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| EVICTION SCENE, COUNTY CLARE.-The foregoing scene represents the humble furniture of a Vandeleur tenant thrown out and piled up beside the cabin, to await sale or removal. In the middle foreground are shown the evicted man and his sons-the females of the family and the younger children having, doubless been cared for by kind neighbors, as is the custom among the Irish people, unless the landlord or his agent has power to prevent hospitality being extended. Before the advent of Parnell, it was a common thing for Irish evictors to make the sheltering of the evicted by other tenants an excuse for further eviction. Even within the last ten years, very aged men and women, tender infants and the hopelessly sick, have been turned out of their humble homes under pelting rain, or chilling sleet, to die in the ditchside, within sight of the cabins they and their fathers before them had occupied for generations. Many an Irish youth and maiden has sung, with bitter tears, the words of Charles Kickham- My father died-we closed his eyes And then my loving mother, Outside our cabin door- And sister three also, The landlord and the sheriff, too, Were forced to go, with breaking hearts, Were there the day before! From the glen of Aberlow! |
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