Byrne also had a taste for poetry, and taught the lad to scribble rhymes.  Very proud was the boy’s mother, and very carefully did she preserve these foolish lines.

All this was in the village of Lissoy, County Westmeath; yet if you look on the map you will look in vain for Lissoy.  But six miles northeast from Athlone and three miles from Ballymahon is the village of Auburn.

When Goldsmith was a boy Lissoy was: 

    “Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
    Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain,
    Where smiling Spring the earliest visits paid,
    And parting Summer’s lingering blooms delayed—­
    Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
    Seats of my youth, when every sport could please—­
    How often have I loitered o’er thy green,
    Where humble happiness endeared each scene;
    How often have I paused on every charm,
    The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
    The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
    The decent church, that topped the neighboring hill,
    The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade
    For talking age and whispering lovers made: 
    How often have I blessed the coming day,
    When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
    And all the village train from labor free,
    Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree—­
    While many a pastime circled in the shade,
    The young contending as the old surveyed;
    And many a gambol frolicked o’er the ground,
    And sleights of art and feats of strength went round.”

In America, when a “city” is to be started, the first thing is to divide up the land into town-lots and then sell these lots to whoever will buy.  This is a very modern scheme.  But in Ireland whole villages belong to one man, and every one in the place pays tribute.  Then villages are passed down from generation to generation, and sometimes sold outright, but there is no wish to dispose of corner lots.  For when a man lives in your house and you can put him out at any time, he is, of course, much more likely to be civil than if he owns the place.

But it has happened many times that the inhabitants of Irish villages have all packed up and deserted the place, leaving no one but the village squire and that nice man, the landlord’s agent.  The cottages then are turned into sheep-pens or hay-barns.  They may be pulled down, or, if they are left standing, the weather looks after that.  And these are common sights to the tourist.

Now the landlord, who owned every rood of the village of Lissoy, lived in London.  He lived well.  He gambled a little, and as the cards did not run his way he got into debt.  So he wrote to his agent in Lissoy to raise the rents.  He did so, threatened, applied the screws, and—­the inhabitants packed up and let the landlord have his village all to himself.  Let Goldsmith tell: