Myles Before Myles E-Book

Flann O'Brien

• Herausgeber: The Lilliput Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Myles Before Myles is a wonderfully funny selection of writings from the pen of Brian O'Nolan (aka Flann O'Brien, Myles na Gopaleen, George Knowall). In this fun-filled extravaganza he is, above all, an entertainer, a 'gas man'. Like much of O'Nolan's most entertaining work, the pieces in this did not originally appear in book form, but in periodicals and newspapers that are now almost impossible to find. Myles Before Myles reveals that some of his wittiest and most unusual were published years before Myles na Gopaleen (or Flann O'Brien) had even been born, and were destined to lie in almost complete obscurity for many decades. Flann O'Brien is a cult hero whose comic genius has been praised by anyone who is anyone -- from James Joyce to Graham Greene, Dylan Thomas to Anthony Burgess, Bendan Behan to S.J.Perelman. Old addicts (lucky enough to have discovered Flann in previous hilarious guises) will rejoice at the rediscovery of lost laughter and new readers will revel in one of the funniest writers in any language. Here is a feast for them all: a book full of the joys of Myles as student, as blatherer, as romancer, as Irishman, as poet -- as Myles! With an intelligent and amusing introduction from the compiler, John Wyse Jackson, Myles Before Myles (which has been out of print for some twenty years) is a brilliant addition to the O'Brien canon. Its reappearance has been well worth waiting for.

Leseprobe

FLANN O’BRIEN

(Myles na Gopaleen)

MYLES BEFORE MYLES

A selection of the earlier writings of Brian O’Nolan

Selected and introduced by John Wyse Jackson

Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The Student

2 The Romance of Blather

3 From the Irish

4 At Swim-Two-Birds

5 Henrik Ibsen and Patrick Kavanagh

6 The Bell

7 Poems in Translation

Sources

By the Same Author

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Warm thanks are due to Breandán Ó Conaire for translating most of the Irish material, and to Susan Asbee for making available to me the extracts from At Swim-Two-Birds; to Tess Hurson, Aibhistín Mac Amhlaigh, Anthony Cronin and very many others for help and encouragement; to Mrs Evelyn O’Nolan for smiling on the project; and to Eoghan and Biddy, Lucy and Julie, and the entire Wyse Jackson family for being themselves. I would also like to thank John Ryan, Peter Costello, and, for the pieces included here by her late husband, Mrs Kathleen Kavanagh.

Introduction

On April Fool’s Day 1986, exactly twenty years after the death of the author of this book, there was a strange gathering in Dublin. It was the first international symposium devoted to the life and work of Flann O’Brien. Incorporated into each day’s proceedings was an event oddly titled ‘Late Evening Criticism’, during which delegates and members of what could be called ‘Literary Dublin’ met, drank Guinness, and then proceeded to criticise each other. One morning, John Ryan, artist, writer and old friend of Flann O’Brien, set off from the symposium with a crocodile of professors, students, Mylesmen and ‘corduroys’ – Myles na Gopaleen’s term for personages of undefined literary pretensions. The object of this pilgrimage was to visit some of the many hostelries where ‘your man’ had reputedly found inspiration, to look at them, and to soak up, among other things, the ambience. In just such a spirit did the devout penitents of the Middle Ages visit the holy wells of Ireland and partake of the holy liquid therein. It was not until the Holy Hour (when the pubs shut) that the crocodile shuffled, bedraggled but happy, back to the symposium. Flann O’Brien, Myles na Gopaleen and Brian O’Nolan could not have disapproved.

Apart from the celebratory festivities during the three days of the symposium, the emphasis among the more studious delegates was primarily on the novels of Flann O’Brien. This is understandable: a novel must have a beginning (or, in the case of At Swim-Two-Birds, three beginnings), a middle and an end; it can be more satisfactorily tackled as a unit, whereas it is not so easy to discuss collections of shorter pieces which by definition lack a collective structure. There is another reason, however. Much of Brian O’Nolan’s most interesting and entertaining work has never been published in book form. Most of his writings from the thirties, for example, which include some of his funniest excursions, and which display several nearly unknown aspects of his work, have lain in almost complete obscurity since then, and it is this material which forms the basis of the present collection.

Like Gaul and good sermons, the thirty-five years of O’Nolan’s writing life can be divided into three parts. For the first ten years, say, between 1930 and 1940, he was seeking a voice. During the next ten years or so, he had found it. After about 1950, he had become that voice. Throughout, he could write elegantly, intelligently and hilariously, and often with what he once called ‘the beauty of jewelled ulcers’. The things that changed were the tone, the style, the language, and the pseudonym, or pen-name.

There are two main reasons for the use of a pen-name. The first is obvious: to provide anonymity for propriety’s sake or for professional purposes. As a civil servant, Brian O’Nolan needed to be able to say, as he once did when accused by his superiors of having written an article signed by one ‘John McCaffrey’, ‘I no more wrote that than I wrote those things in the IrishTimes by Myles na Gopaleen.’ The second reason is that the use of a pen-name makes it far easier for some people to write imaginatively and freely, and, indeed, to write well. Try writing to the papers under a false name and you will see what I mean. You will be able to say all sorts of disgraceful things without being accused of believing them.

