PROMPTED by alert reader Darach MacDonald, I hereby apologise to emigrants everywhere for my inadvertent use in a column earlier this week of the term “ex-patriot”. This arose during an anthropomorphic reference to the Anglo-Scottish word “crack”, which I said had adopted Irish citizenship some years ago and now goes as “craic” on its passport. Of course, in referring to its British origins, I meant to describe it as “expatriate”.
But as Darach points out, with the sensitivity of an Irishman who has lived abroad, this is an increasingly common malapropism, usually made in reference to migrants of the human kind. He even suggests it may have been a Freudian slip on my part, hinting at a belief that those who choose to live abroad “cease to love their country”. This is a serious charge, and while pleading guilty to the crime, I vigorously protest my innocence of the intent.
Samuel Johnson famously considered patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel. But as I am well aware, this is not a view shared by most sovereign governments. Many a man has been shot at dawn for being an ex-patriot. And while this is no longer a big risk in these islands, I appreciate that even mistakenly referring to emigrants in such terms may add undue stigma to their situation.
Apart perhaps from Stephen Ireland, the former international footballer whose current indifference to national duty is rendered bitterly ironic by his surname, I accept that few of our exiles can justifiably be described as ex-patriots. On the contrary, people now leaving our shores might claim to be doing the country a service. It’s not the first time Ireland has summoned her children to the flag and suggested they emigrate until things improve.
But that’s all by the way. Naturally, in keeping with usual procedure in The Irish Times when these mistakes come to light, I immediately tendered my resignation over Darach’s complaint. This was reluctantly refused when, during a hastily-convened court-martial, it emerged that a search of our 150-year archive for the term “ex-patriot” had yielded 43 hits.
They were not all mistakes, admittedly. But they included, for example, a report from 1976 about the then Minister for Trade and Commerce promoting tourism in the UK by meeting “ex-patriot Irish organisations”. No doubt there are such organisations in England, plotting the downfall of Mother Ireland (or pledging support for Stephen). Even so, I suspect that that reporter meant “expatriate” too.
More confusingly, the term also appeared in a 1996 feature about Cork people in Dublin, wherein the philosopher Richard Kearney was quoted thus: “There is an ex-patriot community of Cork exiles in Dublin. When we meet, there is a smile of recognition and the language of the tribe.” This may or may not have been an error. The reference could plausibly be to former Leesiders who have renounced citizenship of the People’s Republic and embraced Dublin rule. Or it could be to a flying column of born-again Corkonians who have abandoned their former loyalty to Ireland and are now working behind enemy lines. I don’t know. Perhaps some of the tribespeople involved would contact us anonymously and explain.
THIS WHOLE confusion arose in the context of a discussion about Ewan MacColl’s song, Dirty Old Town, which as I said is 60 years old. But Darach’s e-mail also reminded me of MacColl’s one-time collaborator, Dominic Behan, and a song of his that has just turned 50.
Behan was apparently a big admirer of the aforementioned Samuel Johnson, and particularly liked his quip about patriotism. This helped inspire one of his most famous ballads, The Patriot Game: written in 1959 about a young Monaghan man killed two years earlier during the IRA’s “Border campaign”. The song was soon being sung in the bars of New York. And there, its ambivalent sentiment in turn inspired a young folkie called Bob Dylan.
Dylan used the same tune and a similarly ironic note for his anti-war classic, With God on Our Side. In fact the opening verse of the latter (“Oh my name it means nothing, my age it means less . . .”) is a strong echo The Patriot Game’s “My name is O’Hanlon, I’ve just turned sixteen . . .”: a point not lost on Behan.
A lesser man might have been flattered by such influence on the great Bob. Instead, Behan accused Dylan of plagiarism. Which to a certain extent was the pot calling the kettle black, since the tune was an old one, sung variously to such songs as The Nightingale, The Shores of Lough Erne, and The Merry Month of May. Despite which, according to Liam Clancy, Behan “plagued Dylan about it for the rest of his days”. Behan’s days, that is: he died in 1989.
Much has changed in Ireland in the 50 years since his song was written, and some of the changes might baffle its author. The Border is still there, of course, but is now straddled by agreed North-South institutions. As a consequence, the compulsion towards dying for Ireland has greatly waned, while an alternative ideal – buying for Ireland – has replaced it.
Raids across the Border are now mostly commercial and, paradoxically, are regarded as attacks on the Republic. Those who go North to shop in Newry at the weekend are accused of economic sabotage, more or less. In fact, official thinking seems to be that for the duration of their visits to the other jurisdiction, southern shoppers are – to coin a phrase – ex-patriots. Which must have been what I was thinking about earlier this week.