Poverty in Ireland existed in plenty in the Famine years. It was not something that came and went with the Great Famine of 1845 - 49. An American writer has left us with a vivid impression of Tullamore and much of the rest of Ireland in a book published in London in 1847 entitled Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger; or, Excursions through Ireland in 1844 and 1845, for the purpose of Personally Investigating the Condition of the Poor. The author was Asenath Nicholson, born in Chelsea on the New England frontier in 1788, she died in 1855. Dr. Rolf Loeber of Pittsburgh sent me the extract from her book about Tullamore, reproduced below and I have since had an opportunity to examine a copy of the old volume. I was aware of Mrs. Nicholson but only through an abridged edition of her work published in New York in 1927 under the title The Bible in Ireland, Ireland's welcome to the stranger or excursions through Ireland in 1844 - 45. This version was edited and introduced by Alfred Tresidder Sheppard. His introduction told us little about Asenath Nicholson and a lot about the editor's preoccupation with Burrow's, The Bible in Spain and related matters.
More recently two books have been published which throw light on Nicholson. The first by Helen E. Hatton, The largest amount of good: Quaker relief in Ireland, 1654 - 1921 (Canada, 1993) and Chris Morash and Richard Hayes (eds.) Fearful Realitites: new perspectives on the Famine, (Dublin, 1996).
Hatton in her first class study of Quaker relief methods adverts to Nicholson in passing and describes her as a remarkable American woman who at one time ran a vegetarian boarding house in New York. "Unattended and unafraid" she travelled throughout Ireland to investigate the condition of the poor, staying with the peasants in their pitiful cabins. At the height of the Famine in 1847 she returned to Ireland as the field agent of the New York Irish Relief Society. "Full of blunt Yankee common sense, Nicholson was not a ranter and did not approach her task from a "missionary" frame as did some of the relief officers of the evangelically based agencies."
Her second book on Ireland arising from this experience was published in London in 1850 as Lights and Shades of Ireland and the Famine section was re-issued in New York in 1851 as Annals of the Famine in Ireland in 1847, 1848, and 1849.
Nicholson was not herself a Quaker. She also refuted the idea that the Famine was "God's will" as some evangelical preachers had said. "Was there a God's Famine in Ireland in 1846-7-8-9"...."No, it is mockery to call it so". She saw that religion helped people to accept their sufferings but as Hatton points out she also saw that the people had a degree of political awareness.
In Fearful Realities Margaret Kelleher has written an essay on Nicholson's narrative 'The Female Gaze: Asenath's Nicholson's famine narrative" (pp 119 - 130). The article is about "re-reading" the old account of the Famine of Nicholson from the perspective of feminist studies. Instead of male accounts and "male gaze which objectifies the woman" where woman has the quality of "to-be-looked-at ness" i.e. "women as image and man as the bearer of the look" Nicholson's study of the Famine is seen as the "female gaze".
In 1998 an edited version of Nicholson's Annals of the Famine in Ireland was published by Maureen Murphy . Originally published in 1851 it provides a valuable account of that tragedy and according to Murphy is 'the extraordinary narrative of Nicholson's work and witness in Dublin and in the west of Ireland.'
Mrs. Nicholson departed New York in 1844, arriving at Liverpool and eventually at King's Town or Dun Laoghaire. After visiting some of the sites in Dublin, including an asylum for unmarried ladies, she made her way to Tullamore because of an obligation to deliver letters to the mother of a young girl who had stayed with her in America. She mentions in her book staying at a terrace in Tullamore and that there were twins in the house aged 11. I looked through the parish registers for the Catholic parish of Tullamore to see what twins were born in 1833 and in fact there were three or four sets that could have fulfilled Mrs. Nicholson's description and at such it was not possible to identify the family that she visited.
