The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-25 00:00:00

THE WEST OF IRELAND-ITS PROSPECTS.

A letter from Clifden, Connemara, Galway, dated Dec.
19, says :—ln describ:ng one portion of the Connemara sea
coast I have described nearly all. The nature of the soil,
the appearance of the ccuntry, the character and habits of

the people are almost identical—the only points of variance
being that in some plices the land may be in re rocky, and

in others more boggy, and that the inhabitants of particu-
lar districts derive a portion of their subsistence from fish•

ing, whilst others depend solely upon tillage and grazing.
As I have already stated, the fishing is carried on here in
an uncertain, irregular, precarious fashion, which is not
likely to undergo any improvement until proper harbours
of refuge shall have been constructed. The Sellerney or
Cleggan district, extending from Aughrim Point to Ball-
nakill, on the north of Clifden—a distance of about eight
miles in a straight line, but fully 20 miles if we follow the
windings of the shore—is one of those whose inhabitants
depend to a considerable extend for support on the produce
of their fishing. Little hamlets or clusters of cabins of the

most miserable kind are scattered at various places along
the coast. It would be impossible to convey by any written

description an adequate idea of the appearance of wretched-
ness, misery, and neglect which these hovels present. The
walls are all made of stones, not cemented together, but
placed loosely on the top of each other, and the interstices
inside filled with clay or turf mould to keep out the wind,
_ _ _

which, however, must penetrate through so frail a barrier.
The thatch is always rotten, and often brcken, so as to ad-
mit the rain, which renders the clay floor muddy and slip-
pery. The invariable dung heap lies in front of the house,
and frequently encroaches on the door-step. The inside of
these cottages is in keeping with their external appearance.
A bed of straw, covered with a patched and tattered
quilt, a ricketty table, a few stools, perhaps a rude
dresser containing some articles of delf, and an iron pot
for the cooking of the potatoes or the porridge, consti-

tute the entire furniture of the ordinary Connemara
peasant's house. The degrees of poverty do not seem to
make any difference between the people in this respect.
The man who has three or four acres, and has been able not
only to live well according to his notions, but to save a little
money, does not possess a better or neater cottage than his
poorer neighbour, who is always on the verge of starvation
or the workhouse. The idea of neatness and cleanliness in
their household arrangements does not seem ever to enter

into their minds; and, indeed, it must be remembered that
the women being always working in the fields or at the sea
shore have not time, even if they had the disposition, to do
anything towards the improvement of their abodes; whilst
their children, male and female, are kept constantly em-
ployed out of doors from the moment they are able to con-
tribute anything to the support of the family. The conse-
quence, as I have before observed, is that they grow up
without education, as ignorant and as prejudiced as their
fathers. In the Sellerney district, the fishing on which the
people depended so much has proved this season very un-
productive, in consequence of the unfavourable weather ;
and the potato crop has turned out as badly as in other parts
of the country. The same variety of results is observable
here as in other places, one man having obtained a very
fair return whilst his neighbour has scarcely any. Here,
as elsewhere, experience has shown that a light sandy or
moory soil is the best for the growth of the potato, whilst
heavy clayey land, especially in wet weather, is exceedingly
bad for that purpose. The instances in which a large and
sound crop has been obtained are rare, and on an average
it may be safely estimated that one-half of the crop in this
district has been lost, and that after the month of February
there will be very few potatoes left in this locality. The

