Following Ken’s cue
QUESTION After Ken Doherty, who is Ireland’s most successful snooker player? FOLLOWING on from the successes of Ken Doherty 20 years ago, Ireland’s most successful players are Fergal O’Brien and David Morris.
O’Brien was born in Dublin in 1972; he became a professional in 1991 and has remained one ever since. His highest ranking was ninth in 2000/ 01 and his greatest victory was winning the British Open in 1999. After that, his ranking nosedived. He remains the only player to have scored a century in his first frame at the world championships in the Crucible, which he achieved in 1994, but his best finish in the competition was the quarter finals.
But the winnings during his career have totalled over €1million.
After O’Brien, Ireland’s number three snooker player is David Morris, who was born in Kilkenny in 1988. He became a professional in 2006. His best ranking was in 200708, when he did well in the world championships, but not enough to put him in the top 64 rankings. More recently, he reached the fourth round of the UK championship. He is currently ranked at 71. But his winnings are less impressive than those of Fergal O’Brien, standing at just over €100,000.
Other Irish players, such as Joe Delaney, Vincent Muldoon and Michael Judge have done reasonably well. Judge, for instance, born in Dublin in 1975, was a professional player f rom 1991 to 2011 and achieved his highest rating of 24 in the 2002/03 season. He also won close on €500,000 during his career.
Today’s outstanding younger players such as Aaron Goldrick from Co. Cavan and Jason O’Hagan from Derry, may go on to achieve solid ratings and winnings. But overall, Ireland suffers from a diminishing pool of star snooker players able to match the outstanding performances of Ken Doherty.
Graham Toner, Ashford, Co. Wicklow.
QUESTION From where does the term Fifth Columnists derive? THE term Fifth Columnists, meaning those who actively try to undermine or sabotage their country or army has its origins in the Spanish Civil War, though obviously such treachery has been around as long as Man himself.
Emilio Mola, a Nationalist general, is credited with first using the phrase. He is said to have told a journalist in 1936 that as his four columns of troops approached Madrid, a ‘fifth column’ of supporters inside the city would support him and undermine the Republican government from within.
Ernest Hemingway popularised the phrase when he wrote his only play while in Madrid when it was being bombarded. The play was published as The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories.
A growing fear of a tidal wave of fifth columnists who were aiding and abetting the Nazis during the Second World War became prevalent.
In June 1940, Life magazine ran a series of photos under the heading ‘ Signs of Nazi Fifth Column Everywhere’ and then in July, Time magazine called fifth column talk a ‘national phenomenon’. In August 1940 the New York Times mentioned ‘the first spasm of fear engendered by the success of fifth columns in less fortunate countries’.
One report identified participants in Nazi ‘fifth columns’ as ‘partisans of authoritarian government everywhere’, citing Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, and the Netherlands.
Kevin O’Connor, Cork.
QUESTION In the recently reshown first episode of Dad’s Army, Private Frazer gave his occupation as the owner of a philatelist shop. When and why was this changed to being an undertakers? PRIVATE James Frazer was the wild- eyed Scottish Home Guard platoon member and undertaker portrayed by John Laurie, fondly remembered for his pessimism and his fatalistic catchphrase: ‘We’re doomed!’
It’s true that he began the series running a philatelist shop on Coast Road in Walmington- on-Sea, the fictional coastal seaside resort where the series was set.
By the early Forties, however, the coast was locked down, the holidaymakers had left and there was no longer any market for his stamps.
His conversion to undertaker was clever character development on the part of the writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft.
It wasn’t until the penultimate episode of series three, No Spring For Frazer, transmitted on Thursday, December 4, 1969, that it was revealed he made coffins, though not as a full-time occupation. In this episode, Frazer loses the spring of the Lewis gun. He believes it has been lost in a recently made coffin, shortly to be buried.
The platoon declare a bomb scare and evacuate the graveyard, but fail to find the spring – until Frazer discovers it in his pocket.
In this episode, he claims making coffins was a craft he had learned on the Isle of Mingulay (though Frazer came from the Isle of Barra).
His graduation to full-time undertaker proceeded slowly. In No Spring For Frazer he was only supplying coffins to a Mr Drury, and assisting in funeral arrangements.
By series five he has a funeral parlour at 91 High Street, next door to Jones the Butchers, where he is aided by his boy assistant, Heathcliffe. He claimed people said he ‘had a rare skill at beautifying the late lamented’ and that ‘in my calling I am no stranger to sorrow’. Kevin Rigby, Mansfield,
Nottinghamshire.
QUESTION My 14-year-old students studying their first year of English as a third language would like to know why the personal pronoun ‘I’ is always written with a capital letter? IN Old English, the first person singular pronoun was ic or ik.
From the beginning of the Middle English period (1100-1500) ic, ik gave way to an unaccented form i and y first used only before consonants. This form gradually became general in most parts of the country except in the south of England where the ic form remained commonplace. Indeed, in south-west British dialects ich, and related forms (utch, ch, che, utchy) were in use as late as the 18th Century.
In late Middle English, the ich form was seen as humorous or rustic by sophisticated Northerners.
In the Second Shepherds’ Play, from the Wakefield Cycle of mystery plays from the 15th Century, a Northern thief called Mak tries to steal some sheep from shepherds Coll, Gyb and Daw. He attempts to affect a Southern accent but fails to keep it consistent: Makffffe What! ich be a yoman, I tell you, of the kyng, The self and the same, sond from a greatt lordyng, And sich. Ffy on you! Goyth hence Out of my presence! I must haue reuerence. Why, who be ich?
When the Northern English forms of the pronoun established themselves, squeezing ich south of the Thames, the capital I gradually became predominant. Its use is first recorded in about 1250 in an early English manuscript for the folk song The Story Of Genesis And Exodus, but became increasingly popular from the 14th Century.
Chaucer used this form in his Canterbury Tales (written at the end of the 14th Century). Here’s an example from The Knight’s Tale: And thus with victorie and with melodye / Lete I this noble duk to Atthenes ryde, / And al his hoost, in armes hym bisyde. / And certes, if it nere to long to heere, / I wolde have toold yow fully the manere / How wonnen was the regne of Femenye / By Theseus, and by his chivalrye,
Why this irregular form appeared and conquered all is uncertain. Chambers Dictionary Of Etymology hypothesises t hat t hi s f orm developed ‘ to avoid misreading handwritten manuscripts’.
Otto Jeperson, in Growth And Structure Of The English Language, states: ‘The reason for writing I is the orthographic habit in the Middle Ages of using a long i, (that is, j or I), whenever the letter was isolated or formed the last letter of a group; the numeral one was written j or I (and three, iij etc) just as much as the pronoun.’
Another theory is ego. Other languages capitalise the second person pronoun as in Germain Sie, the Danish De, Italian Lei or Loro, and the Finnish Te. These are all the opposite of ego, intended to show respect to the party being communicated.
Oscar Weise in his History Of Language goes so far as to say ‘the Englishman, who as the ruler of the seas looks down in contempt on the rest of Europe, writes in his language nothing but the beloved / with a big aristocratic “I”.’
Some mixture of aesthetics, convention, phonology, clarity, egotism, and orthography seem to have conspired during the English language’s ‘Great Upheaval’ to produce a form which appears natural today. Janine Donaghue, Chalfont St Giles,
Buckinghamshire.