- This topic has 45 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 11 months ago by
.
- Posts
Wonderful stuff. Its meaning escapes me, but it has a haunting, epic ring about it.
I’m a goin’ to google the poem now.
I read a few months ago a remark by G K Chesterton to the effect that slang is poetry, and it happens I’ve long admired the incredible metaphors in slang, at least of Anglo-Saxon provenance, e.g.
‘Why, she beat him like a red-headed stepchild!’ You could just imagine an old gossip in the Southern States drawing that, couldn’t you?
And I was reminded of this one, another American one, today:
‘Kicking butt and taking names.’
Just read Under Mount Benbulben, Drone. Wonderful stuff! A ‘momentous ring’ to it; that’s the word I was searching for.
‘Horseman, pass by!’
yay or nay?
lay or play?Was that couplet of your devising? It has a certain magisterial ring to it, anyway – like, ‘Horseman, pass by!’ But with overtones of ‘no nonsense’.
As regards this ‘punting superhero’ question, I’m afraid mine was really, I suppose an anti-hero, in that he hauled an injured jockey off an ambulance at a track, because he hadn’t, as yet, weighed in! Understandably enough, it’s not obligatory in such circs. Dodger Macartney.
But my wife always said I had a dark sense of humour. Well, she put it a bit worse than that!
Wonderful stuff. Its meaning escapes me, but it has a haunting, epic ring about it.
yay or nay?
lay or play?Was that couplet of your devising?!
The meaning intended in those last lines from the poem…
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!…have exercised – and perhaps exorcised – the minds of many plagued by existential deliberation. My over-simplistic interpretation is ‘don’t ask me what it’s all about, get on with life, don’t fret about death’
Yeats is buried near Sligo and the words are carved on his headstone, which may help explain the ‘horseman pass by’ bit, or perhaps he was referring to the horsemen of the apocalypse..
…hence the addition of my yay nay lay play riddle to the enigma
Nice town Sligo with a rather splendid statue of Yeats swirling his cape. Shame the races weren’t on during my visit. Bad planning that
Even Dodger had to walk-that-feared-walk occasionally: window cleaning if memory serves
Aye, horsemen for companions,
Before the merchant and the clerk
Breathed on the world with timid breath…It saddens me how badly the word horsemen has been debased in recent times. The currency has been clipped to the extent that no Noble metal remains.
The rot started with the Sleepy Hollow alumni hijacking the word for their attempted muscling in on the media world.
The word has now been annexed by a bunch of clowns, dressed from a pathe news reel, that could start a fight in an empty room, holding out a begging bowl to that anyone fancying a proper fire up on the next race.
Potts and Nevison are proper horsemen not only as Yeats would understand them, but in the finest traditions of the word. Disenfranchised by the ‘stakeholder’ interlopers, their time, and horse racing’s time, will come again.
Sing on: somewhere at some new moon,
We’ll learn that sleeping is not death,
Hearing the whole earth change its tune,
Its flesh being wild, and it again
Crying aloud as the racecourse is,
And we find hearteners among men
That ride upon horses.Noticed a feature on RUK yesterday entitled
Betting Lab
.
I imagined this would be some documentary on Potts’ swashbuckling exploits at Bath in the spring of 1997.
Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a debate on the Naylorisation of the betting markets!
Glen …its a load of tosh ….Professor Willoughby is the judge and jury of all contestants….combatants ….and blokes who think they have it cracked
Talk about up your own backside
The sooner RUK realise that this bloke stands for drivel ..the sooner I would reconsider paying a sub …as it is I don’t think its worth it
For the record I reckon Potts has forgotten more about punting than any of them combined ….
imo and all the usual disclaimers ….
Was Willoughby going on about betting markets again, with no data to back it up, as usual.
Drone described him as an amateur mathematician.
Kudos, Drone.
Noticed a feature on RUK yesterday entitled
Betting Lab
.
I imagined this would be some documentary on Potts’ swashbuckling exploits at Bath in the spring of 1997.
Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a debate on the Naylorisation of the betting markets!
I thought it was to be a canine version of Paul the octopus
There’s a repeat of the betting lab on RUK now.
Funnily enough despite being naive about betting markets Willo talked more sense than most of the others and made a good point about Alan Potts books.
Richard Thomas, so called betting guru immediately lost credibility by stating "punters have never had it so good" which Willo quickly picked him up on.
But Willo himself quickly lost some credibility by giving some credit to absolute drivel from a young tipping line chap called Spence.
Richard Thomas, so called betting guru immediately lost credibility by stating "punters have never had it so good" which Willo quickly picked him up on.
I think the problem here is referring to punters as a single homogenous block. If you are a modest-stakes punter, either in singles or multi’s, often betting on marquee meetings, there is absolutely no question that with wafer-thin margins, special offers and BOG, you
have
never had it so good.
If you want to back to larger stakes at advertised prices you probably haven’t.
Mike
Batman always had a shark repellent bat spray on hand to deal with the common problem of a rubber shark chasing him up a rope ladder.
As a betting man, I’d have taken London to a brick that Potts had an invasive pestering by an over-zealous nanny state repellent Potts spray in his utility belt.
Apparently not. Our hero departs the scene being hectored about the affordability of his betting activities by someone demanding ‘paper’s please.’
What a way to go.
Four decades of betting superherodom ended by the faddists.
I’m still reeling from this news.
Not with a bang but a whimper. The last of the gambling superheroes of the 90s has time called on his escapades.
No Timeform ratings to go on but Amazon ranks them thus (hard copies as digital can be taken away any time and probably will be in the current environment):
Potts (The Inside Track) Priceless
Mordin (Mordin on Time) £64.49
Mordin (Betting for a Living) £31.45
Beyer (Picking Winners) £23.92
Potts (Against the Crowd) £12.75
Veitch (Enemy Number One) £2.84
Nevison (No Easy Money) 84p
Nevison (A Bloody Good Winner) 70p“Nice town Sligo with a rather splendid statue of Yeats swirling his cape. Shame the races weren’t on during my visit. Bad planning that.”
I planned better because they were on when I visited.
Sligo is an attractive looking course with Mount Benbulben forming a dramatic backdrop. It is a pity the racing is so moderate, especially when compared to other small tracks in Ireland. Maybe the stiff uphill finish and the draw bias do not appeal to trainers. The course is also quite a long way from the main training centres.
When I visited, a horse owned by HH The Aga Khan won the last race. It was a little disappointing he was not there in person to cheer it home. He could have made the effort!
I visited Yeats’s grave the next day. Unfortunately it is very much on the tourist coach party trail, so the great poet does not get much peace. Ironic given he wrote about arising and going home to County Sligo to find some peace there..
I realise it is a bit late replying to a post made 12 years ago but Drone still posts here, including today!
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.