However, the harsh realities of Dublin, which did not mean to be cruel and which solicited compassion, did provide where and when it could. Brendan Behan, one of the few who moved in both these worlds of the well possessed and that of the dispossessed, and was the son of its most bitter environs, often occupied for a shilling an overnight cubicle in the Iveagh Hostel, in Bride Road, merely a stone’s throw from Swift’s cathedral. Behan, one of Dublin’s own, and later famed as poet, novelist and playwright, strode like a king in his unkempt clothes through the thoroughfares that he regarded belonged to him and he frequently talked of and quoted Swift in this Swiftian city. Met on the more fashionable streets, with the tongue of his untied shoes hanging out, he’d shout an appropriate, if not always taken as a flattering greeting, but meant as such to all those familiar he passed. Roaming everywhere he would stop and chat along the streets of Nighttown. Always exuding a universal cheerfulness, he’d know as ancient friends the whores on the quays. Up dark alleys he’d confer with gun men on the run. Greeting the passing stranger arrived anew, whom if they stopped to chat, Behan would mesmerize to follow in his wake either to a pub or the notorious Catacombs of Dublin’s iconoclasts, there to live the first day of their lives changed for ever.
It was Behan who was the one and the only man I have ever heard sing Dublin’s praises, reverently loving every inch of this city, and who I often heard declaim as he would from his bar stool an irreverent parody of Swift’s last will and testament:
I do hereby vouchsafe to make my last will and testicle. Not having a penny or pot to piss in I nevertheless verily do decree that there be upon the present site where I have placed what respectable parlance dictates I refer to as my buttocks, an edifice to be erected large enough for the reception of as many incurable accountants, tax collectors, bailiffs, money lenders, solicitors, barristers, judges, and hangmen and gas meter readers, and other odiferous total bollocks as can be collected at any one time at high noon in off the streets of Dublin and without ponces, whores, eunuchs, hetero and homo sexuals galore or golden balls of malt to keep them in contentment, leave them to suffer indefinitely in their continued middle class repression.
And so, back we should go to the great ancient cathedral of St Patrick’s. As it still stately sits unchanged amid a rapidly changing city. Its massive oak door opening upon its great darkness. To find revealed wolfhounds who lie crouched in their stone rigid integrity and find in the ancient grey gloom more of what is known about this man upon whose grave now march the thousands of tourists. Statues and tablets and monuments proclaim the great deeds of the departed. Words and testimonies of sincere affection carved in the stone or pressed on brass. The brightest, purest, the zealous, candid and bravely bold. None of whom ever stooped to the unworthy. And Swift. A man who loved and was loved. His and Stella’s skulls lie together. He who could not be indifferent to suffering and poverty or the children’s bodies floating down the Liffey.
And perhaps Swift living was not universally esteemed and perhaps dead not universally lamented. But he is not ignored. His skull upon death split open to examine his brain and later passed around the drawing rooms of Dublin. This city with another ancient church in whose tower has rung Dublin’s oldest bells, tolled during stormy weather to remind citizens to pray for those at sea.
1995
* While most readers are undoubtedly familiar with Behan and his Borstal Boy, the work of his contemporary Ernest Gebler is sadly overlooked today. His book He Had My Heart Scolded presents a brilliant picture of the Dublin poor before the war.
A Bit More Blarney about the Emerald Isle
I live here for my sins and for my tax free status on earnings from what I presently write and have already written. Not the worst arrangement, for many of my novels occur amid the scenes and settings ancient and modern vividly described by word and photograph in many a handsome book. And this combination of strange factors will not be unfamiliar to others who have come here to reside for similar reasons. Full as Ireland is of its myths, leprechauns, blarney and blandishment. Such perhaps even verging on the mawkish as it is liberally doled out by its friendly welcoming people and the state bodies who represent them. But I still, after twenty five years, have no intention of leaving.
In spite of its literary censorship, subjugation by a neighbouring island, its famed famine and long impoverishment, no country on the face of the earth has attached to it an amount of romantic imagery as has this emerald isle. And such kept burningly alive by those escaped and exported from Ireland over the years as emigrants to other distant climes and places. Leaving well behind them the ‘crut’, a chronic usually celibate condition of repression known to encumber the spirit and leave its victim possessed with guilt and superstition, which in turn had long to be kept in check and disguised by respectability and a deep devotion to religion. You might even say it was a place where friendship was on the lips but not in the heart. Because if, giving vent to honesty, the truth ever got out, the gossip then spreading about the impure, defiant and disreputable thoughts you were really thinking would ruin you.
Ah but now come up to date. Forget all this old rubbish about the true nature of the Irish. The thoughts in the mind might not have changed but this is a brand new place not only for the native but for the visitor. And you would be fearfully wrong to think that any of the above guilt and superstition, impure and disreputable thoughts, had anything to do with the modern Ireland of the present, awakened as it has been from its centuries of slumber. Yet the past flavours and forecasts the future. The ghost of the two decker green upholstered tram still rumbles its way through the heart of Dublin city. There it goes now with the half dreaming poets aboard heading nowhere and everywhere and this versifier looking down at the passing citizens with a gimlet eye in case he should recognize someone and could jump down, stop them in their tracks and borrow half a crown.
Gone, too, are the shouters who from the kerbside would proclaim their theories as to the origin of the stars. And no more are the massive draught horses and drays, barrels of Guinness aboard, clip clopping upon the roadway amid a swarm of cyclists, the white gloved hands of the seven foot tall Garda Siochana raised, starting and stopping the traffic. And woe betide the infractor of a rule. He’d soon be told to mind his manners and keep his wheels where they should be. Or if on foot to take the pair of his feet and to get back up on the kerb and rejoin the alive life on the glistening granite pavements. That was the old Dublin of my university years.
