and turf, without mortar, and stopped with fog or straw, to keep the wind from blowing in upon them. They had a window on each side of the house, which they opened or shut as the wind blew, to give them light. These windows they stopped with straw or fern. In such houses, when they kindled a fire, they lived in a constant cloud of smoke, enough to suffocate them, had they not been habituated to it from their infancy. They had many of them no standing beds, but slept on heath and straw, covered with the coarsest blankets, upon the floor They kept their cattle in the same house with themselves, tied to stakes in one end of the house. There was no division to separate the cattle from themselves. Their furniture consisted of stools, pots, wooden cogs and bikkers. At their meals they ate and supped altogether out of one dish. They lived in a coarse and dirty manner, and ate of the meanest and coarsest food. In general, their food consisted of brose, pottage, oatmeal flummery, and greens boiled in water with a little salt. The dishes out of which they fed were seldom washed after meals, and, of course, were often thick with dirt. Each person in the family had a short-hafted spoon made of horn, which they called a munn, with which they supped, and carried it in their pocket, or hung it by their side. They had no knives and forks, but lifted the butcher meat they ate with their fingers. They ate little meat at that time, excepting the offals of their flocks, which died either by poverty or disease. At Martinmas they killed an old ewe or two, as their winter provision, and used the sheep that died of the braxy in the latter end of autumn. At this time their farms had no march fences to separate them from their neighbours. A single farm was let in runrig among a number of tenants, which caused them to live in a constant state of warfare and animosity. The dividing the produce of the farm, according to each tenant's share, became a usual source of quarrels and fighting.

"Their mode of agriculture was uncommonly stupid in every stage of the operation. They yoked six oxen and two horses in one plough, and sometimes eight oxen and two horses. They yoked four horses abreast in a plough without oxen, and had

always one to hold the plough, and another to drive the cattle. They used a heavy clumsy Scots plough, that murdered the weak and half-starved animals to drag it after them. Their harrows were heavy and clumsy, with the teeth made of wood instead of iron. In the spring season their horses and oxen fell down in the draught through perfect poverty and weakness. They ploughed great quantities of the land, and had poor returns for their labour. They took four or five crops, without putting on any manure. In dry seasons, they could scarcely gather their corn in harvest, upon account of its shortness. They sowed nothing but poor grey Scots oats; their poor land would bear no other species of grain. This kind of oats yielded little meal, and of a dark colour. When their corn came above the ground in the spring, they had constant herding of their cattle day and night, till the harvest was finished, and the corn gathered into their corn-yards. They built turf-folds in summer in the fields, into which they put their cattle in the middle of the day, when annoyed with the heat; and also at night, to preserve them from destroying their grain. In the night they put all their cattle into these turf-folds, and one or two persons watched them every night in summer and harvest, till their corns were got in. By over-stocking their farms, the poor animals were starved for want of grass. In the spring, their cattle were so weak, that when they lay down they could not rise of themselves till they lifted them up. They fell into mosses and quagmires through weakness, and were drowned. In the spring season, it was a constant custom to gather their neighbours together, to assist in lifting their cows and horses, and to drag them out of moss holes. At that time, and for long after, there was not a cart in the parish. They led home their corn and hay in cars, and in trusses on the backs of their horses, and their peats in creels and sacks. They led out their dung on cars, or creels coupled and hung over the horses' backs. The women carried out dung in creels on their backs, and the men filled the creels at the dunghill, and lifted it upon their shoulders. This resembled the savage state of society, where all the drudgery of the domestic labour fell to the de

