‘Remember that I too was Irish. Today I am cured.’
CRUISKEEN LAWN Irish Times, 31 May 1943
Brian O’Nolan had his first prose pieces published in The Irish Press at the end of 1931, when he was twenty. They were in Irish, his first language, and he was to continue writing in Irish on and off until about 1960. The five stories and single essay that make up this section can be looked upon as apprentice pieces: as always, presages of O’Nolan’s mature work may be seen in material from the beginning of his career. I am grateful to Breandán Ó Conaire for supplying translations of the stories. It is no easy task to put English on O’Nolan’s Irish, for he revelled in word-play and parody from the start, and inevitably something is lost in the transition. However, enough remains to give a reader a taste. The final essay I have translated myself.
The readers of Blather will be glad to hear that we are neither negligent nor careless in matters pertaining to the ancestral tongue. In the warm weather it gets dry and the only remedy is a full glass of Frontillan ’34. (Don’t let that strange word frighten you, reader. That’s the French for poteen.) But may the frost kill us! It wasn’t to talk about that kind of tongue we took up our pen. Let you have patience. We’ll begin again.
The readers of Blather will be glad to hear that we are neither negligent nor careless in matters pertaining to the ancestral tongue. The very moment that Blather was founded the VIPs of the paper came together and agreed unanimously that it was a great pity that the old tales of our ancestors were becoming extinct as they were. Before you’d have time to redden your pipe they had decided (a) to snatch the old tales and folklore of our ancestors from the mouth of the grave, and (b) to exit immediately and have a drinking session in the public house at the corner of —— Street. A week after that they assembled together again, and it was then, by dad, that the work began in earnest. Five hundred train tickets were purchased, five hundred notebooks and five hundred pencils. They were distributed amongst five hundred young men, who were ordered to disperse throughout the country and collect the stories of the old people. They are now working at their utmost (and at many other things which can’t be mentioned here) in every corner of the country where Irish is spoken or whispered, in pursuit of the elders and coaxing stories from them. This tale below was told by a grey bandylegged ugly-mouthed old man named Laury Mac Lupracaun.
When he was questioned, he said that he hadn’t a story and that he hadn’t heard a story nor an excuse for a story in all his life. His shirt was then removed (if he had worn buttons on his skin that would also have been removed, believe us), he was bound in chains and one of the men began to lay into him with a split stick.1 (The stick was perfect when the battering began, but after a while it was seen to be broken.) Well, well! Is there anything in the world, reader, so miserable and pitiable as the crying of an old grey-haired man? It would wring a tear from your eye the roars let out by the poor old boy, and the agitated manner in which he screamed for his grandmother, who had been beneath the sod for twenty years. Yes, twenty years she had been carrying the sods from the bog, a full of a sack of them – but finally the pain made him see that if he didn’t know a story that he would have to make one up if he wanted a break. He was then set free, and he began:
Once upon a long time ago, before trousers were worn in Ireland, there lived a king called Slocky Mac Slobber. He had only the one son. Eochy, I am sorry to say, was the name of this son. The son’s fame was far greater and more widespread than the fame of the king, because there was not on the face of the earth, nor on the surface of the globe, nor under the blue framework of the sky a lazier man than he. He spent his time, from one end of the year to the other, day and night, and each hour of the clock between those two occasions, lying on the flat of his back, eating and drinking, and when the notion would take him, drinking and eating. He used to lie on a fine soft bed of feathers, and nothing on earth could budge him out of it. He slept at night, but remained awake during the day. The nobles of the royal family would always be gathered round the bed, attending on him, and inventing amusements for him, as is the custom to do for the son of a king.
By the side of his bed was a table covered with delicious savoury food of every sort in existence. And there were fruits there as well, apples and gooseberries, and large leather bags full of watercress, and decorated silver platters full of blackberries, and gold-hooped barrels full of whortle-berries gathered on Slemish, and marble buckets full of red and dark berries. And on the other side of his bed was another table with hundreds of bottles on it, and every bottle of them full to the neck with dry smooth poteen made by the distillers who used to make poteen on Slieve Gua, and there did not exist at that time better poteen-makers in the country. And under the bed were thousands of bottles. And all of them used to be empty.
