The Highland Lady In Ireland. Elizabeth Grant

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20. Red cow calved yesterday, brown mare had a colt foal last night the image of Major; four young horses and four old, a nice stud and not one of them fit for use,—if I managed my department in like manner I wonder what would be said to me, my dear Colonel, eh. Sold all our lumpers2 at two pounds a ton, the produce of the old orchard, not an acre, value upwards of fourteen pounds, set that against the horses, Mrs. Smith!

      

      21. All our cattle sick with this distemper everyone of them, it is not now fatal, nobody has lost an animal of late but they suffer a good deal and are very much reduced and thrown back by it; for fear the pigs should take it and so all our feeding be thrown away, we ordered both porker and baconer to be killed.

      23. The Doctor brought the post down in the morning with a note from John regarding tenants in arrear which I answered by return of post. Now don’t owe a shilling in the world except this thousand pounds to George [Robinson]. By living quietly for a while we have got over all our perplexities and shall certainly on settling accounts in May have a balance in hand, the beginning of comfort. I don’t think we shall ever live up to our income again, all heavy expenses being over and the more land we get into our own hands the richer we shall be and the more valuable the property will become. So all looks very bright towards the future.

      There was a little scrap too from Aunt Mary [Bourne] enclosing Jane’s extracts from the India letters. All perfectly well, [brother] John off at last by long sea to sail early last month, March, in the Walmer Castle. He is bent on living entirely in the highlands with his wife and children, determined upon it and very rightly. If his boys are to live on their inheritance hereafter they must learn to love their Duchus’ in childhood, and his wife will better bear a Highland winter in her old age by recollecting how many most happy summer days she passed with her young husband in the beautiful woodland scenes of Rothiemurchus. He wishes my mother and Jane to live with him, but this my mother will not do. She has no love for the Highlands and she will never return there without my father.

      25. Heard of Pat Farrell being nearly thumped to pieces by the priest the little Roman Catholic Curate, Mr. Rickard, a perfect little fury.

      27. Had Pat Farrell with us in the morning. The Colonel had gone to him last night to see what state he was in and to insist on some steps being taken to put an end to these proceedings of this reverend firebrand who not content with beating almost everyone he has anything to do with, maligns those he is offended with from the altar and has kept the parish in perpetual disquiet ever since he entered it. So several of the people who have been themselves ill-used have determined they say to sign a petition explaining their grievances and to send Pat Farrell and another man up with it to their Bishop. The Colonel wrote him a note to back them which I think a very proper one though it did not meet with the approbation of the Doctor with whom we sat an hour before going into the poor Murrays’ auction. We looked at the plate and several other things and got Tom Darker to stay and bid for them but this day nothing we wanted was sold.

28. The Doctor came to breakfast and brought the post with him. We showed him the copy of the letter to Doctor Murray3 of which he could not help highly approving, his objection is against interfering with their squabbles at all. The more tyrannical the priests become the sooner he says the people will tire of them, the more the priests beat and abuse and extort the sooner will the William Tell arise who is to prove to the poor ignorant terrified multitude that these furies are but men and may be resisted with impunity. There is much truth in this and the fact is that the people generally are beginning to feel towards their priests and to speak of them in a way they would not have dared to think of two years ago. Farrell told most injurious tales yesterday of them. At the same time the landlord interfering to protect his people never can be injudicious. What we want to lead them to is to consider him as their friend, the natural guardian of their rights and their comforts.

      I heard some complaints of Miss Gardiner I must enquire into, such as her sending the children into Blesinton for messages and to gather sticks for her fire and asking higher fees than I had settled on, these were Mrs. Hugh Kelly’s reasons for taking her children from school. Very likely quite explainable but still I must look after it all. I shall have time next week to set affairs to rights. Now while the Colonel and Doctor are at their piquet I must go and make my preparations for Dublin. I don’t somehow think that Pat Farrell and his petition will get there.

      

      SUNDAY MAY 2. A rainy day the very best thing possible for the country, too wet however for church so I have time to set down that there was a very proper note to the Colonel from Bishop Murray saying he should in about a fortnight come to this neighbourhood when he should enquire into the very painful subject of the complaint against Mr. Richard.

9. Hal and I are reading at night Whateley4 on the ‘The Errours of Romanism’, so far most admirable, shewing that the spirit of superstition or misdirected religious zeal is inherent in human nature, as rife among the members of the reformed church as ever it was among the papists, taking different disguises in different sects, hurtful in all and to all and quite adverse to the purity of religious feeling inculcated by Jesus Christ. To me it has always appeared that we have changed names not habits. We are pagan idolaters still, have misunderstood the doctrines of our divine teacher, profaned His name, disobeyed His precepts and dishonoured the religion we only pretend to. But if the world continues to enlighten at the rate of its progress during the last five and twenty years, superstition will vanish in a few generations. Another startling kind of book I am reading is full of sublimities amongst its oddities. Carlyle on the French Revolution.

      10. Tom Darker has entered with his accounts and I have Monday’s work to do before settling them, he is selling about thirty pounds worth of old potatoes and the two calves we parted with immediately after their birth, brought one nine the other eighteen shillings. Went to school and found matters improved, twenty-six pupils, more coming. Father Germaine been to visit them, the first time for near a twelvemonth. All very orderly and children doing very well. The removal of Mr. Rickard will certainly do good, he was a vile political agitator, ignorant and violent and bigotted, two years ago the people would never have complained of their priest had he half murdered them, they are grown bolder now and I am glad they see their Landlord will stand by them and that they find he can get a priest removed.

      

      11. This is the road meeting and there are fears that Mr. Fenton’s party is so strong that poor William Murray may not be made Treasurer, perhaps no loss to him, the little fifty pounds a year might encourage him to sit still with the brother in his curacy as in this cheap country it would keep him alive in a chimney corner, when if he is outvoted he will be thrown on his own exertions for his bread.

      I must not forget to set down all Mr. Verschoyle’s political news. A letter from Mr. Evans, the member for Dublin, reports that the Queen is inconsolable at the thoughts of losing her ministers, that Lord Melbourne has over and over again entreated to resign, assuring her they had lost the confidence of the country but tears, screams, claspings of hands was her answer to which absurdities of a headstrong girl he weakly yielded.

      Poor girl she has many a hard lesson to learn and was called too early to such dangerous distinction She may hereafter turn out a fine character when tamed and one don’t dislike her attachment to the first set of people she ever had to deal with, who escorted her from a rigorous obscurity to the throne and first made her feel she was somebody.

      Thirty people at the road meeting and Mr. Fenton was elected by a majority of three votes.

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