My own reluctant conclusion is that the thing is impossible, if one is to be honest and factual. It would be easier and at least possible to write about the first book one remembers having read, the first book which stuck in the mind. And I would say that for anybody in my own age group, the book would most certainly be one by Charles Dickens, though by no means to be ignored is the possibility that it was ‘Knocknagow’.
Where’s the nigger in this woodpile?
Every ever-so-often I present here a dissertation on the meaning and usage of words; this pleases some people and infuriates others, who think words are arid and dessicated playthings but the subject is really important since words are the only tools we have for conveying anything but the simplest and plainest meaning.
Consider first the trick of intonation we call accent. By any standard of measurement Ireland is a tiny country, yet the northern and southern accents are totally dissimilar, and so is the pronunciation. The slow drawl that is heard in Tyrone is in great contrast with the sharp, rifle-crack parlance of Cork. Why should this be, and what causes this considerable variation? Personally I do not know. It cannot be topography, for landscape north and south is largely the same; there is a small possibility that the reason may be racial, though passing time should long have effaced that. In Britain the situation is far worse for, though the language is the same, people in the far north do not understand a word the southerners are saying.
I have been brooding on the great number of words in English which have totally different meanings as between Europe and the USA. Take the motor car, which is still nearly always an automobile in the States. With us the hood is that deplorable canvas affair to be erected or taken down with unmanageable arms; there it means our bonnet. (But hood is also short for hoodlum, or gangster.) Where we have a gear lever, they have a shift. When they need a refreshing milk shake or a bag of sweets (candy) they go to, of all places, a drug store. With us hardware could mean anything from barbed wire to buckets but this is the word they have for tanks and artillery. We go up in a lift but they insist on using the elevator. London has an underground system while New York has a subway and an entertainment which is a movie there becomes a picture or a film over here. An American vagrant is a bum but with us the word has quite another meaning. A most important difference attaches to the meaning of billion; here it means a million million, there a mere thousand million.
Mention of movies should remind us that the Americans have dozens of words or locutions which cannot properly be classed as slang but for which we have no native equivalent word at all. Just try translating the following:
Gatecrasher, flophouse, make a getaway, rough-house racketeer, lounge-lizard, OK, snap out of it, live wire, hard-boiled, down and out, go-getter, guy, pan out, pussyfoot, played out, quitter, size up, bawl out, canned music, cinch, double cross, bring home the bacon, monkey business, get down to brass tacks, sugar daddy, speakeasy, fourflusher, jinx, on the spot.
When it comes to slang proper, the sky’s the limit (which is itself a bit of slang). A rubberneck is a person who gawks stupidly at things, a rube is a country bumpkin, a man who commits suicide takes the Dutch route. A car which has much ostentatious ornamentation has pizzaz and when the presentation of a play is deliberately inflated and exaggerated, what has happened is a case of lollapalooza. And so on ad infinitum.
Conversely, the British have many words of their own which would puzzle even smart Americans. Samples which come to mind are biff, humdinger, conchy ( – note here that the military abbreviation CO can mean either conscientious objector or commanding officer), scrounge, cushy, fag, iron rations, copper, jabber, rung, pug, tippler, peepers, clink, cove.
A nigger in the woodpile is another bit of slang, but can you find him? In the first paragraph a fairly commonplace plain English word is very badly misspelled. No prize is offered, but can you find it? I would nearly bet you cannot, even if you look over my prose again several times. The answer is upside down here below.
ANSWER
Old troubles of a newspaper
Strikes, threats of redundancy, fears of disemployment through automation and other labour troubles are accepted as normal features of our time. Our bus strike has caused national chaos and severe public hardship; it is only a fortnight ago that a settlement was reached in a strike of all New York newspapers which left the citizens without any paper for 114 days; and everybody agreed that radio news was no substitute.
But let nobody suppose that such goings-on are characteristic of the second half of the twentieth century. I present this week some notes on the history of that august organ The Times of London.
It was started in 1785 by a John Walter but under the name of the Daily Universal Register; he changed the title to The Times on the 1st January, 1788, and was in the habit of calling his publication ‘a logographic newspaper’. That term would probably puzzle the printers of today but it proves that Walter was a very intelligent and far-seeing man.
Of course type was set by hand in those days but the logographic system, for which Walter held several patents, entailed casting all the more frequently recurring words in one piece, entire. It was in fact a system of partial stereotyping. It was said by the wits that his orders to the type-founders ran like this: ‘Send me a hundredweight, in separate pounds, of heat, cold, wet, dry, murder, fire, dreadful robbery, atrocious outrage, fearful calamity and alarming explosion.’
Being an Editor in those days was no honour and no joke. In a climate of political storm Walter was imprisoned several times for articles against important people and in 1790 had to stand in the pillory for a libel against the Duke of York. He died in 1812 and his son who succeeded him was the real founder of the paper’s greatness and reputation. But he also offended the Government and they retaliated in a way unfortunately familiar to newspapers of today – they withdrew their standing order for the printing of lists of Customs duties and all their advertising. In those days there were no book reviews but great attention was paid to the drama.
