The following recitation was popular in the 1950s. It was one of the many recitations performed by Tadhg Hugh Twomey, Aharas, Ballingeary. The Cumann Staire would be interested in printing other recitations.
You know, my dear friends, that LOVE is a most peculiar sort of a thing.
May God help us it makes some poor devils do queer things. I knew a fellow and before he fell in love he could do nothing, but since then he could coax any man’s daughter over a ditch of furze.
I spoke about love the other day to a lazy class of a fellow who badly wanted something to shake him up a bit. Tell me, said I, did you ever fall in love?
"Oh! No" said he, "but I once fell into a boghole". "Ah", said I, falling into love and falling into a boghole aren’t a bit in the world alike, said I.
"And what is like?", said he.
"Love," said I, "isn’t like anything, it is a sort of something more like nothing. You can’t touch it, hear it, or see it and yet again you are positively sure that you have got it and that you have fallen into it - and still you can’t tell where it is. "How in the name of God" said he, "could you fall into love if it is a thing you can’t see"?
Said I. "It is the thing you can’t see you are always bound to fall into – just the same as you fell into the boghole.
"Oh then", said he, "if I was as wet and as libernach and as cold coming out of love as I was coming out of the boghole, I wouldn’t ask to fall into it for one".
Now, my friends, I know you will agree with me that talking about love to that class of an AMADÁN is only a waste of time – pure waste of time – because why? – He has got no imagination, and imagination is chiefly what love is made from. Let me give you a simple example. Supposing you looked at a good looking girl there and if you caught the girl looking at you – well then wouldn’t you be expecting that she was expecting what yourself was expecting?
Love makes a poor devil get up early, stay up all hours of the night, it lowers his pocket money but it rises his EXPECTATIONS. And above all, and this is what you would be most surprised about – it gives a man an insane desire to support another man’s daughter.
The old people used to tell me that Love has nothing at all to do with Marriage, but my opinion is different:
For when you go courting a young and dainty lass,
Don’t be too shy or ready to faint for her
Ah! little she’ll care about your pluckless philandering
Soon my poor boy she would send you a rambling.
Just let her see that your love you would like to grant
and politely explain to her that yourself is the boy she wants’
Tip her a wink, get hold of the fist of her
and kiss her before she’ll have time to say, "Stop it, Sir".
Give her another and then half score of them
Bye and bye you will see she’ll be looking for more of them
Talk to her, laugh to her, be saucy and stylish, Sir,
That is the way to make love like an Irishman.
Sing to her, smile to her, sit down near the side of her,
And I will go bail that you’ll soon make your bride of her.
The End.