"Tipperary is the deadest town in all Ireland," said a bookseller of
that place, of whom we were buying some postcards. "I don't believe
there was ever a deader town than Tip-rar-ry [for that is the way they
pronounce it] and everybody is going to America who can get away." And
that seemed to be the prevailing sentiment among the people I talked
with. It is the most pessimistic community I found in the country,
without even a single good word for their own town. "There's no business
outside of cattle and dairying," said another merchant. "Trade is so
dull that the shopkeepers are loafing half the day." But the people seem
to keep up their interest in politics, and that they have some money
left is evident, because at a meeting here, the day before my arrival,
£95 was collected in a few minutes for the expense fund of the
parliamentary Irish party. Outside, in the streets, there was a good
deal of activity. It was market day and the farmers from all the
surrounding country were in town to sell their produce and buy a stock
of supplies for the ensuing week, but there was no vehicle, not even a
jaunting car, at the railway station to take us to the hotel, and
evidently nobody was expected. So we had to do the best we could and
succeeded in persuading a farmer who was there with an "inside car" to
carry us and our luggage, which he managed to do by sitting on the
shafts himself. And afterward when we wanted to see the town we
couldn't find a vehicle in the street, although Tipperary is a town of
six thousand population, and the hotel proprietor sent out to a livery
stable for one.
Tipperary lies in the midst of a lovely country, more level than that we
had been traveling through for the past three weeks, but there are only
a few patches of timber and a few gentle slopes and no peat bogs so far
as we could see from the railway train. The landscape reminded me of the
Western Reserve of Ohio, with the exception that the Silievenarmick
Hills rise in the background to the height of nine hundred and one
thousand feet. The Aherlow River waters the plain and runs through the
town. There doesn't seem to be much cultivated ground in the
neighborhood, but there are long stretches of meadow in which the
farmers were cutting the hay, and we can perceive the perfume as we pass
through them if we stand at the open window of the car. Alternating with
the meadows are fine pastures, where large herds of sleek and fat cattle
and many yearling colts and foal mares are feeding. There are several
large stock farms in the neighborhood, and, as it was the season for
county fairs when we were there, the Tipperary farmers are raking in
prizes for all kinds of stock. In the town is a creamery which, we were
told, is the largest in Ireland. It employs one hundred and twenty hands
and its butter is shipped almost entirely to London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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