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The Romance of Blather

‘Words are divils altogether.’

‘Tongues and Faces’,
Irish Red Cross Annual, 1951

In May 1934 Brother Barnabas died. Four months later The O’Blather was born. The second of O’Nolan’s personae, he was the powerful and learned presence behind Blather, a monthly magazine. It went on sale in August of that year, and was to last only until the next January, five issues in total. O’Nolan produced almost everything in it. In her book Flann O’Brien: A Critical Introduction to his Writings (Dublin, 1975), Anne Clissman refers to Blather as an ‘anti-magazine’. This would certainly be how O’Nolan saw it.

Nothing within Blather’s pages can be taken at face value. The letters to the editor are all blatant inventions, the competitions offer ludicrous prizes or none, and the editorials are pre-Mylesian flights of fancy. Throughout there is the characteristic O’Nolan double standard: just as in Cruiskeen Lawn, Blather emphasises its own vast importance at the same time as it announces that it is just a poor amateur affair, not worth the paper it besmirches. The first editorial reads:

Blather

THE ONLY PAPER EXCLUSIVELY DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS OF CLAY-PIGEON SHOOTING IN IRELAND

Blather is here.

As we advance to make our bow, you will look in vain for signs of servility or for any evidence of a slavish desire to please. We are an arrogant and a depraved body of men. We are as proud as bantams and as vain as peacocks. Blather doesn’t care. A sardonic laugh escapes us as we bow, cruel and cynical hounds that we are. It is a terrible laugh, the laugh of lost men. Do you get the smell of porter?

Blather is not to be confused with Ireland’s National Newspaper, still less with Ireland’s Greatest Newspaper. Blather is not an organ of Independent Opinion, nor is Ireland more to us than Republic, Kingdom or Commonwealth. Blather is a publication of the Gutter, the King Rat of the Irish Press, the paper that will achieve entirely new levels in everything that is contemptible, despicable and unspeakable in contemporary journalism. Blather has no principles, no honour, no shame. Our objects are the fostering of graft and corruption in public life, the furtherance of cant and hypocrisy, the encouragement of humbug and hysteria, the glorification of greed and gombeenism.

Blather doesn’t care.

In regard to politics, all our rat-like cunning will be directed towards making Ireland fit for the depraved readers of Blather to live in. In the meantime, anything that distortion, misrepresentation and long-distance lying can do to injure and wreck the existing political parties, one and all, Blather will do it. Much in the way of corruption has already been done. We have de Valera and the entire Fianna Fail Cabinet in our pocket; we have O’Duffy in a sack. Michael Hayes lies, figuratively speaking, bound and gagged in our hen-house. Colonel Broy has lent us a Guard to post our letters.

Every nerve will be strained towards the achievement of the Blather Revolution and the establishment of the Blather Dictatorship, followed by the inauguration of the Blather Communist Monarchy. Gunplay will be rife, the Motherland will be soaked in a bath of blood, Chinese Tong Wars will stalk the land. But we will win the day and the brutal military heel of Blather will crush the neck of its enemies. Write to us for the address of your nearest Blather Study Circle. Write to us for a free cut-out pattern of the Blather Patent Woollen Panties and say good-bye to colds. Write to us for our pamphlet, ‘The Blather Attitude on Ping-Pong.’

We have probably said enough, (perhaps too much).

Anyhow, you have got a rough idea of the desperate class of man you are up against. Maybe you don’t like us? …

A lot we care for what you think.

 

The only other considerable comic paper in Ireland in the thirties was Dublin Opinion, modelled on Punch, and Blather may be seen as a counterblast to the prevailing modes of humour of the time. Indeed, O’Nolan’s paper reviews Dublin Opinion thus:

Book reviews

Dublin Opinion, Price 3d. Published at 67, Mid. Abbey St., Dublin.

We have received a copy of this publication – presumably for review. Whilst the times are not altogether propitious for the founding of new journals, the courage of the proprietors is to be commended, and we gladly extend a céad míle fáilte to this gallant little newcomer.

It bluntly announces itself as ‘Ireland’s National Humorous Journal’, which gives a clue to the contents of the paper.

It contains jokes. For instance:

1st Farmer: ‘Last week a cattle exporter made 20% profit by sending cattle to England.’

2nd Farmer: ‘Where?’

1st Farmer: ‘On the Arithmetic Paper in the Cattle Supervisors Examination.’

You see?

Altogether the best and funniest matter is to be found under the heading of ‘Plays and Films’. We will quote and we will pay an enormous sum to charity if it can be proved that we are not quoting truthfully and accurately.

‘MacLiammóir is in a class by himself. He speaks them (lines) better than we ever dreamed to hear them spoken, with that extraordinary voice of his, with tones in it that are like black and cream velvet.’

‘Of course, MacLiammóir was gorgeous….’

‘It is just that MacLiammóir, by some gorgeous freak, has the best voice in the wide world for saying things like those.’

Isn’t that gorgeous?

Proving, in other words, that beneath the motley of the jester lies a true appreciation of the arts. The rapier-thrusts of the cold steel of criticism.

We like this article so well that we are going to quote bellylaughs from it every month. So keep it up, boys.

 

But perhaps it is best to let Blather speak for itself. It is not short of things to say.

The romance of Blather

THE INSIDE STORY OF A GREAT NEWSPAPER

There is no truth in the rumour that the art of printing was invented by the Irish Independent or by the Irish Grocer for that matter. We don’t say we have invented it ourselves, but at least we have perfected it. The Blather printing-halls are the last word in up-to-date technical equipment, as we show in these soul-stirring glimpses below. Our wonderful machines, as a matter of fact, afford a clue as to the insane jealousy with which we are regarded by the Irish Grocer. Let us take you by the hand and show you the works. Do not speak to the men, as they are forbidden to give you the answer you deserve.

The arrival of the Editor at the office. He is fond of servility and employs a lackey to  grovel at his feet and dust the skirts of his coat. Inside, our racing experts are picking the  day’s winner with divimng-pins. The rod on the floor is not a rod, but a goad, and is used  by the Editor. 

Linotype Operators at work in the great Linotype Hall. These machines are so ingenious  that they are almost human, can almost speak, etc. On the floor in the foreground is a  bucket of plain porter.

Making up the forms on the stone. (Hell! Aren’t we devils for jargon, we hard-boiled men  of the great printing world?). Note the wireless inlead. 

The great foundry. Casting the type, if you know what we mean. Our poor workers have rotten teeth, but we generously supplied them with bandages free. The health of our workers, you see, is one of our greatest cares. 

The giant rolls of paper being rolled on giant rollers. Our worker here has evidently drunk his wages and has been afraid to go home for the last two nights. His wife, you will notice, is coming round the corner. 

The last process. Running the paper through the giant Hoe Rotary Press. This ingenious machine folds and counts the copies; can almost speak, etc We have no less than 20 of them. In our spare time we use them for mangling our sheets. 

After the day’s weary work, a little play. Blather was the first paper in the world to establish a scheme of social welfare for its workers. In this picture you see two foundry-men enjoying a quiet game of billiards in the club-room. They evidently intend to have a long game, for they have brought their tea with them. 

Threepence for twenty pages!!

‘The dirty, dirty robbers. Threepence for twenty pages.’

In the yellow way that is your own, you are afraid to say it to our face. But we know you. You keep whispering it to your friends and you keep thinking of it in your black heart. Some things, as Mr Lemass has said in the Dail, can only be answered with a blow in the teeth.

In this particular case, however, you are perfectly right. Robbery is no word for our last issue. Last month Blather presented a staggering example of bad value. Blather was the only journal in Ireland to present twenty pages of depraved twaddle to the great white public in exchange for a good-looking threepence. First again. We lead, others follow. The issue undoubtedly marked an epoch in Irish journalism, and we are having the epoch tastefully packed in yellow tissue-paper for conveyance to the National Museum, where it will be given an honoured place among the thousand of other epochs manufactured by Independent Newspapers now resting there.

The threepence which you so foolishly threw away on our great paper last month could have bought you five normal cigarettes, or five subnormal cigarettes, together with a penny button hooker for fastening the buttons on your boots. It would have brought you nearly to Palmerston and back again on a tram, though goodness knows the place is a stern test of manhood and no place for a sane Blather reader; better to go down to the Custom House and throw your money into the middle of the Liffey there before you spend it on a trip to that place. If you still insist on going somewhere with your threepence, you can spend it on a bus-ride to Booterstown or to Clontarf, though the walk home from these grand spots will kill you, you weak-arched mollycoddle. You were never made for walking. You can view the roof-tops of Dublin from the top of the Nelson Pillar for sixpence, and if you had mentioned Blather and courteously explained your position to the man, he might have let you half-way up the stairs for threepence. You could then potter around in the dark and maybe sit for a while on the cold stone steps. If you met any one coming down from the top, you could first frighten the life out of them by making a dreadful noise, and then closely question them on Dublin’s sky-line.

And that is not all. You could send a few spoonfuls of whiskey in a little bottle by letter post to Belfast for threepence – you do be up to queer things – and probably get a smart jail-sentence for sending dutiable goods by letter post. You could send the threepence to a bookie in Glasgow for the Manchester November Handicap and get another six months for sending money illegally to bookies abroad, the two sentences to run concurrently. If you behaved yourself in jail and got full marks for good conduct, you would be out in four months, and then you could take the night boat to Glasgow and collect your winnings the following day – plus six months simple interest at 5 per cent – and then start the New Life, a Clean and a Better Man, in Uganda or Rhodesia or maybe Sierra Leone. You could then write us stern letters from the bush, the strong and earthy utterances of the Empire-builder.

Friday night at the Blather Offices. ‘Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane,’ as the O’Blather sternly remarked at the memorable Hastings Chess Congress, ‘the office-boys must have their bath.’ there is no bath in the Blather OFFICES. And at three o’clock on every Friday morning, at a time when Mother Sleep is draping her queenly mantle o’er the town of Anna Liffey and when Lombard murmurs in his sleep that his machines can rot, the great work of transporting our sleeping office-boys to the Tara Street Baths is begun. No noise, no fuss. They are lowered into the medieval underground tunnel tunnelled underground in medieval times to connect our offices with the James’s Gate Brewery. After a long detour embracing Inchicore and Old Bawn – which was still new, by the way, when the tunnel was first constructed – the baths are reached and the boys are carefully dipped and brought home again before they catch cold. The Editor supervises the operations personally and is waiting for his sweet charges in the picture with outstretched hands. In case you don’t notice the hands, our artist has thoughtfully inserted a number of arrows pointing to them; the arrows are not an unmixed blessing, however, as the man on the right has evidently hurt his head on them last week and has decided to wear his ancestral armour in future. The man on the left, having no armour of his own and being in the same danger, does not like it. ‘You big sissy!’ he is saying, ‘You big soft mollycoddle!’ But who cares, so long as the boys are washed? 

If you had kept your threepence and gone for your annual whoopee to the seaside, you could have got your photograph taken for it while you wait; and you would now have in your possession a nice tin-plate portrait of yourself, complete with bovine smile and ninepenny tie. And you would probably send it to the Little One whom you one day hope To Make Your Own and she would probably write you a sweet note and tell you it was lovely, as you are still good for a seat at the pictures when a little girl has nothing worse to do. We pity you, you and your threepence.

Better resign yourself to the fact that you have spent your threepence. In exchange for it, you got two or three hours solid reading, which is good enough for you.

If you cannot read, of course, your threepence represents hours and hours of healthy speculation. Let us hope it was clean.

Whither Bettystown? Progress or decay? Our stern attitude

The present agitation for proper Atlantic ports at Galway, Killybegs and elsewhere, has in no small measure displeased Blather. Why? The reason is very simple. The pre-eminent claims of Bettystown have been passed over, and it is the sheerest folly on the part of those concerned to imagine that Blather is going to stand for it.

