Gombeen man
A Gombeen man is a pejorative Hiberno-English term used in Ireland for a shady, small-time "wheeler-dealer" businessman or politician who is always looking to make a quick profit, often at someone else's expense or through the acceptance of bribes. Its origin is the Irish word "gaimbín", meaning monetary interest.[1] The term referred originally to a money-lender and became associated with those shopkeepers and merchants who exploited the starving during the Irish Famine by selling much-needed food and goods on credit at ruinous interest rates. Gombeenery (gombeenism), was also in use, meaning "the political, economic and social control of communities by gombeen men."[2]
More generally, "gombeen" is now an adjective referring to all kinds of underhand or corrupt activities and to the mindset possessed by those engaged in such activities. In Irish politics, it is used to condemn an opponent for dishonesty or corruption, although its definition has become less precise with time and usage and it can also imply pettiness and close-mindedness. Alternative modern parlance for a gombeen man is someone "on the make". It is also used to describe certain Independent politicians who are seen to prioritize their constituents needs, no matter how trivial, over national interests.
Contents
In popular culture
Padraic Colum, Irish poet, children's writer, folklorist, and playwright, described the Gombeen to American readers as follows:
The Irish countryside has a very significant word for the shopkeeper who deals with them cunningly. He is “gombeen,” a name that expresses a mean graspingness. Not all the shopkeepers are “gombeen- men,” but there are a few in every parish. The gombeen-man has the emporium in the village; he gets the farmers on his books, and then they dare not deal in any store but his; they never know how much they owe him, for he charges them interest on their debts. He takes their butter and eggs, but never gives them the full price for them. The money that comes from earnings abroad, the check that comes from America, the money got on the sale of a calf or cow — all goes to the gombeen-man. The exactions that the gombeen-man makes are harsh enough to recall the landlordism of the old régime.[3]
Gombeen men were sometimes called "meal-mongers," as in the novel The Black Prophet, a Tale of Irish Famine (1847) by William Carleton. Black Murdock, the villan in Bram Stoker's The Snake's Pass (1890), is called "The Gombeen Man". The Gombeen Man (1913) was also the title of a play by Robert J. Brophy[4] (published under the pen name R. J. Ray).[5]
The despised image of the gombeen as an usurious predator on the poor was immortalized in the poem "The Gombeen Man" by Irish poet Joseph Campbell:
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Behind a web of bottles, bales,
Tobacco, sugar, coffin nails,
The gombeen like a spider sits,
Surfeited; and, for all his wits,
As meagre as the tally-board,
On which his usuries are scored.— Joseph Campbell, The Gombeen Man
While the phrase "gombeen man" is traditionally intended to refer to an unscrupulous local usurer who exploits his own people, it can be applied in relation to other groups such as, in this instance from James Joyce, to an Irish Jewish man:
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-- O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance.
-- With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked.
-- The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk.— James Joyce, Ulysses; "Episode X: Wandering Rocks"
John B. Keane's epistolary novel, Letters of a Successful T.D. (1967) is a satire on a gombeen man. Crime writer Kyril Bonfiglioli wrote a dark short story called "The Gombeen Man" about just such a character in the late '70s.
This excerpt is from The Crock of Gold, by James Stephens: "... the women were true to their own doctrines and refused to part with information to any persons saving only those of high rank, such as policemen, gombeen men, and district and county councillors; but even to these they charged high prices for their information, and a bonus on any gains which accrued through the following of their advices [sic]."
Although he does not use the term, gombeenery is a major theme in Dermot Bolger's novel, The Journey Home (1990).
Modern use
- "Goodbye Gombeen Man", a Sunday Times headline from 1994, which was referred to in a 2 December 2004 Guardian article. "Mr Reynolds had objected to a 1994 Sunday Times article – headlined 'Goodbye gombeen man. Why a fib too far proved fatal' ..."[6]
- In the 2016 Irish general election, the term Gombeenism or Gombeen man has been used with the term Parish Pump Politics (a pejorative term that implies local or vanity projects are put before national interests) by populist left-wing parties against mainstream establishment parties.[7]
- William S. Burroughs, in his book The Adding Machine: Collected Essays, mentions and explains the Gombeen Man in a story entitled "Bugger The Queen." He posits the monarchy as a sort of country-wide Gombeen racket, and refers to the Queen as a Gombeen Woman.
See also
Notes
Footnotes
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Wall, Richard (2001). An Irish Literary Dictionary and Glossary. Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, p. 186.
- ↑ Colum, Padraic (1925). "A Glimse of Irish Cooperation," The Commonweal, Vol. I, No. 11, p. 286.
- ↑ "R. J. Ray," Irish Playography, Irish Theatre Institute.
- ↑ "The Gombeen Man 1914 (Abbey)," Abbey Theatre.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ "Failure, contempt and gombeenism". Irish Independent. December 13 2015.
Citations
General references
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- Select committee reports on money lending, with proceedings, minutes of evidence, appendices and indices, 1897-98. Shannon: Irish University Press (1969)
