A well known poem my Flann O Brian who was born
in the Bowling Green in Strabane, Co. Tyrone.
The Workman’s Friend”
| When things go wrong and will not come right, Though you do the best you can, When life looks black as the hour of night – A pint of plain is your only man. When money’s tight and hard to get And your horse has also ran, When all you have is a heap of debt – A pint of plain is your only man. When health is bad and your heart feels strange, And your face is pale and wan, When doctors say you need a change, A pint of plain is your only man.
When food is scarce and your larder bare And no rashers grease your pan, When hunger grows as your meals are rare – A pint of plain is your only man. In time of trouble and lousey strife, You have still got a darlint plan You still can turn to a brighter life – A pint of plain is your only man. — Flann O’Brien (Brian O’Nolan) Brian O’Nolan, more often recognized by his penname Flann O’Brien, was a major figurehead of Irish literature as a novelist, playwright and satirist, widely followed for his bizarre, dark humour and modernist/postmodern metafiction. Here are some of his witty quotations 1. “Is it life? I would rather be without it. For there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe.” 2. “The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at crossroads.” 3. “A wise old owl once lived in a wood, the more he heard the less he said, the less he said the more he heard, let’s emulate that wise old bird.” -From his novel, At Swim Two Birds 4. “When I want to read anything, however, I usually write it meself.” 5. “Remember that I too was Irish. Today I am cured. I am no longer Irish. I am merely a person. I cured myself after many years of suffering.” 6. “Having considered the matter in, of course, all its aspects, I have decided that there is no excuse for poetry.” 7. “It only occurred to me the other day that I will have biographers… All sorts of English persons writing books “interpreting” me.” 8. “I am completely half afraid to think.” -From his novel, The Third Policeman 9. “It cannot too often be pointed out that women are people.” 10. “In Boston he met a pretty lady, fat and forty, but beautiful with the bloom of cash and collateral.”
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Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 