the Land Act of 1881, tenant-right was unknown.

Poetry is always congenial to an Irishman, probably because it has
licences almost as great as he likes to take, and has a vague,
irresponsible way of putting things, much akin to his own methods.

Here are some lines from the 'Irish Tenant's Song' which express a good
deal of the popular emotion:--

Oh, Parnell, dear, and did you hear the news that's going round?
The landlords are forbid by law to live on Irish ground.
No more their rent-days they may keep, nor agents harsh distrain,
The widow need no longer weep, for over is their reign.
I met with mighty Gladstone, and he took me by the hand,
And he said, 'Hurrah for Ireland! 'tis now the happy land.
'Tis a most delightful country that I for you have made--You
may shoot the landlord through the head who asks that rent be paid.'
We care not for the agent, nor do we care for those
Who come upon us to distrain--we pay them back in blows.
And when hopeless, helpless, ruined, these landlords vile shall roam,
We'll hunt and hound them from the roofs they've held so long as home.

I don't say that was sung in Castleisland, but it might have been the
local hymn and verbal companion to the brutal misdeeds of the benighted
inhabitants.

As if matters were not bad enough, that Apostle of outrage Mr. Michael
Davitt came to Castleisland on February 21, 1886, and in a pestilential
speech, inciting to crime, he showed that, at all events, he appreciated
that for sheer blackness and turpitude Kerry was bad to beat. He said:--

'For some time past Kerry has attracted more attention for the
occurrences which have been taking place here, than the whole remainder
of Ireland put together. I am not without hope that henceforth, until
the battle with landlordism and Dublin Castle is triumphantly over, the
people of Kerry will be towers of strength to the national cause. The
hope of Irish landlordism is now centred in Kerry. Elsewhere it has
none, it is a social rinderpest, since the National League was started
1600 families have been turned out in this one county.'

Captain M'Calmont in the House of Commons, three weeks afterwards,
called attention to Mr. Baron Dowse's address to the Grand Jury of the
County of Kerry in which he stated:--

'That this county is in a very much worse state than it has been for
years: that there are no less than three hundred offences specially
reported to the constabulary since