Chapter 34

A smart car driver, named Matthew Henay, was dubious as to the benefits accruing from Home Rule. His driving was a study, and his conversations with Maggie, his little mare, were both varied and vigorous. "Now me little daughter, away ye go. That's the girl now. Me little duck, ye go sweetly. There's the beauty, now. Maggie me love, me darlint, me pride; ye know ivery word I spake. Yes, she does, Sorr. She ondhershtands both English an' Irish. I can dhrive her in both, but I have an owld woman o' me own that can only dhrive her in Irish. Home Rule will do no good at all. Twinty years I wint to England to harvest, an' eighteen iv it to the same masther an' on the same farm. An' ye don't get me to belave all I hear widout thinkin' a bit. An' I say, get out o' that wid yer talk o' mines an' factories, an' rubbish. Where's the money to come from? says I. That's what nobody knows. Sure, we'd be nothin' widout England. A thousand goes from this part every year, an' even the girls brings back ten to fifteen pounds each. That's all the circulation of money we have. An' as all we get's from England, I say, let us stick to England, but nobody agrees wid me. There's the girl, now. Away ye go, me little duck, me daughter, me beauty, me--bad luck to ye, _will_ ye go? What are ye standin' there for? Will ye get out o' that, ye lazy brute? Take that, an' that, an' _that_, ye idle, good-for-nothin', desavin', durty daughter of a pig. _Now_ d'ye ondhershtand who's masther, ye idle, skulkin', schamin', disrespictable baste?"

Misther Henay was favourably disposed towards the Protestant settlers of Dugort, but another Sounder was very bitter indeed. "A set of Soupers an' Jumpers an' Double-Jumpers. What's the manin' iv it ye ask? Soupers is Catholics that's turned Protestants for the sake of small pickin's sich as soup. That's what they are at Dugort. An' Jumpers is worse than Soupers. For Soupers only changed once, but Jumpers is thim that turned once an' then turned back again, jumpin' about from one religion to another. Ye can have Jumpers in anythin'. Ye can have thim in politics. Owld Gladstone is a Jumper and a Double-Jumper an' a Double-Thribble Jumper. An' if we get a Parlimint for ourselves, 'tis because he daren't for the life of him say No--an' divil thank him. Yes, we'll take the bill; what else will we do? We can amend it whin once we get it. But afther so much jumpin', owld Gladstone's a man I wouldn't thrust. A man that would make so many changes isn't to be thrusted. I wouldn't be surprised if he wouldn't bring in a coercion bill at any minute. Ah, the thricks an' the dodges iv him! An' the silver tongue he has in his head! Begorra, I wouldn't lave him out o' me sight. 'Tis himself would stale the cross off a donkey's back."

The Achil ditches are full of ferns, and a hundred yards from the sea are clumps of _Osmunda regalis_--otherwise known as the Royal fern--spreading out palm-like fronds four feet long. Other ferns, usually regarded as rare, abound in every direction, and potatoes and cabbages grow at the very water's edge. The vast plains are treeless save for the plantations round the house of Major Pike, who has shown what can be done to reclaim the land, but his excellent example has attracted no imitators. Except in the Major's grounds there is not a tree on the island, unless we count the hedges of fuchsias, twelve to fifteen feet high, which fence in some of the gardens. The Post Office, engineered by Mr. Robins, of Devonshire, an old coastguardsman, is surrounded by fuchsia bloom, and every evidence of careful culture. Here I met some Achil folks who did not understand English, and a mainland man who does not believe in the future of the race. He said:--