It is almost impossible to discover from O’Nolan’s pseudonymous writings what the man behind them really believed. Pseudonyms were central to his creative impulse. He rarely used his real name, and when he did it was usually in its Irish version, Brian Ua Nualláin, or some variant thereof. Other names that he adopted, apart from Myles na Gopaleen and Flann O’Brien, include Peter the Painter, George Knowall, Brother Barnabas, John James Doe, Winnie Wedge, An Broc, and The O’Blather. The list is by no means complete. It has been said, however, that he began life as who he really was, and ended it as Myles. The whole of Ireland, as well as most of his acquaintances, knew him simply as ‘Myles’, and he thus gradually lost the freedom of expression that his persona, ‘Myles na Gopaleen’, had given him. In the later CruiskeenLawn columns in the IrishTimes, what ‘Myles’ wrote, Myles believed. Or so people thought. It was probably a response to O’Nolan’s realisation of this effect that prompted him to give birth in 1960 to George Knowall, the hectoring polymath of MylesAwayfromDublin.

In this collection, however, there are few of the acerbities of George Knowall. Brian O’Nolan, here, is above all an entertainer, a ‘gas man’. He began his literary career proper with stories and articles, generally humorous in intent, which he wrote in Irish, his first language. (His father had discouraged the use of English at home, and the young Brian is said to have taught himself to read the language – first, by looking at comics, and then, at about the age of seven, by tackling Dickens.) These early Irish pieces, a few of which have been included here, show O’Nolan already trying out ideas and techniques that he was to use in his greatest Irish work, An Béal Bocht (ThePoorMouth). They were published in the early thirties while he was a student at University College, Dublin. The College magazine Comhthrom Féinne, of which he was to become editor for a time, printed his first articles in English, and ‘Brother Barnabas’, the most important pen-name he used at this time, was celebrated as an oracle and commentator on College matters. Like ‘Myles na Gopaleen’ ten years later, the eccentric monk practically became a person in his own right, and, indeed, on 30 April 1932 the magazine’s gossip column reports that ‘Mr B. O’Nualláin was heard speaking to Brother Barnabas in a lonely corridor: “Brian, I had to come back from Baden-Baden.” “That’s too bad, then.’”

At the end of his college career, O’Nolan, together with some friends, notably his brother Ciarán, Niall Montgomery and Niall Sheridan, who was to appear thinly disguised as Brinsley in the novel AtSwim-Two-Birds, founded Blather, variously described by itself as ‘The only really nice paper circulating in Ireland’, ‘Ireland’s poor eejit paper’, ‘The voice from the back of the hall’ and ‘The only paper exclusively devoted to the interests of clay-pigeon shooting in Ireland.’ It was inspired by Razzle, an English comic magazine of the period, and contained cartoons, some of them drawn by O’Nolan, silly verse, mock political pieces, short stories, and a host of other miscellaneous pieces which display the warped and imaginative view of things that we have come to expect from O’Nolan. Again, several of the comic devices for which Myles/Flann is known appear in their early forms in the paper, but, that apart, Blather remains vastly entertaining still, and a generous selection from its short life is reprinted here.

It is extremely difficult to identify for certain which of the pieces in Blather and ComhthromFéinne were actually written by O’Nolan, which were collaborations, and which were the work of other contributors. There was a common sense of humour and style among his friends at the time, and it is likely that there was considerable discussion of what was to go into print. However, what is certain is that O’Nolan wrote most of it, and furthermore that his was the creative guiding force behind all of it. The humour was his own, or he made it his own. The same caveat applies, probably to a greater extent, to the section in this collection entitled ‘Henrik Ibsen and Patrick Kavanagh’. These letters, written at the beginning of the forties to the IrishTimes, are a surrealistic exercise in lunacy, in which each contribution sparks off an even more outlandish reply, until finally R. M. Smyllie, the editor, calls a halt. It has been decided to reprint here the best of them, without being unduly concerned as to their true authorship. Evidence, in any case, is minimal. O’Nolan was certainly F. O’Brien, but he may also have been Whit Cassidy, Lir O’Connor, Luna O’Connor, Mrs Hilda Upshott, Judy Clifford and Jno. O’Ruddy. He was probably not Oscar Love, and he was certainly not Patrick Kavanagh. These letters derive much of their entertainment value from their context, and it would be churlish to exclude them on the scholarly grounds of dubious ascription, for their entertainment value is high, and if there was a mastermind behind them, it was none other than …

The present book closes with Brian O’Nolan’s verse translations from the Irish. He would not have claimed a great deal for them, I suspect, but they have a lightness of touch that does not diminish their impact, and have none of the pomposity of most Irish verse translations. All O’Nolan’s work contains a similar playful unexpectedness. Often this quality hides deep seriousness, outmanoeuvring reality in order to show what makes it appear to be so real. Sometimes, as in the bulk of this collection, the playfulness is for its own sake. And a very good sake it is, too, as the gentleman from Japan used to say. Cheers!

JOHN WYSE JACKSON

Fulham, March 1988

1

The Student

‘Tell me this, do you ever open a book at all?’

AtSwim-Two-Birds, p. 10

The earliest known piece of published writing by Brian O’Nolan is a little poem written during his schooldays at Blackrock College, Co. Dublin. When it was written is impossible to say, as it appeared when O’Nolan was already an undergraduate at University College, Dublin, but it bears evidence of his having opened perhaps too many books at too early an age. Its title is the school’s motto:

AD ASTRA

Ah! when the skies at night

Are damascened with gold,

Methinks the endless sight

Eternity unrolled.

The verse is almost unique among O’Nolan’s creative writings in that it shows none of his characteristic irony. It is tempting to imagine what the poet Patrick Kavanagh would have remarked if the poem had circulated through the Dublin pubs in later years. Still, O’Nolan never forgot about eternity.

