Re-imagine the Rising. Irish Independent 25/3/2016

Reimagining the 1916 Rising

"What's in the pot?" says the brother skipping in from the field with a bee in his bonnet. "Salad for the stools," says I, "and a bit of bacon and cabbage for the day that's in it."

"By Jaysus, we're gonna be in the silk," he says, rubbing his paws together like a March hare. "And how's that?" says I, cutting the heel off the loaf.

Well, declare to God, he upends the place and fires a tomato and a handful of boiled cabbage at the kitchen wall with a bang and a wallop that sends the auld dog across the lino with a yelp.

"Get me the camera from the top of the wardrobe," he roars. "Be God I will," says I, thinking to meself I'd make the call on the way and get the man seen too once and for all.

So in the hall I pick up the phone but had to put it down again on account of him roaring from the kitchen about hypocrisy, revolution and the history of auld Ireland.

"Have you lost your bearings man?" says I. There he was scratching his chin and contemplating the spattered tomato and broken cabbage dripping down the stone, as if he was looking at high art up in the big smoke. "Whisht," says he, taking the camera, "you know nothing of history! Put your paw on the wall there by the tomato for a bit of scale." Says he, "I'm going to sell this picture to the post office for a 1916 commemoration stamp." "Ah," says I to meself, "the poor craytur is gone."

"This little piece of ballistics," says he pointing the crooked finger to a vein of cabbage on the wall, "this here, me boyo, is a piece of our history that has been conveniently forgotten! Washed and hosed clean from the record like dung from the floor of the milking shed," says he.

"How do ya mean?" says I, with one eye for the telephone.

"Well," says he, "when the founding fathers of auld Ireland were hauled from the GPO, 'twas the tomatoes, the cabbages, and the consumptive spits fired at them by the good people of Dublin that encouraged the Brits to give the lead penny to each and all of them. 'Twasn't Britannia's Huns and her long-range guns that put an end to the Rising and sent the leaders to the firing squad, 'twas the tomatoes and the cabbage.

"If it wasn't for the first and more important firing squad of spits and rotten fruit, sure enough Ireland wouldn't be as free and as happy as she is today. Make no mistake, 'tis the tomato and the cabbage that are the heroes of the story.

"With all the shiny uniforms, the marches, the parades and the 1916 speeches, there should be a statue of a cabbage put outside the GPO and a stamp with a tomato on the front of it.

"That would remind us all that in Ireland a sure sign of a good idea is that the whole country will be against it from the start, and a sure sign that someone is telling the truth is the length of the queue that is lining up to give the craytur a hammering!"

Dr Marcus de Brun

Rush, Co Dublin