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I have now a faded letter from Ethan Allen, grim old warrior, in which he calls my father "the best swordsman that ever straddled a horse." He was a "gallous chap" in his youth, so said my grandmother, with a great love of good clothes and gunpowder.
It is this which makes him find the masterly conclusion to Riders of the Sea, when old Maurya, lamenting the death of her sons, comforts herself, "No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied;" it is this which gives Naisi the ancient love of life, "It's a hard and bitter thing leaving the earth;" which produces so admirable a proverb as, "Who would listen to an old woman with one thing and she saying it over?"; and enables Pegeen, in The Playboy of the Western World, to perceive, if only from pique, the preposterousness of her infatuation "There's a great gap," she says and this is the gist of the matter "between a gallous story and a dirty deed."
"I know rightly," says the tinker, "and it's the first too." 'Then my wife was going to slate me for bringing in people to bewitch the child, and I had to turn the lot of them out to finish the job in the lane. I asked him where most of the tinkers came from that are met with in Wicklow. 'They come from every part, he said. 'They're gallous lads for walking round through the world.
But never does such common sense stay the flight of the poetic dream. Pegeen may know the difference "between a gallous story and a dirty deed," but that does not stop her from breaking out into wild lamentations: "Oh, my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only Playboy of the Western World."
This broadside, one of very few which are not preserved in the British Museum and a greater tribute to its rarity could not be devised was called, "A Good Suggestion as to ye Proper Use of ye Chinne Whisker," and consisted of a few lines of doggerel printed beneath a caricature of the king, with the crown hanging from his goatee, reading as follows: "Ye King doth sporte a gallous grey goatee Uponne ye chinne, where every one may see.
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