The “Hilary Term,” now under way in courts (and Trinity College) is named for a fourth-century French saint, Hilary of Poitiers, whose feast-day falls on January 14th.
He was known as Hilarius in Latin and so, to modern ears, sounds like a funny man. So does Pope Hilarius, the only pontiff named after him, who governed the church from 461 till 468. On the contrary, both were notably serious people, much caught up in the schisms of their day, which in Hilary’s case earned him the nickname “Hammer of the Arians”.
The only thing suggesting he had a sense of humour, perhaps, is that he is the patron saint of lawyers. But then, in its original sense, the word just meant “happy”, or “cheerful”. This sometimes went hand in hand with a certain solemnity.
Ancient Romans used to host Hilaria: public holidays marked by ceremonial rejoicing. And as late as the 19th century, it was still possible for even serious Christians to refer to “our hilarious church”.
Only in the 1920s did that adjective come to mean “exceedingly amusing”. This coincided with a surge in popular use, which continues to this day, making a Pope Hilarius II unlikely.
Sometime around the middle of last century, it seems, hilarity also acquired the habit of “ensuing” in certain situations, typically those depicted in film and theatre. The earliest recorded incidence I can find in Ireland is 1956, at a cinema in Dublin’s Fairview.
The occasion was a Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis comedy in which a jewel thief and train-fare dodger take refuge in a girls’ school. According to the Evening Herald, “much hilarity ensues”.
It wasn’t until the 1990s, however, that the ensuing of hilarity became widespread here. Perhaps that was another effect of the Celtic Tiger. Then, thanks to verbal inflation, “great hilarity” became the new normal.
An early outbreak was reported in a Dublin pub, Scruffy Murphy’s, at Christmas 1989. It started, as detailed in an Irish Independent social column, when “cheery proprietor Paddy Mulligan . . . decided to staple a customer’s cuffs to the bar counter”.
The report continued: “Great hilarity ensued until the customer showed the holes in his sleeves and claimed the jumper was a designer original worth £150.” An examination of the label suggested otherwise and “an amicable settlement was arrived at”, without the need for a Hilary term hearing in 1990.
Incidences of hilarity show no sign of abating today. In fact, a graph of usage shows the term has surged again since the millennium, although in certain places, the adjective has reasserted at the expense of the noun.
Thus, in South County Dublin and elsewhere now, “totes hilaire” describes the maximum possible extent of hilarity in any given situation.
This reminds me of the French-English writer Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953,) who may be an argument for nominative determinism: the theory that names influence vocation.
Not that he was especially hilarious, but he was an occasional humorist at least. His comic verse Collection, Cautionary Tales for Children (1907) is said to have been an influence on Roald Dahl, albeit even darker in tone.
Titles included “Jim; Who ran away from his Nurse and was Eaten by a Lion”; “Matilda: Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death”; and “Lord Lundy, who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and thereby ruined his political career”.
But Belloc was many other things too, not least a vocal defender of the Catholic Church, of which he was a devout member. This, in George Orwell’s view at least, was central to his humour.
In an essay lamenting the decline of English comic writing in the mid-20th century, Orwell wrote:
“Nearly all English humorists today are too genteel, too kind-hearted and too consciously low-brow. P,G. Wodehouse’s novels, or A.P. Herbert’s verses, seem always to be aimed at prosperous stockbrokers whiling away an odd half hour in the lounge of some suburban golf course.
“They and all their kind are dominated by an anxiety not to stir up mud, either moral, religious, political or intellectual. It is no accident that most of the best comic writers of our time – Belloc, Chesterton, ‘Timothy Shy’ and the recent ‘Beachcomber’ – have been Catholic apologists; that is, people with a serious purpose and a notable willingness to hit below the belt.”
Born in Paris, Belloc was descended via his paternal grandmother from an Irish Protestant who fled 18th-century Ireland after hitting somebody above the belt – fatally, in a duel.
The émigré converted to Catholicism and became a colonel in France’s Irish Brigade. This led to his descendent– who often wrote about Ireland - being hailed on occasion as an “Anglo-Irish Frenchman”.
Getting back to Hilary Term, it begins by tradition on “Plough Monday”, the first Monday after the Epiphany, so named because it also used to be the start of the agricultural year.
The same date, or at least the new year’s first working Monday, is also frequently claimed to be the busiest of all for a certain kind of solicitor. It may be a myth, but the theory goes that, after the pressures of Christmas, this is when warring couples are most likely to reach for the divorce lawyers. Hilarity does not usually ensue.