produce of the oat crop was not by any means so bad here
as in other places I have visited, judging from what I
have been told by intelligent and observant persons resi-
dent in the district, and also from my own personal obser-
vation. The haggards of those who cultivated oats were
much better stocked than they would have been if there
hal been that general failure alleged by some persons.
The crop was rather a light one, but the return not
much below the average. Some barley was sown in this
district ; although it cannot be described as a good, it was
certainly not a very bad,. crop. Taking, then, every cir-
cumstance into consideration—the frugal and parsimonious
habits of the people, the fact that, however poverty .stricken
the aspect of their hovels would lead one to suppose them
to be, many of them have money saved, and considering
also that up to tha present they have been able to pay their
rents with great regularity, I do not anticipate that for some
months to come there will be any very general distress
arising from want of food. Thero will always be exceptional
cases, but it cannot be truthfully stated that at present there
is any dearth of provisions in Connemara. I have no doubt,
however, that from April, if not sooner, up to the month of
August, there will be N ery severe pressure and much priva-
tion and suffering amongst the very small farmers, who
have not been able during former years to put anything by
to meet such an emergency as the present. In a couple of
months these people will have no potatoes, and no means of
purchasing meal, however low the price of that article may
be. They will of course endure the utmost extremity of
distress sooner than give up their land and enter the work-
house ; but to that miserable consummation some of them
must come at last, unless they obtain employment. Where
they are to obtain that employment I am unable to discover.
The farms are so small that every man, with the aid of his
family, cultivates his own little holding without calling for
the assistance of strangers, and there are no resident gentry
to give the employment which is so much required. If the
owners of the soil could be brought to see their own interests
they would employ their tenants in the making of proper
fences, and in carrying out those drainage works which are
everywhere necessary; and if this were done to any consider-
able extent no reasonable apprehension could be entertained
of the existence of any distress which the operation of the
poor-law system, ailed by private benevolence, would not
be perfectly adequate to meet. There could be no doubt that
if the landlords of Connemara expended money judiciously
on the improvement of their properties they would have no
reason, in a pecuniary point of view, to regret having done
so. The letting value of the land might be greatly in-
creased by a comparatively small outlay in the carrying out
of obvious improvements, which could be easily and cheaply
effected. A gentleman who resides in another part of the
county told me that during the famine years he employed
every labouring man in his immediate neighbourhood, both
from the desire to improve his property and to afford them
means of earning their bread. The improvements he car-
ried out in fencing, draining, planting, Sec., were so exten-
sive and his weekly labour-bill so large that many of his
friends remonstrated with him on his imprudence and pre-
dicted his rule. How different was the result. " I never
(said my informant) spent money so profitably as that.
The improvements which I then carried out have added
largely to my income." I have seen this gentleman's
estate, and have been able to judge of the extraordinary
transformation which his taste and enterprise have effected
in the aspect of the place by comparing his thriving
plantations, find pastures, and well-tilled fields,
with the swampy land and barren mountains imme-
diately adjoining his property, which have been left by
their owners in all their original wildness. The field
for improvement in Connemara is a wide one, and
here and there we come upon exquisite little spots, which
show what might be done on a larger scale by the judicious
expenditure of capital. In the Sellerney district, of which
I am now speaking, the landlord who has done most to im-
prove the condition of his tenantry is Sir Christopher Leigh-
ton. This gentleman has no residence here, tut he has
shown a laudable desire to introduce better habits amongst
the tenantry on his estate. lie has encouraged them to
fence their holdings, to make gates, and to effect other im-
provements—they have shown themselves capable of profit-
ing by his advice, and are making considerable progress
compared with the tenants on other properties where no en-
couragement or facilities for improvement are given. Their
land is much better cultivated, their cottages neater, and
the rents being toe high they are able to live very well.
The only persons over whom Sir Christopher exercises no
influence are some tenants who hold under ancient leases,
and they pursue the old slovenly system in which they
were brought up, without any thought of improvement
whatever. Example is absolutely necessary to rouse these
people from their apathy, and stimulate them to exertion.
The tenants from year to year improve when they have a
landlord who gives them encouragem, nt, because they are
anxious to secure his favour. The tenantry who have
leases, being independent of the landlord, go on in the old
lazy, thriftless fashion, and will continue to do so until
they see their neighbours rising above them, and reaping
the fruits of industry directed by skill and knowledge. The
progress of improvement must be slow amongst a people
who have been so utterly neglected, and so long as the
miserable two and three acre farms are allowed to exist
agriculture will be badly carried on, and the small holders
will always be liable to suffer great distress whenever the
country is afflicted with a deficient harvest, There can
be no analogy, however, between the terrific famine years
and the present or any future bad harvest which we may
have to encounter. The people are in a better position
to meet the failure of the potato; although it is still their
staple food, they do mot depend up n it so absolutely as in
past times, and the prices of Indian meal and oetmeal are
far below what they were in the years 1847.48. The scar-
city of fuel throughout the whole of Connemara has been
already so fully spoken of by me that I cannot add anything
to what I have written upon that subject. In the Sellerney
distric+, as in the neighbourhood of Clifden, Melanin More,
Bunowen, and every other place in which I have been, the
inhabitants have been reduced to great distress from want of
turf. They might have saved an abundance of it had they
taken advantage of the fine weather in April and May; but
there is not one man in a hundred throughout the whole of
the west of Ireland who has had the forethought or the
wisdom to do so. According to the custom of the country
turf-cutting is always deferred until St, John's (Ivy ; and