Ever since the good people of Bettystown bade The O’Blather a hearty céad míle fáilte when he went there to recuperate after his illness in 1924, Blather has had its eye on Bettystown. Only for five minutes was the Blather eye taken off Bettystown in those ten long years, and that was for two minutes in 1932, when the eye was moved up eight miles to watch the first train crossing the reconstructed viaduct over the Boyne at Drogheda. Nothing happened; the structure held, and the eye was immediately refixed on Bettystown.

‘Take it from me,’ said The O’Blather when taking his farewell in 1925, after the fires of life had been successfully rekindled in his poor body, ‘I shall look on every man from Bettystown as my own son. I shall build and adorn Bettystown until it becomes the fairest and the brightest gem in the diadem of Eire. I shall go further. I shall see the manager of the Munster and Leinster Bank this afternoon and I shall arrange that Betty, the noble foundress of these historic streets – (Cheers) – shall be provided with a modest competence, such as will ensure that want shall not hurt nor hunger sting the soft twilight of her years.’

Noble, noble words. Today Blather stands four-square with Bettystown in the gallant fight the little town is making against the mogols of the Local Government Department in their ill-conditioned attempts to shoulder it out of its rightful place in the sun. Nor are the claims of the town in anywise extravagant. Ten years ago their demands were modest; ‘Parity with Jerrettspass!’ was the simple rallying-cry of the good townspeople. It was only after a hard and bitter fight that this was conceded, and much of the credit for victory must go to The O’Blather. Today Bettystown, marching with the times and eager to seize the opportunities opened up by the progress of modern life, asks in a voice that is dispassionate, free alike from the thick bluff of the bully and the fawning pleading of the cringer, that it be provided an Atlantic deep-water harbour.

The construction of this harbour was at all times desirable. With the advent of war-rumours in the Far East, however, it becomes an imperative necessity, notwithstanding anything the greybeards of Skerries or Laytown may croak to the contrary. It follows that a betrayal of Bettystown by the present Administration would make the establishment of the Blather Dictatorship a contingency in our national life which could not in reason be further postponed.

 

Rumours and canards have been circulated by the vested interests to the effect that the natural amenities of Bettystown do not admit of the passage of vessels of deeper draught than that of yawls, skiffs, smacks and Far Eastern river-junks. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

When these reckless statements came to the ears of The O’Blather, he wirelessed the Cunard liner, Pythia, then on her way from New York to Cobh. She immediately altered her course, and after battling with tempestuous and mountainous seas for forty-one hours, she appeared five points off Lambay Island, and in half-an-hour had put into Bettystown Harbour, thanks to the good offices of pilot-officer Hanrahan, who went out to meet the liner in mid-Atlantic. (What or who she put in has not been stated.) The O’Blather, who had been troubled with his Old Wound, was not present to welcome the Captain ashore, nor was he represented; he courteously sent a letter-card, however, apologising for his absence.

‘The worst passage in forty years,’ said Captain Cummins, when interviewed by our reporter, ‘and too much praise cannot be given to the cool and plucky conduct of the crew and passengers.’ He went on to say that Bettystown offered the finest natural salt-water harbour in the world. ‘When I get back,’ he added, ‘I am going to see my Board and endeavour to persuade them to put Bettystown on our regular calling-list.’ The Cox of the Pythia was loud in his praise of the town and especially of the townspeople. ‘Those who know me,’ he said tersely, ‘will tell you that Cox Craddock never bunked the public in his life. And when I say, I like your people, I mean it!’ The Stroke of the Pythia was also very favourable in his comments and promised to use his influence with the Board in backing up the Captain’s appeal.

It is a mistake to imagine, however, that the matter is being allowed to rest there. Four tugs are being rushed across from Liverpool in a last desperate endeavour to get the Pythia out of Bettystown before the Board learns what the Captain has done. In the meantime, engineers have been engaged in deep-sea blasting operations in an attempt to destroy the famous Bettystown Death Reefs, while two Saorstat Dredgers are engaged in removing everything movable from the ocean bed. HMS Dauntless is standing by eighteen points west of Lambay to protect British settlers and their property in the event of a native rising, and an eighteen-inch gun has been mounted on the bows of the fishing-smack Maureen. Messrs The O’Blather and Sean Lemass are keeping in close touch with the situation.

The last definite piece of information to come through to the Blather Offices was to the effect that four thousand sacks of flour had been dumped into the sea from the Pythia in an endeavour to make the vessel ride higher. The great natural deep-water harbour is a solid mass of pie-crust or pastry, and slabs of it are being retailed by the local bakers at very keen prices. In the meanwhile, the more active elements in the township are engaged in roller-skating on the firmer parts, the good, dry weather presaging a lengthy continuation of this popular sport. HMS Dauntless has moved four points further west, as the solid diet of apple-pie supplied to the Commander and Jolly Tars every day on the way from India has made the smell of pastry something very repulsive to them indeed.

This, as far as we can remember, is the Shan Van Vocht; we keep her in the office all day to give the place a homely atmosphere and to ensure that the boys won’t ruin the carpet with their cigarette-ash. These Damn Scallions, she is saying to herself. What Made Me Eat Them? Do you want advice on Life from a Mature Person? Write to her about your troubles, if you must whine to somebody else about them. 

It is gratifying to learn that on several Blather-Readers courteously making representations to the Captain to the effect that the pastry was just a leetle tart, he graciously ordered a thousand sacks of best-quality sugar to be dumped overboard also. This had the desired result and caused a slight appreciation in the price of the pastry retailed in Dublin.

This interesting contretemps has had the effect of focussing world attention on the possibilities of Bettystown as the site of a deep-water Atlantic harbour.

For further news, see the next addition of our great paper.

Answers to correspondents

Day after day, more and more people are writing to Blather. If the saliva involved in licking each stamp were represented by an inch of coarse twine, the entire length of it would stretch twice around the globe.

Vulgarity aside, though, why don’t you write to us? Write and let us know what you think of our great paper. Anything short of fulsome praise will be ignored, of course, and anything in the nature of what is called constructive criticism will cause us to fly into one of those tantrums that make Blather a bye-word in Dame Street. Surely you have sorrows, troubles, cares? Why not share them with us, or try to share them, anyway? Let us be your father.

 

‘I am so worried (writes Minnie, Stoneybatter South) when John brings business friends home to dinner without giving me warning. I am expected to put up a Dinner fit for Business Friends and City Colleagues, God help me. Is this British?’

No, Minnie (Stoneybatter South), this is not British. John is behaving like a cad and if you could persuade him to call at the Blather Offices, law or no law, we would give him five minutes in our back room. So stern, in fact, is the attitude of Blather on this question that we might give him ten minutes. And what is more, City Colleagues our granny. Touchers, public-house cronies and porter-sharks, that’s what they are. You think we don’t know them? You must think we are very simple, so you must. If this dinner business starts again, threaten to create a vulgar scene, or better still, threaten to see the Editor of Blather personally. In the meantime stop wasting water. We have had our eye on you long before you wrote to us.

‘I entered for a Civil Service appointment two years ago and the result of the examination has not yet been announced. In the meanwhile, I have refused four lucrative appointments in the Honolulu River Police. I have in the interim developed pimples, which I attribute to the waiting and anxiety. My friends all say it is too much of a good thing. Frankly, all jokes and racial prejudice aside, do you think it cricket?’ (Constant Reader)

You must have patience. You are young yet and you have your life before you. (Or are you one of these ould candidates?) You seem to be unaware of the fact that Blather has been working hand in glove with the Civil Service Commission for the past year. The Commissioners and all their little Writing Assistants have been spending most of their time thinking out little jokes for Blather – pretty feeble efforts too, if the truth were told. And it’s only the other day that we, in our sleepy degenerate way, were poking through a heap of forms and dockets and applications and things; we may have seen your name, C.R., and again, we may not. Wild horses would not drag the truth from us and we have backed a few of them in our day. However, since you are a reader of Blather, we will have another poke round in a day or two and if we think you deserve a job, well and good, we will let you have one. Fair? But those pimples in the interim. Maybe you imagine that the Blather-Civil Service Medical Examination is a mere formality, a farce, an empty formula, a man of straw? Maybe you were never told that pimples mean a poisoned and corrupt bloodstream. Maybe you think your pigeon-chest won’t be noticed. Maybe you think your piano-legs will be taken for advanced muscular development. We are afraid, C.R., that you must be a right cur. And another thing before we forget it. Canvassing in any form, oral or written, direct or indirect, will automatically disqualify the candidate for the position which he (or she) is seeking. Laugh that one off, Mister Constant Reader. Mister Spotty!

‘I have been walking out with a girl for the past seven years and more. We have grown to be very fond of each other and we see a lot of each other. However, she has never said anything about marriage. Do you think her intentions are honourable or is she trying to compromise me? I am a Wexford man, thanks be to God.’ (Joseph)

We must be very careful not to be unfair to the girl, Joseph. Possibly her job is not as good as it might be, possibly she has found it hard to save, possibly she feels it hard to ask you to enter a love-nest, which, however good, must fall short of those standards which you as a Blather-reader must, however regretfully, insist upon. However, your first duty is to yourself. Go to her and tell her bluntly – it is the kindest way in the end – that she must make up her mind. Tell her that unless she can see her way to take the step, she must in common fairness release you. If you think it will help, you may mention Blather. That, we think, is the wisest course. But just one point, Joseph. Are you absolutely certain that you have not already been married to her? Only those who are privileged to peep into the Blather mail-bag can have any idea of the amount of suffering caused in the world by the delusions of married men. Goodness knows, it is terrible.

‘I am in the very devil of a hole,’ writes Major T. ‘I spent my life soldiering in the East and was regarded by my fellow-officers as a pretty good pucka sahib. Damme, I enjoyed the life and I cannot settle down here after it. What am I to do? My malariar makes me homesick for Indiar. After the veldt, Rathmines is the very devil.’

If you could only go through our letters with us every morning, dear Major, you would realise that there are thousands of your brother-officers going through the same hell. Thousands of sheets of notepaper relate the same sad story. Men made into inexorable machines of war and then asked to end their days amid the effeminate inanities of civil life. Our invariable advice to these poor wrecks is this. Hire out three or four Hindus, get them into your garden every morning before tiffin, grip your old service lathi and bate them from one end of the garden to the other. No quarter given or asked for. Give them merry hell, and, take it from us, it will make a new man of you. Inside a week you will begin to feel the pressure of the White Man’s Burden. When showing visitors over your house you can waggishly call the coal-house the Black Hole of Calcutta. Every little helps. And a final word in your ear, Major, about these Hindus. They are over-running the country at the moment. Selling scarves, muryaa. Selling grandmothers. They are the paid spies of enemy Powers, and they are probably out every night building concrete gun-implacements. Take it from Blather, they are up to a little bit of no good. Not one of them in ten is a registered reader of our paper.

Answears to correspondents …

Ah, the black dark staring pity of it. The harsh hard heartbreaking pity of it. The cruciating cruel criminal contrariness of it all …

We refer to the Slices of Life that reach us every day from our readers. They come by every post. Farmers write us harrowing tales about sheriffs seizing the last harrow. Starvation. Gruelling epics of gruel for breakfast, dinner and tea.

Ah, the black dark staring starving stony pity of it.

This month’s prize of half-a-guinea is awarded to Breadcart Barney for the most poignant and soul-searing letter received.

Those extra inches

‘I am seven feet two inches tall’ writes Major Tawlboy, of the 5th Batt. Royal Second Punjab Rifles, ‘and my life in consequence is one long misery after another. When I go out for a walk, small boys keep pestering me to look over high walls and tell them what’s on the other side. When I go to a football match all the small men congregate round me and keep pulling my coat-tails and asking me questions. Apart from the annoyance, I am compelled to go to such functions dressed as a tramp in order to save my good clothes. In the name of Harry, is there no way of reducing my stature?’

