Chapter IX: A Kerry Farmer’s Budget

“I wonder how landlords can manage to live, under such conditions,” I said to my guide. “Are there any tenants left paying their rent?”

“There are many. First, those who have been able to come to an agreement with their landlord about the reduction of 20, 25, 30 per cent. that they claimed; in such cases the landlord’s income is reduced, but at least he still retains a part of it. Then, there is the tenant’s live stock; he cannot prevent its being seized for rent, in case of execution, and consequently chooses to pay, if possible, or he would have to sell his cattle to avoid distress, which means ruin to the family. Lastly, there are the tenants who pay secretly, although pretending to adhere to the rules of the League—_backsliders_ they are called—a class more numerous than could be supposed at first sight.”

Here MacMahon laughed. He went on:

“I will tell you, Sir, a story I have heard lately, of a man in county Cork, who wanted to pay his landlord but dared not, on account of the other tenants on the estate. Coming across the landlord on a lone road (not improbably after many an unfruitful attempt for such a propitious opportunity) he stood before him in a threatening attitude. ‘Put your hand in my coat’s inside pocket!’ he said gruffly. The landlord did not understand at first what the man meant, and considering his look and address, was far from feeling reassured. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked uneasily. ‘I tell you, sir, put your hand in my coat’s inside pocket, and feel for what you find in it.’ At last the landlord did as he was bidden. He put his hand in the man’s pocket, and extracted from it a bundle of papers, carefully tied up, that looked like banknotes. At once the tenant took to his heels. ‘The devil a penny of rent you can ever say I paid you,’ said he, in the same strange threatening tone of voice, as he ran away. Still, the banknotes in the landlord’s hand were exactly to the amount of the rent due. As a rule, when the tenant is really able to pay his rent, he pays it.”

Such has not been the general case, it seems, for the last three years. _In produce_, perhaps the Irish farmer might have paid his rent, as the crops have been, on the whole, fairly up to the average. In _money_, he cannot, because the fall of prices on hay, potatoes, beef, mutton, pork, and butter alike, in 1885, 1886, 1887, has been at least 20 per cent. on the former and average prices, which not only means no margin whatever of profit to the farmer, besides his necessary expenses, but in most cases the sheer impossibility of providing for the forthcoming outlay in seeds, manure, and labour.

This may not be self-evident. Many a reader probably fails to see why a fall of 20 per cent. on the prices of agricultural produce must necessarily entail a total disability to pay the rent. “I can well understand the demand of a proportional reduction of rent in such cases,” he will say, “but not absolute non-payment.” To fully realise the situation, one must go into the details of a farmer’s life.

Let us take the case of Denis O’Leary, a Kerry man, with fourteen acres of good land. He seems to be in easy circumstances; his house is clean and pretty; he owns three cows, two sows, ten sheep, and about a score hens. Denis O’Leary is a good man, industrious and thrifty, who does all the work on his farm, with the help of wife and three children. He likes his pipe of tobacco, and on Sundays, a glass of beer over the counter with a friend or two, but otherwise indulges in no expensive habits. On the whole he can be considered a pattern tenant, as well as one of the most fortunate of his class. His rent, which had been gradually raised by his landlord up to the sum of £11 6_s._, was in 1883 put down at £8 7_s._ by the Land Commissioners.

Such being the case, when we are told that the same Denis O’Leary, who was for five years able to pay the larger rent, is now unable to pay the smaller one, this may look absurd. Still, it is the simple truth. To ascertain the fact, it is only necessary to make the budget of the O’Leary family.

The yearly expenditure, unavoidable and irreducible, is as follows:—

EXPENDITURE.

£ _s._
Taxes, rates, and county cess 1 15
Turf (Royalty on) 1 10
Clothing and shoes 6 10
Meat 2 15
Bread 6 18
Beer and tobacco 2 5
Oil, candles, sundries 2 15
Sugar and tea 6 5
School fees 0 7
Church subscription 0 10
------
Total 31 10

Most assuredly there is nothing excessive in such a budget of expenditure for a family of four. If even it is possible for Denis O’Leary not to go beyond its narrow limits, it is because he consumes in kind a large proportion of the produce of his fourteen acres, namely, some hundred stones of potatoes, with a good deal of milk, eggs, and butter. This alimentary deduction duly made, he has still a certain quantity of agricultural produce (which shall be supposed here a constant quantity) to sell, as follows:—

1800 lbs. Potatoes.
2200 ” Wheat.
1750 ” Oats.
38 ” Wool.
116 ” Butter.
1000 ” Straw.
25 dozen Eggs.
3 Pigs.
2 Calves.
3 Lambs.

