The Tailor and Ansty (sometimes known as The Tailor and Anstey) by Eric Cross was considered so fiendishly obscene or indecent in its general tendency that it was for many years banned in Ireland. When parts of it were quoted in a Seanad (senate) debate in the 1940s there were calls for the quoted bits to be struck from the record for fear that people would get their grubby, sweaty hands on the debates and feast on the filth therein.

Times change and now I have my grubby, sweaty hands on the offensive item. In the finest, noblest tradition of literary criticism I have read it through looking for the dirty bits. Alas! An odd reference to a cock having its way with a hen, a joke about a brothel and laments about the unwillingness of modern women to have children are about all I can find.