C SKETCHES OF THE HIGHLANDS OF CAVAN, AND OF Shirley Castle, in Farney, TAKEN DURING THE IRISH FAMINE. BY A LOOKER-ON. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. BELFAST: J. REED, BOOKSELLER, 97, VICTORIA STREET. MDCCCLVI. THE HIGHLANDS OF CAVAN. SKETCH I. A TRAVELLER starting from the county town of Cavan, and wishing to get a correct idea of the state of things, physical and social, in the higher and poorer parts of this (once) thickly populated county, could not take a better course than to come up by the Dublin mail to Virginia, and, stopping there for the night, he might take a look in the morning at the beautiful scenery around Lough Ramor. At the upper end of the town, his eye will be taken by the view of a babbling rivulet, tumbling down a ledge of rocks, and soon disappearing under a covert of shrubs and trees, as it rolls onward, and soon loses itself in the broad expanse of Virginia's lovely lake. Lough Ramor is one of the largest and most picturesque of our county Cavan lakes-a county which is noted for the number and variety of its loughs-it touches the town of Virginia on the South side, and extends from right to left of the town some three and a-half miles, and in several spots it spreads out more than a mile in breadth. Numerous islets lie sprinkled upon its bosom, and are, for the most part, tufted with wood; its outlines are, in several places, considerably varied, and its shores are diversified with demesnes, plantations, fine farms, and the town of Virginia. On the Western end, the shores are beautified by the plantations of Lord Headfort's fine deer-park, which stretches for two miles around them, and connected with the improvements of Fort George, the residence of the rector of the parish, and also with the plantations of Fort Frederick, the beautifully situated demesne of Richard Scott, Esq. This lake has for the last few years become famous for its regattas, which come off with great eclat in the month of August, and attract to its shores the rank and fashion of the county, with crowds of strangers from various parts of Ireland. But we hasten away to other scenes. The streamlet that crosses the Dublin road at the upper end of Virginia, and loses itself in the broad lake adjoining the town, may be traced along its winding course for twelve or fourteen miles, till the tourist finds himself standing at its source among the heath-clad hills and moors of the Highlands of County Cavan. Crossing over the country lying to the Eastward of Lough Ramor, the traveller meets little to attract his attention until he reaches a summit nearly midway between Virginia and Bailieborough ; and there, if the day is fine and the sky clear, his eye will range over a wide and varied outline, stretching from Slieveglagh, in the neighbourhood of Cavan, to the mountains of Mourne; and here he can see and feel the point and beauty of the poet's couplet ""Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, After admiring the country around him, the traveller will soon enter the town of Bailieborough; and as this remote inland town, with its mountain scenery and crowded population, is little known, it may be right to take a look at the town itself, and, if time permitted, to make a few excursions in its neighbourhood, and give a description of its physical features, and then to tell something of the past and present condition of the people who dwell there. Bailieborough was, till of late, one of the best market towns in the county. It was, till the famine arrested its progress, a most promising and thriving place. The weekly market is on Monday; it is pretty well attended by the farmers for miles around, who find in it a ready sale for every kind of farm produce; but it must be no longer concealed, there has been for the last year or two a visible falling off in the numbers who used to attend fairs and markets. The change for the worse is felt in both town and country. The introduction of the free-trade policy has told terribly on the agricultural population of this corn-growing district, and the loss of the potato has entirely changed the appearance of the country. The cabins where the farm-labourers or cottiers used to dwell, have long since been deserted, and nothing remains of most of them now but a solitary gable or ruined side-wall, which may remain for years to come a memento of past neglect and mismanagement somewhere. Not only are the cabins of labourers abandoned, but many of the cottages of the honest and once thriving small farmers are now standing tenantless, and their quondam occupants are now gone, exiles in a foreign land. We are not in a position at present to judge what our losses are in suffering this class of farmers to leave the country: and if rent and poor-rates continue to press as they have done for the last few years, it requires no prophet's eye to see that this part of the country will be left without people to till the soil; and this great agricultural county will, in many parts, be turned into pasture grounds, and, like some parts of the West coast of Ireland, be utterly forsaken. There seems to be some kind of infatuation over the minds of both rulers and ruled, in pursuing for the last five years the insane policy of keeping up in idleness great masses of the population, and feeding them first at the expense of the Treasury, from which we drew nearly ten millions one way or another, and which money must now be repaid; and in now pressing out of the country the tenant farmers, who are at present flying their homes, rather than wait till their little all is wrested from them to pay old rents and new rates. |