Myles Away From Dublin (23 page)

There is something vaguely comic about the
reappearance
of
The
Plough
and
the
Stars
on the stage of the Abbey Theatre, advertised by the management as being ‘by special permission’ of Sean O’Casey.

When the theatre refused a new play of his,
The
Bishop’s
Bonfire,
over six years ago, reportedly because it was anti-clerical, the playwright got into a huff or a tantrum or a pet, and excommunicated the theatre with truly ecclesiastical solemnity.

O’Casey likes to consider himself as an equal of Bernard Shaw but in a like situation Shaw would hardly have taken himself so seriously; very likely he would have contented himself with sending off a scurrilous postcard. It seems that O’Casey has now relented as a result of the Abbey Company being invited to play in London in connexion with the quartercentenary of the birth of Shakespeare.

The attitude of many people, Dubliners included, to the Abbey Theatre has changed a lot in recent years. Most of the great players of the past are dead or departed, and new plays of real stature are apparently not forthcoming. Moreover, there has been a policy of gaelicisation which many feel is out of tune with the theatre’s origin.

When a play in Irish is on, the programme refers to the stalls as ‘steallai’. Probably this word has been mined out of Dinneen but why, I ask, don’t they use the obvious word ‘stol’? I might as well be talking to the wall, of course, though this phrase has always seemed pointless in view of the belief that walls have ears.

For years there has been on the programme and outside the house a phrase which annoys most people, if only for its decrepit syntax and obscurity – ‘
Latecomers
not admitted until end of First Act.’

It has several undesirable implications: first, that every play must have not only acts but have even a first act! (Nay, a First Act.) What would, say, Rouault or some other abstract artist think of such unenterprise? Is it also suggested that every play must also have a last act?

In my youth I wrote some plays myself and competent people who read them swore that there was neither beginning nor end to them. Some of them had no characters – I did not say CHARACTER, mind – and others were without ‘climaxes’, ‘plots’ and other dreary journeyman paraphernalia, but the scripts had clearly marked pauses for applause.

The second deplorable implication of the ‘late-comer’ slogan is that while those who are in at the beginning will not be disturbed during the first act, they will not necessarily be undisturbed during subsequent acts. (There are bars on the present premises, remember.)

You can’t barge in in the middle of the first act but you can arrive in the middle of the second or third act, start tuning the piano, decide you haven’t enough light and stagger out with the thing on your back. What they really mean, you say, is ‘Patrons not admitted between the acts.’

But not quite; because if that were the rule, nobody would ever get in. The … interval, shall we call it, before the first act could not be fairly included as ‘between the acts’.

But sheer admittance to the building is not necessarily a control of disturbing the audience. After a customer has patiently endured the first half of the first act, he may decide he has had as much as he can bear, get up, disturb everybody along the row, distract the players on the stage, and stumble out. Even if he likes the play, he may be overcome by a deadly craving for a cigarette, and create a similar fuss to get out. Without leaving his seat at all, he can create havoc by falling asleep to the accompaniment of thunderous snores, or be thoroughly objectionable by arriving with, not a box of chocolates,
but a bag of walnuts and proceed to crack them against each other in a mighty fist.

And, anyway, wouldn’t the odd late-comer be better for everybody than several early-comers who have whooping cough?

On the whole, the Abbey should think of a more precise and literate slogan, something catchy – like this:

The real trouble is, of course, that too many of the patrons have learnt their manners from characters on the Abbey stage. I wonder has Sean O’Casy a clear conscience here? If Joxer Daly was ever in a
drawing-room
, he slept, cooked his dinner and drank his porter there and the house, alas, was a decayed tenement.

Most people are, like myself, fond of old books. Probably we feel that our forefathers, having arrived earlier, must have been wiser and that we miserable moderns can improve ourselves by reading what they left behind them.

I have been looking through an old book with the commonplace title of ‘Information for Everybody’, published in Boston, USA, in 1851. The author’s name is given as Dr Chase – just this, with no Christian name and no clue as to whether he might be an ancestor of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, this year a contender for the US Presidency.

