Some New Zealand 'Bulls'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 38, 17 September 1903, Page 2

Some New Zealand 'Bulls'

• Bulls '—by which we mean, not the quadrupeds, but the mental no-thoroughfares, of that name— are not by any means all raised in Ireland. In his ' Irish History and Irish Character ' Goldwin Smith says : ' The source of Irish bulls is a national quickness of wit, which, when uncontrolled by judgment and education, tumbles in its haste into laughable blunders. Such a " bull " as •' The Minister had a majority m everything but numbers," is merely a h\ely idea expressed without reflection.' In his ' Irish Life and Character,' MacDonagh gives expression to a similar idea. ' A " bull," ' says he, 'is not evidence of stupidity ; quite the contrary. Mental confusion is, of course, in every case the source of its origin, but that mental confusion often arises from rapidity of thought—from a plethora of ideas which, in the course of expression, get mixed up and confused in an odd and ludicrous fashion, like objects in a dissolving view. " Bulls," to put it briefly, more often spring from mental quickness than from mental sluggishness ' A ' bull ' is no blunder, according to MacDonagh ; it is a gift. Sydney Smith's long and labored definition of a 1 bull ' may be very well in its way but it is scarcely as illuminating as that of the Irish peasant • 'If you was dhrivin' along the road and you seen three cows lyin' down in a field, an' one of 'em is stan'in' up—that one is an Irish " bull " ' When the Yorkshire and Lancashire Agricultural Society ordered some copies of Miss Edgeworth's ' Essay on Irish " Bulls " ' for the use of members, they were indignant at finding that the book treated of a form of mental confusion and not of sturdy quadrupeds from the rich pastures of Kildare, Meath, or the Golden Vale

But we have said that all the ' bulls ' are by no means raised on lush pastures. Practically e\ery country furnishes its fair quota of this delightful confusion of thought to add to the gaiety of the nations New Zealand political life has produced a goodly collection of this form of unconyi'ious drollery. On Saturday week, for instance, the spokesman of the Taranaki deputation to Ministers worked off trie following exquisite specimen : ' While coming to attend this deputation in the coach with three horses we got stuck firmly in the mud, and had to walk back one mile and a half to get sho\els to dig oursehes out ' ' Some time ago, the Chairman of the Wellington Conciliation Board, in addressing the parties to the tailoring dispute, declaied that they were ' flinging formidable-looking logs at each others' heads and asking thorn at the point oi Ihe bayonet to swallow these things ' '

During the past. lew years members of the New Zealand House of Representatives ha\e collect i\ely perpetrated nearly as many ' bulls ' as did Sir Boyle Roche in his palmiest days in the Irish House of Commons 'Never ! ' exclaimed an indignant legislator some time ago, ' never ' as long as I have a seat on the floor of this House ' ' On another occasion an Opposition member was nb-roasting one of the occupants of the Treasury benches and described him as ' a cock-robin ciowing on his own dunghill ' During the same sitting a Ministerialist member summed up the individi'ahsm and keen competition of our day by declaring that ' e\ery man had to paddle his own canoe, and if he didn't he

would be kicked to one side and walked over. 1 • L am glad,' said Mr. Hogg in the House two years ago, •to see that there are no absentees present.' This was, on the self-same day, equalled by Mr. Haselden. In the course of his maiden speech on the Compulsory Taking of Land Bill, he spoke of a woman who was the first 'man ' to carry a gun into the wifd and woolly back-blocks in order to prevent her land from being taken away. And —not to mention other ' bulls ' galore — did not Mr. Buchanan refer to Mr. O'Meara as, in his haste to speak, ' straining like a greyhound at the leash trying to get in his oar ' ? It is comforting to reflect that such unconscious expressions of incongruous ideas are due rather to mental quickness than to mental lethargy. But the Green Isle cleariy enjoys no monopoly of the business of raising ' bulls,' although there seems to be a freshness and llavor about the Irish article which is all its very own.