Part 19

Mr. O’Byrne kindly made inquiry for me, and I found a farmer willing to take a boarder. To see him I went by rail to a certain station. Near by I entered a humble dwelling, where a man was working at his trade, besides being a petty government officer. He talked pleasantly on Irish affairs, and said that some landlords have granted a reduction in rent of twenty-five per cent. I repeated what an editor in New York had said of the present condition of Irish affairs,—that bad harvests, the competition of American beef and mutton, and the consequent decrease in the value of real estate had made the farmers unable to pay their rent.

The Irishman admitted that American meat is much cheaper than theirs, but said that it had not brought down the price of their own. He said that four or five landlords and agents had been killed; at this a woman present smiled; and a man added that it is a pity there were not more. This was the only sanguinary remark that I heard a poor Irishman make.

At the railroad station the train from the west was behind time, and the agent suspected disturbances. When it came it was mostly filled with soldiers, who called out for water; but who reported no immediate disturbance. At this station I was met by the farmer and his wife with whom I was to lodge, who took me home in their cart. I call him Maurice Collins. He was not very poor for an Irish cultivator. He was doubtless considered quite fortunate in owning a horse and cart, even if the cart had no box and no seats, but was simply a bed or frame. Upon it lay a great bag of corn-meal, upon which sat Mrs. Collins and myself. I steadied myself down-hill with one arm at her waist, while my right hand grasped a projection of the cart. I expressed surprise at the number of ruined and abandoned dwellings, for we were within ten miles of one of the largest towns in Ireland. Collins said that farms once separate have been thrown together. When the population of a country falls thirty-seven per cent. in about thirty-four years, or from over eight millions to about five, it is not strange that abandoned houses are found when built like these, of stone. Dwellings of mud and straw are more readily demolished. Collins’s house was on rather a sterile hill. To reach it we rose above the lower and more fertile ground. On our arrival a chair was brought out to enable us to alight from the cart. On entering the house we were followed by a young man, who staggered under the weight of the great five-bushel sack on which we had sat in the wagon.

There were twelve in the family,—six boys, one girl at home and one away, the old aunt, and the domestic. The living room had an uneven floor of earth. Within the front door stood the slop-barrel. A dresser of dishes stood on the left, and beyond it there was a red-painted, two-storied hen-coop. A hen and chickens occupied the lower story, and a setting hen the upper one. A second door faced the front door. It generally stood open, discovering a little muddy yard. A great settle or couch of wood stood on the same side of the room. Beyond it, on a low seat, sat a little fair, weak-eyed old woman, the aunt. She sat beside a small fire on the hearth, holding the baby. With her left hand she turned a crank and wheel, which by some invisible agency created an underground draught to kindle the fire. The fire was generally of coals. It bore no proportion to the fireplace, which occupied a large part of the third side of the room. I saw the girl hang over the fire a large Dutch oven, called here a bastible. It was a round iron vessel with a lid. On its top she kindled a fire of furze, and hung the bastible to bake the large cake within, made of flour not fully screened, sour milk, and soda.

At nightfall the barefooted little ones gathered to the blaze, although it was in the month of June. The babe in arms was Tim, the three-year-old Norah, and the five-year-old, in trousers surmounted by a red woollen frock and blue apron, was Dennis. At one end of the long fireplace stood the heavy cradle. A steep staircase, almost like a ladder with a railing, led to the rooms above, for this house, roofed with slate instead of thatch, had a loft with a board floor. Wet weather makes the uneven earthen floors inconvenient. The water gathers in little pools. The door to my room was at the foot of the staircase. There were only two apartments on the ground-floor.

The fourth side of the apartment was lighted by a small window and the doorway through which we entered the house. There were only two windows down-stairs, one in this room and one in mine. They were little iron-barred windows. I thought that they might be taxed, but I was mistaken. Collins told me that the glass came from England. They used to have glass-manufactories in this country.

I had taken tea before my arrival, and Mrs. Collins gave me some milk. She and her husband had been to Cork, where, she said, they had a cup of tea and a penny bun at a baker’s. (The penny is about two cents.) In the evening we had a good talk. I commented on the nice hen-house standing in the corner, and Mrs. Collins told me that they had lost several chickens by the fox. “And do you still have foxes in Ireland?” I asked, in some surprise.

“We do,” she replied.

“And that is what the gentlemen hunt?”

“It is,” she said.

“And can you kill the foxes?” I inquired.

“No, ma’am,” was the reply.

This I afterward thought must be an error, as foxes are vermin; but a gentleman born in the north of Ireland has told me that they would be evicted for killing foxes. Sometimes hunting clubs pay for poultry killed by foxes.

