Celebrating the colours of The Kingdom

I COULD introduce the ‘kingdom’ of Kerry with a description of its incomparable physical attributes, from Cahirsiveen to Ballybunion, but a few well-taken photographs would eclipse my most passionate prosopography.

I might also write about Kerry football and outline for you a particularly well-taken point, from boot to crossbar, but I would much prefer to write about the living lingo of the greater, hard-necked, Atlantical warbler known as the Kerryman, who quests individually and in flocks for all forms of diversion and is to be found, high and low, winter and summer, wherever there is the remotest prospect of drink, sex, confusion or commotion!

Plain, everyday language is of no use to your genuine Kerryman. I remember to have been involved only last year in the purchase of a trailer of turf for my winter fires. A countryman friend, in order to bring down the price, spoke disparagingly of the trailer’s size. Said he, dismissively, “A young blackbird would bring more in its beak”.