New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1880-04-19
THE DISTRESS IN IRELAND.
vrsrrrNa WESTERN VILLAGES.

I
...,, vyxTs xxACTED FROM PEOPLE IN THE Last
srAoR OF wRETCHEDSEss-TYPEs OF BAD LAND
,opDs-HOW AMERICAN Kelley HAS SAVED
LIVES
Waiting several villages In the County
Aaavo ireland, Mr. James Redpath, the special
correspondent of THE TRIBUNE, gives details
If the Indebtedness of the people and the in
difference Of the landowners to their suffer-
,nes He shows how the relief provided from
America and elsewhere saved many lives.
IRISH MISERY AND ITS CAUSES.
NorEs IN THE COUNTY MISCONCEPTIONS
FOUNDED ON OBSERVATION.
r1pox THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE TRBUXEl
WEsTPoRr, County Mayo March 1O.-Last Satur-
day took jadntinE car and horseback ride in
the parish Of Aughagower, in the company OF the
Rev john Stephens the Roman Catholic Citrate
there Aughagower begins about two miles from
Westport in sOutherly direction. The parish is
mountainous, for tho most part stony, heath-grown
and sterile. with little patches here and there that
have been reclaimed by the patient and pro-
lOnged toll of the peasant tenantTy The valleys
are mostly poor with whole districts of bog or
peat that have not been drained yet All. or nearly
ALL the good land tonee densey peopled) is DOW In
the hands of English and Scotch graziers. The small
farmers therefore. have been driven to the wet and
sour borders of the Dogs and to tile bleak and lean
slopes of the mountains, OF course they are very
door, There are few poorer parishes in all Ireland
certainly no poorer ION the main land, &C least
in tie County Mayo. Once Aughagower supported
1900 families. Its present population is about 6oO
families. But they do not all occupy separate
cabins. They have to double up" said Father
John, and probably there are not more than 600
cabins in the parish"
II was beautiful morning when we started. but
the rain soon fell, and we travelled nearly all day
In a storm. The country looked indeScnbably IN
hospitable and unspeakaby barren. The few wo-
men whom we met were barefoOted-trudgng along
in the mud to go TO Westport for market or return
ing from it to their homes Father john as his people
call him. is young Of great energy OF character
who seemed to me to have been born for an active
careeI-a Yankee-quite out of place among these
brown, cold hills. among these starving and scat
tered peasants. He belongs to the type of men who
make rapid fortunes in America and control great
enterprises. How does such man find field for
his energy in a lonely and obscure parishf often
asked myself that question when first met these
young Isish priests. But the puzzle is solved when
one sees them among their people. They are ap-
Dealed to by every one about everything; and IN
times of distress theirs the tongues of want and
theirs the hands to relieve il. They are kept too
busy to think about their intellectual isolation.
The first village that reached was Ballygol-
man, tits cluster of Six cottages All these ham
let's have the same appearance you rice along the
road-Iong, low whitewashed cabins of one story,
thatched with straw, with single door and small
windows. For six or eight months after harvest
the thatch looks we'll but during the three months
before harvest 1t is dirty and soaks in the
rains cabin must be thatched every
year. We did not stop at Ballygol-
man Bally means village, and is
common prefix to Irish town names.
These hamles are on the hands of the owner of the
Deighborhood which the inmates of the cottages
have hired; but each house Is not on the separate
lot Of the individual tenants. Tenants prefer to live
IN one cluster if their holdings are small, but
when the farm is from ten acres upward they
usually live on 1T,
Now, this hamlet of Ballysolman is good illus
tration of phase of Irish landholding that have
not hitherto touched. The town land is the prop
erty of the Earl of Lucan. The Earl has an infa-
nous reputation in the Westof Ireland landlord.
He is hated more than the Marquis Of Sligo He Is
absentee he has not even residence on his estates
here as the Marquis has, and he rarely pays a visit
to the country. He lives in London and Paris.
During tho last famine he cleared out miles and
miles in the neigbbOrhOOd Of Castelar, driving
hundreds of families into the roadside to perish
to emigrate as they pleased He Is spoken of as
the most heartless land autocrat IN all Ireland.
Lord Sligo has sometimes done kind acts, but of the
Earl OF Lucan not even one is recorded.
The Earl leases the town land of BallygOlman to
q tenant named BOurke, who took for his own use
the good and-at least seyen-tenths Of it in extent
and much greater proportion in yalue-and then
rented the outskrts-rOcky, barren hisides, or wet
and worthless bogs-tO the six poor cOttiers of
this htts hamlet. Bourke was an. attor-
ney and secured long leasei but he
holds he sub-toDants at his mercy. Bourke
compes them to pay for their fraction of the eS-
tate within trife OF the entire rental OF tho town
land They each paid until the last six mouths eX-
actly double the Government valuation. What IS
the result of this rack-rentingf Five of these six
families living on Indian meal supplied by the
Relief Committees. Neither Lucan nor BOuIke has
contributed a single shilling to the charities that
are saving their tenants from starvation!
The next village was Leekane-a few hundred
yards away. This is a cluster of about fifteen or
teen cottages. Here we rested for time, as it is
the residence of my felIow-traveller, Father john
He inbablts a single room in neatly kept cottage
of one of the tenants OF an adjoining "holding"
The priests in the west of Ireland do not live luxu-
riOusly Here, in a single small chambsr. with
little bed in one corner. and library of three or
four hundred boOks-mOstly French and Latin
classics and Roman Catholic literature-the curate
lives among the peasantry, who are his constant
care A score of peasants came up and crowded
around the Car when 1t stopped at the door, !
gathered from them the facts that have stated
about their landlords Leckane ls rented directly
from the Earl BY fifteen tenants, Tie government
valuation is EST 19s. The rent is Ell los. They
lost their crops this year. and have NOS been able
20 pay their rent. Every one OF these fifteen fam-
lies Is living charity.
Over bleak hill. quarter of a mile from Leck-
ane. is the hamlet Of Aughagower. Tradition has
St. Patrick. We called on Father McEvilly, who
showed me the ruins Of an abbey in which lit is
supp0sedl the early successors OF St Patrick
preached. The Little space is fenced off by stone
wall not far from the ruins and outside
of the cemetery is exhibited as the site of
St. Patuck's well still another similar enclosure
as the site of his CELL aud another still as the site Of
the cell of his successor st Auneus. But older STILL
and more interesting to tho general student of early