"In one of them dwelt John Killian, who stood by me while I made
a sketch of the remains of his dwelling. He told me that he and
his fathers before him had owned this now ruined cabin for ages,
and that he had paid £4 a year for four acres of ground. He owed
no rent; before it was due, the landlord's drivers cut down his
crops, carried them off, gave him no account of the proceeds,
and then tumbled his house. The hut made against the end wall
of a former habitation was not likely to remain, as a decree
had gone forth entirely to clear the place. The old man also
told me that his son having cut down, on the spot that was once
his own garden, a few sticks to make him a shelter, was taken
up, prosecuted, and sentenced to two months' confinement, for
destroying trees and making waste of the property.
"I must supply you with another sketch of a similar subject,
on the road between Maam and Clifden, in Joyce's County, once
famous for the Patagonian stature of the inhabitants, who are now
starved down to ordinary dimensions. High up on the mountain,
but on the roadside, stands the scalpeen of Keillines. It is
near General Thompson's property. Conceive five human beings
living in such a hole: the father was out, at work; the mother
was getting fuel on the hills, and the children left in the hut
could only say they were hungry. Their appearance confirmed their
words—want was deeply engraved in their faces, and their lank
bodies were almost unprotected by clothing.
"From Clifden to Ouchterade, twenty-one miles, is a dreary drive
over a moor, unrelieved except by a glimpse of Mr. Martin's house
at Ballynahinch, and of the residence of Dean Mahon. Destitute
as this tract is of inhabitants, about Ouchterade some thirty
houses have been recently demolished. A gentleman who witnessed
the scene told me nothing could exceed the heartlessness of
the levellers, if it were not the patient submission of the
sufferers. They wept, indeed; and the children screamed with
agony at seeing their homes destroyed and their parents in tears;
but the latter allowed themselves unresistingly to be deprived of
what is to most people the dearest thing on earth next to their
lives—their only home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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