Pallas or Elphin?
The birthplace
Oliver Goldsmith was born either in the townland of Pallas (where his father was curate of Forgney) or at his maternal grandparents' house near Elphin in Roscommon. Both claims have merit. Both towns maintain statues. A limestone cell at the ruin of his birthplace in Pallas holds a plaster statue (made 1974, in poor condition now) cast from the bronze at Trinity College Dublin. The town does not fuss too much about which county wins. Ballymahon, equidistant and practical, is the hub.
The village of memory
Auburn
Goldsmith grew up in Lissoy (1730–1747) and spent his life looking back at it. Lissoy parsonage is now a ruin on the road to Tubberclair, but it was "the only home he ever knew." He turned it into Auburn, the sweet village in his long poem The Deserted Village (1770), which mourns the enclosure of rural land and the drift of country people to the cities. The poem starts: "Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, / Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain." That swain was Goldsmith himself, aged six.
June every year
The summer school
The Oliver Goldsmith Summer School convenes every June Bank Holiday at Ballymahon Library and the Bog Lane Theatre. Poets, scholars, and readers gather to read Goldsmith's work and his life aloud at selected sites: the birthplace in Pallas, the school house, the parsonage, the church. The third-oldest literary festival in Ireland. Not the biggest, but honest.
Goldsmith Country
The trail
The Goldsmith Country literary trail stitches together the sites of Goldsmith's childhood across three counties: Longford (Pallas, Ballymahon), Westmeath (Lissoy, Kilkenny West, Edgeworthstown), and Roscommon (Elphin). A Literary Tour car route begins at the Goldsmith Monument outside Ballymahon Library, stops at Forgney Church, the schoolhouse, Lissoy Parsonage, and the Three Jolly Pigeons (which inspired his plays), with short readings at each stop. The whole loop takes a morning. The reading takes longer than the driving.