Soon after entering University College, Dublin he became involved in the chief debating society, known to all as the ‘L. & H.’. He later wrote two accounts of his time there:

Memories of the Literary and Historical Society, UCD

The Society met in term every Saturday night at seven thirty p.m. in a small theatre upstairs in 86 St Stephen’s Green. Impassive as that granite-faced building looks to the present day, it was in the early thirties derelict within and was in some queer way ostracised from the college apparatus. And when the L. & H. met there, there was unholy bedlam.

The theory of the procedure was that the Society met to debate a pre-publicised motion, usually under the auspices of a visiting chairman. But before that item was reached in a night’s work, time had to be found for the transaction of Private Business. So private was this business that in my own time the fire brigade had to be sent for twice and the police at least twelve times. Four people were taken to hospital with knife injuries, one man was shot, and there is no counting the number of people hurt in free-for-alls.

And there is no possible way of dealing here with the far more spectacular tragedies arising from people getting sick by reason of too much drink. Still … the Society bravely carried on. The roars prefaced by ‘Mr Auditor, SIR!’ were uttered by certain guttersnipes who are today the leaders in politics, the law, other professions and even journalism. One should not look too closely at the egg while it is hatching. That fable of the ugly duckling is still vivid.

Once a meeting got under way, many people were under the impression that the heavens were about to fall. The situation was one of a sort of reasoned chaos. During Private Business it was customary for the Auditor to scream to make himself heard and rule sundry questioners out of order. Apart from the jam-packed theatre itself, the big lobby outside and a whole staircase leading to it were peopled by a mass of insubordinate, irreverent persons collectively known as The Mob. Their interruptions and interjections were famous and I was myself designated (as I say it without shame) their leader.

Were we bad old codgers, notwithstanding those days of disorder and uproar?

Well, I don’t think there was much wrong with us. If something has to go down on the charge-sheet, say that we were young. It’s a disease that cures itself.

From The centenary history of the Literary and Historical Society, University College Dublin, 1855–1955

An invitation to write a few notes on my own day in UCD and the L. & H. – roughly from 1929 to 1934 – revealed that one effect of university education seems to be the distortion or near-eradication of the faculty of memory. I retain only the vaguest notion of how important rows arose, what they were really about and how they were quenched, whereas some sharp images in the recollection relate to trivial and absurd matters: but perhaps that is a universal rather than a university infirmity.

Architecturally, UCD reminds me of a certain type of incubator, an appropriate parallel – full of good eggs and bad eggs and ‘gluggers’. I entered the big Main Hall at an odd hour on the second day of Michaelmas term 1929, looked about me and vividly remember the scene. The hall was quite empty. The plain white walls bore three dark parallel smudgy lines at elevations of about three, five and five-and-a-half feet from the tiled chessboard floor. Later I was to know this triptych had been achieved by the buttocks, shoulders, and hair oil of lounging students. They had, in fact, nowhere else to lounge, though in good weather many went out and sat on the steps. Before I left College, a large ‘students’ room’ had been provided in the semi-ruinous remnant of the old Royal University premises, which is still behind the UCD façade; this room was destined to become the home of really ferocious poker schools. The ladies had a room of their own from the start. The only other amenity I can recall pre-1930 was a small restaurant of the tea-and-buns variety which provided the sole feasible place intramuros for the desegregation of the sexes. Later a billiards table was conceded, possibly in reality a missionary move to redeem poker addicts. Lecture theatres were modern and good, the lectures adequate though often surprisingly elementary, and it was a shock to find that Duggie Hyde spoke atrocious Irish, as also did Agnes O’Farrelly (though the two hearts were of gold). Skipping lectures while contriving a prim presence at roll-call became a great skill, particularly with poker and billiards men.

The Republican versus Free State tensions were acute at this time, but one other room was set aside for the non-academic use of students; it was a recruiting office for a proposed National Army OTC. When it opened, a body of students led by the late Frank Ryan, then editing AnPhoblacht and himself a graduate, came down with sticks and wrecked the joint. And there, I can’t remember whether anybody was identified and fired for that!

The President for my span was Dr Denis J. Coffey, a standoffish type and a poorish public speaker, but a very decent man withal. He lived only round the corner but never came or went otherwise than in a cab. That may seem odd now, but at that time it was the minimum requisite of presidential dignity. Many will recall the hall porters of that and preceding eras – Ryan and his assistant Jimmy Redmond, made in the proportions of Mutt and Jeff. Ryan was the real Dublin man, thin and tall with bad feet, a pinched face behind costly glasses and adorned with a moustache finished to points like waxed darning needles. Jimmy was more plebeian and ordinary-looking, and often more useful. Both, alas, are long dead. I hope Peter recognised two of his own trade.

The students’ many societies, of which the L. & H. was the principal one and the oldest, held their meetings in a large building at 86 Stephen’s Green. In my day it was a very dirty place and in bad repair, in the care of an incredible porter named Flynn whose eyes were nearly always closed, though not from an ocular complaint or mere sleep. If I am not mistaken, lighting was by gas, and it was in this 86, in an upstairs semi-circular lecture theatre that the L. & H. met every Saturday night. It was large as such theatres go but its seating capacity could not exceed two hundred, whereas most meetings attracted not fewer than six hundred people. The congestion, disorder and noise may be imagined. A seething mass gathered and swayed in a very large lobby outside the theatre, some sat on the stairs smoking, and groups adjourned to other apartments from time to time for hands of cards. Many students participated in the Society’s transactions from the exterior lobby by choice, for once inside there was no getting out unless one was a lady student staying in one of the residential halls run by nuns, who imposed a ten o’clock curfew. The mass exit of these ladies always evoked ribald and insulting commentary. A particular reason why many remained outside was the necessity to be free to make periodical trips to the Winter Palace at the corner of Harcourt Street, a pub where it was possible to drink three or four strong pints at sevenpence each.

