Illicit stills, poteen, marriage and language.

Chapter XVIII

Illicit stills - Getting a reward - Poteen — Past and present - Dress and dwellings - Marriage and language - Material improvement since 1850.

Some 20 years ago one of my sons, then a boy, and I were on a fishing excursion in the county of Donegal. We were staying at the little village of Glen, close by Glen Lough, in rooms over a public house, kept by one Dolty MeGarvey. After a few days he had become a great friend of ours. I knew a great deal of poteen (illicit whisky) was distilled there, and as I had, in all my rambles, never seen an illicit still, I greatly wished to see one. I imparted my wish to Dolty, and he at once said he would take us to see one the next day; so early on the morrow he brought us some miles across wild hills and bogs till we arrived at the house of a farmer, who was his partner in the still. They brought us on some way till we came to a lane, well sheltered by thorn bushes, where, by a little stream, three sons of Dolty’s partner, fine young fellows as I ever saw, were working at the still. They wore stockings, but no shoes, and told us that by that means, in case of alarm, they could run more quickly over rocks and rough ground than if they were barefoot or had shoes. We sat on a bank, and they drank our health and we drank theirs, in a little measure, not much bigger than a thimble, of the poteen hot from the still. I asked Dolty whether the smoke ever attracted the attention of the police. He said that the distilling itself made so little smoke that it was unnoticed at a short distance, but that drying the malt made a great deal, and it was then they had to be careful.

“How do you manage to escape, then?” I asked. “Ah!” said he, “we always dry the malt in the beginning of July, when all the police are taken off to Derry to put down the riots there; so we can do it safely then. God is good, sir; God is good.”

A few mornings after this he roused us up very early, and told us to look out of our window, from which we saw five policemen carrying in triumph through the village a still, which they had just seized. Dolty was in fits of laughter. On our asking what he laughed at, he told us that the still was an old one, quite worn out.

“Look at the holes in it,” he said. “Some one has given information to the police where they would find it. We often play them that trick, and sometimes get a pound reward for an old still that isn’t worth sixpence.”

On our return to Dublin I told my friend T--- of our adventures. An Englishman he was, on the Lord Lieutenant’s (Lord Spencer) staff; he had been studying Irish characters and habits, and was most anxious to see an illicit still at work, so off he set to Glen, and put up at Dolty McGarvey’s. The morning after his arrival - it was rather premature - he said to him -

“Can you take me to see a still at work? I should like to see one.”

“There is no still in the country,” said Dolty.

“Nonsense,” said T---.

“You took Mr. le Fanu to see one.”

“Who told you that, sir?” said ‘Dolty. “I couldn’t show him one, for there is not one here.”

“‘Twas Mr. le Faun himself who told me,” said T---.

“He was humbugging you,” said McGarvey. “He never saw a still here.”

Before I again visited that part of Donegal Dolty MeGarvey had died, so I never heard why he wouldn’t do by my friend as he had done by us. Perhaps he had seen the royal arms on T---‘s despatch-box, or on the seals on letters from the Castle, and feared he might be a detective or a spy; but whatever it was, my friend’s wish to see a still at work has never been gratified.

It is a curious fact that in parts of Donegal they grow a crop of oats and barley mixed; they call it *pracas *(which is the Irish for a mixture), and use it for no other purpose but illicit distilling.

Since the time of my visit to the still with Dolty McGarvey, illicit distilling in that part of Donegal has, I believe, much diminished, owing to a great extent to the exertions of the late Lord Leitrim, whose early death has been such a loss not only to his own tenantry, whose welfare he always had at heart, and by whom he was much beloved, but to the whole of the countryside, which he had benefited in many ways, especially by the establishment of steamers plying between Mulroy Bay and Glasgow. But though illicit distilling has to a great extent died out on the mainland, it has been found impossible to suppress it on the islands off the west coast. Constabulary had for some time been stationed on several of the largest of these islands, but they were in some cases withdrawn about 18 months ago. Whatever the reasons for this step may have been, the results cannot but be disastrous to the inhabitants of the islands and the adjoining parts of the mainland, to which the poteen is easily smuggled. It is only a few days ago that I received a letter from a friend of mine who had just visited one of the islands off the coast of Sligo. The following is an extract from his letter:-

