George Adair - Landlord
Taken from The Secret Places of Donegal by John M. Feehan

It is a constant source of wonderment to me how the landlords of Donegal could live in surroundings of such extraordinary beauty and at the same time be so cruel. I would have thought that the glory of spring, the magic of summer, the mellowness of autumn and the wilderness of winter, in such a magnificent environment as Glenveagh would have softened even the hardest heart. But it was not so. Even today there is an air of tragedy and sadness about this whole countryside as if the pain and sufferings inflicted by two brutal landlords, Lord Leitrim and George Adair still lingered on like winter mists on the mountain peaks.

Leitrim was cantankerous, quarrelsome bully who evicted people on the slightest pretext, and in mid-winter flung women and little children out on the roadside to die. For a long time after his death the Irish people drank the health of his killers with the following toast.

Here's to the hand that made the ball
That shot lord Leitrim in Donegal

Lord Leitrim was succeeded by his nephew, a decent honourable man who treated his tenants in a fair and just way and to some extent made amends for the barbarity of his uncle.

Read The Killing of Leitrim.

John George Adair

George Adair was an entirely different kettle of fish. He does not seem to have the problem that tantalised Lord Leitrim, but on balance he may have been worse. He was a cunning, ruthless land speculator who trampled on the rights of everyone in the pursuit of financial gain.

After he purchased the Glenveagh estates he decided to turn them into huge sheep farms and to do so he had to get rid of most of the tenants. But he needed a good excuse and his cunning was not found wanting. He decided to goad them to breaking point and he instructed his chief steward, James Murray, a man with a criminal background, to lean heavily and harass the tenants as much as possible. In this way Murray made himself so obnoxious that he was hated and detested by the tenants. Then one morning he went up the mountain with his dog to check on some sheep. He did not return that evening, but his dog, stained with blood, did. Two days later a search party found his dead body. His head had been battered in. His killers were never found.

This gave Adair the excuse he wanted. He publicly blamed his tenants for killing Murray and he evicted 50 families comprising 250 men, women and children. He levelled 28 houses to the ground. The eviction scenes in themselves were harrowing. One old man who had build his house stone by stone and reared his family kissed each wall before it was flattened to the ground. A poor widow and her seven children threw themselves on the ground and their crying resounded through the mountains as their little home was levelled to the ground. In another house a bedridden old man was carried out in his bed while the house was being knocked down. The desolation all around was beyond description.

The Londonderry Standard reported:

When dispossessed the families grouped themselves on the ground beside their late home... As night set in the scene became fearfully sad. Passing along the base of the mountain the spectator might have observed near to each hose its former inmates crouching round a turf fire close by a hedge; and as the rain poured upon them they found no cover. Many of them were miserably clad and on all sides the greatest desolation was apparent... These poor starving people remain on the cold bleak mountain, no one caring for them, whether they live or die. It's horrible to think of, but more horrible to behold.

John George Adair had won and from the luxury and opulence of Glenveagh Castle he celebrated his victory over the Irish peasant. The estates became the vast sheep farm he desired.

Yet in subsequent years there were a lot of strange murmurings, even among his own class. It was widely believed that the tenants did not kill Murray but that Adair himself planned it and paid a handsome sum to have it carried out. Dugdale Rankin, another employee of Adair's, who was a lodger in the Murray house, was having an affair with Murray's wife and local belief was that Adair paid him to murder Murray, this giving him the excuse to blame the tenants. A local report states tersely and laconically that immediately after the funeral Rankin 'moved into Mrs. Murray's bed'.

Before Adair died he had a monument erected to commemorate his memory. It was a huge boulder overlooking the lake with the inscription: 'John Adair, just, generous and true.' Shortly after the work was completed it was struck by lightning and broken to bits.

Adair escaped an Irish bullet by dying in America. His body was brought back and buried in his native Leix. Beside Adair's grave is another grave, that of Edward Mead who wrote a book called The Dastard's Guide to Fame and Fortune. They should have much in common to discuss with one another.

The shattered remains of many of these little homes are still to be seen around and about Glenveagh. Stop your car, pause for a few minutes and go into one of them. Sit down on a stone outside the door and transport yourself back one hundred years. Imagine that it was you who built this little home, stone by stone, plank by plank, that you brought your beautiful young bride here full of the joy of boundless love; that you began your married life here, brought children into the world, paid your rent and worked twelve or fourteen hours a day just to rear your family and barely keep alive; then one day your and your family are evicted, the home that you built crowbarred to the ground. Hear the cries and lamentations of your wife and children - your children - then perhaps you may get some idea of the horror and savagery of it all. And it did not happen only in Glenveagh . It happened in every village and townland in Ireland. This little visualisation may help you to understand the feelings of the Irish people towards the British Establishment, even after 100 years. As the old Irish proverb puts it: It's easy to sleep on another man's wound.

Later Glenveagh was bought by Kinsley Porter who died so mysteriously off Inishbofin.

Glenveagh is now a National Park www.glenveaghnationalpark.ie