Tag Archives: Martín Fierro

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That no true Paddy would ever cut a tree into a rectangle has long been one of the axioms by which pegamequemegusta has led its increasingly obtuse life. The Paddy is after all a raggle-taggle creature, his talk garrulous and brimming like the vowels of his native tongue. Moreover, millennia of rain have left his edges poorly-defined. Living so exposed to the elements, traditionally the Paddy had no need for precision time-keeping tools such as those fashioned by the valley-dwelling Swiss. So it was we looked with some dismay a few years back when under the guise of modernising reforms, Dublin’s O’Connell Street saw its fine London Plane trees removed.

The tree, of course, was not native to the island, having its roots in 17th century Spain. Yet after a 100 year residence, it’s fair to say the trees had become more Irish than the Irish themselves. So it was sad to see these sturdy friends of ours hacked down and replaced by puny, inescapably French specimens. The natives had been robust yet wavy, the geometry of their cylindrical trunks offset by a delightfully asymmetric dispersion of branches. They were well able to take a storm. The colonisers, on the other hand, were straight from the pristine Jardin de Luxembourg. They took the form of rectangles and looked shakier than a frigateful of General Hoche’s wastrels. Pegamequemegusta stared aghast at the manicured Parisian abominations, shorn like effete poodles. The Sons of Róisín had made a very poor investment indeed. The Paddies had bought into the idea that Nature not only had been overcome but was also ripe for humiliation. Pegamequemegusta saw it was time to leave. Continue reading →