Chapter IX (2)

Thus had the great Famine seized upon the four Provinces before the end of 1846; Munster and Connaught, however, enduring sufferings which, in their amount and terrible effects, were unknown to Leinster or Ulster. In the West, Mayo, up to this time, had suffered most, which, from its previously known state of destitution, was to be expected; in the South, Cork seems to have been the county most extensively and most fatally smitten. This, however, may not have been actually the case. Clare and Kerry suffered greatly from the very beginning, but their sufferings were not brought so prominently before the public as those of Cork. This county had many and faithful chroniclers of her wants and afflictions--a fact especially true of Skibbereen. That devoted town and its neighbourhood were amongst the earliest, if not the very earliest, of the famine-scourged districts; and their story was well and feelingly told by special correspondents, and, above all, by Dr. Donovan, the principal local physician, whose duties placed him in the midst of the sufferers. There can be no doubt that even at this comparatively early period of the famine, parts of Connaught, especially Mayo, suffered as much as Skibbereen, but the results were commonly told in briefer terms than in parts of the South. "More deaths from starvation in Mayo;" "Dreadful destitution in Mayo;" "Coroners' inquests in Mayo." Such are the headings of brief but suggestive paragraphs, during the latter part of November, and all through December. Many of the Mayo inquests may have been the occasion of more dreadful revelations than even those of Skibbereen, but they did not receive the same extensive and detailed publicity. Here are two or three starvation cases from that county. Patrick M'Loughlin, in the parish of Islandeady, was ordered by the Relief Committee a labour-ticket, in consequence of earnest representations as to his starving condition. He did not get the ticket for five days, he, his wife and five children not having a morsel of food in the interval. Having at length obtained the ticket, he produced it, and went to labour on the Public Works. He got no pay for the first three days, and in the meantime his wife died from actual starvation. Being unable to purchase the timber for a coffin in which to bury her, poor M'Loughlin held over the remains for upwards of forty-eight hours; but yet anxious to earn what would give her decent sepulture, and at the same time procure food for his children, he went each of the two days her remains were in his cabin to labour, and spent the night in sorrowing over his departed wife. At length the story came to the ears of the parochial clergy, one of whom immediately furnished the means of interment, and she was consigned to the grave _at night_, in order that the survivors might not lose the benefit of M'Loughlin's toil on the following day.[188] Bridget Joyce, a widow with four children, was found dead in a little temporary building, which had been erected in a field to shelter sheep. One of the children was grown enough to give some attention to her dying mother, but had nothing to moisten her parched lips but a drop of water or a piece of snow. The woman died, and so poor were the people of the locality, that for want of a few boards to make a coffin, she remained uninterred for eight days. There is a melancholy peculiarity in the case of a young lad named Edmond M'Hale. When he had been a considerable time without food, he became, or seemed to become, delirious. As his death approached, he said from time to time to his mother--"Mother, give me three grains of corn." The afflicted woman regarded this partly as the mental wandering of her raving child, and partly as a sign of the starvation of which he was dying. She tried to soothe him with such loving words as mothers only know how to use. "_Astore_," she would say, "I have no corn yet awhile--wait till by-and-by;" "Sure if I had all the corn in the world I'd give it to you, _avour-neen_;" "You'll soon have plenty with the help of God." A neighbouring woman who was present at the touching scene searched the poor boy's pockets after he had died, and found in one of them three grains of corn, no doubt the very three grains for which, in his delirium, he was calling. Many of the deaths which happened are too revolting and too horrible to relate; no one could travel any considerable distance in Mayo at this period without meeting the famine-stricken dead by the roadside.

