Penelope's Irish ExperiencesWiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
General
Penelope's Irish Experiences
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
Ireland -- Fiction
Salemina says that Rhododendron Cottage (pronounced by Bridget Thunder
'Roothythanthrum') being the property of one landlord and the residence
of four tenants at the same time makes us in a sense participators in
the old system of rundale tenure, long since abolished. The good-will
or tenant-right was infinitely subdivided, and the tiniest holdings
sometimes existed in thirty-two pieces. The result of this joint tenure
was an extraordinary tangle, particularly when it went so far as the
subdivision of 'one cow's grass,' or even of a horse, which, being owned
jointly by three men, ultimately went lame, because none of them would
pay for shoeing the fourth foot.
We have been here five days, and instead of reproving Benella, as we
intended, for gross assumption of authority in the matter, we are more
than ever her bond-slaves. The place is altogether charming, and here it
is for you.
Knockcool Street is Knockcool village itself, as with almost all Irish
towns; but the line of little thatched cabins is brightened at the far
end by the neat house of Mrs. Wogan Odevaine, set a trifle back in its
own garden, by the pillared porch of a modest hotel, and by the barracks
of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The sign of the Provincial Bank of
Ireland almost faces our windows; and although it is used as a meal-shop
the rest of the week, they tell us that two thousand pounds in money is
needed there on fair-days. Next to it is a little house, the upper part
of which is used as a Methodist chapel; and old Nancy, the caretaker, is
already a good friend of ours. It is a humble house of prayer, but Nancy
takes much pride in it, and showed us the melodeon, 'worked by a young
lady from Rossantach,' the Sunday-school rooms, and even the cupboard
where she keeps the jugs for the love-feast and the linen and wine for
the sacrament, which is administered once in three years. Next comes the
Hoeys' cabin, where we have always a cordial welcome, but where we never
go all together, for fear of embarrassing the family, which is a large
one--three generations under one roof, and plenty of children in the
last. Old Mrs. Hoey does not rightly know her age, she says; but her
daughter Ellen was born the year of the Big Wind, and she herself was
twenty-two when she was married, and you might allow a year between that
and when Ellen was born, and make your own calculation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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