I owe it to Mary Cups and Saucers Sullivan to use my time capsule box

Forget about time capsule comments to give future generations a snapshot of how we lived in 2022 — if the Central Statistics Office really wants to capture who we are right now, they should have made space on their unwieldy forms for nicknames. Writing ‘I’m very concerned about the environment’ in a box for future generations to peruse doesn’t have quite the same impact as learning that somebody was known the whole town over as Red Diesel Dan.

I speak with some authority here. I inherited my Dad’s love of poring over old census returns and with it, his collection of copies of documents pertaining to his home town, Macroom in Co Cork. I am looking now at a list of the town’s residents, extracted from the 1895 census, which includes people’s nicknames as well as their given names.

I should point out that Macroom still has form in this. When I was growing up, every visit back to Dad’s homeplace seemed to be populated by people with names like Sailor Lucey, Foxy Jack, Rubber and Gump.

As an adult, making my own way in the town, I met men called Falling Trees (who worked for Coillte), Sliding Roof (who wore a wig), and Little Bo Peep (don’t ask). I still put flowers on The Madonna’s grave every time I’m down and I remember Magoola who used to wash his suit with a yard brush out the back of his house.

Maybe it is the case in every small town, but almost everyone in Macroom seems to have a nickname. And while some of the handles are self-explanatory, others are a complete mystery even to their owners. ‘Why is Dinger called Dinger,’ I asked my old friend Swanky last time I was down. ‘Why is anyone called anything in this town?’ came the philosophical reply.

But I think I can guess at the origin of some of the 1895 denizens’ nicknames easily enough. The Man Who Never Smiled was obviously a morose character, though God Bless Us All was more than likely possessed of a sunnier disposition. Doctor White, or Old Stick The White Boy, was in my mind’s eye a tall, thin man, while More Soup Maggie was probably more generously proportioned. Long Pockets might have been given to bouts of generosity, and Dirty Ellens was probably a shade on the slovenly side. Given the contrary nature of the town now, I’d guess that Happy Home came from anything but.

I think I may be related to Mary Cups and Saucers Sullivan and I’m definitely something to Pat Champion Jumper Looney, who, family lore holds, very briefly held the World Record for the hop, skip and jump, which he acquired when the Tailteann Games were held in a gale force wind.

I’d make an educated guess that Yankee Lynch never set foot in America, though Boston may have done. As to Hind Bowl, Spot Alias, Game Cock, Hurry Up, Duck Eggs, Handbasket, the two Pumps and Suck, your guess is as good as mine. And then there is The Gager, whose real name is not even recorded. Perhaps, by Census night in 1895, he had forgotten what it was.

There is no room to record nicknames on next weekend’s census form, but then again there wasn’t really room for it back in 1895 either. Yet somehow all these people’s alter egos and characters were captured for posterity because somebody entered them on a form. If they hadn’t, the list of 1895 Macrumpians would have made for dry enough reading — as it is, it’s a rich and vivid picture of robust life in a small country town more than a century ago.

Which brings me back to the time capsule space on next weekend’s form and the opportunity to try to capture that same sense of place that the enterprising Macrumpians inadvertently documented in 1895.

I had been thinking of writing ‘f*** you Cian’ on mine, because that is a very longrunning joke between The Boy (for it is he) and I, but I’m not sure it would age very well over the course of a century and I may just come across as a terrible parent or, worse, a lunatic (a condition which, back in 1895, you could record on your census return).

To be honest, I’m a bit stumped about what to write — which, for somebody who makes a living from writing, is a curious state of affairs.

There is an option to leave it blank of course, but I think I owe it to Mary Cups and Saucers Sullivan not to do that. When it comes to creating a snapshot for the future, there really is no such thing as Too Much Information.