The young prince spent twenty years in this manner reclining on his bed, and it was contented, comfortable, agreeable and cheerful the soft blanketed life he had, eating, drinking, debating with wise men, and listening to music and to the harmonising of his harpers. But now and again a mournful frown came over his countenance and he would say in a morose, tearful, despondent voice, ‘Oh woe is me! Are there no birds with softer plumage on them that a new bed could be made for me, because this bed is damnably hard!’ And an anguished cry of lament and sympathy would then rise from the company, pitying the poor fellow.
In the summer when the red pate of the sun was high in the sky and the birds raving in the woods, wheels would be put beneath the bed and the young prince conducted out to the orchard so that he might see the sky and the trees and the other things which do not grow in the inside of a bedroom.
But after some time the king perceived that it was not natural for a person to be stretched out on his bed for so long, and, in a manner which he himself did not understand, he came to realise that his son was perhaps slightly indolent. He pledged one thousand pounds to the first person who would entice the prince from his bed. Many people came and departed again but not one of them bore the reward away. Whiskery long-bearded men from the back of the hills came, fierce large-limbed men of unusual strength, and they attempted to drag the prince out of the bed by force. But they did not succeed.
‘Devil a foot nor a toe will I lay on the floor again as long as I live,’ said the prince, and he summoned his male nurse, and a great stack of oat-bread and a big bowl of steaming tea was brought in for him, and he set about meal and munching; the men then understood that it was no use, and they departed. The following day a skilled harper from the County Meath arrived, and he began to play lively airs with vigour, hoping to beguile the prince from his bed, for there wasn’t a second person on the face of the earth who could hear his music without doing a dance. But –
When the old man had come this far in the story one of the men asked him Did He Think They Were Eejits, or What Sort Of Nonsensical Rubbish Was This, and another man asked was He Looking For A Fight and if he was Step Out On The Road and I’ll Give You A Skinful. However, when the old man proved to them that his pockets were empty and that the homespun clothes on his back weren’t worth a blade of grass they allowed him to go home. But do not be befuddled, reader. As long as a drop of whiskey remains in the bottom of a glass, those men will not forsake this noble task. If you are a grey-haired person or an eighty years oldster do not attempt to flee or go into hiding from them. And when they arrive, have a story ready for them, or if you prefer, two excuses,1 as two excuses equal one story. Have that ready and you’re in no danger.
Once upon a time there was an old fellow, who was honest, charitable, wide-girdled and even-tempered – in short, an exceedingly good person. He was so ancient that he was well able to remember the great historical events which came to pass in Ireland a hundred years before, and he spoke Irish of a strange and awkward sort – the amount of it that he had – whose like is not to be encountered outside the Book of the Dun Cow, and often not even in that book either. He had a stoop in his back and he always used to carry a blackthorn stick in his claw; he was stout, well-nourished, with two eyes twinkling lively beneath his white brows, and he wore neither collar nor tie but had a monstrous long white beard flowing down from his two ears on to his breast – enough fine fur to stuff a pair of pillows! The person who would understand the nobility of the elderly and the respect to which they are entitled would take a second look at this specimen. He was too good.
The old fellow lived with his son in a house, and (since we are telling a story in Irish), it was a small whitewashed house in the corner of the glen. Not far from his house was another in which a growing young lad lived with this family. The youngster was increasing in wisdom every day, and becoming astute and inquisitive.
One day he took his father aside and asked him a question – a great question that had been lying heavily on his mind for a long time.
‘When this old fellow is in bed,’ said the lad, ‘does his beard be under the bedclothes, or does it be out in the open with the blankets tucked in underneath it?’
‘That’s a big question,’ said the father, ‘and I haven’t got its solution. But go and ask your mother.’
This the lad did.
