SHITE, ONIONS AND “THE TIMES” of LONDON by Donal Kennedy

I’m perhaps less travelled in the realms of shite than  a former veterinary surgeon and in language and literature than Professor Horobin, but I’m sure the latter scholar is mistaken. For James Joyce himself  in 1912 wrote an angry poem – “Gas From A Burner” containing the expression   “Shite And Onions” which was published in Trieste that year.Joyce was a Dubliner but borrowed the expression from his Corkonian father.  Some reader familiar with “How They They Brought The Good News From Aix To Ghent” might write lines inspired by the traffic of Shite from Cork to Trieste via Dublin. They might even earn a Gong – (if they can stand the Pent!).

My guess is that shite is a variant of scheisse and arrived in England before Prince Albert , before the Hanoverians and most probably with the Angles,  Saxons and Jutes and other rude forebears of today’s Englishmen. Indeed it’s what their forebears did in the woods when they were still Papists.
Professor  Sharp, the former veterinary surgeon traces literary shite to Scotland , long before James Joyce and even William McGonagle whose oeuvre was replete with it, to Robert Burns and his poem “Grim Grizzel” of 1795.

Grizzel was the wife of a dairy farmer and she demanded that the cow drop her dung just where she wanted it.  Her herdsman, John o’Clods, presumably a yokel was less simple than her and told her cows did not perform to order, so she took to instructing the beast herself-

“Shite, shite ye bitch”  Grim Grizzel roar’d,

  Till hill and valley rang;

  “Shite, shite ye bitch,” the echoes roar’d.
LIncluden wa’s   Amang

A priest uncle of mine in West Cork used tell a story of a parish priest scandalised on hearing a maid remarking that the butter was soft as shite. He told the cook who said    “I wouldn’t worry, Father, that wan’s as ignorant as my arse.”
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Seriously, though, there’s no limit to shite in “THE TIMES” as regular readers of my blogs will have gathered.  The same day as the letter quoted (Thursday, March 23 2017) the paper had an editorial headed “War and Peace”, sub-headed “The life of  Martin McGuinness, the former IRA leader,  shows that it is right to talk to your enemies and right not to give in to them.”

It goes on to assert that “Mr McGuinness was once a leader of an organisation committed to the use of violence to achieve objectives that were democratically impossible.”  Really ? In 1918 Sinn Fein took 73 of Ireland’s 105 Parliamentary seats and the Nationalists a further 6 in an election “considered on all sides as a plebiscite” according to one London newspaper.  If I’m not mistaken it was THE TIMES of London. Nobody who knows their onions can trust that paper. It has long been criminally dishonest.