Disturbed Ireland : $b being the letters written during the winter of 1880-81Becker, Bernard H. (Bernard Henry)
History
Disturbed Ireland : $b being the letters written during the winter of 1880-81
Becker, Bernard H. (Bernard Henry)
Ireland -- Social conditions; Working class -- Ireland
The object in all cases seems to have
been to "hunt" the injured persons out of the country in order that
the neighbours might turn their cattle on to his grazing land, as has
been done in Mayo. In one conspicuous case these tactics have proved
successful. Michael O'Neil was awarded 120l. "to compensate him for
ninety-six sheep, his property, maliciously taken or carried away and
destroyed, at Tonadooravaun, in the parish of Ballynakill." This sum
is levied off the fourteen adjacent townlands, among which is the
unlucky Lettermore, just quoted as paying an enormous addition to the
county cess. Michael O'Neil, who appears to have been a respectable
man, not otherwise objectionable than as the tenant of more grazing
land than was considered his share by his neighbours, has received his
120l., and is so far reimbursed; but he thought it better to obey the
popular will than to attempt to stand against it, and gave up his farm
accordingly. Such deeds as the frightening of "decent people" out of
Connemara by maiming cattle and burning houses, which must be paid for
by the offending districts, speak more distinctly than any words could
do of the ignorance of this part of the wild West. So wild is it that
although the Roman Catholic clergy of Connemara adhere to the
elsewhere-obsolete practice of holding "stations" for confession,
there are many dwellers on the mountain who have never received any
religious instruction. Chapels are few and remote from each other, and
even the "stations" kept for the purpose of getting at the scattered
population only attract those dwelling within reasonable distances.
The poor mountaineers in the neighbourhood of the Recess Valley and
away over the hills seldom go far enough from home to rub shoulders
with civilisation. Many of them have never seen bigger places than
Letterfrack and Leenane, and those perhaps not fifty times in their
lives.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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