their families well. I have known a farmer take his oats to market and spend every shilling of the price of them in whiskey before he left it. Punch and a pipe—that was the Irish comfort, and to enjoy it he sat in a ruined cabin in a ragged dress by a cold hearth, with a starving set of children round him.
9. Little girls and Miss Cooper went to church, so did Marianne—and didn’t some home again, leaving us to get our dinner as we could. So I sent for her and scolded her well. My former gentle fault-finding making no impression on any of them, they never believed me in earnest. Mary, too, remained at chapel till five o’clock to take the pledge. The Doctor called in on his way to dine at Tulfarris. He had been talking to Father Matthew, and says he is a gentlemanly, nice-looking man about forty. None of the people hereabouts much disposed to follow him, but their priests make them. I wonder what becomees of all the money collected—the poorest person pays 1/– for the medal, the better sort 2/6 or more, and near a million have bought them.
16. My new maid Mary Byrne, who seemed so good a servant and had endeavoured to do all her work to my satisfaction, has got her head turned already. On Saturday she could not eat her dinner—a stew of beef and cabbage. To-day she declined washing the clothes without assistance, so I desired her to return to her cabin—such sort of tempers not suiting me. All spring and the early part of summer they had only one meal a day, and she was working out in the fields on 6d a day without food when I was struck with her tidy appearance. How can one help such creatures?
17. Dull morning. About half after seven Mary Byrne sent me word that she would stay with me still if I would give her help. I was very angry, ordered her off without delay and sent for Nancy Fox to come and wash for me. They are most extraordinary people.
28. Getting ready for John Robinson, who came by the mail at 11 and had all his business over by dinner time. The tenants paid well with the exception of Pat Quin in the Bottoms, who never will be made anything of, and Kearns. Little Doyle paid up all arrears, his fright having made him industrious—that and the Temperance pledge. Old Mrs. Tyrrell has given up her little holding to Mick Tyrrell, one of the most thriving farmers in the place. Commons, as usual, had a mere nothing to give—three or four pounds and his tickets for butter.
30. John off to Commons early to distrain his goods and began in form to make an inventory of stock and crop amounting in value to several hundred pounds, when the old wretch told him he might take whatever would make up the rent at Mr. John Darker’s valuation. So John helped us to two good milch cows, a yearling and some oats—altogether equal to the nine months rent owing. Why the old creature did not sell his things himself at the different fairs and markets and bring the money decently it would be hard to say.
John says that in the King’s County when he is receiving Lady Milltown’s rents the tenants will pay a small proportion, fall on their knees, declare they cannot pay another penny, a thousand excuses from different pieces of ill-fortune, when he calls in the Driver, orders him to proceed immediately to distrain their goods, and then from out of some secret pocket comes the whole rent to a fraction. They are the strangest people! What has made them so it would be hard to tell: maybe misgovernment and certainly want of education and most indubitably the priesthood; but here they are, neither honest nor truthful nor industrious and full of wild fearful passions that won’t be rooted out for many generations.
The poor Delanys, who owe a dozen years’ rent, gave up their bit of ground at once and were forgiven their £15 or £16, which they were quite incapable of making in their best day, and now the old man’s ill-health and the old woman’s want of energy, for she is not so old or so weakly but what she could very well earn her bread, were it not for an indolent habit and the frightful doctrine that the more she suffers here, the less will she suffer hereafter. John got altogether upwards of £220. Rutherfurd and Williams have still to pay—another hundred nearly—and all the Bills we have in Dublin won’t be quite a hundred, so that leaving me £60 for present expenses he will have a very nice little sum in hand, £150 I think, which we will not touch if we can help, that we may have a little ready money by us. We felt it so very uncomfortable to be run so close. Before the end of February pay will come again, and before any more bills are due in May, both rent and pay will come, and another good balance I hope after clearing all debts may be added to the sum in Bank, so we shall get on capitally, and if we could but get more land into our own hands we should really make a fortune. By taking advantage of every windfall, I hope in time we may manage this.
TUESDAY DECEMBER 8. Dempsey has been most extremely disagreeable about the same piece of ground of Kearns’ that he was so unruly about in spring, 27threatening James Ryan and his whole family, getting Counsel’s opinion, going to the Sessions, and using such language himself and his daughters to everyone whom he thinks fit to consider of the opposite faction. Altogether he is a regular savage, and threatens to be very troublesome.
Miss Gardiner called upon me in great distress to know how to conduct herself in the following circumstances: since the measles broke out, she has never got her school gathered again. On going to enquire for her different scholars, she was told they should not return, for that I had burned all their Roman Catholic catechisms, that their priest was informed of it, that he was exceedingly angry and determined to make a great noise about it. She wanted to know whether she should call upon him to refute their folly, but, after considering a minute, I told her not. I bid her take no notice of the story whatever, and if the priest called on her to make enquiries, to take him extremely coolly, merely to say the tale was not true, and that there were no catechisms in the school, none being allowed to be taught there by the rules. I think it not unlikely that the tale may have originated with the priests themselves. They do not like my school, they do not like the knowledge the children gain there, nor the attachment they feel for me. They are beginning to find their power shaking, and they are trying desperate plans to retain it. How difficult it is to do good here. Much can’t be done in this generation.
19. Finished six shifts and six nightcaps and sent them to Mr. Foster for the six old women on the Church list and have determined on endeavouring to alter the arrangement concerning the charity money. At present it is given in single shillings to any of them who beg hard or on the first Sunday in the month they each get three or four. They are all in rags, all starving, lodge where they can, and spend this money on the people who let them in and in tea, snuff, etc. I will myself give no money to be so misapplied, and as our Vicar takes no sort of trouble with his parish nor any one else, as I have the Curate’s ear, I’ll try and do what good I can, and for a beginning give them all linen instead of putting a sum of money in the Box on Christmas day. Went to Peggy Nary, who is much in want of Christmas comforts. She is Hal’s pensioner, but I look after her for him, and before many days she will be very comfortable.
25. Christmas day. What a pity—I forgot teetotalism when I mixed the puddings, and not one of the outside men would taste them. Now when those unruly people have such self-command where they think it a sin to yield to temptation, is it not plain that properly educated they would be a fine and a moral race, almost equally plain that those thousand crimes they do commit they have not been taught to consider sins.
26. A regular réveillée—The Wren—under our windows. What can have been the origin of this strange custom? It is St. Stephen’s day—the first martyr, who was stoned to death—and what has a little harmless bird to do with that? They hunt the poor little thing to death, then set it on a pole, fix a kind of bower round it, and then carry it all over the country with musick and dancing and all of them dressed up with all the rags and ribbons and bits of coloured paper they can collect. This morning there were no young women of the party as there used to be. Maybe they don’t find it merry enough now that whiskey a’n’t in fashion.
A visit from Mr. Moore and chatting on from one subject to another, he and I got quite confidential; he lamented his dereliction of duty, said he was firmly resolved to ‘turn over
