Best of Myles

by Flann O'Brien

  On a long journey a small flexible tube may be carried. This can be unobtrusively inserted into the pocket, and then, after the face has been discreetly obscured by the Irish Times or other interesting national newspaper, the nozzle can be put between the lips and an innocent potation indulged in.

  INCIPIT Crusculum Lan: sciant universi per presentes inso sios quod haec sunt vera indubitata agus authentica priathra miulesij copleansis videlicet primus fer et naem praeclarissimus & imperator ocus taisech Hiberniae alias Ierne alias Foley alias Bonbo alias sauioeurstut herend alias ould oireland alias iarm Breatane alias crioch Fheidhlim alias gort Neill alias clar righ-Eibhir alias clar Chriomhthain alias fod Eachaidh alias Tulcha Fail alias Fuinn Tuthail alias Craobh Chonnla alias Fuinn Fhoinidh alias Roe-Sheen Doo alias Catch Knee Guire alias Trimming Done Jeelish ocus tsar et paterculus gacho ruisse & ananamday a loqgteoir sechain an drochmhnai .i. in serpens ocus an ahair neimhe adapertamar Finuiot (A creak, son?)

  Tri coindle furrowsnot cork drochnas, fear, agony, tetanus, Firkin annso. We could do with one, too—put it up on the piano, get four glasses and a knife to take the froth off.

  RESEARCH BUREAU

  There was a fearful row at the Bureau the other day. Sir Myles na gCopaleen (the da) arrived unexpectedly and it was obvious to all present that he wasn’t feeling himself. (Truth to tell, he was feeling the tyres of his bicycle, fearing he had so stained a slope puncture.) He gave the savants he employs there a dressing down, a going over and a word in season, not to mention those pleasing but none too plentiful domestic veracities, a few home truths. In brief, he complained that they had not done a tap for months. This charge was bitterly re-scented by the scientists. The charge hand (whose name happens to be George Shand) went to his drawing board and in two ticks had run up the blue prints of the tap mentioned. (He found he couldn’t run down again and had to be rescued with a ladder.)

  Irish faucet factors should study this drawing very closely. Not only does it give you two taps in one, thus saving metal in the emergency, but enables you to draw either hot water or cold water or both simultaneously, mixed to a desired temperature. If you think this is an effete and decadent convenience, there is nothing to prevent you from connecting the cold water pipe to a barrel of good Irish malt and providing yourself and your family with scalding punch for drinking and washing purposes. Think of the fine affectation of having handsome decanters full of water to pass to your guests so that they may adulterate what they get from the tap.

  RESEARCH BUREAU

  RECENTLY I referred briefly to a new type of telephone patented by the Research Bureau. It is designed to meet an urgent social requirement. Nearly everybody likes to have a telephone in the house, not so much for its utility (which is very dubious), but for the social standing it implies. A telephone on display in your house means that you have at least some ‘friend’ or ‘friends’—that there is somebody in the world who thinks it worthwhile to communicate with you. It also suggests that you must ‘keep in touch’, that great business and municipal undertakings would collapse unless your advice could be obtained at a moment’s notice. With a telephone in your house you are ‘important’. But a real telephone costs far too much and in any event would cause you endless annoyance. To remedy this stay tough affairs the Bureau has devised a selection of bogus telephones. They are entirely self-contained, powered by dry batteries and where talk can be heard coming from the instrument, this is done by a tiny photoelectric mechanism. Each instrument is fitted, of course, with a bogus wire which may be embedded in the wainscoating. The cheapest model is simply a dud instrument. Nothing happens if you pick up the receiver and this model can only be used safely if you are certain that none of the visitors to your house will say ‘Do you mind if I use your phone?’ The next model has this same draw-back but it has the advantage that at a given hour every night it begins to ring. Buzz-buzz, buzz-buzz. You must be quick to get it before an obliging visitor ‘helps’ you. You pick up the receiver and say ‘Who? The Taoiseach? Oh, very well. Put him on.’ The ‘conversation’ that follows is up to yourself. The more expensive instruments ring and speak and they are designed on the basis that a visitor will answer. In one model a voice says, ‘Is that the Hammond Lane Foundry?’ Your visitor will say no automatically and the instrument will immediately ring off. In another model an urgent female voice says ‘New York calling So-and-So’—mentioning your own name—‘Is So-and-So there?’ and keeps mechanically repeating this formula after the heartless manner of telephone girls. You spring to the instrument as quickly as possible and close the deal for the purchase of a half share in General Motors. These latter instruments are a bit risky, as few householders can be relied upon to avoid fantastically exaggerated conversations. The safest of the lot is Model 2B, which gives an engaged tone no matter what number is dialled by the innocent visitor. This is dead safe.