In the evening I spoke of the sun’s setting so late and our being so far north, and asked the eldest son, a youth of fourteen, whether he had studied geography. He said he had, but his mother told me that he had been obliged to leave school at eleven, and her manner seemed sad and disapproving. There are no free schools in Ireland like ours. The poorest citizens need not pay in the national schools, but others must. A gentleman in Dublin, who publishes a school journal, told me that he doubted whether these schools would ever become entirely free to the public, like those in my own State. He had never heard that such a movement was contemplated.

In further conversation Mrs. Collins told me that they had lost seven cows in eighteen months, and that they were nearly broken down. They had to incur some debt to replace them, and they must meet the rent or be thrown upon the world. Their lease would expire in about six years. Do not these misfortunes make them dwell very near to the Divine Father, in humble submission and prayer?

About ten o’clock in the evening the wooden table was put before the fireplace. The old aunt had gone to bed. Collins was in one end of the fireplace, a boy asleep in the other, and the eldest slept on the settle. Mrs. Collins made tea and put a bowl of white sugar on the table. She told me that sugar cost about five cents a pound (two and a halfpence). They cut pieces off of the great cake baked in the Dutch oven, and ate their supper without any of the precious butter, which must go to market. Little Norah had given a low laugh when her mother handed her a bit of warm cake without anything spread on it. Mr. and Mrs. Collins had milk in their tea. The tea cost about forty cents a pound. Collins helped himself quite freely to the cheap and nutritious sugar, one of the blessings which the poor man owes to free trade.

Collins and his wife gave up their own room to me. It was the other room on the ground-floor. It also had an earthen floor, with perhaps the addition of a little cement, but it was not level. There I slept, and here were set my simple meals, more luxurious, however, than their own. Some of the dishes were of china, which belonged to Collins’s grandmother. I had plenty of milk, eggs, butter, tea, and baker’s bread. They gave me goat’s milk, richer than cow’s milk, for tea. For me especially Mrs. Collins procured meat, a bit of jowl, but I am not partial to it. They did not, however, go to the extravagance of eating it themselves. I was told of a farmer’s family who had jowl and cabbage for a Sunday dinner. A watch was set for the agent, lest, seeing such evidences of prosperity, he might raise the rent. Collins and his wife seldom ate meat. He told me that he had two eggs in the morning and the mistress one. They raised turkeys. Twenty-four were running with one hen. The servant fed them with a mixture of nettles, corn mush, and thick milk, but she said they scarcely ever ate a turkey even at Christmas.

In the morning, at breakfast, Mrs. Collins had some cold mush or stirabout cut up and boiled in sheep’s milk. This saved bread and tea. I observed one day within the back door, and by the chicken-coop, a little trough with corn-meal. There seemed to be always food there. The chickens came in and helped themselves. Seeing a fowl eating, I said to the aunt, “That rooster ought to be fat.” She did not understand me, and I tried again:

“That cock ought to be fat, he eats so much.”

“He do ate a dale, God bless him,” she said. She meant “prosper him,” I think. Some neighbors visited the family one morning, and from my room I heard earnest talk. They spoke of the rumored arrest of Father Murphy, which had caused much excitement. One man came in who was full of talk of the Cork races on the preceding day. At first, Mrs. Collins allowed him to think that they were present, but they went to sell butter, and did not go to the race-ground.

The girl swept the earthen floor with a bunch of twigs without a handle. I mention these little things to show the poverty of the country. They had no almanacs at Collins’s and no clock, except a Connecticut one, which did not run. Collins once intimated that it was painful to have such a poor harness for his horse.

One day I walked over to the school. I passed a house licensed to sell beer and spirits to be drunk on the premises. It was whitewashed, and looked better than most of the farm-houses. The boys told me that tea and sugar could be bought there. Bread was sold, but I could buy no sticks of candy for the children. A carpenter-shop and a blacksmith’s forge stood near this public-house, but I saw no country stores like ours at home.

The Collins family carried water some distance uphill from a spring. This part of the country is supplied from springs. They had excellent roads, apparently macadamized, and free from tolls. When I spoke in Cork of the great cost of such roads I was told that they were probably made after the famine, when the government gave laborers employment. The roads, however, seemed deserted. Once I saw a man on horseback, and occasionally market carts were seen, but of plain carriages, like those of the farmers in Eastern Pennsylvania, I remember none. Poverty hangs like a cloud over the land. Yet the people seem honest. The servant-girl at Collins’s said to me, “Nothing do ever be taken.” I wished to know whether it was safe to leave my towels to dry on furze bushes near the road. Afterward, in a gentleman’s house,—a gentleman who lived in a disturbed section, and whose tenants were not paying rent,—I was told that they would not be afraid to have plate in the house; the people there were honest.

