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In equally poor case with the cottiers is the woman who keeps the village shop at Derryinver. Those who know the village shops of England and the mingled odour of flour, bacon, cheese, and plenty which pervades them, would shudder at Mrs. Stanton's store at Derryinver. It is a shop almost without a window; in fact, a cabin like those occupied by her customers.
There are Lord Lansdowne's still greater estate of 94,983 acres, and the large property held by Trinity College, both of which have given rise to considerable controversy of late. In many parts of Kerry may be found townlands vying in wretchedness with Coshleen and Champolard, with Derryinver, Cleggan, and Omey Island while others give abundant evidence of improvement and enlightened management.
How any compensation money is to be got from the hundreds of miserable people who inhabit Coshleen and Derryinver I cannot conceive. They have, it is true, potatoes to eat just now, and may have enough till February; but their pale cheeks, high cheek-bones, and hollow eyes tell a sorry tale, not of sudden want but of a long course of insufficient food, varied by occasional fever.
Thus the addition to the county cess in Lettermore is 10s. 11½d. in the 1l.; in Carna, 8s. 9½d.; and in Derryinver, 8s. 7½d. a cruel additional burden on the ratepayer. Some of the items are very large. To George J. Robinson was awarded 181l. for seventy-six sheep and two rams "maliciously taken away, killed, maimed, and destroyed."
It is natural to suppose that here resides a race of marine mountaineers seeking their living on the deep while their flocks and herds pasture on the hill. But no supposition could be wider of the actual fact. Neither the fields beneath nor the mountain above belong in any way to the villages which form a belt of pain and sorrow half-way up its side, drooping at Derryinver to the sea.
Few people hereabouts own an ass, much less a horse or a cow, and boats are few in proportion to the population. Such a cabin as I have rather indicated than described is occupied by the wife of one John Connolly, of Derryinver. When I called the husband was away at some work over the hill, and the two elder boys with him, the wife and seven younger children remaining at home.
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