Glossary: R

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Short for IRA, the Irish Republican Army, a nationalist paramiltary group responsible for a lot of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Often heard in the phrase `up the RA!', a phrase often shouted by the same sort of people who sing rebel songs.

Ráméis

Roughly pronounced "rawmaysh". The Irish word for "bullshit".

Rapid

(adj.) Usually pronounced-- and sometimes spelt-- "rappa". Good, wonderful. See deadly.

Rat-arsed

see drunk.

Rare oul' times

Mythical period (but generally held to be sometime between the thirties and the fifties) forever alluded to by Dublin bores when people were happy despite-- no, because of-- being crammed ten or twenty to a room in condemned tenement buildings, watching friends and relatives die of tuberculosis and cholera while alchoholic fathers drank the wages and beat their wives. Mention of the rare oul' times in non-ironic tones is grounds for murder in many parts of Dublin.

Rebel song

Traditional Irish lyric that celebrates the fun jolly Irishmen had assassinating perfidious Britons while they occupied our country. A good rebel song will set the scene by enumerating the nefarious deeds of some cowardly moustache-twirling Englishman against the Irish peasantry before moving to the gripping details of his murder proper, and finishing with the rousing speech the guilty Irish patriot gave from the dock before being led off by the redcoats to be executed in some ingeniously bloodthirsty fashion. Alternatively, the rebel song may conclude with the lament of the patriot's grey-haired mother or his colleen as she sees her son's/ lover's body dumped into the lime pit; this embellishment is an optional extra, and is not required by Irish law.

The rebel song operates on the principle that eight hundred years of dispossession, violence, and ethnic cleansing against the Irish people were a small price to pay for all the enjoyment the Brits gave us, really, when you think about it. We wouldn't have so many great rebel songs to sing for a start.

There is a law of the Universe that states that those who sing rebel songs can never remember more than the first verse and the chorus and who will therefore repeat both endlessly and tunelessly until drink renders them mute or a fight starts, whichever happens first.

Republican

Person who believes in and strives for the eventual re-unification of the island of Ireland. The term "Republican" is generally used to refer to those who believe in the use of force to further this aim, while the term "Nationalist" is used to describe those who prefer to use political means to achieve this. In Northern Ireland, most Republicans and Nationalists come from a Roman Catholic background.

Revenue, the

The Revenue Commissioners, Ireland's tax collectors. While the representatives of any such organisation in any country are going to be a mite unpopular with the general public, the employees of the Irish Revenue Commissioners are particularly vile examples of the breed. Famously enthusiastic in their prosecution of Social Welfare cheats-- God forbid some working-class miscreant diddle the State out of a tenner's worth of butter vouchers!-- and PAYE workers, they are studiously low-profile when any of the so-called Irish Quality are caught stashing their swag in the Caymen Islands. Frankly, the only way to make these crooked, hypocritical pigfuckers popular in any way would be to shoot the lot of them in the head and hang their stinking carcasses from the lamp posts of Dublin for the city's dogs to worry. That way, at least the dogs might have something good to say about them (even if it's only, "tasted worse").

Update, June 2001: The Revenue have done it again! Despite swearing black and blue that the tax-dodgers' amnesty of 1993 was the last one ever, cross-our-hearts-hope-to-die, and anyone caught with hot money thereafter was looking at a stretch in the Joy, despite the fact that the country has now enough money to hire extra investigators to give the cheats an auditing they're not likely to forget, despite all this, they're offering another tax amnesty! Beautiful! Why bother to pretend anymore? The Revenue are revealed as nothing more than criminal bagmen for their masters.

Ride

(verb) To copulate, have sex
(noun) An act of sexual intercourse. Heard in the traditional chat-up line: "I suppose a ride is out of the question?"
(noun) A sexually-attractive person, male or female. "Jaysus, that young wan is a right little ride."

Note to visiting Americans: what you call a "ride", we call a "lift". Use of the word "ride" while in Ireland will only lead to much merriment at your expense.