Myles Away From Dublin

by Flann O'Brien

  Nearly all of them carry a sort of toffee apple on a stick which is brandished indiscriminately between sucks, on one occasion smearing the clothes of my innocent self. The noise is deafening and fights start here and there. They kneel and stand on the seats. The last time this happened to me, the company had an important notice about time-table changes pasted to the curved bulkhead above the windows but one corner of the notice was loose and detached. One lad stood on the seat, got a hold of this corner and methodically began to tear the notice down.

  The reader must not think I am censuring the natural exuberance of youth and, in case it should matter, the boys were nearly all well dressed and did not look as if they attended the conventional national school. They were brats. Do they behave like this in the schoolroom? If they do, teaching some juniors must be a greater martyrdom than is commonly supposed, though it would be quite unfair to expect teachers single-handed to try to eradicate this mode of conduct. That is primarily the duty of the parents. And the prognosis could be grim enough. I am afraid that some at least of those characters are embryo teddy-boys.

  Of Yesterday

  I am sure some readers may have heard of a little book entitled The Accomplished Gentleman or Principles of Politeness and of Knowing the World by Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield. My own copy is published by James Duffy of Dublin and dated 1844.

  I will grant that parts of this treatise are funny and the mere date alone countermands many of the principles he lays down, for even manners have some dependence on contemporary fashion and custom. All the same much of what he teaches could with great benefit be absorbed by those schoolboys, for he is addressing ‘every young gentleman’.

  He praises modesty and reprobates all insolence, boasting, shouting and extravagant behaviour, and strongly condemns lying, which he discerns as originating in vanity and cowardice. He considers the essence of good breeding is absence of rudeness and ruffianly self-assertion. At table the awkward fellow is easy to discern. ‘He sets himself upon the edge of the chair, at so great a distance from the table, that he frequently drops his meat between his plate and his mouth; he holds his knife, fork and spoon differently from other people; eats with his knife, to the manifest danger of his mouth; picks his teeth with his fork, rakes his mouth with his finger, and puts his spoon, which has been in his mouth a dozen times, into the dish again. If he is to carve, he cannot hit the joint, but in labouring to cut through the bone, splashes the sauce over everybody’s clothes. He generally daubs himself all over, his elbow is in the next person’s plate, and he is up to his knuckles in soup and grease.’

  In that much I think Lord Chesterfield was mostly concerned with etiquette, and it was not in etiquette that I found those schoolboys so deficient.

  Dress and Laughter

  One of the subjects on which his lordship’s advice is obsolete is that of dress. Let me quote again:

  ‘There are few young fellows but what display some character or other in this shape. Some would be thought fearless and brave: these wear a black cravat, a short coat and waistcoat, an uncommon long sword hanging to the knees, a large hat fiercely cocked, and are flash all over. Others affect to be country squires; these will go about in buckskin breeches, brown frocks, and a great oaken cudgel in their hands, slouched hats, with their hair undressed, and tucked up under them, to an enormous size …’

  I complained of wanton noise in the bus. He holds that loud and frequent laughter is sure evidence of a weak mind and quite inexcusable if the pretext for it is that when another man is about to sit down, you pull the chair away so that he falls on the floor. Loose language, mispronounced language and even bad language ‘must be avoided, if you would not be supposed to have kept company with footmen and housemaids’.

  His lordship undoubtedly has some stern attitudes. He advises against playing cards or drinking. Excess in drink is the mark of the blackguard, though moderate drinking when unavoidable (e.g. a toast at a wedding) is permitted. But suppose playing cards is a social duty. A person in such a spot ‘will not be seen at cribbage, all-fours, or putt’. Seemliness at games is also important and those schoolboys might note that a wellbred person ‘will not be seen at skittles, football, leap-frog, cricket …’ If music be your interest, be careful here again. ‘Piping or fiddling at a concert is degrading to a man of fashion. If you love music, hear it; pay fiddlers to play for you, but never fiddle yourself. It makes a gentleman appear frivolous and contemptible.’

  There are many other matters I may mention another day but perhaps special school buses and not Chesterfield are the real remedy for my own problem.

  Bringing back the Gaelic tongue

  Some stir has been caused by the turning down of a motion at a recent meeting of the Dublin Corporation. The motion was that a former resolution be rescinded and that for the future the title of all new roads on Corporation estates should be put up bilingually, not in Irish only as heretofore. Many people had complained that they did not know Irish and had the greatest difficulty in finding given addresses.

  Passers-by whom they stopped could not help much and other people complained that although they had no trouble in making their way home, they could not say where they lived – postally. One man wrote sarcastically to the papers saying that he fully appreciated the Corporation’s attitude, that those who objected were shoneens, but that the Corporation should now carry on its deliberations in Irish only and that the minutes and records should be kept only in that language.

  Stupid Mistakes

  The curiosity is that Corporation name-plates bristle with stupid mistakes in the Irish, and the plates are expensive enamel or cast-iron affairs incapable of amendment. I once had a list of them, now long mislaid, but I clearly remember one. In the old days a saintly man was saying his matins on the banks of the Dodder and was attacked by a gang of louts, who fired his holy book into the river. Promptly a badger appeared with the book in his mouth and restored it to the saint and soon at this spot a church was built. It was called Domhnach Broc, church of the badger, or Donnybrook. Several Corporation plates in the area give the Irish name for Donnybrook as Domhnach Broch. There is no such word as Broch.