The above commodities have not, unfortunately, a constant value. They sell more or less, according to the fluctuations of prices on the market. In 1882, 1883, 1884, prices were high. Denis O’Leary’s revenue was consequently as under:—

REVENUE (THREE YEARS AGO).

£ _s._
Sold: 1800 lbs. Potatoes 3 8
2200 ” Wheat 9 0
1750 ” Oats 6 4
38 ” Wool 1 15
116 ” Butter 5 7
1000 ” Straw; 1 5
25 dozen Eggs 1 2
3 Pigs 5 10
2 Calves 6 15
3 Lambs 3 5
------
Total 43 11

When Denis O’Leary had deducted from his revenue of £43 11_s._ the yearly expenditure of £31 10_s._, he had still £12 1_s._ left. He was able, accordingly, to pay £8 _7s._ rent (or even £11 6_s._ before the judicial reduction), and the rent duly paid, he was still the proud nett gainer of four shillings under the old _régime_, of £3 14_s._ under the new.

Unhappily, prices fell down in 1885, 1886, and 1887, to the tune of 25 or 30 per cent. on nearly all agricultural produce, with the exception perhaps of oats and eggs, so that the revenue of the O’Leary family (all things otherwise equal) has come to be as under:—

REVENUE (AT PRESENT).

£ _s._
Sold: 1800 lbs. Potatoes 2 8
2200 ” Wheat 7 0
1750 ” Oats 6 2
38 ” Wool 1 5
116 ” Butter 3 12
1000 ” Straw 0 15
25 dozen Eggs 1 5
3 Pigs 3 4
2 Calves 4 8
3 Lambs 2 10
------
Total 32 9

Thus, the revenue and expenditure are nearly equal, with a slight balance of nineteen shillings, that could hardly be proffered for rent. Local usurers are not wanting, of course, who will advance to Denis O’Leary the necessary funds, at 10 or 15 per cent., if he wants to pay the landlord, all the same. But then his budget is no more in a state of equilibrium: deficit enters it, to widen every year up to the final catastrophe. In other words, Denis O’Leary cannot pay the rent, unless he draws on his capital. One may well understand that he should not relish the idea, considering especially that the landlord’s rack-rent has been reduced three years ago in the Land Court, and that the same landlord demurs to a fresh reduction, so obviously just and necessary that all landlords in England have granted it of their own free will these last three years.

And Denis O’Leary is a wonder in his class: he is an industrious, hard-working, wise man, without a penny of previous debt. He has precisely the area of land adequate to his means, and the live-stock indispensable to manure the soil. He does not drink, he does not gamble, he is never ill, he has no old people to support, he has not experienced failures or mishaps of any kind, and his crops are fairly up to the average.

Let us come back, however, to the world as it is, and see Man with his foibles, his usual neglects, errors, and mishaps. Let us suppose that he has more land on his hands than he can well manage to till, or that his holding, on the contrary, is too small for his wants. Let us suppose that instead of selling three pigs and two calves, he was not able to rear them, or lost them from disease; that instead of bringing to market 1,800 lbs. of potatoes he had to buy some hundred-weight of the same for domestic consumption—the man is lost, irretrievably lost. Not only will he never be able to pay the landlord one farthing, but it will be enough that the crops should be slightly under the average to make a hopeless beggar of him—a case of outdoor or indoor relief for the parish.

Now, these are the circumstances of six or seven tenants out of ten in the lowlands of Kerry, where they seem to be comparatively well off. If we leave the plains for the higher districts bordering on the sea, the question is simpler still. There is no need of long accounts here. The hour of irretrievable misery has struck long ago, and habitual hunger stares us in the face.

* * * * *

UP IN THE MOUNTAINS.

The mountains of Kerry are the finest in the island. They form its south-western angle, throwing out on the Atlantic the peninsula of Dingle, between the bay of the same name and the Kenmare River. As you leave the plain following the Cahirciveen road towards the coast, you see them develop their parallel ranges, which are divided by deep valleys. Some of these valleys are fertile, being watered by impetuous streams from the mountain side. But the general impression one receives is that of agricultural poverty, as is the case in nearly all mountainous countries in the world. Pastures are thinner, cattle less numerous, homesteads fewer and more miserable than in the plain. Human creatures themselves partake of the general look of wretchedness that prevails. They live on potatoes, milk, and porridge; seldom eat bread, meat never; wine, beer, tea, coffee are to them unknown luxuries. Their ill-shaped cottages are made of soft stone, with a thatched roof maintained by ropes made of straw. There they all sleep on a bed of rushes, which they share with the pig, when there is such a thing, for even the traditional pig has become now a symptom of wealth in a manner. On the beams of the roof roost perhaps half-a-dozen hens and chickens.