‘I couldn’t tell you that,’ said the mother, ‘but I have an idea that his son will know. Go over and put the question to him.’
This was done. The son was an affable fellow, who hadn’t any guile in him, no more than his father. He reflected.
‘I have slept in the same bed as him,’ said he, ‘from the time I was as small as yourself, and if I were to be flayed alive on this spot I couldn’t answer that question – but here he is coming in now. Ask him yourself.’
The question was put. The Oldfellow contemplated deep and hard. He scourged his sluggish languid mind, and twisted and shook his memory. He closed his eyes and visualised himself lying in his bed. He tried his utmost, but, alas, it was no use.
‘I don’t know,’ he said simply. He felt sad and ashamed that he could not solve such an easy question, after all he had seen of the world.
‘Come back tomorrow, little man,’ said he, ‘and I’ll have the answer to your question.’
‘Thank you,’ said the youngster.
The day departed and the night arrived. The Oldfellow headed for bed. He put on his nightshirt and his sleeping bonnet, he snuggled himself down cosily, put his head on the pillow, arranged the bedclothes compactly and carefully under his beard, and lay there trying to sleep. But he did not lie there for long. His chinbone began to itch, with a firm fiery itch. His neck began to get sore and his ears warm; the bedclothes were irritating his beard. Isn’t it foolish my old head is tonight, he thought, and me without my beard under the blankets as it has been for forty years. Angrily he put the clothes over the beard and again tried to sleep. Within a minute, however, he was again at a loss: he was truly wretched, in pain and torment. Had twenty crows been attempting to build nests in that beard, they wouldn’t have caused him more distress.
‘Damn!’ said the Oldfellow.
He controlled the fit of anger that was coming over him, and made an attempt to remedy the situation. He placed half the beard inside and half the beard outside; he lay on his face; he lay on the hair itself; and he put his head completely under the bedclothes. But each solution was worse than the previous one …
The Oldfellow sat up and pondered gloomily to himself. Then he decided that it would be a good idea to get up and make a strong cup of tea, and to put the boy’s question completely out of his mind; afterwards he would go back to bed, and only just when he had almost fallen asleep, would recall the question.
‘I will make a cup of dark, mysterious, uncharted tea,’ said the Oldfellow.
He rose and located the dark stairway leading down to the kitchen. Thus it happened that he continued walking the floor without the floor being there: the beginning of the stairs and the conclusion of the floor was that place. He descended like a sack of flour. He broke his neck and split open his skull, and his soul sundered from his body.
That youngster is still living. He goes to school, acquiring education, and that question still remains in his heart, unsolved. He will presently understand that all knowledge is not to be found in the books, and he will put the question to some other old fellow; and if the worst comes to the worst he can wait until the arrival of his own beard (if such is destined for him) and banish the deadly doubt from him for ever.
But maybe God will give him sense.
‘Do you see this watch?’ said I.
‘I see it,’ said Old Greyhead.
‘Well,’ said I, ‘there is a peculiar story connected with it. It’s my opinion that there isn’t another watch of the same make in Ireland or Aran today. It is an ancient heavy gold watch and it has an attribute which no watch made these days has. Not a minute has it lost since I got it, and my father told me that it only lost half a minute during his lifetime, and that half minute was lost because my grandfather wound it a little too tightly when he got it from his father as a boy, before he was accustomed to it.’
‘My own watch is better than that,’ said Old Greyhead.
‘Hold your tongue and don’t ruin my story,’ said I. ‘Well, when I was young and had little sense, there was one day and I was badly in need of money (I believe I was in love with a girl and longed to buy a present for her). Unfortunately for myself, an unpropitious inclination came upon me to bring my noble and ancient timepiece to the man of the three orbs, and to acquire a generous sum of money for it. There was heavy gold in it, not to be found in any other watch. I would not accept a penny under twenty pounds.
‘I put the watch apprehensively in my pocket and repressed the shame which was rising in my breast, and out I went in the evening twilight, proceeding towards the shop of the three orbs. I laid my heavy yellow friend on the counter and asked for twenty pounds. The shopkeeper scrutinised it, and without much delay placed it back in my hand. “It is not our custom,” he said mockingly, “to purchase broken objects.”
