I have been looking through an old book with the commonplace title of ‘Information for Everybody’, published in Boston, USA, in 1851. The author’s name is given as Dr Chase – just this, with no Christian name and no clue as to whether he might be an ancestor of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, this year a contender for the US Presidency.
Dr Chase says that his book is Consisting of a Large Number of Medical Recipes: Also, Practical Recipes for Merchants, Grocers, Shopkeepers, Physicians, Druggists, Tanners, Shoemakers, Harness-Makers, Painters, Jewellers, Blacksmiths, Tinners, Gunsmiths, Farriers, Cabinet-Makers, Dyers, Barbers, &c.
That’s a modern weakness – that ‘&c.’ He shoves it in when he has absolutely failed to think of a single other word he can add to the list.
Most of his recipes are technical and boring but he invented a potion which he called ‘Soot Coffee’. Hear his own words on how to make it:
Soot Coffee has cured many cases of ague after ‘everything else’ had failed; it is made as follows: soot scraped from a chimney (that from stove pipes does not do), 1 tablespoon steeped in water 1 pint, and settled with 1 egg beaten up in a little water, as for other coffee, with sugar and cream, 3 times daily with meals, in place of other coffee …
Thereafter the Doctor turns aside to castigate people, including ‘Upstart Physicians’ who stick up their noses at ‘old grandmother prescriptions’. I agree with him there, for a lot of what nowadays is called folk medicine has a sound basis. I would gladly try this soot coffee myself if I had a chimney – or can it be that I have already had a cup of it in a certain place in Carlow at the cost of a shilling? For ague you take it with cream. Taken black, it would probably be good for nerves or a sore head, but taken any way at all it would be bound to be very good for smoky chimneys.
But Dr Chase is not just an old scientist. He has a stern moral eye, and there’s many a young fellow who could take a leaf out of the Doctor’s book with advantage. Here is a note he has on the drink situation, in his day very bad:
It will be seen that every quart of fruit wine not made for medicine helps to build up the cause (intemperance) which we all so much desire not to encourage. And for those who take any kind of spirit for the sake of the spirit, let me give you the following:
2. Spiritual Facts – That whis-key is the key by which many gain entrance into our prisons and almshouses.
3. That brandy brands the noses of all who cannot govern their appetites.
4. That punch is the cause of many unfriendly punches.
5. That ale causes many ailings, while beer brings to the bier.
6. That wine causes many to take a winding way home.
7. That cham-pagne is the source of many real pains.
8. That gin-slings have ‘slewed’ more than slings of old.
A most impressive person, the Doctor, for here are met wit, good counsel, and a lofty literary style. It is perhaps significant that the admonition numbered ONE does not appear anywhere in the text. What good thing is thereby lost it is hard to say. Probably something like ‘Porter is the man who carries the bags under your eyes.’ Or better, perhaps: ‘A pint of plain will make you very plain.’ Or maybe just ‘Stout makes you very stout, no doubt.’
My own dreadful weakness is that lager makes me swagger.
Our national feast-day
Narrow green lines to guide traffic on the streets, emerald green beer in the pubs and beaming negroes wearing shamrock – that is Saint Patrick’s Day for you in New York. Apart from its religious significance, the day has for long been taken very quietly indeed in Ireland.
In Dublin there is usually a considerable collision at Croke Park and, in the morning, a great procession honouring Irish manufacturers. Some of these processions in the past have been in some respects surprising and shoddy.
I have seen our national electricity undertaking publicly flexing its muscle by displaying a considerable piece of machinery (a transformer or something) on the heavy duty lorry, though surely it was made in Stuttgart? Surely a nice stretch of native bog tastefully arranged on a float would be more appropriate nowadays?
How Irish are cigarettes made in Dublin but with alien tobacco handled by foreign machines? The more one ponders this problem the more one is driven to the conclusion that there are hardly any manufactured articles in the country which are Irish from top to bottom except stout and whiskey. For that reason it was surely ironical when the first native Government evinced an unsuspected puritanical trait and ordered the complete closing of all pubs on the National Festival, giving the day the same penitential mood as Good Friday.
