A Singular Country

by J. P. Donleavy

  HONOUR IS THAT QUALITY ONE CHERISHES, KEEPS, PROCLAIMS AND EXEMPLIFIES UNTIL SUCH TIME AS YOU ARE DAMN SURE CERTAIN IT WOULD DO YOU NO BLOODY DAMN GOOD TO KEEP, CHERISH, PROCLAIM OR EXEMPLIFY IT ANY LONGER.

  Now the reason honour gets short shrift in the land of the shamrock is because the Irish as a people long occupied, subdued and dominated as they were by the foreigner, never had a sufficiently unleaky pot to piss in or could get their clogs long enough up out of the bog to display this quality of ethical high mindedness. Thus the term ‘gentleman’ becoming as it has long been, an expression regarded as advertising the sort of fool ripe to be fleeced of his money or goods. And even if a brilliantly disguised Irishman in such a delusion and alert to this drawback would set himself up with the trappings of a gentleman and squire he wouldn’t be lasting the course I’m telling you, surrounded in a flash as he would be in such plenitude by conniving rogues reducing him naked to his socks and them left smelly with holes.

  So in the age which has wrought the demise of your chivalrous status known as gentleman, let there be rejoicing that the gap left is being filled by your Protestant Catholic. This is not to say that your traditional gentleman cannot be found if looked for in the nether corners of the morning rooms of your better clubs, excluding the night variety, who try to specialise in such ranking of such class. But it is alas a fact that the numbers of these upper crusted folk once noted for their natural gallantry, high minded principles and elegance of behaviour, are now so rare as to be considered de minimis in Irish society. Notwithstanding that circumstance you might in the presence and environment of the horse be cajoled into believing that your previous persons of courtly magnanimity are still all over the place. And in particular are to be found prevalent at your stud farm, polo match, or conspicuous in the paddock at the race meeting. By god, you’d be badly misled. Separate the wheat from the chaff. Take no superior nonsense from those strutting about in their equine equipage and exhibiting characteristics historically associated on this island with nature’s noblemen. And certain words are called for here in exacting from such booted and horsed folk their warrant and making bloody sure straight off that they are not your sham squire and fake.

  “I say sir are you possessed of a reasonably substantial amount of land as a freeholder or are you masquerading with nothing more than your suburban front and back garden to boast of?”

  But do in such questioning make allowance for your more modest and unaffected Protestant Catholic whom a lot of your discerning people will spot either mounted for the hunt or examining the alignment of his polo mallet before the match. Nor be put off the scent by his unprepossessing appearance in the midst of any of these clipped vowelled horsey impostors. And what the hell, occasionally one can be liberal here, and as ranking among your would be gentleman gentry include those who have arbours, ponds and glasshouses in their back gardens. Or indeed who have a few mature fruit and nut trees. For the advent of the Protestant Catholic hasn’t come too soon for the sake of the ultimate betterment of this Isle. Even your Orangemen, who stand for no nonsense in these matters would have to admit subtly that he feels a mite easier these days as he travels golf club to golf club the length and breadth of the country and thoroughly enjoying the latest Gaelic contributions to freedom in that part of the land that holds the world’s record for the banning of evil literature. He’d even be cocking his hat at your Man Fighters Mark I, II, and III. And of course your Orangeman would be doubly pleased to encounter your multi-orgasmic man loving vicar’s daughter. On or off her horse. Or in or out of her Ferrari.

