Paddy Baloney

 This was my first poem, written at the age of 7. I shared a desk in school with Paddy Monahan, a jovial friend. Paddy invented a war game on paper, that might have been successful as the theme of a computer game, but could not work on paper. The two contenders were given an equal number of soldiers, drawn by dots on paper, and then were to make battle by moving their forces into combat. Paddy, however, allowed his opponent only to march down the middle, whereas he was allowed to outflank you, and so win the game. I could not win, so I thought of a different way of getting my own back: I would describe the ridiculous game in a poem. I completed the poem over a weekend and presented the result to Paddy on Monday morning. I thought he would be amused, but he said, "That's Rubbish!" and, in disappointment, I threw the page into the Bruscar (rubbish bin). Why should I have been surprised that Paddy would be offended by being called "Paddy Baloney?" It was the culture of the time to slag one another, and this poem was but a friendly slag.

I’ll tell you a story
About Paddy Baloney,
Who sits beside me in school.

 He’s very barmy;
He’s got an army
Drawn on paper with pencil and rule.

 If you sit down beside him,
You’ll have to fight him,
With your own pencilled army, of course.

 The game is a fiddle:
You must march down the middle,
So Paddy can outflank your force.

 If you protest,
(I do not jest),
Paddy will insist it’s the rule.

 Whatever the weather,
Paddy’s the winner,
And his foe is always the fool.

Well, I was easily persuaded that the poem was, indeed, rubbish, for a number of reasons:

1. It seemed presumptuous to think that I could write a real poem.
2. The plagiarism of the opening lines, borrowed from a rhyme oft quoted by my father:
   "Will I tell you a story?
   About Johnny Magory?
   Will I begin it?
   That's all that's in it!"
3. The use of the word "rule" in the second verse. Paddy did not use a ruler in setting up his game. The word was dragged in just to make the rhyme. As well as that, we in Phibsborough did not use "Rule," but "Ruler." "Rule" was a country version used by my father, (c.f. in the song "Colcannon," "My book, my slate and rule"), and sounded odd in the local vernacular.
4. I thought my description of the game was inadequate to give an independent reader any idea of the game.
5. "Jest" was not a word used in the local vocabulary, and was found only in books. The local word was "joke," which, of course, would not rhyme here.
6. "Whatever the weather," was another plagiarism, and did not exactly fit the desired meaning, which was "whatever the circumstances." Also, it did not rhyme properly with "winner."

With all of these defects, I was not terribly confident of my creation, and needed somebody's encouragement. I did not get it from Paddy and saw no possibility of anybody else being interested. Into the rubbish bin it went.