Drink could be had in hotels, of course, and at the famous Dublin Dog Show, but the Plain Man was denied even a pint of plain. Happily, a more enlightened view now prevails, though it happens that abstinence is still promoted by the shocking price that is now demanded for the stuff. One wonders what Saint Patrick himself would have thought of it all.
Saint Patrick himself is an extraordinarily shadowy figure, several responsible scholars maintain that he never existed, and it is true that primitive Christianity abounds in mythical figures.
Reputedly he was born in Britain about 389, was kidnapped by marauders and brought to Ireland as a slave, escaped home and then went to France. After returning home he had a vision, went back to France to study at Auxerre and arrived in Ireland in 432. It was to commemorate that landing that we had a Eucharistic Congress here in 1932.
There is no authentic account of what Patrick did here after he arrived or whom he met, though tradition and legend are plentiful enough. But two things are reasonably certain: Christianity was in existence in Ireland before Patrick’s time, and there is therefore no substance in the claim that it was he who first brought the new message here; secondly, Pope Celestine had already sent Palladius, who had laboured in Britain to stamp out the Pelagian heresy, to Ireland to do the same thing.
The only surviving document definitely ascribed to Patrick is the Confession, which appears in the Book of Armagh, said to date from about 800; it gives a general account of his career but is couched in Latin that is crude at best, and sometimes downright bad.
There are, of course, other and far later accounts of Patrick’s life but it is hard to understand the absence of reliable contemporary information, having regard to how minutely we know the people of a far earlier day – the Apostles, for example, or all the kings and prophets of the Old Testament.
Most people would be appalled by the theory that Saint Patrick never existed and that he is simply a pious myth, as was shown a few years ago and acknowledged by the Holy See in the case of Saint Philomena. But there is an even worse possibility. A learned historian and philologist named Professor D.A. Binchy has been maintaining for many years, both in writing and lecture hall, that in fact there were TWO Saint Patricks!
This is hardly the place to set forth his arguments and the sources on which he relies but it can be said that his theory has never been refuted. However unlikely, it is possible that another savant may yet come along and establish that there were three of them.
However tenuous the proof, most people – but particularly the Americans – will be glad to settle for one Saint Patrick and beg leave to inquire no further. Imagine … just imagine … where we would be if we were to have two Saint Patrick Days every year.
The Irishman would then cut a queer figure in the world: people would stare at him as if he had two heads!
Buy home products’
Well, we’ve had another St Patrick’s Day, with all attendant shamrockry, champagne and shenanigans. The Saint has been once again toasted all over the world, and for at least a week in Ireland the motto has been BUY IRISH (but with no sly reference to whiskey hidden in the phrase). How real and how true is all this? Do we mean it? Do others mean it? Or is the cult of Saint Patrick an internationally-accepted sham, like Santa Claus?
At the outset, I honestly say I don’t know. But I have genuine cause for wonder.
Last week I went
into a tavern on purpose to have a snack. I won’t say where, but it was not in Carlow town. It was a pleasant enough house. I sat at the fire and ordered bread and butter, some sardines and a bottle of ale. The bottle of ale was British, because the native article stocked was not in condition. The butter, rather like cheese, was Danish. The sardines came from Norway. The coal in the fire was American. The knife was made in Sheffield, and I assume the bread was made from imported grain. And do we manufacture salt here? I don’t think so.
You might imagine that we could go no further than that? Wrong!
I stood up and turned my chair upside down. (I thought standing up was a desirable preliminary.) Hurrah! There was an inscription on the underside of the seat in the bold characters of the old tongue, namely, ‘Déanta sa Phólain’.
The phrase means ‘Made in Poland’.
Taking a sad farewell, I was nearly run over by an American car burning Iranian petrol.
Who made the paper, the ink, the machinery that enables you to read this? But perhaps I am asking too many questions this week.