She travelled by [Grand canal] fly-boat and gives an interesting description of the voyage from Dublin to Tullamore which she reached in eight hours. Her description of the poor of the town bears out what Francis Berry, Lord Charleville's agent had said about poverty in correspondence of that time and which has survived in the Charleville correspondence in Nottingham university. Asenath Nicholson wrote as follows:
Tuesday, July 2d 1844 - Must leave for Tullamore. I had removed my lodgings from the first kind house where I stopped, and had found in the second all that hospitality which is so congenial to a stranger, and was becoming much attached to Dublin; but rest was not my errand to Ireland, and the kind daughters of the family accompanied me at seven in the morning to the [Grand Canal] fly-boat, where I was packed as tight as livestock could be in any but a slave ship. Here I found a company of would-be intelligent Irish and English aristocrats, who, on "both sides of the house," were professed enemies to the poor Irish, calling them a company of low, vulgar, lazy wretches, who prefer beggary to work, and filth to cleanliness. How much of this may be true I pretend not to decide, but this may be safely hazarded, that it is an established law of our nature to hate those we oppress. The American slaveholder, while he keeps his foot upon the slave, despises him for his degradation, and while he withholds a knowledge of letters, and closes the Bible against him, hates him because he is ignorant and a heathen. In eight hours we reached Tullamore, a distance of fifty miles, and the first novelty was the market-place.
The appearance of the people here was not prepossessing, for there was not one among them decently clad, and everything indicated that a last effort had been made to set off the merchandise to the best advantage, while the looks of the seller seemed to say, "We have toiled all day, and caught nothing."
A son of the lady to whom I had letter, conducted me to the terrace, and as the letters were from her daughter in America, I expected a cordial reception, and was not disappointed. Tinctured a little with aristocracy, well educated, and disciplined by family disappointments, her mind had become chastened, and she appeared as if struggling to support an independence which a heart sinking under silent grief could not long sustain. The children were well trained, and had been educated mostly at home by herself. Her husband was of a good family, and had speculated her property away, and as the last resource fled to that "house of refuge," America; and an absence of three years, without sending her any relief, left suspicions on her mind that all was not well. I had seen her daughter in New York, who had followed her father thither, and she begged me to search out the family in Ireland, and do what I could to comfort her mother. My errand was a painful one, - family troubles can seldom be mitigated by foreign legislation; and while this noble minded afflicted woman made full, meaning, but indirect inquiries, her voice faltered, the tear was in her eye, and for a moment I regretted that I had complied with her daughter's request. Her well regulated family being assembled around the family altar, she read an appropriate prayer with practical observations, adding suitable ones of her own, which made the devotions pleasant to me, for it savored of a heart that had been made better by the things it had been called to suffer.
The next morning, the twin daughters of eleven years accompanied me into a lane to see the poor. Here I found these lovely girls had long been acquainted, for they inquired of a poor old man about the growth of a pig, and kindly patted the well known pets of donkeys, goats, and dogs, calling them all by name, while the mistress went into the garden to pluck a bouquet for the fine girls, who, she assured me, were the smartest in the parish.
I had always heard the Irish were celebrated for giving the pig an eminent birth in their cabins, and was a little disappointed to find that though it was really so, yet there was some nicety of arrangement in all this; for in two cabins I found a pig in a corner snugly cribbed, with a lattice work around him, a bed of clean straw under him, and a pot of food standing near the door of his house, to which he might go out and in at option. And in both these huts, though the floors were nothing but the ground, yet these were well swept; a peat fire was smouldering on clean hearths, and the delf was tastefully arranged upon the rude shelves. An old cobbler sat with his lap-stone, and said he could make one and six and one and ten pence a day, and he took care of the bit of ground at the rear of the cabin for the rent of it. "My wife, praise be to God, is dead, but I can get a comfortable bit for my children." An old blind man of seventy-two, sitting at the door of his cabin, thanked God that he had no right to complain, though he had seen better days; for he had "two kind girls, who, when they had done all in and out of the cabin, got little jobs now and then, which kept the bread in all their mouths." On looking into the cabin, nothing could be cleaner. Here, too, the family pig was snoring snugly in his crib in one corner of the room; and here, in all justice, I must say that these pigs were well disciplined, for when one of them attempted to thrust his nose into a vessel not belonging to him, he was called a dirty pig, and commanded to go to his own kettle, which he did as tamely as a child or a dog would have done.
Another cabin attracted us by the tidy white aprons upon two little girls who were standing at the door, and their nicely attired mother, with clean cap and handkerchief, who welcomed me heartily to Ireland. On my commending her for her cleanliness, she said, "Plase God, poor folks should be a little tidy who have nothing else to set' em off. Would ye walk into the garden? May be ye'd like a rose or two." We willingly complied, and found an acre of kitchen garden well cultivated, with a few flowers interspersed, which they rented for nine pounds, and sold the avails for the support of the family. She plucked her fairest roses and ripest gooseberries, and bade me God speed, long life, and a safe return to my own country.