  Some people may think it a snag that one’s name won’t be in the telephone book. In a way that is nonsense because there is nothing so refined as having a telephone and not being in the book. In any case, if you have the Bureau’s model that always gives the engaged tone, it might be possible for you to induce the Post Office to insert your name in the book, putting opposite it the telephone number of the Department of Supplies. PS might arrange it in exchange for a couple of old books.

  SOME sat her daze ago I picked up this newspaper (hopeless business trying to read it on the floor) and read ‘… genuine European. How often do we hear the concept of “Europe” bandied about, and how rarely is it used by a writer who makes us feel that he really has Europe in his bones …’

  This, of course, is a nasty dig at meself; thanks heavens I’m too big to pretend to notice. Go on.

  ‘From the time when, in his early twenties, he first met Emile Verhaeren, he was constantly sensitive to “The Heart of Europe”.’

  Hmmmmm. Verhaeren. Hoho. Verhaeren. I have to laugh. Do you remember porridge … and and … treacle, and … Lyle’s Golden Syrup out of the strong cometh forth sweetness … and brown sugar … and when the good Nanny is not looking … an enormous pat of butter. Hah? When you were a chisler, of course. Then pains all night and roars and Oh God please don’t kill me this time I’ll be good I’ll be good. Well, if you remember what that felt like you’ll have a faint idea of the texture, colour, sensibility of this small-town bill-poster. Here’s a little bit of his ‘work’:

  ‘Le monde entier travaille et l’Europe debout

  Là-bas, sur son tas d’or millénaire qui bout,

  Du fond de ses banques formidables, préside

  A ces trafics captés par des cerveaux lucides,

  Chiffre à chiffre, dans les mailles de leurs calculs.’

  An esquisite image, Mac——— eh? (Cerveaux lucides is good begob). European my hat. All on the strength of laborious steamship catalogues the like of Et les voici tanguer, surs leurs vaisseaux, ces hommes dont l’âme fit Paris, Londres, Berlin et Rome (if you or me wrote that, of course, it would be called pantomime jingle). And then this schedule stuff—prêtres, soldats, marins, colons, banquiers, savants …

  Don’t be talking man. It is rather significant, I hold, that this European (?Euro-peon) was ran over be a goods loco at the heel of the hunt. Honest engine!

  What then is my Europe? It is in the mind, Resource, cunning, inventiveness. Brightness, life. Overcoming obstacles. Take my Research Bureau. There you have men who are truly European. They know life. They take steps to guard against it. Not for them filthy ‘poetry’, drivel and pretence. What profit have you in that, they say, if your skull is ripped open by a falling stove pipe? But they do not stop at this rhetorical query.

  Here is what they conceive to be one of the perils attending life in a decaying city like Dublin. Gutters, pipes, chimney-pots falling on the citizens from immense altitudes. Bricks, slates, window sills and iron balconies. And what is the remedy? Simple as can be:

  A hat with a patent spring top that instantly wards off the missile and projects
it for a distance of twenty or thirty yards.

  Personally, I would not feel very European if I was afraid to go out in a storm—or is it suggested that in Europe there are no storms?

  Bah!

  RESEARCH BUREAU

  IGNORANT people sometimes complain about the ‘footling’ character of some of the Bureau’s inventions. Than this there were no more unjust accusation. Every invention helps some poor fellow mortal … somewhere. Some of the inventions, however, have a unique general utility for all mankind. Day and night, somewhere on the earth, men are hoisting weights and wasting time and energy on futile grappling devices. They have to tie this knot or that, or make fast the other. Consider, however, this thing I illustrate:

  Examine carefully the innovation at the top of the hook. It is a movable steel loop with just sufficient clearance to permit the hoisting-rope to pass through. In this case, you tie nothing. You simply pass the rope through and begin to hoist. The weight will cause the steel loop to tend to move up vertically and will thus catch the rope in an unshakeable vice.

