‘You can have every bit as much love and romance with a girl who has money as with a girl who has none’

Nicky Furlong’s novel

Young Farmer Seeks Wife was acclaimed as a comic masterpiece when it was published in 2002. Here is an extract from the book which has been recently republished and is available from Amazon in print, kindle and audiobook formats.

The mother was no daw. One day I was in the kitchen, reading the riddles in Ireland’s Own. The mother was knitting a red gansey.

“How old are you now hon,” she asked.

The alarm went off in my head. “I’m nearly 20,” I said, adopting a defensive attitude. The mother got up.

“What are you but a big soft child still?” the mother sighed, “but all the same you’re shaving.” She threw me a sudden look under the bright spectacles. “I never gave you the wrong advice, Nicholas, and I want you to listen carefully to all that I have to say. Gold locks, fancy words and the come-hither look never put anything on a man’s plate or a garment on his back. I do not want you to throw yourself away.”

I hadn’t been doing anything out of the way. Sure, I was at a few dances with the boys and talent competitions and matches, but that was all. “You must think I’m a right gawk,” I said. “All I’m having is a bit of gas, going around.”

“Oh Nicholas,” the mother said, “in this world the time for gas is very short indeed. Faith, we’d all be fond of gas if it came to that. Damn the much gas I ever got. I want you to steady yourself. You ought to be on the lookout for a good sensible match, a girl with a respectable background, a farm of land to her name, and better gain if she had a few shillings at her back.”

“And where does romance come in, Mother, or do you know anything about love?”

I asked with my temper mounting.

“Ah, child,” she said, with that sad sweet smile of hers, “you can have every bit as much love and romance with a girl who has money as with a girl who has none.”