Myles (1 Viewer)

[rettucs]

These are brilliant

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1003/1224305145571.html

MYLES NA GOPALEEN


I HAPPENED to glance at my hands the other day and noticed they were yellow. Conclusion: I am growing old (though I claim I am not yet too old to dream). Further conclusion: I should set about writing my memoirs. Be assured that such a book would be remarkable, for to the extraordinary adventures which have been my lot there is no end. (Nor will there be.) Here is one little adventure that will give you some idea.


Many years ago a Dublin friend asked me to spend an evening with him. Assuming that the man was interested in philosophy and knew that immutable truth can sometimes be acquired through the kinesis of disputation, I consented. How wrong I was may be judged from the fact that my friend arrived at the rendezvous in a taxi and whisked me away to a licensed premises in the vicinity of Lucan.

Here I was induced to consume a large measure of intoxicating whiskey.

My friend would not hear of another drink in the same place, drawing my attention by nudges to a very sinister-looking character who was drinking stout in the shadows some distance from us.

He was a tall cadaverous person, dressed wholly in black, with a face of deathly grey. We left and drove many miles to the village of Stepaside, where a further drink was ordered. Scarcely to the lip had it been applied when both us noticed – with what feelings I dare not describe – the same tall creature in black, residing in a distant shadow and apparently drinking the same glass of stout.
We finished our own drinks quickly and left at once, taking in this case the Enniskerry road and entering a hostelry in the purlieus of that village.

Here more drinks were ordered but had hardly appeared on the counter when, to the horror of myself and friend, the sinister stranger was discerned some distance away, still patiently dealing with his stout.

We swallowed our drinks raw and hurried out. My friend was now thoroughly scared, and could not be dissuaded from making for the far-away hamlet Celbridge; his idea was that, while another drink was absolutely essential, it was equally essential to put many miles as possible between ourselves and the sinister presence we had just left.


Need I say what happened? We noticed with relief that the public house we entered in Celbridge was deserted, but as our eyes became more accustomed to the poor light, we saw him again; he was standing in the gloom, a more terrible apparition than ever before, ever more menacing with each meeting. My friend had purchased a bottle of whiskey and was now dealing with the stuff in large gulps.


I saw at once that a crisis had been reached and that desperate action was called for.


“No matter where we go,” I said, “this being will be there unless we can now assert a superior will and confound evil machinations that are on foot. I do not know whence comes this apparition, but certainly of this world it is not. It is my intention to challenge him.”


My friend gazed at me in horror, made some gesture of remonstrance, but apparently could not speak.


My own mind was made up. It was me or this diabolical adversary: there could be no evading the clash of wills, only one of us could survive. I finished my drink with an assurance I was far from feeling and marched straight up to the presence.


A nearer sight of him almost stopped the action of my heart; here undoubtedly was no man but some spectral emanation from the tomb, the undead come on some task of inhuman vengeance.


“I do not like the look of you,” I said, somewhat lamely.


“I don’t think so much of you either,” the thing replied; the voice was cracked, low and terrible.


“I demand to know,” I said sternly, “why you persist in following myself and my friend everywhere we go.”


“I cannot go home until you first go home,” the thing replied. There was an ominous undertone in this that almost paralysed me.


“Why not?” I managed to say.


“Because I am the taxi-driver!”


Out of such strange incidents is woven the pattern of what I am pleased to call my life.

The Irish Times are printing one a day for the month of October

 

[David Kronenbourg]

deadly

 

[nEiLo]

I was given a copy of At Swim To Birds for my birthday. Must be almost 20 since I read it. Fantastic book.

 

[rettucs]

I was given a copy of At Swim To Birds for my birthday. Must be almost 20 since I read it. Fantastic book.

I read it last year and couldn't make head-nor-tail of it. Will definitely give it another bash soon. I enjoyed this paragraph about At-Swim, from a Fintan O'Toole article in saturday's times (they had a supplement devoted to O'Nolan)

This is a book that begins by questioning why a book should have just one opening, and proceeds to give us three. It is a book by a man (Brian O’Nolan) who invents an author (Flann O’Brien) who is writing a book about an unnamed student narrator who is writing a book about a man (Dermot Trellis) who is writing a book. The narrator openly declares that “a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham” and that “the modern novel should be largely a work of reference”, since virtually all characters have already been invented. Its governing caprice is that fictional characters do in fact already exist, have independent lives and are capable of revolting against the author. The novel is a treasure house of brilliant pastiches of everything from Gaelic sagas and Irish folkloric narratives to the Bible, Victorian encyclopedias, scholasticism, pub poets, cowboy novels and trashy thrillers.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

i found at swim a bit mental as well. hadn't a clue what was going on.