  A similar mess is made all over Dublin and the whole country in the matter of putting up the Irish names of sub-post offices. It is a rarity to see a wholly correct inscription.

  The Long Journey

  All the trouble, agitation and work to revive the use of the Irish language is about 100 years old. In 1860 there were over a million native speakers in the country, many communities as far east as Tipperary and Roscommon, and at Omagh and Antrim. I do not suppose that there are 200,000 left who speak Irish ‘from the cradle’.

  It is impossible to assess the extent or value of teaching Irish in all the schools since the foundation of the State but it is a fair guess that the language learnt, even well learnt, is not true Irish. Scarcely ever anywhere is an acquired tongue the true thing and that holds even where a transposed person is in an environment where nothing but the other tongue is spoken. In fact, as languages go, Irish is a very difficult language, totally alien to the European mould.

  A Trinity Man

  I happen to have a formidable library of literature relating to the revival, including many bound volumes of the Claidheamh Soluis and the earlier Gaelic Journal, issued by the Gaelic Union. In 1886, when the President of the latter body was The Right Hon. the O’Connor Don and the Patron The Most Rev. Dr Croke, Archbishop of Cashel, I am ever delighted to note the particulars of a Trinity man who was on the Council. Here is the name as it appears on the official list:

  ‘Rev. Samuel Haughton, MD, FRS, FGS, SFTCD, DCL (Oxon), PRIA, MA, LLD, F K & QCPI, FGRSI.’

  It is nice to know that so learned a man did not despise the Irish tongue.

  I think the first formal body dedicated to reviving Irish was the Ossianic Society – one omits, of course, the Royal Irish Academy, founded in 1782. Next came the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, then the Gaelic
Union and in 1897 the Gaelic League. After that, cumanns and clubs were ten a penny.

  Do We Know Much?

  Has there been any genuine progress? I cannot truly say but don’t believe the man who tells you he doesn’t know a word of Irish. It isn’t true.

  The same man may take a dander down the boreen, raising his cawb to the soggarth shebeen to have several glawsheens of usquebaugh in his cruiskeen lawn. When he has become a bit unsteady on his croobs, he will try to give a pogue to the benatee, whether she is colleen dhas, a shan van vocht, a banshee, or a streel, calling her his mavourneen. He will become talkative and begin discussing the market for bonavs with sundry other omadhauns, shanachies, ownshucks, cawbogues, loodera mauns, spalpeens and even leprechauns, his doodeen stuck in his gob. After ordering a pound of drisheen and a pound of croobeens to bring to céili he is going to, he will call for a duckandurus and fooster about, proposing a drunken sláinte to all and trying to grig the son of the house by calling him a sleeveen. Tottering home leaning on his slane like a bemused pooka, he will stop to talk to a gossoon about pinkeens. A garda will bring him the rest of the way. He will be met by his wife and it won’t be 100,000 fawlthah she will put before him.

  Sure we’re all practically native speakers.

  Men and women of the roads

  It seems that many people, puzzled and fed up with almost daily confrontation with the prospect of cosmic crisis and catastrophe, turn almost with relief to problems which are much nearer home and of considerably lesser gravity.

  Just now tinkers have become a subject of pretty widespread concern and interest but the public attitude to them has been far from uniform. Some ten days ago it was reported that near Mullingar a herd of about 20 donkeys had broken into a holding, devoured everything green in sight, including a large plot of cabbages, and were then seen departing ‘in a southerly direction’. They were said to belong to tinkers encamped nearby, and there can be little doubt as to the feelings of the ruined farmer.

  Only a few days ago while waiting for a bus by the side of what is reputedly the most heavily-trafficked and dangerous road in Ireland, I saw a large mare with a little foal ambling along the centre of the thoroughfare. They were unperturbed by swerves and the shriek of brakes until a grassy bank attracted them. They could have been killed or have caused the death of a whole carful of people, though grazing their animals on the verges of public roads, with no watch or control over them, has been the settled, long-standing practice of gypsies – that is, when they cannot get them into the fields of farmers. Yet at several public discussions on the subject (one in the Dáil) several speakers took the side of the tinkers and argued that they should be persuaded to settle down in houses provided by local authorities and that they were very decent romantic folk.

  Unthinkable Facts

  The prominence the subject has attained seems to indicate that tinkers are increasing in number, and I have heard the total genuine tinker population of the whole country estimated at 6,500. Is this a social trend, provoked by rocketing rates and taxes? Hard to say but there is no denying that tinkers in their way of life can be not only a nuisance but a danger.

  With their livestock they cause damage to property and traffic danger.

  Many of them steal and send their womenfolk begging, usually armed with an ailing child.

  Their sanitation arrangements are either nil or of the most primitive kind, and thus menace the public health.

  Their children, usually very numerous, do not go to school and grow up to be little savages.

