Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-02-09
LIFE IN IRELAND.
Evictors and Evicted-Countess of Kings
ton, Known the GaItee She-Wolf.

This her ladyship has refused
them, and old women, widows, pow
erty-stricken farmers of absurd little
holdings of ten or twelve acres, are
all to be turned out of their homes.
Their cattle and crops have already
been seized because they cannot raise
the money, $15 or $40 per acre, to pay
their rents in full. For weeks evic-
tions have been threatened, and O'SuI-
Ivan has closed out his business and is
sacrificing his time and fortune in
order to make his practical protest on
behalf of the poorer tenants, to whom
eviction is a tragedy indeed.
1t was not yet clock, and we had
no difficulty in getting into this house,
going down dingy alley, across a
yard, up ladder, and finally crawl
ing into an upper room. Nearly
everything had been removed from
the house; only few straw beds for
the family to sleep on, and few pots
and pans for cooking. All was dark
inside and silent. A peat fire glow
cred on the hearth, over it sat two
men and three boys, roughly dressed,
q sixth was sleeping in corner. Sew
eral pitchforks and clubs stood near
the door. A huge kettle of tar was in
a corner of the fireplace, and a second
kettle of boiling meal.
1--WE will feed the Emergency men
well, you see" said one of the men.
Tons of stones, enormous trunks of
trees and logs were piled, tied and
nailed about the doors and windows,
an impenetrable thicket of branches.
filled the windows. 1t was a siege,
and it looked like one. At o'clock
the inmates assemble, the fire is
stirred, the tar and meal set to boil
the fortress is made more secure, and
with bated breath, watching, waiting,
listening, they wait for t coming Of
the red-coated soldiers, the regiment
of police, the mounted Sheriff, and his
squads of bailiffs and emergency men.
We went on down the street. In the
market-place people were buying and
selling, but strange atmosphere of
repressed excitement seemed to en-
velop everything and everybody.
Now and then It large wagOnet be-
longing to the Countess of Kingston,
drawn by splendid, spanking gray
horses, dashed by filled with armed
police on their way to their barracks
in the Kingston Arms, a big old hotel
just outside the castle gates.
We followed the wsgOnet as it
crossed tae market place, and about
couple of blocks distant came upon the
castle square, a beautiful square, with
avenues of trees, velvety stretches of
grass, surrounded by fine old stone
houses, that is placed directly be-
fore the ponderous gateways of the
demesne. This little neighbOrhood
might be called the Kingston colony.
The occupants Of the house are all
supporters and defenders of the Coun-
tess. The Kingston Arms swarms
with police. just outside the castle
gate, in commodious and picturesque
mansion of brown stone, lives the
agent. His two young lady daughters
and couple OF young men in blue
and pink tennis fiannels were PLAYING
tennis in the opera square. Police
men marched around the house and
one with gun paced before the iron
barred gate of the castle. There was
one store called u general provision
store, where the inhabitants of this
colony deal, for there is not a shop in
all MttchellstOwn where yard of cot
ton, a pound of beef, an ounce of tea
could be purchased for the use of Lady
Kingston, her police or her bailiffs or
agents. Here flowers grew in the win
dows, lace curtains showed, ladies APP
peared in the doors, young women in
fashionable gowns were sketchinG,
writing, reading in the squares; pianos
were playing. Life here was different,
separate from, antogonistic to, that
other life going on in the market
place, going on in those dismantled,
barricaded homes, where men and
women were waiting in the smoky
rooms, heavy with the fumes of tar, to
be evicted. In these charming old
stone houses, with their arched door
ways and pleasant stoops, live the
gentry of MitchellstOwn, the families
of army officers, clergymen, and 9TH
ers, kind Of high-class almshouse
given to the inmates with an annuity
of ESQ year.
The Countess of Kingston is a stern,
unyielding woman, childless, of mid
die age, married to her second hus-
band. She is hated and feared by her
tenants and hates and fears them in
return. To the last penny she has
always exacted her rents. Even in
tiTe of famine, sickness, extreme di s.
asters, her people have had to pay
every penny, or if they did not were
turned out into the roads.
1t was she who last winter had a
family of eight children, all sick with
the measles, evicted and turned out
into fierce storm of rain and wind
and hail. She was never known to
visit one of her tenants, or to look in
their homes. When she used to ride
out in the country roads, all hers, be-
side the miserable shanties, window
less, chimneyless, with mud floors
and broken doors, all hers, the ten
ants, men, women, and children, hers
in body and almost soul, their rags
flying, would rush out to their stone
fences and humble out unwilling ex-
pressions of pleasure at seeing her,
wishing her a long life to rule over
them and deal fate to item, staring
anXiously to see if she seemed pleased.
She never noticed the children nor
saw that they had schools. She TO-
nored the moral and physical welfare
of tie 500 human souls intrusted to
her protection, but ruled them never
theless as completely as if the time was
feudal. The agent collected the rents.
If the people had no money he dumped
them out into the road, pulled the
howell down, and put her ladyshlp's
cattle to Craze on the dismantled
farm. She was called the Galtee She
Wolf. 1t was she who looked down
on us, frowning, from her fine castle,
where she lives in perilous isolation,