Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Gems from an Irish CupboardA Book of Irish Quotations by Sean McMahonReview by: Joe McMinnFortnight, No. 215 (Mar. 4 - 17, 1985), p. 21Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25547730 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 17:23

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Fortnight Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Fortnight.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.105.245.44 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:23:19 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

^^^ ^^ ^ ^^ ^ II^H BOOKS GEMS FROM AN IRISH CUPBOARD

Joe McMinn

Sean McMahon (editor) A Book of Irish Quotations (O'Brien Press, IR?11.95)

Sean McMahon's Book of Irish Quotations is the first of its kind to be published in Ireland. In his modest introduction, he

says that short of something as systematic as the English Dictionary of Quotations the present work will have to do. Person

ally, 1 think his work achieves the best of both worlds - it will be of real academic value as well as a source of popular enter

tainment. Congratulations must go to the

author and to O'Brien Press for a well

presented, informative and very readable

contribution to Irish studies.

Reading books of quotations is a nos

talgic exercise, a bit like emptying out old drawers and cupboards, finding fragments of the past, some precious, most familiar,

several ridiculous. When the thousands of

fragmentary observations have a common

theme -

Ireland - it reads like an unofficial

history of people we used to be.

The earliest quotations come from the

Latin -

St Patrick and Scottus-with a very

generous illustration of the subsequent Gaelic literature from mediaeval bardic

verse, the folk poets O'Raftery and Merri

man, up to contemporary writers like

O'Direain. All of these are given in orig inal and translated form, and testify to the

varied relation of language to Irish liter

ature. Sean McMahon says he deliberately

prefers extracts from literature to those

from politics, "born of a continuing despair of Irish history, but his book often has the

opposite effect. Too frequently, the liter

ary quotations and their contexts, as with

modern writers like Heaney, are already familiar. The political entries are nearly

always striking, even without the elo

quence of their artistic cousins, Some real

gems have been dug here.

Paisley is always good for a laugh -

The

Catholics have been interfering in Ulster affairs since 1641' (August 1969); or one of his more poetical observations

- *We do

not accept the word of the slanderous ba

chelor who lives on the banks of the Tiber'

(December 1974). Staying with the clerical

imagination, a parish priest from Dingle on world issues

- 'Socialism is worse than

Communism. Socialism is a heresy of

communism. Socialists are a Protestant

variety of Communists' (June 1969).

Of current interest, perhaps, is Arch

bishop McQuaid's considered opinion -

"To speak of a right to contraception on

the part of an individual... is to speak of a

right that cannot even exist* (April 1971).

A little light relief from Jack Lynch - I

would not like to leave contraception on

the long finger too long' (May 1971). Per

haps a 'pre-historic' section might be con

sidered for the next edition.

So much for the familiar. Of more in

terest is finding the unknown alongside the

familiar: Michael Collins' soubriquet for

De Valera -

The Long Hoor'; what Swift

thought of Newry -

High church, low

steeple/Dirty streets, proud people'. We

all know that Bernadette Devlin, when she

gave Maudling a digging in the House of Commons after Bloody Sunday, said T am

sorry I did not go for his throat'; but just before the action she said T have a right, as

the only representative who was a witness,

to ask a question of that murdering hypo crite." Heah, heah! An unfortunate piece of prophetic prose comes from the North

ern Ireland Tourist Board in 1969: 'Shoot

ing is a popular sport in the countryside... Unlike many other countries, the out

standing characteristic of the sport has

been that it is not confined to any one

class." Script writers come and they go.

The only pattern to a book like this is one imposed by personal need or interest.

One very sombre pattern is found in the

private thoughts of men waiting to be exe

cuted: Kevin Barry noting that his crimes

included 'smiling derisively at a police

man'; Casement writing T feel just as it

they were going to kill a boy'; Tone, who slashed his windpipe instead of his jugular,

whispering to the doctor T find 1 am but a bad anatomist"; Thomas Clarke, pleased he will be shot, T feared it might be hang ing or imprisonment'. These are the kind

of human fragments only found in such a collection. Like verbal equivalents of rare

photographs. Not all the extracts are from Irish peo

ple. Many interesting contributions come from foreigners speaking of Ireland, es

pecially travellers -

Arthur Young, Sam

uel Johnson, De Beaumont, Virginia Woolf, Le Figaro, Engels, Kierkegaard, Goethe and Johann Kohl. Goethe sup plied Yeats with the image for Parnell's fate - 'The Irish seem to me like a pack of hounds, always dragging down some noble

stag.'

Everyone will have their favourite pieces from this book - the range is truly democratic. My own is Flann O'Brien

-

'When money's tight and is hard to get/ And your horse has also ran,/When all you have is a heap of debt -/A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.'

W-liffiHrEXTERNl?*w WF/ I 46 UNIVERSITY ST. BILFAST1T7 1HI TEL: 244003/240034 | \H?

'^_ JUMP sport and help EXTERN to reduce the number of young _ people In care and find new AWL^ H^ ways of working with offenders ?

II WW

You must be aa least 16 years of age. Full ground training Is If |H B| Hfe m given for a day at the Wild CWTCdM Geese parachute club near r ML I ^n |k 111 Garva before the drop. mtmmWm I HI ml m

A NORTHERN IRELAND CHARITY

/^W ̂ -, jy?L Sponsorship forms and more details

(Sgfelw EXTERN

^ JiTtt?!^ 4? Unlverslty street> Belfast BT7 1HB fffc^ WjL^jf Telephone 244003/248034

jj^j

Mg-W'Md/ww' EXTERN runs a day centre for the

wSM v&MW homeless, the West Belfast Auto Project, H|HijF^^^ accommodation tot, ex-offenders, a youth

\Wt Wm^mW^ workshop and an adult workshop. It helps fBbJRSp^ people reduce crime in their own areas and ^^W^^ assists ex-offenders back into ordinary life.

Fortnight 3rd March 1985 21

This content downloaded from 193.105.245.44 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:23:19 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions