FACTS FROM GWEEDORE.

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume IV, Issue 98, 23 September 1852, Page 3

FACTS FROM GWEEDORE.

(From Chamber's Edinburgh Journal.) In the county of Donegal, on the north-west coast of Ireland, is situated a wild mountain district called Gweedore, about which a pamphlet of ;i remarkable nature. from Unpen ol' I.onl George Hill, has lately nunc ils appearance. Hit' object ol tlie. publication is to satisfy a reasonable curiosity which has lieeii expressed hy his lordship's Irieiuls rrsperling a somewhat Quixotic attempt to improve an estate, or, more correclly sp.-ak-ing, to reclaim from wor.-e than a slate of nature a tract of country i f which he had become the'pnrrhaser. The nolile anchor's prodiiction boasts none of llie graces of polite literature; it is little else than a scries of facts treated plainly and statistically; lint on that account we like it all the lietler. Practical and to the point, it demonstrates, ill language not to be niisuii-der.-lood, what a new world Ireland might l>ccomr were ils landowners resolutely to address themselves to the task of improvement. 'i'hn account of I.onl George Hill's cll'orls, however, may lie iuspiriiiu.; in ol'.;er ipiarlers; and as his ' Pacts from Gwcedore' have as yet attracted little allenlion from the press, we propose to giw them as wide a publicity as may he possible through llic mediiiin of these pages. It will be necessary, in the firs! place, to describe llie condition of Gwcedore previous lo its change of owners. Gwcedore, which forms part of the parish of Tullaghohegly, extends to twenty-three thousand acres or> mountain-grazing and arable land, lip to ISoN, il belonged lo a number of proprietors, num.- of whom resided in the dislriel. The popidalion of the parish amounted lo abonl nine ihoiisa'id individuals, of whom a third were locair.l in Gwcedore. The Irish language \\a, mii\.-r------sallv spoken, and comparatively ii-w knew English. There docs not ;u>i lo have been any clergyman of lie- c;::--blished church within the district, '! iapeopje were all ltoinan Catholics, an.l hail a chapel and a priest. Ileside:, litis gentleiiien there was a school-master, on miserable pay, who'aught a few pupils; i kewise a coast-guard and constabulary force. And' here may be said to conclude the list of individuals above the condition of an ignorant, wretched, and lawless peasantry. Grazing of cattle and sheep, the f ;isii_ Nation of patches of land, lishing al certain seasons, and the illicit distillation of whisky formed the means of general siih-islence. Everything was on the rudest possible scale. There were no handicrafts, no inns, no shops; articles were purchased at a dear rale Iroin hawkers, and the produce of llie dislriit 'could be disposed of only al fairs or in distant towns. The slate of the roads was also deplorable. 'Even in the year wle-a the lord-lieutenant made his tour through those parts of Donegal, the leading to id v a • so broken up and intercepted by l-oggy sloughs (though in the middle ofsnmni-iv thai his excellency might not have bet n able to proceed along part of il, had il not been lor the ingenuity of a country fellow, who,

observing the (liflicnlly, with all the quickness and spirit of a rustic Haleigh ran to his cabin, whipt off ibe door, anil burning to his excellency's relief, laid il down before his horse's feci; by ibis device his lordship and stall" were enabled to proceed in coinlorl. As scon as they had passed ihe man immediately hoisted the door on his shoulder, tripped on nicrily before his excellency, until he saw it necessary lo lower il again ; and ilius lie accompanied the cavalcade, being, perhaps, not the least useful aliaclie to llie suite.' Tu Ihe same year in which the lord-lieu-tenant paid a vir.il lo Donegal, a memorial was presented to his excellency by l'atrick Al'Kve, teacher in (lie parish, showing the general state orall'airs. We transcribe it as a curiosity. 'Humbly showeth that the parishoners of this parish or West Tullaghobegly, in the barony of Kilmacreiinan, and Ihe conntv of Donegal, arc in the most needy, hungry, and naked condition of any people lhal ever came within the prerinds of my knowledge, although I have, travelled a pari of nine counties in Ireland, also a pari of England and Scotland, together with a part of fii ilish America; 1 have likewise perambulated 22,"J3 miles through seven of the I'niled States, anil never witnessed the tenth purl of such hunger, hardships, and nakedness. Now, my lord, if the causes which 1 now lav before your excellency were mil of very extraordinary importance, I would never presume that it should be laid before you. But I consider myself in duty bound by charity lo relieve distressed and hungry fellow-man ; although lam sorry to slate thai my charily cannot extend farther llian to explain lo the rich where hunger and hardships exist, in almost in the greatest degree that nature can endure. And which I shall endeavour lo explain in detail, with all the truth and accuracy in my power, and that without the leasl exaggeration, as follows: —All within the parish [!)0!!> in l.Sil]are as poor as I shall describe lliein. Thcv have among them no more than one cart, no wheel car, no coach or any other wheeled vehicle, one plough, sixteen harrows, eight saddles two pillions, eleven bridles, twenty shovels, thirty-two rakes, seven table-forks, ninelyIhrce chairs, two hundred ami forly-lhrcc stools, ten iron grapes, no swine, hogs, or pigs, twenty-seven geese, three turkeys, two feather beds, eight clialf beds, two stables, six cow-houses, one national.school, no other school, one priest, no other resident gentleman, no bonnet, no clock, three watches, eight brass candlesticks, no looking glasses above threepence in price, no boots, no spurs, no fruit-trees, no turnips, no parsnips, i:o carrots, no clover or auv other garden vegetables, but potatoes and cabbage, and not more than len square feet of glass in. windows in the whole, with the exception of the chapel, the school-house, the priests, house, Mr. Doinbrain's house, and the constabulary barrack. 'None of ihcir either married or unmarried women can afford more than one shift, and a few cannot afford any; more llian onehalf both of men aud women cannot afford shoes lo their lect, nor can many of iliem afford a second bed, but whole families of sons and daughters of mature age indiscriminately lying together with their parents. ' They have no means of harrowing their land but with meadow rakes. Their farms are so small, thai from four lo len farms can be harrowed in a day wilh one rake. 'Their beds are straw —grceu and diicd rushes or mountain bent: their bedclothes are either coarse sheets, or no sheets, and ragged filthy blankets. 'And worse iliau all thai I have mentioned there is a general prospect of starvation at lite present prevailing among them, and that originating from various causes; but the principal cause is a rot or failure of seed in the last year's crop, together wilh a scarcity of winter forage, in consequence of a long continuation of storm since October, last, iii* this pari of the country. ' i*o ilial they, the people, were tinder the lie: '■s.itv of culling down their potatoes and give litem lo their callle lo keep them alive. All these circumstances connected together, has brought hunger to reigou among ihem to that degree that the generality of the peasantry are on ihe small allowance of one meal n-day, and many families cannot afford more than one. meal in two days, and sometimes one meal in iliree days. Their children crying aud fainting with hunger, and their parents weeping, being full of grief, hunger, debility, ami dejection, wilh glooming aspect, looking at their children likely to expire in the jaws of starvation. Also, ill addition to nil, iheircalllo and sheep arc dying with hunger, ami their owners by hunger lo cat the llesh of such. (To be continued.l