 

[ann post]

I love at swim two birds, always thought it was way better than the third policeman.

 

[rettucs]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1004/1224305205285.html

Cruiskeen Lawn January 11th, 1941

MYLES NA gCOPALEEN

A LADY lecturing recently on the Irish language drew attention to the fact (I mentioned it myself as long ago as 1925) that, while the average English speaker gets along with a mere 400 words, the Irish-speaking peasant uses 4,000.

Considering what most English speakers can achieve with their tiny fund of noises, it is a nice speculation to what extremity one would be reduced if one were locked up for a day with an Irish-speaking bore and bereft of all means of committing murder or suicide.

My point, however, is this. The 400/4,000 ration is fallacious; 400/400,000 would be more like it. There is scarcely a single word in the Irish (barring, possibly, Sasanach) that is simple and explicit.

Apart from words with endless shades of cognate meaning, there are many with so complete a spectrum of graduated ambiguity that each of them can be made to express two directly contrary meanings, as well as a plethora of intermediate concepts that have no bearing on either.

And all this strictly within the linguistic field. Superimpose on all that the miasma of ironic usage, poetic licence, oxymoron, plamás, Celtic invasion, Irish bullery and Paddy Whackery, and it is a safe bet that you will find yourself very far from home. Here is an example copied from Dinneen and from more authentic sources known only to my little self.

Cur, g. curtha and cuirthe, m. – act of putting, sending, sowing, raining, discussing, burying, vomiting, hammering into the ground, throwing through the air, rejecting, shooting, the setting or clamp in a rick of turf, selling, addressing, the crown of cast-iron buttons which have been made bright by contact with cliff-faces, the stench of congealing badger’s suet, the luminance of glue-lice, a noise made in an empty house by an unauthorised person, a heron’s boil, a leprachaun’s (sic) denture, a sheep-biscuit, the act of inflating hare’s offal with a bicycle pump, a leak in a spirit level, the whinge of a sewage farm windmill, a corncrake’s clapper, the scum on the eye of a senile ram, a dustman’s dumpling, a beetle’s faggot, the act of loading every rift with ore, a dumb man’s curse, a blasket, a “kur”, a fiddler’s occupational disease, a fairy godmother’s father, a hawk’s vertigo, the art of predicting past events, a wooden coat, a custard-mincer, a blue-bottle’s “farm”, a gravy flask, a timber-mine, a toy craw, a porridge-mill, a fair-day donnybrook with nothing barred, a stoat’s stomach-pump, a

broken –

But what is the use? One could go on and on without reaching anywhere in particular.

Your paltry English speaker apprehends sea-going craft through the infantile cognition which merely distinguishes the small from the big.

If it’s small, it’s a boat, and if it’s big it’s a ship. In his great book An tOileánach, however, the uneducated Tomás Ó Criomhthain uses, perhaps, a dozen words to convey the concept of carrying super-marinity – árthrach long, soitheach, bád, naomhóg, bád raice, galbhád, púcán and whatever you are having yourself.

The plight of the English speaker with his wretched box of 400 vocal beads may be imagined when I say that a really good Irish speaker would blurt out the whole 400 in one cosmic grunt. In Donegal there are native speakers who know so many million words that it is a matter of pride with them never to use the same word twice in a life-time. Their life (not to say their language) becomes very complex at the century mark; but there you are.

 

[rettucs]

deadly

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1005/1224305259154.html

Cruiskeen Lawn December 9th, 1957

MYLES NA gCOPALEEN

SOMEBODY SHOULD write a monograph on the use of the word “supposed” in this country.

Start listening for it, either in your own mouth or in others, and you will see that is comprises the sum of the national character, that, it is a mystical synthesis of all Irish habits, hopes and regrets.

There is no immediately obvious or neat Gaelic equivalent, and I harbour the guess that the discovery of this boon “supposed”, may have been a factor in the change over to English.

You meet a man as you take a walk along the strand at Tramore. “Of course, I’m not supposed to be here at all,” he tells you, “I’m supposed to be travelling for orders for th’oul fella in Cork. I’m here for the last week. How long are you supposed to be staying?”

