I’m not proud of my expat misadventures around the globe, although I’ve got enough that you think I would be: I once convinced a Swiss couple to cancel their trip to Jamaica because they didn’t understand my sarcasm; upon meeting a past partner’s parents for the first time I assumed a false cognate was a true one and I told them I was aroused by their daughter; and I spent a good two months mistakenly thinking my German neighbors were calling me a piece of shit (they would in fact do that later, but that’s a story for a different day). It was my discovery that I was a ciotóg, however, that takes the cake for now.
I was supposed to meet my friends for an Anglo-Irish plane- and train-hopping tour, and since I was already living on the continent I arrived at spot number one before my friends did. And because my friends forgot about time zones they arrived a day late, giving me a full evening learning about the local culture of Dublin.
And this wound up being the perfect moment for taking it all in – our AirBnB was next to a pub, which was across the street from Páirc an Chrócaigh, the Croke Park stadium in which the local Gaelic football club was playing a championship game against Galway, And Dublin won that day, and the pub went from all but empty to standing room only just minutes after the final score was called.
I checked my watch, a cheap little analog wrapped just too tight around my right wrist – I didn’t know how long tonight’s festivities would go, but I was curious as to when they started. A big man in blue stumbled next to me and stared – he must have been drinking during the game because he only just got here – and he stared at me and I smiled and went back to my Smithwick’s (the “w” is silent like it’s the title of a Tarantino movie, a fact of which apparently everyone in the pub but me was aware) and he stared some more and I sat frozen not in fear but in the intense curiosity that’ll one day get me killed, and he pointed at me and gleefully shouted, “Ciotóg!”
And I would have run in that moment if he hadn’t been smiling, but smiling he was, a friendly toothless grin, and as I pondered the meaning of the word ciotóg he invited me to sit with his friends, a dozen or so men clad in blue shirts and scarves and holding drums and drinks, and we each took turns ordering rounds of The Black Stuff — it’s not a myth, Guinness really is better over there — and in between drinking songs which were all brutally anti-English in one way or another, we enjoyed a bit of craic (which is homophonous with the English word ‘crack’). Despite sounding exactly like the illicit substance, I was both relieved and disappointed that I would not be trying an infamous drug, but would in fact be enjoying pleasant conversational fun. It was the first of many words I’d learn in the local tongue that night.
Now, I don’t know if it was the drinks or my American ignorance or this is just how everyone is in Ireland, but these Dubliners in particular were pleased to enlighten me on words which made English so very Irish.
There were some I assumed, like “shamrock” (seamróg) and “whiskey” (usice beatha), but I didn’t want to insult my hosts by falling on stereotypes so fast. So I kept my mouth shut and absorbed the words they threw at me: from “bog” to “bother” to “hooligan” to “phony”.1 I was pleased to discover that the linguistic accident that is English would not exist in its current form without Irish. No mention of ciotóg, however. It makes sense, since it didn’t sound like any word I knew. Maybe it was a synonym of sláinte, that great cheers to health for which every great drinking culture has a word or phrase. But everyone said sláinte, and no one said ciotóg, that is apart from the drunk man who would mutter it to me and then laugh.
Then there was a moment where I thought sláinte was a lie, an arbitrary turn of phrase like when Americans say “How are you” and don’t have the intent intended to back up the words spoken automatically, and I nearly spat out my beer when I was told this Guinness was deadly – a writer may drink himself to death, but I wasn’t planning on that happening tonight – though it turns out they were just codding me, just pulling my leg, and I learned that “deadly” here is slang for “fantastic”.
I spent the whole evening in the pub watching people “acting the maggot” (fooling around) and getting further and further “fluthered” (drunk), but there was something I couldn’t shake. I enjoyed “earwigging” (eavesdropping) and picking up on gossip about the “floozies” and “fine things” and friends who hadn’t talked “for donkey’s years” (for a long time), but there was a question that needed asking. There was plenty of “effin’ and blindin’” (swearing), but of all the words I heard, I didn’t hear anyone else but me called a ciotóg.
