The poems of peace . . .

QUESTION What was the poem that Martin McGuinness gave Ian Paisley when the latter retired from Stormont?

WITH the signing of the St Andrews agreement in 2006, DUP leader Rev Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness became First Minister and Deputy First Minister respectively.

Paisley had been a firebrand cleric and Unionist rabble-rouser, a hate figure for Irish Nationalists; and McGuinness had been an active IRA member, yet remarkably, the two men struck up a close friendship.

They were photographed together so many times laughing and smiling that they were nicknamed ‘The Chuckle Brothers’ after the hapless comedy duo on children’s BBC television.

When Paisley stood down in mid-2008, McGuinness’s parting gift was two framed poems. The first was a passage from Seamus Heaney’s The Cure At Troy, in the laureate’s own hand; the other was composed and handwritten by the former Deputy First Minister himself.

Heaney’s The Cure At Troy is an interpretation of Philoctetes, Sophocles’s fifth-century play, which won first prize at the Festival of Dionysus in 409 BC. It played a notable role in the peace process: President Bill Clinton quoted Heaney’s version during his famous address at Derry’s Guildhall Square during his 1995 visit to the province: History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme. The words captured the mood of the euphoric audience packed into the square and resonated well beyond the walls of the Mid-chuckle: Paisley and McGuinness old city to the world beyond. McGuinness’s poem, Breac Gheal (The Silver Trout), explores concerns over attacks on Native American culture and the disappearance of the silver trout from Irish waters, it includes the verse: The lilac creature lay silent

and unmoving As the peaty water flowed over the last

of the Mohicans. Stones were the wigwam in a

Donegal river For a decimated breed of free spirits. Tribes and shoals disappeared as we

polluted and devoured With our greed and stupidity the homeland of the brave.

Tom Connor, Belfast.

QUESTION When was the derogatory term ‘hands-uppers’ first used?

THIS was a term adopted by the Boers in the Second Boer War as a contrast to the heroic ‘Bitter-enders’. A ‘Bitter-ender’ was a Boer who refused to surrender and doggedly fought ‘to the bitter end’ of the conflict, the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging on May 31, 1902.

The complex origins of the war resulted from a century of conflict between the Boers and Britain, but the question as to who would control the lucrative Witwatersrand gold mines was uppermost.

In october 1899, the Boers mounted preemptive strikes into British-held territory in Natal and the Cape Colony, besieging the British garrisons of Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley. Stunned by the ferocity of the attacks, the British responded by deploying overwhelming numbers of soldiers and introducing punitive measures.

The turn of the tide coincided with the British capture of Johannesburg on May 30, 1900, and Pretoria on June 5, 1900, coupled with British proclamation on June 16 to order the burning of Boer farms.

Fatalism and war weariness seemed to grip many Boer leaders and soldiers, and on June 1, 1900, the Boer leadership held a conference to consider surrendering. More aggressive Boer leaders, including Christiaan R. De Wet and Marthinus T. Steyn, advocated guerilla warfare and vowed to ‘fight to the bitter end’. But over the following months, many Boers surrendered voluntarily to the British, earning the epithet ‘hands-uppers’.

In September 1901, a group approached the British and volunteered to fight against former Boer compatriots. They were derisively named ‘joiners’. Numbering around 5,500 men, they had an eye on the main chance in terms of loot and privileges if the British won the war. When the war finally ended, about 17,000 bitter-enders were still in the field.

Albert Lloyd, Millbrook, Beds.

QUESTION Was dentistry being practised in Roman times?

FURTHER to the earlier answer, while very little is recorded of Roman dentistry, there are some other contemporary references. In his Epigrams, Book X, Poem LVI, first-century poet Martial describes a Roman dental practice: ‘Cascellius draws or stops the decayed tooth.’

Because of the absence of sugar, Roman teeth were generally healthier than ours, though hygiene was poor. Pliny the Younger, a contemporary of Martial, described remedies for toothache.

Teeth were whitened, rather than cleaned, with a toothpaste made of nitrum (probably burnt potassium or sodium carbonate), or ammonia from urine.

In the previous century, Catullus quipped in Poem XXXIX that ‘the finer the polish on your wonderful tooth, the more copiously will you have quaffed piss.’

Graham Jennings, London SW16.