The Highland Lady In Ireland. Elizabeth Grant
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hope to replace him. The whole house is weeping.
31. The last day of October—upon the whole a very harassing month to me. We were too prosperous, all was going on too brightly with us, we needed some little check to keep us in mind that we are but pilgrims and sojourners here below and can’t expect always to travel in pleasant places or in sunny weather. I hope, and I firmly believe, that the worst is over.
MONDAY NOVEMBER 2. I am no worldly mother, dear children, I wish for no splendour for any of you. If my two dear girls marry men of worth with a profession which their talents and industry will enable them to live comfortably by and to leave their children in the same station they hold themselves, it is all that I desire. A small establishment, some years of strict economy, would be no objections with me, but I think we owe it to our parents and to our children not to sink them below their birth, which we most certainly do when we cannot educate them for and in that rank in society they have a right to join.
3. Old Lord Seafield dead26 my Chief—puffed off in the papers as a noble Earl, which indeed he was, but it was a dignity he and his family and his race and his people think very secondary indeed to his being the head of the Clan Grant. In my young days, at least, and in our part of the Highlands the clannish feeling was as ardent as ever it could have been, though they tell me it is wearing out like other good old things that don’t seem to me to be replaced by better.
7. Hal rode and I walked, and then came the butcher with a quarter of beef and a poor man with a quarter of veal, which he had overbled and had to kill. I remember thinking it very disagreeable in your grandpapa, children, my dear father, that he made me, when I had grown up, attend the cutting up of the meat. The sight of so much raw flesh and the smell made me nearly sick at first, and I thought I should never learn the names of the pieces, nor understand where to look for them all. ‘If you don’t marry a rich man,’ said Grandpapa, ‘you will thank me for this.’ ‘Even if she do,’ said Grandmama. ‘she will not be the worse for her servants knowing she understands her business.’ I was a foolish little girl in some things. I used to faint when I saw blood, so Grandpapa made me attend the Doctor whenever he had to bleed any one, and very soon I could hold the cups and even assist him in many surgical operations. It is mere selfishness prevents women being thus useful. Nature intends them for nurses, and if they thought more of the sufferings they could relieve than of the unpleasantness to themselves, they would soon lose their nervousness.
8. Jane Cooper quite shocked at my family troubles. Caroline requiring more rubbing in consequence of disobeying the Doctor’s injunction—little naughty girl, one would have thought her seven weeks’ penance would have frightened her. And Mary Byrne needing several more ablutions before she will be free from a swarm of very unpleasant companions. Decent and clean as she looks with a neat bonnet and shawl and two tidy gowns, she has but one shift—one petticoat—so she must wash, and I must lay out her money for her in Linen if she is to stay here. Absentees, you ought to be at home instructing these poor savages.
Father Matthew to preach at Black Ditches to-day. Such crowds already on the road, the hill and the bridge swarming. All the country will be there; and no one before him ever did so much good to it, already rags are disappearing, the people are looking fat, clear, clean and more cheerful. In Blesinton, where I know every second house once sold whiskey, there are not above three in the whole town now where it is to be had. Coffee, tea and bread to be had in the teetotal shops instead, and on a market day quantities of meat bought. Drinking was the curse of the country, it is by no means so poverty stricken as it looked. The means of the people for the most part were fully adequate to their comfort, but they wasted in riot what would have supported 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