as the rain has been falling continuously from the middle
of June nearly up to the present time, it is' obvious that the
turf cut in th,, beginning of June has hal no chance of cry-
ing. The people are endeavouring to turn the wet turf to-

gether with brambles, heath, furze, and straw, but they are
not able to do much good in this way. I have seen turf
purchased at double the ordinary price, which was almost
useless, and could not be made available unless burned
with coals, Every sod was thoroughly saturated with
moisture, and resembled a wet sponge more than any-
thing else. Connemara, like the coast of Clare, suffers
from the want of turf the more intensely because of the
absence of trees. The country is perfectly bare of wood,
except the small plantations that surround a few houses
in sheltered places ; and this is the more extraordinary
when we find from the abundance of fir trees in the bogs

that the whole of the land must at one time have been a

vast forest. The inhabitants of Sellerney and other places
have nothing wherewith to cook their food save the ferns,
furze, and logwood which they pick up from day to day.
Some of them are taking the old screws off the roofs of their
houses and burning them ; others arc carrying away the
turf walls by which the roads are fenced, and resorting to

any shift and contrivance which urgent necessity can sug-
gest to procure the materials of a miserable fire. This is a
sad state of things, and matters will be worse if active mea-
sures be not taken to supply the people with coals until the

dry winds, with which we hope to be favoured in March,
enable them to obtain turf from the bogs. The Clifden Re-
lief Committee are awaiting a favourable change in the
weather to obtain a cargo of coals for the supply of the
town and its neighbourhood. Their funds must, how-

ever, be greatly increased by subscription from the public
at large before thoy can expect to deal effectually with

he immense amount of distress occasioned by the un-

precedented scarcity of fuel. I have read a letter in
the London Morning Test, in which the writer notices

~ .
my correspondence from the West of Ireland as being
likely to do some good, but also likely to mis-

