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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 38

"Attymass, Bullina, Co. Mayo, 26th January, 1880

"Attymass, Bullina, Co. Mayo,

"My Lord,

"Among the many applications for relief that reach you, I venture to say there is hardly any district where relief is more needed than in this parish. I could say to you, even passing by train from Foxford to Ballina, look yonder east, and behold my parish, situate I at the very base and beginning of the Ox Mountain. I would require page 49 no other word to convince you that distress, deep and sad, exists there. Even in better times there was pinching want in the greater part of this parish at the end of Summer; and how could it be otherwise? The land is extremely bad and awfully dear, the holdings very small, generally under five or six acres, very rarely beyond eight or nine. The parish is densely populated, a circumference with a radius of two miles enclose it, save one village of sixteen families, situated in the very centre of bogs and mountains. If you'll consider the land covered by four lakes, with bogs and small barren mountain hills within this circumference, then there remains little land to sustain 420 families, with fourteen or fifteen who live on conacre You'll then admit that the parishioners (Protestant and Catholic) here are in want and destitution, in testimony of which I might relate many and many a painful incident. I am a prisoner in my own house, for though I tell them again and again I have nothing to afford them, they still remain about my house hoping yet to have something with them to their empty houses, and hungry families. I am pained to meet them, as I can't relieve their wants. It's the same way in every village where I have to visit. I must wait and listen to heart-rending stories, and witness sad scenes. I therefore implore yourself and charitable Committee will vote me a remittance to meet the urgent destitution of my poor parishioners, 420 families, which means about 2,000, in distress for food and clothing.

"I remain, with respect, your obedient servant,

"John O'Grady, P.P.,

Attymass, Ballina, Co. Mayo."