There are lyrics and catchphrases, profane and sacred, that make me wince with embarrassment or provoke rude parody. Can anybody listen to ‘Hail Glorious St.Patrick’ without embarrassment at such mongrel doggerel and without wishing it were put down by a vet? Or Longfellow’s moralistic hectoring on the reality and earnestness of life? Or enterprises proclaiming that they are “Investors In People.” It’s a boast that could honestly be made by slave traders.
I remember when, as Shadow Home Secretary, Tony Blair addressed the Labour Party Conference and wowed it with the promise that the party, when elected, would be “Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime.” In letters to various papers, not published, I asked why it couldn’t be Hard On Fornication.
Oscar Wilde is not one of my heroes. He sued Queensberry for criminal libel with the intention of having him imprisoned and he perjured himself. But his mockery of the earnestness of the likes of Longfellow and others of his times was well earned by those worthies.
Aubrey de Vere’s celebration of the heroes who broke down the Bridge of Athlone opens with a silly line characteristic of much Victorian verse- “Does any man dream that a Gael can fear?” To me it invites variants – “Does any man dream that a Gael can -Fight/F**t/F**k/Or Play the Piano?” As for W H Davies and his – “What is this life, if full of care/ We have no time to stop and stare” – perhaps if the second line went – “I cannae pairt yer pubic hair” the poem would have more admirers.
‘I asked why it couldn’t be hard on fornication’.
But without ‘hard’ there wouldn’t be any fornication!
EXACTLY,Sherdy!