Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) by William Henry Hurlbert

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"But could the people earn nothing in Scotland or in Tyrone?"

"Oh no, they could earn nothing at all. They could pay no rent."

So he sat there, a Jeremiah among the potsherds, quite contented and
miserable--well and hearty in a ragged frieze coat, with his hat over
his eyes.

While we talked, a tall lusty young beggar-girl wandered in and out
unnoticed. Chickens pecked and fluttered about, and at intervals the
inevitable small dog suddenly barked and yelped.

On our way back we met the elder daughter of Mrs. M'Donnell, a girl of
sixteen, the "beauty of Gweedore." A beauty she certainly is, and of a
type hardly to have been looked for here.

Her lithe graceful figure, her fine, small, chiselled features, her
shapely little head rather defiantly set on her sloping shoulders, her
fair complexion and clear hazel eyes, her brown golden hair gathered up
behind into a kind of tress, all these were Saxon rather than Celtic.
Her trim neat ankles were bare, after the mountain fashion, but she was
prettily dressed in a well-fitting dark blue gown, wore a smartly
trimmed muslin apron, with lace about her throat, and carried over her
arm a new woollen shawl, very tasteful and quiet in colour. She greeted
us with a self-possessed smile.

"No," she had not, been shopping with her mother. The shawl was a
present from one of her cousins. Did we not think it very pretty? She
was only out for a walk, and had no notion where her mother might be. A
stalwart red-bearded man who lounged and loitered behind her on the road
was "only a friend," she said, "not a relation at all!" Nor did she
show, I am sorry to say, any compassion for the evident uneasiness with
which, from a distance, he regarded her long and affable parley with two
strangers.

We asked her whether she expected and wished to live in Gweedore, or
would like to follow elsewhere some calling or trade. "Oh yes," she
unhesitatingly replied, "I should like to be a dress-maker in Deny;
but," she added pensively, "it's no use my thinking about it, for I know
I shouldn't be let!"

"Wouldn't you like Dublin as well?" I asked.

"Perhaps; but I shouldn't be let go to Dublin either!"

Would she like to go to America?

"No!" she didn't think much of "the Americans who came back," and
America must be "a very hard country for work, and very cold in the
winter."

Now this was a widow's daughter, living in such a cabin as I have
described, and upon a small holding in a parish reputed to be the most
"distressful" in Donegal![15]

Returning to the hotel we found our car ready for Falcarragh. Our driver
was a quiet, sensible fellow, who did not seem to care sixpence about
the great Nationality question, though he knew the country very well.

Iron was visible in the rocks as we drove along, and we passed some
abandoned mining works, "lead and silver mines;" he said, "they were
given up long before his time." We got many fine views of the mountains
Errigal, Aghla More, and Muckish. Lough Altan, a wild tarn, lies between
Errigal and Aghla More.

The peasants we met stared at us curiously, but, were very civil, even
at a place bearing the ominous name of Bedlam, against which Mr. Burke
had warned us as the most troublesome on the way. All the countryside
was there attending a fair, and we drove through throngs of red-shawled,
barelegged women, ponies, horses, cattle, and sheep. Of Tory Island,
with its famous tower, dating back to the fabled "Fomorians," we had
some grand glimpses. The white surf, flashing and leaping high in the
air on the nearer islets accented and gave life to the landscape.

In one glorious landlocked bay, we saw not a single boat riding. Our
driver said, "The fishermen all live on Tory Island, and send their fish
to Sligo. The people on the mainland don't like going out in the boats."

Lord Ernest tells me there is a movement to have a telegraph station set
up on Tory Island, to announce the Canadian steamers coming into Moville
for Deny.

We found Falcarragh, or "Cross-Roads," a large clean-looking village,
consisting of one long and broad street, through which horses and cattle
were wandering in numbers, apparently at their own sweet will.

Ballyconnell House, the seat of Mr. Wybrants Olphert, is the manor house
of the place. As we drew near, no signs appeared of the dreadful
"Boycott." The great gates of the park stood hospitably open, and we
drove in unchallenged past a pretty ivy-clad lodge, and through low, but
thickly planted groves. A huge boulder, ruddy with iron ore, bears the
uncanny and unspellable name of the "Clockchinnfhaelaidh," or "Stone of
Kinfaele." Upon this stone, tradition tells us, Balor, a giant of Tory
Island, chopped off the head of an unreasonable person named
Mackinfeale, for complaining that Balor, under some prehistoric "Plan of
Campaign," had driven away his favourite cow, Glasgavlan.

