This war of words could be a dangerous game to be playing

EAST to Kilkenny. Arts festival in full flow, therefore streets overflowing with odd limestone statues, dance recitals, readings and so forth.

And talk about hurling. On this column’s first evening in the Marble City, the conversation starts well but soon heads lower than a frog’s belly in a coal mine. Tickets, Tommy, Sean Óg: you know the drill.

Then: “What I noticed against Clare was that Henry changed the grip, he shortened his hurl. For a long time he...”

“Hurl? A hurl. What is that?”

Words exchanged. Dictionaries exchanged. Pistols at dawn in the shadow of Kilkenny Castle. Diplomatic recognition withdrawn. And all because of a syllable.

Where does this lamentable tendency come from? More importantly, where does it end? Reliable witnesses have identified a meandering line across the country as the hurley/hurl demarcation boundary. Somewhere slightly to the north of Crusheen in Clare it begins, then it crosses the Shannon north of Limerick and heads for Tipperary.

At Mullinahone and environs it takes a sharp turn south to Carrick-on-Suir, where it more or less follows the boundaries of the Gentle County to the sea. Those reliable witnesses refuse to surmise on how far out over the Continental Shelf the line extends. Within the boundary, the word is hurley; without, hurl is a perfectly acceptable usage.

What began this abbreviation we cannot say, though it seems to be a growing phenomenon in the outside world also. On a recent visit to the cinema to enjoy the stylings of Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx in Miami Vice we noticed the tendency to shorten: the two undercover cops start referring to transpo this and transpo that: (“Twelve keys transhipment to the Keys; go-fast boats as transpo”).

Clearly it would be nonsense to suggest that the use of hurl for hurley influenced director Michael Mann in his choice of terminology. Although given it’s fairly obvious that former Kilkenny legend Dick O’Hara clearly influenced Colin’s hairy cornflake look, perhaps not quite as nonsensical as all that.

On a more serious note, the tendency to shorten hurley to hurl, while not quite this week’s sign of the apocalypse, is something that will have to end. For one thing, it creates a serious precedent. When are we going to start calling hurling balls sliots, for instance? When are we going to start shortening county names to Co and Ki, encouraging commentators to say Co coa Jo Al is putting in Ca Nau for Nei Ron? For another, it’s simply sloppy, and could lead to terrible misunderstandings.

I am sure we all remember (he said in a pompous voice) the embarrassing exchange in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when Stephen Dedalus calls a funnel a tundish, to the amazement of the (English) dean of studies: Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heard the word in my life. It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra, said Stephen, laughing, where they speak the best English.

Fair enough, the embarrassment comes later. But you see the point.

There doesn’t seem to be as much of this kind of thing in football, oddly enough. Though one of our pet peeves with the big ball has to be that frequently-sighted abomination, “kicking football”. Usage: “Fonsie McCuttridge had been a promising minor before he went to Australia to prospect for uranium; when he returned to Coalboe he was soon back kicking football with” (and so on for several lifetimes).

No, don’t even involve yourself with the insanity of “kicking football”: either it’s “playing football” or nothing. Amending the thing to “kicking a football” conjures up disquieting images of some grinning yokel walking a country road, booting a misshapen lump ahead of him before he cuts the neighbour’s throat out of boredom. Less of the hurl. More of the hurley. Full word please; precision in our vocabulary, that’s the spirit. If we’re not exact we’re nothing.

Think that’s panic talking? Not long before the exchange quoted above, Stephen’s pal Davin is talking about a match he attended in Buttevant; Davin’s cousin was in goal for Thurles and had a particularly narrow escape when one of his Limerick opponents (spying a lump in the back of his shorts as he prepared to take a penalty, perhaps) had a cut: “One of the Crokes made a woeful swipe at him one time with his camán and I declare to God he was within an aim’s ace of getting it at the side of his temple”.

See? If James Joyce himself couldn’t decide whether to use hurl or hurley, what hope is there for the rest of us?

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