  Most difficult job, thinking out these things.

  A NEW PROJECT

  The Bureau is not, of course, solely occupied with mere mechanics. Vaster things are brewing. You have, no doubt, heard of the Hidden-Ireland. Professor Corkery has written a book on the subject and Mulhausen and I went rather deeply into the thing in 1933. And now, in conjunction with the Bureau, I have been trying to interest some people with money in a scheme—pretty ambitious, perhaps, but well worth it—a scheme that should win the support of all right thinking citizens. Hide Ireland again! Hmmmmm? Could be done war or no war, take my word for it.

  RESEARCH BUREAU

  AH WELL. You are of course, very ill with that disease of yours, yet doctors will not hear of it. You know (who better?) that there is nothing for it but hyperpyrexia. You fix on therapeutic malaria, stuff yourself into bed and send the son out for a jug of benign tertian parasites. Very good, these parasites you ‘take’ intravenously and the four or five dull days of incubation you pass by reading ‘War and Peace’, Lafayette’s great novel of the American civil war. You know the time of the first paroxysm is most important. You know also (who better?) that the sequence of malarial paroxysms can now be regulated (remember my monograph in The Lancet (there) last year?) by sodium bismuth thioglycollate. You must watch the time so that a paroxysm will not come upon you unawares and prevent you giving yourself an injection at the right time. My sketch shows the Research Bureau’s ingenious device for having the right time all night—and so big that you will grasp it even when debilitated by ten febrile paroxysms and crippled by quinine. The watch is fixed upside-down at the back of the projector, which is operated by an oil lamp and the powerful lens can then be focussed to throw the image on a screen of frosted glass.

  Therapeutic malaria can kill unless the paroxysms are timed and spaced properly. Why risk perilous dehydration or anorexia for the want of this magic lantern article? The whole, complete, 25 guineas.

  THE RAILWAY WORLD

  Same old boring story, as if anybody but themselves could be interested in their dividends. My picture (opposite) shows G.S.R. shareholders washing the Company’s dirty linen in public.

  SOME CHAPS who work in the Liffey Junction Tunnel came to us the other day complaining that they frequently have the clothes nearly torn off them by Rafferty, who ‘coasts’ on 493 and is nearly on top of the platelaying gang before they have time to jump out of the way. They have no oil for their lanterns and cannot see the ruffian approaching when he is some distance off. They have tried putting detonators on the tracks but Rafferty has got wise to this and pumps out flange lubricant, thus destroying the squibs. Somebody will be killed, they say, unless a way can be found to best Rafferty. We went into the matter, of course, at the Bureau. Most steam men are aware that every tunnel suffers from what is called ‘ground-damp’; this is an unpleasant moist breeze that blows along the bottom half of the tunnel. No naked flame could live in it. The problem was solved, of course, and the solution is illustrated overleaf. It is a patent tunnel-man’s ‘pin’. It is used to hold a candle and the whole point is that the candle can be stuck high up near the roof of the tunnel, where the flame will burn without disturbance, even when a train is passing. A further advantage is that the spike can be reversed when not in use and the device carried conveniently in the pocket or hand-bag.

  The Cruiskeen Court of Voluntary Jurisdiction

  OWING TO (pressure) (of work) in the courts of justice, withdrawal of judges, electric heaters, bicycle-crime and other matters, the public-spirited Myles na gCopaleen Central Research Bureau has persuaded several impatient litigants to bring their differences before the Cruiskeen Court of Voluntary Jurisdiction. This institution conducts its proceedings in English and ‘recognises’ only those statues which are ‘recognisable for the purposes of the court’. Since nobody knows what this means, the ‘lawyers’ do not like to spend too much time rehearsing jargon and citing ‘cases’, fearing that the whole spiel will be ruled out as ‘inadmissible’. Hence, justice is rough, not to say ready.