Collins and his wife were trying to better their condition by going to a market-town and buying butter, which she brought home and reworked and packed into firkins to sell in Cork. This consumed so much of their time that it was hard for me to see much profit in it. They may have received five dollars a week more than the butter cost them. Mrs. Collins was pleased in telling me of one firkin or tub that brought the highest market price. But during their absence the elder boys were left alone at the farm-work. Nor did I see the great pressure of labor found among our Pennsylvania German farmers. This may be in part owing to open winters in Ireland, which enable the former to work the year round, in part to the fact that the patient, ox-like labor of the German is not a trait of the Irishman, and partly to a national disregard of time, producing such a proverb as “Hours were made for slaves.” When I apologized for having talked so long to a poor man and his wife, she answered, “Sure, many a year we’ll rest in the grave.” Calling on my friend Collins and his wife before I left the county, I found they had gone with their horse to the funeral of a much-respected neighbor, and as they were so long absent, had doubtless accompanied the funeral to the place of interment, twenty miles. A manufacturer in the county Cork said that the Irish girls in the mills are not greedy enough. They would rather have less wages and more play. They were not indolent, but a bit of fun would call them off. A Quaker lady in Cork said to me, “None of the Irish are thrifty. They do not value their time.” And afterward, “They are a thrifty people in the north. They make use of their time.” She herself was born in Ireland, but when she spoke of the Irish she did not mean to include herself. When any one called the Irish lazy, I replied that they did not seem so in America. They left their temperate climate, came to our country, and constructed railroads under our broiling suns. I heard in Ireland that girls who go to America say, “If we had worked as hard in Ireland as we do in America, we would have been well off there.”

I spoke of Mr. and Mrs. Collins’s drinking tea at supper. Once when they were absent, Mary, the servant, came into my room to hide the teapot, lest the boys should want sugar and bread.

“What do you give them for dinner?” I asked.

“Stirabout and new milk,” she replied.

“Potatoes?” I suggested.

“They do not care about potatoes,” she said.

Our corn-meal, among its many other Irish uses, seems likely to supersede the national dish. What a change since 1847, the year of the potato famine! This family used Indian meal because it was cheaper than oatmeal, but they did not like it so well. As for the inferior animals, they occasionally give horses corn-meal, but generally feed them in winter on oats, turnips, bran, and hay. Indian meal and bran are fed to cows with young calves. To pigs corn-meal is given the year round, occasionally adding a few boiled potatoes, the sortings. They are fattened on meal and sour milk when it can be spared. Poultry abounds here, and Ireland exports large quantities of eggs. I never saw corn-meal at home stand so constantly in the chicken-trough as at Collins’s.

I have said that the domestic came into my room to hide the teapot. The cup which cheers but not inebriates is in immense demand here. The old aunt wanted tea. The children worried the girl for tea. The beggar-woman insisted on tea. The three-year-old Norah says she has a pain and wants tea. It might be a very happy thing for Ireland if the people would confine themselves to such cups as these; but, while all other manufactures are languishing in the county Cork, malt liquor and whiskey distilleries are flourishing. (However, Scotland, a Quaker told me, excelled Ireland in regular drinking.) As to what constitutes moderate drinking, I was amused by the remarks of a girl in Cork. Speaking of young men, she said that she did not object to a bottle of porter at dinner and one in the evening, but seven or eight bottles a day she thought gluttony and a sin. Porter, however, is not dear. On draught it sells at about eight cents the quart imperial. Whiskey is quite another thing. I hear that the tax on a gallon is twelve shillings and ninepence, or about three dollars. It has been said that Ireland pays more for liquor than for rent; yet estimates given me show that while over nine millions of pounds sterling are spent yearly on intoxicating drink, the rent of the country amounts to thirteen million pounds. Let no one jump to the conclusion that it is the working farmers who expend this great amount, for doubtless the small landlords are great consumers.

Distillers and brewers are great men in such a country. I heard of several celebrated Protestant churches indebted to them for funds. A distiller gave twenty thousand pounds and a brewer ten thousand pounds to assist in building or renewing an Episcopal cathedral in Cork. It is said to have cost Guinness, the great brewer, two hundred thousand pounds to remodel St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Dublin and to build the appurtenant houses. And a distiller gave a great sum to repair Christ Church in the same city.

To return to my farmer, Collins, in whose house I saw no intoxicating liquor drunk. He rented seventy acres, of which twenty were bog, nearly worthless; the peat for burning being all cut from the bog land in this neighborhood. (Nor is the county Cork, taken altogether, a rich agricultural tract. Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary, 1837, gave the acreage at about one million seven hundred thousand, of which about seven hundred thousand acres were bog and mountain.)

Collins’s lease was for thirty-one years, of which six remained. He has built the part of the house in which we live, having slate-roofed it. He has also built a stone stable and a small dairy, with slate roofs. The landlord gave him almost nothing toward these improvements, not even the flooring of the loft. The stone Collins got off the place. When he came here the walls of the fields were mostly of clay or mud, and he has built stone ones. In this neighborhood the walls are mostly built of stone. In some cases they are covered with earth, and grass and other plants are growing on them. “These walls,” I said to him, “must take up a great deal of room. That one beside your house is a yard across the top.”