This most heterogeneous congregation, reeling about, shouting and singing in the hogarthian pallor of a single gas-jet (when somebody had not thought fit to extinguish the same) came to be known as the mob, and I had the honour to be acknowledged its president. It is worth noting that it contained people who were not students at all. A visitor would probably conclude that it was merely a gang of rowdies, dedicated to making a deafening uproar the obbligato to some unfortunate member’s attempts to make a speech within. It was certainly a disorderly gang but its disorders were not aimless and stupid, but often necessary and salutary. It could nearly be claimed that the mob was merely a severe judge of the speakers. In a document he issued in connection with his own candidature for the auditorship, here is what Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh wrote about them:

I have no faith in quack-police remedies in dealing with the Mob. Any good speaker can subdue them. It is his pleasure, pride and triumph. I consider the lack of courtesy in other parts of the House equally annoying and unfortunately not eradicable at the hands of good speakers.

I believe that the men at the door – some of them better intellectually than our speakers – will respond to an appeal given in a gentlemanly way and backed by personality.

The crowded House is the soul of the L. & H. It makes the gathering electric.

I agree with that last sentence absolutely. The Commerce Society also held weekly debates in the same theatre and, granted that they had not the indefinable advantage of owning the Saturday nights, the debates were distressingly orderly, prim, almost boring. The same was more so when the CumannGaelach met to debate in Irish, and be it noted that L. & H. members were also speakers in both those other societies. The mob, however, was on duty qua mob only on Saturday nights, though many individual members were to be seen wolfing cakes at the teas which societies often gave before a meeting. The Society now meets in the big Physics Theatre in Earlsfort Terrace. There is no mob now – the miseenscène is impracticable – and I have no doubt at all that the Society has deteriorated, both as a school for speakers and, more important, the occasion for an evening’s enjoyment.

If my judgment is not faulty, the standard of speaking was very high on the average. There were dull speakers, some with hobby horses, politicians, speakers who were ‘good’ but boring, but there were brilliant speakers too. The most brilliant of all was J. C. Flood. He was an excellent and witty man, with a tongue which could on occasion scorch and wound. Long after he had become a professional man of the world, he found it impossible to disengage himself from the Society. Another fine speaker I remember was Michael Farrell and, God bless my soul, I amassed some medals myself.

The man I admired most was the late Tim O’Hanrahan, a most amusing personality and a first-class debater on any subject under the sun.

That the Society is really an extra-curricular function of the university organism is shown by the great number of the members of my day (and, of course, of other days) who were to attain great distinction in legal and parliamentary work. The Irish gift of the gab is not so spontaneous an endowment as we are led to believe: it requires training and endowment, experience of confrontation with hostile listeners, and, yes – study.

Not only was the L. & H. invaluable to the students in such matters, but it could teach the visiting chairmen a thing or two. Determined chairmen who tried to control the mob found they were merely converting disorder into bedlam, while timid chairmen learnt the follies of conciliation, and the beauty of a mean between weakness and pugnacity.

I can attempt no statistical survey here, for it would be like what somebody called a net – a lot of holes tied together. But a few names were prominent enough to be securely lodged in my mind. The Auditor in office in 1929–30, when I entered the Society, was Robin Dudley Edwards. He was of striking appearance (still is, I hope) and enhanced his personality by appearing nowhere, never, winter or summer, without an umbrella, an implement even then completely out of fashion. To Edwards the umbrella as to Coffey the cab. He was a good speaker and a very good Auditor.

A big change began to come about in 1931–2, when Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was elected. The last time I saw this ex-Auditor, he was seated on the bench of the Supreme Court. Apart from his College activities, he was in those days writing articles in all manner of outside publications, all contentious and reeking with politics – a sort of primitive Myles na Gopaleen. The country was on the brink of the Fianna Fáil age and Ó Dálaigh was backing that movement so strongly, in speeches and in print, that the election involved political alignments. He had a successful reign in the Society. I note from the printed programme of his year that of the eighteen debates – I exclude six impromptu debates – eight were on political themes.

The next Auditor was the editor of this book.1 He was elected the hard way. The cost of membership of the Society was one shilling, but I can think of no power or privilege membership conferred other than the right to vote at the auditorial election. When the 1932–3 votes were counted, it was found that the new Auditor was Richard P. Dunne, a law student.

R. P. Dunne was a strange and interesting character, and an able speaker. Having made up his mind to be Auditor, he had himself elected treasurer of the Society in John Kent’s year and gradually made members of many people he regarded as his friends, even if they had never attended a meeting of the Society in their lives. The result of the election flabbergasted many people. An Electoral Commission was set up and a committee of these appointed to make recommendations. One recommendation they made was that membership should not carry the vote until the member’s second year, but the main thing is that the Commission upset the election of Dunne. On the re-election Meenan was declared Auditor.

The session 1932–3 was of some importance, for it was then I decided it was time for myself to become Auditor. My opponent was Vivion de Valera. The Fianna Fáil Party was by then firmly established, heaven on earth was at hand, and de Valera gained by this situation. I believed and said publicly that these politicians were unsuitable; so I lost the election.

As an Auditor, I would give de Valera, as in marking speeches, eight out of ten. The affairs of the L. & H. were cluttered with too many politicisms, objectionable not because politics should have no place in student deliberations, but simply because they bored. Perhaps I am biassed, for it was to be my later destiny to sit for many hours every day in Dáil Éireann, though not as an elected statesman, and the agonies entailed are still too fresh in my memory to be recalled without emotion.

