John Arnold: What’s this Tinder? I used to swipe right for The Siege Of Ennis...

Someone was trying to persuade me lately that I sang an incorrect version of one of my very own favourite Elvis songs.

We had a heated argument, and anyone that knows me will agree that in my youth (in the last century) I bore an uncanny resemblance to the King. Other than the fact I had foxy curly hair and a freckled face, I think one could see certain similarities in our facial profiles and muscular formation.

Anyhow, my friend scoffed at me when I crooned ‘Love me tender, love me true, all my dreams fulfil…’ saying it was ‘Love me tinder…’

Will ya go way with yourself - in my youth and in Elvis’s adolescence the word tinder meant something very dry and easy to burn.

In Ireland, we had cipín and kindling long before the fire-lighter had been invented. Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, where the Presleys lived, they used sliced, dried buffalo dung to get the campfire going.

In this heat wave we are experiencing - along with most of Europe - we regularly hear warnings of forest fires, bush fires and gorse fires because of the ‘tinder-dry’ vegetation and undergrowth.

The word tinder has been with us for generations, as has the now nearly forgotten tinderbox, which was a small container, often made of metal, used to start fires before our ancestors and Maguire and Paterson came up with the idea of matches.

About the size of a gramophone-needle box, it would have ‘tinder’ or flammable material - maybe cloth, dried briars or straw, also some steel, and a little piece of flint. By hitting the steel against the flint, a spark resulted and in turn that lit the tinder, producing a flame.

I was never in the scouts, but I remember seeing The Virginian and Trampas on black and white television starting fires that way. That’s the history lesson for this week done and dusted.

So, the new craic apparently is this tinder thing, which may or may not be very tender!

I was actually talking about match-making and the role of smoochy romantic songs that we all used to sing to girls we thought might like us! That’s why I was singing Elvis’s hit of 1956.

Apparently, now things called apps are all the go. I am very familiar and knowledgeable with naps, taps, maps and raps (across the knuckles in National School) but apps were new to me.

I know I knew a thing or two about computers and lappingtops and mobility phones, but leave me alone about apps.

Apparently, an ‘app’ is a considerably shortened name for an ‘application’ which is a procedure a computer can do - even a so-called smartphone can.

I was informed that if people of the opposite, or any sex you want, give all their vital statistics to a machine (sounds crazy, doesn’t it?), then you could maybe find someone somewhere who might like you and ask you out on a kind of virtual, electronic ‘date’.

Wow, and wow again - apparently, last year about 75 million people all over the place were wired into this thing and paid for it!

Was it Patrick Kavanagh or Daniel O’Connell said ‘a fool and his money are soon parted’, and maybe ’twas Oscar Wilde coined the phrase ‘there’s one (complete eejit) born every day’ - well, it bates Banagher that this tinder yoke is so popular.

As a child, I was always urged to ask questions when I came up against something I knew nothing about, so I rang up a friend who’s years younger than me and a kind of ‘global jet-setter’ - that’s according to himself!

He typed out what he called a simplistic definition of the tinder concept of modern match-making as follows: “The platform has a ‘double opt-in’ set-up, many call it matching, and thereby two users must be fond of each other (without seeing one another!) and like the other before they can swap electronic notes or messages; the choices a user makes are unknown to other users unless two users swipe right - with their finger on the mouse - on each other’s profiles.”

“Now, John” says he, “it’s really simple and popular.”

Well, I’m not sure about the popular bit, but most of the users truly must be simple!

The only word that rang any bell in my head was the term ‘platform’, which was another name long ago for the dancing ‘stage’ which was a feature of rural summer life in Ireland for many years.

Yes, they were simpler times, but the people weren’t as simple as many of today’s ‘tinder-folk’.

Not far from here there was a stage in Ballinterry - near the present sheep-dipping tub. Another famous stage was at Kaime - between Rathcormac and Glenville.

For a few years, I was told a dancing stage, or platform, was operational on summer Sunday nights at a place called ‘the Comeen’ between Desert and Rathaneague.

Back then, I suppose the pace of life was slower, but lads - and lassies too - if the night was anyway bright you knew what you were getting!

There might be a mouse or two under the stage, but you needn’t put your finger next nor near the creature. The only ‘swiping’ to the right or left would be when The Siege Of Ennis got going!

People say there was fierce ‘class distinction’ long ago when it came to matters matrimonial and nuptial nesting. Of course there was, and it hasn’t changed much over the years. Now, couples must be compatible, contactable, comfortable, and cringe-proof.

The old adage: ‘Well, you’ve made your bed so lie on it’, has gone out with the contents of the vessel under the bed.

This man was taking a few bags of oats to the local mill to be crushed for farm animal feeding. Back then, the bags were heavy - maybe 10 or 12 stone apiece. He was about 60 and found the lifting tough.

A younger neighbouring man came to his assistance at the mill. Says he: “You’re shoving on, you’d want to be getting a bit of help on the farm.” The older man had just one daughter - she was about 22 at the time.

Came the reply: “Where could I get a suitable man?”

“What about myself?” “And would you marry Ellen (the daughter)?”

“I would, faith, if she’d have me.”

“Alright so, shure, I’ll ask her”.

He asked Ellen, she said yes, and the young couple were married before Shrove.

No talk of ‘tinder’ then, and did they get on OK? By all accounts, grand. They were a bit shy with each other first, but love blossomed and then romance and soon they truly knew the meaning of the song lyric ‘Love me tender, love me true.’

You might well say - ah, but in them times people’s expectations of life, love, and romance weren’t very high.

Are they all gone sky high in today’s world? Maybe that’s the problem.