3-052-382 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches in Ireland: harrowing under difficulties, mountain farm in County Mayo, 1880. 'The large county of Mayo...is still the poorest and rudest part of Ireland...the greater part of the land consists of barren moors,...incumbered with huge rocks,...either protruding through the thin heathery turf from the mass of granite that lies beneath, or else scattered in loose heaps and detached fragments over the hillside. The difficulty of ploughing, harrowing, or in any way properly cultivating, such land as this, may be imagined...The exact spot where our Artist...made the Sketch we have engraved, was close to the Pontoon Lough, on the road between Castlebar and Ballina, near the ridge of mountain called "The Rocks."...here are the poor little cabins, built of turf and stones, inhabited by hard-living families...The harrow for the oat-field...is an implement of the rudest make, and it has to be guided, or lifted over the stones, by the wife's hand which holds it with a rope of straw. The horse, most likely borrowed or hired for the day, is led by her husband...It is a fine example of agriculture in the civilised nineteenth century, and in the United Kingdom of Greal Britain and Ireland'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.