At Burtonport we found the “gombeen man,” of Dungloe, represented by a very large “store.”
There are no “gombeen men” here, he says, and no usurious shopkeepers.
They vary in wealth and position from the humblest 'gombeen man' to the millionaire banker.
The "gombeen" man is alike trader, publican, and money-lender, and he is the backbone of official Nationalist influence.
For the name of this grisly and terribly real spectre is gombeen; which, in the Irish tongue, signifies usury.
This poor innocent was charging just 60 per cent., but his terms were lavishly liberal as compared with those of the gombeen man.
gombeen man; a usurer who lends money to small farmers and others of like means, at ruinous interest.
The farmers were at the mercy of the gombeen traders and the agricultural middlemen.
The priest and the “gombeen man” deal with them on the old principle of “freedom of contract.”