And now along comes that most contentious thing we call progress. The Times had been laboriously printed by hand-press, several pressmen struggling for hours to produce the 4,000 or so copies which was the total circulation. A compositor named Martyn had invented a machine superseding this method and which was powered by steam.
The pressmen threatened to wreck this machine if it was installed but it was smuggled into the office piecemeal, with Walter going about under various disguises lest the workmen set about wrecking him personally. His courage failed when the moment for action arrived but he returned to the charge in 1814, when he had the mechanical plant installed in the house next door to The Times office.
One night he entered the old pressroom with a copy of this paper, the ink still wet, in his hand and told the pressmen to their astonishment, that the paper had just been printed by steam. He added that if they tried any rough stuff, he had already arranged to have all the protection he needed at hand, and that every man would continue to receive his pay until new employment was found for him. There was something eerily modern about that ‘no redundancy’ tactic.
That machine was too complicated, however, and another firm invented the cylindrical method of printing as known today, with a speed of 8,000 copies an hour. Then came Hoe’s process, with speeds of up to 22,000 copies.
The Times had been nicknamed ‘The Thunderer’ by Carlisle, and many Irishmen were associated with it, as they still are. An Irishman named Captain Stirling, who had fought in the battle of Vinegar Hill (I am sorry I cannot say on which side) was paid over £2,000 a year for writing ferocious leading articles.
Tom Moore was offered £100 a month if he would contribute, and Southey turned down an offer of £2,000 a year if he would take over the editorial chair. John Delane, who retired through ill-health in 1877, was the paper’s most competent and distinguished editor since the start and gave it the final polish that won it worldwide respect and esteem.
Yet in those early days
the paper lacked the dignity (which some people would call smugness) which informs it today. It had qualities we are inclined to associate with the gutter press. It was to the fore in exposing fraudulent promotion schemes and swindlers of every description, and carried on its own violent private feuds with public men. Its influence on Parliament and political changes was immense, and even Prime Ministers feared it.
It was the pioneer, too, in establishing the modern system of having correspondents stationed at capital cities and seats of war abroad and constantly beat its contemporaries in being first with the news. In 1870 its advertising revenue was of the order of £1,500 a day, and it was estimated that an issue consumed 70 tons of paper and 2 tons of ink. Nor was it the old-fashioned thing of 4 pages: its normal size was 24 pages, or 144 columns.
When it made mistakes it made them courageously. It warned the public of the misery and ruin which would attend what it called ‘the railway mania’ when trains were running at the unprecedented speed of 15 miles an hour and persisted in this attitude despite the fact that it resulted in the loss of £3,000 a week in railway advertising. And it was notable not only for paying the highest price for articles but by giving generous pensions to staff members who retired.
The attitude of The Times to Ireland and her troubles is another week’s story. After disclosure of the Pigott forgery, Parnell sued the paper for £100,000 for libel, but settled for £5,000.
There’s something fishy here
This week I should like to venture a little comment on a subject which has many aspects and is much talked and written about, sometimes praised, sometimes condemned as a gross public scandal, occasionally denounced as a ripe example of the stage the country has come to.
No, I don’t mean hooliganism, the price of drink, dance halls, or even bingo. I mean navigation and fishing, and those two pursuits are much tied up with each other. I claim to know a bit about both, unlike most other people, who think they know EVERYTHING about them.
Ireland is a small island in which it is impossible to stand anywhere without being within 55 miles of the sea; and a glance at the map shows that, by reason of the profusion of great lakes and rivers, the country is internally waterlogged. Yet everywhere it is difficult – often impossible – to get fresh fish at a reasonable cost.
Poaching is rampant all over the country but any fish illegally taken (particularly the noble salmon) is intended exclusively for the black market. I find the situation is inexplicable, and made by no means the clearer by any babble from politicians, pisciculturists or those wisest of men, economists.
I am sure most readers will share a memory of my own very early youth. In those days one did not require a clear mind or a handy newspaper to know that a certain morning of the week was a Friday morning; lurid banshee shrieks from the street or road outside betokened that a woman was on her rounds with a basket selling fish, usually real fresh herrings, at possibly tuppence each. She is now as obsolete as men wearing wigs and swords.
Technical people say that our sea-going fishermen are lazy and incompetent and that the steam trawlers they use are quite unsuitable – far too small and unfitted for proper cruises of 8 or 9 days. Well, their predecessors used sail, which made their trips far more unpredictable as to distance and duration, and yet they landed immeasurably more fish. The poor folk of the West lived on fish and potatoes, and it is true that the currach is the most primitive of vessesls.
If we are not to be forced to the conclusion it is the men who are different, we may fall back on the theory that the distribution system of the fish trade is ruinously inefficient. One hears of a big catch being landed in Donegal but having to be dumped in a fish-meal factory owing to the prohibitive cost of transporting the catch and marketing it in the cities and bigger towns. It is a comforting thought, even if the comfort is a bit perverse, but it does suggest that such chaos could be somehow remedied.