Try the following prescription. Recite this daily three times before meals: ‘I am a dirty skunk, a rotter, a cad, a parasite and a low scrounging corner-boy of uncouth habits and loutish appearance. I don’t deserve to live another minute, and I quite fail to understand why I have been let live so long.’

If this fails to make you feel small, you will have to try removing your superfluous stature with a coarse hacksaw.

No frivolity for us

‘Is it true that Memory is the Only Friend that Grief can Call Its Own?’ Interested, Mullaghmast.

Can you not see, Interested, that if we answer a fool question like this, thousands and thousands of people would immediately deluge us with similar enquiries. Of course we could burn their letters, but what would we do with all the envelopes? Ah-ha, there you go in your careless degenerate way and never think of these things, you frivolous little moth, you.

Life is so cursedly crude

‘I am a wireless announcer,’ writes Bertie, Belturbet, ‘and every night before going on duty, I manage to drink thirty bottles of stout and fifteen large whiskeys with a horsey friend of mine. When I appear before the microphone the most unaccountable things happen. The ceiling of the studio comes down and hits me great whacking belts on the head. Listeners have written in complaining that my announcements are thickly worded and incoherent. They accuse me further of bursting into song in the middle of the weather reports. Is it possible, by heck, that I am going mad?’

Quite possible, by heck. That, however, does not in any way relieve the landlord of the studio of his obligation to keep the roof in good order and repair. Prosecute. Again, as regards these complaints from listeners. The spread of radio, we regret to exclusively announce, has encouraged the horrible vice of solitary drinking. A man gets in a case, or maybe a pony of porter, andsettles down with his set for a good night’s enjoyment. What the country is coming to, of course, is another question.

The case of Breadcart Barney

‘I am so unhappy’ he writes, ‘For the last six years I have been employed as a van-man by a prominent City Bakery. I leave the bakery every morning with a full cart and I return again every night. Last year I fell from the cart and hurt my head. Up till then, I had no fault to find with my employers. One day after I had been discharged from hospital and had taken up my rounds again, I got a brilliant idea when passing a small stream at Tallagh. I dumped all the bread into it. I found this made the cart much lighter, and easier to draw. Every day I dump my bread into the stream and then I go up to Glen Cullen to pick daisies. When I’ve picked all I can there, I usually make for Lucan. I pick more there. Some days, by way of a change, I like to go out to the Pine Forest. When I get there, I run round the trees and bark at myself until I’m dizzy. It’s great fun. Then I go home. I like my job, I must say, and try to do my best, but somehow I feel that my employers are not satisfied. Nothing definite, of course, has been said, but I have noticed an air of tension and gloom on the part of my superiors when I am around.’

We are very interested – go on

‘One morning, for instance, the foreman forgot to wash his face. He came into the yard where I was washing down my horse and gave me a black look. Naturally, I was furious. But that is not all. One day the Boss called me into his private office, locked the door and then offered me a cigarette. I was horrified. I simply cannot understand what is wrong. Every morning I leave the bakery with a full cart. Every night I return with it empty. WHAT MORE DO THEY WANT? Please advise me in my terrible problem. (Could it be because my maiden name is Tobias?)’

On sober reflection, Barney, we don’t think your maiden name has anything to do with it. You have only one honest course of action. Be a man. Tackle your employer. Tell him all about your hobbies. Tell him all about the tough time your sister Gertie, that married that brute from Drumcondra, is having. If this doesn’t soften his heart, nothing will. In the meantime we will try to get a  question raised in the Dail. And by the way, stop dumping bread into that stream at Tallagh. You’d never know. Possibly the owner has complained about the pollution of his fishing rights. Try dumping it in our backyard instead. We won’t complain.

 

BALM FOR BATTERED HEARTS

The hussy!

‘Some time ago I was introduced to a boy and we have grown to love each other dearly. I have been keeping company with him for six months.’ (Blue Eyes, Stradbally)

That’s quite enough, you shameless little hussy, you. What is your mother thinking about, we wonder?

Same old story

‘I am in love with a very beautiful girl. I visit her in her home on Tuesdays and Fridays. Every time I go into the house, however, there’s another man there before me, a very ill-favoured mutt with rat-coloured hair. This man is apparently my rival. The eternal triangle again, I feel. Nevertheless, she still welcomes me warmly into the drawing-room when I call. Is there a way out?’ (Love-bird, Inchicore)

There is indeed, Love-bird, Inchicore. The door. They usually keep the windows barred in these places.

Our growing pains

She was only a farmer’s daughter

It is a very pretty sight to see a wench

Feeding ducks and hench.

Gad! The brutality of nature!

Sea-weeds and anemones

Are deadly emones.

This economic war

In the wake of the tariffs

You’ll always find shariffs,

And you’ll be put in gaol if

You can’t pay the baolif.

Would you blame them?

The pilfering that they call

The Servants’ Hall

Is when waiters taste the entree

In the pentree.

Foreigners are different

People are rarely in a coma

In Roma,

They drink themselves under the tables

In Nables;

But in gay Paris

They are merely maris.

You might have thought it!

The best paper in Ireland is Blather

And no Ather.

Strange but true

The extraordinary thing about cows is

That they never wear trowsis.

Naked, pink, and one year old

He who figures in the family album –

God halbum!

Isn’t it a pity?

When we are buying a crocus

The florists socus.

Warning to sots

You’ll eventually become dumb

If you drink enough rumb.

Live, laugh and love

When one hears a spinet-like piano

One remembers Viano.

You look it too

If you are too fond of the sofa

You are only a lofa.

Blast convention again!

It is not a sin to sing psalms

In ptralms.

We wouldn’t say it unless we knew

Of gay women the gayest

Is May Wayest.

Have you ever noticed it?

There’s this about a jig,

That it’s very quig.

One can’t be too careful

If anybody asks you to take absinthe

Say no, I shinthe.

Where are your manners?

Never say ‘The deuce!’

Such language is very leuce.

Brighten our little lives

If you want to make us laugh

Send us your photograph.

Our handy hint

If you have the misfortune to spill water

You can soak it up with the blater.

Our cottage industries

They make coffins in Swords

Out of white bwords.

Life is so crude

It is very hard to keep accounts in Sallins,

They never ballins.

The effects of sun-bathing

Michael got sun-burnt in Enniscorthy –

It only made Dennis sworthy.

Our wretched rimes

Merit will out

Whereas the good Blather

Gets bather and bather,

The bad Irish Grocer

Gets wocer and wocer.

Not in public anyway

Don’t give your Mrs

Krs.

The importance of manners

A gentleman would send for a Dr

For his wife if he sr.

Do you hate your name?

People with a nice name like Chas.

At least rime with George As;

All poets detest Jas,

Really the most awkward of Nas –

(But the name Geo. is Go. is).

By heaven, sir!

If you elope with the daughter of a Bt.

The temperature will advance several degrees Ft.,

He will ’phone for the Guards and Sergt.

And say it is very ergt.

The frugal life

In nearly every pub

You can drink and sub;

And after victuals

You can play skictuals.

Love makes the world go round

Bro. and Bro.

Should love one ano.

The grabbing robbers

Every cigarette-butt in your av.

Contributes to the rav.

Don’t make a beast of yourself

Many people have to take Bismuth

From over-eating at Chrismuth.

 

BETTER THAN ‘JOHN BULL’

An impudent scoundrel unmasked!

Should a man call at your door, probably attired in clerical garb and selling onions, send him away.

He is none other than the Editor of Blather.

Better still, invite him into the kitchen for a mug of tea and phone for the police. If you are not the possessor of a domestic telephone, we must ask you to pass our paper on to somebody else; we are sorry, but we cannot be bothered talking to you.

Our point is that when you try to telephone, you will find that the wires have been cruelly cut. That will bring home to you the desperate character of the man whom you have so foolishly invited into your kitchen for tea. It is no use telling us that you invited him in on our advice. Your reproaches, your hurt tones, will leave us unmoved. We are not called Ireland’s Heartless Hoaxer for  nothing. In fact, we are not called Ireland’s Heartless Hoaxer at all.

Keep your head

Now that he is in your house, the important thing is to get him out. He is dangerous if provoked and is known to the police of three continents. Your best plan is to ring up our offices and ask us to send along our Keeper. Almost before you have finished dialling our number, you will remember that the wires are still cut. ‘Tch, Tch,’ you will murmur, ‘How stupid of me!’ And for our part, if we hear the telephone ringing, we will know not to answer it as we will remember that the wires are cut. That will be very clever of us.

He is probably still at his tea, however, and there is no immediate cause for alarm. Your next best plan would be to go upstairs to your armoury and lay your quivering hands on three or four machine-guns, two or three field-pieces, some cannon and ball-cartridge. It is contrary to the Civil Code, of course, to have these articles in your house at all; but as long as Blather does not adopt a stern attitude on the point, you need not worry. Mount two machine-guns in the scullery and do not forget to camouflage them as saucepans or scriveners or scullery-maids or anything your mawkish fancy dictates. Mount two field-pieces on the stairs and three or four pieces of cannon on the first landing. If you have a sufficient supply of shooting-irons left, it will do no harm to construct a further machine-gun nest behind the hallstand. When everything is in readiness, set all the pieces at full cock and call upon the criminal in steely tones to come out of the kitchen and take what is coming or die therein like a rat. Repeat louder, inserting the word ‘dirty’ before ‘rat’ and avoid long pauses as the talking will keep your teeth quiet. The chances are ten to one that you will get no reply. Fire off forty rounds in the air and endeavour to waft the acrid smoke into the closed kitchen through the key-hole and take good care to dodge the shower of plaster from the ceiling. Repeat your terrible threat, punctuating it with salvos of maniacal laughter. Re-charge all pieces with ball. Rake the hall with a rain of death-dealing lead and finally demolish the kitchen-door with a shower of devastating shells. Wait for a short interval under cover until the smoke and dust have died down and then proceed revolver in hand to the kitchen. This is known as reconnoitring and is dangerous work and no job for weaklings. Fifty to one you will find the kitchen empty, though you may possibly find a bed or two in it from upstairs. Go back to your machine-guns with a muttered oath and sweep the stairs as they have never been swept before. Clean all pieces with rags and ramrods and adjust safety catches, clean yourself up and go into the drawing-room. You will find the rat sitting at the piano playing one of the rarer Chopin Etudes. Say nothing but go downstairs again and fetch two quick-firing field-pieces. When you return, the window will be open and the room will be empty.

Very quick-fingered, is he?

‘Not only that,’ you will write to us and say, ‘but my grand piano is gone as well.’

But we know you.

You never had a grand piano.

Four weeks old today!

Four weeks old to-day! That is the staggering achievement of our great paper. The credit is yours as well as ours. Are you glad?

Today is the first birthday of our great paper. You would hardly know us, we are growing up so fast. Already there is talking of casting off our little swaddling rags and petticoats, and sending nurse away. Not that they mean to leave our pinkness naked. No. There is even talk of a little sailor suit with ribbons and bibs and a wooden whistle on a string. How nice it will look folded on a chair while we are being bathed and powdered! How nice to stagger round the nursery on our little bandy legs and thuck our thumbs and tear the wall-paper and dribble dribble dribble! How nice to tear the guts out of a padded chair and shriek with salvos of mad baffled temper! How nice to be a devil! Please send us a nice rag doll.

Soon, of course, will come the reckoning. Soon will our little molars start to rack our gummy mouth and soon will our Office resound with the roar of our Teething Tantrums. But who will say it is not worth it? Think of our first crust and our first Fit of Choking! Think of our first dish of wretched lumpy gruel!

Then the cruel years of whipping and thrashing and flogging and bating and larruping and lashing. The bitter nights of No Supper. The wretched days when The Boy Must Be Made Do As He Is Told. (But are we a Boy? Never mind. We are damned if Blather will stand for any sex-talk in the presence of little children.) And then school. SCHOOL! At three p.m. a man starts walking from a point A towards another point B. At three-fifteen, another man starts walking from B to A at a speed . 18239 m.p.h. faster than the man from A. They meet at a point C. A third man (evidently a cyclist), starts off from C in a northerly direction on a fast pedal cycle. At a point D he meets a fourth man who had started out from F. You know the stuff. We dare not pursue it any farther; we would probably reach L, if we may permit ourselves a mirthless schoolchild’s joke.

