I HAVE been leafing through Tim Pat Coogan's massive new tome about Eamonn De Valera, entitled, Long Fellow, Long Shadow. When, as will undoubtedly happen, Sam Snort, the venerable historian, is asked for a comment to stick on the jacket of the paperback edition, I will say "I couldn't put it down. But I wouldn't lift the bastard up, either."

Yeah, it's a good title, Long Fellow, Long Shadow. In fact when people come to write gargantuan biographies of Sam Snort, as no doubt they will, I guess that they will choose titles of a similar nature.

"Long Pecker, Long Shadow," seems like an obvious candidate in all the circumstances. Variations on the theme might include "Long Pecker, Very Long Pecker," or "Long Pecker, How Long Is A Piece Of String?"

an open book

Since so much of my life and times is an open book already, set down by myself without fear or favour, in flagrant defiance of dull conventionality and the rule of law, my biographers will find it hard to rake up anything to which I would not be delighted to lay claim if I had thought of it first.

Not so with the Long Fellow.

Reading between the lines of the new biography (it's quicker and easier than reading the actual lines themselves) I found that there was much in it that we knew already.

That he was illegitimate is no surprise to seasoned commentators such as Sam Snort. This does not bother me one whit. It is the bastard that he became in later life that bothers me.

There's the stuff about how he shat his pants in Boland's Mills during The Rising. Yes, this makes sense. The only problem I have about The Rising is the enormous fuss that people make about it. Sam Snort has a Rising every Easter Monday, on the hour, and on every other Monday of the year, indeed, every other day of the week. But I don't expect people to organise parades to commemorate every occasion on which I get a hard-on. Though now that I come to think of it . . .

Then there's the torrid affair that Dev had with his secretary. Again, we will not condemn him too harshly for this, but we will condemn the secretary for her lax approach to the degeneration of her own mental health, which was clearly in a dramatic decline if she was reduced to shagging De Valera.

He may have been The Long Fellow, but his Fellow would need to have been of Snortian dimensions to compensate for the rest of what was laughingly referred to as his "personality."

On this, Tim Pat Coogan clarifies what we have known about De Valera for a long time, with or without documentary proof. I mean, if the grass is wet when you wake up, you can assume that it has been raining, even if you didn't actually see the rain.

a pig-fucker

What we have known about De Valera, and what is now confirmed to a wider audience, is basically that he was a pig fucker of heroic proportions, a twisted sonofabitch who could not unleash a good fart without first consulting the Papal Nuncio, a man who has never had a street named after him because the street does not exist which is long enough and crooked enough.

Did we need half-a-ton of Cooganian prose to work this out? I say that we did not. But it's nice to have it there anyway, to wipe one's ass if one runs out of bogroll.

I am more interested in the phallic imagery which seems to have permeated the spirit of these revolutionary times.

The two men who dominated the scene were The Long Fellow, of course, and Michael Collins, who was known as The Big Fellow.

Who says that size is not important, even in the dreary milieu of Republican in-fighting?

I assume that Dev's pecker was named for its elongation, whereas Collins' was prized for its thickness and durability. Between the two of them it was, comrade against comrade, brother against brother, langer against langer.

Having prevailed in this battle of the baldy lads, Dev, the rat, then turned tail into the clammy embrace of the Catholic church, and became Mr. Floppy for the remaining decades, thus rendering his Fellow, long, short or a mere stump, an ultimate irrelevance.

As far as his friends in Rome were concerned, his pecker was something for passing water through, which he did by pissing from a great height on all that moved.

the baldy fellow

Can you imagine the excitement if Sam Snort had been "out" during those revolutionary times?

To The Long Fellow and The Big Fellow would have been added a creature which would be well-nigh impossible to name.

I suppose that the Meaty, Beefy, Big and Bouncy Fellow would have to suffice. But it is somehow inadequate to describe the appendage of which we speak, in all its resplendent majesty.

If people resorted to shorthand, to evocative imagery, I could see titles like The Cannon, or The Monster, or just The Baldy Fellow. Obviously, with a full head of hair, they would not be referring to my tonsure.

Think, though, of what Ireland would have become if the Meaty, Beefy, Big and Bouncy Fellow had prevailed over The Long Fellow and The Big Fellow?

Think about it real hard, and then weep copiously for poor old Ireland.

Up the rebels. Up, up, and remain up till Brigadier-General Sam sees what you are made of.

Then, to battle with the babes, with a smile on our lips and a song in our hearts.

• Sam Snort (Brigadier General) (Retd.)