is rustling through the air, Five hundred thousand curses upon cruel John Adair.

"We little dreamed upon our hills destruction's hour was nigh, Woe! Woe the day our quiet glens first met his cruel eye!

He coveted our mountains all in an evil hour, We have tasted of his mercy, and felt his grasp of power; Through years to come of summer sun, of wintry sleet and snow, His name shall live in Derryveigh as Campbell's in Glencoe.

"A tear is on each heather bell where heaven's dew distils, And weeping down the mountain side flows on a thousand rills; The winds rush down the empty glens with many a sigh and moan, Where little children played and sang is desolate and lone.

The scattered stones of many homes have witnessed our despair, And every stone's a monument to cruel John Adair.

"Where are the hapless people, doomed by John Adair's decree?

Some linger in the drear poor-house--some are beyond the sea; One died behind the cold ditch--back beneath the open sky, And every star in heaven was a witness from on high.

None dared to ope a friendly door, or lift a neighbor's latch, Or shelter by a warm hearthstone beneath the homely thatch.

"Beside the lake in sweet Glenveigh, his tall white castle stands, With battlement and tower high, fresh from the mason's hands; It's built of ruined hearth stones, its cement is bitter tears, It's a monument of infamy to all the future years, He is written childless, for of his blood no heir Shall inherit land or lordship from cruel John Adair.

"His cognizance the b.l.o.o.d.y hand has a wild meaning now, It is pointing up for vengeance to Cain-like mark his brow, It speaks of frantic hands that clasped the side posts of the door; Pale lips that kissed the threshold they would cross, oh, never more.

The scattered stones of many homes, the desolated farms, Shall mark with deeper red the hand upon his coat of arms.

The silver birches of Glenveigh when stirred by summer air Shall whisper of the curse that hangs o'er cruel John Adair."

X.

WHY THE RENT IS RAISED--THE HISTORY OF AN EVICTION FROM ONE OF THE EVICTED--A DONEGAL CONGREGATION--A CLIMB TO THE TOP OF DOONHILL--DOON HOLY WELL--MAKING THE BEST OF A STRANGER.

In the silence of the night when sleep would not come, and when my imagination rehea.r.s.ed over and over again sights I had seen and tales I had heard, I made an almost cast-iron resolution to escape to the estate of Stewart of Ards and have one letter filled up with the good deeds of a landlord. Alas for me! another storm, a rain storm, and a touch of neuralgia conspired to keep me "ben the house" in the little room upon the mountain side. One can weather snow or hail easier than a mountain rain storm. The rain is laden with half-melted snow, and the wind that drives it is terribly in earnest.

It is one queer feature of this mountain scenery, the entire absence of trees. The hills look as if the face of the country had been shaved. Up the hill sides the little fields are divided off by high, broad stone fences, the result of gathering the stones out of the fields. The bog land to be reclaimed requires drains three feet deep every six feet of land.

To trench up a little field into ridges six feet apart, to gather stones out of a little field sufficient to surround it with a four feet high stone fence, to grub out and burn whins, to make all the improvements with your own labor, and then to have your landlord come along with his valuator and say, "Your farm is worth double what you pay for it; I can get thirty shillings an acre for it," and to raise the rent to its full value, which you must pay or go out. This sort of thing is repeated, and repeated, in every variation of circ.u.mstances and of hardship, and the people submit and are, as a whole, quiet and law-abiding.

I was called out of my little den to see a woman, one of the evicted tenants of Mr. Adair. She was on her way to Letterkenny to see her son, who is in the asylum since the eviction. It was hard enough to wander through the ruins and hear of the eviction scenes from others, but to sit by the turf fire and listen to one who had suffered and was suffering from this dreadful act, to see the recollection of it expressed in look and tone was different. This woman--husband dead, son in the asylum--was a decent-looking body in cloak and cap, with a bleached face and quiet voice.

"We were all under sentence of eviction, but it was told to us that it was for squaring the farms. Then we were warned to pay in the half- year's rent. It was not due till May, and we had never been asked to pay the rent ahead of us before. But the landlord was a new one, and if he made a rule, why, we must obey him; so we sc.r.a.ped up and sold this and that and paid it. If we had known what was coming we might have kept it, and had a penny to turn to when we were out under the sky. It was to get the rent before he turned us out that he made that plan. We were put out in the beginning of April; our rent was paid up to May. Oh, I wish, I wish that he had driven us into the lake the day he put us out. A few minutes would have ended our trouble, but now when will it end! I have been through the country, my lady, and my boy in the asylum ever since."