And then, before school is over, Ah! the Difficult Years.

Frankly, it is a black outlook; there seems to be no ray to lighten the darkness. Let us take a stiff shot of gripe-water.

Our tottering circulation

ARE WE TOO GOOD TO LAST?

Sitting in our palatial offices the other day, we heard a strange hacking noise. (Sitting in offices, by the way, takes some doing.) We asked our pretty typist what she thought it was, but she did not know. We questioned our staff of clerks and accountants, but nobody, alas! could explain. The strange hacking noise occurred again an hour later.

‘I have it,’ cried George, ‘It’s Blather’s death-rattle.’

Stern words, these. They put the heart across us. But being pessimists at heart, we refused to believe them.

‘Is Blather in a bad way?’ we asked.

‘Very bad,’ said George, ‘have a look at these figures!’

And he handed us our Certified Accountant’s Net Circulation Figures. We don’t know in what year our accountant was certified, if that’s what you want to ask us. Frankly, the story the figures tell is a pretty miserable one. Having deducted all copies returned as unsold, and also, of course, those spoilt in printing, we have registered a net sale of five dozen copies, that is sixty, (or 60, stupid!). For those of our readers who are congenital idiots and unable to grasp ordinary plain figures, we have pleasure in appending a diagram, clearly showing the extent of the sales of our last issue, together with a forecast exclusive to Blather regarding the present, the next and the second next issue of our great paper:

We know what you are going to say. There is no trace of the second next issue. Tut, tut! It is there, all the same. It has disappeared into the ground, as the sale of two copies in the scale in which our diagram is drawn is not visible to the naked eye. Those of our readers who are lucky enough to be working in laboratories can try the diagram under the microscope. If there is no result, they can try playing the page on the gramophone, using, if at all possible, a fibre needle. If there is no result, they can try putting it under the Hoover. If there is still no result, they have one last resort – blue litmus paper. If there is no chemical reaction, they can run along and buy sweeties, as people who spend their time on fool games like that deserve a few sweeties for their pains. What do you say?

This talk is all very well, but it is getting us away from our terrible circulation figures. Candidly, five dozen copies per issue is definitely not enough; and what is more, the directors of Blather will not rest until these figures are doubled!

We realise, of course, that the task ahead of us is a stern one. We realise that lesser journals must go to the wall in the desperate circulation war that we are planning. But who will blame us?

No man can set bounds to the onward march of a great paper.

Hash

A novel – even a very bad one – can cost you a good sevenansixpence. Eleven or twelve novels can cost you £4 2s. 6d. (or £5 4s. od., as the case may be). Blather, ever jealous for your honour and eager that you shall not let our grand old paper down by displays of ignorance or illiteracy when In Company, has pleasure in presenting the pith and the cream of eleven or twelve novels in the grand Non-stop Hash-up below.

You are even saved the bother of wading through pages of muck in order to get at the good bits.

You must admit that we are a handy crowd of boys to have about the house. Write to us and thank us.

 

Solitaire sat thoughtfully on a bunk in one of the cells of the jail that had been built in the back part of the sheriff’s office. He realised that he was in a very difficult position. He was a prisoner in a town where he was an utter stranger.

I was a white man – the last product in the slow upward rise of mankind through the ages. I had to stop this thing if it cost me my life!

There was one way to do it – and the idea came to me so suddenly that I almost thought – well, never mind what I thought. I’m not ordinarily a religious man …

I could have done it before, if I had only stopped to think instead of running. But now was another chance.

With a shriek that almost tore my lungs out, I leaped up on the stone.

A feature of Moscow broadcasting is the regular relaying of ballets and operas from the Bolshoi Theatre, or Grand Opera House, Theatre Square. As the home of the famous Imperial Russian Ballet, Moscow has always been a prominent artistic centre, and the performances at the Grand Opera House and the other theatres are of the highest standard.

The little dancing lights began to flicker in the black eyes.

‘I see that I will have to put it in words of one syllable so you will understand,’ she began sweetly. ‘In Maryland and Virginia, Mr Hatfield, there are always many guests coming and going and three or four more never make any difference. I am not familiar enough with life in Arizona to –’

‘O. K., O. K.,’ he growled. ‘Forget it. Let it slide. Shut up and give your ears a chance.’

‘And you don’t have to be insulting –’

‘I’m sorry, Lady Patrick. On bended knees, wallowing in self-abasement –’

‘Oh, you shut up!’

The elevator opened and he lined out ahead of her, his floppy hat crushed down over his forehead, his heels smacking the tiles.

Lil read the telegram hurriedly.

I AM GOING TO BE MURDERED STOP I CAN’T GO TO THE POLICE STOP SET YOUR OWN FEE AND HELP ME STOP SIT IN END SEAT MIDDLE AISLE SEVENTH ROW CRITERION THEATRE FIRST SHOW TODAY IF WILLING STOP FURTHER DETAILS WILL BE SUPPLIED.

‘Back to the office and find out all you can about this, Jimmy,’ Pat ordered the messenger. ‘Where it was filed, how filed, who filed it, and anything else you can get. I want to know all about it.’

He was flat on his back, bound hand and foot, on the floor of the cabin of the launch.

The blow on the head that had knocked him out had cut his scalp and his face was smeared with blood.

The gun barrel, pointed downward at him, wavered. Then very slowly it was lowered.

‘Last chance!’ Tolmie’s voice was thick and shaky. ‘Will you put in with us?’

He slithered toward me. My own knife was out, and I gripped it in front of me and waited. Now my great-bodied adversary advanced inch by inch. He circled like a boxer seeking an opening. He bent sideways, crouched, then suddenly straightened in a lunge. To lessen the impact of his drive, I heaved desperately against the wall of water at my back, dislodging it with scarce an inch to spare, for divers move under water like figures in slow motion pictures.

Power on another occasion was entering a cafe and accidentally jostled a lady who was being escorted by a young dandy. The cavalier (he was the lady’s son) insisted on calling out the famous duellist for the supposed insult. Power good-humouredly sought to explain, but the hot-headed gallant wouldn’t listen, and insisted so much upon fighting that the elder man at last consented. The lady (knowing Power’s reputation as a duellist) drew him aside.

‘And do you think this attack will come soon?’

‘Not later than tonight,’ asserted Liston. ‘Perhaps sooner. That message from the plane, the call for mass meetings and all will force Foresti into action.’

Then the telephone which stood on the table between them rang. The publisher had given orders that that phone was to ring for but one reason. He snatched the instrument and listened.

‘Yeah. You’re right.’ Butcher stood up. ‘Let’s carry him to one of the tents, get him out of the sun. I bet by tomorrow he has a sweet mess of gangrene, or something worse.’

‘What could be worse?’ Picadilly wanted to know as he helped Butcher carry the wounded Vargas to one of the tents.

‘I don’t know. Pain, I suppose. If he has to linger on and be in pain.’ He shut his lips together grimly. ‘But he won’t. I’ll take care of that.’

‘Shudderin’ thought!’

Pat Holliday guffawed, his voice harsh with biting sarcasm. ‘Fly a plane in this flood? You’re crazy!’ He pushed his hands against Hansen’s chest. ‘Get away and leave me alone. I’m clearing out of here, I tell you. I wouldn’t fly your mail fifty feet even if the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in sight!’

All this only seems to prove that pets are all right in their own place, but if we had a place like that we would put some of our blasted relatives there.

Our sports club 

The visit of the President and the members of the Executive Council to the Blather Sports Club was the occasion of a brilliant social gathering. In the 440 yds, Mr Lemass was beaten on the tape by the pigeon-chested Blazes O’Blather, who wore a Lansdowne jersey. The Governmental honour was later retrieved by the Pres., who was not present to welcome the President. It will be recalled that the two statesmen have not been on speaking terms since the notorious Horse Show incident. 

Rugby

‘There Is Nothing I Like Better Than A Nice Ball-Game.’

THE O’BLATHER, at Naas Races.

Blazes O’Blather to join Lansdowne?

Much interest has been aroused in Rugby circles by Blazes O’Blather’s dramatic threat to join Lansdowne. This would mean that every member of the Lansdowne Club would automatically become a member of the Blather Staff and this would inevitably lead to nasty questions about the Club’s amateur status as all members of the staff are paid a ridiculously high salary. Some notorious Club like Bective would be sure to make a smell about it, as the little green demon of jealousy can drive men to do the meanest things.

The O’Blather was a great sportsman

Like his distinguished father, Blazes O’Blather comes to the world of Irish sport with a great record and a fine family tradition. In the memorable Clontarf team which defeated England at Folkestone in 1912, The O’Blather combined brain and brawn in achieving a great victory. His position was behind the scrum, and opening with the Queen’s Gambit, he sacrificed two pawns and managed to effect a very neat little mate with two bishops and a knight just as the final whistle was about to be blown. Playing faultless Rugby at Paris in the spring of the following year, he brought a clever French side to five sets before he would admit defeat, defeat which was in no small measure due to the fact that his hurley was smashed to atoms, ten minutes before time, when victory was all but in sight.

A proud record

In 1919 he joined Wanderers and formed the backbone of the team which visited Belgium in the autumn of the following year. The match was played on a Sunday in a downpour of rain, and though opposed to the cream of the Belgian clubs, the Irish team made a gallant and a worthy stand. The O’Blather, who had by this time acquired a considerable reputation for a safe pair of hands and a long kick, was in the front line of the forwards and opened up for Ireland with cue-ball in hand. Though faced with a particularly embarrassing double-baulk, he managed a cannon after employing no less than eighteen cushions. This clever if rather flukey manoeuvre left the red near the top cushion and the white on the centre spot. Two more cannons, four pots and a long jenny left the two balls properly ‘on’ for the great break that was bound to ensue. Half-time score:

Belgium, (rec. 1,000)	…	…	…	2,104
The O’Blather, in play	…	…	…	2,558

The rain became heavier at this point and Belgium apparently decided to vary their tactics. They cunningly introduced a slow bowler, evidently determined to make hay on the sodden pitch. The O’Blather, though busy with a series of peerless nursery cannons, quickly adjusted himself to the new threat and flogged the first over for three fours and four threes, cutting his drives through cover point and silly-mid-on with an abandon and a zest that would have done credit to a younger man.

Three-quarter-time score:

Belgium, (all out)	…	…	…	2,615
The O’Blather	…	…	…	3,498 Unfinished

The close of an epic struggle

Stumps and lots were drawn for tea at five-thirty when there were four inches of water on the pitch.

The same high standard of play was maintained on the resumption. The O’Blather had three strokes in hand and managed to half the sixteenth hole, thanks to some very neat work with his irons. Leading a fine handling movement emanating from a scrum in midfield, he went over for a try at the seventeenth, thus putting Ireland farther in the lead and making the possibility of an equalising score even more remote.

From that moment the Irish team never looked back. And the O’Blather, playing faultless handball, obtained a solid in the last thirty seconds of the last minute and put the result beyond all doubt.

Today?

Today, he can be but rarely persuaded to talk of it. ‘Twas a great victory,’ he will tell you with the simplicity of a child, before going back into his brown study.

If you follow him in, he will draw your attention to its beautiful brown wall-paper.

‘It is my favourite colour,’ he will murmur, ‘and nothing could persuade me to change it.’

But if you look closely you will find it is distemper.

Listen in to 2BL

OUR BID FOR ETHER HONOURS

Athlone – whither?

