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Updated: May 8, 2025
"At last I came to the summit of a little green hill overlooking Gobstown, and there I sat me down. The sight of Gobstown rose the gorge in me. Nothing came out of it but weak puffs of turf smoke from the chimneys little pallid thin streaks that wobbled in the wind. There, says I, is the height of Gobstown.
What do they talk to you at home about at all?" "The most thing they tell me," said Padna, "is to go to bed and get up in the morning. What is the name of the place in the country where they found you?" "Gobstown," said the shoemaker. "It was the most miserable place within the ring of Ireland. It lay under the blight of a good landlord, no better.
Once we rigged up a banner with the words on it, 'Gobstown to the Front! but still we were put to the back, and when we walked through this town the servant girls came out of their kitchens, laughed at us, and called out, 'Gobstown to the Back of the Front! "The fighting men came to us, took us aside, and asked us what we were doing in Gobstown. We had no case to make.
Our good landlord took his rents and said nothing. Gobstown became the most accursed place in all Ireland. Brother could not trust brother. And there were our neighbours going from one sensation to another. They were as lively as trout, as enterprising as goats, as intelligent as Corkmen. They were thin and eager and good-tempered.
I could hear him fumbling somewhere under the thatch. Presently down he came the ladder, a gun in one hand, and a fistful of cartridges in the other. He spoke no word, and I spoke no word. He came to me and put the gun in my hand and the handful of cartridges in my pocket. He walked to the fire and stood there with his back turned. I stood where I was, a Gobstown mohawk, with the gun in my hand.
And no sound came up out of it except the cackle of geese, and then the bawl of an old ass in the bog. There, says I, is the depth of Gobstown. And rising up from the green hill I made up my mind to save Ireland from Gobstown even if I lost my own soul. I would put a bullet in the perfect heart of our good landlord. "That night I lay behind a certain ditch. The moon shone on the nape of my neck.
That was its misfortune, and especially my misfortune. If the Gobstown landlord was not such a good landlord it's driving on the box of an empire I would be to-day instead of whacking tips on the heels of your boots. How could that be? I'll tell you that. "In Gobstown the tenants rose up and demanded a reduction of rent; the good landlord gave it to them.
I knew, then, in that minute, that I was no good, and that Gobstown was for ever lost.... What happened me? Who can say that for certain? Many a time have I wondered what came over me in that hour. I can only guess.... Nobody belonging to me had ever been rack-rented. I had never seen any of my own people evicted.
And there was I, a man of capacity and brains, born with the golden spoon of talent in my mouth, dead to the world in Gobstown! I was rotting like a turnip under the best and the most accursed of landlords. In the end I could not stand it no man of spirit could. "One day I took down my ashplant, spat on my fist, and set out for my cousin's place. He gave me no welcome.
We were a small and an unknown tribe. The Gobstown contingent always brought up the rear of the procession a gawky, straggling, bad-stepping, hay-foot, straw-foot lot! The onlookers hardly glanced at us. We stood for nothing. We had no name.
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