Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (1 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (1 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
would have succeeded, my Galwegian thought, had not the agent, Mr.
Hewson, obstinately fought with the obstinate curate, Father Stephens,
over the suggestion made by the latter, that the terms granted on the
fine neighbouring estate of Mr. Stuart of Ards--a man of wealth, who
lives mainly at Brighton, though Ards is one of the loveliest places in
Ireland--should be extended by Mr. Olphert for a whole year to his own
people, who had never asked for anything of the kind!
Mr. Olphert said he knew Gweedore well. He owns a "townland"[16] there,
on which he has thirty-five tenants, none of them on a holding at more
more than £4 a year. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, he said, finding that
the people on Mr. Olphert's townland were going back to the "Rundale"
practices, tried to induce Mr. Olphert to return all these subdivisions
as "tenancies." This he refused to do. As to the resources of the
peasantry, he thought them greater than they appeared to be. "This comes
to light," said Mr. Olphert, "whenever there is a tenant-right for sale.
There is never any lack of money to buy it, and at a round good price."
The people also, he thinks, spend a great deal on what they regard as
luxuries, and particularly on tea. "A cup of tea could not be got for
love or money in Gweedore, when Lord George Hill came there. You might
as well have asked for a glass of Tokay."
Now they use and abuse it in the most deleterious way imaginable. They
buy the tea at exorbitant rates, often at five shillings a pound, and
usually on credit, paying a part of one bill on running up another, put
it into a saucepan or an iron pot, and boil, or rather stew, it over the
fire, till they brew a kind of hell-broth, which they imbibe at odd
moments all day long! Oddly enough, this is the way in which they
prepare tea in Cashmere and other parts of India, with this essential
difference, though, that the Orientals mitigate the astringency of the
herb with milk and almonds and divers ingredients, tending to make a
sort of "compote" of it. Taken as it is taken here, it must have a
tremendous effect on the nerves. Mr. Olphert thinks it has had much to
do with the increase of lunacy in Ireland of late years. From his
official connection with the asylum at Letterkenny, he knows that while
it used to accommodate the lunatics of three counties, it is now hardly
adequate to the needs of Donegal alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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