HANG, DOG AND GNAW BONE by Perkin Warbeck

There is a recent phenomenon called the ‘Evil Clown ’ which has caused a whole lot of upset and even driven that Super-Mac of Malevolence, Ronald McDonald into taking a hasty Sabbatical.

Unfortunately, this is a phenomenon which is not at all recent in the Free Southern Stateen. It concerns a clown of the low mass communications industry who appears on the Sabbath and alas, is never in the slightest danger of being compelled to take a Sabbatical.

In fairness, going backsideways, one cannot help reading this clown’s column without being reminded of S. Milligan. (See below)

The court jester who fulfills this role with no little relish in the Sindo recently came up with this title in that malfunctioning Organ of Rex Accord:

“Love/Hate feeling for the Gaeilge, minus the love.”

Thus read the headline of the  ‘Game for a Scaff ‘ column of one   Dec ‘The Neck’ Lynch (for it is he !)

There is a profound silence on the part of what might be called the Irish intelligentsia and others in the ‘Arts’ who astonishingly seem to accept the officially sponsored line on Compulsory Irish, to live with the lie in general.

This of course is a loy, a little loy, a juvenile jest which our Playboy of the West British World, our jester in cap and bells which, ar ndoigh/ of course, utilises as his stock in trade when it comes to dealing with what he calls, ‘The Big Lie that is Irish’, or to be more precise, and in keeping with his Southern Yune view: ‘The Big Lie that is Leprechaun’.

As the straight-faced foil of the jester might put it, he who functions, as it were, in TUT as his o’ tool or sounding board: Of the truthiness, truthy.

There is a song in Leprechaun called Amhrán na mBréag / The Song of Lies, which is a genre common to many languages and which is not entirely inapropos the, erm, poppycock which is this clown’s stock in trade:

-Chonaic mé breac ag baint coinín as a pholl

Is nead ag an bhfuiseog i ngob an ghandail

Cearc uisce ag cronán is ag baint ceoil as trumpa

‘S madra rua ar an dtinteán is an criogar ag amhastraigh.

To translate that Erse verse into this slice of supposed prose of the German Q’s English:

-I saw a trout pulling a rabbit from its hole/ A lark nesting in the beak of a gander/

A water-hen crooning and blowing a trumpet/ A fox on the hearth and a cricket barking.

(The following two lines were rejected on the basis of being too phantasmagoric:

Chonaic mé giobal leis an dá fhocal seo le spéis  / Domhnach agus Neamhpleách mar ‘riobal áiféis’

– I saw a rag with the following – two words / Sunday and Independent – too absurd.

Mais revenons a nos moutons / But, let us return to the sheep-like bleating in q.

There is a profound silence on the part of what might be called the Irish intelligentsia and others in the ‘Arts’.

It is necessary only to consider one element of the ‘Arts’ here – specifically, the theatre, to realise the comic depths of this buffoonery or eejitry as its author would prefer: three examples of which will suffice, dealing with, as it happens, the top three theatres in the country, more or lissome:

-The Gadaboutery of GAD: Gate, Abbey, Druid.

1. In the Gate and the Abbey exciting new appointments have been announced in the form of a young English lady to the top job in the Gate and (even more exciting) a pair of Scottish laddies to the top job of the Abbey. The appointment of Selina Cartmell as the top Gatekeeper was greeted with a message of subdued ecstasy by ‘Waking the Feminists’ aka WTF, whose stock in trade is…….(fill in as apt).
2. Their response to the appointment of Neil Murray and Graham McLaren from the National Theatre of Scotland tp Amharclann Náisiúnta na hEireann/ D’Abbey is still awaited, though the word in the pits and the gods alike is that the Sisters of the Bubbling Cauldron will not at all balk at the appointment of this kilt-wearing producers of, erm, Scottish plays. Their Herprimatur is inevitable.

(Compulsory English / Mandatory Majesty-speak is safe in the Motely Land on Liffeyside !)

3. Gary Hynes, Bachelor of Arts, the diminutive busy boots of the Druid Theatre and late of the Abbey Theatre who has imposed a policy of Compulsory English with a mailed, oops female fist, regardless of theatrical location. Has to do with some kind of childhood trauma thingy of being brought up in a (gasp) Leprechaun-speaking household, as she has gone to (yawn, stretch, trouser cough) great lengths to expatiate upon in the media to any Freeloading First Nighter happy to lend an ear.

Only one with a heart of stone could forbear, not unlike O.Wilde who, on first reading the death of Little Nell, outburst into uproarious laughter.

( The clue may be in her foreshortened first name: Gary, short for (gulp) Gearoidin.)

That it should happen during the rule of Fine Gael is perhaps not entirely inapt? For whom the PC Know Nothings tend to vote although Fianna Fail Better are not too badly supported too by the same cohort. The KNs made it a point of principle to pronounce Fine to rhyme with Wine (even if the dregs are not quite what is on that which they are pleased to call their ‘mind’).

This is peculiar: for they have no problem – take, say, Liverpool FC fanatic (sick, oops, sic) , Dec ‘The Neck’ Lynch, as a not atypical example – with pronouncing a Cockney word which has the identical sound as Fine in the Leprechaun:

-Inna?

To conclude with the above reference to S. Milligan:

S. Milligan’s corpse, clad only in a pair of stockings and suspenders, was found suspended with an electrical flex tied tightly around his neck, with a black bin liner over his head and an orange in his mouth.

An orange ? Even though there is no mention of (gulp) a crooked mouth. A black bin liner such as makes perhaps the least inappropriate container for the Sunday (gulp) Independent?

That would be, of course, Stephen Milligan, a Tory MP and former (gasp) hack with the Sunday Times. The coroner’s report in 1994 mentioned A.A. as a probable cause of death.

A.A., while it stands for Aggressive Anglophilia, in this instance stands or rather suspends for :

-Autoerotic Asphyxiation.

There is a hedge school of political thought which holds that the industrial-strength dissing by uber- Irish hacks, aka Aggressive Anglophilia, of the Leprechaun might well be an early warning system of (gasp) Autoerotic Asphyxiation.

This view is based partly on the fact that the Leprechaun for jester is ‘fuirseoir’ which, as it happens is also the Leprechaun for ‘flagellation’. Filch the Fein from the Shinners and you get ‘Féin-fhuirseoir’:

-Self-flagellation.

Funnily enough (in the funny fun sense) the headstone of S. Milligan in London is etched in Leprechaun:

-Dúirt me libh go raibh mé tinn.

For the benefit of DL (!) and other indefatigable Know Nothings of the Puckoon School of Buffoonery, not, this translates as:

-I told ye I was was ill.

That would be, ar ndoigh/ of course, the headstone of Spike Milligan.