In conversation with a friend the other day, mildly disparaging a mutual acquaintance, I reached for what I used to think was a very common Irish expression: “He has a great welcome for himself.”
But not for the first time in my recent experience, this drew a puzzled response. My friend somehow hadn’t heard it before. So once more I had to explain that it referred to a person who was suffering from a superfluity of self-esteem, not all earned.
I wondered again if the phrase – clearly descended from an older Irish one, or so I assumed – was on the way out. Then I looked it up. Now I’m not sure if it’s old at all and am wondering where and how it ever came in.
My first point of inquiry, as usual, was Terry Dolan’s Dictionary of Hiberno-English, which has no mention of it.
When hospitality begins at home – Frank McNally on having a great welcome for yourself
Revving up the Shamrock – Alison Healy on the car that never quite got motoring
Innocence and mischief – Desmond O’Neill on the humorist and social commentator Erich Kästner
Rhyme and reason — Alison Healy on Longfellow’s Wreck of the Hesperus
From there I consulted Patrick Dinneen’s famously inclusive Irish-English lexicon, much lampooned by Myles na gCopaleen for finding layers of meaning that had previously eluded even the greatest of gaeilgeoirí (eg Myles).
And true to form, under the heading fáilte, Dinneen includes such exotica as fáilte gealgáire, “the winning pleasantness of a light-hearted laugh”. But as for somebody having a great welcome for him/herself, that dictionary has nothing to say either.
Had Myles ever used the phrase, I now wondered? Apparently not. A search of the Irish Times archive suggests “a great welcome for himself” postdates Cruiskeen Lawn by decades, being first used by Deaglán de Bréadún in 1995.
Subsequent appearances include my own A History of Ireland in 100 insults (2012), where it featured at no. 57 (just ahead of a phrase of broadly similar import, “he’s running around like a dog with two mickeys”, at 58).
But even in a database of Ireland’s provincial newspapers, the great self-extended welcome seems relatively modern.
The oldest example I can find is from the Donegal Democrat in November 1943, where the local news for Kinlough included the visit of a mysterious gypsy woman, returning to the area after what she claimed was many years of absence.
Affecting surprise that nobody knew her, she “remembered the locality distinctly and had, apparently, a great welcome for herself back to it”.
Only after extensive researches about who was now who, however, did she get around to telling the locals’ fortunes.
After that, there are sporadic occurrences of the phrase in the 1970s and 1980s, as for example when the Western Journal quotes somebody on a newly elected TD for Mayo, Pádraig Flynn: “‘I’ll give him this,’ chuckled John Callanan ‘he certainly has great welcome for himself.’”
The lack of an indefinite article there may be interesting. When I mentioned my quest to David Stifter, Professor of Old Irish at Maynooth, he wasn’t familiar with the expression either.
But he guessed its origins might be in the “ambiguity of Irish fáilte”, which originally meant “joy, happiness” before it came to mean “welcome”, now its main job.
“I suspect that this lies behind that Hiberno-English phrase, ie someone extrapolating from the Irish practice that a word seemingly meaning ‘welcome’ can occasionally be used for joy,” says David, who agrees that the lack of earlier examples in English seems odd.
Getting back to Dinneen, he also includes all the usual denominations of the Irish fáilte: céad (a hundred), míle (a thousand), and of course céad míle (a hundred thousand), which remains the hospitality industry standard.
More interestingly, he claims that “fáilte is daichead”, which he translates/paraphrases as “forty-one welcomes”, is common too.
Why 41? It seems a rather obscure number, devoid of any great mathematic or mystical qualities (unlike, say, 42, which according to Douglas Adams is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything).
But I suppose it’s one more than another industry standard: the number of shades of green, as recorded by Johnny Cash. Maybe we should bring the “Forty-one Welcomes” back, in place of a hundred thousand, as the slogan for a more sustainable tourism.
Another curiosity in Dinneen is “O’Kelly’s welcome”, which I had to look up. The man in question was William Buí Ó Ceallaigh, a 14th-century chieftain in Connacht, who had a great welcome for others if not himself.
Specifically, on Christmas Day 1351, he invited poets, writers, and artists from all over Ireland to his home. Such was the generosity of his hospitality (and/or the influence of his guest list) it remained proverbial six centuries later.
Mind you, that one doesn’t make it into Patrick Weston Joyce’s classic English as We Speak it in Ireland (1910). Nor does the self-extended welcome of our enquiries.
And speaking of Joyces, neither Ulysses nor Finnegans Wake appears to include the latter phrase either.
But I’m reminded in passing of the celebrated closing passage from Portrait of the Artist, where the author says this: “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
Now there was a man with a great welcome for himself.