“We made an expedition to Inishmurray the day before yesterday… . We saw the old churches and the beehive cells, and the image of Father Molash. The island was once an island of the saints; it is now one of devils. Most of the men were more or less drunk; the air seemed laden with fumes of poteen. We saw a couple of stills, one at work. The school-master says that the children are getting quite dull and stupid from being constantly given tastes of the whisky.”

The manufacture is an ancient one. No doubt the “Aqua Vitae,” which Holinshed in his “Chronicles” mentions as an “ordinarie drinke” of the inhabitants, was nothing but the poteen of the olden times. I cannot do better than to give a quotation of the passage in the “Chronicles,” in which its wonderful virtues are so well described.

“The soile is low and waterish, including diverse little Islands, invironed with lakes and marrish. Highest hils have standing pooles in their tops. Inhabitants, especiallie new come, are subject to distillations, rheumes and fluxes. For remedie whereof they use an Ordinarie drink of Aqua Vitae, being so qualified in the making, that it drieth more and also inflameth lesse than other hot confections doo. One Theoricus wrote a proper treatise of Aquce Vitae wherein he praiseth it to the ninth degree. He distinguisheth three sorts thereof, Simplex, Composita, and Perfectisima. He declareth the simples and ingrediences thereto belonging. He wisheth it to be taken as well before meat as after. It drieth up the breaking out of hands, and killeth the flesh worms, if you wash your hands therewith. It scowreth all scurfe and scalds from the head, being therewith dailie washt before meales. Being moderatlie taken (Saith lie) it sloweth age, it strengthneth youth, it helpeth digestion, it cutteth flegme, it abandoneth melancholic, it relisheth the heart, it lighteneth the mind, it quickeneth the spirits, it cureth the hydropsie, it healeth the strangurie, it keepeth and preserveth the head from whirling, the eies from dazeling, the toong from lisping, the mouth from maffling, the teeth from chattering, and the throte from ratling: it keepeth the weasan from Stifling, the Stomach from wambling, and the heart from swelling, the hands from shivering, the sinewes from shrinking, the veines from crumpling, the bones from aking, the marrow from soaking. Ulstadius also ascribeth thereto a singular praise, and would have it to burne being kindled, which he taketh to be a token to know the goodnesse thereof. And trulie it is a sovereigne liquor if it be Orderlie taken.”

It is hard to realize how great the change in nearly everything has been since my early days.

I was a child when steam vessels first plied between England and Ireland; before that passengers and mails, as well as goods, were carried across the channel by sailing vessels.

The mail-boats started from the Pigeon-house, near Dublin. In bad weather the voyage often occupied some days, and in view of a not improbable long sea voyage, each passenger took with him a hamper of provisions, which, if the passage proved a good one, was given to the captain as a perquisite. A ferry-boat carried passengers and mails across the Menai Straits.

I remember well the opening of the first railway in England. I had entered college before one existed here. The earliest was that from Dublin to Kingstown, on which I travelled in the first train that ever ran in Ireland.

I can recollect the time, before gas was used as an illuminant, when towns and cities were lighted by oil lamps. It was in those days that an old lady, on being told that oil would be altogether superseded by gas, asked with a sigh, “And what will the poor whales do?”

There were no matches in my early days; the want was supplied by flint and steel or tinder-box.

I need hardly say there were no telegraphs nor telephones nor photographs. “The world, indeed, has wagged a pace.”

In the dress and habits of the country people, too, there has been much change. The, dress of girls and women on Sundays and holidays is now as close an imitation as they can afford or procure of that of fashionable ladies. Formerly, instead of shawls or capes, they wore over a simple gown a long cloak with a hood. In many parts of the south it was of bright scarlet cloth, the hood lined with pink silk. Hats and bonnets were unknown. Girls had nothing on their heads; married women wore many-bordered, high-cauled caps. The men all wore corduroy knee-breeches, bright coloured waistcoats, and frieze coats, made like an evening coat.

