A R Y 

 ENNIS — C0RCASE LANDS. 61 



many good shops in the town. A fine suite of new 

 county buildings are just being completed, which will 

 contribute much to the ornament of the place, though, 

 if payable from the grand-jury cess, it may be doubted 

 whether it was prudent at present to proceed on such a 

 costly scale. 



Proceeding southwards from Ennis, the country im- 

 proves. The road crosses the Fergus at Clare, to which 

 town the river is navigable by large vessels. Along both 

 banks of this river to its junction with the Shannon, 

 being a distance of eight or ten miles on each side, are 

 fine tracts of rich alluvial land, called "corcases/'* which 

 yielded very high rents before the famine. These rich 

 flats are banked off from the inroads of the tide, being 

 in many places under high-water mark of spring-tides. 

 Where they have been left in their natural state, they 

 are exceedingly fertile, producing heavy crops of hay 

 year after year, or carrying large stocks of sheep and 

 cattle. They have been generally let in farms of con- 

 siderable extent, and £3, 10s. per Irish acre, besides 

 grand-jury cess, &c., was no uncommon rent for a large 

 farm. The custom of the tenants was to sublet certain 

 portions to the farmers of the upper country for meadow, 

 at rents varying from £6 to £8 an acre ; and being 

 fettered by no restrictions in their management, other 

 parts were con-acred for potatoes at even greater rents, 

 the tenant afterwards putting in the grain crop, and 

 frequently selling it, with the straw, before cutting. In 

 this way the actual tenant employed almost no labourers ; 



* " Corcase," in Ireland, seems to denote much the same kind of land as 

 the " carse " of Scotland. 



