Best of Myles

by Flann O'Brien

  First, rud. Rud means ‘concern, sympathy, anxiety, sorrow’. Nuadh means ‘act of strengthening, intensifying’. It also means ‘strength’. ‘Fad’ just means ‘longitude’. Then we come to cuirm. The lexicographer is only warming up now. In his frightfully superior voice he explains that cuirm means ‘a kind of ale formerly used by the Irish; drink in general; a feast or banquet’. He assigns absolutely no other meaning to the word. Ceol means ‘activity, vigour, sprightliness’. Siansach (despite the gloss) means ‘wise, sensible’. The next word is siubhal and the crafty master messes up everything with vindictive skill when he announces that this word means ‘a measure in music between fast and slow (moderato)’. The cuteness of this move is beyond belief. He won’t allow that ceol has anything to do with music, but insists that siubhal has. ‘In éinfheacht’ means ‘at once’ and ‘cór Gaedhealach’ means ‘an unsophisticated troop’.

  Now let’s see what we have. Dinneen says the passage quoted has the following meaning:

  ‘It is longitudinally a strong anxiety that a wise and vigorous ancient Irish ale should be in moderato time at once with an unsophisticated troop.’

  I infer that the writer (I know the type well) meant to say this:

  ‘It is entirely a new thing that a symphony concert should be held in conjunction with a Gaelic choir.’

  Mr Charles Lynch is announced as giving dreas ceoil, ‘a sprightly bramble’. He is described as a pianadóir, Dinneen says pianadóir means (exclusively) ‘a punisher, a tormentor’. Granted that we’re not all fond of music, isn’t that a bit … hard? And brambles!

  What a man.

  THE GAELIC

  A LADY lecturing recently on the Irish language drew attention to the fact (I mentioned it myself as long ago as 1925) that, while the average English speaker gets along with a mere 400 words, the Irish-speaking peasant uses 4,000. Considering what most English speakers can achieve with their tiny fund of noises, it is a nice speculation to what extremity one would be reduced if one were locked up for a day with an Irish-speaking bore and bereft of all means of committing murder or suicide.

  My point, however, is this. The 400/4,000 ration is fallacious; 400/400,000 would be more like it. There is scarcely a single word in the Irish (barring, possibly, Sasanach) that is simple and explicit. Apart from words with endless shades of cognate meaning, there are many with so complete a spectrum of graduated ambiguity that each of them can be made to express two directly contrary meanings, as well as a plethora of intermediate concepts that have no bearing on either. And all this strictly within the linguistic field. Superimpose on all that the miasma of ironic usage, poetic licence, oxymoron, plamás, Celtic evasion, Irish bullery and Paddy Whackery, and it a safe bet that you will find yourself very far from home. Here is an example copied from Dinneen and from more authentic sources known only to my little self:

  Cur, g. curtha and cuirthe, m.—act of putting, sending, sowing, raining, discussing, burying, vomiting, hammering into the ground, throwing through the air, rejecting, shooting, the setting or clamp in a rick of turf, selling, addressing, the crown of cast-iron buttons which have been made bright by contact with cliff-faces, the stench of congealing badger’s suet, the luminance of glue-lice, a noise made in an empty house by an unauthorised person, a heron’s boil, a leprachaun’s denture, a sheep-biscuit, the act of inflating hare’s offal with a bicycle pump, a leak in a spirit level, the whine of a sewage farm windmill, a corncrake’s clapper, the scum on the eye of a senile ram, a dustman’s dumpling, a beetle’s faggot, the act of loading every rift with ore, a dumb man’s curse, a blasket, a ‘kur’, a fiddler’s occupational disease, a fairy godmother’s father, a hawk’s vertigo, the art of predicting past events, a wooden coat, a custard-mincer, a blue-bottle’s ‘farm’, a gravy flask, a timber-mine, a toy craw, a porridge-mill, a fair-day donnybrook with nothing barred, a stoat’s stomach-pump, a broken—

  But what is the use? One could go on and on without reaching anywhere in particular.

  Your paltry English speaker apprehends sea-going craft through the infantile cognition which merely distinguishes the small from the big. If it’s small, it’s a boat, and if it’s big it’s a ship. In his great book An tOileánach, however, the uneducated Tomás Ó Criomhthain uses, perhaps, a dozen words to convey the concept of varying super-marinity—árthrach long, soitheach, bád, naomhóg, bád raice, galbhád, púcán and whatever you are having yourself.

