€ulogy for the old currency

One of the lingering regrets as our independent currency passes into history must be that we as a people will never now resolve…

One of the lingering regrets as our independent currency passes into history must be that we as a people will never now resolve the "issues" we clearly had about the representation of women on our banknotes, writes Frank McNally

THE LAST STRAW:  For many years, the notes featured only Lady Lavery, leaning beautifully on a harp. An impossible ideal of Irish female beauty, if only because she was American, and harps are very awkward for the average woman to be dragging around. But then we went from one extreme to the other.

In the 1970s, presumably under the influence of the feminist movement, Lady L was deposed on the £1 note by the mythical warrior-queen Medb (a woman still remembered in my part of Ulster as a cattle thief). And then finally, amid the rampant materialism of the 1990s, Queen Medb was herself substituted, by a nun. Psychology students could write papers about this.

One can only guess what kind of woman would have been chosen in the next redesign. Perhaps we'd have opted for a combination of the three former incumbents: someone who was beautiful, combative, and also had a religious vocation (step forward Sinead O'Connor). We'll never know now.

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Another thing I regret about the coming of the euro is the potential loss of the arrangement whereby the old money lent itself (permanently and at low rates of interest) to the English language. In truth, it's the old "old" money I'm thinking about here.

But, for example, such is its power that, even after 30 years of decimalisation, we still use the phrase "not the full shilling" as a euphemism for somebody we consider to be sanity-deficient.

Many people will remember handling the new five-pence piece for the first time in 1971 and thinking it wasn't the full shilling either. Yet the phrase lived on, as did others. The "queen's shilling," and specifically the taking thereof, is another example.

And if I also mention the scout movement's "bob-a-job week" - sadly overtaken by inflation - you get some sense of the weight of tradition carried on the narrow shoulders of the 5p coin since 1971. Now even that link, inadequate as it was, is gone.

Some phrases predated even the old "old money". The word "quid," which remains in circulation until February 9th, was once the slang term for a sovereign. Its origin as such is obscure, but as you know (if, like me, you're looking up Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable), it occurs in Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia (1688). So, despite three centuries of inflation, the term is still in use: that's what you call stable currency.

OF COURSE, the point is that the old "old money" had centuries to establish itself. Which is why even a forgotten coin like the farthing has taken its place in our culture (e.g. "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done" - Dickens), alongside penny candles, tuppenny damns, Elsie Tanners, etc. Maybe, decades from now, the euro will have made similar gains against the dollar, as it were.

The new currency certainly seems popular so far. Nowhere more than in media organisations, where it gave us something to write about at the quietest time of the year. The bleak midwinter can be especially bleak in a newspaper, when even the winter solstice at Newgrange (always good for half a page) is behind us, and there's still no sign of a stretch in the evening news conference. Normally in early January, we have to depend on such hardy annuals as the birth of the year's first babies, Liam Lawlor going to jail, and so on. But in 2002 we had the birth of a currency, plus the year's first bank robberies, so it was a bonanza.

I know some will see the euro, with its lack of personality and its deliberately vague architectural imagery, as marking the end of an independent Irish identity. Personally, I think we crossed that nondescript bridge back in the 1970s, with the conversion of restaurant menus to French (under the terms of the Treaty of Dijon). For a while, they still had side-by-side English translations. But soon we were asking for boeuf bourguignon instead of stew without even thinking, and we were never the same afterwards.

On the other hand, I would point out again that the conversion of road distance signs to kilometres, for example, has not noticeably impinged on the Irish psyche. Admittedly, this has been helped by the retention of mileage values on speed-limit signs, and the wise decision of the authorities to have a lengthy dual-circulation period. All of us who treasure our unique Irish heritage will hope that when we eventually adopt the European standard of driving on the right, implementation will be similarly gradual.

fmcnally@irish-times.ie