Unit 1.4 – Irish Poetry
Difficulty: Hard
Time: 4 minutes 30 seconds
A Priceless Simplicity by Pat Ingoldsby
You sat in beside me on the bus
because you wanted to.
You talked to me with
a lovely loud open voice
which doesn’t know the meaning
of shyness or inhibition
or fear of saying the wrong thing
and many people in this world
would call you simple.
You have got free travel
because your special allowance
isn’t really very special
and nobody would ever dream
of giving you a job
unless they needed a man to
clean out a public convenience.
Everybody upstairs on the bus
heard every lovely disabled
word that you spoke
but nobody turned around to see the lovely man who was speaking them.
“Isn’t it great to be able
to read and write!”
You boomed out the words
with wild and free enthusiasm.
Then you began to struggle
with the mysteries of the notice on the bus.
“Tha … tha … thank you for
… for … for not smo … king!”
You got it gloriously right
and God I wanted to cheer
but to my eternal shame I didn’t
because it wouldn’t be the right thing.
You struggled with the signs
which we passed and you won
some magnificent victories.
“Ba … ba … bank of Ire … land!”
“No par … no .. par … king!”
You beamed with huge pleasure
when you cracked – “Emergency Exit.”
“Irish Permanent” gave you a hard time
but what the hell you are only learning
for a year or so and you are bloody
brilliant.
We should have all cheered
and saluted you in your triumphs
but we are not simple
so we didn’t.
You got off the bus
and went down to The Dinner Centre
to buy yourself a meal for forty pence.
The bus was suddenly a poorer place
because we had just lost
the richest free man on it.
1. What does the poem suggest about the nature of shyness and social inhibitions?
- A They are complex emotions
- B They serve an important function in social situations
- C They are often necessary social conventions
- D They are learned responses intended to comply with social norms
2. Why did the poet feel shame? (5th stanza)
- A Because he acted exactly like everyone else on the bus
- B He had been smoking on the bus
- C Because he was afraid to be a hypocrite in public
- D Because he felt he was patronising the ‘simple’ man
3. In what sense is the subject ‘free’? (final stanza)
- A Free from societal taboos
- B Free from employment
- C He is not bound by the need for wealth
- D He doesn’t understand and is therefore not bothered by economic and political turmoil.
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Answers:
Q1: D.
In order to answer these questions one must understand the poem as a whole. The poem is about this loud character who people would call ‘simple’. Everybody thinks he is stupid, but the poet thinks he is brilliant because he is not afraid of embarrassment and does exactly as he pleases. He sits beside the poet on the bus because he ‘wanted to,’ and talks loudly, despite the implied social convention to sit quietly and not talk to anyone. He doesn’t understand what it means to be embarrassed and so he doesn’t know the meaning of shyness – because it is a feeling imposed by the presence of others. There is no suggestion in the poem that the other people on the bus were actually inconvenienced by him, so B, and C are out. A is true, to an extent, but it was not the poet’s intention to suggest that shyness is too complex for this man, rather that he is above it.
Q2: A.
B is wrong because we don’t know that he was smoking.
C is wrong because he was, in fact, a hypocrite. Praising the man (in his head) but being unable to do so out loud. This answer is the opposite in meaning of the correct one.
D is wrong because at no point is it suggested that he was patronising him.
A is correct because he was too shy to cheer. He defames the other people on the bus for their contempt of this man, but fails to act out what he believes is the right thing to do.
Q3: A.
All of these answers are potentially true (except for D which is not backed up at all), but the correct answer is the one which relates back to the intended meaning of the poem. The ‘richest free man’ does not refer to wealth – he only has 40p anyway. He is free from worry about what other people think of him.
Gamsat Sample Questions
May 17, 2012