“In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.” Mark Twain
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if cursing was an Olympic sport the Irish would be champions, just pipping the Aussies at the post.
Cursing is totally acceptable here. We curse all the feckin time! We don't mean any offence by it and we certainly don't take offence when someone in our company lets fly either. Curse words are just part of the vocabulary. A way to give some oomph to what we’re saying, as punctuation or a filler word.
But while casual swearing is commonplace, it is rarely associated with anger or aggression, nor is it a reflection of poor education or values. My father was a learned man and his speech was ofttimes liberally strewn with profanities. "Jesus Christ in a wheelbarrow, Divine Acrobatic Jesus" he would exclaim when one of us had done something incomprehensibly stupid. I never knew either of my parents to admonish us for bad language.
Of course, people everywhere curse a lot but the Irish do it with a fluency, ease and creativity that would leave others around the world in the dust.
While we do have a very relaxed attitude towards cursing, with only a few words being frowned upon for use in public, there is a certain etiquette to it; never when talking to children or your grandmother, when doing business, at marriages & christenings or when dealing with people in authority (apart from traffic wardens obviously).
I knew a guy once who was being hassled a lot by the police. He got a jacket emblazoned with the words ‘fuck you you fucking fuck’ and would turn his back to the officers when they came calling.
And why do we curse so much? Well, we Irish always follow the science. In tests in which subjects plunged their hands into freezing water, swearing significantly raised their pain tolerance and, it can also improve muscular strength compared with using neutral words. People gripping a hand vice were able to squeeze harder and longer if they encouraged themselves with swear words.
Do I do my share of effin' and blindin'? Well does the pope wear white socks? Or as we say in Dublin absofuckinlutely!
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