The Foolish Lovers | Page 2

in Pickie who
were only mollified when the innocent reporter, in a later article,
altered the description to, "the Brighton of Ireland." With consummate
understanding of human character, he added, remembering the Yacht
Club, that perhaps the most accurate description of Pickie would be
"the Cowes of Ireland." In this way, the reporter, who subsequently
became a member of parliament and made much money, pleased the
harmless vanity of the lower, the middle and the upper classes of Pickie;
and for a time they were "ill to thole" on account of the swollen
condition of their heads, and it became necessary to utter sneers at
"ham-and-egg parades" and "the tripper element" and to speak loudly
and frequently of the superior merits of Portrush, "a really nice place,"
before they could be persuaded to believe that Pickie, like other towns,
is inhabited by common human beings.
Ballyards never yielded an inch of its pride of place to Millreagh or to
Pickie. "What's an oul' harbour when there's no boat in it?" Ballyards
said to Millreagh; and, "Sure, the man makes his livin' sellin'
sausages!" it said to Pickie when Pickie bragged of the great grocer
who had joined the Yacht Club in order that he might issue a challenge
for the Atlantic Cup. Tunnels and attractive seaboards were extraneous
things that might bring fortune, but could not bring merit, to those

lucky enough to possess them; but Ballyards had character ... its men
were meritable men ... and Ballyards would not exchange the least of
its inhabitants for ten tunnels. Nor did Ballyards abate any of its pride
before the ancient and indisputable renown of Dunbar, which distils a
whiskey that has soothed the gullets of millions of men throughout the
world. When Patrickstown bragged of its long history ... it was once the
home of the kings of Ulster ... and tried to make the world believe that
St. Patrick was buried in its cathedral, Ballyards, magnificently
imperturbed, murmured: "Your population is goin' down!"; nor does it
manifest any respect for Greenry, which has a member of parliament to
itself and has twice the population of Ballyards. "It's an ugly hole," says
Ballyards, "an' it's full of Papishes!"
Millreagh and Pickie openly sneer at Ballyards, and Greenry affects to
be unaware of it, but the pride of Ballyards remains unaltered,
incapable of being diminished, incapable even of being increased ... for
pride cannot go to greater lengths than the pride of Ballyards has
already gone ... and in spite of contention and denial, it asserts,
invincibly persistent, that it is the finest and most meritabie town in
Ireland. When sceptics ask for proofs, Ballyards replies, "We don't
need proofs!" A drunken man said, on a particularly hearty Saturday
night, that Ballyards was the finest town in the world, but the general
opinion of his fellow-townsmen was that this claim, while very human,
was excessively expressed. London, for example, was bigger than
Ballyards. So was New York!.... The drunken man, when he had
recovered his sobriety, admitted that this was true, but he contended,
and was well supported in his contention, that while London and New
York might be bigger than Ballyards, neither of these cities were
inhabited by men of such independent spirit as the men of Ballyards. A
Ballyards man, he asserted, was beholden to no one. Once, and once
only, a Millreagh man said that a Ballyards man thought he was being
independent when he was being ill-bred; but Ballyards people would
have none of this talk, and, after they had severely assaulted him, they
drove the Millreagh man back to his "stinkin' wee town" and forbade
him ever to put his foot in Ballyards again. "You know what you'll get
if you do. Your head in your hands!" was the threat they shouted after
him. And surely the wide world knows the story ... falsely credited to

other places ... which every Ballyards child learns in its cradle, of the
man who, on being rebuked in a foreign city for spitting, said to those
who rebuked him, "I come from the town of Ballyards, an' I'll spit
where I like!"

II
It was his pride in his birthplace which sometimes made John
MacDermott hesitate to accept the advice of his Uncle Matthew and
listen leniently to the advice of his Uncle William. Uncle Matthew
urged him to seek his fortune in foreign parts, but Uncle William said,
"Bedam to foreign parts when you can live in Ballyards!" Uncle
Matthew, who had never been out of Ireland in his life, had much
knowledge of the works of English writers, and from these works, he
had drawn a romantic picture of London. The English city, in his
imagination, was a place of marvellous adventures, far mere wonderful
than the ancient