A number of our readers have been mystified by the activities of a strange wireless station which came on the air for the first time last Monday night and succeeded in completely jamming Athlone for three quarters of an hour. Listeners who tuned in to Athlone after their teas were surprised and not a little pleased at the streams of bad language which poured from their loudspeakers. They thought it was Moscow and even wrote to us to say as much. But we know better. It was none other than the Blather Pirate Station, 2BL, testing. The plant is situated in the cellars of Blather House and is cunningly disguised to look like a poteen still, in case the police ever hear we are engaged in illegal broadcasts and raid us. The Station is operating on 531 metres, which is considered very high for boys of our age. Tests will be carried out nightly, when the children are in bed.

Our great ideals

The objects of the station are two-fold, even manifold. The primary object is to give Athlone hell. We are going to give it hell every night, and when we are finished giving it hell we are going to give it red hell. We are going to jam and jam and jam. We are going to perforate its wretched programmes with screams and whistles and scrapings and head-noises and streams of bad language. We will permit the undisturbed broadcast of nothing, except SOS messages and anything else that happens to tug at our mothers’ heart-strings.

Der Tag

When Athlone has retired off the air, 2BL will take up the running. Our broadcasts will be devoted to Communist propaganda, the Blather No Rates Campaign, and to the furtherance of The O’Blather’s League for Little People. In the meantime, we think we are just as much entitled to the licence-money as the other crowd. Please remember that all cheques should be crossed. If you are one of those people who use an indoor aerial, of course, you must let your conscience be your guide.

 

CUT THIS OUT

1.30–2.0	Gramophone Records.
6.0	Gramophone Records. (What, again!)
6.15	Uair i dTír na n-Óg. ‘Mickey’s Wedding’ (play). Baritone Solos. Poetry Reading. (But after all, this is for the kiddies. They might as well learn soon as late that life is tough.)
7.0	Gramophone Concert. (Happily, we subscribe to the old-fashioned view that sooner or later these people will have to answer for all their acts. It is a useful and a beautiful philosophy.)
7.20	News. (Thank you, but we buy a morning paper.)
7.30	Time Signal. (A new and a provocative reading of this famous piece; we fancied the Scherzo was taken a trifle too fast.)
7.30	Gaedhilg: Leigheacht. (Maith go leor, maith go leor.)
7.45	Talk: Poultry-feeding in Mid-winter. (There is this about our beautiful philosophy mentioned above, that it often helps to sustain our tottering reason when the latter has made its last poor rally and is threatening to go under.)
8.0	Seumas mac Seadna, Pipes. (Is the rat next door oscillating or is he not?)
8.30	Gramo—— (No, you don’t, by Heavens! We are going out for a bottle of stout and we will be gone half an hour.)
9.0	Talk: Hints on Roses. (But after all, what use is beer to men like us? Two or three darts of malt would have done us a lot of good.)
9.30	Baritone Solos. (Five or six darts, perhaps.)
9.45	Gramophone Selections: ‘You Will Remember Vienna.’ (Yes, we said it, but you did not hear us. Vienna will never let you know.)
10.0	Soprano Solos. (But we might say it louder some other time.)
10.30	Play: The Camel’s Back. (And the last straw.)
11.0	Time, News, Close Down. (Let us pray.)

More about our new wireless service

By the time this appears in print, The O’Blather will be on the high seas on his mission to Australia. By the sensitive twitching of your nostril, we see that you are beginning to smell a rat, you damned terrier. What, you ask us, has this got to do with the Great New Blather Broadcasting Corporation? Nothing. But we were going to write about this mission first to show our teeth and to prove that we didn’t care what we wrote about as long as we used up ink. Hell!

 

We are about to unfold the inside story of 2BL, the Blather Broadcasting Station. The story is copyright and exclusive and if the Irish Times reproduces it in whole or in part, we shall prosecute. Gad, it is hell, this rivalry between great national newspapers!

 

Ever since we were fined for not having a licence, we’ve been hankering after a little station of our own. Not a railway station, mind you, or an RAF bombing station. What we mean is a clean and neat little wireless station. Years ago, we initiated the Shannon Scheme with a view to supplying current, which is a pretty good example of foresight and forthrightness and whatnot. The last obstacle to our plans disappeared recently when the price of barbed wire fell to a level sufficiently low to permit of the wiring of the station at an economic cost.

Here’s the naked truth, boys

The power of the new station is roughly a million Killywatts, with a wave-length of ten million metres. When Blather does things, maybe it doesn’t half do things in style, by Hickory! Are you impressed? We don’t know, by the way, what exactly a Killywatt is, as we have never seen or eaten one. But just imagine. A million Killywatts, with another million in reserve in case of emergencies! Can you beat it? To give you a vague idea of the power of the thing, take a simple illustration. If the charred bodies of all the people the new station could electrocute were put end to end without any overlapping, they would extend from Kelly’s Corner to a cow we saw on the Naas Road when we were going to a Blue Shirt meeting in Buttevant. (This computation, of course, is subject to the condition that the cow hasn’t moved since, or been rustled across the border, or been bitten in the ear by a tsetse-fly). So powerful will it be, in fact, that it will drown every other station in Europe. The dear knows this is a very caddish thing to do, but Lord save us! Is this any fault of ours?

The truth about the staff

The Director of the new station is Mr Eric Blameworthy (related to the Fitzhazzards, of Luttrellstown), affectionately known to his associates as Half-wit Harry. He is also the announcer, the ideal announcer. Sometimes you think he is speaking English, sometimes you imagine it is Irish. Sometimes you think it is pure Gibberish. But you’ll never know for certain, because he doesn’t know himself. When approached with regard to the policy of the new station, the Director was reticent. ‘Tell your readers I am reticent,’ he said reticently. That’s all very well, Eric, old man, but you can’t fool Blather readers with that sort of bluff. Blather readers are intelligent. Give a Blather reader a piece of twine and in five minutes, without any help or promptings from teacher, he will tell you in plain English that what you have given him is a piece of twine and nothing else. You see what we mean?

Our quick way with blackheads?

‘No expense is being spared,’ writes our Special Correspondent, ‘to make the new station one of the most costly and ignominious failures in the history of modern costly and ignominious failures. Sabotage, graft, bribery and all the forces of Communism are being pressed into service. Thousands and thousands of spanners are being thrown into the works daily by Russian arch-dukes thinly disguised as Lithuanian peasants. Trained incendiaries, some of them paid as much as ten roubles a day, are working in six-hour shifts to make life a hell for everybody connected with the new station.’ You see? Everything possible is being done. No expense is being spared.

The truth about Marina

Below you will find the programme of the new station. It took years to perfect. It is so perfect that it will never be changed. You will be able to tune in every night with the calm assurance that everything will be just the same as you heard the night before. No irritating variations, no baffling novelties. Just the same old thing in the same old way. Athlone will not be in it with us. Years afterwards, when you are sitting in your padded cell, you will be able to go over the programme word for word, syllable for syllable, note for note. It will be simply seared into your brain. Here we are.

Programme:
12.0 a.m.–10 a.m.	Reverent silence to commemorate farmers who fell in the Economic War.
10.0 a.m.–11.0 a.m.	Time signal from alarum-clock on dressing-table of The O’Blather. Sounds of yawning and gnarled fists being beaten on bed-posts. Strange grating noise immediately recognisable as The O’B shaving with old-fashioned cut-throat.
11.0 a.m.–12 noon	Homely relay of O’Blather household at breakfast, including following features: Querulous whimpering while The O’B has Bib put on by trained Hindu nurse. Altercation while nurse slaps hand. Senile complaints re burnt stirabout and underdone rasher.
12 p.m.–1.0 p.m.	Interval for luncheon.
1.0 p.m.–1.30 p.m.	Atmospherics.
1.30 p.m.–2.0 p.m.	Readings from Old Moore’s Almanac.
3.0 p.m.–3.30 p.m.	Readings from Old Moore’s Almanac. Clerical staff thoroughly fed up to the back teeth writing a.m. and p.m.
3.30 p.m.–4.0 p.m.	Readings from Old Moore’s Almanac continued.
4.0 p.m.–5.0 p.m.	Borstal Boys’ Reunion dinner.
5.0.–6.0. p.m.	Atmospherics.
6.0. p.m.–7.0 p.m.	Talk on Blather Circulation figures.
7.0 p.m.–7.30 p.m.	Talk. Stoat-shooting in Siberia, by Major Snodgrass-Worthing, Punjab Fusiliers, ret.
7.30 p.m.–8.0 p.m.	Morse concert, relayed from SS Muirchu.
8.0 p.m.–9.0 p.m.	Castlepollard Dramatic Society in readings from Old Moore.
9.0 p.m.–10.0 p.m.	Opera The Flying Scotchman (Verdigris).
10.0 p.m.–11.0 p.m.	Atmospherics.
11.0 p.m.–12.0 p.m.	Atmospherics, continued.
12 midnight, onwards:	Reverent silence.

OUR MONTHLY HEART-TO-HEART

Has Hitler gone too far?

The great army of Blather Readers who inhabit this lovely island will be delighted to hear that our great paper is out of the wood at last. The doctor has just left and his last remark was that the paper and ourselves, fond parents that we are, were doing very nicely indeed. We must confess that we feel all right and are very very happy.

Our friends tell us that we are looking well and that we are even getting stout. But that is only a dirty lie. Paper or no paper, we never drink anything weaker than whiskey and we like the world to know it. What man in his sober senses could write the stuff that litters our nice clean columns? Tut! tut! Blather will henceforth appear in the middle of every month, just around the time when the hall needs a good scrubbing and the cat comes home for another rest after her immoral travels. Nothing can prevent its appearance. Nothing can prevent it reaching your shaky hands. So who cares?

 

Hot on the heels of the information that seventeen fish-plates have been stolen from a lonely stretch of the trans-Siberian railroad comes the news that Blather has been banned in Germany. The decree was issued from Berlin and was signed by the man Goebbels, and was counter-signed by Goering.

Blather, which was cunningly circulating in Germany under the title of the Daily Express, has evidently fallen foul of the Brownshirt mogols by reason of its fearless disclosures in connection with the Export Horses-Saurkraut scandal. Its stern and unrelenting attitude on the question of an Anschluss has apparently done nothing to diminish the unpopularity of the paper at the Brown House. The attempt to stifle legitimate comment and to browbeat the great national organs of other countries by the operation of bans and prohibitions is bound to fail. Blather receives the present ban unmoved. Arrangements are in hand by which the next issue of the paper will appear in Germany under the title of the Daily Mail. Should a further decree be issued, Blather will have no hesitation in changing the title again to that of Our Boys.

And no amount of persecution will prevent us from carefully pointing out the weakness in the social and political fabric of Germany and maintaining in general that lofty standard of clean and wholesome journalism which has made our name a byword in Dublin.

 

When you buy a copy of our great paper, you have, perhaps rashly, put yourself in possession of a very delicate and sensitive piece of mechanism. Treat it well and it will yield you faithful service. Treat it harshly and without consideration and it will break your heart.

And Blather for Service! If a part gets worn out or becomes defective, there is no question of scrapping the entire copy. Spare parts, accurately cut to one thousandth of an inch, are obtainable at bedrock prices and are fitted at your nearest service station free.

Any complaints as to incivility on the part of your copy, or objectionable habits, or insubordination of any kind should be made immediately in writing and addressed to the Manager, 68 Dame Street. Copies are usually given at least a second chance to turn their back on the black past and Make Good, but if lapses are persistent, the Manager has no option but to withdraw the erring copies from circulation. Readers who prefer to carry out their own punishment should see that correctives are very sparingly applied, as it is too easy, Alas, to sour and warp the little minds for life.

And no Blather Reader worth of the name would do that.

NOTICE

These columns are poisoned. Trespassers will be prosecuted. And incidentally, to avoid clashing with our esteemed contemporaries, The Irish Grocer and The Irish Welder and Iron-Worker, Blather will henceforth appear in the middle of every month, and not at the beginning as heretofore.

£30 in pin-money for readers!