Still it would be hard to surpass Skibbereen in the intensity and variety of its famine horrors. Dr. Donovan, writing on the 2nd of December, says: Take one day's experience of a dispensary doctor. It is that of a day no further off than last Saturday--four days ago. He then proceeds with the diary of that day: his first case was that of Mrs. Hegarty, who applied to him for a subscription towards burying her husband and child; the doctor had not prescribed for them, and he asked why he had not been applied to; the answer was as in other cases--they had no disease, and he could be of no use to them. His second case was that of a boy named Sullivan, who came to him for some ointment for his father. This application was somewhat out of the usual course, ointment being a peculiarly useless thing as a remedy against famine. There was, however, need of it. The boy's grandmother had died of fever some days before, and his father and mother, with whom she had resided, took it from her. The neighbours were afraid to go into the fever-house, but some of them, kindly and charitably, left food outside the door, and candles to wake the corpse. The mother struggled out of bed to get the candles in order to light them. She succeeded in doing so, but from weakness she was unable to stand steadily, so she reeled and staggered towards where the corpse was laid out, and with the lighted candles set the winding sheet on fire: the thatch caught the flame; the cabin was burned down, and the parents of this miserable boy were rescued with the utmost difficulty. They got more or less burned, of course, and the ointment was therefore required for them. Having escaped death from fire, they almost suffered death from cold, as they were left four hours without the shelter of a roof on a bitter December day, all being afraid to admit them lest they should catch the contagion. The doctor's third case happened at midnight, being called on duty to the workhouse at that hour. It was about a mile from the town--something less perhaps. Halfway on his journey he found a man trying to raise a poor woman out of the dyke. He went to his assistance, and found the woman paralyzed with cold, and speechless. Locked in her arms, which were as rigid as bars of iron, was a dead child, whilst another with its tiny icy fingers was holding a death-grip of its mother's tattered garment. Her story was short and simple, which she was able to tell next day: she had made an effort to reach the workhouse, but sank exhausted where she was discovered.

After a while the effects of famine began to manifest themselves in the sufferers by a swelling of the extremities. Perhaps the severe cold caused this or increased it. However that may be, experience soon taught the people that this puffy unnatural swelling was a sure sign of approaching dissolution.

When the cold weather had fairly set in, it frequently happened that the straw which composed the bed, or the excuse for a bed, occupied by members of a family dying of fever or hunger, or both combined, was, piecemeal, drawn from under them and burned on the hearth to keep up a scanty fire. It was felt, we may presume, that the dying could not require it long, and those who had still some hopes of life were famishing as much from cold as from hunger. An eye-witness, describing such a family in Windmill-lane, Skibbereen, one of whom had already died, thus writes: "The only article that covered the nakedness of the family, that screened them from the cold, was a piece of coarse packing stuff, which lay extended alike over the bodies of the living and the corpse of the dead; which seemed as the only defence of the dying, and the winding sheet of the dead!" The same writer says: "In this town have I witnessed to-day, men--fathers, carrying perhaps their only child to its last home, its remains enclosed in a few deal boards patched together; I have seen them, on this day, in three or four instances, carrying those coffins under their arms or upon their shoulders, without a single individual in attendance upon them; without mourner or ceremony--without wailing or lamentation. The people in the street, the labourers congregated in town, regarded the spectacle without surprise; they looked on with indifference, because it was of hourly occurrence.[189]

The statements in the public journals about the effects of the famine in and about Skibbereen were so new and appalling that many people thought them greatly exaggerated. Finding this feeling to exist, and perhaps to some extent sharing in it, Mr. Cummins, a magistrate of Cork, proceeded to Skibbereen, to examine for himself the state of things there. He was not only convinced but horrified. He published the result of his visit in a letter to the Duke of Wellington, in which he begged that exalted personage to call the Queen's attention to the fearful sufferings of her people. Convinced that he was destined at least, to witness scenes of real hunger and starvation, Mr. Cummins informs us that he took with him as much bread as five men could carry. He began his inquiries at a place called South Reen, in the parish of Myross, near Skibbereen.[190] Being arrived at the spot, he was surprised to find the wretched hamlet apparently deserted. There was no external appearance of life--silence reigned around. On entering some of the cabins he soon discovered the cause. He was at once confronted with specimens of misery, which, he says, no tongue or pen could give the slightest idea of. In the first cabin he entered he found six famished, ghastly skeletons, to all appearance dead, huddled in a corner on a little filthy straw, their sole covering being what seemed a piece of ragged horsecloth; their miserable shriveled limbs were hanging about as if they did not belong to their bodies. He approached them in breathless horror, and found by a slow whining moan that they were alive--four children, a woman, and what had once been a man--all in fever. Mr. Cummins met other cases as fearful, more especially one similar to that described by the writer quoted above, where a corpse was lying amongst the surviving members of the family, sharing their straw bed and their scanty covering.

