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Updated: October 18, 2025
One gentleman, a magistrate familiar with Gweedore, told me he believed the statements of Sergeant Mahony as to the income of Father M'Fadden to fall within the truth.
The tenant's wife, for whom in 1838 a single shift was a social superiority, in 1852 went shopping at Bunbeg for the latest fashions from Derry or Dublin. Whatever "landlordism" may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enough that in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference between savage squalor and civilisation.
Like Father M'Fadden at Gweedore, he speaks of the landlords in this part of Donegal as really owning, not so much farms as residential grounds for tenants who export their thews and sinews to Scotland and other countries, and live by that traffic mainly.
"We started at daybreak," he writes, "for Glenties, thirty miles distant, over the mountains; and after leaving the improved cottages and farms on the Gweedore estate, soon came upon the domain of an absentee proprietor, the extent of which may be judged by the fact, that our road lay for more than twenty miles through it.
This was in 1840, and in 1854 Gweedore hand-knit socks and stockings were sold to the amount of £500, being just about the annual estimated rents of all the properties bought by Lord George at the time when he bought them in 1838!
He rated Father M'Fadden and his curate of Gweedore, for example, without a moment's hesitation, at a thousand pounds a year in the whole, or very nearly the amount stated to me by Sergeant Mahony at Baron's Court. This brought from Mr. Davies a curious account of the proceedings in a recent case of a contested will before Judge Warren here in Dublin.
Burke evidently thinks, though he did not say so, that Father Stephens has been spoiled of his sleep by the laurels of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore. He is to be tried at Dunfanaghy on Tuesday, and there are now 150 troops quartered there Rifles and Hussars. "Are they not boycotted?" I asked. "No. The people rather enjoy the bustle and the show, not to speak of the money the soldiers spend."
One of the stenographers told me the other day that they had to invent a special sign for the phrase 'bloody and brutal Balfour, it is used so often in the speeches." About the prosecution of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, he knew nothing beyond the evidence on which it had been ordered. This he showed me.
It is reputed the most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dream of beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity of that interesting type of Irish civilisation, the "Gombeen man," of whom I had heard so much at Gweedore.
Offerings of old bottles and little headless images were planted around, but the favourite gift was a pin, stuck in the ground by way of fee. Jolly Mr. Whicker, of Dublin, who represents three Birmingham houses, saw Father McFadden, of Gweedore, waving his hat when in custody. A policeman insisted that this should cease, when a man in the crowd said to Mr. Whicker:
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