I returned for this lane much gratified by the cleanliness, simplicity, and comfort of this humble people, for I had ever associated a mud wall, a thatched roof, and a pig as an inmate, with all that was wretched in the extreme; and I had so far as this lane could speak, abundant evidence that a very little will made the Irish content, and even happy.
Tullamore jail and workhouse
In the afternoon I visited the jail, a building, with its appendages, including an acre and a half of land. It contained eighty-one prisoners; seventeen had been that morning sent to Dublin for transportation. They were all at work; some cracking stones, some making shoes, and others tailoring or weaving. Their food is one pound of stirabout, and milk in the morning, and four pounds of potatoes for dinner. There are two hospitals, one for males and the other for females. The drop where criminals are executed is in front; four had suffered upon it within the last two years.
From the prison I went to the poor-house, [ erected at Arden Road in 1841 and demolished in 1978] which was conducted on the same principle as that of Dublin; but the funds were so low that but three hundred could be accommodated, and multitudes of the poor were suffering upon the streets. A flourishing school was in operation, the specimens of writing doing honor to the teachers. The children are fed three times a day; they get a noggin of milk at each meal, with porridge in the morning, potatoes at noon, and bread at night.
The next day rain kept me within doors, and I had the painful annoyance of seeing beggars constantly walking back and forwards before the parlor window; nor would they depart, though often told they could have nothing. The sister, who supported the family of her brother-in-law, now returned from Dublin. She was a woman of some worth, and apparently possessing much piety. The poor afflicted wife and mother, as soon as her sister returned, and the excitement abated became unwell, imputing the cause to her visit at the poor-house; but sickness of the heart was the mover of it all. In the morning, when I went to bid her adieu, she answered not a word, but looked as if in a state of deep despondency:-
"When woman droops, she droops in silence;
The canker grief gnaws stealthily, but sure;
The pallid cheek, the sunken eye alone
Give note of death's dire work within."
Report has said something of the class of beggars in Ireland; but her busy tongue, extravagant as she often is, could not exaggerate here. It was scarcely eight o'clock when I reached the coach, but the beggars had assembled before me; for the going out of this vehicle is the hey-day of expectation. To them a foreigner, or a stranger, whom their shrewdness will readily detect, is a kind of common plunder, and escape is a hopeless undertaking. The coach was to leave at half past eight, and while I stood waiting, I saw some half dozen of men with spades standing in a cluster, and inquired if they had to work for the day. "Not a haporth, but we are hoping to get some." I asked what was the price of labor. "From six to ten pence and we don't get work half the time at this." And does this support you?" "O ma'am," said an old man, leaning on his shovel, "we hope to see better days, plase God; it's but a sorry bit this gives us." Father Mathew has done much for you." "Yes, praise be to God, as early as now in the morning, the people round here, standing as they do now, would be cursin' and fightin'; but now, thank God, there's not a word from their lips."
The chief centre of attraction was now where we stood, as I was a stranger. They attacked me with, "God bless you," "a penny, if you plase, lady" "a ha'penny for the poor woman and child, whose father is dead this twelvemonth," " one haporth for an old man," and "the price of bread for a poor boy;" the boy grasping my clothes, and holding fast, in spite of my efforts to disengage myself- the cries and importunities redoubling, while, like swarming bees, they sallied out from every quarter, till the crowd was immense. In vain I preached loyalty to the government, temperance, and peace; my voice was lost in the clamor of "plase, lady, it's the haporth ye'll give us, thank God." The overseer of the coach, from his window seeing my dilemma, hastened out, and kindly begged me to get upon the coach, where they could not annoy me so seriously. He helped me aloft. Labourers and beggars, some on crutches, some with two legs, and some with one, mostly clad in coats of divers colors, variegated with all shades and hues; boys with a garment suspended from the hips, hanging in strips, making a