The thingy that divides us from the English is just a bloomin . . . yoke!
THE word that divides the English from the Irish is not Boyne, royal or partition. It is yoke.
Say "yoke" to an English person and they will immediately think you are referring to either the yellow bit at the centre of an egg (yolk) or to a contraption placed on the shoulders of a beast of burden.
The 'Oxford English Dictionary' has even noticed our unique use of the word yoke, noting that we use it . . . for any device or unusual object or gadget, as in "where is the yoke for opening tins?"
And the OED doesn't know the half of it.
The nearest English equivalent is the deeply unsatisfactory, Scandinavian-sounding "thingy". This can only refer to an inanimate object and has none of the glorious flexibility of the melifluous and all-embracing yoke.
For yoke goes far beyond inanimates. Yes, the nameless bits of machinery, the tools we do not know or cannot recall the names of are all yokes.
But so too are classes of people. "That poor oul yoke" engenders instant sympathy for somebody doddery and harmless.
But the memory of my mother hissing a warning that my sisters should "stay away from that dirty yoke" in reference to our leering neighbour Jimmy fizzed with menace.
The memory of my uncle hiding in an outhouse to dodge a neighbour who wanted to borrow his beloved fishing rod asking: "Is that fecking yoke gone home yet?" left me in no doubt as to the would-be borrower's status.
Yoke is a word we mould at our will with tone and context.
IT is also a word that, when mastered, offers an insight to the Irish soul. I recently had a plumbing job done by an earnest young Hungarian who has settled well among the many sheep and warm culchies of Carnew in County Wicklow.
Explaining in detail what the job entailed, he finished off by revealing that the final connection would be made when he "stuck the plastic pipe into the brass yoke".
He'll go far here that lad.
ALBERT SMITH
