There are some experiences so awful, we hesitate to put them into words. Nuclear war, the death of a loved one, financial ruin – disaster comes in many forms and we do all we can to avoid them or even talk about them.
That’s the situation for the DUP at present. It will talk at length – and does – about the injustice of the protocol, which PM Boris Johnson signed up to. It will rail against the role of the European Court of Justice infringing on the rights of British citizens (aka unionists). It will remind the world that the number of Protestants living in the twenty-six counties shrank alarmingly after that part of Ireland gained independence.
But as Rishi Sunak tries to get his Tory troops behind him, as the European Research Group of Tory die-hards strive to get rid of yet another unsatisfactory prime minister, the one thing the DUP will not talk out loud about is the notion of a Sinn Féin First Minister, with the DUP playing second fiddle to a party that seeks to reunite Ireland.
Robbie Burns would probably be the favourite poet of DUP MLAs. However, it’s probably a safe bet they don’t want to recite these lines out loud:
“Oh the gift that God could give us, to see ourselves as others see us.”
Very good Jude
I’m surpised that Ulster Scots scholars have not rushed to correct the words attributed by Jude to
Robert Burns.
Occasionally,like the great Homer, Jude nods.
Burns Wrote:-
“TO A LOUSE. ON SEEING ONE ON A LADY’s BONNET IN CHURCH ” in 1786
“O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us.”
I first saw the quotation over a mirror in the wash room for employees of Coras Iompair Eireann
in Sackville Place, Dublin.
Some one had written “as ithers CIE us,