OUR COMPETITION AS SIMPLE AS HELL

In this great Competition, prizes totalling £35 in pin-money are offered to our readers. The £35 will be divided as follows: First Prize, £25; Second Prize, £15; and Third Prize, £10. There will be an additional ten consolation prizes of a pound of Ceylon Tea, presented by the Irish Grocer, presumably as a bribe to bring our bitter vendetta to an end.

The winner will be privileged to own the finest collection of Pins in Europe outside the famous collection of Sir Giles Blether, the head of the English branch of the famous family.

There is no entrance fee, but generous readers may enclose an alms for the editor. Widow-readers may send a mite.

What you have to do

Below we print a number of photographs, etchings, engravings, etc. If they look all the same to you, better keep the fact dark, as it is sinful to parade ignorance. These pictures represent various people prominent in public life. But the titles in some cases have been deliberately mixed up in order to puzzle you. The problem is to allot the correct subtitle to the correct picture.

Do you think your little brain could rise to it?

Do not tell us. We know the answer.

Conditions

The Editor of the Irish Grocer is ineligible to compete.

Passengers having alighted from a car and desiring to cross the road should assure themselves before doing so that no car is approaching from the opposite direction.

All letters in connexion with this competition should be stamped. The feet of bad-tempered little girls should also be stamped.

It is dangerous to touch the wires.

Competitors must supply their own stout and must guarantee that they sell no other brown stout in bottle.

Competitors must use the prescribed Form, but if they cannot find the Form, a Chair will do.

Successful Competitors become the property of the Editor.

Sir Giles Blether (left), the head of the English branch of the famous family, taking a bath with Senator Blythe in 1889. Sir Giles has possession of the soap and refuses to give it up. 

Mr Silas P. Hotchkiss, President of the Clanbrassil Street Brass Fender Founders and Tinsmiths’ Protection Association, Inc. 

The O’Blather, the famous press baron, publicist, playwright, poet, politician and press baron.

The Rt. Hon. Alfred Byrne, Lord Mayor of Dublin, who doesn’t look very pleased in this picture; he probably has a pain in his Royal Liver. 

Sir Giles Blether, the distinguished English statesman, who was responsible for initiating Mr J. H. Thomas into the mysteries of boiled shirt-studs after the latter ceased to be an ex-miner. Sir Giles was second but three to Marina at supper recently in the Carlton. 

Eamonn de Valera, President of the Executive Council, and Chancellor of the National University. 

Miss Amelia (‘Slug’) Cruikshank, the American crooning colossus, who can lift a horse with one arm and beat up five fully grown men with the other. ‘Love is what makes the world go round,’ says Miss Cruikshank. She once offered to put a man called H. L. Mencken in his place for a purse of fifty sovereigns, but the trusts, cartels and vested interests refused to allow it. Liberty? Pah! 

   MR JEKYLL and DOCTOR HYDE If you tell us that once is enough to print a picture, our answer is ‘Nuts!’ A pretty pass, forsooth, if we are going to allow you to tell us what to do. 

The Abbey Theatre subsidy

OUR MODEST PROPOSAL

There is a movement on foot, sponsored by the jealous Gate Theatre, to have the annual subsidy of £750 paid by the Government to the Abbey Theatre transferred to Blather.

The issue is a very complex one and presents many aspects. It has been pointed out in our columns more than once that both the Gate and the Abbey are owned by a crowd of rascally Bolsheviks operating from ports in the Baltic, who have been planning the downfall of Irish dancing for the past twenty years. As well as that, the directorates of both theatres are honeycombed with Masons.

But listen to this one. We were standing in the Abbey the other night with one foot in the foyer and one in the vestibule when we were accosted by a woman. She wanted us to buy a programme. A blind bat could see that she was none other than a beautiful Russian spy. We immediately suspected that she was after the plans, and we instantly went to the phone and warned everybody in Dublin who had plans to be careful of them and to keep them under lock and key, better still, deposit them with the Bank. On one occasion we were put through to London by mistake and we spoke to Amy Johnson, who said she had no plans at the moment, but that it was possible that she and Jim would fly somewhere sometime soon, probably in the face of Providence. Heaven only knows how much bacon we saved by those phone-calls.

On the other hand, judging from the number of broad-brimmed black hats and bohemian cravats visible on the landing of the Gate Theatre between the acts, a subversive movement is on foot to divert the Seine into the Liffey and to change the Red Bank into the Left Bank. If you know what we mean. It is notorious, by the way, that The O’Blather has a grudge against Lord Longford and loses no opportunity of putting sand into the petrol-tank of his Lordship’s Armstrong-Siddeley. His lordship is too big a man to retaliate, and in any case there is no petrol-tank on a bicycle.

As regards the £750 paid to the Abbey, it has been officially explained to a Blather reporter that the money is paid on condition the Abbey Players go to America and remain there for nine months of the year. The idea is to prevent at all costs the further production in Dublin of Riders to the Sea and Professor Tim. It is not known whether the staff of Blather would be required to emigrate in the event of a subsidy being paid to the paper. While it is well-known that the Government are afraid of it and would like to see it out of the country for goodanall, they are nevertheless reluctant to impair their good relations with the Government of the United States. It is admitted that thousands of playgoers who turned their faces sadly to the emigrant ship early in the present century because of Riders to the Sea are now pouring back from the States in hordes. Two thousand of them are camping in the Phoenix Park at the moment. When they are asked about the Abbey Players in Boston, they look away and refuse to talk. One man laughed hollowly when questioned and disappeared into the trees.

Blazes O’Blather (who is studying art in Paris) has written a stiff letter to the Metropolitan Guards requesting them to shut down the Abbey and the Gate for good. When he was last in Dublin, he explains, he broke the back axle of his car twice in the one day, once in Abbey Street and once opposite the Gate. In each case the roadway is damaged by a deep trench extending from the entrance of the theatre to the door of the nearest public house, formed by the feet of patrons between the acts. It is stated that although the surface is stout enough to withstand the normal traffic from the theatre, subsidence is inevitable on the way back as a result of the added weight. The story of Blazes O’Blather is discounted by the Guards, as he has no car; further, it was established from the post-mark on his letter that he is residing in a quarter of Paris where no pretence is made of encouraging the study of art.

In the meantime every effort is being made to have the Abbey’s subsidy transferred to Blather. Mick Hayes, TD, who is a guinea-pig director of the paper, is moving heaven and earth in the matter. We will report the progress of the scheme in future issues. In the meantime, we would be glad if Lord Longford would call at our offices, as we wish to present him with a handsome bakelite writing-set.

 

OUR CHRISTMAS INQUIRY

Is there a Santa Claus?

The question is: Tillage or Ranching?

We are lying.

As a matter of fact, that is not the question at all. The question is: Santa Claus – Does He Exist, or is it only a Dirty Lie?

Some of these days, when the question of Town Tenants is finally disposed of, Blather is going to hold an enquiry into the whole question of Santa Claus, and – Lord save us! – if you are afraid to know the truth, better stop reading our great paper altogether. Our Commission of Enquiry will drag every Christmas shibboleth and pishrogue and shebeen into the inexorable glare of daylight, it will fight the vested interests to the last ditch and then beat them through it, thorns or no thorns. And if they leave their vests behind them after they have fled, our Commissioners will carefully collect them all and give them to the poor, who will be glad of them in the cold weather.

Girls, read this!

The other day we discussed the matter with the manager of a big department store, who has a Santa Claus working in his toy department every year, selling parcels of trash to the kiddies for sixpences on the understanding that it is rude for the kiddies to ask what the hells bells is in the parcel they are paying out their good money for. ‘As far as we are concerned,’ he told us, ‘we would welcome an enquiry. The number of people, young and old, who brazenly say that our Santa Claus is only a vanman dressed up is enough to make a man doubt everything he ever learnt at his mother’s knee. Gad, I sometimes even find the same evil thought creeping into my own mind. Tell me, is nothing sacred, nowadays?’

You see what we are driving at?

Terms of reference

When our Commission is sitting, it will take evidence from all creeds and classes, unhampered by any taboos or colour-bars. What are the relations between Santa Claus and little Sylvester Byrne in the Mansion House? The Lord Mayor will have to let us have the whole story. Does Mr de Valera encourage his son Vivian to hang up the stockings? That is neither your business nor ours. It is for our Commission to find out. We are surprised at your rudeness in asking. But there, we are lying again.

Goody! The facts at last!

As a matter of fact, Blather has no intention whatsoever of setting up any such Commission. If you had been familiar with our attitude on Legends, Pishrogues and Mummery, you would not have been deceived for one moment by our crude tissue of lies. As a matter of fact, if you had had the presence of mind to put this page under the microscope, you would have noticed the tissue, a wavy-wavy thing like a spider’s web behind the printed words. We cannot see any reason for doubting Santa Claus, or starting any fool commission or allowing any fool commissioners to tear his good character to tatters with all the venom of their black hearts.

Degeneracy

The present-day contempt for Santa Claus and kindred institutions is something that every right-thinking Irishman must deplore, irrespective of creed or party, as the Irish Times would say.

Modern youth does not seem to be aware that every time a nasty man says ‘I DON’T DAMN WELL BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS, BLAST ME,’ one or other of the saint’s little reindeers has twinges in the fetlocks, or worse still, sharp shooting pains in the withers.

It is a fact that should be more widely known.

Food taxes or free trade? Our handy vocabulars

In pursuants of our so popular policy of surveying useful informations for our blatherish readers, we are now about to disgorge some lingual tippings for persons contemplating to patrioticlessly  spend a holiday abroad. The as follows French vocabulars are specially prepared by a 100 per cent Anglo-French person, who speaks the tongue more better as a native.

 

‘Je me trouve mal, pourrai-je avoir un sceau.’ This are French for ‘I are suffering to endure stomach spasms, so kindly to produce me a bucket.’

On arriving to step on French soil, the as follows will be very useful:

‘Arrêtez cet homme, il m’a volé ma bourse!’ Which are, ‘Kindly to nab this man, he has succeeded to unpinch my purse!’

If performing a tour à la motor the as follows will prove enormously convenient when conversing French and other Continental persons:

‘Traversez lentement, j’ai mal à la gorge et un saignement de nez.’ This construes to mean ‘Drive less speedishly, I are enjoying a pain in my neck and a nose-bleed.’

‘Quel temps fait-il?’ ‘How are the weather (if any)?’

‘Sacre! II pleut, il neige, il grêle, il fait du tonnere.’ Which are French for ‘O Heavens! He rains, he snows, he hails, he thunders.’

‘Ciel, ma femme ouvieré a sauté.’ This translates to signify ‘O goodness! my honourable girl has fallen out.’

‘N’importe,’ which are French for ‘it are entirely of not any importance.’

When executing speed journies along French and other Gallic roads it are of enormous advantage to have the as follows conversations by heart:

‘Oú est le hópital?’ ‘Kindly to inform where are the hospital.’

‘N’y a-t-ilpersonne de blesse.’ This are handy for ‘Are anybody suffering to endure painful damages?’

‘Ou est l’ambassade d’Angleterre! Je veaux qu’on me libere sous caution.’ This are very convenient for ‘Kindly to inform where are Anglo-British embassy? I necessitate to immediately require bail.’

Polite conversation to use when travelling with foreign persons of mixed tongues.

‘Le chauffeur est évanoui et Er hat das Bein gebrochen.’ ‘Honourable chauffeur are swooned and imbroken his leg.’

‘Donnez-moi mon corset und meine zahnstocher.’ ‘Kindly to pass me my stays and a toothpick.’

‘J’ai bien soif et wollete gera meine Uhr vertauchen por doze, panuelos de faltiriquera tres ovos frereos do dia y una hacha.’ ‘I are very thirsty and should like to change my watch for 12 nose handkerchiefs, 3 new-laid eggs and a hatchet.’

The flawless French is by a man who learned the language by working for six weeks in the Dublin Corporation Street Cleansing Department. The translation is by another man, a French polisher by profession.

