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
It is like inhaling fresh air to turn aside from poorly nourished
people and land to look, from the window of Casson's hotel at
Letterfrack, on two bright green oases rising amid a brown desert of
bog. Turnips and mangolds are growing in great forty-acre squares.
Dark-ribbed fields of similar size show where the potatoes have been
dug, and men are dotted here and there busily engaged with work of
various kinds. The green oases at the mouth of the magnificent pass of
Kylemore are the work of Mr. Mitchell-Henry, M.P. for the county of
Galway. When Mr. Henry first went salmon-fishing in the river Dowris,
which flows from Kylemore Lake into the sea at Ballynakill Harbour,
Kylemore was a mountain pass and nothing more. Now it not only boasts
a castle, but is the centre of extraordinary activity, the first
fruits of which are seen in the villages of Currywongoan and
Greenmount already alluded to as forming conspicuous objects in a
landscape of strange grandeur. Mr. Henry, who was an eminent surgeon
before he became a great landowner, has gone about the work of
reclamation with scientific knowledge as well as vigorous will, and
now has a great area in the various stages of conversion from bog into
productive land. When he began to reclaim land at Kylemore the
neighbouring gentry smiled good-humouredly, plunged their hands into
their (mostly empty) pockets, and wished him joy of his bargain. Now
the Kylemore improvements are the wonder of Connemara. The long
unknown mangold is seen to flourish on spots which once nourished
about a snipe to an acre. Root crops are very largely grown, and it is
to these that the climate and reclaimed bog of Connemara are more
particularly favourable; but there is abundance of grain at
Currywongoan, at Greenmount, and at the home-farm at Dowris.
Neighbouring proprietors are thinking the matter over, and are
wondering whether an Irish landlord ought, like an English one, to do
something to employ and encourage his poor tenants, and help on with
improvements those inclined to help themselves. Even the tenants
themselves on the Kylemore Estate are beginning to wake up under the
care of a resident landlord inclined to set them in the way of
improving their condition. With the run of the mountain in addition to
holdings varying from twelve to forty and fifty acres in extent, Mr.
Mitchell Henry's people are learning by example, are breaking up land,
and every year increasing the area under the plough. It would thus
seem that the Connemara peasant is not unteachable, if only some
patience be shown and fair breathing space allotted to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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