“What a piece of work is a man!” Shakespeare said. “How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!/ In form and moving how express and admirable!/ In action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a god!”
Nelson McCausland, of course, wasn’t around at the time of Shakespeare but the Bard could have had him in mind.
The DUP piece of work climbed onto his angelic high horse last week and denounced the Department of Education and its Minister John O’Dowd. What had they done? Why, they had ‘weaponised’ the Irish language! They had tried to “convince unionists that they are really Irish and Gaelic”. Serious charges indeed. And how had they done this deed born in the bowels of Hades? They had written to primary school principals inviting them to develop an Irish language study programme.
Shock, horror and Hell’s teeth! What nerve! Moving with admirable speed, Nelson urged the principals to “treat these letters with the contempt they deserve”. (No, Virginia, he didn’t do the Gregory’s-toilet-paper thing but he came near as dammit.) Minister for Education John O’Dowd denied that there was any we’ll-make-yis-all-Irish agenda. and that in consultation with the curriculum advisory body, this invitation had been drafted. It was an invitation, that’s all. “There is no John O’Dowd agenda, there is no Sinn Féin agenda, there is no other agenda”.
Tellingly, it’s not just O’Dowd who disagrees with the noble reasoning of the DUP’s piece of work. Linda Ervine, who runs Irish classes in the Skainos centre in East Belfast, has invited the piece of work to visit her centre. “Nelson McCausland is constantly accusing Sinn Féin of politicising the Irish language but he’s doing the very thing he claims others are doing. It’s similar to the way Ulster Scots is promoted but I don’t see Sinn Féin or the SDLP jumping up and down”.
Ah.Methinks Mrs Ervine has put her finger on it. Using his angelic/god-like reasoning, dear Nelson has figured there’s an election coming down the track, so he must do all he can to sharpen antagonism between his party and those damned Shinners. And the Irish language is as good a weapon to point their direction as any other.
This isn’t about the Irish language. It’s the election, stupid.
Fill arís
Is an bóthar fada, bain ded mheabhair/Srathar shibhialtach an Bhéarla,/Shelley, Keats is Shakespeare:…
The journey back to what matters is a long one. Exploring the wealth of our shared culture through the medium of Irish does not pose a threat to anyone. A language is just another means of communication. The Irish language is not private property. While there are some who wish to write, No Trespass, there are others who wish to make the journey, before, during and after the election.
Go n-éirí do bhóthar leat.
Go raibh maith agat, Iolar…
“They had tried to “convince unionists that they are really Irish and Gaelic”. ”
Yes, it’s obviously madness to suggest that a man living in Ireland with a Gaelic surname could be Gaelic in anyway…
Those were my thoughts too Jude …i nearly went for the bait until I thought …”Elections!!!!” ..what is so transparent is the absolute paucity of debate here. He really is desperate …hoking about for any old bit of a rag to wave at the bulls..He really picked the wrong one here because it blows so many holes in any acclamations he might make about promoting cultural activities….in either community…..Old Nelson may have had an education of sorts, but it is obviously in a very narrow channel of cultural understanding . It’s a bit like a one trick pony who knows the methodology of passing an exam but knows nothing about reasoning or of life itself…Thank the stars , he makes me laugh very loudly…because thee’s really nothing else of substance there to get a grip of.
Jude, I think you’re stretching it a bit when you use reasoning and Nelson McCausland in the same sentence.
But I do think much more should be made of his involvement in the shameless Red Sky and Tarkington Windows debacles.
Also more investigations are needed into his attempts to build Protestant houses for Protestant people in North Belfast when the crying need is to help homeless Catholic families.
Nelson, like Gregory, Arlene and Sammy and all the other DUPs has to make sure he doesn`t come across as conciliatory, chance would be a fine thing. Jim Allister is scowling away in the background, carrying out the type of stunt they would have been doing back in the day. The ignorance of McCausland and his ilk stands in marked contrast to the likes of Linda Ervine. He comes across as a tight, hateful little man who has his head stuck in the Old Testament every night, the Ulster Scots version of course. None of that Love Thy Neighbour stuff as spouted by that Jesus chap.