Beware of B.A.!

THOUSANDS OFFEND WITHOUT KNOWING

YOUR BEST FRIEND WON’T TELL YOU

One of the most disquieting aspects of modern life is the unparalleled increase in students. They are increasing and multiplying and soon they will fill the earth.

To quote the solemn words of our godfather, The Irish Grocer, it would be laughable were it not so tragic.

Let it be quite clear at the outset that we are not talking about school-boys. To turn round now and say that we must then be alluding to school-girls would be to bring the blush of honest resentment to our face. To suffuse our finely-chiselled features with the glow of outraged modesty, to curtain the cheeks with the scarlet tide of shame. See you go no farther or by Heaven we might lift our arm in anger.

What we want to talk about is students.

Listen to this!

Now some misguided souls – we will mention no names – have frankly told us that they think students are all too wonderful. But that is a mistaken idea. Really it is too sordid. As a matter of fact, students divide their time between brawling, bilking, boozing, billiarding and bauching. That last word should have read ‘debauching’, but hell, we hadn’t the heart to bash up the alliteration. (It is our way; perfection or nothing.)

What!!

A man once told us about a student at a Dublin university who arrived at his college one morning and went straight to his lecture. When his name was called at roll-call, he stood up and said he refused to recognise the court and reserved his defence. He then fell down in a dead faint. People around said it must be starvation, and really there is nothing in life so beautiful as the poor University student’s fight against poverty and adversity. He was tenderly lifted and carried out and examined by a doctor. The pit of his stomach was found to contain ten naggins of whiskey and a cheese sandwich.

You see?

Our point is that there is no shirking the conclusion that the lad had been drinking. Say what you like in extenuation – depression, worry, trouble at home, anything – but for Heavens sake let us look the facts in the face.

Is it good enough?

In other countries, of course, the student scourge is even more terrible. As a matter of fact, it is really all too sickening. How often have we read stuff like this in our morning paper?

The southern half of the city of Barcelona was burnt to the ground yesterday as a result of the annual May-day celebrations. The perpetrators of the outrage are stated to be students.

Or maybe this.

In Madrid yesterday, 600 civilians were injured in a clash between students and police.

Is there any hope?

The life of the average student is nauseating when you come to look into it. Parts of it are so shady that you can see nothing unless you strike matches.

The really alarming part of it is that despite the fact that they scarcely open a book at all, they all manage to get their degrees, which furnish them with a nice respectable disguise and prevent people from knowing them for the depraved hooligans that they are. In after-life, they make a show of plain people like ourselves, who have always played the game and carried a straight bat for King and Empire.

What we are driving at now is Committees. A Committee is formed for this or that and the thing is published in the paper. Like this:

J. M. C. D. Trevor-Ball, M.D., M.Ch., F.R.C.S.I.

M. A. T. B. Humphries-Belvoir, LL.D.

J. J. Jasper Logg-Byrne, Ph.D., F.R.S.

P. W. C. P. Funk-Frazer, M.A., B.Sc, B.L.

J. Brown, Esquire.

The first four people here are all ex-students. That last name represents you or us. Is it any wonder that we are mad?

If we weren’t men, we’d cry.

This is Angela, the author of ‘From Man to Man’, a smashing two-fisted snorter of an article unavoidably crowded out of this issue. She has promised us an article on ‘Turning points in a Miner’s Life’ for our next appearance. The article in her hand is a banjo. That’s what you say. It is not. It is a thinly-disguised slag-hammer, used for powdering Dutch quartz in the Franco-Prussian war, which proves that you don’t quite know everything. We find it very hard to have patience with these smug know-alls, and we’re not afraid to say it. 

FORM OF BEQUEST

I GIVE AND BEQUEATH to the Proprietors of the Great National Enterprise known as Blather the sum of £.................... to apply the same to and for the objects and purposes of the said Great National Enterprise, AND I DECLARE that the receipt, in writing, of any two of such proprietors, or of such other person or persons as my Executors shall think fit to accept, shall be sufficient discharge for the said legacy, and exonerate my Executors from any obligation of seeing to the application therefore.

Only the judgment, discrimination and public spirit of our Advertisers makes the production of a great paper like Blather possible. It is therefore your bounden duty to buy their products. Accredited Blather- Readers, of course, do not have to be told this, but those who read it over an Accredited Blather-Reader’s shoulder on the tram may require an occasional reminder.

OUR NEW YEAR MESSAGE

Balm for Ireland’s ills

NEW DEAL FOR MISS KATHLEEN HOLOHAN

Knowing full well that many of our dear readers (dear at any price) are seriously perturbed over the future of our bleeding country, suffering motherland, etc., we sent a courier to the boudoir of the aged statesman, The O’Blather, with a request that he should address a message of hope and cheer to them on the eve of the New Year. We asked him to say a few seasonable words on Imperialism, Partition, Pin-money Girls in the Sweep, and other snags in the pie of our national policy. The aged shanachy agreed to do so and we have pleasure in printing his scholarly contribution to the cause of international peace below.

It is little short of scandalous, writes The O’Blather, that at a time when Kathleen Ni Holohan is lying broken and bleeding in the gutter of party politics and in imminent danger of being arrested by the Guards for loitering, millions of pounds of money are being squandered on hydro-electric schemes and export bounties and Abbey Theatre grants and what not. The Irish people are still sitting in ignominious bondage and it cannot be too heavily emphasised that it is more than myself and the group of newspapers I control are prepared to stand for.

My own plan for the salvation of Ireland and for the amelioration of all her ills is too well known to require elaboration here; it is not too well known, however, to require statement. Briefly, it is as follows.

Let there be a big (if necessary an enormous) saw got, and let there be two yokes or businesses erected, one in the Atlantic and one in the Irish Sea, for working the big saw in the manner of two men working a cross-cut. Let the country be then sawed from its moorings from Antrim’s coast to wild Cape Clear. By the laws of physics (Boyle’s Law, Principle of Moments, etc.), the country will then float. Our subjection to England will then be no longer dependent on our geographical proximity to her. It is the first step in the sundering of the chain. It is not enough, however, to be afloat. At the mercy of the wind and the waves, we might edge over to England on a dark night and be anchored to her for the rest of time, like Wales.

A simple means of locomotion would be to divert the course of the Shannon so as to make it enter the sea at Cobh, which is roughly the centre of the vessel’s stern. Another idea would be to erect an enormous sail in the centre of the midlands, but the cornerboys of Athlone would probably ruin it by playing handball against it. The Shannon scheme is the better of the two.

All that remains to be done now is to erect an enormous rudder at Cobh as well. The rudder is to be housed in a great building which will also be the seat of Government, because the party in power will simply have charge of the rudder and will have power to decide whether it is to be turned this way or that. Can you help wondering at the sublime simplicity of it all?

Now what are the advantages of this grand scheme? First of all we are rid of the Saxon, and the rotten climate that goes with him. The entire country (by the simple process of passing a Bill), can go abroad for the winter. The people can have winter sports at will, or languish in the Mediterranean when the whim takes them. We can grow tropical fruits and spend our leisure by baiting arctic bears and Russian wolves. We can get all our foreign supplies at greatly reduced prices by eliminating the costly item of freights. (‘10,000 tons of timber for Ireland. To be called for’.) We can substantially augment the national income by acting as common carriers between the New World and the old, putting every shipping company in the world out of business. We can give the British hell as often as we feel like it by steaming past her coast and ruining the country with gigantic tidal waves. The possibilities are endless.

 

We feel sure that this thought-provoking article will give our readers plenty of food for thought in the New Year. The Editor invites Correspondence on the aged statesman’s ingenious proposals.

The Blather bounty

There is no doubt about it, we are always up to something. Our latest bombshell is — guess!

Bulls!

Let us grasp you by your skinny wrist and tell you all about the Blather Bulls. Not the Stock Exchange variety, though, mind you, when it comes to unloading Blather Ordinary on a flat market, we take a lot of stopping.

These fine Irish animals (tauri hibernici), born and bred in Irish Birth and Breeding Pens, form the cream of the Blather Bounty Scheme.

Blather is prepared in its big-hearted way to award a Pedigree Bull to every reader. We are not philanthropists or fools, of course, and there is no end of annoying conditions and bans and taboos and marks off for blots and bad handwriting. But who cares? The prize is worth the game, and any Bull Fancier will tell you that. You think not? Listen to what Rockefeller, the richest man in the world, said to one of these wretched little underpaid reporters of ours.

‘Money? Bah! If I were to start again, I think I’d have a good bull. Just a little one with white markings, a clean stall and plenty of straw….’ Here the iron face of the old fighter of the oil-markets softened. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘there is something about good bull….’

And now listen to the babble of the poorest man in the world, the Editor of Blather, an only child, as we said before, with no home-training, no character, if you get what we mean.

‘Ever since my boyhood days when a barefoot lad I played marbles on the hills of Tipp. with Eamonn Dev, I always used to say to myself that one day I would grow up and own a nice bull and wear leggings and act the can and be a hell of a hard man. Or was it Dev that said that? I don’t know. But the pair of us went to Duffy’s Circus and there was a lady there with pink stays and ——’ You see what we here in the office are up against? No sense of fitness, no restraint, if you know what we mean. We like to think it is the Great War, but one cannot blame everything on the Great War, can one? Let us get back. The life-blood of any reputable paper is its circulation. Blather is not a reputable paper. Nevertheless, we must get rid of our great paper somehow as we do not keep our fires going in the summer and we cannot store the stuff in our garage, as it contains at the moment five private scrub-bulls of our own, as well as dozens and dozens of empties which they haven’t called for yet. Hence we are offering Pedigree Bulls to our readers as an inducement to boost our circulation. In order to qualify for an award, the Reader must perform one or other or all of the following Exercises and must lodge an affidavit with our solicitor, signed by a Peace Commissioner and two witnesses, testifying that such Exercises have been duly performed.

The Blather circulation exercises

1. Candidate enters Tram clutching copy of Blather. Goes inside. Starts tittering. Opens Blather and titters louder. Tittering becomes a definite nuisance to fellow-passengers. Takes fits of tittering, winding up with a throaty chuckle. Gropes for cigarettes and lights one. Conductor approaches and says put that cigarette out, where do you think you are. Candidate says: O yes, sorry, and adds in a very loud voice: I FORGOT BUT  I WAS CARRIED AWAY BY THIS GREAT PAPER. Sniggers coarsely and goes upstairs where tittering is resumed.

2. Same as I above, but Candidate refuses to pay fare, explaining that he has spent last twopence on THIS ASTOUNDINGLY GOOD PAPER and has name and address taken, or maybe Policeman.

3. Candidate boards tram and goes upstairs. Opens Blather and lets loud guffaw. Guffaw continued. Breaks into loud roars of laughter. Chokes. Shifts about in seat to let fellow-passengers see cover of Blather. Roars louder. Bends practically double and slaps thigh hysterically. Takes breath and embarks on fresh paroxym. Slaps thigh of fellow-passenger by mistake. Apologises and explains loudly about THIS GREAT PAPER. Resumes shrieking.

4. Twenty Candidates board tram en masse and go upstairs. Flourish copies of Blather. Start sniggering piano and develop into salvoes of maniacal laughter, fortissimo. Fall on floor and over each other and eventually convert Tram into Shambles. Explain loudly to Guards and Crowd about THIS GREAT PAPER. (Extra Bulls awarded for this one.)

5. Candidate enters Office carrying Blather. Laughs loudly and continuously. Boss enters and asks does he think Office is a Bear-garden. Candidate wittily replies world is now a Blather Garden. Offers to lend copy to Boss. (An extra Bull if Candidate is sacked.)

6. Candidate enters Cinema carrying Blather and small torch. Sits in prominent position, ignores screen and starts to study Blather with aid of torch. Torch to be accidentally flashed on screen when turning pages. Bursts into roars of laughter and holds up entire show. Blames THIS GREAT PAPER. Is forcibly ejected.