kind of frill - these all followed in pursuit. By the time I was well adjusted, a sea of upturned faces, some with hats and caps in hasd, to catch the falling penny, lavished all sorts of blessings on America and the kind lady who had come to see them, who as yet had not given them a farthing. Waving my hand for a moment, all was silent. I endeavoured to count them; there were about two hundred and twenty, one half at least beggars. The huddling became so confused that I could not proceed, and I resorted to exhortation, telling them to be true to their young queen; that they had a Father Mathew to keep them sober; a never-tiring friend in O'Connell, who said he would "rot in prison for them if need be;" and under all these encouragements, they must be patient. "That we will , lady and the blessin' of Almighty God be on ye, and the prayers of the blessed Virgin, if ye'll give us a penny." The scene had now become, to say the least, ludicrous, painful, and unseemly. I had travelled by sea and by land among the savages of my own country, the poor abused slaves on the plantations, the degraded, untutored native Canadians; but this eclipsed the whole. I looked down upon the forbidding mass, and saw every lineament of talent, every praiseworthy and noble quality, every soul-speaking glance of the eye, every beauty of symmetry, that God's image ever possessed, united with every disgusting, pitiable incongruity that imagination could depict. Much did I wish that the good queen would leave her throne for the one on which I was sitting, and see for a few moments her subjects, her loyal Irish subjects, as they really are, disgusting to refined eyes as it might be. She must, she would pity, and though her administration had done nothing to produce this state of things, yet her administration should and could produce something better. I begged the coachman to make speed, knowing that a few pennies dropped among them would endanger faces and eyes, if not pull me from the coach; and the promise was given, that when my bag of money should come from America, part of it at least should be poured down upon them. "Faith", cried a poor woman with a dirty urchin hanging to her, "and ye'll be here no more, if the bag's to come with ye." The coachman attached his horses, leaving the whole town with the troop of ragamuffins swinging hats and caps, cheering America and the queen, shouting and calling for a penny till we were out of hearing.
When we had well escaped, "What is this?" I begged the coachman to tell me. "It is the case of all Ireland wherever you travel; a fine country but cursed with bad laws." "But when could all these miserable objects that swarmed around the coach proceed?" "From the mountains and places around; they all know the time that the coach goes out, and are always in readiness; they are not all street beggars, only trying their hand at the coaches and canal-boats."
Tullamore is the assize town of the King's county; it is situated nearly in the centre of the bog of Allen, and the proprietor, the Earl of Charleville, has done much to improve it. Good schools are established and the poor in the town are more comfortable that in many others in the vicinity. The road lay from Tullamore through a part of King's county and Kildare, to Dublin, a distance of fifty miles; and forty five of this it was lined on each side with hawthorn and cinnamon-briar hedges. The briar was in full bloom; the air had been purified by the preceeding day's rain; and the fragrance of the sweet brier, united with that of the new-mown grass, which lay here and there as we passed, made a day's ride of the pleasantest I ever enjoyed, so far as sweetness of air and beauty of scenery were concerned. But the beggars we had left, and the beggars that met us at every village where the coach stopped, made me dread the appearance of a human creature. We passed the most beautifully cultivated fields, where not a stone or a stump could be seen, and saw gardens joined to the most forbidding-looking hovels, where roses were blooming upon the walls, and even upon many a thatch were waving flowers of variegated beauty; so that the unaccustomed stranger must ask, "What means this strange contradiction? How can such taste for farming and gardening be blended with such unseemly rags, such debased minds, and such a lack of self-respect as many of these beings manifest? What must be the state of that people, who can walk and breathe in such a paradise of delights, and not be assimilated in some measure to the more than enchanting prospects around them?"(from pp 24- 31 of the London edition of 1847).
