To Americans, English, And Others Poem by Martin Swords

The Black Puddin’ Question

Yet another Irish Poet tries to explain
the Irish love of Language with no more
success than the many previous attempts

In Ireland everyone is a poet.
In Ireland everyone uses language like
music, to play and to enjoy.
If you can’t compose yourself,
you can sing your mother’s phrases.

In Ireland if you haven’t got the word for something,
if it doesn’t exist, you make it up,
and it does exist thereafter!
Only be original,
creativity must be treated with respect!

In Ireland everyone worries a bit.
Some worry a great bit while others worry a little bit,
or only rarely. It evens out.

Some, often a great many, hardly worry at all at all,
relying on others to do their worrying for them.
This can be a matter of great concern to those inclined to worry,
and generally adds to their worryload.
The only occasional worriers take great comfort in the
knowledge that others are worrying for them, even though they may suspect that the worrying done on their behalf might not always
be as intense as if they did it for themselves, if they had a mind
to worry on their own behalf.
Generally it evens out, but it can be quite worrying.

The Irish use language like a gushing parish pump,
why use three words when four words paint a better picture.
They use good language, colourfully, often as a tribute.
They use bad language with no badness intended – rather as a way of measuring. It is well known that a feckin’ eejit is much worse
than an ordinary eejit.
Also, in Ireland we use colourful words simultaneously, and also at the same time. We wrap words inside each other, so that that
abso-feckin’-lutely indicates that something is a few steps further
than absolutely.

In Ireland we are proud of our poets, playwrights, and writers.
Everyone knows a writer, met a writer, or had a drink once
with a writer.
Their works are well known but not always widely read, although in our praise of our writers they are widely quoted in pubtalk.
That’s because a great many heard the quote in other pubtalk
and so became learned without having to read the books themselves.

We love and treasure our Joyce, Beckett, Behan, Synge, O’Casey
and will defend them against all critics or naysayers. We probably
won’t read them but we are proud of them as writers, for afterall, they are our writers.
The number of people who have really read Beckett, or have read Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, could probably be all put together
in one room, or the snug of a country pub, where they could bore each other to death.
But we would miss them and mourn the loss of quotes for pubtalk.

Few read all their works, fewer still understand them, but all
admire our writers-and any who say otherwise can expect a quick puck–in–the–mouth and a colourful word, wrapped or otherwise,
by way of explanation. Proper order!

And so the proof is in the pudding- The Black Pudding!
The question is did the reader get this far to encounter the answer.
Or was the case made and sustained or indeed enjoyable enough to carry the reader to the Black Pudding dénouement.
In considering this there is a certain amount of Habeus Corpus,
Ipso Facto and Quod Erat Demonstrandum in the Yes M’Lud manner
as practiced at many a bar, lounge or snug where matters such as
these are properly discussed by the Irish. I rest my pint.


Martin Swords
April 2010
Wicklow
Ireland