  But in Ireland everything is opposite to the obvious. And the country itself is best described as a conspiracy among the populace. To achieve a confusion of image to the rest of the world. And in this, it must be admitted, that without in the least trying, they have succeeded admirably. Especially in giving a good impression to the outsider while keeping hidden qualities that might make him abhor you. Be that as it may, you’d still want to vaguely know what was happening all the way down the social ranks to your bootless and unhorsed and your largely materially dispossessed hoi polloi. Which latter, let me tell you, is your different cauldron of eels entirely. Notwithstanding the fact that the innate character of even your lowest of low orders of the purely Irish retain a peculiar and individualistically aristocratic quality. Mind you, it would be a quality peculiar enough and some of course would unkindly attribute it to an overblown sense of their own self importance they attach to having been born in the country of the shamrock in the first place, of parents just like themselves. And that they and their existence is unique. Now you might think this is a stupid assumption for them to make in the extreme in a world where others are so blessed. Well believe it or not they have a point. For there is nowhere else on earth where you can be where you’d think you weren’t who you were or weren’t where you were because you were there. Did you understand that? Now if you didn’t, don’t worry. But it is this slightly disorientated state of mind and place, and being isolated for so long from the vulgarity of the modern world, that has cultivated the Irish to enjoy the sight of one another which in turn has lead to the happy go lucky nature of the people. Such accumulated contentment and self assurance, real or imagined, has now at long last nearly put the Irish inferiority complex to rout which, regrettably, had, when the Irish leave Ireland, become over the generations a major part of the nature of being Irish. And instead it now accounts for the strange reason why on St. Patrick’s day in the United States every inhabitant of every ethnic persuasion of that country is in his green tie and sporting his spray of shamrock and presenting himself to all and sundry as an Irishman. Even to being ready, some of them, to give you a quick fist in the gob if chided as an obvious Greek, Black, Oriental or Jew that he’s prima facie an arrant impostor. Resulting finally, I’m telling you, in it’s being dangerous business to being Irish in any guise whatsoever. Except as your forelock pulling bog trotter.

  Now you would betimes in the homeland of the shamrock itself be forgiven for expressing an observation as to where can you see your real ordinary down to earth and less blessed Irishman who isn’t still standing there at the door of his thatched cottage owning a bit of land and smoking his clay pipe and day dreaming as he looked over the hedgerow and down the road into the infinity. For you’d be concluding no doubt that they’d all packed their bags to disappear in the long accustomed stream of emigration. Well you’d nearly be half right and nearly half wrong. For as the new history of the land of the shamrock unfolds they have, a great big plethora of them, gone to the periphery of the conurbation. And now why would they do that. They’d do that because out there on those sprawling housing and council estates they’d have available to them a cheap rent and maybe a mortgage and have as a result a house in which to eat and sleep and not have the roof leak. And by god these boxy little abodes both sprawling and built towering on top of one another are erupting to beat the band all over the place. And it is here on these brand new laid down streets that these days resides nearly your majority of the nation, fully subsidised. And Ireland long being a location where the pigs and chickens were running loose all over the parlour, you’d wonder how the government can afford it. Well they can’t. But in the true Irishness of the situation, they can. And impressive it is too and another example of the conspiracy active among the population to live free of charge in neat comfortable little houses with wonderful, not to say astonishing, social amenities including your white ceramic flushing bowls. And where the inmates instead of using the tub to store the turf and coal, as they had previously been long accustomed to doing, now immerse themselves to take your perfumed bubble baths while humming the national anthem. And more power to them you’d say.

  But let me tell you, this humanity and kindness to these subsidised, less well heeled members of the population with the non leaking roof over their heads, hasn’t improved some of their manners one bit. There’d still be among them plenty of your small minded bigots putting the tongue upon you i
n the land where bigotry reigns supreme. And still plenty of them of the sort who lurk at the cracks between the window curtain, and eye on everything that passes. And from behind a hand, as busy as ever spreading rumour and gossip ear to ear like wild fire. And if you were wandering by in any way decently, if not stylishly, attired, there would be grumbling remarks from doorsteps and glaring stares trying to bore their enmity into any who might look to be that little bit better than themselves. Now these are still your brand of people who might smile and plamás you as a stranger, but who would also try to make sure you do not stay too long so that you’d be getting to know what awful fuckers we really are. But then by god, there are your better people here too. Who were once your aspiring Protestant Catholic and who were even once successful in Irish life and whose children were growing up refined and who were butchers or other entrepreneurial businessmen who either slowly descended or were suddenly busted into bankruptcy. And now are relegated and given the four walls you get in the tall housing blocks or are put residing in a terrace of these sprawling estates. It is they who find they have been dropped into this other suspiciously mean sea of humanity who now lurk around them like piranha fish ready to rip and tear by ignominy and hostility the remaining life from them. However, those who knew better times at least become possessed of a roof over their heads and not a bad roof at that, under which there’s running water and electrocuting electricity, all for a reasonable rent. And who would expect everything to smell of roses in the new Ireland. Or for that matter be looking too deeply into the gift horse’s mouth.

