There are some unexpectedly light passages in a recently published tome of above average avoirdupois, entitled :
-‘Forgotten Patriot: DOUGLAS HYDE and The Foundation of the Irish Presidency’ by Brian Murphy.
One passage deals with the re-naming in 1938 of the former Viceregal Lodge which had been picked as the residence of future Irish Presidents. The newly elected President Douglas Hyde or, as he himself preferred to refer to himself, Dubhghlas de hIde, suggested:
-Brú na Life.
This suggestion (it translates into Complusory English as: ‘The Liffeyside Mansion’) was laughed, however, out of, erm, court. On the following basis and which might well have been put forward by the precursor of the critically-acclaimed ‘ G. Campbell Academy of Advanced Linguistics’:
-Because ‘Brú’ is pronounced the same as ‘Brew’ it would be be taken as the HQ of the nearby Guinness Brewery, Prez.
The new President then turned to his Plan-B which involved an A-word , and so Aras an Uachtaráin was chosen. Indeed, Aras an Uachtaráin, Phoenix Park.
Hmmm.
Strangely, the author did not tease out this topic for he might well have even, erm, distilled some further funny facets of a liquid nature. Take for example, the first part of the second add-on of the address:
-Phoenix.
Which when degarbled and translated back into the original, non-compulsory Leprechaun comes out as:
-Fionn Uisce or Clear Water.
Speaking of which, the Revival of Leprechaun was given great credence by the very choice of this agreed candidate (1938 was but the dying echo of a decade and a half after the Civil War and a Half of 1923). For Dubhglas de hIde was the polyglot founder of Conradh na Gaeilge and one whose cultural philosophy was contained in his seminal – but now airbrushed in monoglot Eire – essay :
-The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation.
Hmmmm.
Maybe it is not so strange – tar éis an tsaoil ! – considering that the author Brian Murphy has been, in his time, ‘a speechwriter to two Taoisigh’. (Translation: ‘ventriloquist to two PMs of the Free Southern Stateen’).
The following self- revealing (maybe too much so) Homeric nod is made by the author in the preface:
-I want to acknowledge Eoghan O Neachtain and Padraig Slyne, both of whom frequently came to my assistance when I struggled with documents written in the Irish language.
Hmmmm.
Indeed:
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
This is where we enter through the portals of The Thigh-slap Arena which has recently agreed to a lucrative 100 year sponsorship deal with Irony Ireland Inc whose core product is Unintentional Humour.
Is Brian Murphy, author, actually admitting, in an indirect, scenic route way, to spindoctoring for not one, but two PMs in not two but (gasp) only in one glot, that is, Compulsory English only?
One raises this point for the last time The Perkin’s inner pernickety pedant looked, Leprechaun was not just one of the two Official Glots in the Constitution of The FSS, but indeed was in the Gold Medal Position on the Podium itself.
Do one be detecting a whiff of (erm) subvERSEsion here?
Surely not. Shirley.
For if one did one would be – post hic, ergo propter cup – automatically depositing the author into the same basket as (gulp) The Belfast Telegraph which greeted the Presidency of the son of the Protestant clergyman with boundless jollity, not. An Orange-blossom Organ which was not, according to Brian Murphy, enamoured with the efforts to restore the Irish Language, which had been Hyde’s life work.
It criticised the Dublin political establishment for – in the following Bel Telling phrase:
-a campaign waged with an intolerant fanaticism equal to that of any Communist or Nazi for forcing the study of the Gaelic language into the schools.
Or, even, depositing the author into the same basket as the diplomatic David Grey who was the US Ambassador domiciled in the former Chief Secretary’s House in the Phoenix Park fornenst Chesterfield Avenue from the President.
In November 1943, Grey wrote to his Big Kahuna, Franklin D. Roosevelt:
-Your friend Mr. De Valera is continuing to ignore those little events of history which in spite of him keep occurring. He is in fact too busy attending meets celebrating the revival of the Gaelic League to give his attention to such matters. It is fifty years since Douglas Hyde, the Protestant Anglo-Irish squire from the west, found the Gaelic League. He now has his reward in being the paralysed, dummy President of a country which would have seen Britain overrun by Hitler with a degree of satisfaction and without lifting a finger to prevent it….If I go nuts, can you blame me?’.
David Grey, incidentally, was married to Eleanor Roosevelt’s favourite aunt. The same dear Eleanor who always looked as if she had put hubby Franklin’s false teeth into her own mouth by mistake.
Curiously, this Grey view of David’s on the whole Gaelic thingy seems to have prevailed and is indubitably now the dominant dogma in the contemporary Little Grey Home known as West Brittania.
To conclude; mention has been made of Chesterfield Avenue. This is called after the first Viceroy, the man who laid out the Phoenix Park and one who gets namechecked in the book. In the context of his portrait being removed (belatedly) along with the portraits of his successors from the walls of Aras an Uachtaráin.
This was a pity. For Lord Chesterfield was the exception which proved the rule. And, yes, there is an exception to every rule, even to (gulp) British Rule. Any man who can define what The Great Shakes called ‘making the beast with two beasts’ in the following terms:
-The position is ridiculous, the pleasure but momentary and the expense damnable.
Must, perforce, be described as an exception to most Rulers, especially of the British stripe. Philip Stanhope, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield (for it was he !), is a reminder that another Stan (Laurel) and a different Hope (Bob) were also English born humourists who thrived abroad.
When, in 1745, he was awoken in the Viceregal Lodge by a false alarm of a rebellion and being told ‘that all the papists are up’ he yawned, stretched , t.c.’d and replied:
-I am nor surprised at it, why it is ten o’clock. I should have been up too, had I not overslept myself.
He also saw to it, disregarding the advice of his spindoctor(s), that local Dubliners were allowed to roam freely through the Phoenix Park. Just the kind of dude who would have written in his days as a hack under the pseudonym ‘Jonathan Broadbottom’.
One has a notion that Chesterfield and Hyde would have hit it off, bigly.
To finally conclude: The Heckler in the title refers to Pat ‘P-brain’ Kenny.
-Cheap shot ! Cheap shot ! Cheap shot ! Cheap shot !
Au contraire, it has since been clarified that Kate Hopkins did NOT, repeat, KNOT, call P. Kenny a ‘Peabrain’ when being quizzed by Ireland’s Supreme Broadcaster on Newstalk. As had been widely reported and in some quarters (sadly) with no little glee.
But rather as, P-Brain. That would be:,
-P for Profound.
The Perkin would have been unaware of the Tome of the Day if PK had not drawn his attention to it. This occurred when the only element of same which caught his short attention span while reviewing it on his prog , the single facet which enabled him to put his Guccis into the GAH:
-The GAA expel President Hyde for attending Soccer Game !
(Méanfach, síneadh, casacht thrúis)
P.S.
For BM’s eyes only:
(Yawn, stretch, trouser cough).
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