On the 20th of May I received a whisper of an eviction that was to
occur up in the neighborhood of the Ox Mountains. Great opposition was
expected, and therefore a large force of police was to be there. I
procured a car, and in company with the local editor went to see. The
landlord of this property is an absentee; the agent - a Mr. Irwin - lived
in a pleasant residence which we passed on our way. We noticed that it
was sheepshearing time at his place, and many sheep were in the act of
losing their winter covering.
After we left Ballina behind, and followed in the wake of the police for
some time, we seemed to have got into the "stony streak." Such land!
Small fields - pocket handkerchiefs of fields - the stones gathered off
them built into perfect ramparts around them! I enquired of one
gentleman what was the rent exacted for this land so weighted down with
stones - for in addition to the high, broad fences surrounding the little
fields some of them had cairns of stones built up in the middle of them.
He said thirty shillings an acre ($7.50); asked another who said fifteen
($3.75). I fancy one would need to see the office receipts to know
correctly.
There is little cultivation in this part of the country. Hopeless-
looking ragged men, and barefoot ragged women, were at work in the
fields; little ragged children peeped from the wretched houses at the
police as they passed. And indeed they were a fine squad of broad-
shouldered, good-looking men, heavily-armed, marching along, square and
soldier-like, with a long, swinging step that goes over the ground
quickly.
We followed them up a stone-fenced lane just wide enough for the car to
pass. As we went along, men working at building a stone wall, looked at
the procession with a cowed frightened look. Our carman gave them the
"God save you" in Irish, and in answering they turned on us surely the
weariest faces that ever sat on mortal man. The lane becoming narrower,
we soon had to leave the car and follow the police on foot through a
pasture sprinkled with daisies.
Suddenly we saw the police scatter, sit down on the ditch and light
their pipes, throw themselves on the grass, group themselves in two's
and three's here and there. The end of the journey was reached.
We looked round for the wild men of Mayo from whom the bailiff, sub-
sheriff, and agent were to be protected, who were, I was told, to shed
rivers of blood that day. They were conspicuous by their absence. There
were three or four dejected-looking men standing humbly a bit off, three
women sitting among the bushes up the slope, that was all. The house
where the eviction was to be held was a miserable hovel, whose roof did
not amount to much, sitting among untilled fields, with a small dung
heap before the door.
