Farting Around and Footering
“I spent the following year kind of working and farting around”
Women of Ireland Project Participant
‘Farting around’ could be an excellent candidate for a “Tell me you’re from Cork without telling me you are” social media meme, but that wasn’t why it stood out to me as I read through the life history interview of this participant recently. It was for how it was chosen to describe and capture a particular point in her life — the year just after she’d finished her college degree, where she worked and went on “lots of holidays” before she decided what she was really going to do.
My immediate thought was “Well, if you’re working and experiencing the world through holidays and travel, that’s hardly farting around”? But I knew exactly what she meant. In Irish society if you’re not on a clear career trajectory (as opposed to just ‘working a job’) and you’re not flat out working, producing, and ‘doing’ all the time then you’re aimless and idle — you’re ‘farting about’ — and you’ll be judged for it.
Ireland is hardly unique in this. The pressure to ‘get a good career’, be ‘always on’, ‘proactive’ and ‘busy’ all the time is the case in most capitalist societies the world over. Our societal systems train us up into this mindset of ‘doing’ equals good person and not doing equals bad/lazy/useless person from birth. It’s the undercurrent that feeds and shapes our education systems, provides the metrics we are measured against and determines what behaviours and activities we are praised for. Yet, capitalism alone doesn’t explain the underlying sentiment — the energy and feeling — that is being conveyed by a phrase like ‘farting about’, nor does it capture the judgement inherent in its use.
Footering* was a favourite phrase of my Monaghan born maternal grandmother. “Ah, sure you’re only footerin’” she used to say. Last year, while spending a week in Donegal, I heard someone say, “I love a good footer” (pronounced like foo-th-er). The sudden reminder of a word I had long forgotten (unusual in the dialect of my Wicklow upbinging) made me smile but I was also fascinated by how, unlike my Granny, this person framed footering as a positive activity (the pleasure derived from pottering about with no real aim and seeing where you end up). If Granny said “Sure you’re only footerin’” you quickly copped yourself on — because to be caught ‘footerin’ was not a positive thing. She never said it with any malice but there was a mild chastisement in it. A warning: you’d been given notice that you weren’t engaging in anything useful. You were ‘at nothing’, only idling, passing time, trying to look like you were doing something, and she was on to you.
My mum’s last memory of Granny using this phrase was when she rang her up to say “Would you come up here and take your father out from under my feet, he’s only footerin’”
If you were footerin’ you were farting around. If you were farting around, ‘sure you were only footerin’.
Fairly innocuous, almost humorous, phrases. Yet, they deliver a clear and direct message in that hidden and subtle way only Ireland’s complexly indirect communication codes could achieve:
“What you are doing there isn’t of value to anyone, so you’d want to swiftly correct that and occupy yourself with something useful”.
Across women’s stories, there is a patchwork quilt of different vignettes which express the general sentiment that productive doing equals good, while doing anything trivial or idling equals bad. Like mothers who made it clear you were ‘under pain of death’ if they caught you up the town just hanging around (especially in the areas associated with the ‘layabout’ types), or parents describing anyone who didn’t have a ‘proper job’ (a category often reserved for musicians or artists) as ‘wasters’. Adjacent to this is the emphasis placed on what you should be doing: education, achievement and career progression. Numerous women recount how get a degree—get a proper job—work hard—be a high achiever was an enduring message of their upbinging, and how strongly they have imbibed it. They are consummate do-ers and achievers and when anything but is judged, chastised, or devalued as ‘farting around’ or ‘footering’ is it any wonder that women use phrases like ‘always on’, ‘flat out’, ‘up to 90’ to describe their daily lives?
Again, I am drawn to conclude that none of this — this emphasis on achievement and doing, and the devaluing and dismissing of anything deemed not productive or not useful — is unique to Ireland. But, again, I am struck by how there is something about how this all shows up in women’s stories that just feels specific to Ireland.
“It’s the fear”….
…. I said to myself as I read through all the excerpts from the 37 Women of Ireland Project interviews I’d organised under the simple heading of ‘Doing’ and began to see some patterns.
Doing to organise the chaos. Doing to prevent things from falling apart. Doing to avoid negative judgements. Doing to meet expectations (and not let anyone down or upset anyone). Doing to address the fear of lack (to feel safe and secure). Doing to keep everything (and everyone) going. Doing to fix things. Doing to keep difficult emotions and memories at bay. Doing to maintain respectability (avoid loss of (family) reputation).
As historian J.J. Lee describes, a sense of threat is encoded deep in the DNA in Ireland:
“The Irish have had a sense, as a consequence of objective historical circumstances, of being under permanent pressure, of having their backs to the wall”1
This sense of threat has strongly shaped our behaviours; how we respond, think and act. Doing is as much (if not more) about keeping a sense of threat (some negative outcome occurring) at bay as it is about achieving or being productive. And when this is the role which doing plays in society it’s easy to see why anything deemed frivolous, useless, or ineffective is quickly quashed, devalued and dismissed as ‘farting around’ and ‘footering’.
Something to keep in mind the next time you feel guilty for spending an afternoon ‘footering’ or ‘farting around’?
*Footering is a not uncommon phrase in Scotland and the North of Ireland which implies ‘messing around’ or doing trivial, pointless things. It’s etymology is not clear but some believe it originates from the Irish word fútar, which means to be fidgety or bungling.
Lee, J. (1994). The Irish psyche: An historical perspective. The Irish Journal of Psychology, 15(2–3), 245–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/03033910.1994.10558008
Yes exactly that ... or 'put up with it'/ 'endure it'.
My mother and maternal grandmother used 'footering' a lot (and yes, my granny was also from Donegal and it had a tinge of 'foothering' as she pronounced it). It had exactly that meaning of doing something that wasn't really worth while, and as you say being accused of footering wouldn't exactly be a rebuke, but there would be a sense that you'd be better off doing something more useful or focused. In fact often it was used to chastise themselves rather than other people, or to explain than what they were doing coud easily be dropped of someone asked them to do something else. I like your analysis of Irish society's expectation that women will always be doing something... especially strong in the Presbyterian community I was brought up in.