158 ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. [BOOK II. 



County of Longford ; examinations taken by J. Spencer, Esq. and W. 

 Gray, Esq. ; parish of Abbeysrule, barony of Rathcline. Nine wit- 

 nesses. 



Amongst the depositions which the Commissioners re- 

 ceived on the subject of widows with families of children, 

 was that of John Casey, who gave the following state- 

 ment. 



" In my parish of Kilcormack, of which the popula- 

 tion is 3,800, there are no less than thirty-six widows, 

 having weak families of young children. I know the 

 number accurately, because I have made a list of the poor 

 of the parish for my master, who distributes meat among 

 them at Christmas. There is no town in the parish, and 

 the manner in which they live is this : the neighbours 

 build huts for them on the verges of bogs, for which they 

 pay no rent ; and they endeavour to rear a pig, which 

 gives them such clothes as they are able to procure. They 

 get a little patch of land rent-free, and the neighbours are 

 always ready to plant it for them ; there is not a Sunday 

 in the year that my own boys are not employed in plant- 

 ing her con-acre for a widow. This supplies them with a 

 little stock of potatoes, and they have occasional assist- 

 ance from those who know them. They sometimes get a 

 little job, for which they are paid in potatoes. They also 

 get some field-work in the season, for which they some- 

 times receive threepence a day, but oftener a greater 

 value in potatoes. Let them do what they may, they are 

 often reduced to beg, but I have never known any of 

 them beg publicly in their own parish. There is thus no 

 kind of constant occupation at which a woman can earn 

 even a scanty pittance/ 5 