But another possibility, not lightly to be dismissed, is that Irish people as a whole do not like fish. Certainly where fish is to be had, the choice available to them is laughably limited: herring (perhaps), whiting and cod. Shellfish such as lobster or oyster is out of the question at the best of times owing to cost, and most people hold that mackerel is uneatable unless cooked within 12 hours of being landed. Plaice and sole are regarded as luxuries, sinful to buy.
I have personally done some sailing, mostly in Dublin Bay and thereabouts, and there is no more exhilarating way of passing the time if one has a good boat, the skill to sail it and a fair breeze. Mackerel hauled in from lines trailing at the stern taste indescribably wonderful if flung on the pan of a good primus stove almost before they are dead. But there are other fish, too.
What does the reader think of the following list? Sennit, Wall, Granny, Thief, Seizing, Diamond.
Would you fry, boil, stew or roast them? No, faith – for they are knots that are familiar to a good yachtsman, and you can’t eat ropes (which we yachtsmen always call ‘sheets’).
To the good landlocked folk of Carlow I would say this: never take out a sailing boat alone unless you have experience and know how to handle it, even on quite inland water. For then you might find yourself not only IN THE CART but, far worse, IN THE BARROW!
Taking too much for granted
All of us every day make use of small items and services so constantly and casually that we usually become quite unaware of them. But if you happen to be walking across the Curragh of Kildare and, quite alone, decide to light a cigarette, the discovery that you haven’t got a match can be a calamitous shock.
It can be an occurrence that seems to darken the sun. And if you found you had a box of matches all right but not a solitary cigarette, you would probably conclude that earlier in the day you had taken leave of your senses.
The fact is that we take too much for granted.
That was the sentiment which came into my head at the start of the bus strike several weeks ago, when I was living just outside Dublin city. True, the strike was countrywide but the importance of public transport in a big city is far more vital than anywhere in rural Ireland.
In effect it is the city’s bloodstream, and the total absence of buses caused something not far from absolute paralysis. As in all big modern cities, very few people live in the inner warrens and hives of work; they live as far out as they can and daily commute to their offices, factories or shops.
And when the carrying firm is in fact a State monopoly, a strike is an absolute thing. It could in many cases impose severe hardship, sometimes perhaps death, though this is not the place to argue out the wrongs and the rights of the occurrence. It is however worth noting that initially the men struck in defiance of the advice of their union leaders.
The worthwhile question is this: how did the Dublin people manage for those five weeks?
I am delighted to report that they managed very well, often achieving miracles of improvisation, and the heroes who shone most brightly were the owners of private cars. To wait at a bus stop on a lonely suburban road was to be certain of a lift into town, and in a matter of minutes. Alas, the snag was getting a lift out again, for hanging about traffic-packed city streets gives no clue as to destination.
As is usual in most civil catastrophes, the situation had many diverting aspects. The eye was confronted with motor vehicles of unbelievable antiquity, bicycles which had probably not been on a public road since 1919, and a veritable swarm of scooters, tandems, motor-bikes and even bath chairs. There was no limit, provided the ‘yoke’ had wheels.
And there was, of course, always the horse, though I cannot imagine where one could park a horse. Finally, a great number of people were forced to acknowledge an astonishing conclusion: that is that they could still walk, and that this exercise did them no harm.
Not a few (call them eccentrics if you will) came to the conclusion that buses were a curse, devices to make the able-bodied into effete wastrels, and an insult to civilisation.
The British in wartime plugged the phrase IS YOUR
JOURNEY REALLY NECESSARY? It was a shrewd and effective question, for in those years overladen transport was being choked by people whose business was mainly to wander about and gaze at shop windows.
That question was much asked in Dublin of late, and in thousands of cases the short honest answer was NO. But that meant disastrous business for cinemas and theatres.
What was done by the Government, itself largely responsible for the crisis? Next to nothing at all. A small number of dirty Army lorries (I was in two) were run between selected suburban points and the city centre. Each Minister has a Mercedes-Benz to go about in.
It is not right, I think, to be frivolous about an affair of this kind. A city is a monstrously artificial invention, and its inhabitants are pathetically vulnerable from every angle. My own form of personal solace was to meditate on what would happen if there was a countrywide strike of the staff of the Electricity Supply Board.
Think that one out. Tens of thousands of homes would have no heat or light. Many water and sewerage systems would collapse, since many have pumping installations. No telephone to call doctor or priest if you are suddenly very sick, and no prospects of the essential operation even if you do get to hospital.
I’ll pile on a final horror: no Teiefis Eireann!
Do you like doing it yourself?
In a long, holy and brilliant life I have done many things but this week let me mention just one little sortie of mine. Several years ago I was directed, in two succeeding years, to go to London as ‘observer’ rather than as a member to the annual congress of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.