HOW DID the innocent body part that connects the head and shoulders ever get such a bad name in this country, asks Frank McNally
We know, for example, that to have a neck deemed of less than normal softness is a serious misdemeanour in Ireland. A "hard" one implies you have no shame; a "brass" one suggests you'd sell your grandmother; and to have one deemed of similar durability to a jockey's undercarriage puts you beyond the pale of polite society.
Size seems to be a problem too. Any deviation from average length or width, especially on the larger side, will not go unremarked. "He has some neck on him, that fella," people will say.
To suffer from that well-known anatomical disorder, "a right neck", is perhaps even worse, implying that you may once have had a left one too - and a head to match - before it was surgically removed.
In his great dictionary of slang, Eric Partridge traced the origins of "hard neck" - meaning "extreme impudence" - to about 1870, and attributed it to two groups of people: "Anglo-Irish" and "tailors". Neither supplied him with an example of its use. Instead he cited a Hiberno-Irish house painter - Brendan Behan - whose Borstal Boy includes the phrase: "You had the hard neck to pass the time of day with him."
But merely to possess a neck at all in Ireland - a crime of which every human is guilty (barring a few body-builders who've spent too long in the gym) - can be frowned upon. It is always a statement of the obvious; and yet to be told you "have a neck" is somehow never meant as a compliment.
WHAT got me thinking about this subject was the grim news that items for sale at an auction in England next week will include the century-old notebook of Henry Pierrepoint, founder of a dynasty of hangmen.
Pierrepoint's career in the gruesome trade was relatively short. After canvassing for the job in a series of letters to the British home secretary, he dispatched 105 of his majesty's prisoners between 1901 and 1910, before being sacked for drunkenness at the age of 32.
In time, his stats would be beaten both by his brother Tom, whom he introduced to the job, and by his (Henry's) more prolific son Albert, who hanged more than 600 men and women in a career that spanned several European countries, including this one.
Like his better-known offspring, Henry Pierrepoint kept a record of executions, noting the names and ages of those hanged, as well as the vital statistics that were more immediately relevant to his grisly task.
His pocketbook had columns for each victim's height and weight, and - a consequence of those factors - for the drop necessary to do the job quickly but without decapitating anyone. The unusual thing about his log is that it also includes remarks about the prisoner's neck, described in each case as "long", "muscular", "feeble", and so on.
This was an important part of the calculation, obviously. But Pierrepoint Jnr must have considered such details indelicate. At any rate, he did not include them in his notebooks.
One of Henry Pierrepoint's last jobs, incidentally, was in Dublin: at Kilmainham Jail in January 1910. On that occasion, he hanged one Joseph Heffernan, aged 27, who in a drunken rage a few months earlier had cut the throat of his unfortunate girlfriend, Mary Walker, in Mullingar. He subsequently pleaded insanity.
Pierrepoint's notebook records that Heffernan was just under 5ft 5ins at the time of his death, weighed 140 lbs, and had a "strong neck". The drop required was 7ft 1in, which seems to have been about average.
A CENTURY before Joseph Heffernan, a man known only to us as "Larry" was hanged, also at Kilmainham. Or so we are led to believe by a famous song: The Night Before Larry Was Stretched.
Written circa 1816 in the slang of the day, it describes the eponymous anti-hero's last hours as he is wakened in advance in his cell. It was the custom then for a condemned man on the eve of execution to have the company not just of his friends but also of his coffin - the better to encourage prayer and reflection.
But Larry and his ne'er-do-well pals spend the evening drinking and playing cards, using the coffin as a table. And the nearest thing the prisoner has to an epiphany is when he discovers somebody cheating and loses his temper.
Although his crime is never specified, the anti-clerical Larry is not for repentance: "Then in came the priest with his book/ He spoke him so smooth and so civil;/ Larry tipp'd him a Kilmainham look/ And pitch'd his big wig to the devil."
And although the desperado's confidence falters occasionally, the author takes his cue from him with a bleakly cheerful account of the execution: "When he came to the nubbing-cheat [ie. gallows]/ He was tack'd up so neat and so pretty;/ The rambler [cart] jugg'd off from his feet,/ And he died with his face to the city."
Maybe it was events like this that gave us the terms mentioned earlier. Whoever Larry was, he clearly had a hard neck - at least in the sense that Behan, Partridge, and the Anglo-Irish tailors meant it. His hangman's opinion on the matter is unknown.