Léirmheasanna Leabhar - Book Review

Léirmheas Leabhair

Slanguage - a Dictionary of Irish Slang

By Bernard Share

Published by

Gill and Macmillan

Ignoring the front page blurb by that haverel, Hugh Leonard of the Sunday Independent, this reviewer opened the dictionary and began to enjoy it straight away. This is the second edition and fourth printing of what is a popular tome, though one that I had not come across before.

It's an ideal book to dip into or to compare notes with friends on the more obscure slang words in their language store. And there are some very obscure ones here, like 'Clare hearse' — a Kerry expression for the ten of clubs playing card, an ill omen to fortune tellers. Then there are much more modern ones, like the gem coined by Michael Palin in 1994 — 'The Cholesterol Coast'. This refers to the County Antrim seaside and its many hotels and B&Bs where tons of 'Ulster' fries are consumed.

Have you ever heard of anyone 'living on the clippings of tin'? This comes from the tinker's craft and refers to someone struggling for a living. That derivation is clear enough but some will be argued over 'til kingdom come. One of the longest entries in the book is for the word 'culchie' but none of the theories about its origin seems to fit. You tend to hear 'bogman', 'bogger' or even 'bog warrior' (curiously not included) more often nowadays.

Not all slang words stick, but one that certainly stuck was 'Stick' or 'Stickie', the name given to so-called 'Official Sinn Féin' after the 1970 split. They got the name because they adopted sticky-backed Easter lily badges, in place of the traditional pins. For some reason the author refers to 'identity badges' or 'labels' when he should refer to Easter lilies. In a similar vein he gives the word 'Provies' but omits the much more common variant 'Provos'. Alas, the 'Irps' — slang for the Irish Republican Socialist Party — are not included, thus losing the opportunity to remind people that Divis Flats were once known as 'Planet of the Irps'.

These quibbles aside this is an essential book for anyone interested in the words we use.

'Haverel', by the way, means a half-witted/talkative/garrulous person, an ignorant man or a slatternly woman.

By Micheál Mac Donncha

Léirmheas Leabhair

The IRA in Kerry 1916-1921.

By Sinéad Joy

Published by

The Collins Press

Sinéad Joy's book is based on a Masters thesis she completed in Cork University. It is well researched and based on an impressive range of sources. Although Joy refers to the influence of Tom Garvin, Peter Hart and David Fitzpatrick, whose book on the same period in Clare set the standard for this sort of regional study, she manages to avoid the cruder formulations of some of their work.

While this is a positive, and indeed ought to be a required, feature of an academic thesis, the book in my view is weakened by a lack of engagement with the subject. For republicans familiar with the period, there is no sense of the time or the struggle that is found for example in some of the ballads of the period. Joy does stress that she was attempting to move beyond the 'folklore' of the Tan War but there is the danger in so doing that the motivations of those involved is lost sight of.

For example, at several points, Joy claims that many Kerry Volunteers had a poor understanding of the political background to the struggle or that they had joined the IRA in pursuit of land or social influence. Of course, there are many reasons why people become involved in revolutionary organisations but it is a mistake to believe that they can all be reduced to crude individual motives.

Land was a factor in Kerry, as in many other parts of the country, but this was usually because of the unresolved issues surrounding ownership that were a hangover from the attempted settlement of the land question in the early 1900s. Many republican activists came from small-farming or farm-labouring backgrounds and the common aspirations of those groups did play a part in encouraging involvement in the national revolution. A more interesting study therefore, would be the manner in which those interests were incorporated into the politics of the movement overall. And indeed how those interests and those of the urban working class were placed a poor second to the interests of the economic elites who were for the most part hostile to the revolution.

The book deals well with the internal organisation of the IRA. For example, Joy shows the huge disparity between the numbers who were nominally members of the Army — almost 3,000 Volunteers in the county in October 1919 — and the relatively small number who were active in the actual fighting. She also refers to the logistical difficulties of acquiring arms and the problems of engaging the British forces at an effective level. While there was a huge number of minor actions, the Kerry IRA only managed to pull off a relatively small number of operations on the scale of the Ballymacandy and Headford ambushes.

At Headford, it was claimed that up to 25 British soldiers were killed. That is another omission in the book in that Joy does not provide any details of such events which were, after all, what the whole thing was all about! In fairness, this was possibly outside of the scope of her thesis but any book with a serious claim to be a history of the period would have to include that aspect.

Nor is there any real sense of the terror in the county although Joy does mention the difficulties which faced the IRA in attempting to operate under conditions of martial law. It is true, as she states, that the Tans forced many activists and supporters to cease their involvement in the campaign. The more remarkable thing, however, was that so many people did not cow before British brutality and that in Kerry, as in Dublin, Cork, Tipperary and other places the level and quality of operations intensified in the months leading up to the Truce of July 1921. Proof that the attempt to break the IRA had been unsuccessful.

Léirmheas Leabhair

Colossus. The Rise And Fall of the American Empire

By Niall Ferguson

Published by Penguin Books. ISBN 0-141-01700-7

This is stunning work in its breadth of span and forensic focus of detail.

I haven't read a historian with this ability since Eric Hobsbawm at the height of his analytic powers 30 years ago.

The main thesis of Ferguson's work is simple and will not trouble republicans in the slightest.

America is an empire in the business of global domination. It differs in some aspects from the empire that gave birth to it — the British Empire. However, it is an empire nonetheless. Ferguson argues that even back to colonial times, when the early Americans fought a revolutionary war against the British, that America was always destined and intended to be an empire.

His descriptions of the first faltering footsteps of the baby empire in the late 19th Century are faultless.

Ferguson believes that imperium is almost an iron law of human development. Empire, argues Ferguson, is the normal way that humans do things. However, there are historical gaps he concedes which he dubs "apolarity".

After the fall of Rome, Europe fell into "apolarity". With no obvious dominant polity chronic, ongoing conflict was the result. Although clearly the dominant force in the world he argues that the United States is an empire running on empty.

Like all empires the American empire contains internal flaws.

Ferguson states that the US Colossus suffers from three potentially fatal deficits: Money, manpower and attention. He doubts it will have the staying power to get the imperial job done in Iraq.

If it does decline then the world could enter a new dangerous time of apolarity. This time the contenders are all nuclear powers.

In the preface to the paperback edition he looks at the fateful decisions in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Looking at the WMD justification he baldly states that Bush and Blair told "downright lies" to justify their actions.

Ferguson hopes that the US empire does not decline. He sees the US as a "liberal empire" and the world's best hope. I rather think the good folk of Fallujah would beg to differ.

Should you wish to get into your head how America became the dominant force on the planet then you can't do much better than this. His political bias is out there from page one. That does not take away from the fact that you are reading a brilliant historian at the height of his powers.

BY Mick Derrig.