  Now remember Dublin was once such a place as was unequalled the world over for the squalor of its slums. Death and rats haunting the alleys and hallways. And the coffins would be aloft on shoulders and in and out of these tenements. But all save the memory is now swept away. Leaving the modern Ireland which has spawned a strangely humane socialism. Ruled over by the little emperors who nobly sit behind their desks as they officiate over the dispersal of cash. Ready for them and most of your little tricks perpetrated by those beneficiaries, busy perfecting schemes to cheat it. And occasionally the miscreants are reported and caught and punishment meted out. But it’s very much a benign administration. While more and more of your torturing and incitement to greed comes beaming down out of the skies. Burning images into all these new growing up souls whose antecedents were dispossessed. Just as they are now dispossessed of the old Ireland, bad as it was. It might have nearly been better than the television screen now doing all the educating and preaching. That this or that product is good for you. And that the standard of life we’re showing in our situation comedies with all our very own pots to piss in, is even better for you. And of course truth be told it is. It is. And aren’t we eating the junk and wearing the styles to prove it. We are. We are. But now I’ll tell you what really is an aesthetically crying shame. That will forever here on in, play havoc with a once starvingly poor but contentedly devout population. It is that religion has gone to the dogs.

  And here we come now to the really big regret and the change that has hit this isle a cultural hammer blow in the haggis. With the population up and dancing all over the kip with your permissiveness. And of course in and among this lot will not only be found your British vicar’s daughter aiding and abetting but also your local models and débutantes, who haven’t a trace left of your previously admired chastity. Fish on Friday is gone. The Latin mass is gone. The roofs of the chapels and churches are leaking. And you’d wonder what has this got to do with culture. Or the Irish of today. Well I’ll tell you. Picture this nation as it isn’t any more but once was. As you pass on the road or street in town or country, there would in many a window be a candle glowing in front of an artefact of the sainted or sanctified. Your clergy, and plenty of them, were conspicuous in their communities in their black vestments or monkish robes. Your devout of the population were blessing themselves hurrying along laneways and pavements, nuns nodding at them as they went to attend upon vespers or make their novenas. A grand pious god fearing sight. And the atmosphere of the nation was the aesthetic better for it. In these hallowed churchly places, the echoes of organs playing. Choirs chanting and singing. In the solemn memory of the dead and dying, the incense filling the chapel air. Your confessional boxes with lines of sinners waiting outside their shrouded mahogany confines. And inside, were you to tune an eavesdropping ear, would be buzzing alive with the telling of real genuine sins. Albeit of an old fashioned passé quality and the like of which perhaps would not have involved the fancy copulation your man enacted with your vicar’s multi-orgasmic daughter. But if it had. You’d hear questions shot at you like bullets from a machine gun.

  “And was she, my son, on top?”

  “She was father, and spinning.”

  “For the sin of impurity say five acts of contrition and for fugacious and fancy fucking repeat the rosary a thousand times. And spin no more my son.”

  And lined along the pews on their knees, heads bowed into their hands, the forgiven and repentant mumble their penance. And now on this isle even the most heinous of despicable deeds are hardly sins any more. The Protestant churches stand deserted, jackdaws nesting in their belfries. The nunneries and monasteries closed. And you’d even be afraid to stop anyone in the street to ask them do they still believe in God or do they now put their trust in their T.V. If they didn’t laugh at you, you’d be lucky if they didn’t give you a good kick in the shins for reminding them of the Almighty above. And if you did get kicked and then gave them back a good slap in the face for their cheeky irreligiousness begorrah they’d have equally profane solicitors suing the living holy god fearing excreta out of you.