"I think their civilisation has stood still for at least five centuries. They are so wedded to their ancient customs that nothing can be done for them. They are not so poor as they look, and the starvation of which you hear in England is totally unknown. As an object of charity Achil is a gigantic swindle. When the seed potatoes were brought here in Her Majesty's gunboats the people were too lazy to fetch them ashore. I was there and heard an Irish bluejacket cursing them as a disgrace to his country. They do just what the priests tell them from week to week. Every Sunday they get their instructions. They keep up the cry of distress when there is no distress, for fear of breaking through the custom. They have been helped on all sides, but they will not utilise their advantages. The sea is before them, swarming with fish, which they will not catch. They said, we have no pier, no quay. They were set up with these and everything they needed. What did they do with them? Nothing at all. The work is falling to pieces and they let it go. They sometimes go out in coraghs, and catch enough fish for the day's food, but that is all. They don't pay their rents, and their rents would amuse you. Twenty-five shillings a year for a decent house and a good piece of land is reckoned a heavy responsibility. One man I know named McGreal has twenty acres of good land and a house for seventeen shillings and sixpence a year. They will not sell you butter, they will not sell you milk. They say they want it for themselves. None of them has ever paid a cent for fuel. All have turf for the digging, and much of the Achil turf is equal to coal. The sea is in front of them, and all round them, and the lakes are full of fish. And yet the hat is sent round every other year.

"They used to pay their debts. Now they will pay nothing, and their audacity is something wonderful. A gentleman over there has bought some land, and the people turn their cattle on it to graze. He remonstrates, and they say, 'What business have you here? Keep in your own country.' He sued them for damages. They had nothing but the cattle aforesaid, and, as he could not find heart to seize, he had no remedy. They keep their cattle on his land, although he has, since then, processed them for trespass. They have already divided the spoils of the Protestants; that is, in theory. They are anticipating the Home Rule Bill in their disposal of the land. They have marked out the patches they will severally claim, and are already disputing the future possession of certain desirable fields.

"English Gladstonians ridicule the fears of Irish Protestants, who declare unanimously their conviction that Home Rule means oppression. This ridicule is absurd in face of the fact that every Protestant sect, without exception, has publicly and formally announced its adherence to this opinion. The Church of Ireland believes in Catholic intolerance; the Methodists believe it; the Baptists believe it; the Plymouth Brethren believe it; the Presbyterians believe it; the Unitarians, the most radical of all the sects, believe it; the Quakers, who never before made a public deliverance of opinion in any political matter, believe it; and all these have issued printed declarations of their belief. The Roman Catholic laity, the best of them, believe it; but the Catholic Bishops say No, they will not admit the soft impeachment. And Englishmen who are Gladstonians believe these Bishops in preference to all the sects I have enumerated. Could anything be more unreasonable? But it is of a piece with the whole conception of the bill, which seems to contain every possible absurdity, and is based on extravagant assumptions of amity on the part of Irish Catholics, of which there is not one particle of evidence in existence. All the evidence points the other way, and Irish Protestants know that under Home Rule their fate is sealed. There would be no open persecution, but we should be gently elbowed out of the country. All who could leave Ireland would do so at once, and England would lose her most powerful allies in the enemy's camp. For it is the enemy's camp, and this fact should be borne in mind. Mr. Gladstone and his followers would be horrified to hear such a statement, which they would regard as rank blasphemy. But every Irishman knows it, and every Englishman knows it who lives here long enough to know anything. Irish Nationalists have two leading ideas--to get as much out of England as possible, and to damage her as much as possible by way of repayment. Mr. Gladstone wants to put England's head on the block, to hand an axe to her sworn enemy, and to say, 'I'm sure you won't chop.' People who have common sense stand amazed, dumbfounded at so much stupidity."

