The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through IrelandNorah
History
The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland
Norah
Ireland -- Description and travel
The country out of Enniskillen is very pretty. May has now opened, the
hedges have leafed out and the trees are beginning lazily to unfold
their leaves. The roads are not near so good as the roads in Donegal,
which are a legacy from the dreary famine time, being made then. The
hedges are not by any means so trim and well kept as the hedges by the
wayside in Down or Antrim. The roads up to the farm houses are lanes,
such as I remember when I was a child. The nuisances of dunghills near
the doors of the farmhouses have been utterly abolished for sanitary
reasons, also whitewashing is an obligation imposed by the Government.
For these improvements I have heard the authorities both praised and
thanked. In these times of discontent, it is well to see the Government
thanked for anything. The country is hilly and the hills have a uniform
round topped appearance, marked off into fields that run up to the hill
tops and over them and down the other side. There are, of course,
mountains in the distance, wrapped in a thick veil of blue haze.
The house to which I was bound was, like most of the farm houses, long,
narrow, whitewashed, a room at each end and the kitchen in the middle. I
will now let the farmer tell his grievances in his own words. He is
about sixty years of age, a professor of religion of the Methodist
persuasion, an Orangeman, and a hereditary tenant of Lord Enniskillen,
and now an enthusiastic adherent of the Land League. "In 1844 I bought
this farm--two years before I was married. There is 17-1/2 acres. I paid
L184 as tenant right--that is, for the goodwill of it. The rent was L19
7s 4d. I should have gone to America then; it would have been better for
me. I have often rued that I did not go, but, you see, I was attached to
the place. My forbears kindled the first fire that ever was kindled on
the land I live on. I held my farm on a lease for three lives; two were
gone when I bought it. I have been a hard-working man, and a sober man.
There is not a man in the country has been a greater slave to work than
I have been. I drained this place (fetches down a map of the little
holding to show the drains). It is seamed with drains; 11 acres out of
17-1/2 acres are drained, the drains twenty-one feet apart and three
feet deep. Drew stone for the drains two miles, L100 would not at all
pay me for the drainage I have done. I built a parlor end to my house,
and a kitchen; also, a dairy, barn, byre, stable and pig house. Every
year I have bought and drawn in from Enniskillen from sixty to one
hundred loads of manure for my farm; this calculation is inside of the
amount. I have toiled here year after year, and raised a family in
credit and decency. When the last life in my lease died, my rent was
immediately raised to L27 10s. I paid this for a few years, and then the
seasons were bad, and I fell behind. It was not a fair rent, that was
the reason I was unable to pay it. I complained of the rent. I wanted it
fixed by arbitration; that was refused.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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