I
If you were to say to an Ulster man, "Who are the proudest people in
Ireland?" he would first of all stare at you as if he had difficulty in
believing that any intelligent person could ask a question with so
obvious an answer, and then he would reply, "Why, the Ulster people, of
course!" And if you were to say to a Ballyards man, "Who are the
proudest people in Ulster?" he would reply ... if he deigned to reply
at all ... "A child would know that! The Ballyards people, of course!"
It is difficult for anyone who is not a native of the town, to
understand why the inhabitants of Ballyards should possess so great a
pride in their birthplace. It is not a large town ... it is not even
the largest town in the county ... nor has it any notable features to
distinguish it from a dozen other towns of similar size in that part of
Ireland. Millreagh, although it is now a poor, scattered sort of place,
was once of great importance: for the mail-boats sailed from its
harbour to Port Michael until the steamship owners agreed that Port
Michael was too much exposed to the severities of rough weather, and
chose another harbour elsewhere. Millreagh mourns over its lost glory,
attributable in no way to the fault of Millreagh, but entirely to the
inscrutable design of Providence which arranged that Port Michael, and
not Kirkmull, should lie on the opposite side of the Irish Sea; and
every Sunday morning, after church, and sometimes on Sunday afternoon,
the people walk along the breakwater to the lighthouse and remind each
other of the days when their town was of consequence. "We spent a
hundred and fifty thousand pounds on our harbour," they say to each
other, "and then the Scotch went and did the like of that!"--the like
of that being their stupidity in living in an exposed situation.
Millreagh does not admit that it has suffered any more than a temporary
diminishment of its greatness, and it makes optimistic and boastful
prophecies of the fortune and repute that will come to it when the
engineers make a tunnel between Scotland and Ireland. Sometimes an
article on the Channel Tunnel will appear in the _Newsletter_ or
the _Whig_, and for weeks afterwards Millreagh lives in a fever of
expectancy; for whatever else may be said about the Tunnel, this is
certain to be said of it, that it will start, in Ireland, from
Millreagh. On that brilliant hope, Millreagh, tightening its belt,
lives in a fair degree of happiness, eking out its present poverty by
fishing and by letting lodgings in the summer.
Pickie, too, has much reputation, more, perhaps, than Millreagh, for it
is a popular holiday town and was once described in the _Evening
Telegraph_ as "the Blackpool of Ireland." This description, although
it was apt enough, offended the more pretentious people 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!"