A pious Catholic bore out the statements of my first Achil friend with reference to the comparative comfort of the Islanders. He said:--"We live mostly on bread and tea. Of course we have plenty of butter and eggs, and now and then we go out and get some fish. I had a go at a five-pound white trout to-day, with plenty of butter and potatoes. At Dugort people who live in cabins have money in the bank, aye, some of them have several hundred pounds. And yet they took the seed potatoes sent by England. Well, they wanted a change of seed, and they must do the same as their neighbours. It would not do to pretend to be any better off than the rest. They are compelled to do as the majority do in everything, or they would be boycotted at once. They cease work when a death occurs in the parish. If an infant three days old should give up the ghost, every man shoulders his spade and leaves the field. And he does not return till after the funeral. If another death occurred on the funeral day, he would leave off again, and so on. No matter how urgent the state of the crop, he must leave it to its fate, or leave the country, for no one would know a person who would work while a corpse lay in the parish. They would look upon him as an infidel, and, if possible, worse than a Protestant. Luckily we don't often die hereabouts, or we'd never get the praties set or the turf cut. Sometimes they won't go to work because someone is expected to die, and they say it isn't worth while to begin. I have known a lingering case to throw the crops back a fortnight or more. Oh, they don't grumble; any excuse for laziness is warmly welcomed. They complain when people die at inconvenient times, and will say the act might have been delayed till a more convenient season, or might have been done a little earlier. The whole population turn out for the funeral, but they don't dig the grave until the procession reaches the graveyard. Then the mourners sit around smoking, both men and women, while a couple of young chaps make a shallow hole, and cover the coffin with four to six inches of earth. No, it is not severely sanitary, but we are not too particular in Achil."

These unsophisticated islanders are decidedly interesting. Their customs, politics, manners, morals, odours seem to be strongly marked--to have character, originality, individuality. I fear they are mostly Home Rulers, for in Ireland Home Rule and strong smells nearly always go together.

Achil Sound, June 20th.

No. 38.--THE ACHIL ISLANDERS.

Dugort, the capital city of Achil, is twelve miles from the Sound, a terrible drive in winter, when the Atlantic storms blow with such violence as to stop a horse and cart, and to render pedestrianism well-nigh impossible; but pleasant enough in fine weather, notwithstanding the seemingly interminable wastes of bog and rocky mountain, dotted at infrequent intervals with white cottages, single or in small clusters of three or four. After Major Pike's plantations, near the Sound, not a tree is visible all the way to Dugort, although at some points you can see for ten miles or more. Here and there where the turf has been cut away for fuel, great gnarled roots of oak and fir trees are visible, bleached by exposure to a ghastly white, showing against the jetty soil like the bones of extinct giants, which indeed they are. The inhabitants say that the island was once covered by a great forest, which perished by fire, and Misther Patrick Toolis, with that love of fine words which marks the Irish peasant, said that the charred interior of the scattered remains proves that the trees were "desthroyed intirely by a grate confiscation." The heather, of two kinds, is brilliantly purple, and the Royal fern grows everywhere in profusion, its terra-cotta bloom often towering six feet high. The mountains are effectively arranged, and imposing by their massiveness, height, and rugged grandeur. Some of the roads are tolerable, those made by Mr. Balfour being by far the best. Others are execrable and dangerous in the extreme, and in winter must be almost impassable. Sometimes they run along a narrow ridge which in its normal condition was of barely sufficient width to carry the car, and it often happens that part of this has fallen away, so that the gap must be passed by leading the horse while the car scrapes along with one wheel on the top and one clinging to the side of the abyss. The natives make light of such small inconveniences, and for the most part ride on horseback with saddles and crupper-bands of plaited rye-straw. Every householder has a horse or an ass, mostly a horse, and young girls career adown the mountain sides in what seems the maddest, most reckless way, guiding their half-broken, mustard-coloured steeds with a single rein of plaited straw, adjusted in an artful way which is beyond me to describe. Very quaint they look, on their yellow horses, which remind you of D'Artagnan's orange-coloured charger, immortalised by Dumas in the "Three Musketeers;" their red robes floating in the breeze, their bare feet hanging over the horse's right flank. When they fall off they simply get on again. They seldom or never are hurt. They are hard as nails and lissom as cats. Dr. Croly, of Dugort, saw a girl thrown heels over head, turning a complete somersault from the horse's back. She alighted on her feet, grabbed the rein, bounded up again, and gaily galloped away. During my hundred miles riding and walking over the island I saw many riderless horses, fully accoutred in the Achil style, plodding patiently along the moorland roads, climbing the steep mountain paths. At first I thought an accident had occurred, and spent some time in looking for the corpse. There was no occasion for fear. The Achil harvesters going to England and Scotland ride over to the Sound, where lie the fishing smacks which bear them to Westport, and then turn their horses loose. The faithful beasts go home, however long or devious the road, sometimes alone, sometimes in company, only staying a moment at the parting of the ways to bid each other good-bye, then going forward at a brisker pace to make up for lost time.

