Ah feck it – so what’s the harm in an odd curse here and there

Country Living with Francis Farragher

I’m not really a television person and especially so when the daylight hours begin to stretch. There is, though, the occasional and often random dip into something that catches my eye or ear and last week, Ardal O’Hanlon’s ‘Holy F***’ programme ‘killed an hour’ before the arrival of The Sandman.

It kind of took me back to a time at national school, maybe at the fourth or fifth class stage, when we all thought we were ‘getting to be big lads’, making our way in the world at around the age of ten or eleven.

For most of us, cursing or any kind of liaison with bad language was very much off-limits both at school and at home, but being an entrepreneurial bunch, we used to organise ourselves into little groups far away from the prying eyes of teachers and pestering parents.

These were quite simply cursing sessions, where we’d all use the F word, the C word and a variety of B words to get our points across to each other. Of course, we weren’t really ‘making points’ – or much sense either – but these little championship matches of swear words seemed to give us great satisfaction.

I remember another occasion many moons ago when a brother of mine used the C word within earshot of ‘the ould ones’ at home, and for an hour or two, I thought he’d committed a crime on a par with an unlawful killing or the robbery of a travelling shop.

The short C word I never heard used again in a domestic setting, apart from our own little primary school gang in a secure corner of the playground (well a field at the time), when it would be exchanged with great enthusiasm, knowing full well that it would be supressed again until our next clandestine get-together.

Is there really anything such as bad language? Probably not, as most of the words that we consider to fall into this category of speech can all be found in the bowels of the Collins or Oxford dictionaries. They are just words, and as long as they’re not used in an abusive manner, they tend to form part of many people’s daily conversations.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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