lead the half-educated and selfish politicians who lay
the blame on the clouds of the Atlantic, or anything
rather than the real cause. I hope nothing I have written
is calculated to produce that effect. The object of my mis-
sion is to ascertain the amount and intensity of the distress
occasioned by what is acknowledged on all hands to be a
deficient harvest. The causes of this distress, and the
means whereby such results are to be averted in future, are
not subjects which I am called on to investigate very deeply.
Nevertheless, I have not hesitated to attribute much of the
calamities that have befallen the farmers of the West this
year to their own bad methods of cultivation, and to the
want of drainage which I perceived in every part of the
country through which I passed. I stated in one of my
earlier letters that Mr. Allan Pollok, of Lismany, Ballina-
sloe, had succeeded in growing good crops, nohvitlstanding
the extraordinary wetness of the season, because his land
was thoroughly drained and skilfully cultivated ; and I have
frequently mentioned instances in which earlier and better
culture has been rewarded with success when failure was
the general rule, arising from ignorance of the principles
and practice of scientific agriculture.. I have, therefore,
shown no disposition to slur over the defects which are-but
too observable in the cultivation of the soil throughout the
West of Ireland. Dealing with matters as I found them, I
attributed the admittedly bad crops of the present year to
the inclemency of the season ; but I did not suggest that
if the land were properly drained and better cultivated (as
it would have been if it formed a portion of England or
Scotland) the result would have been so unfavourable as it
has unfortunately proved. Considering the present state
of Irish agriculture, to what cause can we attribute the
total loss of the turf, the aggravation of the potato blight,
and the deterioriation of the cereal crop, if not to the
" clouds of the Atlantic" obstructing the vivifying influ-
ence of the sun, chilling the atmosphere, and deluging
the land with rain? It is true more forethought and less
indolence of thought and action on the part of the people
might have diminished the intensity of the evil, but as long
as the present minute subdivision of land prevalis in
Ireland no human ingenuity or labour could avert from
the poorer classes a great amount of privation consequent
on such a spring and summer as we have had. I
agree with the correspondent of the Morning Post
in some of his assertions, the force of which I fully
recognise, while I dissent from others. Whether seaweed
be good for land in an open question, but where there is
nothing else it must still be resorted to. It promotes the
growth of the first crop when judiciously applied, but I
have heard it said that it makes the land thin and poor—in
fact eats away the soil. However, the people living along
the coast of Connemara and Clare have no other manure.
Sea-weed, however objectionable in some respects, is within
their reach, whilst they have no means of procuring farm-
yard and artificial manures. There cannot be any doubt
that sea-weed is bad for potatoes, it makes them wet and
ill-tasted. I mentioned in a former letter that the people of
Connemara deferred the planting of their potatoes until a
later period than usual, in consequence of the stormy
weather, which prevented them from cutting the sea-
weed on the rocks. I have been told by persons
who have had some experience on this subject, that it
was not necessary to defer the planting until the com-
ing in of the sea-weed. They should have pi.-fated
them in ridges without it not deeply covered, and
when the sea-weed came in have spread it over the ridges,
and covered it up at the second earthing or moulding, when
the plant was making its first appearance through the
ground. 1 understand this has been practised with success
in Mourne, in the county of Down. Any time after the
potatoes have been planted, until they are just issuing
through the mould, will answer; and by adopting this sys-
tem an additional month or six weeks will be gained for col-
lecting and applying the manure. The correspondent of the
Morning Post speaks of bogwood as a substitute for turf.
It is used in that way at present throughout every part of
the country I have visited, but it is exceedingly scarce and
dear. Perhaps the writer of the letter to which I have re-
ferred is not aware of the labour and difficulty in procuring
this article, sunk six or seven feet below the surface of the
wet bog, which must be cleared away so as to allow a suffi-
cient space around the block to admit the man with his good
hatchet (made purposely for this work) to chip it away, for
otherwise ititould not be removed out of its bed without an
enormous expenditure of labour. Formerly bogdeal was
used for lighting fires only, helping wet turf or giving light;
and in many parts of Ireland the ,mall farmers and poorer
class depend altogether on bogwood for giving light to the
household during the long winter evenings, and the price it
brings in towns for lighting fires is far above that of coals
imported into Dublin. The wood which the correspondent
of the Morning Post saw at Kilkee was, in all probability,
found on the bog after the peat had been stripped off it, by
the cutting out of the turf, and nothing more was necessary
than to chip it up and dry it. I have been told that, many
years ago, in the north of Ireland, the chipping of fir blocks
in the bogs was quite a profession, requiring much skill
and dexterity; so much so that some individuals could earn
2s. and 2s. 6d. per day at this work, whilst others as strong.,
but not so skilful could not earn 6d. a day. I question
whether, when the writer of this letter was in Kilkee, if he
wanted to buy the bogwood he saw about the streets and
houses, he would have found it so cheap as he appears to
suppose. The people had it exposed to dry to be treasured
up for the winter evenings' light, or to dispose of it for
lighting fires in the neighbouring towns. Just at this mo-
ment it is very precious in the West of Ireland, and there
are many people living in the immediate vicinity of the
bogs who are making a livelihood by raising and selling it
throughout the country.

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