“Not a scalp was ever brought into Gobstown.  No man of us ever went out on an adventure which might bring him home again through the mouth of the county jail.  Not a secret enterprise that might become a great public excitement was ever hatched, not to speak of being launched.  We had not as much as a fife-and-drum band.  We did not know how to play a tin whistle or beat upon the tintinnabulum.  We never waved a green flag.  We had not a branch of any kind of a league.  We had no men of skill to draft a resolution, indite a threatening letter, draw a coffin, skull, and cross-bones, fight a policeman, or even make a speech.  We were never a delegate at a convention, an envoy to America, a divisional executive, a deputation, or a demonstration.  We were nothing.  We wilted under the blight of our good landlord as the green stalk wilts under the frost of the black night....  Hand me that knife.  The one with the wooden handle.

“In desperation we used rouse ourselves and march into the demonstrations on other estates.  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.  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.  We offered to bring forward our good landlord as a shining example, to lead our lamb forward in order that he might show up the man-eaters on the other estates.  The organisers were all hostile.  They would not allow us into the processions any more.  If we could bring forward some sort of roaring black devil we would be more than welcome.  Shining examples were not in favour.  We were sent home in disgrace and broke up.  As the preachers say, our last state was worse than our first.

“We became sullen and drowsy and fat and dull.  We got to hate the sight of each other, so much so that we began to pay our rents behind each other’s backs, at first the reduced rents, then, gale day by gale day, we got back to the original rent, and kept on paying it.  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.  They ate very little, drank water, slept well, men with hard knuckles, clean bowels, and pale eyes.  Anything they hit went down.  They were always ready to go to the gallows for each other.