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
Moreover, the land was not "striped" in blocks, but remained in
awkward patches, so that each man was obliged to cross the other's
land, and perpetual squabbling occurred. So when the question of a new
lease arose, Mr. Stacpoole sent a surveyor to divide the holding into
three equal shares as justly and conveniently as might be with
reference to the tenants' houses. This was done, the land was
re-valued at 12s. 6d. per acre, the tenants preferring to hold it
without a lease. Thus two were pleased and one displeased by the new
arrangement, and the displeased one, Welsh, or Walsh, was finally
evicted a short while since, and his house pulled down. Only the other
day a mob assembled, rebuilt Welsh's house, and reinstated his wife
and family, who occupy it at this moment. Welsh himself is not with
them for the reason that Mr. Stacpoole has an attachment out against
him. However, the family remains, and no process-server would show his
face at the rebuilt house for fifty pounds. Mr. Stacpoole could, of
course, go and turn the people out as trespassers, but does not think
it worth while until he joins issue with all the recalcitrant tenants
under his control. Some forty of these will neither pay up nor
surrender their holdings, and Mr. Stacpoole declares that he will get
Dublin writs against the whole of them, and that if they do not yield
he will evict them all and compel the authorities to support him.
There is no concealment about all this, and it is quite certain that
if Mr. Adair's action in the Derryveagh matter is imitated it will
only be by aid of the military. The landlord declares he will "have
his own," and the tenants talk ominously of the "short days and long
nights" between this and spring.
Meanwhile they carry on the war after their fashion. Only a few days
ago they levelled the walls of a holding which had not been
administered to please them by Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald. The week before
last when Mr. Stacpoole's harriers met there was a crowd assembled of
men on foot and on horseback, and the huntsman was ordered by the
fugleman of the mob to go home. Luckily Mr. Stacpoole himself was at
Liverpool, winning races with Turco, or something serious might have
happened. As it was, Mr. Healey and Mr. Studdert, well-known
cross-country riders, and very popular here, being present, as well as
one lady, the sport of hare-hunting was allowed to go on; but this
week, although ordered to go out with his hounds, the huntsman thought
it wiser to stay at home, and a meeting of the Hunt has been called to
consider what shall be done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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