  The plight of the English speaker with his wretched box of 400 vocal beads may be imagined when I say that a really good Irish speaker would blurt out the whole 400 in one cosmic grunt. In Donegal there are native speakers who know so many million words that it is a matter of pride with them never to use the same word twice in a life-time. Their life (not to say their language) becomes very complex at the century mark; but there you are.

  SLIGHE AN ALLUIS

  Tá litir fághalta agam o Muilte Farannáin adeir gur mithid go gcuirfí ar fagháil don lucht léighte, blúire eile den eolus atá in mo fhoclóir príobháideach féin (agus nách bhfuil in-aon foclóir eile). Seo thíos a bhfuil le leigheamh ar leathnach a 115.

  Buachaill báire—a follower of Shels, a ball-faced youth, a moulder of suet balls.

  Buachaill cúinne—a corner boy, a local boy who has turned the corner, a tool used by an unscrupulous wheat cartel.

  Buachaill árd—a tallboy, one who tells tall stories, a youth addicted to looking over walls.

  Buachaill Mara—a buoy, a sea scout.

  Buachaill anbhruithe—a broth of a boy, a whey-face, a gruel complexioned wastling.

  Buachaill Oidhche—an owl.

  Buachaill Maidne—a peep o’day boy, a milkman’s nark, a hangover (facetious).

  Buachaill Gunna—a garage ‘MEXICAN’ or greaser, a rowdy, a ‘Son of a gun’, a card, a terrible man.

  Buachaill Siamsa—a play-boy, a waster, a tap-dancer, a jazzer, a George Raft.

  Buachaill Soic—a nosey parker, a muzzle faced meddler, a van driver’s butty who has custody of the horse’s nosebag.

  Buachaill Mála—a young Commercial Traveller, a young bag-eyed inebriate, a convict, a cat keeper, a ‘spook’ who stands on the fringe of strangers’ billiard games and retrieves the balls from the pockets, a ‘malley-boy’, a bag snatcher, a wearer of plus-fours, a porter, a ‘bags’.

  FEACHTAR leat go beacht, a anam a liquoiuor, dánta grádha et corpus gean-fhilíocht fear Erenn (sraith moron nach maireann, farrier) et taréis infhiúchta, measta agus meaidhte na binnbhairdne sin duit, fíor go mbeidh deirhbiú agaibh, a léathóir, ar ar bhaineadar ár amateurs sinnseardha de thaithneamh, de shult et de chaitheamh—(cailín)—aimsire as an mbantracht. Binn a mbriathra, gasta a nglór, aicme narab mór mo bháidh; a gcáineadh is mairg nár loc; mairg adeir olc ris na mnáibh! Ita cecinit Gearóid Iarla, acht go deimhin is 6 baramhail an Mhíleasa úi cCopúláin gur ag faithbheadh ocus ag dénamh fonamhaide do bhí fitz fileata ngearailt an tan do grafadh ris an dréacht neaphróis odpertomor. Thamhéibhir bí deat as iot mé, iot ios ab-bhíos deait hí bheais neat iondifirint tú de féar séacs agus dearbhaimíd-ne (aos gCoupling) gurbh é a dhála-sa dála gacha bhaird có-aimseardha leis (et dála gacha bháird & beard & bird & bored & buyer & byre & Board & Bart & Bert & bear & Baer & beered & Byron noch aut olim in Ierne vixit). Ciodh trácht, a liuqcgrwthóir a anamchara, nach iongantach (ar fad) a annamhaighe is ainmnítear nó a sloinntear i rannaibh riartha rachtmhara roscacha ár sinnsear (rogers) adhbhar a suime teinntrighe? Or let me put it this way (I pray you): whereas we angle-irons, pardon me anglo-irish cry woo is Sylvier wot is she, or Lesbia hat a beaming i or Oh my poor Nellie Grey, níorbh’in gnás an tsein-fhile ghaedhealaigh: fear cúramach cigilteach discréideach abhi ann a thuig gur ró-mhaith an dídean an dorchadas agus nach mbionn an ráth acht mar a mbíonn an rún. Ba leisg leis dá bhrigh sin ainm, sloinneadh nó seoladh (nó fiú uimhir telefón—) a sheirce do scéitheadh nó do nochtadh—agus an tan dar leis go raibh sé riachtanach lideadh a thabhairt cé in Eirin
n í agus gan aon dul-as aige, é sin do dhein sé sa chaoi go mbeadh sé deacair ag an gcoitchiantacht a h-aithint nec possint curiosi fascinare mala lingua. Agus é seo go léir fá ndear a leithéid seo d’fhilíocht, mairg an díol:

  Coll is nion go nua-ghloine,

  Is dá choll ar n-a gceangal,

  Ruis is coll go cruadhshnigthe,

  Ainm na mná so dam mealladh.

