t knows not Parnellism, nor the extent of crime in
that unhappy period, may not be aware of the origin of the term.

Captain Boycott was agent for Lord Erne's Mayo estates, and laid out the
whole of his capital L6000, in improving and stocking his own property.
Because, in the course of his duty, he served some ejectment notices, he
was denounced by the Land League, his farm servants were terrorised into
leaving his employment, and when he imported fifty labourers from the
north of Ireland to save his crops, the Government had to despatch a
small army corps of troops and constabulary to protect them. So great
was the power of the League, that even in Dublin the landlord of a hotel
declined to let him stop more than twenty-four hours in the house, as he
was threatened if he ventured to harbour him. For the protection of his
life and no more, the unfortunate gentleman had to leave the country.

Baron Dowse said in charging the Grand Jury of the Connaught Western
Assize, that this case had 'excited the wonder and amazement of a great
part of the United Kingdom and the sorrow of a considerable portion of
Ireland.' Very soon the name of Boycott was given to the approved method
of actively sending a man to Coventry, or threatening his life and
property as well as refusing to permit him to be supplied with even the
bare necessities of existence.

Baron Dowse, a man who had no fear of unmanly criminals, justly styled
this a reign of terror.

Kerry is divided into six Poor Law Unions, three of them--Kenmare,
Cahirciveen and Dingle--are very poor districts; but there was
practically not an outrage in them. Killarney, Tralee and Listowel are
rich by comparison, Tralee being the richest of the three, and
Castleisland the wealthiest portion of the district. There were nearly
as many outrages there as in the whole of the rest of the country, which
shows that poverty was not the cause.

I was in and out of Castleisland, but though I had a sheaf of
threatening letters, I never met with any insults or received a threat
to my face.

Only once did I overhear any hostile mutterings. This was when I was
driving out of Tralee, and my coachman stopped to give a message in the
dusk at a house on the outskirts of the town.

Suddenly two or three men came up, and one said:--

'Now's the time to settle old Hussey.'

Old Hussey--to use their accurate nomenclature--popped his head out of
the window, and also his right hand which held a mo