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