The next Auditor was Richard N. Cooke who had in a previous year been auditor of the Commerce Society. Cooke was a good and forceful head man, lively and persuasive as a speaker. A superb domed cranium lent a sort of emphasis to his most trivial arguments. It was about this time, I think, that the Society’s membership was rising rapidly, due to the missionary work of interested persons who saw themselves as contenders for the auditorship in the future.

In 1935–6 Desmond Bell was elected, and the year may be said to mark the end of my own association with the College and the Society. In my irregular attendances at meetings, where into my speeches there was now creeping a paternal intonation, I found Bell an active and able Auditor though as a speaker, he was inclined to indulge in ‘oratory’.

I am afraid this brief sketch gives little hint of the magic those years held, at least for me. Like any organisation of any size, there must be many officers who work hard and quietly in its many departments, and for little recognition or thanks. A lot of responsibility lay on the committees elected every year. The only programme of debates I have is for 1931–2, consule Ó Dálaigh, and shows included on the committee T. Lynch, BA (now County Solicitor for Clare), Donnchadh L. Ó Donnchadha (now a District Justice), Joe Kenny (now County Registrar for Waterford), and Una O’Dwyer, one of the few ladies who distinguished themselves in the Society. But I make no attempt to enumerate all the names that deserve honour for all the work they did in maintaining and fortifying the venerable Literary and Historical Society. As many of them were destined to do in the bigger world later, they influenced the life of the whole College in their day. Modestly they may say with Virgil: QuaeregioinTerracenostri non plenalaboris!

By 1931 O’Nolan was writing under a number of pseudonyms for the student magazine, ComhthromFéinne (Fair play). Among his first contributions was another, somewhat different, account of the L. & H.:

The ‘L. & H.’ from the earliest times

BY ‘BROTHER BARNABAS’

At the risk of saying something very commonplace, we must begin by stating that the Literary and Historical Society is an institution of unparalleled antiquity. The fact has been suitably stressed by succeeding auditors, year after year, by way of warning to the Janitor-Philistines, but that does not deter me from reiterating it here in the select seclusion of these columns. The ‘L. and H.’ is an institution unconscionably ancient, and every loyal child thereof should be sufficiently versed in its tenets and history to defend it alike from the broadside vocalism of the obstructionist, and the more insidious attacks of the non-believer from without the fold.

Accordingly, the excerpts printed below should be committed to memory, care being taken when reciting them, to pronounce all proper names with the slight sing-song intonation current in the latter part of the Stone Age. These excerpts are compiled from the original Minutes, which stretch back far beyond the Palaeolithic Age. All the spellings have been modernised, and the text has been extensively revised with a view to the Amendment (Censorship of Publications) Act.

Date …1

Curious semi-legible references to ‘members’ tails’. Chairman ‘takes the bough’. Debate illegible. Auditor unknown.

Date…

Auditor reads several stones on the interesting subject, ‘Is Civilisation a Failure?’ Subsequent motion to build a home for decayed ex-auditors with the manuscript is rejected on humanitarian grounds.

Date…

Member ejected for cracking a joke ‘in the worst possible taste’ during private business.2 Insistent non-member, Mr Yhaclum, has his tail pulled and is ejected. Egg of dinosaur thrown by disapproving bystander. Debate and further proceedings illegible.

Date…

New Auditor, Mr Tnek. Is suspected of having glass eyes, as he continues to fix one part of the house with a gaze of unnatural dog-like devotion, or alternatively, a glare of fanatical fish-like hatred. He takes things quietly.3 Delivers Inaugural Address with tail exposed and wagging nervously.4 Makes an unexpected witty retort towards the end of his auditorship, and is burnt on a pyre of crude paraffin wax.

The Minutes for several centuries subsequently have been irreparably damaged by Phœnician settlers, who have used the stones for the sharpening of bronze weapons. One curious word – ‘Neoinín-clog’* – is still plainly legible on many slabs. It is probably the Erse title of a pagan love saga, a double-cycle of which is known to have existed.

The next legible set of Minutes, in a much better condition, are scratched on stout elephant-hide.

DateAD198

Auditor, Mr F. McCool, B.Agr.Sc. Mr McCool, speaking first in Irish and continuing in English, said he wished to draw the attention of members to a reference in the Minutes of previous – very previous – meetings, to ‘members’ tails’. Speaking for himself, he did not like it. These Minutes, unless they were altered or destroyed, would remain to embarrass and humiliate the members of the future, the members of generations still unborn; more especially those who aspired to match supremacy of intellect with dignity of carriage. He therefore proposed that all incriminating Minutes be dumped in the sea at Dollymont (now Dollymount), where a mammoth skating rink could be constructed. Speaking, then, in his official capacity, he had no hesitation in accepting the motion.5

Mr Yaf, B.Naut.Sc., who was suspected to be a Viking, and spoke with a curious foreign accent, said he was interested in international peace, and he wished to object. To place all the incriminating Minutes in the sea would lead to a phenomenal increase in coastal erosion all over the world. To the best of his recollection, he had never met the word ‘skating’ or ‘rink’ in any of the many books he had read, and he was therefore reluctantly compelled to condemn the thing or the practice, or whatever it was. He courteously thanked the house.