Dr Chase says that his book is Consisting of a Large Number of Medical Recipes: Also, Practical Recipes for Merchants, Grocers, Shopkeepers, Physicians,
Druggists
, Tanners, Shoemakers, Harness-Makers, Painters, Jewellers, Blacksmiths, Tinners, Gunsmiths, Farriers, Cabinet-Makers, Dyers, Barbers, &c.

That’s a modern weakness – that ‘&c.’ He shoves it in when he has absolutely failed to think of a single other word he can add to the list.

Most of his recipes are technical and boring but he invented a potion which he called ‘Soot Coffee’. Hear his own words on how to make it:

Thereafter the Doctor turns aside to castigate people, including ‘Upstart Physicians’ who stick up their noses at ‘old grandmother prescriptions’. I agree with him
there, for a lot of what nowadays is called folk medicine has a sound basis. I would gladly try this soot coffee myself if I had a chimney – or can it be that I have already had a cup of it in a certain place in Carlow at the cost of a shilling? For ague you take it with cream. Taken black, it would probably be good for nerves or a sore head, but taken any way at all it would be bound to be very good for smoky chimneys.

But Dr Chase is not just an old scientist. He has a stern moral eye, and there’s many a young fellow who could take a leaf out of the Doctor’s book with advantage. Here is a note he has on the drink situation, in his day very bad:

A most impressive person, the Doctor, for here are met wit, good counsel, and a lofty literary style. It is perhaps significant that the admonition numbered ONE does not appear anywhere in the text. What good thing is thereby lost it is hard to say. Probably something like ‘
Porter
is the man who carries the bags under your eyes.’ Or better, perhaps: ‘A pint of
plain
will make you very plain.’ Or maybe just
‘Stout
makes you very stout, no doubt.’

My own dreadful weakness is that lager makes me swagger.

Narrow green lines to guide traffic on the streets, emerald green beer in the pubs and beaming negroes wearing shamrock – that is Saint Patrick’s Day for you in New York. Apart from its religious significance, the day has for long been taken very quietly indeed in Ireland.

In Dublin there is usually a considerable collision at Croke Park and, in the morning, a great procession honouring Irish manufacturers. Some of these
processions
in the past have been in some respects surprising and shoddy.

I have seen our national electricity undertaking publicly flexing its muscle by displaying a considerable piece of machinery (a transformer or something) on the heavy duty lorry, though surely it was made in Stuttgart? Surely a nice stretch of native bog tastefully arranged on a float would be more appropriate
nowadays
?

How Irish are cigarettes made in Dublin but with alien tobacco handled by foreign machines? The more one ponders this problem the more one is driven to the conclusion that there are hardly any manufactured articles in the country which are Irish from top to bottom except stout and whiskey. For that reason it was surely ironical when the first native Government evinced an unsuspected puritanical trait and ordered the
complete
closing of all pubs on the National Festival, giving the day the same penitential mood as Good Friday.

Drink could be had in hotels, of course, and at the famous Dublin Dog Show, but the Plain Man was denied even a pint of plain. Happily, a more
enlightened
view now prevails, though it happens that abstinence is still promoted by the shocking price that is now demanded for the stuff. One wonders what Saint
Patrick himself would have thought of it all.

Saint Patrick himself is an extraordinarily shadowy figure, several responsible scholars maintain that he never existed, and it is true that primitive Christianity abounds in mythical figures.

Reputedly he was born in Britain about 389, was kidnapped by marauders and brought to Ireland as a slave, escaped home and then went to France. After returning home he had a vision, went back to France to study at Auxerre and arrived in Ireland in 432. It was to commemorate that landing that we had a Eucharistic Congress here in 1932.

There is no authentic account of what Patrick did here after he arrived or whom he met, though tradition and legend are plentiful enough. But two things are reasonably certain: Christianity was in existence in Ireland before Patrick’s time, and there is therefore no substance in the claim that it was he who first brought the new message here; secondly, Pope Celestine had already sent Palladius, who had laboured in Britain to stamp out the Pelagian heresy, to Ireland to do the same thing.

The only surviving document definitely ascribed to Patrick is the Confession, which appears in the Book of Armagh, said to date from about 800; it gives a general account of his career but is couched in Latin that is crude at best, and sometimes downright bad.