Roscrea and Birr October 1844
On returning to Dublin, Nicholson visited the counties of Wicklow, Kilkenny, Tipperary and eventually reached Birr via Roscrea. Before leaving Roscrea she went up to the top of the castle to see the town. She noted that the old building was now used as a barrack and that she was shown over the place by Dr. Downer who told her that "you see what remains of its former greatness and what a lesson it gives of the frailty of human grandour." It was the end of October 1844 when she reached Birr to stay first of all in what she described as a miserable Protestant lodging house. She wrote as follows:
My walk of five miles was not tedious; the air was wholesome, the lark was singing, the road smooth, and the scenery pleasant. The town of Birr was the residence of Lord Rosse and his telescope, [completed in 1844], and here I had hoped to have a feast of some other worlds of light but this, on which I had so long figured to so little advantage. It rained as I entered the town, and turning into a neat little cottage, found a kind welcome by the cleanly master and mistress, who are Roman Catholics, and was invited to eat, and then they directed me to a Protestant lodging-house. I say Protestant, because the Catholics knowing me to be one, generally selected this sort, supposing I should be better pleased. They told me the people were kind and respectable; this was true, but the rooms were dark and without floors, and two enormous hogs which were snoring in an adjoining closet were called out to take their supper in the kitchen, which made the sum total a sad picture. (A cabin-keeper near Roscrea, who kept her pigs in the room, told me, "An' throth, ma'am, I'd take him into my bed wid me, if he'd thrive any better." Her bed was curtained and her cabin was clean.) I was kindly urged to take supper, and sat down with them, took an apple, and passed a solitary evening. Not that I was sorry for my undertaking, but the lack of all social comfort, where comfort should be expected. When I went into my bed-room I felt like bursting into tears; every thing looked so forbidding, and so unlike cleanliness about the bed. Clean sheets were begged, and clean sheets were granted; yet it was a doleful night, and in the morning, after taking some potatoes, and asking for my bill, four pence was the answer. Cheap indeed! I paid her more.
A drunken Birr distiller
The morning was dark; the rain poured fast. At six, a hearse passed, bearing the corpse of the son of a distiller, [probably Robinson of the Castle Street distillery. The surviving records indicate that this refers to Robert Robinson a distiller of Castle street Birr, probably son of Arthur Robinson also a distiller. Death records for the period are poor but there is a record of a Robert Robinson of Birr dying in 1844. who fell from his horse, and was killed, when intoxicated. The keeper of the lodgings remarked, that he had seen the father, and twelve sons grown to manhood in church together. Seven of these sons have died by intemperance. Are whiskey-making, whiskey-selling, and whiskey-drinking attended with a blessing?
I set off in the heavy rain to find the house or castle of a rich man, who was considered a great eccentric. He was owner of three domains, but had divested them of all their frippery, and put on a frieze-coat and brogues, and literally condescended to men of low estate in dress and equippage. He had taken many orphans into his house, and provided them food and clothing. When I reached his dwelling, my clothes were profusely drenched. Mr. S.___ was not at home. I asked the housekeeper if I might step in till the rain should abate, and dry my clothes. She allowed me to do so; and I followed her through a long gangway of desolated halls, to a kitchen, and found a company about to dine in the same way and on the same materials as the cabin people do. The rain continued, and an invitation to stop over night was not needed a second time. A fire was made in a parlour, where no carpets or supernumeraries met the eye. Tea, bread, and butter were offered, and the housekeeper made everything pleasant. She had embraced the principles of her master, who had taken her, when but two years old, begging her from a widowed mother, who was embarking for England. He had been a father, indeed, she said, and the care of the house was entrusted to her.
When I was comfortably prepared in my lodging-room, with a fire and clean bed, and contrasted it with the preceding night, in what extremes do I find myself, from cabin to castle, tossed like a "rolling thing before a whirlwind," yet never destroyed. I slept in peace, and thanked God that in Ireland one rich godly man could be found, who called all mankind his brethern.
In the morning, I took my breakfast, was kindly invited to come when Mr. S. should be at home, and went out, and called at the lodge-house, where was a godly-woman, poor in this world, but rich in faith. A pleasant hour was passed with her, for with such, lessons are to be learned which the rich cannot teach. The rain had deluged the country the preceding night; and many a poor cabin was swept away with the miserable furniture, and the affrighted inmates had fled, with their children in their arms, naked as they were, from their beds of straw.
The lawn containing the telescope of Lord Rosse was open, and passing the gate, the old lady who presided in the lodge asked me to go through the grounds, which were free to all. Much did I regret that clouds obscured the sky the whole time I was in Birr, so that not one gaze could I have through that magnificent instrument. The pipe is fifty-two feet in length, and six and a half in diameter. The earl is mentioned as a man of great philanthropy, and much beloved by the gentry and poor.
Sabbath - Heard the baptist minister preach to an audience of five, and he likewise broke bread to three. He observed, when he went out, that he felt it his duty to keep the light a burning, the more so, as there were but a few tapers kindled in the island. In the intermission, heard a sermon in the neat Methodist chapel, and that day and evening heard four good sermons. At the house of Mr. W. heard a Roman Catholic, who had been converted from Popery, relate his exercises of mind. A few others had renounced the doctrines, and united with Protestant churches. The priest at whose chapel he attended had left also, and became a Presbyterian clergyman [Father Crotty], that when any become converts from that church, they are the most spiritual Christians of all others, and we must take great stride to keep up with them. ( From pp 146-49)
November 4th - Early on foot I commenced a walk to Ballinasloe.