But talking of pubs, I think we are inclined to take too much for granted. A public house looks simple but isn’t. I have been looking through a publication issued by Messrs Guinness entitled Handbook for Customers and I find there is nothing simple or obvious about the bottle of stout or its management. The tapping of a cask (the Handbook carelessly calls this thing indiscriminately Cash and cask) is a difficult and esoteric process. To begin with you have to put the cask ‘lying on a stillion, bung up’. There is later the question of the Keystone Plug, which must receive ‘one hard blow’. Later comes along a ‘Starter’, possibly with a pistol in his hand. The book says:
With a starter, drive the oak shive which is in the taphole about half an inch into the cask. (If any difficulty is found in doing this, not more than a quarter of an inch of the shive may be removed by a chisel before using the Starter.)
Do you know what is meant by venting a cask? The instructions are a bit obscure, but venting is a process definitely carried out by licensed vintners.
Before bottling its contents a cask must be rolled to ‘rouse’ the beer. Also, ‘strict cleanliness is necessary to good bottling’ – I would prefer ‘for’ instead of ‘to’ there, nor do I know the distinction between cleanliness and strict cleanliness. Yet perhaps there is a distinction. If one publican gives a hot bath to his cellar-rats once a week while another does it every day, I suppose their standards cannot be identical. The Handbook is unbending on one particular. ‘Cullet and rubbish must be removed,’ it says, with severity in its steely prose. What on earth is this Cullet? Could it be the name of some nasty old man? I have looked up the telephone book and find there is not a single Cullet in the country to ring up in search of information.
There is a whole section devoted in the Handbook to Crown Corks. Guinness is a London company, but they go a bit far, I feel, with this hint that they get their corks from Buckingham Palace.
A last thought; nearly a year must roll by before we have another St Patrick’s Day. Can we stand the strain of waiting?
What’s our address?
I am sure the reader has noticed the slow but inexorable change by common usage of the name of this unkingly territory from Eire to Republic of Ireland. I am not very clear why the handier Irish Republic is so studiously avoided but it is clear that ‘Eire’ is pretty universally disliked.
I heard through my grapevine that there was a devil of a row between a Government department and the designers of the Irish stand at the New York World Fair about what the country’s name was; only after a bitter battle did the designers succeed in establishing the fact that where we live is IRELAND.
The Eire label is set forth in the Constitution. Is it the best name? I doubt it, mind you. We had others in the old days, of course, when the old crowd were around. Banba, for instance, now hyphenated Ban-ba in honour of their Excellencies, the Censorship Board.
Then we had Scotia. This title has been lifted by British Railways for one of their mailboats, so we can hardly use it again. In any case there is now a Nova Scotia and, if anything, we would have to be Antica Scotia. (Not, hasty reader, Antiqua; for that word refers to time, the other to space. Antica Scotia means the foremost Scotia.)
Another name we had was Fodhla, which sounds like a baby food. I’m no longer interested in baby foods though I’m told that some people named Power do very well out of them. ‘Hibernia’ is notable only for the fact that the well-known quotation means that the visiting team became more wintry than the Irish themselves, not more Irish.
‘Saorstát Éireann’ was still another pseudonym adopted by this most honourable Irish nation. ‘Saor’, of course, means ‘mason’ and I have always held that the SE title attributed undue influence to the Masons in our national affairs. The only other title that occurs to me at the moment is the one used among ourselves, in privacy of family or public house circle: I mean ‘this b— country’.
What about rethinking the thing, and having the name properly changed? It would mean a referendum, of course, but unless we have more frequent appeals to the people, I fear the traditional science of personation will be a thing of the past, like ‘patterns’, homespuns, rinnkeh faudas, potheen and efficient public transport.
‘Eire’ is over-full of vowels (75 per cent in fact) which means that the word is open to crazy mispronunciations on the part of foreigners. Could we not call this country … Cork? (Go on, laugh. What is wrong with my suggestion, anyway?)
