‘The poorhouse!’ (firing up); ‘I'd rather die than go there! I'd rather lie down under the snow at the side of the road and _die_! But sure the neighbours will help me. There isn't one 'ill refuse me an air of the fire or a night's lodging, or maybe a bit and sup of an odd time. And you're going to give me something yourself, my lady, avourneen, you are! Don't I see it in yer face? You're going to bring out the dust of dry tay and the grain of sugar and the couple o' coppers to the poor old granny. Ah yes! And maybe the sarvant-maids will have an ould cast petticoat to throw to her, for to keep the life in her ould carcase this perishing day.’
Before the famine of 1846-7, which brought about a change in the food of the peasantry, systematic begging was the annual custom. Potatoes were then the sole food of the working-classes, and the farmers paid their labourers by allowances of potato-ground (half or quarter acres), with seed to till it. Money, therefore, was little in circulation among the lower orders. In the interval between the consumption of the old potatoes and the coming in of the new--expressively known as ‘the bitter six weeks’--there were occasionally great privation and distress. Whole families turning out of their cabin and leaving it with locked door, might at this time be seen trooping along the roads--the father away ‘harvesting’ or getting work where he could. As they went along, stopping at every cabin on their route, a few potatoes would be handed to them--less or more, according as the stock of the donors was holding out--so that by nightfall the bag on the mother's back would have increased to sufficient proportions to furnish a good meal for the family. And thus they continued to live until the new potatoes were fit to dig, when the cabin-door was unlocked, and plenty once more the order of the day.
The charity of the poor to the poor is very touching, and nowhere do we see more of this than in Ireland. The people are naturally good-natured and full of kindly impulses; and they attach moreover, a superstitious, almost religious value to the blessing of the poor, with an equal dread of their curse.
A fatal instance of the latter feeling occurred near Limerick some years since.