EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALOctober 16, 1998
Castlebar
Ireland is an atmospheric painting. Today is particularly dark but not
without its now predictable daily rainbow and gleaming magic hour. We arise after a night
of adventurous dreams. Rich was on a boat and I dreamt we were back in Canada and had not
fulfilled our mandate of Most Recent European Personal Development. Elma serves us fresh
double yolks, accompanied with other Ulster delights; ham, bacon, sausage and
potatocake.
Castle Coole, near Enniskillen is closed after September but its 500
hectare estate is open to pedestrians. the 18th centruy house is said to be filled with
Neoclassical antiques but we are most satisfied with an hour’s walk around the
grounds. They include wooded paths, meadow, lawns and of course, sheep. It rains
throughout but the wind is light and I find myself peeling layers and enjoying the damp
sprinkle. I am a little reminded of the dog park and Emily and our mid-winter walks.
Next we travel a scenic red road and cross the border into the
Republic, to Boyle in search of the Drumanone Dolmen; one of the largest portal
tombs of it’s kind in Ireland. These massive, prehistoric balancing rocks are
scattered throughout Ireland. Our guidebook directions convince us that the author
has written them from the Pub in Boyle. We do eventually find the junction, the railway
bridge, the brown (actually green) sign, the muddy path and railway crossing that leads to
the field in which the dolmen stands. It is worth it! Not huge, (4.5 metres) but an
interesting feat of structural engineering (the big rock is balanced on the two smaller
rocks) and surrounded by grazing sheep.
Part of Ireland's long and tragic history is told at Strokestown Park
House, a Palladian mansion at the edge of the city of Strokestown, built in 1730 for
Thomas Mahon, whose ancestors oversaw the 12,000 hectare estate for Charles II. In
the 18th century the Irish ruling class were members of the Protestant Episcopalian
Church, and were descendants of Cromwellian soldiers, Norman nobles and Elizabethan
settlers. They formed a prosperous upper class known as the Protestant Ascendancy,
and were granted land by the British to lord over and collect revenues from the Catholic
peasant farmers. By the mid-18th century, Catholics held less than 15% of the land
in Ireland and by the end of the century that percentage had dwindled to 5%.
The Strokestown Park House's old stable yard houses The Famine Museum.
Between 1845 and 1851 the potato was the staple food of a rapidly growing but
desperately poor population of farmers who inhabited the land granted to the
Anglo-descendent Protestant upper-class. From 1800 to 1840 the population went
from four to eight million inhabitants, putting tremendous pressure on this land.
Rich in carbohydrates, protein and nutrients, an Irish peasant could stay
healthy by eating just one crop, and ate an average of 14 Lbs. of potatoes per day.
From 1845-51 a succession of almost complete failures of the potato crop resulted is mass
starvation, emigration and death. To this day Ireland has not completely recovered
from this and as a result has one of the lightest populations in Europe.
During this time there were excellent harvests of other crops such as
wheat, but these were too expensive for purchase by the poor. Ireland continued to
export food while the impoverished starved, and most landlords ignored the situation or
satirized it in British newspapers.
As a result approximately one million people perished from starvation
and disease, and another million emigrated, often dying on the filthy "coffin
ships" or upon arrival in North America. Emigration continued to
reduce the population over the next century.
In the case of Strokestown, Major Denis Mahon, its landlord at the
time, and his land agent simply evicted the hundreds of starving peasants who could
no longer contribute to the estate's coffers and chartered ships to transport them away
from Ireland. In 1847 Major Mahon was shot dead just outside the town and one
of the documents on display in the museum is a newspaper account of the incident with two
dubious-looking signed confessions by peasant farmers.
