Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As Michaelmas came round he drew his rents, and then the dandy agent, the solid farmers, and the poor cottiers sat down at one table for the rent dinner. The strict discipline of ordinary life was relaxed, and the Squire allowed even the fishermen to make jokes in his presence.
This is the poorest parish in Donegal, and no statement can be too strong with respect to the wretched condition, the positive misery and starvation in which the cottiers and small farmers on this immense domain are found." James H. Tuke's Report to the Relief Committee of the Society of Friends.
The Irish nation, from the highest to the lowest, in daily conversation about the ordinary affairs of life, employ a superfluity of wit and metaphor which would be astonishing and unintelligible to a majority of the respectable body of English yeomen. Even the cutters of turf and drawers of whiskey are orators; even the cottiers and gossoons speak in trope and figure.
Money was then so scarce that Adam Smith says it was not uncommon for workmen, in certain parts of Scotland, to carry nails instead of pence to the baker's or the alehouse. A middle class could scarcely as yet be said to exist, or any condition between the starving cottiers and the impoverished proprietors, whose available means were principally expended in hard drinking.*
Others opinioned it was the daughter, who, though she played Lady Bountiful among the poor cottiers, and affected interest in the people, was in reality the proudest of them all.
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.
M'Ivor, at this period, acted in the capacity of a plain Land Surveyor among the farmers and cottiers of the barony, and had much reputation for his exactness and accuracy.
But by co-operation among the cottiers and an intelligent Headquarter staff much could be done which at present appears impossible.
To their lord they owed work for three days each week; they also provided oxen for the plough. But more than half of their time could be devoted to the farming of their property. Then next in order came the cottiers, whose holding probably ran to not more than five acres. They had no plough-work, and did more of the manual labour of the farm, such as hedging, nut-collecting, &c.
The farmers, the landholders of all descriptions, the cottiers, the daily laborers, and the very domestic servants, have all joined this conspiracy, and sworn neither to pay tithes themselves nor to allow others to pay them. They compare the established church to a garrison; and although the law prevents them from openly destroying it by force, they swear that they'll starve it out."
Word Of The Day