The hamlet of Cashel, not to be confused with Cashel of the Rock, is the first sign of life after leaving the Sound. A ravine, with white cabins, green crops, and huge boulders, on one of which seven small children were sitting in a row, unwashed, unkempt, with little calico and no leather. Bunnacurragh has a post-office run by a pensioner who grows roses, and keeps his place like a picture, the straw ropes which secure the thatch against the western gales taut and trig, each loose end terminated by a loop holding a large stone. The stones are used in place of pegs, and very queer they look dangling all round over the eaves. Not far from here is an immense basin-like depression of dry bog. Then a monastery, in the precincts of which the ground is reclaimed and admirably tilled, the drainage being carried over ingenious turf conduits, the soil lacking firmness to hold stone or brick. The vast bulk of Slievemore soon looms full in front, and after a long stretch of smooth Balfour road and a sharp turn on the edge of a deep ravine on the right with a high ridge beyond it, the Great mountain on the left, Dugort, with Blacksod Bay, heaves in sight. A final spurt up the hilly road and the weary, jolted traveller, or what is left of him, may (metaphorically) fall into the arms of Mr. Robert Sheridan, of the Sea View Hotel, or of Mrs. Sheridan, if he likes it better.

There are two Dugorts, or one Dugort divided against itself. The line of demarcation is sharp and decided. The two sections stand but a short distance apart, each on an opposite horn of the little bay, but the moral distance is great enough for forty thousand leagues. The Dugort under Slievemore is Protestant, the Dugort of the opposite cliff is intensely Roman Catholic. The one is the perfection of neatness, sweetness, cleanliness, prettiness, and order. The other is dirty, frowsy, disorderly, and of evil odour. The Papists deny the right of the Protestants to be in the island at all, speak of them with acerbity, call them the Colonists, the perverts, the Soupers, the Jumpers, the heretics; and look forward to the time when a Dublin Parliament will banish law and order, so that these interlopers may be for ever swept away, and their fields and houses become the property of the Faithful. They complain that the Protestants have all the best land, and that the Papist population were wrongfully driven from the ground now occupied by the colony. Like other Catholic poor all over Ireland they will tell you that they have been ground down, harried, oppressed, grievously ill-used, habitually ill-treated by the English Government, which has never given them a chance. They explain the prosperity of their Protestant neighbours by knowing winks and nods, and by plain intimations that all Irish Protestants are secretly subsidised by England, that they have privileges, that they are favoured, petted, kept in pocket money. To affect to doubt this is to prove yourself a dissembler, an impostor, a black-hearted enemy of the people. Your Achil friend will drop the conversation in disgust, and by round-about ways will call you a liar. He is sure of his facts, as sure as he is that a sprinkling of holy water will cure rheumatism, will keep away the fairies from the cow, will put a fine edge on his razor, will keep the donkey from being bewitched. He knows who has had money and how much, having reasoned out the matter by inference. He could sell himself to-morrow, but is incorruptible, and will remain a strong rock to the faith, will still buttress up the true hierarchy of heaven. He cannot be bought, and this is strange, for he never looks worth twopence.

