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It was hard for her to remember she wasn't "the Quality" in London, or that the Half-and-Half existed simultaneously with these beloved woods and waters. In only one particular was the village changed. Golf links had been discovered near it, a club-house had sprung up and the peasants found themselves enriched by the employment of their gossoons as caddies.
The Irish nation, from the highest to the lowest, in daily conversation about the ordinary affairs of life, employ a superfluity of wit and metaphor which would be astonishing and unintelligible to a majority of the respectable body of English yeomen. Even the cutters of turf and drawers of whiskey are orators; even the cottiers and gossoons speak in trope and figure.
"There's nothing but boys altogether, white and black. Does it stand to reason that a lot of gossoons, who haven't learnt the goose step, and haven't as much as a shred of faith, ayther in themselves or their officers, are fit to fight the French?" "Oh, I don't know, Tim," Charlie said.
'You may say that! for, were I a farmer, like the rest, I should have something to do, like the rest something that I cared for and I should come home tired at night, and fall asleep, as the rest do, before the fire; but when I comes home at night I am not tired, for I have been doing nothing all day that I care for; and then I sits down and stares about me, and at the fire, till I become frighted; and then I shouts to my brother Denis, or to the gossoons, "Get up, I say, and let's be doing something; tell us the tale of Finn-ma-Coul, and how he lay down in the Shannon's bed, and let the river flow down his jaws!"
Another time, in the winter, and on a desperate cold day, there was no turf in for the parlour and above stairs, and scarce enough for the cook in the kitchen. Gossoons were always employed as messengers. 'Which tree, please your honour? I made bold to say.
No mail-coach road comes near here: no man on horseback could undertake to carry the letters regularly. They are carried three times a week from Outerard to Clifden, thirty-six miles, by three gossoons, or more properly bog-trotters, and very hard work it is for them.
Still, it is but a captain I am, and here are two gossoons, like yourself and Dick Ryan, the one of you marching about a field officer, and the other a captain. It is heart-breaking entirely, and me one of the most zealous officers in the service. But it is never any luck I have had, from the day I was born."
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