After spending much of November walking about the county of Galway, Nicholson was at Eyre Court towards the end of that month which she described as a beautiful little place and she passed on through it and walked the five miles into Banagher [pp 181-95]. She wrote: "I reached a beautiful little place called Eyrecourt, toasted my piece of bread, and went on at two o'clock to walk five miles to Banagher. The road was quite muddy, and my feet were now blistered. I was obliged to wear course shoes and my feet, never having been accustomed to them, were tender. Darkness overtook me, and the way became quite difficult. I enquired of all I met the distance to the bridge, and the distance to the town; and the way lengthened in proportion as I passed on, till I found myself upon the bridge; and meeting a woman, she led me to a lodging-house, which she assured me was as "clane and dacent as I could find in a day's walk."
This lodging-house in Banagher has associations which will live in grateful rememberance while memory lasts. Did they say, when I entered wet and weary, (for I had walked for hours in a heavy rain) did they say, "Who is this strange woman, at this late hour asking for lodgings she must be mad?" but "Come in, come in, ye're wet and wairy. How far have ye walked in the stawrm? Come into the kitchen and dry yer clothes, and yer must be a stranger, and we'll get ye the cup of tay; ye must be hungry." All this was said and more, before I had told them who I was, and what brought me there. When this was known, if possible the kindness was redoubled. I told them I had but sixpence-halfpenny in my purse, and could only get a night's lodging and two or three potatoes. "And that you will get; and a week's lodgin' in welcome. Not a hap'orth of them two crippled feet shall go out of my house till they're hailed," answered the man. The servant was called to fetch water to bathe my feet, "and we'll do what we can for ye, the cratur!" And faithfully did they perform their promise; they were kind to a fault. They were Catholics, but they listened to the Word of Life with the most profound attention, and without any opposition. They told their neighbours they fully believed I was inspired of God to come to Ireland, and do them good. What was this good? Certainly not money, and this they well knew.
They gathered about me in the evening in crowds; and when I had read two hours, such a breathless silence was in the room, that I looked about to ascertain whether all who were behind me had not left it, when I saw the place was filled to crowding, sitting upon the floor; and so quietly had they entered that I knew it not. Till one o'clock I read, a peasant woman, sitting at my feet, holding a candle; and when I said, "you must be tired," "And that I ain't, the long night wouldn't tire me, to be listenin' to ye."
"Ain't she a Protestant?" an old man whispered. "She's a Christian sent here to discoorse us, and do ye think the like of her would crass the ocean to see the poor, and discoorse' em as she does, if God hadn't sent her?" The old man seemed satisfied, and the point was settled by "Aw ! there's no use in tawkin'. The like of her couldn't be found in all Ireland." This last was said audibly, while I was turning the leaves of my book for a new chapter.
Mrs Nicholson wrote:
Among this group was a peculiarly interesting woman of forty-five, who had been the mother of twelve children. Six of them, she said, had "gone innocently to heaven." She was endowed with good talents, had been well bred, and was quite engaging in her manner. But the desire she manifested for her children, their education, and their eternal good, almost exceeded belief. She raised her hands, he full grey eyes glistening with tears, and said,"Can you, will you tell me how I can get to your country, where I can place my children under a good and virtuous influence, and where they will be taught the way to heaven as they should be ? We are here in darkness, darkness! Our clergy are good for nothing; they go to the altar, and say mass, but they preach no sermons. They give no other instructions, and who is any better? We have schools, where they learn more that is bad than is good. I go to bed at night, and I pray, pray. I wake up, and do the same, and here I am. Will you talk to my husband, and tell him what privileges you have in America. I can do nothing with him; he does not feel the accountability of training the children, as I do, and could I persuade him to go from this dreadful place, I would work night and day, not for myself, but for my children." I heard her through, and said "You say you are all in darkness, and I say to you, Christ and his word can give you light. Believe me, you must read the Bible; your children must read the Bible; or they never can reach those high attainments which you so greatly desire. There is a science in that Book of books that can be found no where else, and this science cannot be taught except by the Holy Spirit." "Is it so?" she eagerly said. "Have you a Bible?" I enquired. "No; we have never had one." The mistress then remarked, "There are but two Catholic families in all Banagher that have a Bible." "Well you may be in darkness, if you have not the chart that God has given to guide you to heaven." The company now dispersed, when she entreated again. "Do say what you can to my husband. He may listen to you." "That woman," said one, when she had gone, "has always been goin' on in this way. Her children, she says, are goin' wrong, and her husband cares nothin' about it."
