Best of Myles

by Flann O'Brien

  Then I read that ‘future Croke Park matches may see extremely large numbers of police on duty’. Hmm.

  Could the rules not be changed to provide that in every large match at least one of the teams shall be composed entirely of policemen? Alternatively, could not all teams playing there be bound to the peace before they take the field and thus be liable for a stiff jail sentence if they commit assaults on the referee or each other?

  Here is another extraordinary news item: ‘A pig feeder may slaughter a sick animal, cure it and get a top price. In fact the pig may die and, as an afterthought, be cured.’

  There you get, very nicely put, the distinction between a corpse and a carcase.

  I RARELY OFFER my readers a handsome book prize, chiefly because handsome books one dares not dream of parting with; nevertheless, a handsome copy in calf of my own treatise on ‘Cockburn’s Geared Turbine’ I will gladly send to the first reader who sends me the context of the poem in which this rather pidgin phrase occurs:

  ‘… his Laodamia it comes.’

  Absolutely no chorus pawn dents can be entered into, nor will proof of postage be accepted as proof of delivery. Onus of proof is on plaintiff, though it is not contended that this dictum can operate to suspend the rule of law. In Rex v. Beachborough Sea Fisheries Corporation it was contended that defendants were estopped from salvage by trover by reason of non-user of certain jetties, landing stages, slips, causeways, salting-sheds and brine-tubs formerly held under licence from a board not being a harbour board, a board of trustees constituted for the purposes of inland navigation, or a board charged with conserving maritime fisheries: held by Palles C.B. that there had been suspensory user in fructu and that no escheat or reversionary lapse subsisted by mere reason of effluxion of time, time not being of the essence of the contract, and that the charging order set forth in the third schedule of the Order in Council was properly charged. He quashed the conviction and allowed all parties their costs out of the estate. Continuing, the Chief Baron said:

  ‘Not only must justice be done but it must be seen to be done. It is immediately plain that the Antrim County Council, being a road authority within the meaning of the Grand Jury Acts, the Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898 (read with the Application of Enactments Order 1898), is not statutorily charged with the maintenance of sea-lanes. Plaintiffs therefore must fail.’

  Eh? What am I saying?

  Sorry—I pressed the wrong button. It was poetry I meant to talk about.

  INTROSPECTION

  I often wonder am I … mad? Do I take that rather Irish thing, O’Fence, too easily? I go into a house, for instance. My ‘host’ says ‘sit down’. Now why down? Why must he be so cautious and explicit. Is there not a clear suggestion there that if he had neglected to be precise, he might turn round to find me seated on top of the bookcase, the head bent to avoid the ceiling and the air thick with fractured cobwebs? How equally stupid the phrase ‘stand up!’ And how mysterious the sit-down fight as opposed to the stand-up fight!

  NI NACH ILLTSIOLLAMHACH

  I would like to direct the attention of educated persons to this remarkably elegant little quatrain—a certain Ó Maolchiaráin reproaches parties allegedly responsible for wiping off his son;

  A lucht do mharbh an ngéig nglain is do leig fá’n arm a fhuil,

  níor cháin an fear, níor aor ibh, níor libh a thaobh geal do ghuin.

  Apart from the frank implication that a lampoon is recognised as fair grounds for murder, note that the verse, though unpolluted by dissyllables, is dignified and unmonotonous.

  SECOND THOUGHTS

  The book prize offer above is withdrawn. Too many shrewd Schs. and Mods. and junior ads. in this country, I fear. You guessed the context at once, of course.

  … his Laodamia

  It comes; et iuvenis quondam,

  nunc femina, Caeneus …

  But I will re-offer the prize to the reader who can tell me when the emergency will terminate.

