[Portrait of Richard painted by Barthel ii in the 1520s, after a lost original, for the Paston family. Owned by the Society of Antiquaries, London, since 1828.]
As one of 31 young men accepted into St. Patrick’s Seminary in Carlow town in 1959, I came laden with my distinctive County Laois accent. The first time I met the president of the seminary he leaned across his desk and handed me a piece of paper with the words, “This, that, these and those and all the other things,” written on it.
Then he said, “Read that aloud,”
I read, “Dis, dat, deeze an doze an all de odder tings.”
“Now turn the paper over and read the words there.” The words were, “Dis, dat, deeze an doze an all de odder tings.” I read them out loud.
“Do you know what elocution is?”
“Learning to give a speech?” I said.
“Not exactly. Having good elocution, among other things, is the ability to speak clearly. Like myself, you are from the Midlands and, like you, I found it difficult to pronounce words with “th” in them. Father Kinsella is our elocutionist and he will work with you. With your new way of speaking, when you go home for the Christmas holidays your family will think you’re putting on airs.”
In elocution class I discovered that not only had I a problem with “th,” I was also handicapped by a flat, boggish way of speaking
But Gerry Kinsella didn’t try to change students’ accents. Instead, he worked on the mechanics of diction. “Pint is a measurement of milk, sir. One makes a ‘point’ in an argument; the diphthong in ‘point’ changes the sound and the meaning. A ‘tree’ grows in Brooklyn, sir; ‘three’ is the number that comes after two. Th, th, th. Mister Phelan, it is impossible to pronounce ‘th’ unless your tongue comes off the bottom of your upper front teeth. Stick out your tongue, sir. Again, again, again! Practice, practice, practice!” I often left the class with a sore tongue.
Gerry Kinsella taught us the mechanics of delivery: “From the diaphragm, sir. Diaphragm, diaphragm, diaphragm! Breathe from your diaphragm. That’s how you throw your voice.” To show us how to toughen up our diaphragms he lay down on the floor on his belly, his arms and leg out straight, and rocked on his diaphragm like a rocking horse.
When I was home on school breaks I did not use any of my newfound ways of enunciation and pronunciation. I was still living in the Irish era of having one’s noggin lopped off with the words, “De notions of dat fella. Who does he tink he is!” When I left the seminary as an ordained priest, I was assigned to a parish in Brighton in the south of England. There I spoke in my new style, and in my constant attention to my speech I sometimes uttered “th” where there was none. “May I have the butther please? Pass the wather, please.”
I never gave a sermon unless I had written it out. Before I brought it to the pulpit I familiarized myself with it, and every “th” was underlined. This practice warned me of the approaching hurdle of tongue tip and front teeth. Even so, the connections between teeth, tongue, and brain were sometimes faulty.
I now admit, at age 84, that I was trying to show off to the English congregation when I quoted Shakespeare in one sermon. I do not remember what the quote was, but I do remember it was from “Richard III.” My father often warned us children that people who show off usually get into trouble. “’Look, Ma, no hands,’ usually ends up with the bike in a ditch.”
After Mass that day of the Shakespearian inclusion, an Englishman spoke to me outside the church. “Father, Richard may not have been the best of kings, but he was certainly no shit.” He walked off, leaving me wondering if I had said something in the sermon that had offended his English sensibility.
Two years later I was taking a walk with a fellow curate, Kenneth McCarthy, when he suddenly pointed to the ground and said, “Look out for that dog turd, Phelan.”
I avoided the offending pile and said, “Turd! Did you just make that up that word?”
“No! Actually it’s a little bit vulgar.” McCarthy, despite his name, was a rather proper Englishman with a proper English way of speaking.
“I never heard that word before. Even if it’s vulgar, I suppose it’s better than saying shit.”
“It is as vulgar as shit.” McCarthy said. “To call someone a turd would be just as rude as calling him a shit.”
The heavens opened and like Saint Stephen gazing up and seeing celestial occupants just before the rock split his skull and made him the first Christian martyr, I saw a man standing beside me after Sunday mass. I heard him saying, “Richard may not have been the best of kings, but he was certainly no shit.”
“Richard the Turd,” I said aloud. “Jesus!”
Then I told McCarthy about my Shakespearean sermon. “The entire parish must have been laughing its arse off,” I said
“You are right,” McCarthy said. “However, you might console yourself, too. Of all the sermons those parishioners ever heard, yours is probably the only one they remember.”
© 2024 Glanvil Enterprises, Ltd.
Tom Phelan is the author of the acclaimed “We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It: A Memoir of My Irish Boyhood” and several novels. For more about the books visit www.tomphelan.net.