‘My heart leapt in my bosom! What’s this? I put the watch to my ear, the watch which had not lost a minute in one hundred years. Not the slightest sound was coming from it. It had stopped. I walked out of the shop like a toper on a Saturday night. What had I done that this calamity should befall me? …
‘I put the watch aside for a day, and timely relief arrived in the matter of the money. The watch was in no danger now, and I felt that it ought to be put in order. I lifted it up and my heart jumped alive again when I heard the tic-tic coming from it as smoothly as ever it came. The dear little instrument was back to its old form. I almost gave it a lump of sugar as a reward … I still have the watch as a result of that little hesitation. Have you ever heard of anything as fortunate and as strange as that, Micky?’
‘Of course I have,’ said that son of a mother, ‘Undoubtedly. When I was young (and that’s neither today nor yesterday) I was short on sense and I was discussing nuptial matters with a woman. The affair worsened, and one spring morning the two of us were standing in the presence of the priest. When the question would I take her as my wife was put to me, my tic-tic halted. My voice got the better of me. I could not enunciate a word. My tongue failed me. I was dumb, out and out dumb, dumb completely. The question was put a second time, and the same silence ensued a second time. A fit of crying seized the girl and she was taken home.’
‘And what happened to you?’ I asked.
‘Me? I was laid on my back, my shirt was opened, and the man yonder told the man hither to give me some air. Another intelligent man procured a bottle of whiskey.’
‘And was it long before you got the voice back?’
‘By my life it wasn’t. Inside two minutes I was able to speak.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘“DON’T PUT WATER IN IT!!!” The rogue was trying to destroy the drink. That was as lucky a thing as happened in this world.’
‘You weren’t the only lucky one that day,’ said I.
From the day he was born Big Gogarty had the cream of common sense. Everybody knew that he was an honest, balanced intelligent individual, the last person to lose the head even if the whole world went bananas; his friends knew his value and had great affection and respect for him. That is the first trait of Gogarty’s with which we wish to acquaint the reader.
In addition to that, he understood money and financial matters and, although he was not miserly in any way, it was not his custom to spend or lose the least penny without good reason. He never bothered with the women, hadn’t a predilection for the jar and he didn’t smoke: he was too sensible. That’s the second talent.
However, with the passage of time all things change. Big Gogarty was returning home one winter’s evening and he addressed the young boy who used to sell newspapers on the street corner, as it was his custom to buy the Daily from him – this Gogarty was a clever and wise character. He bought a paper.
‘A word in your ear,’ said he, ‘have you a good belt around your trousers?’
The youngster stared at him in sheer wonder.
‘I haven’t,’ he said finally, ‘I’ve braces.’
‘Well,’ said Gogarty, ‘the belt is better, more wholesome and more effective. Here is a good leather belt for you … a small present for Christmas.’
The young fellow accepted the belt without another word. He didn’t understand the story but it wasn’t his wont to spurn destiny. ‘I’ll get sixpence for it tomorrow in the House of the Three Orbs,’ said he.
Gogarty went home in a bus. When he was approaching the end of the journey he rose and spoke to the official who was in charge of the bus.
‘Your trousers aren’t hanging correctly,’ he said, ‘perhaps you would like a belt?’
‘My trousers are all right,’ said the official angrily.
‘Even so,’ said Gogarty, ‘perhaps you have a headstrong mischievous son. Here’s a good leather belt for you. You can make your son hum with it, or wear it yourself. Your trousers aren’t all right!’ – and he leapt out of the bus into the darkness of the night.
(Permit me now to continue the course of our story in the newspapers. Here below are some short extracts from them.)
The Committee came to order. A letter from the Government was read saying that the position which was vacant should be filled without delay. The name of MacCarthy was accepted as meat supplier for the Poorhouse. A letter was read from Mr Gogarty Esq. in Dublin offering two hundred belts for the men in the Poorhouse. The belts were accepted and gratitude was expressed to Gogarty.