The gift of language and its potential for creative enrichment, becomes a linguistic cul de sac for the negative, and an offence to thoughtfulness for the imbecile alas. Nelsons’ timely Column must be compensating for a lack of imagination in the rest of his Tunnel minded rants methinks.
We need to consider the development of Irish language from evidence in Ogham inscriptions and surviving literature in texts that come down from the eighth and ninth centuries. An abundant literature survives. International scholars share an enthusiasm for the language that shames its neglectful heirs.
I gather Nelson speaks well of you too!!
He does indeed, Argenta. That’s why I proudly quote him in my ‘About Me’ section…
He is also one of the most sectarian journalists I have ever come across and that’s saying something.
For many years Jude Collins was a lecturer in education at the University of Ulster. It is sad to think that for so many years the minds of young trainee teachers were exposed to the views of such a warped individual. Fortunately he is no longer a university lecturer.
Thats what i like about Nelson never sits on the fence although he did make a mistake he said University of Ulster he should have said Ulster Polytechnic….
Ha haa – very good neill – I like it. Nah- it actually is a university – has been since the mid-1980s. And in its latest branding form is Ulster University, not University of Ulster. Oh, and I’m not retired – back this year, I’m afraid. Warping as many minds as I can gain access to…
Are the young pups listening to you?
So in the same comment you admit to liking Nelson McCausland and then lambast somebody else for being sectarian. Typical Unionist hypocrite
er no i was quoting from Nelsons blog and i wasnt saying Jude was sectarian fair enough though i was having a pop against the poly…
Relevant as usual there Neill….
As relevant as you are to unionism Am Ghobsmacht/guilty prod…; )
Ah, it was a quote? Sorry, the lack of quotation marks suggested otherwise.
‘Guilty prod’, if that’s what you call someone who doesn’t swallow al the unionist mythology then I’ll gladly wear that cap.
I think we’ll both find we’re equally irrelevant to unionism Neill.
Jude,
I hope that casting your perceptive eye over “Nelson’s Column” hasn’t triggered a bout of column envy! It is not the column inches that count but the quality of your thrust and parries.
There is no contest really! Just look at the lack of numbers who contribute to his wittering’s which are literally “old hat”. I am sure it does make people looking in at our society from the outside wonder are we really all that backward looking.
Thank God some of us can look forward to a brighter future where we can all work together with increasing confidence and an ever diminishing interference (numerically) of narrow minded bigots trying to drag us back into a darker past.
Onwards and upwards!
“Nelson McCausland, of course, wasn’t around at the time of Shakespeare but the Bard could have had him in mind”
His politics certainly was.
Old Nelse could do a lot worse than consider coming south where he would find himself surrounded by company of an extremely congenial sort. As everytime he opens his mouth to expatiate on the leprechaun he unfailingly manages to make a monumental aus of himself.
One chooses the m-word deliberately, as will become clear (hopefully).
As someone who belongs to Clann Mac Ausalain who vacated the nine-county Ulster in the year 5000 or thereabouts (known as the 12th C to those Come Latterdays of Christianity) to take a vacation on an island in Loch Lomond he would have the choice to take either the high or indeed the low (unapproved) road to the Free Southern Stateen.
Those were the days when the hedonistic and shedonistic island of Ibiza was still afar off in the distant fute and indeed long before the shrill sound of fife and flute. It took Clann Mac Ausalain some hundreds of years to desert the nine bean-rows on their Loch Lomond holiday island to return to their nine-county native province.
There is some dispute among the cognoscenti in these matters as to the actual meaning of ‘Mac Ausalain’. Some genial genealogists maintain that it means ‘Son of Absalom’ in the original leprechaun. Absalom, as every good reader of the Good Book knows well that Samuel (the begetter of mony a wee Sommy) described Absalom as ‘the most handsome man in the kingdom’.
This figures, as a quick glimspe as the finely chiselled physog of Nelse will confirm.
Absalom, indeed, was so obsessed with his own drop-dead gorgeousness that he determined a monument to his memory would be erected after his shuffling off of the mortal kyle. Thus,to this very day in this the year 5775, there stands the Pillar of Absalom on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Yahweh forbid that the Palestinians and their pals would ever develop a gra for the old custard and gelly. Otherwise, the same sad and abrupt end might befall this pillar as befell another, named, curiously enough, Nelson.