  And here we come to the very latest new notion in the nation. Never mind the dying of religion. A new system of belief has been born. The zealous nature of which has no equal in any of your known religious persuasions. And the prayer that’s prayed would be in the form of a writ flying all over the place. And landing to claim injury, indignity, loss, maim, distress and any heretofore negligence attached thereto. With your populace getting dizzy tripping on kerb stones, or pretending that a leg of theirs has been contused by the fender of a motor car. Or that in the supermarket a packet of soap powder has fallen over onto their finger. Or that didn’t they lie unconscious an hour with a wad of gristle from a sausage caught in their windpipe. And by god now that they’re back up and breathing again after a lot of bad dreams, they’re on to the lawyer to commence the action for damages in a hurry. And coast to coast it’s nearly like the automatic winning of a lottery with the temporarily maimed for the purpose, hobbling on crutches into court with headaches, and your transitory crossed eyes, or joints not working, ears not hearing or brains not thinking. With your man there in the witness box alternately scratching and tapping his cranium. As the judge cross examines.

  “Are you actually suggesting to the court that you cannot think any more, having been able to think prior to the alleged injury?”

  “I am Your Honour. Me head’s no longer reasoning right, Your Honour. Not only am I not able to count me cattle one at a time but I no longer know of a morning it’s only one of me there plain as day looking in the mirror.”

  “But, if I may interpose here, you are able to count to one.”

  “Ah I am that Your Honour but I can’t get past it to what I used to count to being two and three.”

  Now suing for substantial damages has done one thing anyway. Although not adding to the collective honesty of the population it has in a stroke created your very latest member of the leisure class. Who’s able to stay abed till noon and to buy new houses, new cars and go strolling hither and thither like any squire gentleman of yore while enjoying to keep his neighbours burning in envy. But by god, don’t be mistaken by the ash plant or the tweeds he’s wearing or the big lungfuls of air he’s ingesting along the seashore that he’s your Protestant Catholic. He’d be instead your genuine chancer and a downright scheming cunning conniver. Out to take the insurance companies for e
very last penny he can get and do it by every trick of deception some of which aren’t listed yet in the books. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that with the collapse of religion and disavowal of honour that the place is running wild with your slick citizen pulling the wool over every decent insurance company’s eyes who hasn’t yet been bankrupted. Ah but we can take some solace here, from the fact that with so many of your tricky customers about, they’re not only getting in each other’s way but also perpetrating their chicanery on each other. The big companies too, would be wise to the fraud. And they’d be more alert than anybody to the demise of religion and the resulting dishonest and unfair play towards the rich and powerful. Now, you’d ask, do these low type persons ever go and confess to their defrauding feloniousness? And whisper to the priest their dishonesty perpetrated upon the big company. They do not. For your man of religion would tell them to go straight back to the counter of the insurance office and make amends. With your sinner in the confessional raising his voice

  What

  You mean

  Give the money back

  Not on your nellie

  Padre

  ACROSS THIS SAND TIDES RISE AND EBB WASHING DUBLIN’S SINS AWAY. AND WHERE SOULS HAVE WALKED AND LEFT A LENIFYING LEGACY.

  IX

  Now after hearing of a few hiccups in the emergence of the Emerald Isle into the modern go ahead world, you’d wonder what else might go wrong with the nation and island as a whole. And indeed there is another little matter going on here on this terra firma that you may have recently heard about although it is as ancient as the place itself. It is that there is an enmity of identity displayed among some members of the population and they are betimes at each other’s throats and providing a situation in which some of your most reasonable men remain unreasonable. Now with the scenery, the fresh air and open fields and plenty of room for everybody you’d say, why in god’s name is that? Well for a start it’s not in god’s peaceful name but it would be clear and distinct as your colours black and white. However, in the matter of the circumstance to which we refer it is two other colours at your loggerheads, these hues being conspicuously green and orange.