The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1920-07-10
HUGHIE


the ROSES. Calling, according to
promise, at the house of friends, 1
found them about to start for the
harvest fair in town of Tirconnell,
some sixty miles away. l was pressed
to join the expedition; and, with an
outward show of protest and inward
jubilation, | accepted the invitation.
The man of the house is an extensive
dealer in live stock. He was, this
day, in the market in Derry; and as
We had to lift himself and another
member of the dealing fraternity, l
knew | would be putting the party to
more or less serious inconvenience
in the matter of motor space. But l
resolved to risk it. The day before,
| had said goodbye to the Donegal
hills, and with great regret parted
with my holiday friends; then, who
could blame me if l did ignore the
Inconvenience of others when | had
the chance of another day or two
among those glorious mountains, with
out the danger of breaking my neck
over the handlebar of a bicycle or
getting drenched on the bleak roads
where it knows how to rain?
We left Derry in blazing sunshine,
and had delightful run into and
through some of the wild grandeur of
Donegal, till we reached our destina-
ton in view of the Atlantic. Next
day, the day before the fair, we set
out to buy sheep. There were three
of us besides the driver; my two com
panions being, as far as | could judge,
a kind Of a live stock company. We
came back for miles over the road
previously traversed; and, but for an
occasional enterprising sheep, there
was nothing to be seen except heath
err, and high mountains and the rug
ged beauty of the Donegal highlands.
After many twists and turns, the
driver steered us back up along a road
of a high mountain that seemed to
bar all passage. We had frequently
the space of one foot between us and
eternity. Yet in this wild solitude,
besides sheep and grouse and hares,
there are human habitatiOns, occu-
pied, too, by human beings, descend
ants of the remnant of the Celtic peO-
pie of the North who escaped slaugh-
ter, or transportation to the West In
dies, and refused to go to He'll by
the road of Queen Bess's Bible or to
Connacht at the point of British bayo-
1%c fIn o1Hyo nf
their Irish souls to English soup, and
betOok themselves to these mountain
Businesses to tell their tale of woe to
the towering peaks and, even in their
poverty, worship God as their con-
science dictated. They brought up
very large families, for child murder
is not fashionable amongst these peo-
pie as it is with those who tried to
hound them out of existence and who
compelled them to rear the children
as they reared the sheep. for eXpOrta-
ton; yet, bad as the world is today,
it would undoubtedly be very much
worse We're it not for the sanctity
which the emigrants from these Irish
cabins brought with them and diffused
in other lands. And, by all accounts,
the Irish exiles, whom a ruthless tyr
amy drove from their homes and
their country, are not behaving them
selves in any spirit of gratitude. The
manufactured poverty and misery, the
considerations, evictions, Transporter
tons are recOiling today on the heads
of their authors and helping them to
make the world safe for democracy.
The Irish went with a vengeance, as
the London Times gleefully announc-
ed: but it was vengeance which
neither the Times nor its hackers
anticipated. The mills of God grind
slowly, but they keep grinding. But
to come back to our journey: We
actually passed a school house by this
remote road, a lonely little pilgrim
of a schoolhouse that appealed to us
as we passed, to get it a teacher who
would stay with it. | afterwards
he could get no trained teacher to
remain there, he was going to ask
the Board to let him appoint any kind
of a teacher.
After long miles of this road we
came opposite the house where the
sheep were for sale. Some of the
next-door neighbors, from a mile or
so down the glen, had come to par
ticipate in the excitement of the sale,
the one yearly event of any impOr-
lance in the dreary life Of that lonely
district. Everybody shook hands with
us in a shy, half-apologetic sort of
way, without saying anything dis
tinctly audible. Proceeding down the
path, we were nearly deafened by
the shouting of men and the barking
of dogs trying to persuade the sheep
which had been rounded up on a
level below, to come up to the yard
On entering the house, we had an
other round of Misunderstanding from the
female members of the family. The
kitchen was specklessly clean. Fol-
This / was prepared, for | am well
acquainted with the houses even OF
the poor, and they are the big ma
5ority, in Donegal. | will not say that
all the houses are shining examples
of cleanliness; but this l do assert
without fear of failure: 1 will I'M
dertake to show you more dirt in
any planted parish in Derry or Down
Antrim or Armagh, than there is in
the implanted parts of Donegal coun
ty. And we listened like fools to the