Peregrine Cavendish is the landowner and 12th Duke of Devonshire, who….
By Bernadette Gallagher
Wants to increase the rent 900%. Absentee
landlordism in Ireland’s Republic of 2026.
We turn away and hope the past will go away,
until forced to look again as every now and
then history rears its ugly, entitled, demanding
head, forcing us to face backward once more;
stopping us dead in our forward thrust tracks.
He comes looking for ‘can I have some more?’
with or without the ‘please’. Grown men holding
back tears. Buried melancholy seeping back
up through Knockmealdown Mountains.
He’s free to cast his ‘fishing rights’ net all the way
from Lismore to Youghal, to reel in sheep grazers
on a hill they would rather not die on. We choke
on their greed; pushed down throats with silver
spoons and a legacy of colonialism renewed and
repeating around the world. The lands within my
land that I avoiding stepping on or spending money
on – my protest, my boycott unnoticed, satisfying.
The maps in my head, as I side step around the
boundaries of privilege. Anger and sadness, at times,
hard to divert. Let all peoples keep marching up hills.
Not ‘the ordinary people’ or ‘the average people’,
but ‘The People’.