  The Royal Irish Academy of the Post War World

  THE ROYAL IRISH Academy of the Post War World (President Sir Myles na gCopaleen (the da)) is making arrangements for turning this country into a limited liability company. Every person who is an existing ‘Irish national’ will automatically become a shareholder unless he formally opts to be ‘an excepted person’ within the meaning of Section 10 (b) of the Eire (Incorporation) Act, upon which the draughtsmen are working night and day. The Act will set up a Board which will take over the country as a going concern together with all proprietary messauges, easements, hereditaments and choses in action. Section 104, subsection 3 (iv) will provide for the holding of an annual meeting at which the audited accounts of the undertaking will be considered and at which every shareholder, hereinafter referred to as ‘the Irishman’, will be entitled to attend and be haired. The members of the board will be ‘elected’ according to certain mysterious formulae contained in Schedule II of the Act. There will be power to declare a dividend, issue debentures and underwrite industrial risks in other countries. Under Part III of the Act, all persons offering themselves for election to the Board automatically become ‘excepted persons’ within the meaning of Section 10 (b) and henceforth will be deemed to be ‘Irishmen’ only if and when elected. On retiring, a member of the Board is de-nationalised but is eligible for re-election to the Irish nation. All very complicated and technical but there you are.

  Myself? Where do I come in? I don’t quite know but if I am elected to the Board, I can foresee a time when I will have to write certain letters. One, for instance, to the Chairman of the Board (probably J. J. O’Leary) and thus to the head of the State:

  ‘Dear Chairman—I write to tender with great regret my resignation from the Irish people. I am compelled to take this step for personal reasons and trust yourself and your co-directors will see your way to accept it. Thanking you for past courtesies, M.’

  Then the reply:

  ‘Dear M—The Board and I have considered the contents of your letter and are unanimous in expressing the hope that you will find it possible to reconsider your decision and agree to remain a member of the Irish nation. The Board wish me to stress the importance they attach to maintaining Irish personnel intact in the present serious state of the world.—J. J.’

  I cannot agree, of course.

  ‘Dear Chairman—I thank you for your letter but I regret very much that owing to advancing age and failing health, I find it almost impossible to fulfil the manifold duties attaching to the position of Irishman and feel that I should make way for younger men. I am indeed sorry that I cannot meet the wishes of your Board. M.’

  But they come back.

  ‘Dear M—While profoundly appreciating the reasons which have led you to tender your resignation, the Board would again warmly counsel you to remain in office for at least a year longer, so that the nation may have the benefit of your advice and guidance in these critical times.—J. J.’

  Again I reply:

  ‘Dear Chairman—I have consulted my physician regarding the request contained in your last letter. He has absolutely prohibited the use of alcohol and also stated that he will disclaim all responsibility for my health if I start fighting. Your Board will therefore appreciate that I am by reason of physical incapacity entirely unfitted for the post of Irishman and for that reason must again tender my resignation with regret.—M.’

  But they won’t take no.

  ‘Dear M—My Board have very carefully considered your last letter. While they are mindful of your enfeebled physical condition, they are still most reluctant to accept your resignation and they have asked me to inquire whether you would be prepared to continue as an Irishman in a part-time capacity.—J.J.’

  There you are. A part-time Irishman! What an end to a life of patriotic endeavour!

  My present hope is that we will be able to get a new section in the Bill providing for persons to retire from the post of Irishman on pension. And they will have to be pretty generous pensions (at that).


  MOST OF MY READERS will recognise the importance of planning. One hears the word mentioned on every side. How good, then, to learn that Sir Myles na gCopaleen (the da) has formed what he is pleased to call the Royal Irish Academy of the Post War World. I defy anybody to exaggerate the importance of this move. It is a move vastly portentous, imponderable and marvellous, its mystical kernel an intellectual epigenesis. Quaternions with cubed vectors are used in the formula, which cannot be evaluated without the use of eighteen differential algebras. The Snodgrass Cycle has been availed of repeatedly in the preliminary calculations. It is all frightfully intricate and subsists intrinsically in a hitherto unsuspected plane of demophysics quite impossible to describe according to the accepted means of communication. Expressed symbolically in its lowest terms, the concept is as follows: a + b + c - j = a. Sir Myles (the da), out for a walk, felt the galvanic circuit close and this almost monstrous essay in socio-thaumaturgics is the result. He reached the nearest canal bridge at a run.