The red cloaks and white caps, contrasting with the grey and blue frieze, gave a wonderfully picturesque effect to a funeral or other procession, where all walked, except some farmers, who rode with their wives on pillions behind them. This effect in funerals was heightened by the wild, wailing Irish cry, “keened” by many women all the way from the home to the grave. Now it is only heard in the churchyard, and rarely even there.

In the food of the people, too, there has been great improvement. In old days most of them had nothing but potatoes; now there are very few who have not, in addition, bread and tea, and not unfrequently meat of some kind.

Their dwellings also are much improved. Formerly the number of cabins with but one room or two, a kitchen and a bedroom, was very large. In them there were two beds, in one of which slept the father and mother of the family; in the other, the children, who lay (as they call it) heads and points, the heads of the boys being at one end of the bed, those of the girls at the other. These houses were built of mud. Most of them had no windows; only a hole in the wall to let out the smoke. Such dwellings are disappearing fast, and ere many years none of them will, I trust, be left. The houses built in recent years are comfortable and substantial.

Now in every house there are candies or a lamp. Formerly, as a rule, there were neither; the inmates sat and talked by the light of the turf fire, and if anything had to be searched for they lit a rush, which served in lieu of a candle. Of them there was a good supply. They were pealed rushes, dried, and drawn through melted grease or oil. The peasants who came to us for medicine always begged for castor-oil. We suspected they generally wanted it not for their own insides, but for the outsides of their rushes; all the more because we knew that they had a strong objection to take it as a medicine, believing, as many of them did, that it was made from human flesh boiled down. This is why an angry man would say to another - or, for that matter, to his wife if she annoyed him - “It’s what I ought to put you into the pot on the fire and boil you into castor-oil.”

The arrangements as to marriages have not changed as much as other things. It very often happened, and sometimes happens still, that the bride and bridegroom never saw each other till the wedding day, or a day or two before it, the match being made by the parents, assisted by the priest. Of course there were love matches too; but they were the exceptions.

Farmers had a great objection to their younger daughters being married before the -elder ones. A tenant of my brother-in-law, Sir William Barrington, came to tell him that his daughter Margaret had been married the day before to Pat Ryan. “How is that” said he. “He told me it was your daughter Mary he was going to marry?” “So it was, your honour,” said the farmer. “‘Twas was her he was courting, but I made him take Margaret. Wasn’t she my ouldest daughter? and I wouldn’t let him be runnin’ through the family that way, taking his pick and choice of them.” Mary was young and pretty, Margaret *passée *and plain. It was probably in such a case that a man, boasting of the kindness of his father-in-law, said, “Sure he gave me his ouldest daughter, and if he had an oulder one he’d have given her to me.”

The greater part of the income of the priests was derived from weddings. There was always a collection for “his raverence.” At the wedding of the daughter of a farmer, Tom Dundon, living near us at Abington, at which I was present, the priest got over £30. That was one of the cases in which the bride and bridegroom never met until their wedding day, and a very happy married life they had.

Not the least remarkable of the changes in recent years is the rapidity with which the Irish language is dying out, and in many districts has died out. This is mainly due to the education in the national schools, where all the teaching is in English, and to the want of books or newspapers in Irish.

In the counties of Limerick and Tipperary, when I was a boy, many of the old people could speak Irish only; middle-aged men and women knew both English and Irish, but always spoke the latter to each other; boys and girls understood both languages, but almost always spoke in English. Now it is only very old men and women who know Irish there; the young people do not understand it, and cannot tell the meaning of any Irish word. The same process is going on, though not everywhere so rapidly, in every district, where 50 years ago Irish was the language of the people; and I fear that, notwithstanding the endeavours of a society started not long ago to keep it alive, the Irish language will before another 50 years be dead.

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