Heart Beat:Now this is a bit abstruse and I ask your tolerance while I develop the theme. We have passed Mid Summer's Day and the mysteries surrounding it but we have witnessed an astonishing manifestation of these legends in our midst over the last few weeks.
'Now thank/ed be the great God Pan
And thank/ed be the wise Green Man
Shelter us from future strife
And grant us glad and healthy life'
Who exactly the Green Man is, remains a mystery. He has been around for a very long time, a pre-Christian figure adapted into the early Church and symbolised in many medieval places of worship, but no one as yet has divined his essence. He is one thing to some, something entirely different to another. He has many facets and secrets, he keeps them all to himself and thus his strength is assured.
Some say he symbolises resurrection, others rebirth, regeneration and possibly the most plausible explanation of all, reinvention.
He is associated with woodlands and pixies and fairies and above all elves. He is a spirit adaptable to any circumstance, changeable yet constant; all things to all men, with no apparent contradictions. He is inscrutable, unfathomable and clearly above ordinary mortals.
In some depictions, known to scholars as the Disgorging Head, the figure is seen to spew vegetation from its mouth.
As I read I began to get an uncomfortable feeling that I knew this person. I suppose it was the bit about the elves that awakened awareness. Could this be the Chief Elf, Bertie himself? It all fits, Christian, socialist, capitalist, statesman, whatever else; rebirth, reinvention, reinvigoration; our very own Green Man.
There are some discordant notes. In some depictions, he is portrayed as a horned figure, but there are always begrudgers around. Rather then, think of him as Kathleen Jenks noted in Mything Links as a force 'transmitted to human realms through the foods we eat, the flowers we smell, the trees we hug'.
But there's the rub. There are another crowd of tree huggers around. How to deal with them? Simple; just steal their clothes; swallow them for breakfast, as in the Disgorging Head noted above.
But be nice to them, let them think they're important and give them a load of aspirations to make them feel happy. Give them Green bicycles, hot air, pious hopes, as much waffle as they like; but no part of the real action.
Sure they're grand folk,
but you'd have to wonder, do their mothers know they're out?
Hence the Corn Dollies, little images that in some cultures were ritually disposed of after the harvest was gathered. They had no part or share in the gathering and were merely incidental to the action. This lot forgot a few principles in providing us with stable Government and for me the greatest betrayal was Tara and all it stood for. I would have thought that, for them was non-negotiable; but you never know. I shall follow the fortunes of the Corn Dollies with considerable interest for as long as the Government lasts.
They stood their previously stated policies on their heads, of course in the common good, and to provide us gullible folk with stable government. What does that mean exactly? Is it simply getting your backside into the Mercedes and hoping for five years in office with a ministerial pension at the end? It's about the only plausible explanation for the obscene courting rituals that we have just observed between those apparently diametrically opposed.
Maybe we would be better off with an administration balanced on a knife edge as it would perforce, mind its manners, too much security leads to complacency and arrogance.
I would not be a Sinn Féin voter, but I was impressed by the straight talking of their health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin who in the aftermath of the election stated that they would not support anybody for Taoiseach who would reinstate the Minister for Trolleys, risen phoenix like from the ashes of her party.
Leprosy's a bad disease Caoimhghín; it's alright for Dr Paisley and the unionists to get it, but not for our lads. Maybe you should try swallowing an oath or two to see if you can be cured and become respectable?
Recently I heard Prof Brendan Drumm of the HSE caution us about talking up 'a crisis in the health service'. Always a great man for a laugh our Brendan; it's a bit like the Pope saying hell doesn't exist. It's going to be interesting in Health over the coming months.
Already we are hearing noises about the closure of peripheral A&E units like Nenagh and Ennis and of course in the North East. The mere fact that the regional hospitals have had no investment to allow them to deal with the demands that such closures would entail, matters not a whit.
This is Ireland, not the real world.
A reader suggested to me that painters, plasterers (don't know if Paddy wants a job) etc, displaced from house building, might be usefully employed in the building of the new co-located hospitals.
Good idea, but maybe a bit premature, as no one has the faintest idea how these are going to work and nobody is being enlightened either. All sorts of bodies have tendered for places at the trough and one cannot but get the feeling that the last people to benefit will be the patients.
Lastly I didn't get a share of the action in the storage of the electronic voting machines. Is there any chance I could store PPARS? I've got quite a big garage. I could run little tours and point out that this heap of rubbish cost €150 million. On second thoughts maybe it would be better in the National Museum, labelled as Nobody's Folly.
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon