Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland by Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall
page 51 of 342 (14%)
hill or many cattle on the deserted farms. It is an awfully lonesome
place; desolation sits brooding among the broken-down walls. My guide, a
lonesome-looking man, enlivened our way by remarks like these: "This was
a widdy's house. She was a well-doin' body." "Here was a snug place.
See, there's the remains of a stone porch that they built to break off
the wind." "That was Jamie Doherty's, he that died on the road-side
after he was evicted. You see, nobody dare lift the latch or open the
door to any of the poor creatures that were put out."

And this has been done; human beings have died outside under the sky for
no crime, and this under the protection of English law. Many of these
people lost their reason, and are in the asylum at Letterkenny. Some are
still _coshering_ here and there among their charitable neighbors,
while many are bitter hearted exiles across the sea. After walking up
and down amid this pitiful desolation, and hearing many a heart-rending
incident connected with the eviction, a sudden squall of hail came on,
and we were obliged to take shelter on the lee side of a ruined wall
till it blew over. To while away the time one of the guides told me of a
local song made on the eviction, the refrain being, "Five hundred
thousand curses on cruel John Adair."

Across the Gartan Lake we could see from our partial shelter the point
to which Mr. Stewart wasted the people off his estate. Mr. Stewart's is
a handsome lonely place, but when one hears all these tales of
spoliation it prevents one from admiring a fine prospect. "He is dealing
kindly with the people now," said my guides, "whatever changed his heart
God knows."

The shower being over we returned to the house of the dummy. In our
absence dinner had been prepared for us. She had no plates, but the
DigitalOcean Referral Badge