FAMINE AHEAD

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1717, 25 January 1905, Page 70 (Supplement)

FAMINE AHEAD

ITS GAUNT SHADOW CREEPING OVER CONNAUGHT.

BALLINA (Co. Mayo), Nov. 24. There is unhappily no doubt about the calamity that has befallen the poorest folk of Connaught, who are the poorest in all Ireland. The situation in many garts of inner and well-nigh inaccessible onnaught is grave in the extreme, and what will happen a few months hence it is appalling to contemplate. The potato crop has been a pitiable failure in great tract© whose toilers based •11 their hopes for a year ahead on it. The turf or peat winch m fairly dry years is a goodly source of profit to many poor people, remains wet and useless, swamped here and there in stretches of dreary bogland. "Dazed” is the word that describe© the mental condition of the people in the many quarters I have explored so far. This is the worst blow they have sustained since the great failure of 1879, which prepared the way for the Hand League. Connaught clergymen who have laboured among the people for more than a generation, and who have a vivid memory of ’79, assure me that the present crisis is the worse of the two, so far as Connaught in concerned; but this time the trouble is more local than in T 9, confined to tho Connaught seaboard, and large inland tracts. w ; th some exceptions, Buch. as spots near Clifden, in the south, and here near Ballina, in the north. It is pathetic to notice how insistently poor Connaught folk harp on the point that the potato yield lias been good this year in other jirovinces of Ireland, and that, consequenely, there is some hope for Connaught in the way of supplies. There are some, however, who express the fear that the others will hold their hands and create such a "boom” in prices as will leave unhappy Connaught no chance. But, taking the best view, the prospect is gloomy. PEASANTS’ POOR OUTLOOK. TV hen you asTc Avlier© the Connaught peasant, who lives from hand lo mouth, and aaTio virtually loses everything when the potato fails him, is to get the wherewithal to buy from other quarters of Ireland, the answer its generally a pcrplexin" "God knows.” In localities in West Mayo the potato yield has been virtually none—not worth digging. Li fact, in places they gave up diggin/ in despair. In the Swinford region some of what were potato fields are ©warn ps' at present. In (he bleak Err is country there is keen suffering. PurTher south, the tubers dug out, in many instances, have been black or rotten and email at the best.

But, strangely enough, people here and there are able to boast that they have had admirable little crops, and specimens I have seen so far are excellent. Boiled in their jackets, they break crisply and. become what the grateful Irish peasant calls “Laughing potatoes.” These, however, are exceptions.

The theory held in some quarters is that "shelter” has saved and developed these exceptions, but "shelter” seemingly has strange vagaries. A parish priest told me in Erris that in his own little potato garden, eurrounded by a wall Bft high and trees luxuriant for Mayo, the yield was not one-third the extent or quality of the previous year. The failure, so far as I have seen, is not to be attributed to anything like the dreaded “'‘’blight” that so often ha© killed, the hope and brought to nought the work of the Irish farmer and peasant. “Spraying” and other scientific devices were tried this year in many instances, but all to no purpose. HAVOC DUE TO STORM.

The havoc is attributed mainly to the great summer storms culminating in July and August, the "undulations” of the strong stalks —for they were strong and promising’—’broke and opened the soil just at the roots,’and the crevices became filled with water to the destruction of the roots below.

It is an irony that in a certain way the year has been good. The yield of turnips, for instance, has been excellent in various places; but this is poor consolation now to poorest Connaught.

The potato, you ar© pathetically told, feeds everybody and everything. When that fail© the peasant, all is lost. Pigs, fowls, and so on are being sold half fattened, and at miserable prices, as there is nothing to feed them on, and the peasant lias before him the appalling prospect of nine long and dreary months of "buying” food and everything with no idea on earth of how he is to. manage it. The shopkeepers cannot give him credit. The smaller ones especially have been hard hit of late. They depend mostly on the peasant, and go down with him when his hope, tho potato*, fails him. It is a tragic existence. One of the gravest questions is where the seed for the next season’s crop is to come from. The Government, no doubt, will bo appealed to-. ’So* far it has given very little indication that it really ajipreciates the grim seriousness of tho situation, especially in the districts off the beaten tracks. I have heard that there is a Government inspector or two taking notes in the south. That generally mean© little. There is a sarcastic Irish song, “The hoard will send inspectors down,” which moon© that something may happen about Lc. Tibb’s Eve. It is a ©ad fact that it

takes a famine to draw serious attention to inner Connaught, which, by the way, has considerable industrial possibilities. Connaught these days gives few chances to optimism. Externally it is snowbound, and fierce hailstorms lash it in furious fits and starts. Inland the very houses of the peasants have a strangely crushed look. Often the chimneys have almost sunk out of sight, as if the giants of Connaught story, passing in the violent nights, had struck them with their clenched fists.

Almost every stretch of country landscape gives the sense of a place from which humanity has departed. One’s first question on entering a Connaught country scene is "Where are the people ?” They seem to shrink and hide away. In truth, away- from the "tourist tracks” they "take some finding,” but Avhen you find them they are the usual hard toiler©, the women and children as a veil as the men. At present, alas! they are mostly crushed and dazed—’dazed is the only Avord.—"Daily Chronicle.”