Return to Newport

Asenath Nicholson

Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger

1847

Chapter XXVI (16) | Start of Chapter

The following Friday I left, with regret and gratitude, the hospitable family at the Sound, and took a car for Westport. Stopped at Newport, at the house of Mr. Gibbon, the itinerant and Bible reader, and passed the time pleasantly till Tuesday with his family, and the kind Christian widow Arthur, who kept the post-office. A kind of romantic charm seems flung about Newport. Sir Richard O'Donel and his lady have established schools on liberal principles. The lady herself teaches two or three days in a week, and Sir Richard has an admirably well fitted school-room, where he teaches a Sabbath-school himself.

Ireland’s Welome to the Stranger is one of the best accounts of Irish social conditions, customs, quirks and habits that you could wish for. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, was an American widow who travelled extensively in Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine and meticulously observed the Irish peasantry at work and play, as well as noting their living conditions and diet. The book is also available from Kindle.

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An American widow’s account of her travels in Ireland in 1844–45 on the eve of the Great Famine:

Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger

Sailing from New York, she set out to determine the condition of the Irish poor and discover why so many were emigrating to her home country.

Mrs Nicholson’s recollections of her tour among the peasantry are still revealing and gripping today.

The author returned to Ireland in 1847–49 to help with famine relief and recorded those experiences in the rather harrowing: Annals of the Famine in Ireland.

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