The word occurs most frequently in connection with breaches of the law or in circumstances where the gravest catastrophe is imminent. You enter a vast petrol depot. The place is full of refineries, tanks, and choking vapour fills the air. The man on the spot shows you the wonders and in due course produces his cigarettes and offers you one. “Of course I needn’t tell you,” he comments as he lights up, “there’s supposed to be no smoking here at all.”

You enter a tavern, meet a butty you have not seen for ages, and you invite him to join you in a drink. He accepts. He toasts your health, takes a long libation and gingerly replaces the glass on the counter. He then taps his chest in the region of the heart. “As you know,” he remarks casually, “I’m not supposed to touch this stuff.”

Yes, drink is full of this property of suppose. You have been to some very late and boring function. You are going home, you feel you need a drink but you are a gentleman and know nothing about the licensing laws. Naturally you rap at the door of the first pub you see. All is in darkness. The door opens, a head appears, it peeps up the street and down; next thing you are whisked in.

“We’re supposed to be closed, you know.”

Menuhin is not a great violinist, in the view of the Irish. He is merely supposed to be one of the greatest violinists in the world. Nor is Irish the national language of Ireland, the Constitution not withstanding. It is supposed to be. You are not supposed to own a radio set without paying the licence. Not more than eight people are supposed to stand inside a bus, and none is supposed to stand on top. You are aware that your colleague was at the races when he was supposed to be sick, but you are not supposed to know and certainly you are not supposed to report such an occurrence. You are not supposed to use the firm’s telephone for a private trunk call. And so on. In no such context does the term “not supposed” connote prohibition. Rather does it indicate the recognition of the existence of a silly taboo which no grown-up person can be expected to take seriously. It is the verbal genuflection of the worshipper who has come to lay violent hands on the image he thus venerates. It is the domestic password in the endemic conspiracy of petty lawlessness. All that I believe to be true, though possibly I am not supposed to say it so bluntly.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

happy birthday, Brian

 

[pete]

From today's Irish times letters page:


Sir, – Brian Ó Nualláin (Flann O’Brien) acted as secretary to the McCarthy tribunal into the death of 35 children in a fire at St Joseph’s Orphanage, Cavan in 1943. Many questions remained unanswered after that inquiry, but Ó Nualláin’s career as a civil servant was not enhanced when he penned the lines: “In Cavan there was a great fire; Joe McCarthy came down to inquire/ If the nuns were to blame/ It would be a shame/ So it had to be caused by a wire”. – Yours, etc,

LOUIS O’FLAHERTY,
Lorcan Drive,
Santry, Dublin 9.

 

[rettucs]

From today's Irish times letters page:


Sir, – Brian Ó Nualláin (Flann O’Brien) acted as secretary to the McCarthy tribunal into the death of 35 children in a fire at St Joseph’s Orphanage, Cavan in 1943. Many questions remained unanswered after that inquiry, but Ó Nualláin’s career as a civil servant was not enhanced when he penned the lines: “In Cavan there was a great fire; Joe McCarthy came down to inquire/ If the nuns were to blame/ It would be a shame/ So it had to be caused by a wire”. – Yours, etc,

LOUIS O’FLAHERTY,
Lorcan Drive,
Santry, Dublin 9.

sure if you can't have a laugh at an orphanage fire, what can you laugh at!

 

[Moods For Mallards]

The Poor Mouth is probably my favourite Flann/Myles thing.

I'd recommend that anyone starts with The Best of Myles though. Brilliant hilarity, it's been beside my bed for years now and I dip into it the odd time.

 

[rettucs]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1006/1224305330413.html

"..but those of us who do not spend all our time in the universe..."

indeed

Cruiskeen Lawn March 7th, 1958

I FOUND myself going homeward the other evening, not in a cab but in that odd mobile apartment with the dun-coloured wall paper, a brown study. Long, long thoughts were in my mind. I was contemplating myself in the light of certain occult criteria which substitute for “time”, “death”, “success” and other imponderables that blinding flash of vision which simultaneously begins, explains and closes all. (Do ye folly me?) Such insights as I have been vouchsafed give warning that all of us will encounter serious trouble in due time, for the upper limits of our serial existences bristle with complexity and problems. Your politician will assure you that the post-war world is still the great problem that looms ahead (stale and all as the alibi is in 1958) but those of us who do not spend all our time in this universe well know that the real problem will be the post-world war.

