July 1, 2007...3:25 pm

Sunday Times: You’re all just jealous of Cork

Jump to Comments

July 1st, 2007

We’ve got pianos. To be more precise, we’ve got 57 brand-new pianos, 54 of them baby grands. It was the single biggest order of baby grand pianos ever received by the famous Steinway company. The pianos, which were delivered last week, cost more than €3m and will require a full-time caretaker of their own.

When I say “we”, I mean the Cork School of Music, although I should point out that I have nothing whatsoever to do with that venerable institution. I haven’t a note in my head and I can’t play the piano. It doesn’t matter, though, because when I say ‘we’, I mean Cork. Boy.

Cork has lots of lovely new pianos. Dublin doesn’t. Other towns and counties in Ireland don’t. Yet more proof, as if it were needed, that Cork is better than everywhere else.

This will seem like bizarre logic if you’re not from Cork, but that’s the way we think. We’re so tired of being belittled as the second city that we love to be first with anything. There is nothing we like more than being better at something than any other place in Ireland, even if that something is only the ability to buy pianos.

This need for evidence of our superiority goes a long way to explain the overbearing attitude of fans of our sports teams. We know we’re better and our sporting victories provide yet more justification of this conviction.

There may be people in Cork who will never speak to me again following this admission, but I have to come clean. I don’t really follow the hurling team, or the Gaelic football team, Cork City FC, Cork Constitution or any of our other sporting bodies. In a city and county where sport is the primary outlet for our separatist leanings, I know my lack of interest is bordering on the traitorous.

Despite my apathy towards Cork’s sporting heroes, my stomach lurched when Sean Og O hAilpin, Donal Og Cusack and Diarmuid O’Sullivan put out their statement accusing the GAA of an anti-Cork bias. This is not the first time a charge of this nature has been made. Roy Keane recently accused the Football Association of Ireland of discriminating against players from Cork on the basis that Liam Miller wasn’t being selected often enough for the Irish team.

I find these accusations embarrassing. They seem like petulant, overly sensitive whinging from Cork people. You just know everyone else is thinking: “Oh God, there they go again.” It’s also irritating, because such episodes force the rest of us Cork people to face down accusations of paranoia, insecurity and arrogance.

I might secretly agree that the outburst from O hAilpin and the lads was over the top but it would be disloyal to admit it so I have be stoic and deny that Cork has an inferiority complex. I equally have to insist that we don’t have a siege mentality and that we don’t have an enormous chip on our collective shoulders.

I have to defend Cork because, although we may be a little too sensitive for our own good, it’s understandable. We get grief on a scale that has to be experienced to be believed. I can’t imagine that people from Longford or Westmeath have to withstand the same amount of needling.

When I tell people where I’m from, the best response I can hope for is some reference to The Rebels or the People’s Republic of Cork. At worst, it’s “Oh, I hate Cork people”. You’d be amazed at the number of people who say this, as if expressing loathing for 10% of the Irish population constitutes perfectly acceptable chit-chat.

Life as a Corkonian in Dublin often seemed like one long session as a judge at a terrible talent show. You had to smile through gritted teeth at the impressionists: “So you’re going to do a terrible version of a Cork accent? Great, go on then. It’s only the 12th time today.” You had to laugh at the jokes, or should I say the joke, as it was almost always the same one. Had I heard the one about the Cork mother who says, “My son, the solicitor, is drowning”? Yes, very good. It gets funnier every time.

You had to chortle along with the stand-up routine about the word “langer”. Yes, I have noticed that Cork people are forever saying langer. And it’s indeed amazing the way langer has so many different meanings to a Cork person – you can be a langer, act the langer, have a langer, be langers or go on the lang. Thank you, all, for reminding me of the word’s versatility.

Every time I have the langer conversation with someone, or rather, when someone has it with me, I always want to interject: “Actually, Cork has a very distinct and etymologically interesting slang that goes far beyond that one word”, but I don’t because doing so would make me sound pompous and defensive, reinforcing the stereotype of cocksure Corkonians.

I asked a colleague from Cork why he thought we can seem so cocky to everyone else. “I think it’s to do with self-sufficiency,” he mused. “Cork people have everything they need in Cork. The county produces a huge variety of food, for example. There is a sense that if Cork absolutely had to, it could manage without the rest of Ireland.”

Another colleague, from Ardee, listened open-jawed to this. “That’s just it,” she said. “That’s the difference. I don’t think anyone in Louth has ever thought, ‘Well, if we absolutely had to…’.”

Cork people do think like that and I’m torn because of it. On the one hand, this self-regarding attitude can be horribly oppressive but, on the other, I’m proud that we have so much in the way of civic amenities, natural resources, tribal pride and, of course, pianos. If it comes to it, we can throw up a wall on the county boundary, turn our backs on the rest of you, and make beautiful music together.

24 Comments

Filed under Columns, Sunday Times

24 Comments


Leave a Reply