Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
The tenant being out of his holding, the agent wishes to put another
tenant into it. But the holding is "boycotted." Several tenants are
anxious for it, and would gladly take it, but they dare not The great
evicted will neither sell any tenant-right he may have, nor pay his
arrears and costs, nor give up the place to another tenant. To put
Property Defence men on the holding would cost the landlord £2, 10s. a
week, and do him no great good, as the evicted man "holds the fort,"
being established in a house which he occupies on an adjoining property,
and for which presumably he pays his rent. It seems as if Mr. Sweeney
were inspired by the example of another tenant, named Barry, who, before
the passing of the Land Act of 1881, gave up freely a holding of 20
acres, on a property managed by Mr. Kough; but as he was on such good
terms with the agent that he could borrow money of him, he begged the
agent to let him retain at a low rent a piece of this surrendered land
directly adjoining his house. He asked this in the name of his eight or
nine children, and it was granted him. The agent afterwards found that
the piece of land in question was by far the best of the surrendered
holding. But that is a mere detail. This ingenious tenant Barry, living
now on another estate just outside the grasp of the agent, has
systematically "boycotted" for the last nine years the land which he
gave up, feeding his own cattle upon it freely meanwhile, and keeping
all would-be tenants at a distance! "He is now," said the agent, "quite
a wealthy man in his way, jobbing cattle at all the great markets!"
"When the eviction of Sweeney took place," said the agent, "I was
present in person, as I thought I ought to be, and the result is that I
have been held up to the execration of mankind as a monster for putting
out a child in a cradle into a storm. As a matter of fact," he said,
"there was a cradle in the way, which the sheriff-Officer gently took
up, and by direction of the tenant's wife removed. I made no remark
about it at all, but a local paper published a lying story, which the
publisher had to retract, that I had said 'Throw out the child!'"
"Two priests," he said, "came quite uninvited and certainly without
provocation, to see me, and one of them shouted out, 'Ah! we know you'll
be making another Coolgreany,' which was as much as to say there 'would
be bloodshed.' This was the more intolerable," he added, "that, as I
afterwards found, I had already done for the sake of the tenants
precisely what these ecclesiastics professed that they had come to ask
me to do!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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