It is the best of times, it is the worst of The Unionist Times.
There is Seamas O Tuathail, AS (as is Abhcoide Sinsearach, as in SC, as in QC, which is often ungrammatically spelled as Queen’s Counsel, m’lud, but of course is actually, Queens’ Counsel, on account of there being, m’lud, not one but two serving Queens, at, erm, least, both simultaneously and concurrently, as distinct from consecutively, like).
Yesterday, Seamas O Tuathail, AS was giving evidence before the Water Committee of the Doll House on Kildare Street, Dublin 2. He had planned to give evidence in Leprechaun but due to the unavailaibilty of the translation headphones was compelled to give his evidence in (gulp) Compulsory English, under protest.
Seamas O Tuathail, Uasal, AS has been been here before, bigly.
F’rinstance, m’lud, at O Beoláin v. Fahy (4, April, 2001) which came before The Supreme Court for Judicial Review:
– Mr O Tuathail submitted that it was clear that what was intended in Article 25.4.4 was that the Statutes should be available in English and in Irish to members of the public. They were thus available until 1978. In the period from 1937 to 1978, it appeared that the Irish version was prepared while the English text was being considered, amended and passed by the Houses of the Oireachtas. In the past twenty years however no translation was provided unless somebody protested vigorously about the lack of such a translation of a particular Act. He argued that the neglect of twenty years could not be excused by producing at the last moment hasty translations of the Statutes required in this particular case or in any other individual case. The Court should make it clear that the State had a duty to produce the required translations as laid down in the Constitution.
Come to think of it, back in 1903 and back in the same court, chappie in horse hair wig, name of Patrick Pearse, BL, stingy fellow who couldn’t look at the lens of a camera straight in case the cameraman asked him for the lens of a few coppers:
In 1900,Pearse was awarded a B.A. in Modern Languages (Irish, English and French) by the Royal University of Ireland, for which he had studied for two years privately and for one at University College Dublin. In the same year, he was enrolled as a Barrister-at-Law at the King’s Inns.[9] Pearse was called to the bar in 1901. In 1905, Pearse represented Neil McBride, a poet and songwriter from Creeslough, Donegal, who had been fined for having his name displayed in “illegible” writing (i.e. Irish) on his donkey cart. The appeal was Pearse’s first and only court appearance as a barrister and was heard before the Court of King’s Bench in Dublin. The case was lost but it became a symbol of the struggle for Irish independence.
It might be pointed out, m’lud, that there also, not one but two chappies in horse hair representing the Donegal ass with the illegible name on his donkey cart: one chappie in horse hair by the name of Patrick Pease and the other, the illegible one, Padraig Mac Piarais.
Then, there is (gulp) Fintan O ‘Toole. A name which one can never pronounce without first gulping, for the moment one gives tongue to the O’Toole once cannot forbear from bursting into this enviable anvil of a chorus:
-There’s only one Fintan O Toole, there’s only one Fintan O Toole, there’s only Fintan O Toole.
(Whack of gavel on the bench . Silence in the court ! The next ne’re do well who wants to stage whisper ‘Thank God !’ in my court will be summarily ejected and consigned to the cell below the well of the, well, court, where he can jolly well spend the rest of his winter of discontent).
This is what the Finest Mind of the Free Southern Stateeen was Making the Minds Up for the Mindless about (it’s what he’s about!) on Tuesday:
Brexit resurrects the English cult of heroic failure
Move to leave the EU feeds into the British taste for celebrating disasters as triumphs
Listening to Theresa May’s big Brexit speech last week, I remembered that the English have a taste for heroic failure. Their favourite poem, Rudyard Kipling’s If, says that triumph and disaster are the same thing. It also enjoins the English to “lose, and start again at your beginnings/And never breathe a word about your loss.”
Losing everything – even life itself – and not whining about it is the English ideal of heroism. And I do wonder if this inherited ideal is not playing itself out in Brexit’.
Oh, the slyness of the lad, the sheer, unadulterated whimsy of the boyo ! Oh, the nudge-nidge, wink-wink of the Tooler ! And there were the Mindless thinking, not (it’s not what they do) dat Paddy do be de only omadawn dat do be indulging in dis cult of dat heroic failure shtuff.
-Never, m’lud, let the charge of po-faced humourlessness ever be levelled at the Tooler again.
-Objection sustained.
-Or, indeed, m’lud, that the Tooler is no Terra-cotta Warrior of Witlessness.
-If counsel does not resume his cross examination of the Witless for the Prosecustion forthwith, the objeciton will no longer be sustained but will be over-Tooled !
