Woman, Church & State. Gage Matilda Joslyn
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Woman, Church & State - Gage Matilda Joslyn страница 27
Название: Woman, Church & State
Автор: Gage Matilda Joslyn
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
isbn:
isbn:
One was shot a few years ago and a great ado was made about it. In this case as in most of the others it was not a question of rent. My Lord had visited his estates to see how much more money could be taken out of his tenants and his lecherous eye happened to rest upon a very beautiful girl, the eldest daughter of a widow with seven children. Now this beautiful girl was betrothed to a nice sort of a boy, who, having been in America, knew a thing or two. My Lord, through his agent, who is always a pimp as well as a brigand, ordered Kitty to come to the castle. Kitty knowing very well what that meant, refused.
“Very well,” says the agent, “yer mother is in arrears for rent, and you had better see My Lord, or I shall be compelled to evict her.”
Kitty knew what that meant also. It meant that her gray haired mother, her six helpless brothers and sisters would be pitched out by the roadside to die of starvation and exposure, and so Kitty without saying a word to her mother or any one else, went to the castle and was kept there three days, till My Lord was tired of her, when she was permitted to go.
She went to her lover, like an honest girl as she was, and told him she would not marry him, but refused to give any reason.
Finally the truth was wrenched out of her, and Mike went and found a shot gun that had escaped the eye of the royal constabulary, and he got powder and shot and old nails, and he lay behind a hedge under a tree for several days. Finally one day My Lord came riding by all so gay and that gun went off, and ‘subsequent proceedings interested him no more.’ There was a hole, a blessed hole, clear through him, and he never was so good a man as before because there was less of him.
Then Mike went and told Kitty to be of good cheer and not be cast down, that the little difference between him and My Lord had been happily settled, and that they would be married as soon as possible. And they were married, and I had the pleasure of taking in my hand the very hand that fired the blessed shot and of seeing the wife, to avenge whose cruel wrongs the shot was fired.
Nor is this the only instance in modern Ireland. A certain lord Leitram was noted a few years since for his attempts to dishonor the wives and daughters of the peasantry upon his vast estate comprising 90,000 acres. His character was that of the worst feudal barons, and like those he used his power as magistrate and noble, in addition to that of landlord, to accomplish his purpose. After an assault upon a beautiful and intelligent girl, by a brutal retainer of his lordship, her character assailed, his tenantry finally declared it necessary to resort to the last means in their power to preserve the honor of their wives and daughters. Six men were chosen as the instruments of their rude justice, and among them the brother of this girl upon whom the leadership fell. They took oath to be true to the end, in life or death, raised a sum of money, purchased arms, and seeking a convenient opportunity shot him to death. Nor were the perpetrators ever discovered; yet it is now known that two of them died in Australia, two in the Boer war in South Africa, and the leader who came to the United States, changing his name, passed away in the summer of 1892 in the State of Pennsylvania.
Under head of “A Story of To-day,” another tale is related of woman’s oppression in Ireland aided by the Petty Sessions Bench in 1880.
Recently, a young girl named Catherine Cafferby, of Belmullet, in County Mayo – the pink of her father’s family – fled from the “domestic service” of a landlord as absolute as Lord Leitrim, the moment the poor creature discovered what that “service” customarily involved. The great man had the audacity to invoke the law to compel her to return, as she had not given statutable notice of her flight. She clung to the door-post of her father’s cabin; she told aloud the story of her terror, and called on God and man to save her. Her tears, her shrieks, her piteous pleadings were all in vain. The Petty Sessions Bench ordered her back to the landlord’s “service,” or else to pay five pounds, or two weeks in jail. This is not a story of Bulgaria under Murad IV but of Ireland in the reign of the present sovereign. That peasant girl went to jail to save her chastity. If she did not spend a fortnight in the cells, it was only because friends of outraged virtue, justice, and humanity paid the fine when the story reached the outer world.
These iniquities have taken place in christian lands256 and these nefarious outrages upon women have been enforced by the christian laws of both church and state. The degradation and unhappiness of the husband at the infringement of the lord’s spiritual and temporal upon his marital rights, has been depicted by many writers but history has been quite silent upon the despair and shame of the wife.257 No hope appeared for woman anywhere. The Church which should have been the great conserver of morals dragged her to the lowest depths through the vileness of its teachings and its priestly customs. The State which should have defended her civil rights followed the example of the church in crushing her to the earth. Christian laws were detrimental to woman in every relation of life.
The brilliant French author, Legouve,258 gives from among the popular songs of Brittany during the fourteenth century, a pathetic ballad, “The Baron of Jauioz,” which vividly depicts the condition of the peasant women of France at that date. In the power of the male members of her family over her, we also find an exact parallel in the condition of English women of the same era. The moral disease thus represented being due to the same religious teaching, the change of country and language but more fully serves to depict the condition of woman everywhere in christendom at this period.
As I was at the river washing,
I heard the sighing of the bird of death.
“Good little Jina, you do not know it, but
you are sold to the Baron of Jauioz.”
Is this true, my mother, that I have heard?
Is it true that I was sold to old Jauioz?
“My poor little darling, I know nothing about it;
ask your father.”
“My nice good father, tell me now – is it true
that I am sold to Loys de Jauioz?”
“My beloved child, I know nothing about it;
ask your brother.”
Lannik, my brother, tell me now – is it true
that I am sold to that lord there?
“Yes you are sold to the Baron, and you must be
off at once. Your price is paid – fifty crowns of the
white silver and as much of the yellow gold.”
She had not gone far from the hamlet
when she heard the ringing of the bells; whereat
she wept.
“Adieu Saint Ann! Adieu, bells of my fatherland;
Bells of my village church, adieu!”
“Take a seat and rest thee till the repast is ready.”
The lord sat near the fire; his beard and hair all
white, and his eyes like living coals.
“Behold the young maiden whom I have desired
this many a day!”
“Come my child, let me show thee, crown by crown,
how rich I am; come, count with me, my beauty,
my gold and my silver.”
“I СКАЧАТЬ
At the beginning of the Christian era, Corinth possessed a thousand women who were devoted to the service of its idol, the Corinthian Venus. “To Corinthianize” came to express the utmost lewdness, but Corinth, as sunken as she was in sensual pleasure, was not under the pale of Christianity. She was a heathen city, outside of that light which, coming into the world, is held to enlighten every man that accepts it.
Les Cuisiniers et les marmitons de l’archeveques de Vienne avaient impose un tribut sur les mariages; on croit que certains feuditaires exigeaient un droit obscene de leur vassaux qui se mariaient, quel fut transforme ensuite en droit de