Never to Return Home by Fraser Boyd

Author:Fraser Boyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical fiction, migration from Ireland to New Zealand, 1860s, Portobello, Dunedin, Port Chalmers, social history
Publisher: Philip Garside
Published: 2015-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two — John White

Chapter 10

Life was tough for farmers in Donegal. Those with long memories said that it always had been, and those with a pessimistic outlook, who called themselves realists, said that it always would be. People said that a farmer with animals could survive the worst of the potato famine. If you had cattle you had meat, milk and hides, and manure to help grow crops, although you still needed to be a good animal husbandman to ensure that any animal you killed was replaced. Some farmers had killed too many, with disastrous consequences.

It was a regular occurrence for the bailiffs to call at a farm and, with the excuse of unpaid rent, evict the family with no notice and nowhere to go, unless they had relatives to call on until they could arrange something else. Because the relatives were frequently in the same position, they were often dragged down as well. Yet, how could you refuse aid to your kin who were suffering so badly?

Due to these problems, jobs in either city or country were hard to find. Many a good farming family had found themselves in the slums of a city, in utterly unfamiliar territory, with no house worth calling a home, no job, and therefore no income, in sight.

Landlords wanted to take back the land and try new farming methods with fewer workers, so hired hands fared no better.

If you could stay on the land, and milk twice a day, seven days a week, you had the problem of finding people who had money to buy your milk. When you made the big decision and killed an animal for meat, you couldn’t store the whole beast. So, you sold it if you could find anyone with money, or perhaps bartered it if the other person had something to offer that you actually needed.

However you looked at it, money, goods, food, and indeed hope, were in short supply. People were being run off their farms and losing their jobs. The cycle of poverty and despair went on.

Everyone knew that the land holding and tenancy rules were biased in favour of the mostly English landowners. Poor Irish small farmers, cottiers, had no show. Their world was bad and more likely to get worse than better.

As John White reached his 20th year in 1862, he decided that he did not really want to farm. Although things were improving as the worst effects of the potato famine and the subsequent depressed state of the economy were being overcome, and most of the repossession of property had taken place, he had seen too much of how peasant farmers were treated, and was keen to avoid it. But how could you?

You only knew what you knew, which was your father’s knowledge and what you had managed to learn as you went along. He had long ago decided that school was not for him. He hadn’t been a bad scholar, but found that most of the knowledge the teacher was trying to impart had little practical use.

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