There are, of course, other and far later accounts of Patrick’s life but it is hard to understand the absence of reliable contemporary information, having regard to how minutely we know the people of a far earlier day – the Apostles, for example, or all the kings and prophets of the Old Testament.

Most people would be appalled by the theory that Saint Patrick never existed and that he is simply a pious myth, as was shown a few years ago and acknowledged by the Holy See in the case of Saint Philomena. But there is an even worse possibility. A learned historian and philologist named Professor D.A. Binchy has been
maintaining for many years, both in writing and lecture hall, that in fact there were TWO Saint Patricks!

This is hardly the place to set forth his arguments and the sources on which he relies but it can be said that his theory has never been refuted. However unlikely, it is possible that another
savant
may yet come along and establish that there were three of them.

However tenuous the proof, most people – but particularly the Americans – will be glad to settle for one Saint Patrick and beg leave to inquire no further. Imagine … just imagine … where we would be if we were to have two Saint Patrick Days every year.

The Irishman would then cut a queer figure in the world: people would stare at him as if he had two heads!

Well, we’ve had another St Patrick’s Day, with all attendant shamrockry, champagne and shenanigans. The Saint has been once again toasted all over the world, and for at least a week in Ireland the motto has been BUY IRISH (but with no sly reference to whiskey hidden in the phrase). How real and how true is all this? Do we mean it? Do others mean it? Or is the cult of Saint Patrick an internationally-accepted sham, like Santa Claus?

At the outset, I honestly say I don’t know. But I have genuine cause for wonder.

Last week I went into a tavern on purpose to have a snack. I won’t say where, but it was not in Carlow town. It was a pleasant enough house. I sat at the fire and ordered bread and butter, some sardines and a bottle of ale. The bottle of ale was British, because the native article stocked was not in condition. The butter, rather like cheese, was Danish. The sardines came from Norway. The coal in the fire was American. The knife was made in Sheffield, and I assume the bread was made from imported grain. And do we manufacture salt here? I don’t think so.

You might imagine that we could go no further than that? Wrong!

I stood up and turned my chair upside down. (I thought standing up was a desirable preliminary.)
Hurrah!
There was an inscription on the underside of the seat in the bold characters of the old tongue, namely, ‘
Déanta
sa
Phólain’.

The phrase means ‘Made in Poland’.

Taking a sad farewell, I was nearly run over by an American car burning Iranian petrol.

Who made the paper, the ink, the machinery that enables you to read this? But perhaps I am asking too
many questions this week.

But talking of pubs, I think we are inclined to take too much for granted. A public house looks simple but isn’t. I have been looking through a publication issued by Messrs Guinness entitled
Handbook
for
Customers
and I find there is nothing simple or obvious about the bottle of stout or its management. The tapping of a cask (the
Handbook
carelessly calls this thing indiscriminately Cash and cask) is a difficult and esoteric process. To begin with you have to put the cask ‘lying on a stillion, bung up’. There is later the question of the Keystone Plug, which must receive ‘one hard blow’. Later comes along a ‘Starter’, possibly with a pistol in his hand. The book says:

Do you know what is meant by venting a cask? The instructions are a bit obscure, but venting is a process definitely carried out by licensed vintners.

Before bottling its contents a cask must be rolled to ‘rouse’ the beer. Also, ‘strict cleanliness is necessary to good bottling’ – I would prefer ‘for’ instead of ‘to’ there, nor do I know the distinction between cleanliness and strict cleanliness. Yet perhaps there is a distinction. If one publican gives a hot bath to his cellar-rats once a week while another does it every day, I suppose their standards cannot be identical. The
Handbook
is
unbending
on one particular. ‘Cullet and rubbish must be removed,’ it says, with severity in its steely prose. What on earth is this Cullet? Could it be the name of some nasty old man? I have looked up the telephone book and find there is not a single Cullet in the country to ring up in search of information.

There is a whole section devoted in the
Handbook
to Crown Corks. Guinness is a London company, but they go a bit far, I feel, with this hint that they get their
corks from Buckingham Palace.

A last thought; nearly a year must roll by before we have another St Patrick’s Day. Can we stand the strain of waiting?