H and I

So, I have now completed another two letters in the glossary in Daniel Cassidy’s absurd book, How The Irish Invented Slang, and as with A and B and C, D and E, and F and G, I have prepared a short account of my conclusions in relation to Cassidy’s efforts.

There are only 31 words in the H and I categories. Added to the 219 words dealt with above, that makes a total of 250 headwords from the glossary of Cassidy’s book. As in the previous letters, none of Cassidy’s explanations is in any way convincing, apart from one that has already been mentioned, the supposed link between the expression ‘big bug’ in English and the Irish boc mór. However, even in this case, Cassidy totally failed to conduct any real research.

The rest of Cassidy’s ‘research’ in relation to these letters is the usual utterly stupid made-up nonsense that breaks the grammatical rules of Irish and stretches credibility (and sanity) well beyond breaking point. There is a lot of material in relation to these two letters that demonstrates very clearly how little Irish Cassidy had. And while it has often been claimed that Cassidy had native Irish speakers available to help him and to vet the material he was coming out with, it is quite clear that these claims are also nonsense. What competent Irish speaker would endorse árd-iachtach-tach as a piece of genuine Irish? Who would give the thumbs-up to a phrase like ag céimnigh? Almost all the Irish in this book is pure invention and bears no relation to the real language, which Cassidy, a loud-mouth, a fool and a narcissist, had never even bothered to learn before setting himself up as an expert.

This man was a disgrace. This book, which so many Irish-Americans and even Irish people have been fooled into thinking was a valid contribution to the history of Irish America, was a collection of utter nonsense. People can believe what they like about Cassidy. They can ignore this blog and all other evidence and claim that he was a genuine radical, someone who actually cared about the poor and oppressed. (While claiming to have degrees from Ivy League colleges to take a job he wasn’t entitled to have.) They can ignore the evidence that claims he made about other aspects of his life were also dodgy. (For example, that he was in the newsroom of the New York Times when Kennedy was assassinated, or that he sold a script to Francis Ford Coppola – though he actually mentions two different scripts as the one he sold to Coppola.) And they can stick their fingers in their ears and hum while they ignore the truth about Cassidy’s etymological hoax. But facts are facts. They remain facts, however many people choose to lie or disbelieve or pretend that they are untrue.

The facts are laid out clearly here. There is no hiding place for liars in these pages, which is why we never hear from the liars in California, New York and even in Ireland who continue to pretend that Cassidy was a scholar and an intellectual. They don’t bother challenging the facts because they have no facts of their own to offer. In the past, some people have claimed that Cassidy was controversial. The truth is that there never was a controversy. Cassidy’s theories were always obvious and indefensible nonsense.

The Day JFK Was Shot

I noticed something interesting the other day in the description of Cassidy’s contribution to an oral history project at the Tamiment Library, curated by New York University. You can find the description here: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/aia_030/dscref56.html

In general, the oral history project looks interesting. There are plenty of names I’ve never heard of, along with some which will be familiar to most Irish people and even one or two who are familiar faces around Belfast, like Frank Costello.

Cassidy was interviewed by his old crony Peter Quinn. One particular detail caught my eye. It says that “Cassidy provides an insider’s perspective on the day JFK was assassinated as a rookie journalist in the newsroom of the New York Times.”

This is interesting, because it throws up the same problems of chronology and accuracy that bedevil every attempt to work out the details of Cassidy’s life. The problem is that Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963. We have sporadic references to Cassidy in the Cornell Daily Sun from February 1961, when he was applying for admittance to the Chi Psi fraternity, right through February 1963 when he was made co-editor of a literary mag at Cornell called the Trojan Horse, right up to May 1965, a month before he was withdrawn from the University, when he won a university award for his poetry.

In other words, I am very sceptical about his ‘insider’s perspective on the day JFK was assassinated as a rookie journalist in the newsroom of the New York Times.’ Not that I’m calling Cassidy a liar or anything – I’m sure we’ve all invented a degree or two to get that plum job or written a book full of fake nonsense in a language we don’t speak at some time in our lives.

