We have a great and much-needed talent in this country for euphemism – honey-coating harsh realities with such phrases as “soft day”, “the Emergency”, “the dead man was known to gardaí”, etc. But I was reminded of one recently that, to my great regret, seems to have disappeared from the lexicon. It used to be applied to events of the 1916 - 1923 period. And it was all the more impressive because it was a euphemism of a euphemism.
We already had “the Troubles” as a gentle description of the violence. Yet even so, some people found it necessary to add another layer of delicacy, and called it the “crossness”.
Yes, even by Irish standards, it’s a beauty which is what the English travel writer HV Morton thought when he first heard it, from a Dublin jarvey in the 1920s. Surveying a still-ruined O’Connell Street by jaunting car he was charmed to hear the driver blame the shattered buildings on the “crossness”.
“You mean the fighting?” asked Morton. Yes, said the driver, as if the words were identical. His passenger was enchanted: “I thought this description quite the kindest and most generous I had ever heard.”
There are few other references to it in literature of the period, so it may not have lasted long. But when it featured in another British travel book in 1949, it set off an interesting debate in the Spectator magazine.
A scornful reviewer questioned whether the word had ever been used to describe the troubles in the south of Ireland and suggested it was a purely Northern term, referring to the ongoing sectarian strife there.
But a letter writer from London countered with the evidence of his housekeeper, the “seventh of a family of 12 from a small farm near Newport, Co Mayo”, who used the c-word when referring to the events of a generation earlier.
Then, interestingly, the reviewer returned to the subject, with a compromise: “It has been put to me that when ‘the crossness’ is used in the South, it means the Civil War (a little bit of bother between friends)”. The “Troubles”, he now suggested, was reserved for the “Black and Tan fighting”.
Siege
I’m not sure if this particular c-word is used any more even in the North. If it’s not, it should be, especially during flag disputes. It would be doubly fitting to describe controversies over where and when the Union Jack should fly. For what else is that combination of the symbols of saints Andrew, George, and Patrick, only a “crossness”?
But watching a BBC NI documentary on Thursday night, I was struck by another possible use for the term. The programme was about Crossmaglen Rangers GAA club, that extraordinarily successful outfit from South Armagh.
And among the interesting things about both town and club is that, when abbreviated, they’re known simply as “Cross”. Which, on the basis of the documentary, is entirely appropriate.
In common with all successful GAA clubs (or so documentaries always suggest), Crossmaglen’s seems to rely on the team’s ability to work itself into a fury every time it’s about to leave the dressing room.
Among several such moments in this programme was one where a Cross player talked – well, shouted – about the respect they were due from the opposition. If necessary, he said (and here he mimed the action in worryingly convincing fashion), “we’ll put our hand down their throat and pull it out!”
The club appears to have an inexhaustible supply of such indignation. It used to be founded in the part-occupation of its pitch by the British army. Now, even though that siege has ended, the siege mentality remains.
It’s well expressed in a local sculpture by Breton nationalist Yann Goulet who, speaking of the Civil War, also did the monument at Ballyseedy. And it helps explain why, since the mid-1990s, the club has won 19 consecutive Armagh senior county championships, 11 Ulster titles, and six All-Irelands.
I should declare a possible conflict of interest here, having been born at the other extreme of a 10-mile stretch of road that starts in Crossmaglen and ends in the Republic at a town with a similar name: Carrickmacross.
This is a cross-border area, in more ways than one. But it may be telling that, as if to acknowledge the monopoly of anger on the Armagh side of the Border, our town is abbreviated as “Carrick”. This may be one explanation why the GAA club hasn’t won a county senior title since the War of Independence. We’re just not Cross enough.