  Seadh faith. Nó an amhlaidh go raibh an beautiful blonde spy beo in Eirinn sa tsean-aimsir (nó sa blackandtan-aimsir). Agent XP2. Please contact WR6, await instructions Ballyhickey. YSAKBN-576 will contact you Friday, please dress as bishop.

  Cuid do dheireadh báid ós tuinn

  Is seacht gcuill ar nach bid cna,

  An t-ainm fá bhfuilim i mbroid;

  Is aon do sgoil bheanfas as.

  Smólach bheag agus lon dubh,

  Agus naoi gcoill ’na gcruth féin,

  Ainm na mná dá dtugas grádh,

  Tré bhfuilim do ghnáth i bpéin.

  Agus mar sin de. Acht cheana, tá teoiric agam féin maidir leis an ngean-fhilíocht seo go léir agus nílim ró-chinnte an raib cur-sios agam uirthi cheana. A leithéid seo—go bhfuil de dheacracht is de chastacht ins na meadarachtaí Gaedhilge gur cabhair ó Dhia don fhile an focal bean toisc go bhfuil fuaimeanna éagsúla aige do réir mar is tuiseal de .i. bean, mná, mnaoi, ban; agus dá bhrí sin go gcuireann na fili síos comh minic ar na mnáibh toisc an triall ceapadóireachta bheith níos fusa.

  Mo chuidse den adhbhar, measaim gur chóir frainncis agus gaedhilg a mheascadh agus fille-eacht a thabhairt ar an obair seo go léir.

  LAST WEEK we had a rather stern address over here———→* regarding the inadmissibility of the Irish language and although it is almost a gaffe for anybody who is qualified to speak on this subject to express opinions on it in the public prints, I feel I must speak out; otherwise there is the danger that the lying rumour will be spread by my enemies that I am silent because once again money has changed hands. (It cannot be too often repeated that I am not for sale. I was bought in 1921 and the transaction was final and conclusive.)

  In my lordship’s view the movement to revive the Irish language should be persisted in. I hold that it is fallacious to offer the Irish people a simple choice between slums and Gaelic. (Indeed, it is hardly an adult attitude and is known in hibernian philosophy as the Ignoratio Mac Glinchy.) If this doctrine of bread alone were followed, we would have (for one thing) to divert the revenues of Trinity College to slum clearance, and Alton and I simply will not have this. The horrible charge is made that Mr de Valera is spending half a million a year on reviving Irish. I may be a wild paddy but I take the view that the free expenditure of public money on a cultural pursuit is one of the few boasts this country can make. Whether we get value for all the money spent on Irish, higher learning and on our university establishments is one question but that we spend liberally on these things is to our credit and when the great nations of the earth (whose civilisations we are so often asked to admire) are spending up to £100,000,000 (roughly) per day on destruction, it is surely no shame for our humble community of peasants to spend about £2,000 per day on trying to revive a language. It is the more urbane occupation. And what is half a million in relation to slum clearance? Faith now, could we be honest enough (for one moment) to admit to ourselves (in our heart of hearts) that there is another sort of Irish, and forced down people’s throats, too, and that we spend enough on it every year to re-build all Dublin.

  Irish has an intrinsic significance which (naturally enough) must be unknown to those who condemn the language. It provides through its literature and dialects a great field for the pursuit of problems philological, historical and ethnological, an activity agreeable to all men of education and good-will. Moreover, the language itself is ingratiating by reason of its remoteness from European tongues and moulds of thought, its precision, elegance and capacity for the subtler literary nuances; it attracts even by its surpassing difficulty, for scarcely anybody living today can write or speak Irish correctly and exactly in the fashion of 300 years ago (and it may have been noticed that the one person qualified to attempt the feat has been too tired to try for the past two or three weeks). True Irish prose has a steely latinistic line that does not exist in the fragmented English patois. Here is a literal translation of a letter addressed by Hugh O’Neill to a hostile captain:—

  ‘Our blessing to ye, O Mac Coghlin: we received your letter and what we understand from her is that what you are at the doing of is but sweetness of word and spinning out of time. For our part of the subject, whatever person is not with us and will not wear himself out in the interest of justice, that person we understand to be a person against us. For that reason, in each place in which ye do your own good, pray do also our ill to the fullest extent ye can and we will do your ill to the absolute utmost of our ability, with God’s will. We being at Knockdoney Hill, 6 februarii, 1600.’

