The Comment Ironic

According to the cabled report of the first English-South African test match at Birmingham, South Africa began their first innings to ironical comments from 11,000 spectators.

DID you say barracking? Oh, come! What, what?
Never in England, sir! It isn’t done.
Do you suggest invective? Oh, what rot?
It must be just that cable fellow’s fun.
“Comment ironic”, yes, but never “skite”.
One may be quite ironic yet polite.

For we never say Boo!
As Australians do
With a loud and vociferous bellow.
And vulgar abuse?
Oh, I say, what the deuce!
Would you take a rise out of a fellow?
I mean to say — What?
When our passions wax hot
We may even wax slightly satiric,
But not in the way
That Australians may
When the barracking lifts to the lyric.
I will even admit,
Should the circumstance fit,
We may even grow mildly sardonic;
And you’ll hear in the hush
Some loud fellow cry “Tush!”
Well, that is a comment ironic.

But barracking! In Birmingham? Tut, tut!
The thing’s unthinkable! There’s not a doubt.
Faint murmuring may be indulged in; but
Should any person seek to rise and shout
Ill-bred expletives and that sort of rot,
Why, dash it all, the fellow would be shot!

Tho’ Australians may,
I am sorry to say,
Grow exceedingly coarse in the outer;
And, in fashion quite crude,
Hurl their epithets rude
At a bowler or batsman or scouter;
In Britain our style
Is to mark by a smile
Or a frown or some fleeting expression
Our views of the play
In a cultural way;
For we’re devilish good at repression.

And if some grave breach
Should impel us to speech
It’s mellifluous, mild and euphonic.
Should the play be quite bad
We may mutter “Egad!”
And that is a comment ironic.