Oceane Dreams Sets 14 - 18l

[Glory Posis]

With this progressive minuteness and subdivision of farms into smaller and smaller potato gardens for the poor peasants, the preservation of the estates of the landowners in their original size stands in sad contrast. For, since the landlords inherit their lands, not according to the custom of Ireland, but the old Norman feudal laws, the great mass of each estate descends to one individual. Had the law countenanced the division of property, the smaller landlords would by degrees have approached nearer to the farmers, and the division of estates would have set a limit to the division of farms. As matters were, and are, there is no country in Europe where the property of the peasant in the land he cultivates bears so small a proportion to that of the proprietor of the soil. In Russia, individuals possess vast tracts; but there the peasants also have extensive districts. In Ireland, there are estates as large as dukedoms in Thuringia, and farms, if one may apply this expression to a potato garden, scarcely as big as the piece of ground which an English gentleman sets apart for his rabbits in a corner of his park. In the county of Tipperary, out of 3400 farms, 280 are less than one acre, 1056 between one and five acres, and the remainder are above five acres.


To a mere pleasure-hunting traveller in this desert, I can readily imagine that a couple of hours would appear like a hundred years, or exactly the reverse of Paddy's stories of the fairy country, in which a hundred years seem but two hours. The Irish, in common with all depressed nations, have their dreams of a fairy-land of wonderful beauty, and the man who drove me the last stage to Kilrush was full of them. Whilst we were rolling down the hills in the twilight, and drawing nigh the little town, he told me of a king who was carried by a fairy lady into that charming land, where he led a splendid and delightful life, till one day he wished himself back on the earth, among men. The fairies then gave him a magic horse, at the same time warning him, as he valued his eternal youth, not to touch the ground with his foot, although he might gallop about the earth on the horse as long as he pleased. He had already spent two hundred years among the fairies, by whose enchantment his youth and strength had been preserved; but on touching the earth this spell would be instantly broken. The king rode forth on the earth, and was greatly rejoiced at again saluting this dear old mother of all mankind. Approaching his own palace, where he had once been used to command, and riding up the court-yard, he saw there another king, ordering arrangements which were not pleasing to him; whereupon he forgot himself for an instant, and, with aview to remonstrate with his successor, leapt from his horse in a rage. Remembering, while he still hovered in the air, the warning of the fairies, he uttered a shriek of despair, and as he touched the ground his youthful and vigorous form was instantly shrivelled up into that of a man two hundred years old; laden with this weight of years, he could not live a single moment, and with a sigh he gave up the ghost. The magic horse instantly vanished; and the new king, who recognised the body of his long-vanished predecessor by a golden medal which he wore round his neck, had him buried, and erected a monument to his memory.



Oceane Dreams Sets 14 - 18l

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