ABSTRACT
Rents paid by Coole tenants were not a negligible part of the overall financial picture, so when fifteen Gregory tenants applied, under the provisions of the Land Act of 1903, for reductions in their annual rent payable to the estate, the short-term budgetary consequences were considerable. The relevant Land Commissioner to whom the tenants made application found in their favour on 30 Jul. 1909, so WBY lost little time in writing his directly reactive poem. The Commissioner in question was not unknown to AG this was Sir Gerald Fitzgerald, who was briefly remembered in AG's autobiography: Mr. Fitzgerald was one of those with whom I carried on a good-humoured quarrel. He, like so many others, had received some kindness from my husband when a young man in Galway town He would sometimes threaten to come in return and wave the green Land League flag at the gates of Coole.