That was in 1966 and there has been a vacancy for a pillar of the establishment in dear old d. Dublin ever since, particularly one by the moniker of – what else, only Nelse.
And this is where the theory of the even more genial school of genealogy comes into focus: they maintain that ‘Mac Ausalain’ actually meant, originally, ‘little one of the castle’.
Right now, at this very moment in t., the Free Southern Stateen is in the grime and the greim (grip) of those ‘little ones of the castle’ caste who were privilged to be educated in the awash-with-dosh Posh Schools whose game of choice involves the pursuit of eggs.Not unlike the Royal Belfast Academy,indeed.
That Nelse should be so blessed to have an alma mater with the utterly appropriated initials B.R.A. !
Now grown up to become that delightful cohort of civilised society known as ‘Castle Catholics’ their loathing of leprechaun makes Nelson’s seem like a mere utterance of mild disapproval. Indeed, so adept has the ruling class of C.Cs become in all aspects of the Necessity to Re-Anglicise Ireland that it has shown up and thrown the incompetence of the Protestant Prosletysers in the 19th Century into focus.
As evidenced by their success in making the Book of Common Prayer compulsory reading in, of all places, Roscommon itself.
With regard to the leprechaun they’ve already scored a hat trick in the first month of Year 5775.
Nelson is no doubt aware of the non-commented upon changing of Bord Gais Eireann to Gas Network Ireland. But is probably unaware of the reason for doing so. it will surely warm the muscles and cockles of his heart, alive, alive-o to discover it was to commemorate those gallant heroes of the Dublin Fusiliers, Jem and Whacker (J.A.W. as in jaw bone of an ass) who, to selflessly defend democracy during the Great Donkey Derby 14-18, scored a (gulp) sadly monumental O.G.
This happened at Ypres when, after hurtling the canisters of lethal gas in the direction of the horrid,humanity-befeft Huns, the capricious wind suddenly changed ….direction.
The second facet of the hat-trick is the low-intensity campaign being waged by The Unionist Times, on behalf of the IRFU, to supplant the current National Tantrum in unspeakable leprechaun with the fine,upright anthem which calls upon all eggchasers to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Q.’s English.
But the third leg of the hat-trick is one which An t-Uasal Mac Ausalain is probably unfamiliar with, due, no doubt, to the failure of the Wireless Correspondent of The Unionist Times to deign it worthy of his high-brow attention.
This was the recent decision of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland to throw out on its Erse a complaint from a listener/ lover of the leprechaun.
His rancid beef seemingly concerned a phone-in show on late-nite Radio Moron in which the topic du nuit was: ‘is leprechaun merely ludicrous or ludicrously mere, my dear?’.This opened the airwaves for cretinous insomniacs to light up the darkness with forty shades of intellectually distinguished insult. All directed with expletives included (commencing with f, c and a) at the Derby O Ghouls of a graveyard dialect.
And of course the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland in their cool shades and gum-chewing elan were pluperfectly entitled to indulge their daydream of being Nite Club Bouncers. For their decision to evict the contrarian complainant on his unspeakable Erse was in full keeping with the dickats of the Equality Legislation of the Free Southern Stateen.
Here, there are nine grounds upon which humans may not be discriminated against .here, too, Nelson’s inner numerologist will notice the number nine making a reappearance in this friendly fan-letter.
As follows: gender, marital statues, family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race and membership of the Traveller Community.
Note the absence of leprechaun or any other language, for that matter. There are those deluded dingbats who point to language as being a crucial differential between the human and the animal, but surely they are not suggesting that the leprechaun is in any way an entrant to the (sponsored) human race? Let them bark, miaow, moo or neigh for all they like at their own deluded moon, for all the ruling class of the F.S.S. cares.
So, travel south, Nelson, a chara, where a Cead Mile Failte agus nocha naoi await you !
Btw, the name of the afore-mentioned Wireless Correspondent of The Unionist Times is one, Mick Heaney.
Now, there are some dudes, equally deluded, who are of the opinion that the mate-ily named Mick is, in fact, you know,, ahem, sort of, a relation of….Old Whoever you say, say Nobody.
