. Ireland yesterday and today . ome places they lookedlike lines of grass, in others they melted into the level were gras3 grown. I asked what they were. The remains of walls and ditches of the old farms, answeredMr. Fitzgibbon. Youll find them all over these lands. When thetenants were evicted the walls were thrown down and grass grewover the places. You will see here and there a clump or row oftrees. They mark where the farmhouses vised to stand. The houseswere leveled, and the walls that inclose the road we are now onwere built of stones that once sheltered evicted tenants. It w
. Ireland yesterday and today . ome places they lookedlike lines of grass, in others they melted into the level were gras3 grown. I asked what they were. The remains of walls and ditches of the old farms, answeredMr. Fitzgibbon. Youll find them all over these lands. When thetenants were evicted the walls were thrown down and grass grewover the places. You will see here and there a clump or row oftrees. They mark where the farmhouses vised to stand. The houseswere leveled, and the walls that inclose the road we are now onwere built of stones that once sheltered evicted tenants. It was ghastly. I began to see these marks of devastationeverywhere. The fields on all sides were scarred with the greenridges, as though the whip of oppression had left great welts on thesurface of the land. In two or three places we came upon thecrumbling ruins of houses which for some reason had not beencarried away. There was one of which the four walls still stood,with the chimney, though the roof had disappeared years ago. We. NOT PRETTY, BUT COMFORTABLE. THE BRIGHTENED LAND 147 could still trace the outlines of a little garden and the remnants ofa stable. A hare scampered away as I peered through a gapinghole where there had been a window. So the story ran, as simple and accurate a descriptionas I could write of the desolation I had seen from thetop of this very mound and in a short drive from it. Thescene came back vividly as I climbed the little I looked upon it again—the same land, but so mar-velously different! Leaning against the wind that camebooming over leagues of rolling plain, we looked off east,north and south. It was one great farm; not one actually,but one in the rich beauty of fertility and busy I had seen thousands of acres of empty grass lands,tenanted only by roaming cattle. I saw now a wide plaincarpeted with fields of growing crops. Where I had countedten houses—the meager, thatched huts of poor herders—Icounted thirty,
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidire, booksubjectlandtenure