Went to the Catholic chapel up here in the mountains. It was quite convenient to my lodging. It is a very nice building with a new look. I was surprised to see such a fine building in the mountains, for, owing to the poverty of the people, there were no chapels at all in some places a little time ago. Ma.s.s was celebrated in _scalans_, a kind of open sheds, covered over head to protect the officiating priest from the weather, while the people cl.u.s.tered round in the open air. When I spoke of the nice appearance of the chapel I was told that the children of these hills scattered through the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, had helped in its building. There were between seven and eight hundred people present. There were no seats on the floor of the chapel. I could not help admiring the patient, untiring devotion of these people, and the endurance that enabled them to kneel so long. The prevailing type of face is eminently Scottish, so is the tone of voice, and the names, Murrays, Andersons, and the like.

Were it not for the altar and the absence of seats I could have imagined myself in a Glenelg Presbyterian congregation. The Irish spoken here, and it is spoken universally, has a good deal of resemblance to Glenelg Gaelic. I was surprised at how much I understood of the conversations carried on around me. The women, too, in their white caps, with their serious, devotional comely faces, reminded me of faces I have seen in dear old Glengarry.

There were not half a dozen bonnets in the whole congregation--snow- white caps covered with a handkerchief for the matrons. They wore cloaks and shawls, and looked comfortable enough. I saw some decent blue cloth cloaks of a fashion that made me think they had served four generations at least. The la.s.ses wore their own shining hair "streeling" down their backs or neatly braided up; abundant locks they had, brown color prevailing. Fresher, rosier, comelier girls than these mountain maidens it would be hard to find.

The men's clothing, though poor, and in some instances patched in an artistic fashion, was scrupulously clean. In the congregation were some young men well dressed, bold and upright, whose bearing, cut of whiskers, and watch chains, showed that they had lived among our trans- Atlantic cousins of the great Republic.

The priest of the hills is the one man whom these people trust. The prevailing type of landlord has been their enemy and oppressor. The priest has been friend, counsellor, sympathizer, helper, as well as clergyman, and so he is _soggarth aroon_.

The storm continues at intervals. I get one clear, cold bit of fair weather to climb to the top of Doune hill, where the Ulster kings used to be crowned, a sugar-loaf shaped hill with the top broken off, rising in isolated grandeur up high enough to give one a breather to get to the top.

The weather returned to its normal condition of storm, and I was shut up again. I became a little homesick, had the priest to tea, and enjoyed his conversation very much, but he had to go off in the storm on a sick call. A priest in these mountains has not the easiest kind of life in the world.

Illusions took possession of my brain. I fancied myself a great queen, to say the least of it. A whisper got among the hills that a great American lady with unlimited power had come seeking the welfare of the country, and so any amount of deputations wafted on me. I will give a few specimens.

Two men to see my lady in reference to a small still that had been misfortunately found on the place of an old man upward of eighty. He was fined L12, and would my lady do anything?

Two women under sentence of eviction, my lady (I saw the place of one of these, the roof was on the floor, and a little shelter was in one corner like the lair of a wild beast, and here she kept possession in spite of the dreadful Captain Dopping; the agent). Would my lady send out their two daughters to America and place them in decent places?

And here was old Roseen, old and miserable, without chick or child, or drop's blood belonging to her in the wide world, and would my lady remember her?

Here's the crature of a widow from the mountain with four small children, and no man body to help her with the place, and not a four- footed beast on it belonging to her; all went in the scarcity; would my lady look to her a little, sure she was the neediest of all?

And here was the poor cripple boy that his reverence was so good to, &c., &c., &c., in endless file.

Nothing kept this over-dose of "my lady" from going to my head like Innishowen poteen, but the slenderness of my purse. Determined at last, warned by my fast-collapsing _portmonnaie_, to refuse to see any more deputations and keep ben-the-house strictly. A cry arose that Captain Dopping and his body-guard, on evictions bent, were coming up the hill. I rushed out, mounted a ditch of sods for one more look at the little tyrant of their fields. As I stood shading my eyes with my hand and looked across at the dreaded agent, a plaintive "my lady," bleated out at my side, drew my eyes down. It was a woman; she did not speak any more, but looked, and that look drew out my fast collapsing purse. I walked slowly into the house, determined to escape from the hills while I had the means left of escaping.