  That seems to me to be an exceptional achievement in the sphere of written nastiness and the original exudes the charm attaching to all instances of complete precision in the use of words.

  There is probably no basis at all for the theory that a people cannot preserve a separate national entity without a distinct language but it is beyond dispute that Irish enshrines the national ethos and in a subtle way Irish persists very vigorously in English. In advocating the preservation of Irish culture, it is not to be inferred that this culture is superior to the English or any other but simply that certain Irish modes are more comfortable and suitable for Irish people; otherwise these modes simply would not exist. It is therefore dangerous to discourage the use of Irish because the revival movement, even if completely ineffective, is a valuable preservative of certain native virtues and it is worth remembering that if Irish were to die completely, the standard of English here, both in the spoken and written word, would sink to a level probably as low as that obtaining in England and it would stop there only because it could go no lower. Not even the Editor of the Irish Times is an authority on the hidden wells which sustain the ageless western Irishman, and cannot have considered the vast ethnogenic problems inherent in a proposal to deprive him of one of his essential chattels. I admire Liverpool but if Cork is to become another Liverpool by reason of stupid admiration for the least worthy things in the English civilisation, then I can only say that the Corkmen will not live there any more, the mysterious language they speak, which is not Irish and certainly not English will be heard no more, and a race of harmless, charming and amusing people will have been extirpated.

  There is another aspect to this question. Even if Irish had no value at all, the whole bustle of reviving it, the rows, the antagonisms, and the clashes surrounding the revival are interesting and amusing. There is a profusion of unconscious humour on both sides. The solemn humbugs who pronounce weightily on the Irish language while knowing absolutely nothing about it I hold to be no less valuable than monetary reformers in the business of entertaining the nation. The lads who believe that in slip-jigs we have a national prophylaxis make life less stark. And the public-spirited parties who write letters to the papers in illiterate English expressing concern at the harm the revival movement is doing to the standard of education generally are also of clownish significance. They all combine to make colour and to amuse.

  To one and all I would say this, my hand upon my heart: Go your ways build and take down, capture and set free, gather in conclave and debate … but … do not tamper with the Irishman, touch not his sacred belongings, be solicitous that thy tongue contemneth not the smallest thing he may prize or the least thing he may love. For he is unique; if you kill him he cannot be replaced, and the world is poorer.

  THE OLD BONE!

  Sooner or later one comes back to this question of ‘compulsory Irish’ and from it that is not a long way off to the other question of teaching through the medium of Irish. It has been held that the teaching of ‘subjects’ other than fishing not through Irish but through the medium of Irish l
eads to a generation ‘illiterate in two languages’ and this venerable joke is expected to make us smile bitterly. Upon all this I claim to have an objective view inasmuch as I am an old Westminster man and I still prize the old battered Greek grammar that was placed in my infant hands in the old school. It was rather different with us English, I mean. One’s parent—persons, when one was ‘born’ entered one for the old school—the idea being that one should learn to fight that odd angular hereditament, one’s corner. Incidentally, as it were, one became educated—viz., one ‘learnt’ Greek. This grammar of mine has an amusing preface beginning: ALTERVM jam faeculum ad finem vergit, cum vir pietate et doctrina praestans, Edwardus Grantus…and then, anti-climax … scholae regiae Weftmonafterienfis moderator … Graecam grammaticam in ufam scholae ejufdem publicavit … (Terrible men for lifping in those days!) But anyway this old boy (I think he must have been one of the first University Grants before the County Councils came along) goes on to say Graecae linguae fpicilegium prae modeftia appellare ipfi placuit…(Prae modeftia, eh?) I admit I never got beyond the first page of that grammar—Graecae grammaticae, I remember it said, quattuor funt partes: orthographia, etymologia, fyntaxis et profodia …

  No doubt you see what I’m getting at. It’s not so much that you have to be got out of your mother’s way for a few years before you go up to Oxford; the point is that education means H.M. Humanities, i.e. one learns Greek and the grammar is in Latin because, of course, one already knows Latin. Our Irish educationalists, in reviving Irish, are therefore proceeding in a well-tried classical tradition.

  * * *

  *i.e., in the editorial columns of the Irish Times.

  Bores

  CHRISTMAS come and gone, eh? Let’s associate for the moment a few banalities and bores associated with the season.