The Man Who Swallowed A Dictionary

Anthony McIntyre ☠ When offered the opportunity to travel to Dublin to see this play I jumped at it.

It was in Dublin that I first met Beano Niblock, one of the creators of The Man Who Swallowed A Dictionary. While we had been in touch regularly, with many of his writings appearing on The Pensive Quill, it was when he delivered a talk in Liberty Hall that I got to press the flesh for the first time. We ended up in a bar close to Connolly Station for a few pints before he made the journey back to Belfast.

My wife booked us into a hotel for the night so that we could turn our latest visit to the capital into a two day trip. That is the type of thing we do annually in the days running up to Xmas, but a special play merited a special occasion. After drinks in the Bank Bar in Dame Street, we checked into the Mercantile just up the footpath. It was quality from the get go. While we always loved Morrisons for our Dublin sojourns, the Mercantile is the go-to place from here on in.

The play was staged in the Smock Alley Theatre on Dublin's southside, right in front of the Liffey. Just as we arrived at the front door Beano's partner, Jackie Drummond, recognised me and came over to greet myself and my wife and thank us for coming. We owed her even more gratitude for having secured the invitation.

I had never been to the theatre before. A former church building, it was quite an impressive layout on the inside, ready-made for staging plays. In the middle of the floor was a huge dictionary serving as the stage. It was a great prop, capturing the ambience of the evening perfectly.

David Ervine was a very articulate working class loyalist politician who commanded an expansive vocabulary which he was unafraid of using. He wasn't ribbed Dictionary Dave for no reason. Dealing in abstract concepts was not his thing, but he did have a love of words. For anybody not understanding his words it was a simple matter of looking at the dictionary. Once the word was understood the concept he sought to convey was easily grasped.

Ervine, brilliantly acted by Paul Garret, came over as a passionate character determined to fight his corner while studiously avoiding intruding into the corner of his opponent. A man more inclined to employ ring craft rather than punching power as he navigated his way around the political boxing ring that was the political arena in the North, he brought to loyalism a level of articulateness expressed only by a few others, of whom men like Davy Adams and Billy Hutchinson stand out. The natural intelligence possessed by these activists was complemented by Beano Niblock in the literary world. All four in their own way were men who sought to reflect on the world of loyalism unlike say Jamie Bryson who, despite a sharp intellect of his own, only ever seeks to reflect it. In that sense they rather than he always brought more to the world of loyalism, managing to bring more out of it than what is on display today with hate marches and burning migrants out of their homes. Collectively they acted as a foil against a deeper entrenchment of the laager mindset which is ultimately polarising and marginalising.

Unfortunately, Beano died a few months ago, depriving the audience of his presence. His fellow writer Martin Lynch was in Dublin for the occasion so it was pleasing to catch up with him. The last play I travelled to in Belfast was one written by him, Chronicles Of Long Kesh. a place where Beano and I spent many years together but always apart.

The Man Who Swallowed A Dictionary took the audience through the life of David Ervine who grew up on the streets of East Belfast, followed Glentoran, married, had children, joined the UVF, went to jail, came out, became a milkman, had grandchildren, and without ever abandoning the loyalist cause he fervently believed in managed to take it on a journey away from political violence. While never conciliatory towards the concept of a united Ireland, he sought to build loyalist opposition on a foundation more redeeming than hatred.

I left the theatre, looking forward to Mercantile cocktails, dazed by the sorrowful, grief stricken way in which the play concluded, my dominant emotion, empathy. As we made our way through the cobblestone streets that still feature in parts of Dublin, I reflected on an audience, which included myself, that applauded the life of a man who was a member of an organisation which, in May 1974, visited a massacre on the streets of the same city, just across the river. It left me feeling that therein lay the real achievement of the work of Beano Niblock. He never filled his pen with an arrogant presumption that he could whisk people into a make-believe world where they would forgive or forget. His goal was a better understanding. The applause suggested that he succeeded.

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