At a meeting of the Killarney Relief Committee, the Earl of Kenmare being in the chair, the parish priest, the Rev. B. O'Connor, made a statement, which, except as an illustration of the unprecedented misery to which the people had sunk, I would hesitate to reproduce. He said: "A man employed on the public works became sick. His wife had an infant at her breast. His son, who was fifteen years of age, was put in his place upon the works. The infant at the mother's breast," said the rev. gentleman, amid the sensation of the meeting, "_had to be removed_, in order that this boy might receive sustenance from his mother, to enable him to remain at work." Another poor woman, the mother of eight children, when dying of want, was attended by the Rev. Mr. O'Connor. She made her last request to him in these words: "O Father O'Connor, won't you interfere to have my husband get work, before the children die."

"In December, 1846, matters seemed to have come to a climax, and on the evening of the 24th [Christmas Eve] I witnessed a scene which scarcely admits of description. On that day a board was held at the Workhouse, for the admittance of paupers. The claims of the applicants were, in many cases, inquired into, but after some time the applicants became so numerous, that any attempt to investigate the different cases was quite useless, and an order was then given by the members of the Board present, to admit all paupers, and at least to give them shelter, as but little food was to be had. I shall never forget the scene which I that night witnessed: mothers striving, by the heat of their own persons, to preserve the lives of their little ones; women stretching out their fleshless arms, imploring for food and shelter; old men tottering to the destination where they were to receive shelter. The odour from the clothes and persons of those poor people was dreadfully offensive, and the absence of active complaints clearly showed that in many the hope of restoration was not to be expected. On my visiting this scene next morning, eleven human beings were dead."[191]

Some twenty years after the famine-scourge had passed away, and over two millions of the Irish people with it, I visited Skibbereen. Approaching the town from the Cork side, it looks rather an important place. It is the seat of the Catholic bishop of Ross, and attention is immediately arrested by a group of fine ecclesiastical buildings, on an elevated plateau to the left, just beside the road, or street, I should rather say, for those buildings are the beginning of the town; they consist of a cathedral and a convent, with very commodious schools, and a pretty gothic chapel. On the other side of the way is the schoolhouse, in shade of which the military were concealed on the day the Caharagh labourers invaded Skibbereen. A short distance beyond the town, the wooded hill of Knockomagh, rising to a considerable height, overhangs Lough Hyne, one of the most beautiful spots in Ireland. Some miles to the westward lies the pretty island of Sherkin, which with Tullough to the east, makes the charming little bay of Baltimore completely landlocked. Out in front of all, like a giant sentinel, stands the island of Cape Clear, breasting with its defiant strength that vast ocean whose waves foam around it, lashing its shores, and rushing up its crannied bluffs, still and for ever to be flung back in shattered spray by those bold and rocky headlands. The town of Skibbereen consists chiefly of one long main street, divided into several, by different names. This street is like a horse-shoe, or rather a boomerang, in shape. Coming to the curve and turning up the second half of the boomerang, we are almost immediately in Bridge-street, a name well known in the famine time; not for anything very peculiar to itself, but because it leads directly to the suburb known as Bridgetown, in which the poorest inhabitants resided, and where the famine revelled--hideous, appalling, and triumphant. Bridgetown is changed now. In 1846 it contained a large population, being not much less than half a mile in length, with a row of thatched houses on each side; when the Famine slaughtered the population, those houses were left tenantless in great numbers, and there being none to reoccupy them, they fell into ruins and were never rebuilt. Hence instead of a continuous line of dwellings at either side, as of old, Bridgetown now presents only detached blocks of three or four or half-a-dozen cabins here and there. Coming towards the end of it, by a gradual ascent, I accosted a man who was standing at the door of his humble dwelling: "I suppose you are old enough," I said to him, "to remember the great Famine?" "Oh! indeed I am, sir," he replied, with an expressive shake of his head. "Were there more people in Bridgetown and Skibbereen at that time than now?" "Ay, indeed," he replied, "I suppose more than twice as many." "And where did they all live--I see no houses where they could have lived?" "God bless you, sure Bridgetown was twice as big that time as it is now; the half of it was knocked or fell down, when there were no people to live in the houses. Besides, great numbers lived out in the country, all round about here. Come here," he said, earnestly; and we ascended the road a little space. "Do you see all that country, sir?" and he pointed towards the north and west of the town. "I do." "Well, it was all belonging to farmers, and it was full of farmers' houses before the famine; now you see there are only a couple of gentlemen's places on the whole of it. The poor all died, and of course their houses were thrown down." "And where were they all buried," I enquired. "Well, sir," he replied, "some of them were buried in the old chapel yard, near the windmill; a power of them were buried in Abbeystrowry, just out there a bit, where you are going to, but--" he suddenly added, as if correcting himself--"sure they were buried everywhere--at the Workhouse over--in the cabins where they died--everywhere; there was no way, you see, to bring them all to Abbeystrowry, but still there were a power of them, sure enough, brought to it."