  A tinkers’ camp is too often the centre of mêlées or other disorders.

  Their moral code is deplorable.

  It is clear from the above that several of their practices are prima facie unlawful but for some reason not obvious, the Guards will take no action unless a specific complaint is made to them in respect of a particular occurrence.

  An advocate for the defence may blandly inquire what about the new type of tinker or nomad who is ever more frequently to be encountered – the kind who hauls a luxurious caravan behind a powerful motor car? It is a fallacious comparison. The new wayfarers are merely on a holiday, seek the permission of landowners when camping and do not have livestock, while in several spots in the country caravan sites, fully equipped with sanitation and drinking water, are being provided for a small charge. The genuine tinker spends his whole life moving about in those rickety vans of which few people have ever seen the inside. It must be an awful life in the middle of a real Irish winter.

  Who Are They?

  Many people profess to make a sharp distinction between the gypsy and the tinker; the latter so-called because he repairs tin vessels while the former is a gaudy, light-hearted romany, swarthy with flashing eyes, bedecked with ear-rings and sashes, fond of music and playing the fiddle. I fear this distinction does not exist and probably originated in the cinema. The word gypsy is properly Egyptian, from whence those nomads came to Europe. The French call him a Bohémien and the Germans a Zigeuner, and philologists argue that ‘tinker’ is an attempt to render the latter sound into English. The womenfolk have always been noted, though not so much in this country, for their pretences (or skill) at fortune-telling. It is true that the men often practised metalwork and were good at that craft but it was usually in copper, not tin.

  The clans have never been trusted. Henry VIII issued several severe edicts against them and in 1611 three were hanged at Edinburgh ‘for abyding within the kingdome, they being Egiptienis’ and in 1636 the Egyptians were ordered ‘the men to hangied and the weomen to be drowned, and suche of the weomen as hes children to be scourgit throw the burg and burnt in the cheeks.’

  In what we call their family life tinkers in Ireland seem to behave conventionally enough, though elsewhere polygamy and incest are practised and even cannibalism has been alleged.

  Two oddities arise: first, in a world where the displaced person has become a large and tragic problem, here we have people who have voluntarily displaced themselves and seem to enjoy that status. Second, good citizens who pay taxes and live in houses but who are thought to have committed certain and various offences are brought before the court on a charge of vagrancy.

  Some other day we may consider the tramp. He is a very different man.

  The great perils of being nursed

  It is common enough knowledge that doctors are a closely enough knit body; they do not speak out of turn, quarrel with each other publicly or make any comment that might suggest that all is not as it might be with the care of the sick.

  One was much surprised, therefore, at some outspoken remarks made a few weeks ago by Dr Brian Pringle at the annual meeting of Monkstown Hospital, Dublin. He mentioned many matters which required to be attended to in the management of hospitals so far as the patients were concerned. Presumably he was referring to Dublin hospitals but his remarks may have a country-wide application. As a former patient (broken leg) perhaps I may amplify and supplement what he said. Sick people are quite defenceless and it is sad to say that every advantage is often taken of this condition.

  Peep O’Day

  Nearly all the general hospitals in Dublin are structurally not much better than slums; the buildings are over two centuries old, many unsuitable and dangerous, and most without any proper fire escape system. Through some disastrous breakdown initially of the Hospitals’ Commission (which surveys hospital needs and recommends grants from the Sweepstake Funds) hardly any significant capital works were provided for over the years for the Dublin area. The new National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street was rebuilt, for the old one was positively tottering, and a big new fever hospital has been provided; but these are specialised services.

  Dr Pringle mentioned the universal practice of rousing patients, even in mid-winter, at the unearthly hour of 6 a.m., compelling them to wash and shave, have beds made and then try to face a breakfast which I personally always found poor and usually cold. The whole practice is barbarous and must be injurious.


  The doctor also mentioned the strain caused by noise. He may have meant internal work noises or the clatter of traffic from without but there is another form of noise that could almost lead to the loss of reason. A modern peril is radiation sickness but what I mean here is radio sickness. You are in a ward with, say, twelve other sufferers. One of them has a radio which he keeps turned on full blast all day. But another also has a radio and exercises the same ‘right’, though not necessarily interested in the same station. The incessant din is excruciating and nothing is done about it. Occasionally a table with crucifix is set up at a bed, a clear enough sign that somebody is about to receive the Last Rites. No notice of this is taken, and I have honestly seen a poor man die to the strains of the Blue Danube.

  The meals seem to be improvised and certainly cannot come from a modern kitchen designed for mass catering. The meat used is invariably low-grade mutton, usually boiled or stewed. A tough neighbour of my own told me he had got far better fare in Mountjoy Prison where, indeed, the ration for everybody includes five cigarettes per day.

  Fading Eyesight

  A personal experience of my own may be worth recounting. Treatment for a broken leg usually entails having the whole limb impaled in plaster and a bar driven through the heel; from this bar wires are fixed to run over pulleys at the bottom of the bed and carrying heavy weights, the idea being to prevent the limb contracting when the break begins to knit. It all means that the poor patient must lie immovably on the flat of his back for several months, quite helpless.