The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1897-10-05
FEARS OF FAMINE IN IRELAND.
Barley, Potatoes, Fishing Fail and the
ProSpect ia Dark


who declare that there Is really no cause
for apprehension whatever. For the
first time in an experience of some four
teen years find this latter class con-
Tossing to some anxiety. AS for the
general population, every fresh meeting
and comparing of notes and rumors on
market days increases a tendency to
panic. On every side you hear the
frightened prediction that it is to be
'1S47" over again.
Two districts I have personally in
spected within the past fortnight, both in
county Cork The first is in a fairly
prosperous country, of which Youghal,
Middleton, Carrigtwohill and Cloyne are
the principal points of population.
Here, as elsewhere, the potatoes are bad,
but here, under ordinary circumstances,
this would be of secondary Importance
if the barley had been we'll saved. 1t Is
a brewing and mailing district, and bar
ley is its money crop. Up to the last
week of August this crop promised all
that could be desired. Then, on Sunday,
two weeks ago, the heavens opened and
such a flood descended as had not been
seen before this year. On Tuesday,
when the storm had begun to abate,
QTONG Through lHlIl ~ HINES VI va ~
country, and in seven fields out Of ten
the cut gain was still spread, m but
drenched, discolored and sodden by the
incessant untimely down-pour. In two
other of the ten the grain would be still
uncut, but smashed to earth and practl-
cally ruined. In only the tenth field
would the clean stubble tell the story OF
far-seeing farmer whose crop was safe
under cover.
The little peninsula Of West Carbery,
which lies between Roaring Water bay
and Dunmanus bay, has a heartrendlng
| history. Skibbereen, which stands at its
| inland gate possesses horrible supre-
macy over all other parishes in Ireland
| in the matter of human deaths by star
walton. All the smaller towns and VII
lagos round this wild coastbelt-Bally-
dehob, Schulz, Colleen, Crookhaven.
Dunmanus and Durrus-have memories
OF the famine years hardly to be
matched in the remotest parts of Gal
way and Mayo. This peninsula is
place where I am much at home, and
where / have many friends among the
farmers and fishermen. I am able to
speak of it, therefore, with considerable
| certainty, and with the advantage of
standards of comparison with other
years. Here everything, with solitary
exception to be examined later, is worse
than it has been before in fifty years.
OF course the potatoes are here the great
staple food crop, and they are practical
ly total failure. Perhaps fifth or a
sixth part of them can be used for hui
man eating, but even this selected frac-
ton is of miserable quality, wet, coarse
grained and tasteless In many places
the despairing small farmers told me
they would not dig them at all, but
pillow UP the fields as they stood. In 9TH
er cases, where there was plenty of idle
labor available, the potatoes were to be
dug, but only for fodder Here, as
seems to be the case elsewhere, by the
reports, the only potatoes good for any
thing are those which We're sprayed"
twice
I see in some of the papers which
straggIe out to these parts a. disposition
to scold the farmers for not having en-
ployed this spraying" process univer-
sally These critics seem not to under
stand what spraying means. First of
all, only few people own spraying ma
chimes, these are either village. traders
or strong farmers, and in neither case do
non-owners get the use of the machines
without paying for then-the rental
ranging from half a crown to four shil-
lings day. The chief ingredient in the
solution used-popularly called blue
stone-costs three pence the pound. and
it takes forty pounds to the acre. There
will be another shilling for lime, and to
spray an acre thoroughly consumes the
better part of two days. Thus the
cheapest acre could hear of cost twelve
shillngs for a single spraying; the more
usual outlay was from sixteen shillings
TO one pound. This is very serious
outlay to propose to poor peasant, who
probably will never in his life be hand
ling ten pounds in ready money III a
year. So far as can see, very few peo-
pie in Ivehagh who did not spray could
have done so if they had wanted to.
The explanation Of this disastrous
failure Of the potato bears a sinister
likeness to the accounts of 1S47. There
was an exceptionally wet spring, which
delayed the planting for nearly a month
Then, as the belated shoots came to q
certain height, there came across the
land a blighting mist which withered
the plants as it passed. Most OF the
mountain people speak of this as q
storm or flood, which misled me al
first, but it seems that they all mean the
same thing--a sort of sultry and sweat
ing mist, which lay upon the fields fol
two or more days. Very old women are
credited now with having said at the
time that it was by a similar hot fog
that the potatoes were destroyed JUS
fifty years ago.
What makes the outlook in this
Schulz Crookhaven district peculiarly
bad is that the fishing has also failed
Ever since Baroness Burdett- Coutts
gave her magnificent present of cutter
boats, nets, tackle, school plant, &c, tc
the fishing communities ofBaltimore and
Cape Clear, it has been growing increas
ingly hard for the unaided villages fur.
Their west to make a living out of the
fishing. The philanthropist, of course
could not have foreseen this; it is hard
indeed to decide that the indirect harm
to the west outbalances the great ant
undoubted good done to the benefciarie:
of the Coutts bounty. None the less, thu
Coutts-aided fishermen have been abb,
to cripple and well-nigh stamp out thu
unassisted industries of their neighbors
The people on the mainland have alnos
given up fishing.
Ten days ago the inhabitants of LonI
= -, II