My informant was quite right about my going to Abbeystrowry. I had already enquired the way to it, and had learned that it was half-a-mile or so beyond Bridgetown. I wished my interesting informant good evening, and pursued my walk. Coming to the highest point of the road beyond Bridgetown, a very charming landscape opened before me, made up of the Valley of the Ilen and the agreeably undulating country beyond it. The river at this place is wide and shallow; but, judging from the noble bridge by which it is spanned, it must be sometimes greatly swollen. The evening was bright and pleasant; the sun had gone far westward, and the effect of his light, as it played on the scarcely rippled water, and shone through the high empty arches of the bridge, standing like open gateways in the shallow stream, made me pause for a moment, to take in the whole scene. It was during this time that I discovered, immediately beyond the river, the object of greatest interest to me--the object, in fact, of my journey--the churchyard of Abbeystrowry. There was the spot in which a generation of the people of Skibbereen was buried in a year and a half! Those places in which poor humanity is laid to rest when life's work is done have been always regarded as holy ground; cities of the dead, solemn and suggestive. But this was more; in its lonely seclusion, in its dark and terrible history, it was exciting in its impressiveness. In the still sunlit evening, wooed to rest, one could imagine, by the gentle murmurs of the Ilen, its little clump of gnarled trees grouped around its scanty ruin was a picture of such complete repose as to make the most thoughtless reflective. I entered. Immediately inside the gate, a little to the right, are those monster graves called by the people "the pits," into which the dead were thrown coffinless in hundreds, without mourning or ceremony--hurried away by stealth, frequently at the dead of night, to elude observation, and to enable the survivors to attend the public works next day, and thus prolong for awhile their unequal contest with all-conquering Famine. A difficulty arose in my mind with regard to the manner of interment in those pits. Great numbers, I knew, were interred in each of them; for which reason they must have been kept open a considerable time. Yet, surely, I reflected, something resembling interment must have taken place on the arrival of each corpse, especially as it was coffinless. The contrivance, as I afterwards learned, was simple enough. A little sawdust was sprinkled over each corpse, on being laid in the pit, which was thus kept open until it had received its full complement of tenants.

To trace one's steps, slowly and respectfully, among the graves of those who have reached the goal of life in the ordinary course, fills one with holy warnings; to stand beside the monument raised on the battle-field to the brave men who fell there, calls up heroic echoes in the heart, but here there is no room for sentiment; here, in humiliation and sorrow, not unmixed with indignation, one is driven to exclaim:--

O God! that bread should be so dear,
And human flesh so cheap.

Although thus cast down by earthly feelings, divine Faith raises one up again. Divine Faith! the noblest and brightest, and holiest gift of God to man; always teaching us to look heavenward--_Excelsior_ in its theme for ever. And who can doubt but the God of all consolation and mercy received the souls of his famine-slain poor into that kingdom of glory where He dwells, and which He had purchased for them at so great a price. Even in their imperfections and sins, they were like to Him in many ways; they were poor, they were despised, they had not whereon to lay their head; they were long-suffering, too; in the deepest pangs which they had suffered from hunger and burning thirst (the last and most terrible effect of hunger), they cursed not, they reviled not; they only yearned for the consolations of their holy religion, and looked hopefully to Him for a better world. It is one of the sweetest consolations taught us by holy Faith that the bones now withered and nameless in those famine pits, where they were laid in their shroudless misery, shall one day, touched by His Almighty power, be reunited to those happy souls, in a union that can know no end, and can feel no sorrow.

FOOTNOTES:

[174] "It cannot be too strongly lamented, the opportunity which has been lost for the present, of adopting reproductive employment; but it is not now a question of productive or non-productive employment, it is a question of life or death to those famishing and destitute, anxiously waiting for the means of procuring food.... A general and well-digested Drainage Bill, applicable to Ireland, cannot be hastily prepared; if so it may be again a nugatory one, and it is _some great_ measure, and _great_ expenditure for some years to come, under a Drainage and reclaiming of waste lands Bill, that is to be of permanent and effectual relief to this impoverished country."--_Mr. Lambert of Brookhill's letter to the Lord Lieutenant, October 4th_.