Dunc—— Feis (Cultural Festival). There was a meeting of the Committee and it was arranged that the Feis would be held again this year. A letter was read from Mr Gogarty Esq. offering twenty Irish leather belts as a prize, and he was heartily thanked.
The Committee of the Royal Society for the Clothing of the Naked Savage Blackmen Overseas assembled, the Dowager de la Mer-O’Hickey in the chair, and one hundred leather belts were gratefully accepted from Mr Gogarty Esq.
Saturday, at the Church of St Michael, were married Francis (‘Frankie’) Gogarty, son of Tiny Gogarty and his late wife, and Mary (‘Maisy’) Taylor, daughter of Mr Taylor and his wife, of Beltfort. Honeymoon on the Riviera.
Mary’s father, Mr Taylor Esq. himself, intends to sell the shop and live at his leisure until the day he dies. Perhaps he doesn’t wish to continue with the shopwork without Mary there to assist him, or perhaps she sold so many belts that he was provided with sufficient riches. We don’t know. But Mary will make a good wife for Gogarty. He would be buying belts until the present day, his fingers trying out the leather and his two eyes fixed on the woman’s face, but for the fact that she uttered the necessary word …
Honeymoon, as we mentioned above, on the Riviera supervivant.
He was a small pleasant non-irascible man and I wouldn’t have given him a second glance were it not for the fact that he was vehemently and furiously conversing with a street lamp. It seemed to me he was drunk and that it would be a good thing to guide him home. I accosted him: ‘What’s the meaning of this or what’s the matter with you!’ said I. ‘You ought to be in your bed instead of loitering like this in a state of intoxication about the city. You should turn your back on the public-house and return to the family fireside – a nice sensible person like yourself – and take an interest in some hobby, the gramophone or fretwork …’
‘GRAMOPHONE!’ He looked intently at me with two eyes which had an infernal wildness in them – two venomous red flames.
‘Wait a minute,’ said he, ‘till I tell you my story. It will make you sad if you’re a human being at all … One clear Spring morning ten years ago I heard the woman’s voice for the first time and unless my memory is deluded I considered that it was a good voice she had, a voice that would develop satisfactorily with care and practice.
‘It appears that a similar resolution resided in the bosom of the damsel herself, as the practising commenced the very next day and it continued strenuously without cessation or interruption, without respite or pause, for ten years. I am still here but I am not the same man, alas, who used to be there at that time ... I used to have a consuming interest in music then, and I won’t say that I didn’t strike up the fiddle now and again in the solitude of the night – may I be forgiven for it.
‘But the damsel yonder. She lived in the house across the street from my house. Annie Laurie was the first sound I heard on wakening, and Annie Laurie was the last syllable that rent my heart and me going to rest; and the clock said Annie Laurie-Annie Laurie till morning. “After great diversion comes dejection.” The great diversion was over yonder from dawn till dark, and as I live, it was me who suffered the dejection, the oppression, the frenzied stupefaction, the fit of wrath, the rancour. I believe that the wheezing of death in my throat would have been more melodious to me than those goading words, Annie Laurie.
‘Had matters continued so, I knew that melancholy and loneliness would come upon my soul, that I would become sick at heart and sparse of reason. What happened? I was shaving myself one morning when I became conscious of some other air being rendered. Methinks my pretty comely damsel has a new song – may prosperity follow her – she is making progress.
‘Subsequently I recognised that it was the voice of a man. Down the stairs with me. The music was emanating from the house next door to my house, on the right hand side. The song finished and a voice said that they were “going over to the Royal Hotel, Blackpool, for dance music”. And they went … and majestically and gently, but waxing in power by the minute, the high voice of the woman said that Maxwelton Braes were bonn-ee.