Ballyconnell House, a substantial mansion of the Georgian era, stands
extremely well. Over a fine sloping lawn in front, you have a glorious
view of the sea, and of a very fine headland, known as "the Duke's
Head," from the really remarkable resemblance it bears to the profile of
Wellington. The winds have such power here that there are but few
well-grown trees, and those near the house. About them paraded many
game-hens, spirited birds, looking like pheasants. These, as we learned,
never sleep save in the trees.

The "boycotted" lord of the manor came out to greet us--a handsome,
stalwart man of some seventy years, with a kindly face, and most
charming manners. His family, presumably of Dutch origin, has been
established here since Charles II. He himself holds 18,133 acres here,
valued at L1802 a year; and he is a resident landlord in the fullest
sense of the term. For fifty years he has lived here, during all which
time, as he told us to-day, he has "never slept for a week out of the
country." His furthest excursions of late years have been to Raphoe,
where he has a married daughter. "Absenteeism" clearly has nothing to do
with the quarrel between Mr. Olphert and his tenants, or with the
"boycotting" of Ballyconnell.

The dragoons from Dunfanaghy had just ridden away as we came up. They
had come over in full fig to show themselves, and to encourage the
respectable Catholics of Falcarragh, who side with their parish priest,
Father M'Fadden of Glena, and object to the vehement measures, promoted
by his young curate, Father Stephens, recently of Liverpool. The people
had received them with much satisfaction. "They had never seen the
cavalry before, and were much delighted!"

Before we sat down to luncheon young Mr. Olphert came in. It was curious
to see this quiet, well-bred young gentleman throw down his belt and his
revolver on the hall table, like his gloves and his umbrella. "Quite
like the Far West," I said. "And we are as far in the West as we can
get," he replied laughingly.

Our luncheon was excellent--so good, in fact, that we felt a kind of
remorse as if we had selfishly quartered ourselves upon a beleaguered
garrison. But Mr. Olphert said he had no fear of being starved out.
Personally he was, and always had been, on the best terms with the
people of Falcarragh. The older tenants, even now, if he met them
walking in the fields when no one was in sight, would come up and salute
him, and say how "disgusted" they were with what was going on. It was
the younger generation who were troublesome--more troublesome, he added,
to their own parish priest than they were to him. Three or four years
ago a returned American Irishman, an avowed unbeliever, but an active
Nationalist and one of Mr. Forster's "suspects," had come into the
neighbourhood and done his worst to break up the parish. He used to come
to Falcarragh on a Sunday, and get up on a stone outside the chapel
while Father M'Fadden was saying Mass or preaching, and harangue such
people as would listen to him, and caricature the priest and the sermon
going on within sound of his own voice. "I am myself a Protestant,"
said Mr. Olphert, "but I have a great respect for priests who do their
duty; and the conduct of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in countenancing
this man, who tried to overthrow the authority of Father M'Fadden of
Glena, excited my indignation. As to what is going on now," said Mr.
Olphert, "it is to Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, and to Father Stephens
here, that the trouble is chiefly to be charged." This tallies with what
I heard at Gweedore from my Galwegian acquaintance. He thought Mr.
Olphert, and Mr. Hewson, the agent, ought to have made peace on the
terms which Father Stephens said he was willing to accept for the
tenants, these being a reduction of 3s. 4d. in the pound, if Mr. Olphert
would extend the reduction to the whole year. My Galwegian thought this
reasonable, because in this region the rent, it appears, is only
collected once a year. With this impartial temper, my Galwegian still
maintained that but for the two priests--the parish priest of Gweedore
and the curate of Falcarragh--there need have been no trouble at
Falcarragh. There had been no "evictions." When the tenants first went
to Mr. Olphert they asked a reduction of 4s. in the pound on the
non-judicial rents, and this Mr. Olphert at once agreed to give them.
The tenants had regularly paid their rents for ten years before. That
they are not going down in the world would appear from the fact that the
P.O. Savings Banks' deposits at Falcarragh, which stood at L62, 15s.
10d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to L494, 10s. 8d. A small number of them had
gone into Court and had judicial rents fixed; and it was on the
contention promoted by the two priests, through these judicial tenants,
he said, that all the difficulty hinged. Father M'Fadden of Glena, who
thought the quarrel unjustifiable and silly, had an interview with Mr.
Blane, M.P., and with Father Stephens, and tried to arrange it all. He
would have succeeded, my Galwegian thought, had not the agent, Mr.
Hewson, obstinately fought with the obstinate curate, Father Stephens,
over the suggestion made by the latter, that the terms granted on the
fine neighbouring estate of Mr. Stuart of Ards--a man of wealth, who
lives mainly at Brighton, though Ards is one of the loveliest places in
Ireland--should be extended by Mr. Olphert for a whole year to his own
people, who had never asked for anything of the kind!

