18 
Arthur Young. 
pursued it as a calling, and takes some trouble to reply to the 
various objections raised against bis literary works. 
In 1778 his Tour in Ireland appeared. He had landed in 
Dublin in June 1776, after a tedious passage of twenty-four 
hours. In that town, to quote from a paper read at the Farmers’ 
Club in April 1882, he found fish and poultry plentiful and 
cheap, good lodgings almost as dear as in London, with no idea 
of cleanliness. He notices the great improvement of grass land 
made by the application of limestone gravel, the cutting of straw 
into chaff, and the ploughing of fallows in autumn. Ploughing 
is done by oxen, four in a plough. The cottars give six pounds 
an acre for land dunged for potatoes. At Slaine farmers bum 
their straw, for which they deserve to be hanged ; though 
within the last fifty years of Queen Victoria’s reign this same 
practice was pursued by English farmers with their long stubbles 
left after reaping. Lord Longford tells him that the poor have 
generally such abundance of potatoes as to command a bellyful ; 
flax enough for all their linen ; most of them a cow or two ; all 
of them a pig, and numbers of poultry ; fuel in plenty. Num- 
bers are supported on lake fish, for which five hundred children 
may be seen fishing at the same time. They spin wool enough 
for their own clothes. Reverse the picture. They are ill- 
clothed ; accounts are kept with the labourers which leave them 
very little cash for their year’s services ; they lay hands on all 
sorts of irons, hinges, chains, locks, keys ; gates are cut to pieces ; 
trees as big as a man’s body, ten men’s work to move, gone in a 
night. They bring up their children to “ hoking ” potatoes 
artfully, raising them, culling the best tubers, and then replanting 
them. 
The cropping around Enniskillen is potatoes, barley, oats, 
oats, oats, and six years’ ley. A schedule of 1 1,000 acres of 
Lord Enniskillen’s lands shows the rise of rents between 1730 
and 1770 to be from 931k old to 3,807 1. new rents, all within a 
period of fifty years. In Cavan they very commonly plough 
with their horses drawing by the tail ; “ nothing can put 
them beside it.” The people he finds in better circumstances 
than twenty years back, and more industrious, though now they 
only work to eat. Live stock have been improved by a bull 
and a tup bought of Mr. Bakewell. In the Barony of Costello 
in Mayo there is not a post-house, a market town, or a justice 
of the peace. There is not a free in the whole Barony of 
Ennis. In Tipperary the farms were large, commonly 3,000 or 
4,000 acres, and rose up to 10,000 ; the rent of them was 10,000k 
Dancing is very general among the poor ; dancing masters of 
their own rank travel with a blind piper or fiddler from cabin 