[175] Irish Crisis, p. 68.

[176] If the word of a Scotch farmer may be accepted, this seems a great exaggeration. Mr. Hope, of Fentonbarn, at the monthly meeting of the Haddington Farmers' Club, said, lately: "It was only _after_ the great disaster of 1845 that potatoes began to be grown to any extent in Scotland."--_Irish Farmers' Gazette for 16th Nov., 1872, p. 399_. But Lord John was only too glad to praise the Scotch at our expense.

[177] Some time ago, an English gentleman, who is an Irish landlord, and one in no bad repute either, was told that, for reasons detailed to him, he ought not to continue a certain agent in his employment: he answered--"I do not care for all that--he gets me my rent."

[178] See Inquest on Jeremiah Hegarty, p. 263.

[179] This view differs considerably from that put forward in the Memorial of the 25th of the previous month, in which the Society tells his Excellency, "that, from their experience as the Royal Agricultural Improvement Society of Ireland, they are confident that every part of this country affords the opportunity of at once employing the rural population in the improvement of the soil, and of returning to the ratepayers a large interest for the capital expended, and thus providing an increased quantity of food and certain employment for the working classes in future years."

[180] Letter to Edward Bullen, Esq., Secretary to the Royal Agricultural Society.

[181] A _weight_ of potatoes in the South of Ireland varied from 21 to 23lbs.

[182] _Times_ of 13th November.

[183] See pp. 214 and 215.

[184] A driver or bailiff is a man employed by Irish landlords to warn tenants of the rent day, serve notices upon them, watch their movements, see how they manage their farms, play the detective in a general way, and supply useful information to the landlord and his agent. They are regarded with pretty much the same feelings as tithe-proctors were, until that historic class became extinct. They are called drivers by the people, because one of their duties is to drive tenants' cattle off their lands, that they may be sold for the rent. When a peasant wishes to speak politely of this functionary he calls him "a kind of under agent." "There are many parts of Ireland in which a _driver_ and a _process-server_--the former a man whose profession it is to seize the cattle of a tenant whose rent is in arrear, the latter an agent for the purpose of ejecting him--form regular parts of the landlord's establishment. There are some in which the driver, whether employed or not, receives an annual payment from every tenant." _Journals, Conversations and Essays relating to Ireland. By Nassau William Senior, Second Edition, vol. 1, p. 33._

[185] An Irish word, so given in the report, but more correctly _Creacan_ or _Criocan_. It is used to express anything diminutive, when applied to potatoes, it means they are small and bad.

[186] Letter of Rev. B. Durcan, P.P., Swinford, Nov. 16, 1846.

[187] The Windmill is a bare rock, or collection of rocks, which is used as a Fair-field. It overlooks the town. It derives its name from the fact that a windmill had been formerly in use there. Hence, several lanes leading to it are called Windmill Lane.--_Letter from Rev. C. Davis, Administrator of Skibbereen_.

[188] Letter of Rev. K. Henry, P.P., Islandeady.

[189] Special Correspondent of _Cork Examiner_, writing from Skibbereen, 14th December, 1846.

[190] The first case of death, clearly established, as arising from starvation, occurred at South Reen, five miles from the town of Skibbereen. The case having been reported to me, as a member of the Relief Committee, I procured the attendance of Dr. Dore, and proceeded to the house where the body lay. The scene which presented itself will never be forgotten by me. The body was resting on a basket which had been turned up; the head reclined on an old chair; the legs were on the ground. All was wretchedness around. The wife, miserable and emaciated, was unable to move, and four children, more like spectres than living beings, were lying near the fire place, in which, apparently, there had not been a fire for some time. The doctor, of course, at once communicated with the Committee."--_Letter of Mr. M'Carthy Downing, M.P., to the Author._

[191] MS. Memoir of his famine experiences, by Dr. Donovan. "Up to this morning, I, like a large portion, I fear, of the community hooked on the diaries of Dr. Donovan, as published in _The Cork Southern Reporter_, to be highly coloured pictures, doubtless intended for a good and humane purpose; but I can now, with perfect confidence, say that neither pen nor pencil ever could pourtray the misery and horror, at this moment, to be witnessed in Skibbereen." _Mr. Mahony, the artist of the Illustrated London News, in his letter from Skibbereen to that journal, Feb. 13, 1847, p. 100._