Mr. Olphert said he knew Gweedore well. He owns a "townland"[16] there,
on which he has thirty-five tenants, none of them on a holding at more
more than L4 a year. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, he said, finding that
the people on Mr. Olphert's townland were going back to the "Rundale"
practices, tried to induce Mr. Olphert to return all these subdivisions
as "tenancies." This he refused to do. As to the resources of the
peasantry, he thought them greater than they appeared to be. "This comes
to light," said Mr. Olphert, "whenever there is a tenant-right for sale.
There is never any lack of money to buy it, and at a round good price."
The people also, he thinks, spend a great deal on what they regard as
luxuries, and particularly on tea. "A cup of tea could not be got for
love or money in Gweedore, when Lord George Hill came there. You might
as well have asked for a glass of Tokay."

Now they use and abuse it in the most deleterious way imaginable. They
buy the tea at exorbitant rates, often at five shillings a pound, and
usually on credit, paying a part of one bill on running up another, put
it into a saucepan or an iron pot, and boil, or rather stew, it over the
fire, till they brew a kind of hell-broth, which they imbibe at odd
moments all day long! Oddly enough, this is the way in which they
prepare tea in Cashmere and other parts of India, with this essential
difference, though, that the Orientals mitigate the astringency of the
herb with milk and almonds and divers ingredients, tending to make a
sort of "compote" of it. Taken as it is taken here, it must have a
tremendous effect on the nerves. Mr. Olphert thinks it has had much to
do with the increase of lunacy in Ireland of late years. From his
official connection with the asylum at Letterkenny, he knows that while
it used to accommodate the lunatics of three counties, it is now hardly
adequate to the needs of Donegal alone.

Everything about Ballyconnell House is out of key with the actual
military conditions of life here. It is essentially what Tennyson calls
"an ancient home of ordered peace." In the ample hall hang old portraits
and trophies of the chase. The large and handsome library, panelled in
rich dark wood, is filled full of well-bound books. Prints, busts, the
thousand and one things of "bigotry and virtue" which mark the
dwelling-place of educated and thoughtful people are to be seen on every
side. Mr. Olphert showed us a cabinet full of bronzes, picked up on the
strand of the sea. Among these were brooches, pins, clasps, buckles, two
very fine bronze swords, and a pair of bronze links engraved with
distinctly Masonic emblems, such as the level, the square, and the
compasses. When were these things made, and by what people?

So far as I know, Masonry in the British Islands cannot be historically
traced back much, if at all, beyond the Revolution of 1688.

Mr. Olphert and his son walked about the place with us. They have no
fears of an attack, but think it wise to keep a force of police on the
premises. The only demonstration yet made of any kind against the house
was the march from Falcarragh some time ago of a mob of young men, who
promptly withdrew on catching sight of half-a-dozen policemen within the
park gates. As to getting his work done, some of his people had steadily
refused to acknowledge the "boycott," and they were now strengthened by
the attitude of those who had surrendered to the pressure, and were now
sullen and angry with the League which had given them nothing to do, and
no supplies.

At Falcarragh we met a person who knew much about the late Lord Leitrim,
who was murdered in this neighbourhood on the highway some years ago. He
spoke freely of the murderer by name, as if it were matter of common
notoriety. Of the murdered man, he said that he had made himself
extremely unpopular and odious, not so much by certain immoralities
freely alleged at the time of his death, as by vexatious meddling with
the prejudices and whims of his tenants. "He used to go into the houses
and pull down cartoons and placards, if he saw them put up on the
walls." "No! he had no party feeling in the matter; he used to pull down
William III. and the Pope with an equal hand." It seems that in this
region, too, a local legend has grown up of the birth at a place called
Cashelmore of a "Queen of France." The case is worth noting as throwing
light on the genesis and accuracy of local traditions. The "Queen of
France" referred to proves, on inquiry, to have been Miss Patterson, who
married Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the first Emperor, afterwards
created by him King of Westphalia! This Avas the lady so well known in
America as Mrs. Patterson Bonaparte of Baltimore, who died at a great
age only a few years ago. I have no reason to suppose that she was born
at Cashelmore at all or in Ireland. But her father, reputed in the time
of Washington to be the richest man in the United States, who came from
the North of Ireland and settled in Baltimore as a merchant, may very
well have been born there.