Cork is a simple word that is known the world over for cuteness, alcoholism and literary posturing. The crowd down there have got a bad name for the whole lot of us and I hold that our national ignominy should be geographically located and acknowledged. A town such as Cork, which holds that the rest of Ireland is provincial, deserves to be freed from a name that means ‘swamp’ – if only to utilise, for national purposes, the paranoia, the secret studying, the shrewd marriage, the innumerable small forethoughts that have made our higher executive officers the finest in the world.
Call the country Cork and the other place Eire. Think of the distinction for your children unborn – they will be Corkmen one and all! And therefore they will write ‘novels’! Even we who are now alive could become naturalised Corkmen!
I had a vision, or nightmare, the other night. Dreamt I went up to the Patents Office in Dublin Castle to try to patent being Irish. I had drawn up a very detailed specification. You see, I want this unique affectation protected by world right. I am afraid of my life that other people will find out that being Irish pays and start invading our monopoly.
I am not sure that certain sections of the population in America have not already infringed our immemorial rights in this regard. I did not get very far with the stupid officials I saw.
They held that copyright did not subsist in being Irish and more or less suggested that it was open to any man to be Irish if he chose, and to behave in an Irish way. I pointed to the Cork colony, who were regarded by the rest of Ireland merely as Corkmen. No use.
The officials made the dastardly suggestion that even Corkmen could be regarded as Irishmen … of a kind. It was only on my way out that I realised the reason for this extraordinary attitude. Funny how the Coal Quay breaks out through the whitest official shirt.
Marching schoolboys
As I write, we have the ironic spectacle of young fellows on the march in Dublin demanding the safeguarding of schoolboys’ rights and their ancient entitlement to undergo examinations. Perhaps by the time this is printed somebody will have climbed down. But perhaps what one might call the pathology of literacy and literature is worth looking at.
What prompts a sane inoffensive man to write? Assuming that to ‘write’ is mechanically to multiply communication (though that is sometimes a strong assumption), what vast yeasty eructation of egotism drives a man to address simultaneously a mass of people he has never met, people who may resent being pestered with his ‘thoughts’? They don’t have to
read what he writes, you say? But they do. That is, indeed, the more vicious neurosis that calls for inquiry. The blind urge to read, the craving for print – that is an infirmity so deeply seated in the mind today as to be almost ineradicable. People blame compulsory education and Lord Northcliffe. The writer can be systematically discouraged, his ‘work’ can be derided and, if all else fails, in a military society the creative intellectuals can be liquidated. But what can you do with the passive print addict? Very little.
Average Day
Consider the average day of the average man who is averagedly educated. The moment he opens his eyes he reads that extremely distasteful and tragic story that is to be found morning after morning on the face of his watch. Late again. He is barely downstairs when he has thrown open (with what is surely the pathetic abandon of a person who knows he is lost) that white tablet of lies, his newspaper. He assimilates his literary narcotic in silence, giving only 5 per cent of his attention to the business of eating. His wife has ruined her sight from trying for years to read the same paper upside-down from the other side of the table, and he must therefore leave it behind him when he rushes out to his work. Our subject is nervous on his way, his movements are undecided; he is temporarily parted from his drug. Notice how advertisements he has been looking at for twenty years are frenziedly scrutinised, the books and papers of neighbours on the bus carefully scanned, even the bus ticket meticulously perused. Clocks are read and resented.
At last the office is reached. Hurrah! Thousands of documents – books, papers, letters, calendars, memos, diaries, threats to sue, bailiffs’ writs! Writing, typescript, PRINT! Heaven at last – an orgy of myopic indulgence! Consider the countless millions who sit in offices all day throughout the world endlessly writing to each other, endlessly reading each other’s writings! Inkwells falling and falling in level as words are extracted from them by the hundred thousand! Tape-machines, dictaphones, typewriters and printing presses wearing out their metal hearts to feed this monstrous lust for unspoken words!