‘A year passed and another transformation came upon the world. There was another house next door to mine, on the left hand side, and I heard one morning, over the clamour of Annie Laurie and the shindy of the other man, that it was being announced to the world that a gentleman was about to give a “Talk” on the “Decoration of the Modern Sitting-Room”. Another interval passed. Annie Laurie was still alive, so alive that I imagined that the flower of second youth was upon her. Daventry was coming in doing its level best on one side and Radio-Paris was looking after the revelries on the other side. A barrel-organ used always be audible in the neighbourhood, that and a piper whose ear and whose pipes were far from true, unbeknownst to himself.
‘Well, indeed,’ said I, ‘that is bad tidings. What did you do?’
‘Bad news without any doubt. I wrote to the Minister for Posts & Telegraphs. He said that he intended to initiate “Talks” on the wireless giving advice to the public, which would ease the situation. Maybe they would, “TALKS my granny,” said I. I procured a long sharp knife and I believe that I dispatched the two men who were so enamoured of the radio (one poor individual had a family of eight). I was about to put Annie Laurie to rest for good when I remembered that it was time for me to be on my way to the Conference at Lausanne.’
‘The Conference?’
‘Yes. Don’t you recognise me? I’m Napoleon Bonaparte!’
‘Indeed, you’re right,’ said I, a little dismayed. ‘Wait till you see my fine knife.’ The red eyes were twinkling like stars at Halloween.
‘I’ll see it tomorrow,’ said I, moving off as rapid as my feet would carry me.
In every language that has ever been spoken there are to be found words of great value which have had neither mention in books nor attention from lexicographers. Be that as it may, they are in the mouths of people whenever they voice their thoughts, and they are as essential as whiskey is to a glass.
Those who rely on the intelligence gained at their father’s knee, as opposed to the artificial skills available in the schoolhouse, understand the nobility of these words, and they give great thanks to God that they possess words of this calibre to impart exactitude and neatness to their speech.
The good people who speak Irish in Donegal use such a word: a word that has a strength, an efficiency and an ambiguity not to be found in any other; it contains question and answer (according to how it is spoken), depression and love, melancholy and joy; within it are the loneliness of night and the light of the sun, the laughter of youth and the disability of age. ‘WELL’ (BHÁL) – THAT’S THE WORD WE ARE TALKING ABOUT.
A silly little word, the reader may say, a word that was unwittingly stolen from English. Perhaps so; but a theft of that sort is lawful, says Aristotle, if the thief bestows upon it a special delight and beauty when the thievery is done, and this word in Irish has a power and a beauty which are never to be found in English.
Take, for example, the man of the house who comes home one afternoon tired and weary, and not wanting conversation:
‘Well, well,’ he says. His wife knows what’s up, and gives the one permissible answer.
‘Oh, well, right enough.’
Or, for example, take two people who meet on the main road one rainy day. They speak.
‘’Tis a soft day.’
‘Well, it is.’
That’s a ‘well’ of another type, far more powerful and effectual than ‘alas’, ‘assuredly’ or ‘indeed’.
Youth is greedy: offer an apple to a young lad and ask him the question:
‘Would you like an apple?’
‘Well!’ he will say, i.e., ‘very much.’
Go visiting by night, to where there is revelry and a five-noggin bottle on the table taking the sting out of life; there you will hear calm contented converse that you will appreciate if you understand it:
‘Well, well,’ says the man of the house.
‘Oh, well,’ says another man.
‘Well, indeed.’
‘Right enough.’
‘Well, well, well.’
‘Oh, well?’
‘Well.’
The mouth that is silent is sweet; the mouth that is half-silent is sweeter, with just the one soft, blessed word slipping out of it from time to time.
Whether this fine word is to be found in Connacht or in Kerry or in Ring I do not know, but, during these times, when Irish is daily growing rarer, it would be a good plan to put the word (with all its nuances) onto gramophone discs, and to cause it to be used throughout Ireland, for when the day comes – may the evil thing be far off – when Irish has vanished from the country, there would be one word remaining that would demonstrate the wisdom, the history, the provincialism and the daemon of our forefathers in every parish.
That’s another job for the government.