  One must try, however, to be a little more explicit, even at the risk of misleading. In a word, it is hoped to produce, after an ‘interval’ of five Planned Years, a Planned Man. This process will be cyclic and Men more and more thoroughly Planned will emerge after each quinquennial gestation. The Planned Man, being himself planned, will occupy his planned brain with plans and planning and will breed children so planned that they will not tolerate anything whatever that is unplanned, half-planned or misplanned. Plan-less occurrences like a shower of rain will be discontinued. Death itself will no longer be the desultory, unpredictable and unsatisfactory phenomenon it has been for so long in this country (notwithstanding the vaunted promises of the Fianna Fáil government) but will be planned and re-planned until an all-party agreed measure can be introduced in the Dáil entitled—with planned irony—the Life (Transitory Provisions) Bill.

  All this will not happen in a day. The Royal Irish Academy of the Post War World will have associated with it countless subsidiary planning organisations. The Highways Planning Board will arrange for vast concrete arterial roads to radiate from every centre of population, each road having special lanes for fast traffic, slow traffic, tramways, cycles, pedestrians, invalids, readers of The Standard, school-children and Irish speakers. At intervals of two miles there will be rest centres, health clinics, a ‘People’s Unit’ embracing swimming pools, restaurant, cinema, writing and reading rooms, gramophone recital apartments, a home for the aged, a vitamin bureau and two aerodromes.

  Meanwhile the National Housing Planning Board will be engaged in erecting ten million vast arterial houses for the Planned People of Ireland, each house complete with steriliser and small operating theatre, a miniature pharmacy for a new planned science of autotherapy, built-in wife, and hot-water on draught from the system already provided by An Cólucht Náisiúnta um Uisce Galach, or the National Hot Water Corporation. The Board of Transportation and Communications will lay out and build vast arterial railroads and canals, the railroads traversing only worthless mountain land and being enabled to overcome the unthinkable grades by means of locks. Vast arterial tree plantations will be undertaken by the National Afforestation Trust. Vast arterial hydro-electric, sewerage, waterwork, and mining enterprises will be carried out by direct labour under the auspices and aegis of the National Development Board. A Coal Exploration Company will be charged with the sole take of finding vast arterial coal in this country, and another Company (The National Coal Mining Corporation) will undertake the work of mining it.

  That is but an inkling. Further information I must and will give. But surely what I have said is something to be going on with.

  WHAT BETTER to do this morning than to wish Saul my raiders a Happy Christmas sand a brass pierrot’s New Ear? Particularly Uncle Paul (the paid) and Uncle Peter (the robbed), Tom, Dick and Harry (most plebeian of trinities, mystical triune prosopopoeia of the commonplace), Billy and Jack (the latter tireless welcomer of the former’s ex-friends). Tadhg agus a replica Taidhgin (Mac-rocosm et Mick-rocosm), R. C. Ferguson, Glenavy, Lord Moyne (‘Moyne’s a Guinness’), Willie Norton, Power, O’Keeffe and Fogarty, then Jelly D’Aranyi, Willie Dwyer, Jack Yeats, and, of course, Hernon. Christmas grey things to myself also. I deserve them as much as anybody—as much as the next, in fact—though I never noticed that they done me much good. What is there in all this seasonable time for me? Just a hunk of Manchester corned beef and a cup of ‘coffee’ slammed down at 6 p.m. on top of the boiler drawings by my hired slut. I sigh and take off the glasses. Outside in the snow I hear ‘Good King Wenky’s Loss’ being empiped by a small selfappointed choir of juvenile delinquents. Is a straight steam path possible, I wonder vaguely, if we superheat? After a while I ‘drink’ the ‘coffee’ and go to bed, feeling very ill.

  How tired I am after another year of denunciation!