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I have given Collins’s rent at about one hundred and seventy dollars for seventy acres. Land sold in fee simple, apparently a rare thing, generally brings twenty times the annual rental. Yet, as a lawyer in Cork informed me, the average value here now, under present depressing circumstances, is not over seventy-five dollars per acre.

I have spoken of some of Collins’s land as of inferior quality. His report of its produce, I therefore infer, is above the average crop. He says that on this land wheat ought to bring fifteen hundred-weight per acre, the hundred-weight of one hundred and twelve pounds. (This is twenty-eight bushels, which would be considered a fair crop in the wheat-growing region of Pennsylvania.)

Collins says that on land of best quality in good years wheat is expected to bring twenty-five hundred-weight. On his own land oats frequently brings fourteen hundred-weight to the acre, or about forty-three bushels. This land produces about one and one-half tons of hay, and better land about two tons per acre. A patch of potatoes is called a potato-garden, even if it contain several acres. The manner in which potatoes are planted was strange to my eye. The land is laid out in beds about four feet wide. Between those beds are deep trenches one and a half feet wide. These beds or ridges are made by turning six sods in with the plough. There are four rows of potatoes to a bed. These are hand-weeded, and never hoed. The people manure as heavily as they can for potatoes; and then, without additional manure, put the land into wheat. Barn-yard, guano, and artificial manures are used. On Collins’s soil potatoes turn out about five tons to the acre, or about one hundred and eighty-six bushels. Potatoes have degenerated in Ireland; but of late a new kind, the Champion, has encouraged the people much. At an exposition in Cork in 1880, some farmers claimed to have raised from thirteen to fifteen tons per acre, or about five hundred bushels. Turnips are manured, sowed in drills or rows in May and June, thinned, hoed, and hand-weeded. They turn out twelve tons to the acre. Two men can fork out an acre in a day, and two men can top an acre a day, leaving the tops on the ground.

Domestic animals sell high for food. Beeves sometimes weigh thirteen and fourteen hundred-weight, and bring about three pounds per hundred-weight. Good fat calves of three months sell for five pounds. Fat sheep, weighing dressed about one hundred and twenty pounds, will bring three pounds, or near fifteen dollars. Mrs. Collins had an exceptional pig, supposed to be a fine bacon pig, lean and fat well mixed, or a “ribbon” pig. (An Irishman is said to have fed his pig one day and starved him the next, that there might be a streak of fat and streak of lean.) That pig of Mrs. Collins’s weighed when dressed one hundred and eighty-two pounds, and she got four pounds and ten shillings for it, or about twenty cents a pound. In view of such prices the saying of my Cork landlady is not strange: “May the Lord of heaven spare us the American meat! It keeps the market within our reach.”

Fruit did not seem plentiful in the county Cork. “The children would pluck gooseberries,” was a reason given for not having them. A certain priest was supposed to have strawberries and gooseberries in his garden, but probably fruit-loving children did not disturb those of his reverence. When a retired lawyer took me into his garden he unlocked the gate. He had cut down an old orchard and would not plant another, because the neighboring children would get at the fruit. Thus, the saying of the domestic, “Nothing do ever be taken,” does not seem to apply to fruit.

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I had several conversations with Collins. He freely expressed his disapproval or dislike of the British government. Working farmers rarely or never subscribe for a paper, but often buy one at a market-town. Collins had got one in Cork, and wished me to see a speech in it. He said that it alluded to a manufacturer at Blarney who took a prize at our Centennial.

“What would you think,” said Collins, “when people manufactured goods that they could not send them right off from here to market, but must send them to Liverpool, and have them unloaded and carted there, and then sent back, causing that expense? Would you think that was just?”

“That is not so now?” I asked.

“Indeed it is; that manufacturer’s goods must all be sent that way; and would you think that was justice?”

“It is pretty hard on him,” I answered.

“And is it justice?” he insisted. “You shall have the paper and read the speech.”

In Cork I called to see Mr. Mahony, the manufacturer referred to, who told me that there is no government regulation to hamper their manufactures in any way. It is doubtless a matter of convenience to ship from a great port like Liverpool, vessels not caring to stop and take on small quantities at Queenstown.[167]

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As Collins, his wife, and I were riding on the cart, going to the market-town for butter, I asked whether he expected that there would be a time when there would be no rents to pay. He answered that he did not.

“I understood you to say the other evening that you did,” I continued.

“No,” he replied; “there has been a proposition for the government to take the lands, and the people to pay rent for thirty years——”

“And then the land be theirs?” I interrupted.

“Yes” he answered; “but they will never grant that. More moderate things they have refused. All we want is reduced rents, as the people can no longer pay high ones.”