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Updated: June 21, 2025
"You'll set McCurdy's hut to rights for my dark wife," said Dan to me, "and let it be her own place, and the money that is lying with my uncle, you'll be giving her when she needs it," and there he went on, keeping up her heart with his talk, and his eyes were straining longingly to the loom of hills in the dimness, like a man saying farewell, and I think the gangers and Dol Beag were clean forgot.
A similar class of men is to be found on the banks of rivers, who are known as gangers. Then there are discharged sergeants and corporals, and even privates, who can produce their discharge with a favourable report upon character endorsed upon it. We know the severity of the army, in this particular.
So we had the great days at the burning of heather, and when I would be running with a kindling here and there, and watching the lowes lick into the dry scrog with a hiss before the breeze, I would be thinking much of Dan and Ronny McKinnon and me in the blazing whins, and the gangers and excisemen and riff-raff of that kidney hallooing round us.
Stacpoole told me, to-night, that he borrowed £1000 of the Government for drainage improvements on his property here, the object of which was to better the holdings of tenants. Of this sum he had to leave £400 undrawn, as he could not get the men to work at the improvements, even for their own good. They all wanted to be gangers or chiefs.
The two contingents now lined up, and their total was checked by reference to the ship's articles, the officer never omitting to make affectionate inquiries after men marked down as "run," "drowned," or "discharged"; for none knew better than he, if an old hand at the game, how often the "run" man ran no further afield than some secure hiding-place overlooked by his gangers, or how miraculously the "drowned" bobbed up once more to the surface of things when the gang had ceased from troubling.
The tourniquets were still gripping his lifeless limbs and the blood on the handkerchiefs had dried a rich red-brown. There's a lot of senseless "doing" And a fearful lot of work; There are gangs of men with "gangers," To see they do not shirk. There's the usual waste of power In the usual Western way, There's a tangle in the transport, And a blockage every day.
We had crossed a high road, and entered the belting of trees again, and along this road the gangers would come, and our spoor was written plain. "There will be the collieshangie when they see our marks in the snaw, but they'll founder their horses on the brae and ill-use time tae nae purpose, if just we get ower the common."
A labourer who had hurt his foot, and was awaiting a friendly truck to take him home, said of the swearer: "He manes no harm, an' the Boys doesn't care a rap for his swearin'. These men want no elbowin' on, for they are paid by the piece, so that the harder they work the more they get. All Irish gangers swear like that. An' Irish farm bailiffs is jist the same.
At last I resolved to walk on, and make, at any rate, twenty miles of my journey. I walked for about six hours. How far I travelled I do not know, but I do not think that it was very many miles in the direct line. Every bridge was guarded by armed men; every few miles were gangers' huts; at intervals there were stations with villages clustering round them.
'Troth, he's nae wise man neither, to interfere; no that I blame him for saving the gangers' lives, that was very right; but it wasna like a gentleman to be righting about the poor folk's pocks o' tea and brandy kegs. However, he's a grand man and an officer man, and they do what they like wi' the like o' us.
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