To my great regret Father M'Fadden of Glena, or Falcarragh, was absent
from home. As we drove homeward we met on the way a young lady on a
smart jaunting-car, with a servant in livery. This was the daughter, our
driver told us, of Mr. Griffiths, the Protestant clergyman, past whose
residence our road lay. His church stands high upon a commanding cliff,
and is a feature in the landscape. We met the parson himself also,
walking with a friend. The road from Bedlam to Derrybeg goes by a region
of the "Rosses," reputed the most woe-begone part of the Gweedore
district. This is the scene of a curious tale told about Father M'Fadden
of Gweedore, by his ill-wishers in these parts, to the effect that he
advises English Members of Parliament and other "sympathising" visitors
who come here to make a pilgrimage to "the Bosses," where, no matter at
what time of day they appear, they invariably find sundry of the people
sitting in their huts and eating stewed seaweed out of iron pots. I
cannot vouch for this tale, but certainly I have seen no people here of
either sex, or of any age, who look as if they lived on stewed seaweed.
Another person at Falcarragh told us, as an illustration of the
influence exerted by Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in this parish, over
which he has no proper authority, that, in obedience to an intimation
from him, the persons whose seats in the chapel had been occupied on two
successive Sundays by the policemen now stationed here, yesterday
refused to allow the policemen to occupy them, the only exception being
in the case of a man who had been arrested at the same time with Father
Stephens, and who had been so well treated by the police, that he felt
bound to repay their courtesy by offering one of them his seat.

CHAPTER III.

DUNGLOE, _Tuesday, Feb. 7._--We rose early this morning at Gweedore; the
sun shining so brightly that we were forced to drop the window-shades at
breakfast, while I read my letter from Rome, telling me of the bitter
cold there, and of a slight snow-fall last week. Here the birds were
singing, and the air was as soft and exhilarating as that of an April
morning in the Highlands of Mexico or Costa Rica.

Our host gave us a capital car, with a staunch nag and a wide-awake
jarvey, thanks to all which I found the thirteen miles drive to this
place too short. No doubt it will be a great thing for Donegal when
"light railways" are laid down here. But I pity the traveller of the
future here, if he is never to know the delight of traversing these wild
and picturesque wastes in such weather as we have had to-day, on a car,
well-balanced by a single pleasant companion, drinking, as he goes,
deep draughts of the Atlantic air! Truly on a jaunting-car "two are
company and three are none." You have almost the free companionship of a
South American journey in the saddle, jumping off to walk, when you
like, more freely still.

We drove near the house of the "beauty of Gweedore," but she was not
visible, though we met her mother (by no means a _pulchra mater_) as we
crossed the Clady at Bryan's Bridge.

We soon passed from the bogland into a wilderness of granite. Our
jarvey, however, maintained that there was "better land among the stones
than any bogland could be." He was a shrewd fellow, and summed up the
economical situation, I thought, better than some of his betters, when
he said of the whole region that "it will fatten four, feed five, and
starve six."

It may well fatten six, though, I should say, if the natural wealth of
this vast granite range can be properly turned to account. On every side
of us lay vast blocks of granite of all hues and grades, all absolutely
unworked, but surely not unworkable. We stopped and picked up many
specimens, some of them almost as rich in colour as porphyry. Of lakes
and lakelets supplying water-power the name too, is legion.

