back to the catalogue
|
Lanty Hanlon
order this bookPatrick MacGill Price £30.00  Lanty Hanlon was born in Ballykeeran, "the most envied parish in the land," where they peeled potatoes with their knives and had paraffin lamps, whilst Ballyroon used their fingers and rush-lights.Lanty was christened with potheen, because the beadle was out of water at the time and spirit was plentiful. That circumstance was always regarded as the main cause of all Lanty's misfortunes. Lanty Hanlon possessed imagination, his fellow-villagers were credulous, and many are the incidents narrated that testified to the greatness of him. His swan song was the organisation of the Ballykeeran Development Society, which prospered exceedingly, mainly on alien subscriptions. What eventually happened to it and the power-loom that was the wonder of the countryside, Patrick MacGill tells in his first comedy-novel of Irish life. "There was no place to rival it. Ballyroon, that elbowed it, had pretensions, pretensions without proof, colour or substance. But Ballykeeran, with its worth open to the world, never bragged nor boasted. Ballyroon was as nothing in its eyes. We peeled our potatoes with knives when Ballyroon used its fingers, used forks years before Ballyroon used spoons, and had paraffin lamps when Ballyroon had only rush-lights. "In the parish of Ballykeeran in those days, the days of my youth, when there was a drop duty free to sweeten all discourse, no good man was ever dull and no woman old before her time. Of money we knew very little, and paid in kind for most commodities. Four pounds of butter were given for a scythe, eighteen eggs for a teapot, and a hank of home-knitted yarn for so much tea and sugar. The miller was paid in grain, the grocer in butter, the tailor in wool, and thus without the clatter of a penny we fed and clothed ourselves." |