376 WILD SPORTS OF THE WEST. 



and barbarisms of their progenitors. Without industry, 

 without education, they arrogated a certain place in 

 society, and idly imitated the wealthier in their vices. 

 Poverty and distress were natural results, and desperate 

 means were used to keep up appearances. The wretched 

 serfs, whom they called their tenants, were ground 

 to powder, till, happily for society, the jodeeins passed 

 into other hands, and the name and place ceased to be 

 remembered. The ivied walls, and numerous and 

 slender chimneys one sees in passing through this 

 country, will, in nine out of ten cases, point a moral 

 of this sort. 



In times like those of forty years ago, this extinct 

 tribe were, from the peculiar temper and formation of 

 society, occasionally a sad nuisance. The lord of a 

 JodeetUy like Captain Mac Turk, was " precisely that 

 sort of person who is ready to fight with anyone ; whom 

 no one can find an apology for declining to fight with ; 

 in fighting with whom considerable danger is incurred ; 

 and, lastly, through fighting with whom no ^clat or 

 credit could redound to the antagonist." Hence, 

 generally, the larger proprietors saw this class sink by 

 degrees, without an attempt to uphold them, and the 

 Jodeetn, to the great joy of the unhappy devils who farmed 

 it, was appended by general consent to the next estate. 



Many examples of dangerous and illegal authority, 

 as usurped and exercised by the aristocracy within the 

 last half-century, are on record, that would appear 

 mere romance to a stranger. One of the Fitzgerald 

 family was probably more remarkable than any person 

 of his times. He was the terror of the upper classes — 

 and to such as arrogated the privileges of the aristocracy, 

 without, as he opined, a prescriptive right, he was 



