The Wilmington morning star., 1946-08-24
Fair Enough
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1916, BY King Features Syndicate
IncO

NEW YORK, Aug. 22.-Perhaps you will
remember that, last winter, when some Of
our statesmen in Washington were accusing
one another of resorting to double-talk, l took
amiable exception to their error and main
tanned that double-talk is a much more subtle
and artistic confusion that the mere use OF
such words as Experimentation" 'activate'
and social impact" and traced it first to
Hollywood and then to Boston. My research
paused there with a strong suggestion that
double talk was of Irish origin, once known
in Boston as "sWerve" but l now venture a
step further, thanks in part to Paul Hayes,
of New York, who wrote to say that James
Joyce, bad cess to him, whatever that means,
had used this medium in 'Finnegan's Wake"
which is something I never read.
"For example" Mr.. Hayes wrote. hoW's
this:
" While that mooksius with preprocession
Implicitly and diplussidly, was premulgating
i~psotacts and sadcontras. this raskally gri-
pos, he had adjust seeded in monophysick-
ing his illsobordunates But, asawfulas he had
caught his base semenoyous sarchnaktiers to
conbuccinate upon the silipses of his aspill-
outs and the acheporeoozers of Hassyown
pneumax to synerethetise with the broadches-
tiviousness of his sweetovular ducose-' ;"
Well, i said to meself, not hoW's this but
what the devil is this?
4hlo 10 AIS anu Iic
Gripes," Mr.. Hayes wrote, The quotation is a
fair example OF the entire book"
Mr.. Has es further alleged that DR.. Douglas
Hyde. who recently retired from the presi-
dency of Fire, celebrated folklorist and lin
quist. many years ago issued a small book,
called, he thought, "Shelta,' in which he set
down what he succeeded in collecting from
Irish mixers.
'Members of those still nomadic tribes are
i j., NaU, Norly - NJ II,vae ea;J u,nJ - ,,o,
can find them and get an entree you may be
one the trail of something interesting in word
usage. Though it turns out in the end to be
but the remains o. lost language"
So, thankin' his worship, Mr.. Hayes, 1 tried
Shaun Nunan, the Consul General of Fire,
but he had nothing to offer. although he
thought to doubt that Doctor Hyde had digni-
fled such shenanigans with his scholarly at
tention AID then I telephoned James MacDer-
mott, I did. and him the president and editor
of the Gselic-American, and asked him could
he tell roe now?
Mr.. MacDermott's opinion Of Joyce is well
on the sober side of adulation but on the
subject OF Irish thinkers he made out that
they had been a sort of tribe Of wanderers,
like gypsies, who may have evolved a sort Of
Irish geechee for their own fun, sport and
amusement, as the fellow says, and how do
we know but for privacy or secrecy also in
wv WV oio dUlOI Ole
another? Some of them came to the United
States, too, he said, and wandered about the
South but they seem to be vanished now, for
who ever hears of a tinker today, though as
late as my own childhood, which wasn't yes
terday, we did have thinkers in Minnesota and
they were wanderers, too, mending pots and
pans and umbrellas. Irish, Or not, Or what, l
cannot remember, but tinkers we had, that 7
know, and they came and went and we never
knew them.
Possibly, as Mr.. Hayes suggests, some of
them still live in New York in which case
how do l know but that I will hear from
them and push my studies to the true origin
of double-talk.
So went to the public library and you
would think it was a first edition Of the Bible.
careful they are of this treasure, and for to
start learned that Mr.. Joyce not only wrote
swerve but used it so heavy-handedly that
you have to take a preparatory course
through a book entitled "A Skeleton Kew to
Flnnegan's Wake" by Joseph Campbell and
Henry Morton Robinson. 1 suppose, maybe,
then, in years to come someone will do a
thing in the language of 1--WE, likely some
reefer-slnoking clarinetist, and some savant
from the gents room of a black and-tan dime
a dance Cump will write US a skeleton kew
to that.
Each of the books of ''Finnegan's Wake
has its peculiar logic" they tell us in the
skeleton key. Book one, the book of the FOR
gotten past, the prehistory of mankind, the
infancy OF the individual, the boo of the dark
energies Of the unconscious, is filled with OBJ
scure, swelling figures, rich with terminating
power, vigorously bubbling and rapidly break
ing into fresh figures, reproductive Of them
selves"
Is that SO, now. I said to myself, SO l look
ed in book one and it starts, without even a
capital, the ignOramuS, and l bet he flunked
his grammer like this it starts:
"riverrun past eve and Adams
from sWerve' get that 'sWerve'' now, be-
cause remember. the fellow said the Irish
called il ''swerve'' in South Boston - river
run past Eve and Adams from swerve Of
shore to bend or bay, bring us by a commodi-
ious vicus of recirculation back to Howth
castle and environs," it says.
And like this it says: mot yet, though
venisson after, had a kidscad buttened a
bland old Isaac; not yet though alPs fair in
Vanessy, were Sosie Sesthrs wroth with
twone - and on and on.
Then he throws us a word that he made up
to fool us: Observation-Disclosures ghtakamminarron-
nkonn-"
That isn't even the first syllable Of the
word and if he thought l was going to count
the letters. he was denenthurunuk in the gag
gin. the humptyhillhead. And tell me, does
m find this filled with obscure, swelling fig
ures. rich with terminating power, vigorous
" bubbling and rapidly breaking? And how
can you know it isn't dirty?
IN it, 49, <~,1 Ioy1hJn.fn1k NJ