And now we come to Aspect 2 of our great Bounty Scheme. Now Blather is nothing if not broadminded. Blather, a true cricketer to the last, stands four square behind the Connexion, the Throne, the Crown, the Sovereign and the King-Emperor. Our greatest friend and right-hand man is Viscount Rothermere, who offered to acquire Blather for a million pounds and who was refused because we wanted Rothermore. But forget that. The point is that the Blather Loyalty and Devotion is being unfairly strained by certain happenings at Court. Blather stands for the Union and for a Strong Hand in Ireland, but it cannot tolerate any interference on the part of any king in the affairs of The Nation’s Mothers. This is the Blather Attitude. ‘Hands off our Irish Family Affairs!’ – that is our stern advice to-day. The payment of the Royal Bounty on twins and triplets simply must cease; and quickly.

You see? Let us put it another way. HM ignores his Irish subjects, puts a tariff on their cows, and forbids his Princes to come over for the shooting; he then turns round and pokes his finger into the private affairs of Irish Family Life. Has his cake and eats it in other words; has it both ways and burns the candle at both ends.

Blather considered the matter carefully and came to the conclusion that no useful purpose can be served by receiving a deputation. Blather resolved to fight the menace with every weapon known to clean-limbed British sport.

We dispatched the following sharp telegram to his Majesty the King.

Please accept filial homage stop cannot stand for triplet souperism stop you will have to stop it stop give it over immediately stop will beat you at your own game stop blather will stop at nothing stop ask dulanty stop too much of a good thing stop aithnigheann ciarog ciarog eile1 stop.

The following arrived in reply.

King deeply touched by message of loyalty stop always deeply interested in activities of british legion in ireland stop please convey sincere thanks and best wishes to men stop.

You see the laissez faire philosophy behind it all? Live horse and you’ll get grass. Is it any wonder that the entire fabric of our Western civilisation is tottering, that you have MAs and qualified professional men walking the streets. There are only one or two things that Blather takes lying down, and this is not one of them. When we say it, we mean it, and we are saying it through our teeth. Here is our answer.

THE BLATHER SCHEME OF TRIPLET AND OTHER BOUNTIES

Our Bounty	Charitable Work	His Bounty
Twins	18 free copies of the pamphlet ‘The Blather Attitude on Twins’.	Nil.
Triplets	200 yds of best quality cotton baby-cloth, plus £3 3s. od.	£2 2s. od. only.
Quads	4 lbs. of back-rashers from the Blather flitch plus £4 4s. od.	£2 2s. od. only.
Giant Vegetable Marrows	Blather free tours to America in the Graf Zeppelin.	Nil.
Earliest hearing of Cuckoo, good golf cards, good scout work and woodlanding, etc.	Illuminated Blather Cards bearing the inscription: ‘GOOD WORK’.	Nil.

Is your son an ignoramus …?

Has your son failed the Clerical Officers again? What, AGAIN? No wonder. How can he possibly expect to pass when he doesn’t know the rudiments of English? Don’t get insulted. We mean it. Listen to what the great German Hedge-schoolmaster, Dr Otto Kindergarten, has to say about the standard of English in these islands. Dr Kindergarten always speaks his mind. There isn’t much of it, and he likes to speak it all. You can trust what he says.

‘It is a true but little-known fact,’ he says, ‘that the English language was first invented by the Abbey Theatre. The degenerate patois spoken by the inhabitants of England, Ireland and Wales bears the same relation to pure English as a horse-trough does to the Blackrock Baths. Unfortunately, the number of people who speak English in everyday life is negligible; and it is only on the  stage of the Abbey that one hears this beautiful language spoken as it should be spoken. Can nothing be done about this scandal?’

Yes, Doktor. Everything possible will be done to educate the Great Ignorant Public. By us. In the first place, we are frankly delighted to see that the Civil Service Commission is putting its foot down and insisting on a reasonably high standard of Abbey English. But that is not enough. Growing Lads must be encouraged, by simple attractive lessons, to speak proper English so that when they come to sit for their exams, they won’t be a Trial to their Fathers. We give below the first lesson of our great series. It is specially written in the form of a dialogue between three persons, so that three Growing Lads can get together and give each other hell.

In addition, the student can win valuable prizes by reciting this piece at any decent Feis. We have done it ourselves.

 

FOR BARNEY’S SAKE, READ THIS!

 

Shaun: Good morrah, Peadar.

Peadar: Good morrah, Shaun.

Shaun: It is a grand day, Peadar, thanks be.

Peadar: Musha, aye indeed, it is that, surely. Would you have the filling of a pipe of the good hard plug, forbye?

Shaun: Indeed now, and perhaps I have. Let you draw that stool of the three legs into the good blaze of the hand-won turf and let the steam rise in clouds from your drenched trousers, forbye.

Peadar: Thank ye kindly. A murrain, surely, upon these crickets that leap and leap with many leaps upon the hard flagstones of the hearth. 

Shaun: Indeed, and many murrains upon them. But who comes with the soft padding foot-fall, like the fall of twilight on a purple hill? Surely it is Phelim of the Bogs?
(Enter Phelim of the Bogs. As a matter of fact, the dirty rat has been there all the time.)

Phelim: God bless all here. Have ye heard the news, the black, black news from the North?

Shaun and Peadar (together): Nothing have we heard for many days but the drip-drip-drip of the rain as it drips, and the sighing of the wind as it sighs.

Phelim: Indeed, troth, good cause has it to sigh. For last night, at the grey coming of the twilight, the redcoats seized a poor Croppy Boy as he watered his stag in the glen. O, woe, woe, woe!

Peadar: Alas, alas, poor Yorick.

Shaun: The pity of it. The pitiful pity of it is heavy on my heart this day.

Peadar: A bitter black curse upon these Redcoats, surely.

Shaun: And a red curse, too, say I.

Phelim: Aye, troth, and fifty pink curses with knobs attached be

upon them this day.

Shaun: Och, och, ochone, alannah. Och, och, ochone.

Peadar: Alas, alas, poor Yorick.

Phelim: O, woe, woe, woe.

Your ignoramus of a son? … What of his future? … For that matter, what of his past? …

That young scion of yours, what of his future? We meant to take you into a corner and ask you about him ages ago, but all the corners were occupied by corner-boys and we failed to find a vacant one. Hence the delay. You have no doubt decided not to send him up to the ’varsity, as that would entail his going about in the cold weather with no overcoat, only a scarf around his windpipe, and he is too delicate for that. The question, then, is to decide on a Career or a Trade. Below, our printers have generously agreed to print our survey of some of the existing openings.

Road-surveyor

The business of a Road-surveyor is to survey existing openings on the roads and to arrange for them to be filled up with basic slag and metal and screened dressings and whatnot. He is also charged with preventing the farming community from making pot-holes in the roads with their pots. The roads in Ireland are the best in the world. That is what a road-surveyor says.

County councillor

There is no salary attached to this occupation, but if your son has inherited your own talent for fiddling with the gas-meter, the question of salary is not important. As most of the Board-rooms are dreary places in the winter, the first essential quality is capacity for heat, or for engendering heat. When the atmosphere becomes too heated, the candidate must be capable of producing a ‘breeze’. It is also necessary to ask someone at every meeting whether he is prepared to repeat that filthy lie outside and take the thrashing of his life, or would he prefer to have his face put in there and then. It is also essential (a) to ask the Chairman to resign; (b) to allege that the Department is treating the Council like a pack of schoolboys; and (c) to ask the Chairman to resign.

The Civil Service

This was invented by the Civil Service Commission, Upper O’Connell Street, who jealously guard it and retain the serial rights in Europe and the USA. In the Administrative Grades, intelligence and sound judgment are essential. Candidates deficient in these qualities must produce evidence of a University education.

Cowboy

A lucrative but somewhat overcrowded profession. Candidates must be able to throw a sombrero in the air and riddle it with a six-shooter, give the slip to the Sheriff’s posse and leap the Grand Canyon on a Shetland mare. Cowboys can always get a living punching steers in Ringsend, or holding up the Tullamore stage at Tyrrellspass. In time of trouble, a cowboy must know to make for the badlands, huh! Cowboys who wish to practice rustling cattle can do so by rustling silk in the privacy of their bedroom.

Journalism

There are no openings in this profession at the moment, as all our posts are filled.

Farming

In this calling there is always plenty of room at the top of the tree, as it is necessary to keep a sharp look-out for Guards. Candidates must be practised in the handling of the cross-cut, must be able to drive a car and make a witty after-sale speech in the Pound. They must also understand how to make poteen and grow barley, and know what is meant by the rotation of crops, which is how the barley looks after drinking the poteen. A good farmer never puts on a dinner-jacket when dining. Tails always.

Gombeenism (Gombeenery)

This is Gaelic for Banking & Finance. It is also known as sucking the blood of the poor and taking the bread out of their mouths at the same time. Really skilful Gombeen-men can also manage to bite the hand that feeds them at the same time, feather their own nest and lie curled up with the jaw between the hands, like a dog in a manger. The first essential of Gombeenism (Gombeenery) is that the Gombeen-man must send all his sons and daughters to Trinity or UCD. Modern Gombeen-men must be prepared to lend total strangers £20,000 on note of hand alone without security.

Film-star

Candidates (female) who are very beautiful can make £100,000 per annum on the films. Candidates who are not very beautiful can also make £100,000 per annum on the films, provided they are winsome like Janet Gaynor, or dynamic like Katherine Hepburn. See COWBOY. The profession will not appeal to those poor backward beings who prefer to take off their clothes in private. Big money can be made directing films provided one’s name sounds like Rota Schenk or Baryk Zanuk.

DUT Co. bus-driver

The only essential in this profession is to give the bus its head and yield to its gregarious instinct by driving it in a herd with two others everywhere you go, especially on the Dalkey line. Herds of less than three buses together are unheard of, because if buses travelled alone at frequent intervals, suburban dwellers would have an even chance of getting into town, only to be corrupted in the Big City. It is the business of the driver to prevent this at all costs.

National school-teacher (NT)

The noblest of all the professions. Candidates are expected to make financial provision for retirement into a private mad-house in the early forties, as the little rats are sure to win in the end. Candidates must learn to equate the word ‘swine’ with ‘Inspector’, and have the sense not to slap the children of short-tempered coal-heavers. Teachers who deal with the older boys are only a secondary consideration.

Gaiety-theatre leading lady

Candidates for this attractive position must hail from across the water and must visit the vast linotype hall in Independent House and say the machines are wonderful, can almost speak, etc. She must also receive her name in type-metal, thank the operator for it charmingly and put it in her bag. Ability to sing and dance need be no handicap.

Match-seller

Handsome living can be made by retailing matches on bridges and other public places in the City. The business yields a ready cash profit of 25 per cent and the business is not subject to Corporations Profit Tax. Candidates may at their discretion be blind and dumb, but not too blind to notice a bad coin and not too dumb to tell the world.

Newspaper-seller

Candidates who are going to become millionaires must begin by selling newspapers in the streets; no millionaire is considered genuine unless he has done this.

 

You must admit that this is a goodish list from which to choose a career for your young hopeless. If you do not admit that it is goodish, at least admit that it is fairish. If you do not think the selection is sufficiently wide, write to us and we will print a further list next month. In the meantime, send us a photograph of your son, as we are badly in need of a good belly-laugh. If you have no photograph of your son, your own will do instead.

Cavalcade

Mr Eamonn de Valera arrived.

Mr Eamonn de Valera arrived, accompanied by his son, Vivion.

Mr Eamonn de Valera arrived, accompanied by Mr Vivion de Valera.

Messrs Eamonn and Vivion de Valera arrived. Messrs Vivion and Eamonn de Valera arrived. Mr Vivion de Valera arrived, accompanied by Mr Eamonn de Valera.

Mr Vivion de Valera arrived, accompanied by his father, Eamonn.

1 Proverb: One earwig recognises another.