Of course, I suppose he could have been working part-time in the New York Times while studying, or done a year’s work experience in between two years at college. It’s just that that isn’t the way Cassidy himself told it. In a radio interview with Myles Dungan broadcast on RTÉ 1 on the 11th of February 2007 (now available as a podcast), Cassidy states that he took a job with the New York Times after he finished at Cornell. Notice that he doesn’t say that he graduated (he knew, and we know, that he didn’t graduate.) Perhaps he just forgot where he was. I mean, who remembers where they were when JFK was shot?

I must say, I know where I was. I was in my high chair eating a rusk. As the car glided on and the president crumpled, I pointed at the screen, the rusk momentarily forgotten, dripping milk and crumbs into the bowl. I was unable to speak. Well, to be honest, I only knew about four words at the time: mummy, daddy, doggie, horsey, and somehow none of them seemed quite appropriate to the gravity of the situation …

(If anyone at the Tamiment Library would like to interview me about my traumatic experience of JFK’s death for posterity, you know where to find me.)

So, if Cassidy was still a student in 1963, why did he tell Peter Quinn he was in the newsroom of the New York Times? I’ll take a wee punt here. Cassidy was probably chatting to Peter Quinn one day about JFK, and in keeping with his personal philosophy that a lie is simply a fact with ambition, Cassidy probably told him about his imaginary experience in the newsroom when the news of JFK’s death came through. After all, he was in the newsroom at the New York Times just a couple of short years later, so he was well-placed to take a guess. All well and good, until Peter Quinn turns up with a tape recorder and asks him about that particular occasion. And at that point, Cassidy has the choice to do the right thing and say, Actually, Peter, that was just a humungous crock of shite, like nearly everything I’ve ever told you, or do the wrong thing and carry on lying as if his life depended on it.

Not much of a choice if you’re Daniel Cassidy, who would sooner have stopped breathing than stop lying!

By the way, there’s another interesting inconsistency in the Dungan interview and the Tamiment description. In the Dungan interview, Cassidy states that he sold a script called South of Market to F.F. Coppola, who was a few years senior to him in the New York Military Academy and was nicknamed Ichabod (thank God Cassidy didn’t try to find an Irish origin for that! Ith an bod, which sounds very similar, means ‘eat the penis!’). In the Tamiment description, it says that it was a script called The Volunteer. So maybe the details are wrong. Or … maybe he never really sold any scripts to F.F Coppola at all?

Daniel Cassidy and the Irish Papers

We have recently discovered that ‘Professor’ Daniel Cassidy, self-proclaimed discoverer of hundreds of concealed Irish expressions in American slang, didn’t have a degree. In terms of the framework for qualifications we use in this country, Cassidy was a Level 3 (equivalent to Ardteistiméireacht in the 26 Counties, Scottish Highers, A-Levels here, in England or in Wales or USA High School Diploma). To be a professor, you would normally be expected to have a Level 8 (Doctorate), though you might just get there with a Level 7 (Master’s Degree) in special circumstances. In other words, the man was a total fraud.

However, like many fantasists and con-men, he also had a brass neck. After his crazy book was published in 2007, he went on tour to pitch his ludicrous ideas to Irish America and to the Irish themselves. A lot of articles appeared in the press in Ireland.

We have already discussed the shameful complicity of the Irish-language newspaper Lá in the Cassidy Scandal. As we have said before, one of Lá’s journalists got a trip (presumably free) to Cassidy’s Irish Crossroads Festival in California, so this junket probably explains why they felt obliged to support this nonsense (if rather unenthusiastically) rather than strapping on a pair and telling the truth about Cassidy’s complete lack of ability.

Another offender was the Irish News, which adopted a completely uncritical and laudatory tone in an article by Margaret Canning, who obviously knows as much about the Irish language as Cassidy himself.

However, the worst offender was the Irish Times, which used to be a sensible and intelligent paper. Pól Ó Muirí reviewed the book in glowing terms in the Irish language section, though it seems to me that his article is slightly tongue in cheek. Even if it is, the mockery is so subtle that it might as well not be there. Then Kate Holmquist reviewed it on 28 July 2007, again repeating all kinds of stupidities, such as jism coming from teas ioma, which Cassidy says means an abundance of heat and passion; figuratively semen. This is, of course, complete nonsense.

