Elegy written in a city churchyard

Francis Grose, whose 1785 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue we mentioned here last week, was born and raised in London. But like many Englishmen before and since, he ended up – in that term's fully permanent sense – on this side of the water, and it happened 222 years ago this week.

A military man who found his true vocation as an antiquarian, he had completed books on the ancient sites of England, Wales, and Scotland. Now it was Ireland’s turn. In which cause, he was staying at a house in Dublin’s Dorset Street when, on May 18th, 1791, he died suddenly from an “apoplectical stroke”. Or, as his gravestone in Drumcondra Churchyard puts it, more poetically, he “whilst in cheerful conversation with his friends, expired without a sigh.”

He was in good company then, it seems, and he remains so. Lacking a plot of his own here, he was given lodgings for eternity by James Gandon, the great architect, who was one of his friends. Thus Gandon and he now share billing on a tombstone at Drumcondra, the epitaph badly eroded but still just about readable.

The pair have interesting company in the churchyard's broader neighbourhood too. It includes Patrick Heeney, who wrote the forgotten half of the Irish national anthem – the words. Another resident is Seamus McGowan, a 1916 Citizen Army veteran, further immortalised as the inspiration for a character in The Shadow of a Gunman .

He was, apparently, O’Casey’s model for the pedlar who left explosives in the tenement before the police raid, and was then shot while “catching butterflies at Knocksedan”. The real-life McGowan had shared a room with O’Casey and was no stranger to bombs. But as his Starry-Plough-bedecked headstone records, he was somewhat luckier than the pedlar, dying peacefully in 1955.

Among the churchyard’s other curiosities is something called a “mortsafe”. It sounds like a 21st-century insurance product, and an insurance product it was, albeit against a risk no longer common, but rife in the late 18th century.

That was the era of premature resurrection, when few dearly departed could rest in peace, especially if there was a hospital with an anatomical research department nearby. So, as well as the spiked railings around a grave that the more affluent could afford, one family in Drumcondra took out a “mortsafe” policy: putting a roof on the structure and turning it into a cage.

It is to Grose, incidentally, that we owe an alternative explanation for the phrase: “that beats Banagher”.

In his version, the name is Banaghan, presumed to be a “minstrel” famous for tall stories. He may or may not have been right about that. But the Grose terms I mentioned last week were “Fawney Rig” and “Feague”. And as subsequent correspondence from readers confirms, the concepts – if not the words – remain familiar, 230 years on.

First “feague”, which as you may remember, was a verb referring to the placement of ginger “up a horse’s fundament”, to make it prance in a lively manner and impress observers. I guessed this practice might not have died out entirely. And sure enough, familiarity with the idea has since been related to me by people as far apart as Castleblayney and New York.

In the latter case, worryingly, it didn’t concern horses. Rather, a reader who grew up in Staten Island recalls it is a threat (idle, I hope) made by the family’s Irish housekeeper. Whenever children didn’t respond quickly to an order, she would always add: “. . .or I’ll put some ginger in your behind”.

As for the Fawney Rig trick, several sightings have confirmed my experience: that its modern headquarters is Paris, where it is known variously as " l'arnaque de la bague " or " l'arnaque à l'alliance ". In all cases, it still revolves around the "finding" of a ring, given to the target by the "finder", who then asks for money.

The ring looks gold, but is of course brass. Except, astonishingly, in the experience of a Blessington reader, who while visiting the Champs-Élysées some time ago fell for the ruse to the tune of €2.50. He brought the ring home and to a jewellers, “just in case I had been lucky”. Whereupon, to their mutual astonishment, it was valued at €1,150.

Presumably it had been lost or stolen and, with ironic justice, was thought worthless by the con man. Either that, or a fraud of etymologically Irish origin is now so large scale and organised that the perpetrators can afford to place the odd genuine ring among the fakes, like a prize in a barmbrack, to encourage business.

fmcnally@irishtimes.com