  THE FRIGHTFUL FUTURE

  Another year, eh? Nineteen forty-four, whaaa? What does it hold in Store Street for us? Come back this time next year and I will tell you. But this much it is permissible to say even now. The Royal Irish Academy of the Post War World has plans for 1944. Far-reaching and unthinkable dispositions have already been made. Employment will be afforded to both the stay-at-homes and the returned emigrants, videlicet, the U.A. men and the U.S.A. men. The Academy will without stint pour Phil T. Lukor into (a) the construction of a vast new Cinnamon Theatre; (b) a Ciné-Monotony Theatre; (c) an Ignorarium; (d) a Columbarium (for disused Knights); (e) great new block of Outlaw Courts; (f) an ultramodern Disease Centre with hot and cold shivers laid on; (g) same old vast arterial roads radiating throughout the length and breadth of Ireland (despite the fact that vast arterial roads which radiate can only proceed radially and without reference to length of breadth). Finally a Greyhound Painting Academy.

  SAY I MAKE a ‘joke’ and it doesn’t appeal to you, you are annoyed rather than amused. Annoyed, simply because you haven’t yet found out how to unlaugh. A rather similar problem confronts my Research Bureau. In the Days of the Brown Bread (Lord, how long ago!) a number of disaffected persons, chiefly women, took to illegal sieving operations behind closed doors. Talk to them as you would, you could not induce them to do it behind open doors. Their point was that brown bread did not ‘agree’ with them and that Willie Nilly (that most reckless person) they must have white. Very well. I did what I could, took the matter up with the Ministers, addressed stern admonitions to the farmers … and now … everybody can have white. But including those who want brown, and with whom white does not ‘agree’. Our problem, then is … how to unsieve the white flour. See what you can do for a change. (Offaly papers please copy.)

  But how strange is Nature’s chromatic syntax! The more refined a thing is, the whiter it becomes and if you do not believe this do please come round some evening and have a look at my face.

  SUCCÈS DE STEAM

  But pish! Why should one bother with bread ‘problems’ and the like when that vast ganglion of multiple brain-nerves, the Royal Irish Academy of the Post War World, is grappling mightily with the task of solving all human troubles simultaneously—planning, planning, eternally planning a new world reborn.

  Take transport. We all know by now that we will be the laughing stock of the civilised world unless immediately after the war we can build vast arterial roads. Very well. We are all properly ashamed of our winding undulating country roads and we know too well that they are completely without Rest Centres, Rhubarb Dosage Stations, Health Clinics, Dental Hospitals, Vitamin Breweries, Youth Centres—any primitive modern amenity you like to name. But how are we to provide proper vast arterial roads immediately if the country is full of hills? One way only. The roads must be built on some existing level thoroughfare. Of such thoroughfares we have only two—the canals and the railways. The Academy has under consideration a plan to divert railway traffic to the canals and build the vast arterial roads on the railway lines, which are ideally deficient in grades and curves. Reynolds and McCann kindly met the Academy to the extent of construc
ting an experimental stretch near Dublin. Laugh if you like. At present the rails are laid in the bed of the canal and there is plenty of room for trains and barges to pass each other. There is one snag. Rough stretches of water often mean that the engine’s fire is put out and moreover, constant dredging is necessary to keep the rails free of dead dogs and muck. The Academy is now investigating the possibilities of having floating trains propelled with the screws of old liners. The advantage here is that the engines could tow barges as well as the adapted coaches and thus make up for the shortage of rolling—or rather floating stock: The position is very fluid at the moment but you may be sure that when you read that the reconstructed G.S.R. concern will be a transport rather than a railway company, something like what is shown in aur photograph was contemplated. Why else would My Honour be buying G.S.R.?

  AN ENCOUNTER

  To come back to bread for a moment, I had an odd experience the other day, met one of my poor relations and asked him how he liked the new white bread. Blank face. Eh, bread? What did I mean bread? White? Hah? Hah? Didn’t understand what I was talking about, never heard of it.

  (Damn fellow must eat cake.)

  MORE GOOD NEWS! I am in position to announce that the Royal Irish Academy of the Post War World (President, Sir Myles na gCopaleen (the da)) does not intend to dissociate itself from present politico-social trends. Apart from Planning, which is, of course, all-important, the Academy has officially endorsed the new monopolative and amalgamative concept of society. There will be no more laissez faire if certain of the Academy’s plans mature, nor will profit-making be permitted in relation to any public utility.