Sloth and dirt hold here an undivided sway. Not a woman—and some are pretty—seems to mind the spots and holes in her garments; not one knows the use of soap or needle. They appear to have a rooted dislike for the comb; their hair falls on their back as is the fashion among the Australian aborigines, in nature’s simple disorder.

Men look heavy and apathetic. They work as little as they can manage—one or two days out of seven, perhaps—and do not even think of seeking their sustenance from the sea, which is so close to them. The most they can do is to draw from it now and then a cart-load of seaweed to manure their miserable plot of ground. Their existence rolls on dull, idle, devoid of interest. It is the brute life in its most wretched and hideous state. Here is old Ireland as Gustave de Beaumont’s admirable book showed it to us fifty years ago. Hardly do those wretched products of Anglo-Saxon civilization receive a faint echo of the outer world when the electoral time comes.

The consequence is that the agrarian crisis is reduced here to its simplest expression, _i.e._, sheer impossibility to pay the rent because of total absence of the £ _s._ _d._ wherewith. Elsewhere that impossibility may be half assumed; it is certainly mixed in the plain with bad will, goaded in the peasant’s heart by that dogged desire to possess the land which is so natural in him. In the mountain it is not a political fiction that holds the sway: famine is the king; and it is the spontaneous product of the very nature of things.

For the naturally infertile soil has reached here to such a degree of subdivision that it is no longer sufficient even to feed those it bears. The greater part of those wretched holdings of five or six acres are let at the nominal price of about £4, to which must be added the taxes, poor-rates, and county-cess, increasing it by a quarter or a third. Four, five, six, sometimes ten or twelve beings with human faces squat on that bit of worthless ground and till it in the most primitive manner. Money, tools, intelligence, pluck, all are wanting there. Viewing things in the most optimist light, supposing the year to have been an exceptionally good one, the potato crop to have been plentiful, the cow to have hunted out on the hill-side the necessary grass for the making of a little butter, all that will be sufficient perhaps to prevent starvation. But where will the money be found to pay Queen and landlord?

Let a child or an old person eat ever so little in the year, his food cannot but represent a value. Let that value be £4. Can six acres of mountain ground managed without skill or manure, render five, six, ten times £4 a year, and a rent in addition of five to six pounds? It is sheer impossibility.

A few examples.

James Garey, fifty years old, married, four children. Nominal rent £5 14_s._ Two cows, one pig, eight chickens. About six acres of land. Cultivates only part of it, about three acres, where he grows potatoes; the remainder is pasture. Sold this year thirty shillings’ worth of butter; ate his potatoes from first to last; has not paid a farthing to his landlord for the last four years. Owes £6 to the draper-grocer; would never be able to pay his taxes if two of his children, who are out in domestic situations, did not send him the necessary amount to prevent execution.

Widow Bridget Molony, sixty years old; five children; seven acres of land. Nominal rent £6 12_s._ Four cows, an eighteen-month-old calf, two pigs, twenty chickens. Sold £3 10_s._ of butter this year, £2 oats, 15 shillings potatoes, and a pig for £3; just sent a calf to market, offering it for £1 15_s._; did not find purchaser. Thinks herself relatively lucky, as she is owing only two years’ rent to her landlord. Two of her children have situations at Liverpool, and help her to pay the taxes.

Thomas Halloran, forty years. Three children, eight acres of land; rent £6 15_s._ Two cows, fifteen sheep, a pig, an ass, twelve chickens. Sold during the year ten shillingsworth of butter and ten sheep at twelve shillings a head. Has paid nothing to landlord since November, 1884.

Michael Tuohy, seventy years old, three children, four grandchildren. Nine acres of land, £7 rent. A cow and five hens. Can no longer afford a pig. Sold only fifteen shillingsworth of butter this year, and had to get rid of two cows out of three to pay the ten per cent interest of a debt he has contracted with the National Bank. Owes four years’ rent to his landlord; hopes that his son, who has emigrated to the United States, will send him the money for the taxes; if the son doesn’t, he cannot see any way to save the last cow.

Examples of that description could be multiplied _ad infinitum_; they are, so to say, the rule in the mountainous districts, where the holdings are for the most part beneath £10 rent, and totally unequal even to sustain the farmer.