A little clean, curly-headed girl called the next day, the youngest of this doting, anxious mother, and led me round the corner to show me her home.
"Welcome", said the mother; "you find me in this dirty cabin, where the pig and the shoemaker's bench are always with me. I live in wretchedness: I was not so rair'd. But my husband will have it so; he is a passionate man; but it was a runaway match; and though he often beats me, yet I am fond of him still. Forgive me for making so free with a stranger, but these dear, dear children; my heart is burning up; it is scalded for them, and I cannot get rid of it. We are not poor, though we live here in this humble cabin with pigs. I can spin, weave, and make all kinds of cloth." She then went up a ladder, and brought down two nice specimens of worsted and flannel cloths which she had manufactured. "And could any such work as this do any good in America for my children? I believe", she added, "Almighty God has put this in my heart, and what shall I do at the day of judgement when I meet my children?" I listened to this woman with the full conviction that the Spirit of God had enlightened her, and would yet bring her further out of darkness into his marvellous light.
I went to church, and found a small congregation; but so engrossed was my mind with the sermon I had heard from the woman, that I was but little improved by what I heard there.
The evening introduced me to a family, where I was invited by the father to see a daughter of seventeen years of age, who had three weeks before had a leg amputated. She was sitting upon the bed, and looked to me uncommonly interesting. She was handsome, becomingly dressed, and received me with a dignified cheerfulness that would have suited maturer age and higher education. She was mistress of the tidy cabin; her mother was dead, and she was the eldest of a pretty group of cleanly dressed children, who looked to her as their guide. When I spoke of her misfortune, she cheerfully answered, "I must submit to what the Almighty puts on me." I went away, and was told more fully the cause of this sad misfortune, of which no mention was made by the family.
The father had a mill of some kind, and was in the habit of taking his dinner in it. This daughter had prepared it, and carried it to the mill; but it was later than the usual hour. The father was angry at the delay, and lifted his hand to strike the faithful child. She, to avoid the blow, stepped aside; her dress caught in the wheel, and her leg was torn nearly off. This family discipline needs no comment. The cheerful girl, it is said, has never been heard to reproach the father.
When I returned from this cabin, a new era, opened. A company of Connaughtmen, in rags and dirt, returning from their potato digging in the county of Kilkenny, had turned in hither for the night. They wanted a pot of potatoes; they wanted them cheap and they wanted them in "God speed." All this could not be accomplished without some bustle, and the good man offered the potatoes for two pence half-penny a stone. That, they, in plain language, declared they would not pay. This took some time to settle, and ended by their going out and purchasing the article elsewhere. This adjusted, then came the lodging. They must be up at two, to pursue their journey; they must lodge in one room; and this room must be the one occupied by me, as no other was of sufficient length and breadth. I cheerfully relinquished all claim, as I was but a guest, and the floor was spread with et ceteras for the lodgers to lie down. The clamour and clatter which commenced and continued were somewhat peculiar to themselves. I had quietly put my Polka coat upon a chair managed to make myself a bed; and as this bed, like the other, was gratis, I had no right to complain. The peat fire was dimly burning at twelve o'clock, when the master came in, and hearing the tumultuous jabbering, and feeling the house to be shaking to the centre, he ran up stairs, telling them to be off, every blackguard of 'em, as it was two o'clock, and not a minute more should they stop in his house, disgracin' the divil himself. They declared they had paid for lodging till two o'clock, and they had not slept a ha'porth. He drove them up, and they tumbled down stairs to the kitchen. I had placed myself in an upright position, and was in a corner. They, as if by consent, all stopped short in a semicircle about me, and in perfect silence surveyed me attentively, and my condition for a few moments was not an enviable one.
