The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1883-07-19
Starvation In Ireland.

Alice NJ. Hark, writing to the London
Chronicle of June 8, says:
GAS l have only just returned from
visiting, with my husband, Gweedore
eud the other distressed districts of
Donegal, should be glad if you would
allow me to say few words as to the
actual condition of the peasants in that
part oi Ireland. Last year the potato
crop was lost throughout the whole of
Donegal, and to add to this disaster, fol.
lowing as it did on four successive bad
harvests, q terrible storm swept over
Donegal ON October /, unroofng and
levelling the cottages and sweeping away
the whole of the oats and hay. The
people thus found themselves obliged to
fHce the winter with no store of food for
their families and stock, and no seed
potatoes for the following spring. Enor.
nous exertions have been made by DR..
Logue, the Bishop of Raphoe, and his
clergy to find funds wherewith to feed
the people and to buy seed. potatoes, and
in these efforts they have been aided by
the Society of Friends and by Mrs.
Power Lalor. Owing to their exertions
u great extent of Donegal has been re.
sown with potatoes, and up to the present
time tenant farmers and their families
have been kept from actual starvation
by selling their stock and by receiving
gifts of Indian meal. The funds in the
hands Of the clergy are, however, nearly
exhausted, and how to keep off the fam.
inc till the eWly.sown potato crop has
been gathered is filling their minds with
the gravest anxiety. For three wears
said the Bishop to us last week, L have
been fighting the famine, and now it
seems thst at the moment of victory as
If it would prevail In Gweedore, to
which Capt. Hill has sent his bailiff to
collect rents, the tenants are reduced to
the lowest ebb of poverty. In an estate,
every inch of which is either bog, rock,
or sand, some portion of the land has
been brought into state of cultivation
by the untiring labor of the peasants.
The farms in strips, often not moro
than eight feet or ten feet wide, run from
the bog to the shore, and are being year
by year encroached upon by the sea
sand; others lying more inland have
been reclaimed from the bog by years of
toll. Everything-buildi draining,
ditching-has been done by the ten.
ants unhelped. To stimulate indus.
try the rents on the property have been
raised from time to time from G4OO to
nearly si 200 year, and to teach the
grim lesson of poverty, 10000 acres of
mountain commonage grazing, which
belonged to the tenants from time i'm.
memorial, were some years ago taken
from them without compensation, and
thus people who once owned focks
and herds, and were proud of their hos.
pitality to strangers. have been reduced
to q state of penury most pitiable to be.
hold. While Capt, Hill Is pressing for
rents, hundreds Of his wretched tenantry
are being kept from actual starvation by
doies of pennyworth of meal day,
and all the children on the property are
being fed by the gift Of two biscuits each
per diem. Poverty and misery such as
are now 70 be seen Ia Gweedore are
enough to make the most stony hearted
weep. In one single.roomed cottage we
entered Q reversed tub and board did
duty for table, aud o broken iron pot,
containing stirabout, was tho sole cook.
ing utensil, tho only article of furniture
In the place being tho wooden cradle, In
which the wretched mother rocked her
aev born baby. Tho father, in rags, was
busy planting ont n . seed.Pptatoes just