It’s an odd feeling, being called something the meaning of which you have absolutely no idea. I’ve been called a great many things to my face and behind my back, not that anything had to be said behind my back since my trips to new lands far outpaced my input of new languages, and anything smattered with a smile I could respond to in kind and be none the wiser. Is that what happened here? Was I, clearly the only non-local in the pub, called a dirty word, an insult or an inside joke that only Dubliners can jape about?
Why, then, was I brought forth to join in a rendition of “Up the Dubs” rather than set aside like a circus freak who ran out of tricks to perform? From the songs to the banter to the distinctly Irish pub culture I had longed to experience just once, there was a beautiful moment of authenticity in Baile Áth Cliath (Irish for ‘Dublin’) that I wouldn’t get on any tour or in any must-see spot on a map, and neither cognates, context, nor colloquial conversation could suggest to me that the meaning of ciotóg was anything but positive.
I decided to test the theory – or perhaps the alcohol decided for me. I was surrounded by the same dozen or so individuals who had first welcomed me onto their bench however many hours and however many drinks ago, and I had exhausted my six stories and seven jokes but everyone was a trifle too nice and a trifle too drunk to care one way or the other, and displaying my morbid curiosity I jumped toe to top in the water by blubbering, “What an evening for ciotógs like us.”
For those of you expecting the music to scratch and everyone to turn and stare at me like a sheriff entering an old-timey saloon, I can assure you the evening took no such dramatic turn. I showed my lack of diplomatic tact by not only using a word the meaning of which I had no clue, but in fact including strangers into the mix, and in doing so, I assumed a level of recklessness equivalent to unprotected sex or fighting a bear. Yet, their only response was mutterings of confusion.
The drunken dozen looked at each other, then looked at me, and one by one like dominoes falling they tilted their heads to look at me askew – or maybe the night had gone on too long for them to sit up straight. But either way I feared I had made a mistake, had mistaken my friend in blue’s insult for amicability, and these men had in turn mistaken my amicability for an insult., and my body tensed ready to drunkenly dash and stumble away to escape the mob mad at me.
One of them broke the confused silence. “I’m not a ciotóg,” he stated. “Neither am I,” muttered another, followed by several more saying the same thing. “Are you a ciotóg?” one of them asked me.
At this point I knew the jig was up. At this point I knew I had to come clean. “To be honest,” I conceded, “I don’t even know what a ciotóg is.”
And at this point the band of brothers burst into laughter. One of the men fell over onto the floor – although as to the cause of this, who can say. “Are you left-handed?” one asked. I nodded. “Then you’re a ciotóg!”2 My face blushed a bright red in a sea of blue jerseys. Was that really it? Was I just called a lefty? All this worrying, this concern, this paranoia, and all over being a goofy-footed, right-brained, scrammy-handed southpaw? I craned my neck to find my friend in blue, who was now at another table and struggling to keep his head rested on his hand. I suppose he had seen my watch on my right and my beer in my left, and despite seeing double put two and two together correctly to call me a ciotóg.
It was a teachable moment, one in which craic really was just craic: I was in an Irish pub hearing Irish words enjoying Irish hospitality, and that was all. This was no place for an insult, it was a place for fun, pleasant conversation. My drunken buddy found it humorous, or intriguing, or just plain noteworthy to call me a ciotóg, and from ciotóg came craic, a part of a night I’m frankly surprised I remembered. But remember I did, and this enjoyable moment became a teachable one. Rather than letting my American anxiety and paranoia overpower me, I let linguistic luck illuminate my night, and in jumping from one drink and conversation to another I learned an important truth which I hope will stay with me: craic’s not whack.
1 It is not certain that all these terms came into English from Irish – they may have come from Scottish Gaelic.
2 Note that the term can be seen as pejorative.
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