Abner's life at his age revolves around the struggle between decrepitude and the determination of someone who feels free to shoot off his mouth because he has nothing left to lose; his quarrel with the world may in fact be his best survival strategy.
While we are rooted here going la-la-la auld Ireland (because at this distance in time the words escape us) our neighbours are patching their quarrels, losing their origins and moving on, to modern, non-sectarian forms of stigma, expressed in modern songs: you are a scouser, a dirty scouser.
Even before the defeat last week, the Free Democrats were quickly losing ground and riven with internal quarrels.
Already losing popularity, they can hardly afford to quarrel.
But by fracturing the SEC, quarrelling openly with two fellow commissioners and losing the support even of the mild-mannered Paul Sarbanes, the Democratic senator mainly responsible for the Sarbanes-Oxley act, Mr Pitt has shed most of his remaining credibility.
The murky Swiss-based arrangements for divvying up the compromise price agreed between Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas company, and its Ukrainian partners cannot disguise the reality that Russia lost out in the quarrel.
With few exceptions, it was to stay as aloof as possible from the American quarrel, keep a close eye on who was winning and who losing, and attend to the mother country's economic, imperial, and national interests.
Exactly how this judgement resolves the quarrel over Mestra is obscure, but Sisyphus ultimately comes out on the losing end, for Mestra does not bear children to Glaucus.
Lauren Cuthbertson and Vadim Muntagirov are endearingly grumpy as they quarrel: she huffs and fluffs up her skirts, but aches at the thought of losing him.
He is irked by sportswriters' criticism of his losing teams, and bristles at what is written about his corporate brawling, which included a tempestuous quarrel with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2004 over a proposed West Side stadium.
