A writer in the Freeman’s Journal has the following suggestive remarks with regard to the sorrow and poverty which he found amongst the children of a typical school in the West of Ireland.
“I once asked the Sisters in charge what might be the children’s idea of Home Rule. The reply was eminently practical – ‘Remunerative employment, shoes and stockings, bread and milk for breakfast, and no more rags.’
I confess I feel not a little ashamed to find myself obliged to pen this letter. Must the cycle of Irish beggary forever go round and round, like Ixion’s wheel? Must those unhappy Kinvara children – so modest and shy that they only reply to your questioning in monosyllables and whispers – must they continue to suffer perennial nakedness and hunger?
Kinvara – 1893
The Burren and Beyond 