Mr Oisin, D.Litt.Celt., speaking in metres too intricate to be recorded, said that he also wished to object, but on grounds much more pertinent than those of Mr Yaf. He himself was of a studious disposition, having never laughed in his life, and after studying his family tree for nine years he had come to the conclusion that no ancestor of his ever had a tail – never had and never would have! (Cheers.) The Auditor’s reasons for destroying the Minutes were obvious. His reasons for retaining them were more obvious. He now proposed that a Select Committee of Enquiry be set up, which was to subject the antecedents of every member to the most rigorous scrutiny; that those whose ancestors were found to have had tails be compelled to carry something to represent the fact, preferably a black tail-like rain-shade.

The motion was adopted.

The next most important name of those among the ex-Auditors, who also won fame in other spheres, is that of Mr D. D. McMurrough,* BA (Legal and Polit. Sc.). The Minutes are rather brief.

Signature of Mr Adam, B.A.O., the Auditor who introduced women to the Society.

‘Riotous scenes marked an interesting debate on the subject: “The more we are together, the happier we will be,” Henry VIII. Deo Grat. Rex. a chieftain from a neighbouring island, in the chair. The Chairman, in a neat summing up, said he was sure that Ireland had turned the corner and entered a period of great progress and prosperity, now that the dark and evil days of insular seclusion were a thing of the past. Ireland could now take her place among the nations of the world. (Cheers.) He congratulated the Society on their very able Auditor, whom he had met at an Inter-debate in France.’

Several sets of Minutes, covering the gap between the foregoing and the next available notes, which are inscribed on fossilised goat skin, are in the course of being deciphered.

Date…

Auditor: Mr G. R. Fawkes, B.Sc. Mr Fawkes, in thanking the members for electing him, said he would endeavour to make the Society go with a bang. He had pleasure in nominating his friend, Mr Tresham, to take his place during his temporary absence in London. He was going to attend an Inter-debate at Westminster, the mother of Parliaments, muryaa, and they could bet he would be at the bottom of a very far-reaching motion there. He would ask the gentlemen at the door to stop letting off squibs; his nerves were bad enough, God knows.

Strangely enough, there is no trace of an Inaugural Address by Mr Fawkes.

‘Brother Barnabas’ was the first of O’Nolan’s invented personae, and his activities were chronicled many times in subsequent issues:

Graduatecutto ribbons by express-train

BRILLIANT NEW INSURANCE SCHEME

FREE GIFTS FOR READERS

Another milestone (writes Brother Barnabas, our Special Commissioner) has been reached in the romance of Comhthrom Féinne, Ireland’s National University Magazine. Our Gigantic Free Insurance Scheme, quietly inaugurated over the weekend, has been an instantaneous and nationwide success, and shows every promise of going from strength to strength. Letters of congratulation have poured in from all parts, whilst suggestions (all of which shall receive our sympathetic consideration) as to extending the scheme to cover all the exigencies of University life have been received by the score. Once again we emphasise that there is nothing to pay; there are no wearisome rules; no tedious conditions. You simply fill in the coupon, tear it into two sections,postoneto us and hand the other to yourpetSeller;that is all.1Register now and enjoyrealpeace of mind.

The first reader to benefit under this novel scheme was Mr Bewley Box, a well-known graduate in the faculty of Science. It appears that Mr Box, being a penniless Communist, had set out on the day of May the first last to walk home from Dublin to Cork along the railway line and thus show his contempt for a capitalist company by refusing to use its system of transport. He walked all day and well into the following night. At approximately 5.49 a.m. on the morning of May the second, when some two hundred yards from Limerick Junction Station, apparently after he had been accepted by the North Signal Cabin, he was struck between the fifth and sixth vertebrae of the spinal column by a GSR train bearing several tons of the IrishIndependent and the IrishTimes, (dep. Kingsbridge 3.55 a.m.). Mr Box, realising with admirable presence of mind that a mile-long cattle-train was due in two hours, endeavoured to drag himself from the metals with the aid of his one remaining limb: but before he had time to put his ingenious plan into operation, he was struck by the Irish Press train (dep. Kingsbridge 4.0 a.m.) which came thundering through the night just then, and Mr Box was literally reduced to match-wood. The deceased was calm and collected to the last, the collection occupying four trained paper-spikes from Stephen’s Green, who were rushed to the spot, some twelve hours. Funeral Private.

Interview withnext-of-kin

Our representative, Brother Barnabas, was very courteously received by the grief-stricken mother in a decent and neat little parlour at 13A Cuff Alley, Cork.

‘We suppose,’ said our representative, speaking from force of habit, in the plural, ‘that you are very disturbed over this terrible holocaust?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Mrs Box, smiling through her tears, ‘more or less. The money will come in very useful. £10,000 is a lot, and I’ll be able to give Peggy and Tommie a good schooling. I can buy the wee house I’ve been dreaming about for so long, and I can keep what’s left as a nest-egg. And I can put up a decent marble gravestone to himself, who collected the last souvenir of the last Cork tram. Well, well. It’s a hard life!’

‘Ah-ha!’ said our representative, ‘So your husband’s dead, too. Well, Mrs Box, you must be lonely and heart-broken, and if you should ever think of sharing the toils and the troubles of your good life with some one else, I …’ (Here the interview lapses into the purely personal and ceases to interest our general readers.)

The Management of ComhthromFéinne will pay over to Mrs Box the sum of £10,000, after certain legal formalities, etc., have been completed.

Other claims

£100 – Mr X, undergraduate, strained neck and impaired nerves, and general symptoms of ‘Backstairs Anaemia.’ (Major Subject – ‘Irish.’).

£10–200 claims of strained aural nerves due to listening for overdue bell.

THIS WEEK’S PRIZE OF FIVE SHILLINGS

(For the Most Interesting Claim)

AWARDED TO MR Z. (Ballyjamesduff)

(Two feet severed at ankles – Mowing machine mishap at harvesting)

£50 – Two claims. Rush for morning papers in Gentlemen’s Smokeroom.

