Everybody Has Some Idea What's Going On

Today I loaned a book about tapestries to a library patron. We had this brief exchange:

Him: My wife is going to see the Bayeux Tapestry so she wants to know a bit more about it.

Me: Oh, is it here?

Him: No, it's on loan to London.

Or words to that effect.

I've been mulling on the exchange since. Think of the assumed shared knowledge it reflects:

1) He assumed I'd heard of the Bayeux Tapestry. (Correct.)

2) He possibly assumed I'd heard that the Bayeux Tapestry was on exhibition in London. (I had actually heard this, but I'd forgotten the details.)

3) I assumed that, when I said "Oh, is it here?", he'd know I didn't mean that it was always here-- in Ireland, or in Dublin.

Everybody has some idea what's going on. The truth of this often strikes me and surprises me.

I mean, there's so much to know. Think of everything that happens in the world in a minute, in an hour, in a day, in a week...all those events piling up, and all the ages of history coming before them. And yet we can have a working assumption that people know what we're talking about when we talk about almost anything.

The Bayeux Tapestry is interesting in this regard. What other tapestry do you know about? I remember, when I was learning about it in school, thinking: "Why are we learning about a tapestry? This is history class." Probably the teacher did explain its importance as a historical source but I just wasn't listening.

Or maybe I'm being too harsh on myself. Maybe I did understand it's importance as a historical source but wondered why we were being taught about the thing itself in such detail.

The depiction of Halley's Comet on the Tapestry has always interested me as well. It seems so unusual and exceptional.

I can remember, in 1986 (when I was nine years old) being confused as to why people were getting so excited about the comet. Weren't there lots of comets? Now I'm very pleased that a pub in Dublin is named the Comet because it was built that year. (Or so I've heard.)

From the Wikipedia Page on Pope Nicholas the Great

In 866, the Bulgar Khan St Boris the Baptiser wrote to Pope Nicholas asking a wide range of questions, one of which being whether or not it was sinful for Christians to wear pants. In response, Nicholas wrote, "For whether you or your women wear or do not wear pants neither impedes your salvation nor leads to any increase of your virtue." The Pope then proceeded with a discussion on the virtue of wearing the "spiritual pants" of a temperate life while restraining disordered passions.

Personally I think I would support the abolition of trousers for both sexes. Women could wear skirts and dresses and men could wear kilts, or maybe robes. I'd love to go about in a robe.

Ivy Day 2026

Yesterday was the one-hundredth and thirty-fifth Ivy Day commemoration in Glasnevin cemetery. I was present, which made it my fourth Ivy Day commemoration.

The ceremony is held to remember Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish political leader who died in 1891.

I'm not particularly a devotee of Parnell. I'm a devotee of traditions. Ivy Day is the sort of low-key, long-lived tradition I find especially appealing. (It's never been interrupted, even during the Covid lockdowns.)

It's very simple. A small group gathers around the tomb, led by a piper who plays a few tunes. There's an introduction from the President of the Parnell Society, and then a dignitary of some kind lays a wreath on the grave. After that, the dignitary makes a short speech, the piper plays the National Anthem (one of the few occasions when I ever hear it played), and everybody troops out. It lasts less than an hour and I don't think I've ever seen more than fifty people present.

I was amazed when someone recently mentioned Ivy Day in a comment on this blog, apparently independent of my mentions of it in the past. Nobody knows about it. I was only alerted to it by the fact that it features in a James Joyce story, "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." (As you can imagine, it was a much bigger deal in the decade after Parnell's death. But even in the story, set in 1902, it's a fading tradition. The story reflects Joyce's usual cynicism towards any ideal other than the celebration of his own supposed genius.)

Yesterday, the dignitary was the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Claire Hanna. The speech was the usual boilerplate about pluralism and change, although there were some references to recent events in the North.

Ivy Day itself is tomorrow, being the anniversary of Parnell's death. The commemoration is held on the Sunday nearest to the anniversary.

Every year, on the day before the commemoration, there's a Parnell Symposium in his country house of Avondale. I've been working up the courage to go for the last few years. The speeches are fine but the inevitable tea-breaks are daunting. I might go next year...

My Idea for a New Word

For my entire life, I've had the ambition of inventing a new word and getting it into general usage.

Today, I found myself thinking about a particular class of words: drink (as in alcohol), sale (as in special promotion), product (as in hair gel), view (as in picturesque vista).

All these words are special (but common) senses of a more generic use of the word. Everybody knows what someone means when they say: "I don't drink". 

My suggestion for a rhetorical term to cover this is: "extrageneric". ("Extra" used in the sense of "extragalactic" or "extra-sensory.")

Update: Sadly, and quite surprisingly, there's already a word for this. It's actually autohyponym. Those linguists, you wouldn't be up to them.