Since time immemorial men, and the women who loved them, have sworn by what they both held most dear.
Gonads, in Latin “Testes” of which the singular is “Testis.” The word Testis, when law was in its infancy came to mean “Witness”. Ms Long as Stormont’s Minister for Justice must know that. Despite her party’s antagonism to the Treaty of Rome.
There are times for “polite meaningless words” but not when a pandemic is spreading with the aid of clowns in office. There are times for cross words anD decisive action.
I’ve been checking my Concise Oxford Dictionary, but devil of a mention of Balls, Ballocks or Bollocks, plain English words in it. It does have Gonads, from the Greek, which mean undifferentiated germ-glands,serving as ovaries and spermeries, though not at the same time. The dictionary also records “testicle,” which I’m relieved to find, means what I understood it to mean.
The Oxford Crossword Dictionary records Ballocks and Bollocks. It assumes that every speaker of English does not need to be told what they mean.
One meaning of BALLOCKS for me is anything written by Stephen Collins, Political Editor of THE IRISH TIMES. I’ve just been looking over a Special Supplement to his paper of 25 April 2012 supported by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaelacht, entitled HOME RULE AND ULSTER’S RESISTANCE, which I’d Overlooked Before. It’s a Piss-Poor Production generally but his profile of John Redmond takes much more than the Biscuit. It’s absolute Crackers.
He says of Redmond that he “while he took part in the Land War and Plan of Campaign and was briefly imprisoned in 1888 for incitement, he always opposed violence to achieve political ends.” Further on he says that, in 1914 “Redmond backed the (BRITISH) war effort in the belief that it would help deliver a United Home Rule Ireland when (Anti-German Anti-Austrian and Anti-Ottoman) hostilities ceased.”
What was Home-Rule if it wasn’t a political end? What were the campaigns “wherever the (British Imperial) firing line extends” but the use of violence? Germany, Austria and the Ottoman Empire never injured, insulted nor threatened Ireland.
Many an innocent young woman surrendered her maidenhead to a bounder on being promised a wedding ring, But Redmond surrendered scores of thousands of Irishmen to a far, far worse fate than that of the maiden, to bounders universally recognised for their perfidity over many centuries.
I had been brought up to believe that Redmond’s allegiance was to Ireland and that he had been fooled by the British. Recently, reading a speech he made in London on St Patrick’s Day 1913 I realised he had by then become a British Empire Loyalist. Stephen Collins convinces me that Redmond was always a British Empire Loyalist, which is why he, John Bruton and a perverse tendency in Ireland, wish us to follow suit. Hence their never-ending output of Ballocks and Horse Manure.
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