Short Shrift = The Bum's Rush

Last night, I began my Lenten reading.  It was a poem by Seamus Heaney, "Station Island XI".  I'm reading an anthology of Lenten poetry compiled by Malcolm Guite in The Word in the Wilderness, A Poem A Day for Lent and Easter.  Because I'm too dumb to get all of Heaney's imagery, I really appreciate Malcolm Guite's commentary.

This poem refers to Shrove Tuesday, which is the day before Ash Wednesday.  Shrove is an old English word derived from "shrove" or "shrift", meaning to hear someone's confession.  So you would say after confession, "I've been shriven."  Or going to confession, "shrive me Father."

Have you heard the expression, "He gave me short shrift."  Probably not if you are young.  But it's an expression meaning that someone didn't give you much time, or thought, or consideration. IOW, he gave you the bum's rush.  The following quote from Catholic Culture is clear.

Actually, the English term provides the best meaning for this period. "To shrive" meant to hear confessions. In the Anglo-Saxon "Ecclesiastical Institutes," recorded by Theodulphus and translated by Abbot Aelfric about AD 1000, Shrovetide was described as follows: "In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him as he then may hear by his deeds what he is to do in the way of penance." 

Malcolm Guite says that priests were given the duty of hearing prisoners' confessions who were going to be executed.  If they failed to do this properly, the complaint was made that he gave short shrift. 

Mmmm.  Absolution is absolution.  Why give spiritual direction to someone who is going to die in the next minute?

But, I get the point.  I don't want to give short shrift to the time-honored expression, short shrift.