by Mrs. Hoare [Mary Anne Hoare].
Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.1 #17 (24 Apr 1847).
Ireland—the Green Isle—our poor famine-stricken country!—it would be difficult to give an idea of her sorrows to those who do not witness them; but amply are they realized by those whose lot it is to sojourn in the midst of the perishing people. The peasantry, once so gay, so full of native fun and humour, that the phrase "a light-hearted Irishman" has become proverbial, now bowed down by famine and nakedness, gaunt and haggard, faint and spirit-worn, are but the shadows of their former selves. The food of the land is destroyed. These are words easily spoken, and perhaps excite no adequate idea of their fearful import; well is their significancy felt in our country. In a parish of the south-west, there was lately seen a fainting mother, bending her tottering steps towards the churchyard, and bearing in her arms two infants, one dead, the other scarcely alive. She laid them on the sod, while with her hands she scooped a shallow grave, and placed in it the little form which, a few days since, was drawing life and nourishment from her bosom. She uttered no cry, no word of sorrow, but calmly seated herself beside the open hollow that held the uncoffined limbs of her youngest born, and taking her last remaining child on her feeble knees, waited helpless and hopeless of succour till the moment when the gasping breath should cease, the convulsive sob be stilled, and Death, in his now kindly visiting, should come for ever to assuage the fierce pangs of hunger.
"I waited," she said, "to bury them both in one grave; I had nothing to give my darling, no strength to carry him away—better to stop and put him alongside his brother in the holy ground, than lay him down in the field for the rats to devour."
She survived her children but a day or two; her husband had died the week before by the side of the road where he was working. This is no isolated occurrence; while I write, such things, and worse if possible, are happening throughout our land.
Much has been done for our perishing people, much is doing still; and yet, in the remote districts, hundreds are dying; the columns of the local newspapers teem with incidents of horror, the least of which would in a work of fiction be deemed exaggerated. "Death from starvation" is now the usual finding at the wholesale coroners' inquests held in some places; for in the worst districts deaths are so numerous, that they excite neither surprise nor inquiry. "Death from starvation!" Let any one try to picture what it is. The darkly glowing pen of Dante has described it; but the horrors of his Ugolino's dungeon fade into nothingness before the every-day tragedies of our Irish cabins.
Hundreds, I have said, are dying; they would be thousands but for the liberality of our English brethren, who thus nobly silence the demagogue's senseless cry, and prove that the Saxon is Erin's best friend. Honour, too, to the Society of Friends! well do they merit their gentle name. Large has been their liberality, great and untiring their personal exertions. Their peaceful persevering industry, and laudable attachment to business, which have often drawn down the idle sneer of the proud and dissipated, now enable them to succour their fellow-creatures in the hour of need; while even the necessary calls of that business, and the wonted routine of that industry, are nobly disregarded when the voice of charity calls them to visit the hungry and naked in their dwellings.
In my own city, I know Quaker shopkeepers, who, at serious loss and inconvenience, leave their homes to visit remote districts, and dispense their society's bounty. Often may a nicely-brushed brown coat or a spotless dove-coloured dress be seen entering squalid abodes of wretchedness, where the filth and offensive odours would seem well-fitted to disgust those whose personal habits are the perfection of cleanliness and purity. But the spirit of Elizabeth Fry still survives amongst her gentle sisters, she "being dead, yet speaketh." The heroic benevolence which impelled her to travel like a ministering angel of mercy through the length and breadth of the land, may now be found throbbing in the bosom of many a fair Friend, who cheerfully denies herself all worldly luxuries that she may feed the hungry and clothe the naked.
From some of the touching incidents which have lately come to my knowledge, let me relate the following:—
Near the village of L—, in the south-west, there lived last year a widow named Sullivan, and her children. Her husband had been dead a year. He was a very honest industrious man, and possessed a small cabin and potato garden, the rent of which he paid in labour, giving his master, "a strong farmer," four days' work in the week, and having the remaining days at his own disposal. Returning one evening from the fields, he got a severe wetting, which brought on a "smothering of a cold." This, according to the custom of the country, he sought to expel by repeated draughts of strong whiskey punch; a beverage regarded by the Irish peasants as an unfailing panacea in all inflammatory diseases. Its effect, however, was to convert his illness into a raging fever, which shortly after ended in death, His widow, feeling the weight of care now thrown on her, laboured hard with her eldest child, a pretty, intelligent girl of twelve, to avert the fate which seemed to threaten them, of entering the dreaded workhouse. So the widow rose early, and lay down late, and nerved by the strong. affections of her heart, worked with such energy, that she managed, as she said, "to keep the roof over their heads," and had at least two meals a day of potatoes and salt—seldom indeed accompanied by a bowl of thick milk. The two younger children regularly attended school, and the elder boy and girl were always busy; sometimes assisting their mother in making turf, a small quantity of which she had leave to cut in a neighbouring bog; sometimes collecting manure on the roads, and bringing it-home to spread on the potato garden. Whilst the eldest girl, who had learned to knit very neatly, made some profit by selling the gloves and socks which she manufactured in the winter evenings.