partment of the female sex. At that time there were no saddles nor bridles, and they rode to church and market upon brechams and pillions placed on the horses, and halters on the horses' heads made of hair. They shod their horses' fore feet, but put no shoes upon their hind feet. The women had no little wheels, but span with the rock and spindle. Their yarn was uncommonly coarse. They had no candles to give them light in the winter nights. When the goodman of the house made family worship, they lighted a ruffy*, to enable him to read the psalm, and the portion of scripture, before he prayed. The men had no razors, but clipped their beards every Saturday night with scissors, to appear more decent upon the Sunday. The lower class in general were tainted strongly with superstitious sentiments and opinions, which had been transmitted down from one generation to another by tradition. They firmly believed in ghosts, hobgoblins, fairies, elves, witches and wizards. These ghosts and spirits often appeared to them at night. They used many charms and incantations to preserve themselves, their cattle and houses, from the malevolence of witches, wizards, and evil spirits, and believed in the beneficial effects of these charms. They believed in lucky and unlucky days and seasons, in marrying, or undertaking any important business. They frequently saw the devil, who made wicked attacks upon them when they were engaged in their religious exercises, and acts of devotion. They believed in benevolent spirits, which they termed brownies, who went about in the night time, and performed for them some parts of their domestic labour, such as thrashing and winnowing their corn, spinning, and churning. They fixed branches of mountain ash, or narrow-leaved service tree, above the stakes of their cattle, to preserve them from the evil effects of elves and witches. All these superstitious opinions and observations, which they firmly believed, and powerfully influenced their actions, are of late years almost obliterated among the present generation. Both men and women, about sixty years ago, were robust and healthy, and subject to few diseases. They

* A ruffy is explained by Jamieson to be "a wick clogged with tallow."

were strangers to every complaint of a nervous nature. This arose from the hardy manner in which they were brought up from their infancy, and being accustomed to watch their cattle without doors in the night during the whole summer and harvest season. From the above authentic statistical account of this parish about sixty or seventy years ago, compared with its present state of improvement, in agriculture, the manners dress, and mode of living among its inhabitants, and their present sentiments in religion, the great improvement they have made in agriculture and civilization will appear in the most striking point of view; and as they are still in a gradual train of improvement at present, it gives the most flattering prospects of their future progress in the course of time. The greatest danger to their present progress is the raising the land to a racked rent, which industrious tenants may be unable to pay." Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. ix. p. 324-9.

See similar though less detailed descriptions of the improvement in the physical condition of the Scottish peasantry, ibid., vol. xi. p. 156; xiv. p. 481; xvi. p. 295. On the transition from the cottier system, the consolidation of farms, and the migration into the towns, see vol. ix. p. 561-3; vii. p. 178; xii. p. 412.

(Note D.-p. 336.)

In all the Irish political writings of the last century, absenteeism holds as prominent a place in the list of grievances as it does at the present day.

"The rents of land in Ireland (says Swift in his Seventh Drapier's Letter), since they have been of late so enormously raised and screwed up, may be computed to about two millions; whereof one-third part at least is directly transmitted to those who are perpetual absentees in England, as I find by a computation made with the assistance of several skilful gentlemen."-Vol. vii., p. 40.

66

Upon this subject of perpetual absentees (he adds) I have

1

rather to be wondered at, there being 102 for, and 122 against the measure."-Hist. Review, vol. i., pp. 422, 423.

The question of an absentee tax was again brought forward by Mr. Molyneux in 1783; but his motion was lost upon a division, by 184 votes against 22.-Ib., vol. ii., Part I., p. 64.

Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, published in 1765, has the following remarks bearing on this subject. "Those (he says) who live in another country, contribute nothing by their consumption towards the support of the government of that country in which is situated the source of their revenue. If in this latter country there should be no land-tax, nor any considerable duty upon the transference either of movable or immovable property, as is the case in Ireland, such absentees may derive a great revenue from the protection of a government to the support of which they do not contribute a single shilling. This inequality is likely to be greatest in a country of which the government is in some respects subordinate and dependent upon that of some other. The people who possess the most extensive property in the dependent, will in this case generally choose to live in the governing country. Ireland is precisely in this situation, and we cannot therefore wonder that the proposal of a tax upon absentees should be so very popular in that country."-B. v., ch. ii. Part II. Art. 4.

(Note E-p. 349.)

EMIGRATION OF PROTESTANTS FROM IRELAND.

It appears that there was a continual emigration of Protestants from Ireland to America throughout the last century, at which time persecution by the Catholics could not have occurred. The emigrations appear to have almost constantly taken place from the northern ports: thus seven ships, leaving Belfast for America with 1000 passengers, in 1728, are mentioned in Boulter's Letters, vol. i., p. 288. The number of emigrants who left Ireland in 1771, 1772, and 1773, is stated in Newenham's Inquiry into the Population of Ireland, p. 59: