As the French Revolution and its effects on Ireland were not heard of in Kerry till long after the establishment of the Empire, so was Ross Castle, on the lower lake at Killarney, the last stronghold subdued by Ludlow; and so also was Kerry the last stronghold of Fenianism. Moribund in the other parts of Ireland until Nationalists and Land Leaguers were united, by the prosecution of Mr. Parnell, Fenianism still lingered and lingers on in Kerry. In the pot-houses of Tralee, Castle Island, and Cahirciveen the embers of Fenianism have smouldered since the outbreak of 1867. Slow to learn, Kerry has been slow to forget, and when once the emissaries of the Land League arrived here they found ready to their hand the _cadre_ at least of a formidable organisation, and the reign of terrorism at once commenced.
Up to the present moment I have not heard of houses being blown up by dynamite after the fashion in Bantry, but the farmers who have already not paid their rents decline to do so, or pay in full secretly, while openly subscribing to the Land League and denouncing the mean-spirited serfs who would pay a farthing above Griffith's valuation.
There is no mistaking the strength of the movement which has at last reached this remote island, between which and America, as a native said to me yesterday, "There is not as much as the grass of a goat." This saying refers to the popular method of measurement, which is not by acres, but by the grass of so many cows, according to the richness of the pasture. Up to a month ago there was no talk of the Land League on Valentia Island. The tenants had for the most part paid their May rents, and the situation therefore afforded little scope for agitation; but the subtle spirit which spread instantaneously from Tralee to Cahirciveen quickly traversed the ferry, and now the Valentians are as keen on the subject of their grievances as anybody else in the western half of Ireland. At Cahirciveen anti-landlordism is as vigorous at this moment as at Tralee, or even at Ennis itself, albeit violent personal outrages have not been perpetrated in the immediate neighbourhood.
A resolute and influential leader of the people declared to me yesterday that the spirit now aroused would never be quelled but by a full and generous recognition of the claims of the cultivators. He averred that the people are not only awakened to their wrongs and determined to have them redressed, but that they possess the power of enforcing their will. I hinted that savage threats and deeds of violence might produce temporary anarchy, but that the end of all would be the crushing of the League with a strong hand. The answer was not argument, but defiance. It was impossible, the speaker asserted, to crush the combination now existing in Kerry. It could not be crushed, for the simple reason that it did not transgress the law. This was startling news, and I at once asked what was to be said of the dynamite affair at Bantry, the ear-cutting business near Castle Island, and the shooting of a bailiff in Tyrone? Only one of those things, I was instantly reminded, had occurred in Kerry, and I was moreover instructed that personal violence was preached against by the Land League priests, and opposed by all lay leaders. The crimes alluded to were the accidents of a great upheaval of the people, who could attain their objects perfectly well without violence.