£50–150 Claims. Sore shoulder. From putting shoulder to wheel before Examinations.

Arrangements are being made to extend our Free Insurance Policy to cover Failures of students in Gambling, Horse-betting, Failures at all Examinations, Tests, Studentships, etc. Fill up your coupon now. (You will find it on page five of cover.)

Freegifts for readers

To mark the inauguration of this Giant Free Insurance Scheme, unparalleled in the history of Irish National journalism, Brother Barnabas has decided to present readers with free balloons, embellished with appropriate quotations from Chaucer and Eoghan Ruadh O Suileabháin to readers of Comhthrom Féinne. In order to qualify for this unique and interesting gift (which, by the way, considering the vast number of theories and principles relative to Physics which it exemplifies, should be of special interest to students of the Science faculty), readers, when met by Brother Barnabas, must be carrying a copy of Comhthrom Féinne, conspicuously carried folded twice under the arm, a birth-certificate, copies of references from head of school or college or institution attended, a roll of Gaeltacht hand-woven tweed, a copy of Ulysses by James Joyce or Lord Tennyson, a complete set of snooker-balls, a BA Hons. degree parchment, a tastefully arranged basket of home-grown tariff-free cut-flowers, a copy of an Oath of Allegiance to Brother Barnabas, four penny buns from the College restaurant, ten Irish-made coal-hammers, a copy of Morphi’s GamesofChess, a set of new Dublin-made brow-knitters, a red flag, and a small green-coloured urn containing the ashes of the last issue of the NationalStudent.

(SPECIAL NOTE TO THE WEAK-CHESTED. – For the convenience of those who are debarred from weight-lifting by doctor’s orders, the proprietors of ComhthromFéinne have made elaborate arrangements for the supply of Irish-made barrows, to be hired at a nominal rate. A special army of clerks have been engaged for some weeks past in minutely studying the College Rules, and they have failed to find the slightest trace of any ordinance forbidding barrow-wheeling in the Main Hall. The less developed of our readers, therefore, may join in the fun with the rest. Good luck!)

PoetLionelPrune isnoteligible to compete.

Lionel Prune appeared on several occasions. His similarity to W. B. Yeats, then the grand old man of Irish poetry, is scarcely accidental:

Mr Lionel Prune comes to UCD

INTERVIEW WITH OUR SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE

As I passed through the Main Hall last week I saw, reclining languidly against the Commerce Society’s Notice Board, a stranger of eminent aspect. Taking out my copy of Dialann an Mhic Leighinn1 I quickly noted down details of his appearance in Ogham Shorthand around the margins of pages 77 and 78. He was tall and willowy, and groaned beneath a heavy burthen of jet-black hair long untouched by tonsorial shears. His eyes were vacuous but yearning and looked out on the world through a pair of plane lenses. These latter were held erect on his nose by the device known as pince-nez and from the edge of one of them a thick black ribbon descended flowingly to his right-hand lapel buttonhole. A slight trace of black moustache drooped cloyingly from his protruding upper lip. His neck was embellished by a flame-red tie. He wore a great nigger-brown overcoat which stretched well below his knees. His right hand toyed with a walking stick and his left with a bulky dispatch case.

After this brief survey I recognised him in a flash. It was Lionel Prune the distinguished modern poet of the younger school! Remembering the great paper I represented I took my courage in both pockets and approached him diffidently.

‘Yes’ he murmured, in reply to my nervous questioning, ‘I am Lionel Prune. I have attended the lecture halls, corridors and library of UCD incognito for some weeks past with the aim of getting a carefree and insouciant atmosphere into my work. I shall probably do a BA degree in Summer.’

‘Splendid!’ (said I becoming more bold). ‘And what are your impressions of College?’

‘I have scribbled one or two little things’ he replied, catching hold of my third waist-coat button and shooting up his coat sleeve he read the following from his cuff:

O TEMPORA!

College in a hustle

‘Neath the April sun,

Ryan’s-bell rings for lecture,

And the Co-eds run.

Chatter on the steps,

From which the breezes are waftin’

Aroma of strong thundercloud,

And mild Sweet Afton.

Then a lull of quiet,

And a cloud across the sun,

Fags and brown pipes vanish,

There’s an armistice of the tongue,

As through the College gateway

A black cab passes

Twixt snap-dragons and shrubberies

And ‘Pleasekeepoffthegrass’s.’

‘Note the staccato rhythm (he went on) the air of fervid nothingness followed by the dramatic dénouement. Compare it with the smooth flowing rhythm of this little cameo which flowed from my platignum yesterday:

APPROPINQUAT

Up to the College

The Flood advances,

Softly and swishingly.

Up he prances,

His locks

Are combed

With excessive care

To hide a spot

That

is bare

of hair.

How simple, but how impressive! In a perfect picture without a word wasted it exposes the hollowness of modern thought!’

‘Ye-es’ I said doubtfully, ‘but what do you think of modern tendencies in Art?’

He pulled out his Ingersoll. Fresh-scrawled across the face were the following delicate lines –

Back in the grey beginning,

True Beauty married Art,

But Mister Charles Donnelly said

‘I’ll soon this couple part.

And the reason I am anxious

This union old to end,

Is that Art may marry Anarchy

The Poet’s Friend.’

‘Very sleek I call that (went on Mr Lionel Prune caressingly) but this is also apropos.’ And he read from the back of his watch.

AT THE DOG SHOW

Behind the doors of your prison cage,

Thou lookest on man with baleful eyes.