Count Perkie out of that motley lot,indeed Papal Count him out, for he knows if anyone knows that the high-minded, aloof Unionist Times would never stoop to such a low, such a leprechaun low show of tawdry opportunism.
Gilt by Association?..
Nobel, nay, never.
To conclude: It is inconcievable that one of the foremost free-style political wrestlers in Norneverland would ever have achieved the prominence he has if he had become fluent in the lingo of his ancestors.
One refers to Monoglot McCausland. Sounds a tad more intimidating that the Bilingual Blancmange.
One somehow, find it difficult to imagine BB managing to master that indispensable tool of the Stormont chamber, the Half-Nelson.
“All directed with expletives included (commencing with f, c and a) at the Derby O Ghouls of a graveyard dialect.” And still they gazed and still the wonder grew/That one small head could carry all he knew.We are, I say again, not worthy…
GRMA, Esteemed Blogmeister.
Nonetheless while modesty does indeed become you there comes a tide even in the affairs of an E.B. when the flotsam and jetsam of diffidence must perforce be jettisoned.
Such as this moment in tide.
Now that one of your former students has had not one but two of his verses, one in the Q’s English and the other in Perverse Erse, shortchanged from the Long List in the RTE sponsored ‘Pome for Ire Land’ competition Perkie’s inner poet-taster (for it is he!) would magnanimously like you to share both in the reflected g. and also in the – the bon mot beginning with b eludes one for the moment.
The first is his War Pome, in this the centenary of the Jaw Bone to end all Jaw Bones.
A Disused Head in County Wexford
And, from the Sunny South East
Slouched a warmongering beast
Thus it came to pass
With the jb of an ass
J. Red led 50 thou dead, at least.
The second verse,was prompted by a soft-soap interview which the versatile Cathal Mac Coille, aka the Woodman,for once spared his axe as he oilily beguiled the pre-eminent pote-ess in perverse Erse. into all sorts of revelations and, erm, none.
One speaks of course, of Maire Cruise O”Brien, known to her Merriman Schools of fans as the Venerable Old Oak of Danta On Oidhreacht. (VOODOO).For almost a century now she has bewitched her hackaloytes with her spell-binding and correctly spelt verses in Erse of such sorcery they could only have been conjured by the fairy godmother of lingua france na leipreachan, sheself.
As a composer of pomes she was (agus buiochas le Bandia, ata fos) and still is, one of the Free Southern Stateen’s pre-eminent unacknowledged legislators. Thus, it could only have been Heaven’s matchless matchmaker Herself who saw to it that she and the FSS’s pre-eminent acknowledged legislator were joined in holy wedlock.
And when Conor Craze O’Brain (for it is he !) introduced Section 31 as a tilt at all those misguided missal-wielders who laughingly believe that the word is actually mightier than the S-word he had no greater supporter than his ever-loving word-spinning wifey.
Now, whether The Woodman was too busily involved in the unaccustomed role of applying all kinds of pesticide and insecticide to the bark of the Venerable Old Oak that he forgot to bark his usual answer-chopping questions, perhaps we shall never know why the Unacknowledged Ledge failed to feel the Sharp Edge of his Axe.
Ar aon nos, seo an dan ata ar an gearrliosta:
Mar Dhea
Nior ardaiodh ceist bhacach Alt 31
Lena thacaigh an bhanfhile go trean
Sa Chonor Pass
Cicealadh Ass
Agus cuisiodh go daingean na firein.
Oh, yes: the elusive bon mot beginning with b, Esteemed Blogmeister:
b for blame.
In the beginning was the Word, and word was God, and God’s was the word,- Is this goodly shepherd actually suggesting that these ancient Aramaic and ancient Hebrew texts were actually written in the Good Queens English? Does this woolly liberal Really believe that language is a stagnant affair which like the Old Testament negates the concept of evolution?! This intellectual and linguistic heavy weight is a gift of idiocy that just keeps giving…Alas the blind leading the flock, leaves the sheep bleeting all the louder, ie the one’s who want to believe the wolves abound in old Erin…a priests head got a tenner, a wolf got a measly fiver and yet the wolves were wiped out while priest craft survived…persons of limited vision who pray