It was during a famine that one Mr. Nangle, a Protestant parson from the North, went to Achil and found the people in deepest distress. They were dying of starvation, and their priests had all fled. Mr. Nangle had no money, but he was prompt in action. He sent a thousand pounds' worth of meal to the island on his own responsibility, and weighed down by a sense of the debt he had incurred, went to London to beg the money. He was successful, and afterwards founded the Achil mission at Dugort, now called the Colony. Needless to say that all the land belonging to the mission was duly bought and paid for, and that the Protestants have been the benefactors of Achil. The stories of wrong-doing, robbery, and spoliation, which the peasantry repeat, are of course totally untrue. The example of a decently-housed community has produced no perceptible effect on the habits of the Achilese. The villages of Cabawn, Avon (also known by its Anglicised name of River), Ballyknock, Slievemore, and Ducanella are dirty beyond description. Some of the houses I saw in a drive which included the coastguard station of Bull's Mouth were mere heaps of stones, with turf sods for tiles, whereon was growing long grass which looked like a small instalment of the three acres and a cow. Some had no windows and no chimney, the turf reek filling the hovel, but partly escaping by a hole in the roof. The people who live in this look as it painted in umber by old Dutch masters. These huts are small, but there is always room for a pig or two, which stalk about or stretch themselves before the fire like privileged members of the family. This was very well for the Gintleman that paid the Rint. But he merits the title no longer. His occupation's gone.

A sturdy Protestant said:--"Suppose Home Rule became law, then we must go away. We are only here on sufferance, and every person in the Colony knows it and feels it only too well. Our lives would not be endangered: those times are over, but we could not possibly stay in the island. Remove the direct support of England, and we should be subject to insult and wrong, for which we should have no earthly remedy. What could they do? Why, to begin with, they could pasture their cattle on our fields. If we turned them out they could be turned in again; if we sue them we have a day's journey to take to get the cause heard, and if we get the verdict we can recover nothing. Shoot a cow or two! Then we should ourselves be shot, or our children. No, there has been no landlord-shooting on the island. This kind of large game has always been very scarce on Achil. Just over the Sound we had a little sport--a really merry little turn it was--but the wrong man was shot.

"A Mr. Smith came down to collect rents. The Land League was ruling the country, and its desperadoes were everywhere. It was decided to shoot Mr. Smith, after duly warning him to keep away. Smith was not to be deterred from what he thought his duty (he was a Black Protestant), and away he went, with his son, a neat strip of a lad about seventeen or so. When they got half-way to the house which Smith had appointed as a meeting-place a man in the bog which bordered the road called out, and waved a paper, which he then placed on a heap of turf. Young Smith went for it, and it read. YOU'LL NOT GO HOME ALIVE THIS NIGHT. 'Drive on, Tom,' said the father. 'We'll do our work, whether we go home alive or dead.' Coming back the same evening the father was driving, the son, this young lad, sitting at the side of the car, which was furnished with a couple of repeating rifles and a revolver. Suddenly three men spring up from behind a fence and fire a volley at the two Smiths, but as they rose the horse shied and plunged forward, and hang me! if they didn't all miss. The elder Smith still struggled with the frightened horse, which the shooting had made ungovernable, but the boy slipped off the car, and, seizing one of the rifles, looked out for a shot in return. It was growing dusk, and the bog was full of trenches and ups and downs, of which the three fugitives cleverly availed themselves. Besides, to be shot at from a point-blank range of three or four yards, scrambling down afterwards from behind a frantic horse, is not the best Wimbledon method of steadying the nerves. The boy put the rifle to his shoulder, and bided his time. Presently up came one of the running heroes, and young Smith shot him through the heart, as neat a kill as ever you saw. The dead man was identified as a militiaman from Crossmolina, up Sligo way. The League always brought its marksmen from a distance, and it is known that most of them were persons who had received some military training. Then the youngster covered another, but missed, and was about to fire again when his father shouted, 'Hold hard, Tom, that's enough sport for one day.'"

My friend was wrong. The second shot lacerated the man's shoulder, and laid him up for many a long week. I had the fact, which is now first recorded, on _undoubted authority_. Young Smith may be gratified to learn, for the first time, that his second bullet was not altogether thrown away. This may console him for the loss of the third reprobate, whom he had got "exactly between the shoulders," when the elder Smith ordered him to desist. The occurrence was such a lesson to the Land League assassins that they for ever after forswore Achil and its immediate surroundings. As Dennis Mulcahy remarked, "The ruffians only want shtandin' up to, an' they'll not come nixt or near ye." Mr. Morley would do well to apply this moral to the County Clare.