  The first case was called the other day before His Honour, Judge Twinfeet, who was attired in a robe of poplin green. He ‘opened’ that abstraction, the ‘proceedings’, by expressing the hope that there would not be too much jargon. ‘Justice is a simple little lady,’ he added, ‘not to be overmuch besmeared with base Latinities.’

  In the first case the plaintiffs sought a plenary injunction for trespass, a declaration of fief in agro and other relief. The defence was a traverse of the field as well as the pleadings and alternatively it was contended that the plaintiffs were estopped by graund playsaunce.

  Mr Juteclaw, for the defendants, said that at the outset he wished to enter four caveats in feodo. His statutory declarations were registered that morning and would be available to the plaintiffs on payment of the usual stamp duty. He asked for a dismiss.

  His Honour said that he observed there was no Guard in court to prove certain maps and measurements. That was a serious matter; it showed disrespect to the court.

  Mr Juteclaw said there were no maps in the case; if the plaintiffs intended to produce maps, he was entitled to 18 days’ clear notice and viaticum for engrossment.

  Mr Faix, for the plaintiffs, said he knew of no maps; he had received no instructions as to maps.

  His Honour said he would let the matter pass, but for the future it must be understood that there must be a Guard in court to prove maps; one never knew when a map would be produced, he added.

  Mr Faix stated that the plaintiffs held their easements in foeff-puisaunce pursuant to a ‘very old statute’; he took exception to the remarks made by learned ‘counsel’. Plaintiffs’ rights subsisted by sochemann in droit à moins and were not subject to escheat, in tail or otherwise. It was a very old principle, affirmed again and again by the Lords.

  His Honour: Which Lords?

  Mr Juteclaw interposed to say that he wished to utter an emphatic protest against the remarks made by Mr Faix. The defendant had fenced the land for 400 years without fee.

  His Honour said that he thought the phrase was ‘without fee or reward’. Counsel should be more exact in citation.

  Mr Faix: It is not a legal phrase, my lord.

  His Honour: Every word uttered in this court is legal.

  Mr Juteclaw said he wished to make a further emphatic protest against the disgraceful remarks made by Mr Faix. Mr Faix had referred to him (Mr Juteclaw) as ‘counsel’. He (Mr Juteclaw) would have him (Mr Faix) know that he (Mr Juteclaw) was fully entitled to be known by the name and style of counsel. He would take inverted commas from no man.

  Mr Faix: You never in your life et a dinner above in the Inns. You were only a waiter there, I know your face.

  His Honour: Many a man of ability and unimpeachable integrity followed the ancient avocation of waiter.

  Mr Juteclaw said that if that was His Honour’s attitude, he (Mr Juteclaw) had no alternative bu
t to leave the court. He would not be lachessed with impunity, by squirt-attorneys or anybody else.

  Mr Juteclaw then left.

  Mr Faix then addressed His Honour on several knotty legal points and asked for a dismiss in manu.

  His Honour: Here’s old Jute back.

  Mr Juteclaw re-appeared and said he wished to apologise for a serious solecism he had unwittingly committed. When felt compelled by the dictates of honour to quit the court, he had merely lifted his papers and left. As a lawyer of long standing, he knew that the correct and accepted thing was to gather up his papers and withdraw. He then renewed his apologies, gathered up his papers, and withdrew.

  His Honour, addressing the court, said that he had received a signal from his tipstaff. There was a cup of tea on the hob in his room. He would adjourn the case for three days; pleadings could be re-entered and his order would be discharged.

  ANOTHER interesting case was dealt with recently at the Cruiskeen Court of Voluntary Jurisduction. A man called Smoke sued a well-known Dublin surgeon for grievous bodily injuries. The defendant claimed professional privilege and counter-claimed for fees amounting to £457 12. 3.

  His Honour Judge Twinfeet, mounting the bench, said ‘Now, no jargon. Whoever uses jargon is for it.’

  Opening the case for the plaintiff, Mr Juteclaw said that this client was a decent working man, a trade unionist and a member of the Trinity College Fabian Society.

  His Honour: My heater’s gone. Where’s my foot-heater?

  Mr Juteclaw said that he understood the apparatus had been removed by the Board of Works, possibly for repairs. He would report the matter.