CHAPTER IV.

FACTS FROM GWEEDORE-M'KYE'S INVENTORY-GOING TO BED- - HOUSES IN DONEGAL A SCHOOLMASTER AT HOME-A GUTTER SAMARITAN-ANECDOTES-A HARROWING SPECTACLE

COMPARISON OF ANCIENT AND PRESENT STATE OF CABINS-ENGLISH SETTLERS SET

TLED-WELSH SETTLERS

CONCLUSION.

I SHALL conclude with a short notice of a very pleasant little pamphlet entitled "Facts from Gweedore," compiled from the notes of Lord George Hill, who some years ago purchased a considerable property in the wildest part of Donegal - a tract of country that had been all but worthless to all former proprietors, from the difficulty and almost impossibility of collecting rents-where the tenants fixed their own rents and paid when they pleased, some being in arrear twenty years - where a landlord or his agent were afraid to shew their faces, and where, on one occasion, a sheriff's officer was escorted by a whole corps of yeo

manrywhere the people were huddled together in a state of inconceivable misery and filth, always on the borders of starvation, and where the subdivision of land had been carried to such an extent, that in one place half an acre was held by twenty-six tenants! - here Lord George settled down amongst his tenantry, built a store, opened a shop to supply the poor people with what they wanted, without the ruinous delay and expense of going twenty miles for the commonest article; and after numberless difficulties and opposition, completely succeeded in the object which he had in view; for the amusing and instructive details of which the reader is referred to the book.

Attention was first drawn to this forlorn district by a memorial, or petition, forwarded to the Lord Lieutenant by Patrick M'Kye, the master of the National School in the parish of Tullaghobegley, barony of Kilmacrennan, county of Donegal, and which found its way into the newspapers. In this very curious document the happy thought occurred to him to introduce an inventory of all the goods and chattels in the parish, and many which they had not; the latter being quite as instructive as the former. There is a serio-comic vein in

this petition (as in most things Irish) which is irresistible, and rendered the more touching by the earnestness of the man. The sensitive philanthropist, as he reads it, will hardly know whether to laugh or cry. I shall give a few extracts. This is the inventory of the effects of about 9000 people :

Seven forks amongst 9000 people is scanty; and especially if the stock of the priest, like himself, is included in the inventory. One of the feather beds would, most likely, belong to his reverence, and the other to Mr. Dombrain, leaving a trifle over a thousand occupants for each of the other beds. The most astonishing thing is, there were no pigs in the parish. But no coach! no boots and spurs! he might almost as well have said,-no powdered footmen, no pink champagne.

He proceeds with a little domestic scene:— "None of their either married or unmarried women can afford more than one shift, and the fewest number cannot afford any; and more than one-half of both men and women cannot afford shoes to their feet; nor can many of them afford a second bed, but whole families of sons and daughters of mature age indiscriminately lieing together with their parents, and all in the bare buff."

All things considered, it may be taken as a fortunate circumstance that there were only eight candlesticks in the parish.

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They have no means of harrowing their land but with meadow-rakes. Their farms are

so small, that from four to ten farms can be harrowed in a day with one rake.”

Farms! they were about the size of the bit of ground in front of a Camberwell villa.

We hate ourselves for laughing at his pathos. "Their children crying and fainting with hunger, and their parents weeping, being full of grief, hunger, debility, and dejection, with glooming aspect, looking at their children likely to expire in the jaws of starvation.”

We have seen the state in which they lay: these are the houses they lay in :

"Also man and beast housed together; i. e. the families in one end of the house and the cattle in the other end of the kitchen.

"Some houses having within its walls from one cwt. of dung, others having from ten to fifteen tons weight of dung, and only cleaned out once a-year!"

Not the least interesting part of the "Memorial" is the sketch of his own lucrative appointment as the "National" schoolmaster, modestly given in the third person.

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"I have also to add that the National School has greatly decreased in number of scholars, through hunger and extreme poverty;