Bark gently! Hide thy Kerry rage,

Or else thou wilt not win a prize.

Dost thou feel blue in there confined

With bars more strong than Hadrian’s Wall.

Oh! triumph of matter over mind!

But thou’lt be free though the heavens fall.

‘Of course, of course,’ I said soothingly, ‘Art has been caged cramped and must be free.’

‘Let’s go and have a cup of coffee (said Mr Lionel Prune). But stay I haven’t a coin to spare … You’ll pay? Good.’ And he began to carol blithely and nonchalantly.

‘Where’s the booze? Where’s the booze?

Oh! my bold billiard man,

With your long barrelled cue and your chalk.’

‘But the ladies (he interjected suddenly). Ah the ladies of your College! How they twist and tug at a poet’s very heart-strings. They are wonderful. Yes I have written of them. Listen!’ (He read from a tram ticket.)

IN THE LIBRARY

‘Creak! Creak! Creak! on your boxwood chairs! I see

You lady students though you don’t give a hoot for me.

All well for John at his counter,

For him you all have your say.

Oh well for Mr O’N—ll

For when he speaks

You’re quick to obey.

‘I lost my heart to one of them (went on Mr Prune confidently), but (he added firmly) she must never know. I don’t know how it happened, but I think it was her pipe. Listen to this:

HER DEAR DADAN DUDEEN

‘Did you ever hear tell of Coy Corkey,

She lives between Dublin and Dalkey,

From the fumes of her pipe,

If you’re wise you’ll escape,

For fatal’s the pipe of sweet Corkey.’

‘In the next thirty-nine verses I go on to – but no, I must not speak of her to such as you.’

He looked at me pityingly and there was a long pause towards the end of which Mr Prune wrote feverishly with a half an inch of pencil on the back of a plate.

‘There,’ he said at last, and I read:

THE COLLEGE RESTAURANT

Abandon Hope? Who says abandon hope.

Nil to spare

And um.

I will enter here.

‘A small coffee please!’ The hours roll by

The world is young but I am dry

And as I sit and wait and wait

My feelings I am loath to spake.’

‘What about the Literary and Historical Society,’ I ventured when our coffee came at last.

‘I have here,’ he said modestly, fumbling in his dispatch case, ‘what is probably the greatest thing I have accomplished.’ And he read for me:

Oh! Literary and Historical Society,

(Wangli Wanglos Wanglorum)

Who will your auditor be

I ask with curious propriety.

(Wangli Wanglos Wanglorum).

Who – will – he – be?

Sh-h-h-h-h!

Are you Meenan to say Dunne,

(Wangli Wanglos Wanglorum).

Will lynch the candid Hanly,

Come! Come! It’s not Done

(Tangli Tanglos Tanglorum).

Will – you – be – down – troddyn.

Sh-h-h-h!

I was amazed at the keen insight into our mere College affairs which the great man showed. But I noticed a subtle change come over him after drinking his coffee. The buoyancy vanished from his manner. He seemed to become a little irritable. Still he read me from the back of an envelope this ode after the manner of PiersPlowman.

VAE VICTIS!

Oh! College Rugby Club! Oh! College Rugby Club!

You warded off Wanderers wonderfully.

You manxed up Monkstown manfully,

With luck against you, you broke Blackrock.

But I cannot get in right perspective

The fact that you were bet by Bective.

‘But,’ said I, always a purist in literature, ‘surely “bet” is not what the best people would say.’

Mr Prune gurgled ominously. A beet-red flush suffused his face in waves of rapidly-increasing intensity. Terrible wrath peeped through his eyes.

‘How dare you, sir,’ he exploded, and lifting his dispatch-case and walking-stick, he stalked splutteringly away.

Brother Barnabas did not take kindly to the poet.

‘LionelPrune must go’ says Brother Barnabas

‘A JOURNEYMAN DILETTANTE’ SCATHING ATTACK

In the ordinary course of events (writes Brother Barnabas), an outrage on good-taste on the part of the editorial staff of ComhthromFéinne might be condoned on the extenuating grounds of youth and inexperience, and the present writer would not be the last to turn the blind eye, and to afford the youthful sinners the charity of silence. When, however, he finds that this outrage has been printed on the back of a page bearing a composition of his own, and realising that that composition of his own is separated from this Literary abortion by approximately one thousandth part of an inch, then duty to self and country must brush aside all trivial considerations of etiquette.

Mr Lionel Prune, it would appear, is a poet. He is not. He is a superannuated plum. He is the shrivelled wreckage of a fruit, which though never other than sour and ill to look upon, is now bereft of the paltry juice which once gave it the claim to regard itself as young and green, and full of promise. True to his name, he is a large futile stone wrapped in coarse brown paper; and at best, he is endless wrappings without the stone. He is a journeyman-dilettante, an upstart, a parvenu, who must be persuaded, if civilisation is to be saved, to exploit to the full that one talent which he indubitably has, and steadily refuses to exercise or cultivate – the talent for being a silent corpse in a coffin. Lionel Prune is a bowsy, inspired with the natural badness and mischief of a jungle-born ape without the ape’s brains. Lionel Prune is a menace and an eye-sore, a thorn in the side of educated humanity, an obsession to his dog, and a hundred crosses on the shoulders of his hundred friends. Lionel Prune must go! We have spoken: Lionel Prune must GO!!

It is with extreme difficulty that we restrain ourselves from bursting into a rash of italics; and lest we should lose control in one direction or another, we will leave Prune and his prunish follies, and indicate to the reader in a broad way the general tendency of real poetry.