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Last Tuesday the laundress refused to wash for the family any longer; the baker at Ballinrobe is afraid to supply them with bread, and the butcher fears to send them meat. The state of siege is perfect. When the strike first began Mr. Boycott went bravely to work with his family, setting the young ladies to reaping and binding, and looking after the beasts and sheep himself.
Boycott, with an escort armed to the teeth, or his wife without an escort for the people would not harm her must go to Ballinrobe after putting a horse in the shafts themselves, buy what they can, and bring it home.
Nowhere is the disaffected party more completely organized, and nowhere is it, rightly or wrongly, thought that some of the tenants could more easily pay up if they liked. As contrasted with the hovels of the northern part of Mayo and the west of county Galway, the houses at Ballinrobe are comfortable, and the people apparently naturally well off.
Moreover, they have a better idea of what comfort is than the inhabitants of the seaboard. I cannot better show this than by describing the houses in which I passed part, at least, of the last two Sundays. When I arrived at Ballinrobe on Wednesday last it was almost impossible to obtain quarters either for love or money.
Ballina, the most prosperous town in Mayo, is a stronghold of the anti-landlord party; and the Ballinrobe, Claremorris, and Cong country, full of good land and comparatively large farmers, is the district which has isolated Mr. Boycott, whose turnips and potatoes will probably cost the country and the county at least a guinea a piece.
This difficulty occasioned some little hustling, but the upshot was that the Ulster men, a well-grown, powerful set of fellows, were compelled to walk all the way from Claremorris to the infantry barracks at Ballinrobe. The march was inexpressibly dreary.
Left Ballinrobe behind and drove to Lough Mask Castle, where the celebrated Captain Boycott managed to kick up such a fuss. We passed a couple of iron huts occupied by policemen, who came out to look at us. I may as well mention that after I left Ballinrobe I found that the driver was more "than three-quarters over the bay."
If the weather were only moderately favourable, the work might be got through in a week or ten days; but if it rains as it has done to-day, it is quite impossible to say when it will be done. As I was looking at the men potato-digging the rain seemed to cut at one's face like a whip, and all through the afternoon Ballinrobe has been deluged.
The general aspect of everybody and everything in Ballinrobe this morning expressed fatigue.
Lord Ardilaun, I hear, has organised a little bodyguard of his own people, in preference to being followed about by the tall dark figures now frequent everywhere in county Mayo from Achill to Newport, from Ballina to Ballinrobe, and from Claremorris to Westport.
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