IDIOTS, EEJITS and OMADAWNS by Perkin Warbeck

Fyodor Dostoevski, although he was the author of a novel called ‘The Idiot’, was no omadawn.

Certainly, if one is to judge by his uncanny foreshadowing of the current point-scoring  race for the Presidency in the USA. This came in the shape of a scene in the above-mentioned novel and which takes place on a train. The novel was first published in 1868.

Railways, of course, played a much bigger role in Stateside electioneering in times past when the ‘Whistle-Stop Tour’ became a central part. This involved the candidates crisscrossing the country stopping briefly   at small rural stations to rally the troops from the rear end of the Iron Horse.

The first use of the term in this context was done derisively by Robert S. Taft in relation to Harry H. Truman during the 1930s.

Mind you, the term was used in a different context long before that, as The Perkin discovered during a guided tour of an Ante-Bellum House in the vicinity of Vicksburgh, a riverside city located, as Paul Simon once memorably phrased in, in ‘the Mississippi delta was shining like a National guitar…in the cradle of the civil war’ .

Back in the day, when White Mastah had his black slave whisk away the blue-tailed fly, he also issued strict instructions that he whistle out loud all the way as he carried the dinner down the corridor from the kitchen to the dining room. This ensured that the black slave did not nibble the food as he did the ferrying.

As soon as the dinner had been delivered intacta, the whistling stopped.

The scene in the train which provided this premonition involved a man, a cigar, a poodle and two ladies. (Already beginning to sound familiar?) Although the dog is not named it was more likely to have been called Fido rather than Fyodor.

A crucial element of the scene was the wink-wink, sniff-sniff attitude to the smoking of cigars on board a train. Little surprise that Russia was once known as, erm, the Ireland of the Urals.

Let a delighted General Ivolgin take up the tale:

-Well, it is a silly little story, in a few words. A couple of years ago, soon after the new railway was opened, I had to go somewhere or other on business. Well, I took a first-class ticket, sat down, and began to smoke, or rather continued to smoke, for I had lighted up before. I was alone in the carriage. Smoking is not allowed, but is not prohibed either; it is half allowed- so to speak, winked at. I had the window open.

Suddenly, just beofre the whistle, in came two ladies with a little poodle, and sat down opposit to me; not bad-lookin women; one was in light blue, the other in black silk. The poodle, a beauty with a silver collar, lay on light blue’s knee. They looked haughtily about, and talked Englsih together, I took no notice, just went on smoking. I observed that the ladies were getting angry – over my cigar, doubtless. One looked at me though her tortoise-shell eyeglass.

I took no notice, because they never said a word. If they didn’t like the cigar, why couldn’t they say so? Not a word, not a hint ! Suddenly, and without the very slightest suspicion of warning ‘light blue’ seizes my cigar from between my fingers, and wheugh ! out of the window with it ! Well, on flew the train, and I sat bewildereed, and the young woman, tall and fair, and rather red in the face, too red, glared at me with flashing eyes.

I didn’t say a word, but with extreme courtesy, I may say with most refined courstesy, I reached my finger and thumb over-towards the poodle, took it up delicately by the nape of the neck, and chucked it out of the window, after the cigar. The train went flying on, and the poole’s yells were lost in the distance’.

(Don’t forget American reader : the clock is ticking down. Just a few days to go to November 8, in which you – the citizen – gets to cast either your cigar or your poodle)

To conclude: on the homefront here, the poodles in the streets of Dublin are already barking in their disticntive high-pitched and snappy way that a new translation of ‘The Idiot’ into (gulp) the patois of Pat is already in the pipeline. To be called:

-The Eejit.

The designated translator would, of course, be the mulitlingual Roddy Doyle. Fresh off his triumphant translation of the libretto of Mozart’s Don Giovanni into the patois of Pat. The Rod has come a long way from, erm, the D’Oyle Carte Company and Gilbert O’Sullivan:

-Il mio tesoro / Ah, me head message !

His fluency in Italian, of course, was a given: the local bleeding chipper in the North Side of Dublin cidy was the equivalent of a Linguaphone:

– Ah, Signor Roddy, the a-usual ? A-bleeding batter burger and a-single, lashings of vinegar and a-go handy on the salt ? Correcto?

But, Russian?

No problem: back in the day (again!) a rented caravan in Rush in North County Dublin was a favourite holiday destination for North Siders of Dublin cidy.

Rush – where the best bleedin’ Russian is spoken this side of the Urals.