THE ANNOUNCEMENT by the Fianna Fáil government in 1958 that it was setting up a commission to look into the provision of a television service for Ireland provoked Myles na Gopaleen (Brian O’Nolan) into a typically scathing, pun-littered, flight of fancy in his inimitable Cruiskeen Lawn column:
TELEVASION
THE convection, enfocusment or accretion of a Television Commission will be welcome news to the men of Erin. Some of them have been feeling a bit embarrassed about having an Atlantic world airline yet no TV station, being reminded of the jeer the shawlies used to throw at students long ago: “Luk at them: plus fours and no breakfast!” But for every anode its cathode, and better late than never.
The Commission’s Irish title is given as An Cóimisiún Teilifíse. Dinneen holds that fiseoir means “an informer or spy” but the Teili- part of the term is damn good. In fact teile means a lime-tree. You get the rub-up with Lime Grove?
* * *
Young Mr Boland, the acting Minister, gave the lads a rather cautionary harangue; There was to be no charge whatever on the State because money was so scarce for more pressing and more important projects. He did not specify the latter projects, but they probably include the scheme to choke the British with bacon and butter, the plan to smash the North Atlantic air carriers, the blandishment with public money of shams such as the Arts Council, Boord Fawlthah and the Abbey Theatre.
Who decides what is important in this country? Certainly my own opinion has been rarely sought, and there is none who knows better. I think a television service that will “pay its way” in this country is a manifest absurdity, and the commission is thus hamstrung from the outset.
There is ominous mention in the terms of reference to “special arrangements for the use of the Irish language and for the adequate reflection of the national outlook and culture.” But I say – look here! – hardly any of the Feena Fayl Ministers can speak or understand a word of Irish and as for culture, well . . . (spreads hands.) Bar that fasciculus of holy poems that came out of the Black North some years ago, I cannot associate them with a major cultural intervention either. So far as the national outlook is concerned, it is that things was never worse and that the country is banjaxed.
* * *
More generous terms of reference might well evoke novel and interesting propositions. That word teilifíos brings to my own mind that other very Gaelic thing, the aisling, or vision. For us, spiritual Irish television could be a matter of psychotic raptures, dreams, holy hallucinations. For us the TV set could be, not a vehicle of distraction and impious entertainment in a lather of soap powders and dentrifice, but the focus of our devotions, a strange catoptrical cathartic. I can imagine great historical tableaux wherein, with mystical flux of scene, sound and colour, perhaps on Tara Hill at eventide, the Feena Fayl Party is seen Swallowing The Oath: or perhaps Cathleen Ní Houlihan descried in green robe and saffron girdle kneeling on Croagh Patrick and receiving Document Number Two from the clouds.
I also see, as in a glass darkly, the possibility of proceeding from teilifíse to TELEFISSION. Would it not be the grand thing if Paddy could put both Eisenhower and Khrushchev in their boxes by perfecting this method of broadcasting atom bombs instead of scurrilous invective?
To read the unedited column, and the latest on east-west cold war relations on this date in 1958, go to www.irishtimes.com/150;
[ http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1958/0415/Pg006.html#Ar00600Opens in new window ]