Extract
from Sketches on Irish Highways - Irish Ruins Part 1...from the popular pen
of Mrs Hall...We were wending our way to the ruins of
the abbey of Dunbrody, Co. Wexford, leaving behind us
the picturesque town of New Ross...
"Do you see that cottage
there, ma'am to the left? There used to be a cottage there onc't
though but little else than the walls are in it now bare
and naked walls! and yet I mind when they were roofed,
and dacency within them."
"Who lived there?"
"James Tracey ;
but there's a beautiful place upon the hill"
"Tell me of the cottage, Laggin."
"God bless you, ma'am dear, you're cruel
fond of hearing of cottages ; sure the history of most of them in this country
is alike ; a wedding and little to begin with a power of children, and
little to give them rack rent for the bit of land, turned out, bag and
baggage, for that or the tithe beggary starvation-sickness - death! That a
poor Irishmans calander,
since the world was a world barrin here and there
now and then when he gets a sight of good fortune by mistake "
" But the cabin "
"Ay poor James I mind when he built
it himself and the neighbours with him and the ould landlord was over here, and gave him a promise of
renewal of his father's lease, and we wanted James to get the promise in
writing, but he put it off 'twas a way he had the only fault I ever knew in
James he didn't like to be bothered about what was coming, when he was
satisfied with what was come. Well, the ould landlord
died, and after that, the young one raised the rint
in course, to get all he could to spend away from us ; and then poor James felt
the want of a lease, for a dead man's promise is
seldom thought of except by those who want to see it fulfilled ; by this time
he had a young, heavy family about him, and he dipinded
a good deal out of an old bachelor uncle of his dying and leaving him all he
had which was more than would fit in a midges eye and this hindered him
from doing what he otherwiae would have done : but
it's ill waiting for dead men's shoes sorra as much
as would pay for a stone of praties did he ever get
from that same man. Well, ma'am, gale day came and came and he got time at
first, and they do say he could have pulled up, but somehow he had got fixed in
the way of putting off, and one thing went to rack and another thing to rack,,
and James got a hurt in his back from his horse, which he neglected to fasten
in the stable ; and he'd pass the length of a summer day, propped against a
post which stood at the gable end of the house, doing nothing only fuming with
a neighbour, or keeping the hens out of the cabbages
; and so, in the long run, everything was distrained,
and James turned into the road himself and his children. It ^s little the
land- lord got by the distraining, for no one would
buy, nor no one would take the land over his head for a reason they had
until a north-country- man ventured ; and sure it wasn't for want of the
warning that himself was shot one harvest night against the very post where
James used to stand if you turn about you can see the spot now, madam, though
we're so far from it there^ against that post and the house burnt and
three or four in it-and James himself, to crown the matter, and two more, hung
for the same!"
"How
dreadful! and all originated in the ruinous habit of prcastination"
"Oh sure you're going back
entirely to say that, though maybe you're in the right. What's left of the
children are scattered through the country with one friend or another and the
poor mother Christ defend us ! here
she is ! now for God's sake don't gainsay her maybe she won't speak only
don't gainsay her she's wild mad."
A slight, tall woman had ascended the oppo- site side of the hill from which we were looking down
upon the cottage that had been the scene of such a horrid act, and she came upon
us so suddenly that the narrative, united to her sin- gular
appearance, gave me a shock I shall re- member to my dying day. She wore a
petticoat of black stuff, and a short cloak and hood of the same material ; her
legs were bare, and her feet thrust into shoes much too large they were
strapped over her instep by leather thongs ; she had on neither cap nor bonnet,
and her hair, which once must have been beautiful, hung in grey matted tresses
over her bosom ; the hood was thrown back, so that her features were fully
exposed they were low and flat, but the expression of her large, blue,
wandering eyes was fierce and fearful ! She advanced, curtseying at every step,
towards us we had been walking up the hill and though she did not ask
charity, I placed a small silver coin in her thin hand.
Our guide was behind, or rather more to the
right than we were, so that the maniac's eye, resting on him, would be led in a
direct line to look down upon her once happy home.
"Save ye
kindly, this fine morning,'' he said in a kindly tone. She turned quickly,
looked at Laggin for a moment, then tossing her arms
wildly in the air, uttered a long, loud, and appalling scream I never before
heard such a sound It reverberated through the air like what one imagines would
be the howl of those doomed to eternal agony and then, as if exhausted by the
effort, she sank on her knees on the earth) her right arm extended towards her
cottage.
"Leave her alone she'll
come to presently ; there's one of her boys an
innocent an' he's not far off; he tends and tracks his mother wherever she
goes."
The man had hardly finished speaking, when
a squalid, ragged youth, of about fifteen, crept from among some underwood a copse of mingled furze and hawthorn and
without heeding he commenced turning her round. She appeared to have become
rigid, for he moved her as though she were a kneeling statue,
and having accomplished his purpose, which was to withdraw her from looking
towards the ruined cottage, he sat on the earth beside her, staring up into her
face with the calm, quiet air of one whose feelings are deadened yet who once
felt. I never saw so affecting a picture of human desolation as that mother and
son, in sight of their blasted, ruined home !
...
Ref:
11 April 1835 Wexford Conservative
Sketches on Irish Highways - Irish Ruins Part 1
The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 43, 1835
Anna Maria Hall. Lights and shadows of Irish life. Vol 1. 1838
Last update: 12
June 2015