Civil engineers -- Drama; English drama (Comedy); Ireland -- Drama; Real estate development -- Drama
HODSON. Ow, Tom Broadbent's blood boils pretty easy over
ennything that appens out of his own country. Don't you be taken
in by my ole man, Paddy.
MATTHEW [indignantly]. Paddy yourself! How dar you call me Paddy?
HODSON [unmoved]. You just keep your hair on and listen to me.
You Irish people are too well off: that's what's the matter with
you. [With sudden passion] You talk of your rotten little farm
because you made it by chuckin a few stownes dahn a hill! Well,
wot price my grenfawther, I should like to know, that fitted up a
fuss clawss shop and built up a fuss clawss drapery business in
London by sixty years work, and then was chucked aht of it on is
ed at the end of is lease withaht a penny for his goodwill. You
talk of evictions! you that cawn't be moved until you've
run up eighteen months rent. I once ran up four weeks in Lambeth
when I was aht of a job in winter. They took the door off its
inges and the winder aht of its sashes on me, and gave my wife
pnoomownia. I'm a widower now. [Between his teeth] Gawd! when I
think of the things we Englishmen av to put up with, and hear you
Irish hahlin abaht your silly little grievances, and see the way
you makes it worse for us by the rotten wages you'll come over
and take and the rotten places you'll sleep in, I jast feel that
I could take the oul bloomin British awland and make you a
present of it, jast to let you find out wot real ardship's like.
MATTHEW [starting up, more in scandalized incredulity than in
anger]. D'ye have the face to set up England agen Ireland for
injustices an wrongs an disthress an sufferin?
HODSON [with intense disgust and contempt, but with Cockney
coolness]. Ow, chuck it, Paddy. Cheese it. You danno wot ardship
is over ere: all you know is ah to ahl abaht it. You take the
biscuit at that, you do. I'm a Owm Ruler, I am. Do you know why?
MATTHEW [equally contemptuous]. D'ye know, yourself?
HODSON. Yes I do. It's because I want a little attention paid to
my own country; and thet'll never be as long as your chaps are
ollerin at Wesminister as if nowbody mettered but your own
bloomin selves. Send em back to hell or C'naught, as good oul
English Cromwell said. I'm jast sick of Ireland. Let it gow. Cut
the cable. Make it a present to Germany to keep the oul Kyzer
busy for a while; and give poor owld England a chawnce: thets wot
I say.
MATTHEW [full of scorn for a man so ignorant as to be unable to
pronounce the word Connaught, which practically rhymes with
bonnet in Ireland, though in Hodson's dialect it rhymes with
untaught]. Take care we don't cut the cable ourselves some day,
bad scran to you! An tell me dhis: have yanny Coercion Acs in
England? Have yanny removables? Have you Dublin Castle to
suppress every newspaper dhat takes the part o your own counthry?
HODSON. We can beyave ahrselves withaht sich things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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