United States or Hungary ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"God save you, Jamesey!" said Marsh, and "God save you kindly!" Jamesey answered. The greeting and the reply are not native to Ulster, but Marsh had made them part of the Gaelic studies, and whenever he encountered friends he always saluted them so.
... and they talked to him of the fineness of a farmer's life, but he would not agree with them. A farmer's life was too hard and too dull. He was set on joining his brother in Glasgow.... "What does your brother do, Jamesey?" Marsh asked. "He's a barman." "A barman!" they repeated, a little blankly. "Aye. That's what I'm goin' to be ... in the same place as him!" They did not speak for a while.
What was the good of asking Jamesey McKeown to sing Gaelic songs and till the land when his heart was hungering for the tuppeny excitements of a Glasgow music-hall? What would Jamesey McKeown make of Galway's translations? Would bind him to the nurture of the earth when What ho! she bumps called him to Glasgow? "We must think of something!"
Jamesey was one of the pupils in the advanced section of the Gaelic class ... a bright-witted boy of thirteen, with a quick, sharp way. One day, Marsh and Henry had climbed a steep hill outside the village, and when they reached the top of it, they found Jamesey lying there, looking down on the fields beneath. His chin was resting in the cup of his upturned palms.
"There's nothin' to do in the evenin's ... nothin' at all ... an' it's despert dull at night with nothin' to do!..." "I'll think about it," said Marsh. "You can begin your Gaelic study now," he added. "Mr. Quinn'll give you a lesson!..." It was Jamesey McKeown who caused the decision to hold the dancing classes to be made as quickly as it was.
Marsh smiled. "Don't they?" he said. "It's long hours," Jamesey admitted, "but he has great diversion. D'ye know this, Mr. Marsh!" he continued, rolling over on his side and speaking more quickly, "he can go to a music-hall twice on the one night an' hear all the latest songs for tuppence. That's all it costs him.
Sometimes, in his walks, Henry met young farmers and labourers returning from the Orange Hall where they had been doing such drill as can be done indoors. On Saturday afternoons, they would set off to join other companies of the Ulster Volunteer Force in a route march. Jamesey McKeown had begun to learn wireless telegraphy and was already expert with flag-signals and the heliograph.
"I suppose you'll be leaving school soon, Jamesey?" Marsh asked. "Aye, I will in a while," Jamesey answered. "What class are you in?" "I'm a monitor, Mr. Marsh. I'm in my first year!..." Henry sat up and joined in the conversation. "Then you're going to be a teacher?" he said. "No, I'm not," Jamesey replied. "My ma put me in for the monitor to get the bit of extra education. That's all!"
"What are you going to be, Jamesey? A farmer?" said Marsh. "No. I wouldn't be a farmer for the world!..." "But why?" The boy changed his position and faced round to them. "Sure, there's nothin' to do but work from the dawn till the dark," he said, "an' you never get no diversion at all. I'm quaren tired of this place, I can tell you, an' my ma's tired of it too.
That girl, Lizzie McCamley of whom his father had spoken once, she had preferred to go to Belfast and work in a linen mill and live in a slum rather than continue in the country; and Jamesey McKeown, who was so quick and eager and anxious to succeed, had weighed farms and fields and hills and valleys in the balance and found them of less weight and value than a Glasgow bar and a Glasgow music-hall.
Word Of The Day