In a keynote address to a conference in Cork some years ago, we were reminded in this newspaper the other day, Seamus Heaney retold the story of a local Irish schoolmaster trying to figure out which of two pupils was copying from the other's work. He sat the pair down together and set them an essay on The Swallow. A little later he separated them, read what they had written and identified the plagiarist by the "disjunctive idiom" of his opening sentences: "The swallow is a migratory bird. He have a roundy head."
Heaney describes this clash between the formal correctness of textbook English and the faulty grammar of "the resurrected afterlife of Irish" as a "two-sentence history of Anglo-Irish literature" which encapsulates Ireland's dual linguistic and literary heritage.
This is fair comment but it doesn't give the full story by any means. It is a long time ago, of course, but I remember the day, its events and the schoolmaster very well. Indeed I ought to, having been the best pal of the supposed plagiarist, Sean "Ruadh" O'Shaughnessy.
Our small national school was in the wilds of north Kerry, not far from Lisselton, and as far as the locals were concerned, our "master" was straight out of Oliver Goldmsith's Deserted Village - ". . . And still they gazed, and still their wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew."
Not that we pupils were all that impressed with the master's learning. With the Primary Cert coming up, all we wanted to do was get out and enjoy the Kerry summer, damp as it would undoubtedly be.
Above all, Sean and myself had wearied of the weekly English essay, or "composition" as it was known in those days. We had done to death the familiar themes of A Day at the Seaside, A Man and His Pipe, A Day on the Bog, The Story of an Old Penny, Christmas Traditions in North Kerry, and A Summer Evening in Lisselton. Worse, the master had lately taken it into his head to set us a series of compositions on local birdlife, of which there seemed to be no end, and in which Sean and myself had absolutely no interest.
I recall the two of us making our way home across the bog one Friday evening, with Sean in a rare temper: for the weekend English homework, we had been told to write a composition on The Swallow. Sean pitched a stone at a plover rising from a bog pool: "Haven't we done every fekkin bird in Kerry," he said with some feeling - "and what is there to be said about the bloody swallow except that he have enough sense to get out of here every winter, and us stuck in school with that luadraman of a master."
I could think of nothing to say. We had indeed "done" The Robin, The Blackbird, The Plover, The Pigeon, The Partridge, The Crow, The Wren and just about every other bird you could think of.
Seanin said no more. But he was a far more original thinker than you would guess from the unfair label of plagiarist attached to him. And that weekend he excelled himself.
As the son of the local publican, Sean had the brilliant insight that a composition entitled "The Swallow" need not necessarily involve the migratory bird with the roundy head. So it was that Sean came to write about an entirely different kind of swallow, based on the techniques employed by the most regular and enthusiastic consumer of Guinness at his father's public house.
The following Monday morning, the master was so impressed with Sean's work that he read it out to the entire class. Few of us who were there that morning, so many years ago, have ever forgotten it. "The swallow," began Sean's memorable composition, "have a beginning, a middle and an end. It be the ecstatic climax in the sacred Irish tradition of pint-drinking. For the expert, the true artist, the swallow do begin high up in the throat, where the black and velvety cascade do start, and does not be stopping till the pit of the stomach be anointed with the sacred liquid. The swallow do then fade out on soft notes of muted joy and does be merging instantly into a sigh of contentment and the already fledgling thoughts of more swallows to come. Unlike the migratory bird, this swallow do not distinguish summer from winter or any other season, for it always go south. And it die only to be reborn . . ."
It was a classic composition, of course, and from the outset the master recognised it as such. It was only gradually that he also recognised himself and his distinctive swallowing technique, and when he did so, his voice faltered only briefly. But from that day we heard no more of Irish birdlife, Irish wildlife or the resurrected afterlife of the Irish language; and the summer - glorious, as it turned out - stretched invitingly before us.