However, the prize for chief sucker of the Irish nation goes to Frank McNally in An Irishman’s Diary, a regular column in the Irish Times. McWally gave it a glowing review on August 2, 2007:  “It’s not every dictionary you can describe as a thrilling read. But when I picked up Daniel Cassidy’s How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads the other day, I soon found myself reluctant to put it down. Compared with the OED, certainly, this is a page-turner….” Yes, Frank. That’s because the OED has lots of FACTS. Cassidy’s book is full of fascinating CRAP.

But McWally couldn’t leave it alone. On Friday 13 March 2009 he was plugging Cassidy again, trying to present a ‘balanced’ argument. He talks about linguists looking for written sources while ‘lack of written sources … was central to Cassidy’s argument.’ He also rang Cassidy, apparently, but was unaware of the time difference so the conversation was unproductive. What he didn’t do was phone an academic, a linguist or an Irish speaker in the same time-zone and ask them why this book is mindless shite, which is what he should have done.

McNally was obviously impressed by Cassidy (or perhaps he finds it hard to think of new material). On Sat June 4, 2011, he wrote another article lending support to Cassidy’s specious nonsense. This is one of the worst articles I have ever read. It completely misses the point, drags in H.L. Mencken, the stringency of linguistic methodology and the garrulous nature of the Irish. However, we have to remember here that the book is stuffed full of nonsense. A person with access to Google (and you would hope a so-called journalist would have access to Google) would be able to look up the real derivations for Cassidy’s words and find that the material presented in the book doesn’t actually reflect what the dictionaries say. And of course, anyone looking at an Irish dictionary would realise pretty quickly that Cassidy’s Irish ‘sources’ are hooky as well. Why didn’t McNally do this? Why indeed!

Then on 9 May 2013, McNally discussed the origins of the term phoney, claiming that Cassidy was the first to make the connection between phoney, the obsolete slang term fawney and Irish fáinne. A quick look on Google (try it Frank, it’s really good!) will show that Eric Partridge had already published this claim  in 1990 and I would guess that he probably wasn’t the first to make that connection.

Finally, on 16 Oct 2013, there is another massive plug for Cassidy, again with no attempt to find out what genuine experts think – or more importantly, know. Five plugs for the Great Fraud and not one valid or intelligent criticism of any of Cassidy’s bogus claims – not even the one about Gunga O’Din, Dia idir sinn agus an drochrud!

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Ed Power, writing in the Belfast Telegraph and the Irish Independent in December 2007, did what a real journalist would do. He lifted the phone and got a couple of comments from Professor Terence Dolan, who dismissed Cassidy’s book as almost entirely wishful thinking.

What lessons can we learn from this? Well, don’t read Frank McNally’s column is fairly high on the list. In praising this book, Frank McNally, in addition to revealing that he’s a bit of a pillock and that the Irish Times isn’t what it was, has become one of the few people to support this ridiculous book without (apparently) having any kind of personal connection with Cassidy. It’s kind of understandable that Eamonn McCann would say how great the book is, because he knew Cassidy. As did Peter Quinn, and Joe Lee, and John Rickford, and Alexander Cockburn, to name but a few. What’s Frank’s excuse, apart from laziness and stupidity?

Another lesson is the fact that most people don’t know anything about linguistics. Mathematicians complain that people are happy to admit their innumeracy and that it doesn’t carry the same stigma as illiteracy. Personally, I don’t accept their argument. I think maths is fascinating and I wish I were better at it but it doesn’t bother me because I don’t use it in my everyday life. However, everyone uses language – all the time – and yet the facts of linguistics are a mystery to people who regard themselves as educated. Many people regard knowledge of a few irrational, normative rules of grammar like not splitting infinitives as linguistics, whereas in fact true linguists have a very different agenda.

However, the biggest and most important lesson is probably how enormous our inferiority complex as a nation is (and was, even before the Celtic Tiger was put to sleep). All it takes is for an arrogant, ignorant little gobshite like Cassidy to turn up with a Noo Yoik accent and a monomaniacal sense of entitlement, pretending to be a supporter of the Irish language and a genuine academic and a friend of Francis Ford Coppola, and people instantly lose all their common sense and start tugging the spiritual forelock which the Irish developed a couple of hundred years ago for the purpose of kowtowing to the local Anglo-Irish landlord.

Pathetic!