The Unimportance of Being Mulligan

Irish literature and lore shows Mulligan little respect. The very opening sentence of James Joyce's acclaimed Ulysses introduces Buck Mulligan, a ribald braggart who, before many pages, is borrowing a quid to "get gloriously drunk so as to astonish the druidy druids," making an utter fool of himself in a "jester's dress of puce and yellow and a clown's cap" and identifying Shakespeare as "the chap that writes like Synge."

Prof. Kenner wrote in A Colder Eye, a scholarly work on Irish writers, that Mulligan "was a gilded turd of a name. If 'Buck' is an 18th century honorific, 'Mulligan' is slum-grubby, a low name indeed: Mulligan, a class of stew. To call your man 'Buck Mulligan' is to liken him to a tramp who affects calling cards."

The American Dictionary of Slang defines Mulligan as "a stew, originally made by tramps, composed of odds and ends of meat, vegetables, etc." As a usage reference, it cites Jack London describing "hundreds of hoboes with whom I cooked Mulligans."

In underworld parlance, the slang dictionary adds, Mulligan is a synonym for a copper, the police, and in Australia the name personifies a professional gambler.

The calumny on the proud name of Mulligan is even more shocking in The Informer, Liam O'Flaherty's powerful novel set in the declining days of the Irish Civil War.

Gypo Nolan, the lumbering giant, points a "thick, short, hairy fore finger" at the sickly tailor Peter Mulligan and cries out before an IRA court of inquiry, "It's him that informed on Frankie McPhillip an' he knows that I saw him."

The real informer, of course, was Gypo himself, as monumentally portrayed on film by Victor McLaglen in an Academy Award-winning performance. Yet "The Rat" remains the loyal and innocent Mulligan's nickname throughout both the novel and Dudley Digges' film script.

Film director John Ford compounded the fracture of a proud name by casting that super wimp Donald Meek as the tailor Mulligan.

Songwriter Percy French, who memorialized Ballyjamesduff, near where my forebears came from in County Cavan, seemed on the verge of giving the family name a bit of a boost in Phil the Fluter's Ball.

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Nster.com