Irish Sports
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The mention of the horse Burn and Turn is interesting for any student of Irish social history.
The phrase is a corruption of Burn In Turn ( people mangle phrases all the time ).
For further elaboration of the origin and meaning of the phrase I refer them to Patrick Kavanagh's book
The Green Fool p.126 ( Published first in 1936-Penguin paperback ed. in 1975.
This is a superb book which I highly recommend.
I'd be willing to bet that very few of our second level students and graduates have ever even heard of it let alone read it. -such is the appalling nature of our
so-called 'education 'system.
I would make it a staple of the curriculum.
The phrase is a corruption of Burn In Turn ( people mangle phrases all the time ).
For further elaboration of the origin and meaning of the phrase I refer them to Patrick Kavanagh's book
The Green Fool p.126 ( Published first in 1936-Penguin paperback ed. in 1975.
This is a superb book which I highly recommend.
I'd be willing to bet that very few of our second level students and graduates have ever even heard of it let alone read it. -such is the appalling nature of our
so-called 'education 'system.
I would make it a staple of the curriculum.
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Sorry -first published 1938 ...I know that forumites (rightly) insist on the most stringent requirements of accuracy in all matters -especially those pertaining to material of an academic nature.
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I put my keyboard through the screen in disgust when I saw 1936!
 What does the phrase mean anyway? |
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Sorry db1974 for this offence to your sense of calendrical propriety .
The phrase relates to an insurance scam. PK tells how in his area of Co. Monaghan farmers would deliberately arrange for their house to be burned so they could gain from an insurance settlement. The point was that the burnings had to be spaced out and so a union arranged for people to burn in their turn . PK also tells how a guy got desperate because he had heavy overheads ( he was trying to make 2 priests !) and so he did the unforgiveable -he burned out of turn...leading naturally to all kinds of ructions. It's a great book , very informative and really funny throughout. |
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Very interesting thanks
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Oh ..and just in case anyone might get the impression that the book is a novel -it's not .
It's Kavanagh's autobiography for the first half of his life. As anyone who has read any of Kavanagh will know -he is not a soppy romantic. The Green Fool is a minutely detailed picture of much of small farm rural life in Ireland that would be valid for the century from ,say , around 1860 to 1960. His poem The Great Hunger is a masterpiece -and takes us into the awful bleakness of peasant life as dominated by the repressive tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church with all the sad consequences that that entailed. |
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Vubiant I dont believe any of that burn in turn stuff. No one in monaghan would ever dream of doing anything like that.
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Vubiant while your story of Burn In Turn is correct can I ask how you are sure that the horse is not correctly named Burn And Turn. A phase familiar to those who play poker i.e. burn the next card and turn the next community card - Burn And Turn? The phrase may not have its heritage in a Kavanagh poetry book but given the popularity of poker in modern times (arguably and regretfully more popular than Irish Literature) I had always assumed that the owner enjoyed the occasional game of poker.
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Could very well be - I can't be sure but it seemed very suggestive in an Irish context
My impression ( also possibly erroneous)is that insurance scamming was/is much more common in the ROI than poker jargon. Gave me a pretext too for promoting the genius of Kavanagh ...a sportsman himself who played football and was also a lifelong punter. |
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Were these Monaghan men insured with Quinn Insurance?
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the potato pits were white with frost......
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Probably the most underrated poet of the twentieth century,still a joy to read.
Our education system is now a vehicle of indoctrination,something they picked up from Britain where they ate forced to learn poetry from the West Indies from someone who doesnt speak the language. I think the horse is most likely named after that Texas Hold em phrase but delighted you reminded us of Kavanaghs great writings. |
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a secondary school english teacher of mine was a kavanagh fanatic....we read the book....we visited inniskeen as part of a school trip.......1994 i think it was......very interesting indeed.....
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