There were nine of these nondescripts, not one of them with a whole garment or a clean face, standing in array. The room was nearly dark, and the master not in it. I seriously thought of my sixpence-halfpenny, but before having time to offer it, the good man of the house entered, and poured them out of the house at once. They had the kindness to give the man a timely caution when they were on his steps, for they told him seriously that the stranger in his house was a man in disguise, and that he had come to do some great mischief in the country, and they had not a hap'orth of a doubt but that he had hapes of sovereigns. He added, "Some of the blackguards would not hesitate to take your life, should they meet you alone."
These men certainly are distinct in their appearance from the provinces of Ulster, Munster, or Leinster. Yet I should not feel authorised to say that they are more malicious or dangerous than their neighbours. They are more coarse in appearance and manners; but they do not lack either shrewdness or hospitality. In justice I must say, I have experienced more real kindness from these people, than from many of more refined education and fashionable appendages.
Reader, if you are prone to be incredulous; if you are but a nominal Christian; if you know not how to believe in God without doubting; if you cannot trust him with your body as well as your soul; if you are not willing to deny yourself, and never have done it, and if you do not believe in "particular providence," in particular exigencies, you may as well lay down this book, - at least pass over a few succeeding days, for they will appear like fairy tales, and the teller of them as a silly if not wicked imposter.
Monday: - These Banagher friends wished me "God speed," without taking a farthing, and told me their house should be welcome as long as I would stay. Others in the town did the same: but the time had come; new things were before me, and these new things I must meet.
On leaving Banagher and her account of her stay there, Mrs. Nicholson was back in Birr dining with a Mr. Walsh who insisted that she should go that very evening to visit the good Mr. S., whom she mentioned in her earlier visit to Birr. She had hoped to stay with this Mr. S. at his castle at Rathmore but things did not work out and he refused to see her. Mr. S. was apparently formerly a member of the Church of Ireland and appears to have become a Catholic and did not accept Mrs. Nicholson, who would have been considered a Protestant with a small 'p' - probably a Baptist but certainly not a Quaker. The identity of Mr S. is not disclosed by Nicholson but at a guess it may be Edward Synge who is listed as a landowner in Griffith's Valuation under Rathmore barony of Clonlisk p. 37 and in Burke's Irish Family Records (1976) at p. 1087 is described as born 1788 son of George of Rathmore and residing at Syngefield Birr and Dysart Co. Westmeath. He died unmarried. This was to be Nicholson's last stay in Offaly, at least during the course of the 1844 - 45 visit. She passed out of the town on the way to Roscrea where she recounts further difficulties in obtaining suitable basic accommodation. As she says herself, she had an unfortunate departure from Roscrea in that she had met a Quaker near the town who had provided her with accommodation and helped her to get to Urlingford. Money had arrived for her from America and a young man who was to call and collect her to bring her to Urlingford told her that "uncle has the letter for you at Urlingford, money in it from America; but he found the seal broken at the office, and thought it might be unsafe to send it on to Galway".
"Breakfast was prepared. I passed the day in making repairs in garments, sadly racked by storms and trials before knowing, the next morning the boy and car were sent to carry me to Urlingford. My money was in waiting, my friend was as kind as when I left, and I sat down to rest and reflect".
It appears unlikely that Mrs. Nicholson visited the county in the context of her volume on the Famine, which appeared in London in 1850. Her work is quite distinct from that of previous travellers, nearly all of whom are from a well-to-do background and stayed with the wealthy while on their visit. She afterwards visited Wexford, Tipperary, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Galway and Mayo, following the coast route. Writing at the conclusion of her trip she recorded: "I visited Ireland to see it as it is, so I reported as I found it. I have stayed to witness that which, though so heart-rending and painful, has given me the proof of what common observation told me in the beginning - that there must need to be an explosion of some kind or another. But awful as it is, it has shewn Ireland who are worthy ones within her and who are her friends abroad, it has shown her greater things than these". She completed her preface to the book in June 1847 and noted in the introduction her thanks to the Hibernian Bible Society, which had given her the Word of God, in English and Irish and it also procured suitable books for distribution on her tour. She wrote that nothing had been added to her description of Ireland to meet the state of the Famine in 1846 and 1847. "Facts are related as they occurred and were described in 1844 and 1845. These facts then indicated that an explosion must soon take place and that Ireland was to be turned inside out". In many ways that is why her book is so useful in that it is a pen-picture from an observer who lived among the poor just prior to the Famine years.