They say that everybody knows everyone else’s business in rural Ireland, with the result being that privacy and keeping one’s business to oneself can become an obsession.

Many rural children go out to school with the admonition, “say nothin’ to nobody,” ringing in their ears.

“Keep your mouth shut and your ears open,” is another favoured instruction. Country children can live in fear of their lives of letting some vital piece of information slip, like how many cows are calved at home, how many acres of spud are sown and whether the Angus bull is any good.

Even the most mundane pieces of family information can be treated like state secrets.

Why is it so important not to let anyone know that Tom has thrombosis, or that Mary is repeating her exams in UCD?

A consequence of the culture of secrecy is that certain people, and indeed certain families, have, over the generations, developed a mastery of the art of ferreting out news and uncovering the secret lives of everyone around them.

The Caseys of Shronefodda were a family that kept themselves to themselves and jealously guarded all matters of family business. They’d take their cattle to Newport in the upper regions of the county so that the locals wouldn’t know how much they got for them.

They even managed to avoid having their annual parish dues read out from the altar, they simply paid nothing in Shronefodda. Whatever money they gave to the church went to the Franciscans in Clonmel and no one ever knew what they gave them.

Now, down the road from them lived Murty Delaney and, as we’d say, he’d go up your nose for a bit of news.

Not only that, but the more he thought you might be hiding news, the harder he’d try to get at it, and as soon as he got it he’d spread it like manure.

The Caseys were his biggest challenge and it became his lifelong project to infiltrate their security barrier and lay hands on the juicy nuggets of information he was sure they were keeping from all prying eyes and ears.

He’d use anything as a Trojan horse to get himself into Casey’s yard.

Year in, year out, he’d turn up uninvited for the threshing and hardly a month went by when he or someone from his house would arrive with tickets for a draw, a raffle or a dinner dance. Any and every cause was exploited to get Delaney up the Caseys’ avenue and beyond the front door.

He’d have a list of question designed to elicit as much information as possible.

“I saw the vet in and out a lot over the last while, nothing serious I hope?”

He always approached his topic in a roundabout fashion, creeping through the undergrowth and pouncing like a lion on a gazelle at a watering hole in the Serengeti. But the Caseys’ gazelles were often too lively for Delaney’s lion, and no matter how stealthily he crawled through the long grass, they always saw him coming.

“Great prices paid in Newport for yearlins, I’m told,”

“Is that so? Sure there’s great prices everywhere.”

“ What’s yer hay like? I’d say that was powerful stuff ye saved in the upper meadows.”

“Couldn’t tell you what ’tis like, I didn’t eat a blade of it myself.”

And on it would go as they danced around one another until Murty would burst with curiosity and jump out from under his cover.

“What did ye get for the five yearlins ye took to Newport?”

“Was it yearlins we took to Newport? I can’t remember, can you, Missus?”

But Delaney never gave up. The more the Caseys frustrated him, the harder he tried to prise information out of them. One day he thought he had hit the jackpot when a delivery truck from Crowleys Hardware pulled up at his gate looking for the Caseys.

Delaney not only offered to give directions, but he jumped into the truck and said he’d accompany the driver to the front door in case he got lost. He had a grin on his face as wide as the Shannon as the truck drove into Caseys’ yard.

“Getting’ a big job done?” says he as he jumped from the truck, “sure I’ll give ye a hand to unload the stuff.”

“Here,” says the driver, “this is all I have for them,” and he reached under the seat of the truck and pulled out a roasting tin.

“The big news, Murty,” says auld Casey, “is that the Caseys have a new cooker and it came without a roastin’ tin. I’d say you can’t wait to tell the four parishes about that?”

“No,” says Delaney, “the big news is that ye actually eat a dinner. Most people believe ye’re too mean to eat.”