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"Was he a squire of this country?" I asked innocently. "A squire of this country, sorr? He is just Mr. Sweeney, the Gombeen man; he and his brothers, they all came here from where I don't know." An energetic man, certainly, Mr. Sweeney, and not likely, I should think, to allow the National League, to push matters here to the point of nationalising the land of Donegal, if he can prevent it.
Concerning the shilling interest per week on a pound there is, however, unhappily no room for doubt, and for small unsecured loans 260 per cent. per annum is still the ruling figure. This enormous rate of interest, however, is now only exacted on the very smallest loans, for the old-fashioned gombeen man has lost his customers for larger sums.
But we are going to get a modern slide oven." After viewing the orchard and the beehives beneath the trees, I remarked on the size of the plant, and its suitability for his purpose. He said: "It used to belong to the gombeen man." The sea wind was blowing through the open windows of the mill.
I earned and saved it myself; and then I wasn't above learning how best to use it." He thinks the people here though by no means what they might be with more thrift and knowledge much better off than the same class in many other parts of Ireland. There are no "Gombeen men" here, he says, and no usurious shopkeepers. "The people back each other in a friendly way when they need help."
The Maynooth men, sons of small farmers, back-street shopkeepers, pawnbrokers, and gombeen men, aided by British gold, these half-bred, half-educated absorbers of eleemosynary ecclesiasticism, are deadly enemies to the Empire. This is Mr. Bull's guerdon for the Maynooth grant. My authority is undeniable. The statement is made on the assurance of eminent Catholics.
He compared the trade turnover of $5,045 for the first year of the society with $375,000 for 1918. But there were more things to be done. The finest herring in the world swim the Donegal coast. Scots catch it. Irish buy it. Dungloe men wanted to fish, but the gombeen man would never lend money to promote industry.
At Burtonport we found the "Gombeen man," of Dungloe, represented by a very large "store." He runs steamers between this place and various ports on the Scottish and Irish coasts, bringing in goods and taking out the crops which his debtors turn over to him. This Burtonport "store" towers high above the modest home of the parish priest, Father Walker.
It is reputed the most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dream of beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity of that interesting type of Irish civilisation, the "Gombeen man," of whom I had heard so much at Gweedore.
In spite of combined hopes, the potato plants were floppily yellow that year. Their stems felt like a dead man's fingers. No potatoes to eat. None to exchange for meal. What were they to do? The gombeen man told them. As member of the county council, he said, he would secure money for the repair of the roads. All those who worked on the road would get paid in meal.
"There's a hole in your pocket, Capt'n; stop it up with your fist, man," said Liza she was a gombeen woman, and when she got a penny in her hand it was a prisoner for life. "Chut! woman," said Pete, "what's the good book say ing? 'Riches have wings; let the birds fly then," and off he went, reeling and tottering, and laughing his formidable laugh. Pete grew merry.
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