Trotting fairly lively to the fair by this time, in his high-brow, low-back car the Tooler , with all the Moll Maloneys of Mindlessness as his passengers, tools through the Rathcliffe Highway of Heroic Failure which the English have made peculiarly their own, from the frozen polar regions to the sweaty jungles of the Dark Continents where the Fuzzy Wuzzy won in the end, despite a slowish start :
‘ In her very entertaining and insightful book, Heroic Failure and the British, the historian Stephanie Barczewski says the exploits that have loomed largest in English consciousness since the 19th century are retreats or disasters: the Charge of the Light Brigade, the doomed Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage, “Scott of the Antarctic”, the “last stand” against the Zulus at Isandlwana, Gordon of Khartoum, the Somme, the flight from Dunkirk.
-Stephen, did you say?
-No, m’lud, Stephanie. Y’see, Fintan is a Feminist,
-Right, right, of course, continue.
-In fact, if one might be so bold to suggest, m’lud, Fintan is a Phenomenal Feminist.
– Get on with it. !
Fine-minded Fintan takes up the reins in one hand and with the index finger of the other, points out
-Over there, you can see Scott of the Antartica.
If one didn’t know any better one could have sworn that the Fine-minded Fintan had been humming the old Val Doonican classic even as he used the lap top for his lap dogs: the jarvey was a leprechaun
-He told them it was Cromwell lost the battle of Clontarf
He said the famous Finn Mac’coul was nothing but a dwarf,
He swore the Giant’s Causeway had been in the Phoenix Park,
And it was in Killarney’s lakes that Noah built the ark!
In short, English Failure in a 100 Objects, that kinda thingy.
Actually, he could well have saved his paymaster in The Unionist Times (under increasingly tight margins) a lorra expenses (Klopp talk) going clippity clop around the Empah upon which the Sindo never sets (not to mention The Unionist Times going backwards, involved) if he had only given The Perkin a bell: The Ever Helpful one is always available.
He could have brought him to College Green which is only the length of an exqusitely tooled cliche from Tara House on shanks mare, and back.
-Tabhair dom do lámh – your lámh not your sloinne !- and the Perkin would have been only too de-lighted to take him back to what is probably the finest display of Heroic Failure in record history, oh, Fine Minded Fintan.
There in 1990 the Perkin was on his way from A to B when ihs progress was halted by C. (Ambassador Cinema to Bewleys of Grafton Street when the C for Crowd in College Green blocked his passage, front).
It was early July, and the crowd on that auspicious occasion had gathered to welcome home the Heroic Failures, oops, Heroic FAI-lures of the Italia World Cup bigly. To welcome home with an olde tyme Kade Meela Fawtly to those who, while failing ( abjectly) to win on the inconsequential field of play, had achieved more, much much more: they had (gulp) Won …..the ……Hearts ……of …….the ……Whole ……Wide..World, be jabpers and be hokey.
(Now, whether that crowd had gathered more bigly that, say, the crowd which subesequently gathered, bigly to weclome home Barrak O’Bama is both a moot and a mute point.. One is currently studying the photographic evidence. For purposes of comparison. Because Is féidir linn / Yes, we can. No, erm, Féach News here).
Now, while the mighty multitudes awaited the arrival of the ultimate Heroic F.A.I.-lure (English) the then L. Mayor of Dublin /Ard-mhéara Atha Cliath, one Sean Haughery, TD, in vain attempted to address the crowd (which was actually, Dublin 2, according to the GPO) but had his voice drowned by a rhythmic Mexican Wall of sound and a Mexican Wave of hands:
-We want Jack ! We want Jack ! We want Jack ! We want Jack !
(For Jack read not a Jackeen or Dub, but rather, The Northumberland Knob).
There are those malcontents who contend that Fintan O’Toole has difficulties in telling the difference between his Erse from his surname. Happily, The Perkin is not numbered among these myopic utopians.
One recent example they are fond of quoting is the Tooler’s take on TK Whittaker:
‘He was a fluent Irish speaker with a huge affection for the language, even if it was tempered by a realistic acceptance of the strength and utility of English’.
Eh? – to quote the myopic utiopians. Who continue on their warped way by pointing out that Fintan O Toole has his cart before his ass (See Neil Mac Giolla Bhríde far up above in the Northwest Passage: the truculent one who patently took his truculence from his trucailín ). And that this sentence should have read:
-He was a fluent English speaker with a huge affeciton for the language, eve if it was tempered by a realistic acceptance of the strength and utility of Irish’.
Imagine !
To conclude: how exactly does the Southern Yune Suprme expect to make the Free Southern Stateen a, erm, Warm House for the Northern Yune Supremeacists if he inists on using the clearly provocative I-word – I for Irish – when he clearly means the L-word – L for Leprechaun.
By borrowing the L-word, and wearing it proudly, you too can be an, erm:
-O’Tooe, too.
(As in : Don’t mess with O’Tooe, too).
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