But this scene of humble peaceful industry was soon interrupted. The long bright days of August, 1846, were darkened through our land by the shadow of approaching famine. The blight which had fallen the preceding year on the potato crop had caused much distress and consternation; but the buoyant hopefulness of the Irish nature prevailed, and a general impression seemed to exist that the potato harvest of 1846 would be abundant. Accordingly the roots were planted in the usual quantity, and in most places they sprang up with luxuriant promise. In the beginning of July, the fields were green and flourishing, and the peasant's eye, as he looked on them, sparkled with joy. Before the end of the month, a mysterious blight fell on them, in some places like a sudden stroke: the stalks drooped, the leaves were blackened, and the tubers ceased to grow. In August scarcely an uninjured plant was to be seen.
"What state, Jack, are your potatoes in?' said a gentleman to a poor man, about the middle of that month.
"Indeed, your honour, they're rotten and black, and there's none of them there. God Almighty help us; for unless He looks down upon us we'll all have to die."
Indeed, ma'am," said a poor woman to me one day, showing a small heap of waxy potatoes about the size of walnuts, which she had just dug, "you'd be a long time looking at them when they're boiled, before you'd bring yourself to ate them." At length even this miserable resource failed; the gardens were exhausted, and the state of the poor became worse daily. As the season advanced their sufferings from want of food were greatly aggravated by cold and nakedness.
No class of persons suffer more severely than widows and orphans; at all times more helpless than their neighbours, they were now ready to perish, finding themselves without their "provider," as the head of a family is often called in Ireland, to labour for them on the roads. Poor Mrs. Sullivan and her children now often went to bed without having broken their fast all day. One by one their little articles of furniture, and then their clothes, were parted with "to keep the life in them;" and one evening last December, when literally nothing was left in the house save a bundle of straw and a few sods of turf, they crouched round the hearth, foodless and almost naked, to try and warm their shivering limbs by the flame of a small fire. The eldest boy was not among them, but presently he came in, holding a small paper in his hand.
"Look, mother," he said, "what I got. I went among all the neighbours to try for a taste of turnip or cabbage for ye all, but no one had anything to give me—they're dying of the hunger as well as ourselves—till at last old Paddy Kelly said he'd share a grain of black pepper with me that he had for himself; and he tould me to mix it in hot water and drink it lying down, and 'twould be a fine thing agen the starvation."
This was accordingly done, and the hot mixture was divided among the family as their sole supper.
"Mother," said the eldest, "I heard some people saying to-day that there's fine sea-weed on the shore at Bantry. "Tis no more than thirty miles off, and wouldn't it be better for us to go there and get some, than to die here; we could bile it and ate it, and it might keep us alive."
The mother sighed deeply. "God help us! 'tis all we have to do," said she. "Tn His name we'll set off to-morrow morning." They did so; their cabin was completely empty, and their blighted garden useless, so they had nothing to leave behind or to take with them. Slow and tottering were their steps, and often would they have fallen dead on the way, but for the occasional donations of bread and soup which they received at the few gentlemen's houses scattered through the country. The workhouse was no longer open; it held already more than double the number of inmates for which it was designed, and the deaths had daily increased to a frightful number.
At length they reached the sea-shore, and addressed themselves to collecting sea-weed. This, when boiled, becomes a sort of glutinous substance, on which it is possible to sustain life for a time. Oh! if our English brethren could only have seen the famishing eagerness with which they devoured this wretched substitute for food, having obtained leave from a kind cottager to boil it on his fire, they would not wonder at the importunate cries for help which reach their ears from starving Ireland.
We will not follow the miserable family through their wanderings during the bitter season of mid-winter. Before the end of January the two younger children were dead, and their mother, as she dug their graves, had scarcely power to weep. "Ye're happy now, darlins," she said, "though the father that's before ye in heaven will hardly know the pale faces that looked so bright when he took the last look at ye."
*Mother," said Mary, "who knows but the angels will put their own beauty upon them while they're on the road with them to where father is. I don't think the little children's faces ever look pale in heaven."
In a day or two afterwards the mother was struck with fever, and the same disease began to gleam in the hollow eyes of her remaining children. They were travelling along a lonesome road, and just when their failing limbs refused to carry them further, they espied near them a half-ruined empty cabin. They crawled into it, and lay down together on the wet mud floor. There they remained in burning fever, without strength to rise, or procure even a draught of water. After three days, the benevolent clergyman of the parish, whose purse, time, and energies are devoted to the task of rescuing from death the perishing population around him, was passing by. No sound proceeded from the cabin, yet he entered it, and what a spectacle met his eye! The mother and daughter lay dead on the ground, and a colony of rats had commenced their loathsome banquet on the flesh of both. The boy was yet alive, but in a state of stupor, and already the horrid animals were preparing to prey on him also; the clergyman drove them away, and raising the boy's head poured some drops of cordial down his throat. He revived, and his kind visitor, regardless of personal risk, bore him from the pestilential hole where he lay. With some difficulty he induced a neighbouring farmer to afford him shelter, and send a man to bury the dead. Mr. — took care to supply him with nourishment, and the boy is now recovering; but heart-rending were his tears and lamentations when he found himself alone in the worid—all who had loved him gone!
This is but a feeble outline of scenes which are now daily passing. "The mirth of the land is gone;" and even the proverbial kindness of the peasantry begins to fail When some of the inhabitants of a crowded district were asked lately why they had suffered several fellow-creatures to perish among them without making any effort for their relief, "Sure," they replied, turning their despairing eyes towards the speaker, "it will be our own turn next." May God in His infinite mercy withdraw the chastisement which threatens thus, to swallow up our miserable country!