Meathman's Diary: Farmers need a level playing field
As a teenager in the all-boys St Patricks Classical School in Navan, I was mercilessly slagged for being from a farm, which was ironic as most of their grandparents were farmers. This instilled in me a lifelong pride of my roots and the urge to defend them when they were threatened. With this in mind, it was hard not to notice the amount of negativity farmers receive from non-farmers.
It feels like we're blamed for everything from global warming to traffic jams (although who hasn’t been grateful to use the excuse of getting stuck behind an imaginary tractor when late for an appointment) to dirtying the country's roads and everything in between. While it has long been (falsely) said there are no swear words in Japanese, the opposite is true for farm talk as there is a disproportionate amount of everyday words and phrases in the English language that are associated with farming that have negative conotations in the outside world.
If someone is said to be “milking it” then they’re taking more time or advantage than they’re due because they can get away with it. For example, Britons milked that Royal Wedding/Baby/Funeral. It’s automatically associated with being a bad thing. This is concept is turned on its head in the farmland where milking is a byword for prosperity and wealth and farmers of other denominations will regularly say things akin to “those dairy farmers are making all the money, I wish I was milking”.
Sticking with the theme of dairy farming, have you ever tried giving your significant other a pet name based on an animal? Things like honey bee, huggy bear and love bunny. All fail-safe ways to get in the good books. Trying something bovine based (especially to a woman) like “cow face” is enough to spend the night on the couch, which is baffling when you consider that both bears and bees are hostile creatures. Research on this one is inconclusive though as I told my partner “you have a head on ye like a cow” and she hasn’t replied, over a full week later.
To be bull thick is to be furious beyond reason, while The Dictionary of Hiberno-English, a 1998 book by the late Professor Terence Dolan (a modern version exists with an intro by Blind Boy Boat Club) brilliantly explains the form of English commonly spoken in Ireland describes the phrase bulling as being a derivative of the Irish word for buille, aka furious.
It doesn’t get much kinder with phrases like “useless as t*ts on a bull”, and “like a bull in a China shop”.
We need to level out the playing field (pun intended). Introduce new phrases to bring other sectors down to our level, maybe throw teachers, accountants and judges, under the proverbial tractor. I'd start but I'd only make a pig’s ear out of it.