5 44 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



arable and the mountain land ; but we bare no criteria by which any one of 

 these suggestions niay be tested. 



And no assistance can be got from the people themselves. There they are, 

 an English-speaking population with little knowledge of their own history 

 further back than the famine and none as to their ancestors of two or three 

 hundred or even a hundred years ago. That they must have spun and woven 

 their own wool for many and many a year eannot be doubted. They do so 

 stilL for there are two weavers on the island : and carding, spinning, thickening, 

 and finis hing are done at home. But there is now no sign of growing flax and 

 manufacturing linen They must have lived to some extent on their cattle, 

 sheep, and swine : they must have carried stuff up and down the hill-sides 

 upon their ponies' backs : they must have grown patches of potatoes and oats 

 and barley ; and they must have ground their own grain, and perhaps even 

 made some malt, before the American " yellow meal " ] came in just after the 

 famine. There are traces of a water-mill on the stream that runs into the 

 sea at Portlea: and Mr. MeCabe, the hotel-keeper on the island, writes that " the 

 people used their own hand-mills and ground their own corn up to 1870." 



Eedueed in numbers by the famine and by the emigration to which 

 agricultural and pastoral land has been subject since the invention of the 

 railway and the steamboat and the introduction of machinery into agricultural 

 production, the people have each now a larger share of the island. Having 

 a market on the mainland they now find it convenient to raise stock and to 

 exchange these for manufactured goods in return At the same time they 

 add to their income by taking part in the autumn herring and mackerel fishing. 

 by lobster fishing, in which about three-fourths of the islanders engage, and 

 by burning kelp, of which about thirty tons- are exported annually. For 

 kelp-burning as well as for manuring the land, sea-weed is collected in the 

 coves and bays from November to February and cut from the rocks during 

 March, April, and May. 



Twenty years ago the Congested Districts Board rearranged the holdings 

 on a large part of the island. The mountain land was fenced in by a stone 

 wall : and the low-lying land was split up so that each farmer had all his 

 land together. In some parts, especially along the southern side, a farm strip 

 runs from the mountain down to the sea. Each farmer has from fifteen to 

 twenty acres of arable ground down below and a right of grazing for so many 

 cattle or sheep upon the mountain 



If we take one farm with seventeen acres below, we shall see how the 

 farmer works. Of these seventeen acres he tills about three. This area is 



' Indian meal. ; Formerly, -»hen kelp was dearer, much more was burnt. 



