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
DUBLIN, _Thursday, March 1._--This has been a crowded day. I left
Portumna very early on a car with Mr. Tener, intending to visit the
scene of his latest collision with the "National" government of Ireland,
on my way to Loughrea. It was a bright spring morning, more like April
in Italy than like March in America, and the country is full of natural
beauty. We made our first halt at the derelict house of Martin Kenny,
one of the "victims" of the famous "Woodford evictions," so called, as I
have said, because Woodford is the nearest town.[13] The eviction here
took place October 21st, 1887. The house has been dismantled by the
neighbours since that time, each man carrying off a door, or a shutter,
or whatever best suited him. One of the constables who followed us as
Mr. Tener's body-guard had been present at the eviction. He came into
the house with us, and very graphically described the performance. The
house was still full of heavy stones taken into it, partly to block the
entrances, and partly as ammunition; and trunks of trees used as
_chevaux defrise_ still protruded through the door and the window. These
trees had been cut down by the garrison in the woodlands here and there
all over the property. I asked if the law in Ireland punished
depredations of this sort, and was informed that trees planted by
tenants, if registered by them within a certain time, are the property
of the tenants. This would astonish our landlords in America, where the
tenant who sticks so much as a sunflower into his garden-patch makes a
present of it to his landlord.[14]
I asked if the place made a long defence. Mr. Tener and the constable
both laughed, and the former told me that when the storming party
arrived shortly after daybreak, they found the house garrisoned only by
some small boys, who had been left there to keep watch. The men were
fast asleep at some other place. The small boys ran away as fast as
possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey
pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them. Father
Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny's house an hour after it was all
over, with a mob of people howling and groaning. But the work had been
done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next
drove.
This place takes its truly awe-inspiring name from a ruined Norman tower
standing on a picturesque promontory of no great height, which juts out
into the lovely lake here made by the Shannon. At no great expense this
tower might be so restored as to make an ideal fishing-box. It now
simply adorns the holding formerly occupied by Mr. John Stanislaus
Burke, a former tenant of Lord Clanricarde. The story of its capture on
the 17th of September is worth telling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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