Yet, going home that evening, I was remembering my small self, thinking of all that had happened through the years, re-examining the melange of achievement, grief and disillusion which I am please to call my life, or ma vie bohemienne. Lord, what a skillet of strange stew that has been! Praise I have received, blame also: yet how vain are both, how easy of purchase in the mart of men! I feel that one thing at least stands forever to my credit in the golden ledgers – the rather generous provision I made for the widow Manity and her children when her husband, my best friend, died after a long illness. Poor suffering Hugh Manity, I kept the promise I made to him on this death bed.

When I reached Santry I was in an odd mood for one who is a philosopher and world authority on the Scaligers. I felt . . . old. Age hath like a brandy a mellowness yet withal a certain languor. My daughter was in the next room; my daughter was humming and putting on her hat. I called her. “Hello, Bella. Sit down for a moment will you.” “Yes, Poppa. What’s the matter?” A long watery stare out of the window. The pipe is introduced and fiddled with.

“Bella, how old are you?”

“Nineteen, Poppa. Why?”

Another pause without comfort.

“Bella, we’ve known each other for a long time. Nineteen years. I remember when you were very small. You were a very good child.”

“Yes, Poppa.”

More embarrassment.

“Bella . . . I have been good to you haven’t I? At least I have tried to be.” “You are the best in the world, Poppa. What are you trying to tell me?”

“Bella, I want to say something to you. I am going to give you a surprise, Bella. Please don’t think ill of me . . . but . . . Bella –”

With a choking noise she sprang forward and had her arms about me. “Oh Poppa, I know, I know! I know what you are going to say. You . . . you’re not my Poppa at all. You found me one day . . . when I was very small . . . and you brought me home . . . and cared for me . . . and now you find you have been in love with me all these years.”

Well boys adear, what would you do, reader? Ah? With a coarse oath I flung the trollop from me, went to the wardrobe and pulled on the long dark overcoat Dev gave me many years ago. With collar up, I stamped out into the rain, hurrying with long loping strides to the local cinema. In my pocket was the old-fashioned blue-metal Mauser, a present from Hamar Greenwood. I demanded to see the manager. This suave ruffian came out and invited me into his private office.

Soon afterwards two shots rang out, and I sincerely hope I will be given the opportunity of explaining to the jury that I had merely wished to suggest to the girl that I had worked and scraped for years to keep other people in luxury, and that it was time I should be relieved of the humiliation of having to press my own trousers.

 

[Flux]

Nice to see Brian O'Nolan on the 55p stamp. He doesn't get half enough recognition.

 

[Cormcolash]

I have At Swim Two-Birds in the house, its class

 

[rettucs]

again, excellent

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1010/1224305519093.html

MYLES NA gCOPALEEN

IN THE Dublin District Court yesterday, an elderly man who gave his name as Myles na gCopaleen was charged with begging, disorderly conduct, using bad language and with being in illegal possession of an armchair.

He was also charged with failing to register as an alien.

A Detective Sergeant gave evidence of finding the defendant in the centre of a crowd in Capel Street.

He was sitting in the chair, cursing and using bad language. He became abusive when asked to move on and threatened to “take on” witness and “any ten butties” witness could find. Defendant was exhibiting a card bearing the words “Spare a copper, all must help each other in this cold world”. Defendant lay down in the gutter when witness went to arrest him; he shouted to the crowd to rescue him, that he was a republican soldier. Witness had to send for assistance.

Defendant: Quid immerentes hospites vexas canis ignavus adversum lupos?

Detective Sergeant: This man had no difficulty in speaking English when he was lying on the street. This sort of thing makes a farce of the language movement.

Justice: If defendant does not deign to convenience the court, we will have to get an interpreter.

Defendant (to Justice): I knew your ould one.

Detective Sergeant: Your Honour can see the type he is.

Defendant: I seen the sticks of furniture on the road in 1927, above in Heytesbury Street. Now seemingly things is changed. Fortuna non mutat genus. (Laughter).

Justice: You would be well advised to behave yourself.

Defendant: Of all people.

Justice: Where did you get this chair you had?

Defendant said he got the chair from a man he met in Poolbeg Street. He did not know the man’s name. The man was on his way to pawn the chair and witness agreed to take it off his hands. He bought the chair.

Justice: For how much?

Defendant: £45.

Justice: It’s a pity a tallboy isn’t the subject of a tall tale like that.

(Laughter).

