Here is another brilliant constitutional idea: Britain should change its name to Ireland. Who could stop it? Think of the advantages. The two countries could once more be united across the Irish Sea under one flag, and with one head of state: the President of Ireland. Dispensing with the royal family, we would kill two birds with one stone. Britain — or “the Irish Isles” as they would henceforth be known — could start again with a clean slate: there would be no former colonies, everyone likes the Irish.
Some spellings might be revised, but David Cameron could remain in London as the Deputy Tea-sock or T-shirt.
Gubbeen cheese.
If everyone in so-called “Britain” were to apply for an Irish passport, the deed could be done by 1 February 2011.
The rest is up to you.
A Bad Guide 
Reuniting with Denmark would be more attractive.
Possibly, but I can’t see the point of getting rid of our royal family only to have it replaced by Queen Margrethe of Denmark’s lot. The Crown Prince is married to an Australian. You have to think ahead, dearie. Besides, Guinness is better than Carlberg.
Capital idea, Artur old chap. (Bit of Celtic blood hidden away somewhere there in the royal Crown cellar, just possibly, then?)
My mother’s father, whose people came from the neighbourhood of that Uragh Stone Circle you have pictured above (though this was a short bit after the neolithic period when those stones were put up), would have heartily approved of your sublime and yet modest proposal.
S. Beckett, by the by, when placed (well, the positioning was perhaps none of his doing) in the vicinity of that same Stone Circle, was heard to marvel upon “all the sounds, meaning nothing”.
But then of course SB was, even as Irishmen go, An Odd Bird.
(By the by, on an entirely different yet still recent Badly Guided theme, I did wonder whether perhaps Pin might be interested in Pessoa’s Inscriptions (from English Poems)? They are I believe relatively little known, yet quite fine indeed.)
Swifty was an Irishman, of course. I’ve always thought I must have Irish blood, but I can’t prove it. Now I’ll investigate your links…
Oh, look at that, the same picture in your Becket post! My daughter is always talking about Kerry in connection with horses & dogs, she’s got a bit of a thing about it, though we’ve neither of us ever been there.
And Eric Fischl. A blast from the past. I like the boids best, as always.
Totally off topic. The British expression “a mort”, as in “a mort of trouble”: can anyone shed any light on its origin, its range of application, or anything else about it?
What makes you say it’s British? I’d never heard it before I googled it. Most of the first hits are for a student essay that gives a modern translation of The Wife Of Bath.
mort a great number or quantity
Good point. Seems to be as much a backwoods American thing.
The first hit I found was in a Chaucer translation, but not I think a student essay.
I think it occurs in The Wife Of Bath, but I can’t look it up right now because it’s bedtime.
When I saw the picture of that beautiful cheese I just about caught a whiff of a wonderful smell. What is it?
Gubbeen it is.
Ø – a mort has one use that I am familiar with, that of a trumpet sounded during a hunt. So ‘a mort of trouble’ might refer to some nightmarish blast that presages something awful…
http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/fox-hunting-and-the-ban/features/customs-of-hunting-finished
Well done, Pinhut.
Ø, why were you wondering?
The Scots with their would-be independence would never go for the idea …
Why not merge with France (as Churchill suggested in 1940 and just forget everything since 1066 …
Great idea, AJP!
But… what the Irish think of this?
Yes, Ø, tell us, please…
From my experience living in Dublin, I would say that being united with England would be less intolerable to the people of Eire than reunification with the North.
Perhaps the union could be dissolved, with Northern Ireland joining Scotland.
I’d rather see Northern Ireland united with Glasgow, and Scotland relieved of that dump and its conurbation. Quite who would take on the burden of Glasgow/Ulster isn’t clear. 51st state?
I know, move the capital of the EU out of Brussels to Glasgow/Ulster. Prob solved.
Or, or, … we could say to Norway, “we’ll give you back the Western Isles if you also take on Glasgow/Ulster. Irresistible offer there, I think you’ll agree, Crown.
We only want oily bits.
why were you wondering?
No good reason. Parent uses word, child stares blankly, both parents say “British slang or dialect meaning ‘a lot’, haven’t you run across it?” Child continues to stare blankly. I thought maybe you or dearieme or someone could provide some perspective, like “Oh yes, when I was growing up in Featherstonehaughshire we all talked that way”.
The (old paper) OED doesn’t know where it comes from, and does not connect it with the huntsman’s blast.
The Irish are bankrupt, they’ll take what they can get. Ulster, Glasgow, London, bring it on, maybe they can dismantle it and sell it for scrap to some Ayrab or Russian oligarch. Oh, hang on…
DARE says mort is chiefly Appalachians. Search of the Boston Globe archive finds a dozen uses of “a mort of” around the turn of the century. But they’re in inverted commas just like that and so evidently not native here then. Though I’m not clear what it’s in imitation of: maybe Appalachian, maybe British, maybe some famous remark by someone now forgotten.
M, have you heard it used?
No, I have never heard it spoken and like Ø I associated it written with dialect like Dickens or Thackeray.
Goat News.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1345140/Why-men-beastly-animals.html
Sounds like us. The husband sounds like a bit of a nitwit, but the goat was in very good nick.
If you watch this youtube through to the end (no great hardship) an interesting image pops up.
Just last weekend I was asked whether young wild boars are striped.
“This video contains content [sic] from Sony Music Entertainment, who [sic] has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.”
Bastards.
Swine. Sorry for the frustration; you can find it on youtube (in the UK, at least), and very jolly it is . As Empty hints, it ends with a picture of a wild boar piglet, which I took to.
Or, or, or. Go to the Nourishing Obscurity blog
http://nourishingobscurity.com/
scroll down a few posts, and there it is.
See, I get the same thing there.
On the other hand, I find there’s a slew of Dearieme posts there called “Dearieme Presents”. These must be investigated. Right now , I’m supposed to be going to the cinema.
Perhaps it’s a consequence of Norway’s not being in the EU? There must be some disadvantage, after all. It can’t all be advantage, life’s not like that.
Well, I get the same message, and last time I checked, Belgium was still in the EU.
Did you see a good film, AJP?
Yes, we did. Somewhere, by Sofia Coppola. I liked it for the way it was made rather than for the subject, which was the aimless life of a film star who lives at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. There was a great scene where technicians were piling plaster on to the film star’s face to make a cast, and you watch him sitting there for what seems like minutes, waiting for the plaster to set and seeing if he’s going to nod off–dryly amusing and beautifully done, I thought. Lots of small scenes like that.
Oh well; maybe semi-detached is best for youtubes.
The complete outsiders can see it (at dearieme’s blog). Wonderful, fantastic, perfect music. And the little fellow at the end, lovely.
Thank you, Julia, but it’s not my blog. I’m a sort of musical adviser to the blogger, which is a rich irony since my childhood piano lessons never “took”, I’ve forgotten the little I ever knew about reading music, and my guitar playing involved only one tune; a very fine tune, to be sure, but still. I can’t even sing.
Nor can I remember how the habit started at Nourishing Obscurity – maybe I just loathed the pop music he kept posting, so I started recommending Jazz and Classical. (With apologies to my teacher of Music Appreciation, who disliked seeing Baroque or Romantic music referred to as “Classical”.)