* * * * *

Glenbeigh, between Kilarglin and Cahirciveen. This place was the theatre of several deplorable scenes in January last, on Mr. R. Winn’s property. That property, very extensive, but consisting of poor, not to say totally barren land, was put down at £2000 on the valuation roll. The aforesaid rent not having been paid during four or five years, the owner was of course in very strait circumstances; he had to go to some Jews, who substituted themselves in his place, and undertook to enforce payment. But the extreme poverty of the tenants proved even stronger than the energetic tribe. In consequence of the gradual subdivision of the land, they had come to hold diminutive scraps of it such as could not even grow the potatoes sufficient for their sustenance. After various judicial skirmishes, the plain result of which was to establish the utter incapacity of the peasants to give a penny, the council of creditors resolved in the depth of winter to undertake a wholesale campaign of evictions. Seventy-nine writs of ejectment were issued, and soon after the under-sheriff, backed by a strong detachment of mounted constables, arrived to evict the wretched families.

The operations began at a certain Patrick Reardon’s, on a literally barren land, for which he was expected to pay £4 10_s._ a year. He was the father of eight children, but did not even possess a pig, not a pair of chickens. The furniture consisted of a bed, a rickety table and a kettle. Squatting on the ground with his whole family, according to the time-honoured custom, he waited for the executors of the law. Requested to pay, he answered that he possessed not one farthing; he was then informed that they were going to set fire to his cabin, in order to oblige him to evacuate the premises. The act soon followed the threat. A lighted match applied to the thatched roof, and in a few minutes the whole was in conflagration. All the neighbouring populations, who had run on to the scene of the tragedy, saluted the dreadful deed with hooting and execration.

The myrmidons of the law pursued nevertheless the execution of their mandate. They went next to the dwelling of another tenant, Thomas Burke, inscribed on the list of debtors for a sum of £20. He had five children, and, like the above-mentioned, not one farthing to offer to the creditors. Order was given to set fire to his roof, but it was found to be so damp that fire would not take; so they had to attack the walls with the crowbar and pick-axe. The miserable inmates appeared then to the eyes of the indignant crowd, half naked, wan, emaciated, and starved; and so heartrending was the scene that with difficulty the representative of the League (who had come there for that very purpose) prevented the mob from stoning the bailiffs to death.

Then came the turn of the third cottage. Two old men lived in it, Patrick and Thomas Diggin. The family of the former included ten persons; that of the latter, six. They owed a rent of £8, and had not a shilling between them all. Patrick’s wife, however, came forward, and declared she had just received £2 from her daughter, who was a servant in Belfast. Would they accept that, and stop the execution? The under-sheriff, whom the duties of his office oblige to back the bailiffs, urged them to accept the touching offer. They refused, and set fire to the roof. Then Patrick Diggin, an eighty-year-old man, was seen coming out of his home sobbing; he was followed by all his children and grandchildren. By an irresistible impulse of sympathy all crowd round him, offering what little they possess to the relief of that misery. The constables themselves, moved almost to tears, contribute their silver coin to the subscription which has been spontaneously organized. To carry the barbarous work further becomes an impossibility. The sheriff’s substitute gives the signal for departure, and the cavalcade follows amidst the derisive cries of the multitude.

All those poor people, except one family, have since been re-installed on their holdings, and are now at work on their farms—a strange evidence of the uselessness and cruelty of eviction, to make tenants pay who cannot.

* * * * *

VALENTIA ISLAND.

At Cahirciveen, I crossed the strait which divides the main land from the island of Valentia. This is the extreme point of the old continent, where the Transatlantic cables are placed. Good, honest, plucky fellows! what repose after the misery of Kerry! I am speaking of the fishermen of the island, a peculiar race who never ploughed any fields but those of the ocean. Every night they risk their lives on the giant billows, and earn their bread valiantly. They know nothing of sheep rot, potato disease, or landlordism; all they know is the management of their boats, the making and mending of their nets, and the art of making the deep yield food for their young. Strangers to the neighbouring world, they ignore even its language, and only talk the rude idiom of their ancestors, the Irish of the time of the O’Donoghue.

Noble fellows! I shall not soon forget the night I spent there watching them as they were fishing between the Skellings, two enormous rocks that rise like Gothic cathedrals, about twelve miles from Bray Head, and on which the waves are eternally breaking with a thundering noise. My guide had warned me against offering them money; it would offend them, he said, so I did not do it. I simply drank with them a glass of whisky when they prepared to go home towards daybreak, the stars still shining. And, comparing their happy courage with the distress of Kerry, I wished them from the bottom of my heart never to become acquainted with agriculture on small holdings, under an English landlord.