Defendant said he was trying to go straight but the Guards were down on him. He was holding a political meeting in Capel Street when he was savagely assaulted by the Sergeant. He was discussing monetary reform and mendicancy. He had as much right to obstruct the thoroughfare as the “Fianna Fáil crowd”.

He was kicked in the ribs by the Sergeant while lying on the ground. He would settle his account with the Sergeant at another time and in another place. This much only would he say: Cave, cave: namque in malos asperrimus parata tollo cornua.

Detective Sergeant: This type of person gives the police a lot of trouble, Your Honour.

Justice: I can see that. (To defendant) Are you married?

Defendant: Are you?

Justice: Impertinence won’t help you.

Defendant: It won’t help anybody.The question you put is apparently equally offensive to both of us. I am a victim of circumstance. Maloribus praesidiis et copiis oppugnatur res publica quam defenditur propterea quod audaces homines et perditi nuta impelluntur et ipsi etiam sponte sua contra rem publican incitantur.

Detective Sergeant: This is a very hardened character, Your Honour. He was convicted for loitering at Swansea in 1933.

Justice: I must convict. There is far too much of this sort of thing in Dublin and I am determined to put it down.

Defendant: What sort of thing?

Justice: The larceny of armchairs.

Defendant: It wasn’t an armchair. There were no arms on it.

Justice: You will go to Mountjoy for three weeks.

Defendant asked that 6,352 other offences should be taken into consideration.

Justice: I refuse to hear you further.

Defendant: Very well. I’ll appeal.

Defendant was then led below, muttering.

A sequel is expected.

 

[rettucs]

for Breaking Bad fans!

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1011/1224305578105.html

YEARS AGO when I was living in Islington, a cub reporter in the service of Tay Pay, founder of that modern scourge, the “gossip column”, I had great trouble with my landlord. The man was a vulgar low bowler-hatted plumber who tortured me exquisitely by

his vulgarity of dress, talk and aspect. The situation rapidly became Russian. Evenings in the yellow gaslight, myself immersed in a letter to George Harris or painfully compiling my first novel, the gross plumber audibly eating tripe in an armchair behind me. The succession – the crescendo of “Greek” emotion – irritation – anger – loathing – then hatred. And then the quiet grey thought – I will do this creature in. I will do for him, gorblimey, if I have to swing for it!

It is funny how small things irk far beyond their own intrinsic significance. The way he sucked at his dirty pipe, too lazy or stupid to light it. The trick of never lacing his boots up completely. And his low boasting about his drinking. Forty-eight pints of cider in a Maidenhead inn. Mild and bitter by the gallon. I remember retorting savagely on one occasion that I would drink him under the table. Immediately came the challenge to do so. “Not now,” I remember saying, “but sooner than you think, my good friend.” That is the way we talked in those days. Possibly it was just then that I first formed my murderous resolution. But I digress.

When I had finally decided to murder this insufferable plumber, I naturally occupied my mind for some days with the mechanics of sudden death. I was familiar with the practice of homicide fashionable in the eighties, and I laid my plans with some care. I took to locking my bedroom so that the paraphernalia of execution could be amassed without arousing the suspicions of the patient.

The chopper was duly purchased, together with a spare hatchet in case the plumber’s skull should withstand the chopper. I attended a physical culture class to improve my muscles. Alcohol and tobacco were discontinued. I took long walks on Sunday afternoons and slept with the window wide open. But most important of all – remember that I speak of the gaslit eighties – I purchased a large bath and the customary drums of acid.

I was then ready. The precise moment of execution did not matter so much. It would coincide with some supreme extremity of irritation. And it did. One evening, re-opening the manuscript of my novel, I discovered traces of tripe on the clean copper-plate pages. The wretched plumber had been perusing my private documents. I went upstairs whistling “The Girl in the Hansom Cab,” came down cheerfully with the chopper behind my back, and opened the ruffian’s skull from crown to neck with a haymaker of a wallop that nearly broke my own arm. The rest was simple. I carried the body up to my room and put it in the bath of acid. Nothing more remained but to put things in order for my departure next day for a week’s holiday with my old parents in Goraghwood, my native place.

When I returned to London, I went up to the bedroom with some curiosity. There was nothing to be seen save the bath of acid. I carried the bath down to the sittingroom and got a glass. I filled the glass with what was in the bath, crept in under the table and swallowed the burning liquid. Glass after glass I swallowed till all was gone.

It was with grim joy that I accomplished my threat that I would drink this plumber under the table. It was the sort of thing one did at the turn of the century.