Beyond Annagary we caught a glimpse of the Isle of Arran, the scene, a
few years ago, of so much suffering, and that of a kind I should think
as much beyond the control of legislation as the misery and destruction
which have overtaken successive attempts to establish settlements on
Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

This town of Dungloe sprawls along the shore of the sea. It is reputed
the most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dream
of beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity of
that interesting type of Irish civilisation, the "Gombeen man," of whom
I had heard so much at Gweedore. Over the doorways of most of the shops
appear the names of various members of the family of Sweeney, all of
them, I am told, brought here and established within a few years past by
the head of the sept, who is not only the great "Gombeen man" of the
region, but a leading local member of the National League, and Her
Majesty's Postmaster. The Sweeneys, in fact, commercially speaking,
dominate Dungloe, their, only visible rivals being a returned Irish
American, who has built himself a neat two-story house and shop just at
the entrance of the village, and our own host, Mr. Maurice Boyle, whose
extremely neat little inn just faces a large shop, the stronghold of the
Chief of the Sweeneys. I am sorry to find that this important citizen of
Dungloe is not now here. We went into his chief establishment to make
some purchases, and found it full of customers, chiefly women, neatly
dressed after the Donegal fashion, and busily chaffering with the
shopgirls and shopmen, who had their hands full, exhibiting goods such
as certainly would not be found in any New York or New England village
of this sort. When we secured the attention of the chief shopman, a
nattily dressed, dark-haired young man who would not have discredited
the largest "store" in Grand Street or the Bowery of New York, we asked
him to show us some of the home-made woollen goods of the country.
These, he assured us, had no sale in Dungloe, and he did not keep them.
But he showed us piles of handsome Scottish tweeds at much higher
prices. Now as this is an exclusively agricultural region, it is evident
that the tenants must be able to make it worth a trader's while to keep
on hand such goods as we here found, and therefore that they cannot be
exactly on "the ragged edge" of things.

Mr. Sweeney is also the proprietor of the chief "hotel" of Dungloe; our
host, Mr. Boyle, being in fact supposed to be "boycotted" for
entertaining officers of the police. This "boycott," however, has
entailed no practical inconvenience upon us; and Mr. Boyle's pretty and
plucky daughters, who manage his house for him, laughed scornfully at
the notion of being "bothered" by it.

After luncheon we took a car and drove out to Burtonport, on the Roads
of Arranmore, to visit the parish priest there, Father Walker, and Mr.
Hammond, the agent of the Conyngham estates.

We passed near a large inland lake, Lough Meela, and the seaward views
along the coast were very fine. With peace and order this corner of
Ireland might easily become the chosen site of the most delightful
seaside homes in the United Kingdom. The Recorder of Cork has discovered
this, and passes a great part of the year here. This Donegal coast is no
further from the great centres of British wealth and population than are
Mount Desert and the other summer resorts of Maine and New Hampshire
from New York and Philadelphia; and the islands which break the great
roll of the Atlantic here cannot well be more nearly in "a state of
nature" than were the Isles of Shoals, for example, in my college days,
long after Mr. Lowell first wandered there with the transcendental
Thaxters to celebrate the thunders of the surf at Appledore.

The wonderful granitic formations we had seen on the way from Gweedore
stretch all along the coast to the Roads of Arranmore. At Burtonport
they lie on the very water's edge. At a place called Lickeena, masses of
beautiful salmon-and rose-coloured granite actually trend into the
tidewater, and at Burtonport proper is a promontory of that
richly-mottled granite which I had supposed to be the peculiar heritage
of Peterhead, and which is now largely exported from Scotland to the
United States. Why should not this Irish granite be shipped directly
from Donegal to America, there to be built up into cathedrals, and
shaped into monuments for the Exiles of Erin? All these formations which
we have seen present themselves in great cubical blocks, so jointed that
they may be detached without blasting, with great comparative ease, and
with little of the waste which results from the squaring of shapeless
masses. At the same time, as we saw while coming from Gweedore, the
many lakes of this region offer all the water-power necessary for
polishing-works, columnar lathes, and the general machinery used in
developing such quarries. Without being an expert in granites, I have
seen enough of the granite works at home to feel quite sure that a
moderate and judiciously managed investment here ought to return a
handsome result. If the National League is as well off as it is reputed
to be, it might go into this business open a new and remunerative
industry to the people of a "congested" district, and earn dividends
large enough to enable it to pay the expenses of the war against England
at Westminster, without drawing on the savings of the servant-girls in
America, The only person likely to suffer would be the "Gombeen man," if
the peasantry earned enough to pay off their debts to him, and stop the
flow of interest into his coffers.

At Burtonport we found the "Gombeen man," of Dungloe, represented by a
very large "store." He runs steamers between this place and various
ports on the Scottish and Irish coasts, bringing in goods and taking out
the crops which his debtors turn over to him.

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