But as has happened in the modern metropolis across the world, cities and towns are monitored by red and green lights and white striped pedestrian crossings. And plied by taxis, buses and crammed with motor cars. Even in Irish towns and cities, the worst has happened, the vehicle glut has dawned. But there is a difference. Crawling along you get a chance to see the architecture, not only in the buildings but also worn on the faces. Or in a taxi to be entertained by the astonishing erudition of the drivers. And no question you’ve got on your mind to ask will go unanswered. Indeed you might even detour and repair to a pub together to finish the discussion. But, of course, while the taxi meter outside is kept running tabulating up the fare.
Now from my unexpurgated opinions, you mustn’t get the totally wrong blissful impression. As you won’t. For you’ll soon be reminded that the irascible, perverse and cantankerous are everywhere. And if you’re a visitor, you’ll be concluding that Ireland would be nearly just like the place you’ve just left. Except that as soon as you decided it was, you’d find out that it isn’t. For out across this land there’d be plenty of conundrums. Safety of self, because it is thought to be in the hands of God, is still something many a native chooses to ignore. On wheels with a few jars of the wine of the country taken, a citizen coming around any blind bend like the hammers of hell will not in any way be mindful that you may be coming around the same bend in the opposite direction. But not to worry. Ireland has the best of ambulances to take you to the most up to date of hospitals.
But
one thing can never be denied and that is the general amiability and hospitality of the people. Reinforced by the numerous signs for bed and breakfast that you will see every few yards along the road from one coast to another. And what is to be had and found even in the most humble of homes is both cheap and good. And for extra amusement you can also climb right up the social scale, motor up their mile long drive, step out on their vast apron of gravel and be greeted by the titled and once high and mighty. Who will usher you into their castle, rubbing their hands in anticipation of monetary reward, while giving a tug or two at the forelock and treating you to the best brogue you’ve ever heard. For keeping the silverware shined and the roofs on some of these places would bankrupt you.
Now your next phenomenon is that on foot in Dublin or in any decent town, turn in any direction and you are never more than a hundred paces from a pint of stout and every refurbished pub or hotel has a room named after gentlemen whose photographs appear everywhere but in previous times had their work banned and were driven away from these shores. Three of whom are James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Brendan Behan. And appropriate enough in the latter’s case, as it must be said, he, with insults quickly leading to mayhem, wrecked plenty of these places in his time. His favourite more peaceful antic being to take ‘an anointing of the spirit’ as he called it by pouring a pint of porter over his head. And to then give a rendition of a British judge sentencing him to death.
No matter how well you know it, Ireland, like the bright paint slapped up everywhere, will always come to you as a surprise. Famine once writ upon the soul of this island, and long lingering in its psyche, is now nowhere to be seen or felt. Feast is the word everywhere as this nation, so long torn by troubles and adversity, has none amounting to too much at the moment. The swarm of the recent generation of children, nicely American accented from television and non believing in religion, is two fisted and footed proclaiming their independence, and living life hanging on by their finger tips. Music and dancing are everywhere. And although the famed dungeon outpost of the Catacombs of my own time is gone, and where the inebriated dispossessed cavorted and great minds conferred, there still remains a social life, with none like it anywhere else in the world. And where the definition of clarity is still remembered as that force given to a fist sent in the direction of a face that when hit had no trouble seeing stars.
As you would imagine, such dramatic changes in any nation with a past like Ireland’s can cause a lot of publicity to go circulating around the world. And you guessed it, another new big surprise is in store. Word has finally reached the ears of the rich and famous who have heard news of this place on the edge of Europe with a bunch of marvellous international banks and tax advisers aplenty and these rich and famous are girding loins to make their assault. Descending out of the sky to restore the big mansions and castles with the best plumbing money can buy, mending the leaks in the roofs and reanimating the splendour that once reigned in the grand halls, drawing rooms and ball rooms. And to enjoy, if not their anonymity, at least their humility. For among the Irish you can wash off and shed your celebrity and be as natural and normal as other natural and normal human beings. As in Ireland, far away from the tumult and torture of crowded places, no one matters more than you do and no better place exists on earth to be with your own decent fair minded self wrapped up in solitude.
And now what more can I say than the best words I ever said about Ireland which were the last words said in The Ginger Man. Come here till I tell you. Where is the sea high and the winds soft and moist and warm, sometimes stained with sun, with peace so wild for wishing where all is told and telling. On a winter night I heard horses on a country road, beating sparks out of the stones. I knew they were running away and would be crossing the fields where the pounding would come up into my ears. And I said they are running out to death which is with some soul and their eyes are mad and teeth out.
God’s mercy
On the wild
Ginger Man
And on Ireland
1996
PART 9
Ireland, Then and Now
The Water of Life
As here be nectar sweet upon the air, it’s time to talk of Irish whiskey. For by God, the congenerics thereby occasioned by this distillate lets you soon know that its golden liquid is there nearby resting in its glass ready to be drunk. For there is no drink pervades the elemental ether nor enters the nostril as do the lovingly condensed vapours which produce the aromatically rare blissful bouquet of Irish whiskey. And many are the malty soft and honeyed varieties to choose from.
Now then. Think of it. Whiskey is a drink that can be made wherever it is wanted yet is capable of elegant distinction reflecting the natural conditions from which it originates. And it is produced from barley of the grass family, one of the most ancient of all cultivated crops, originating with a plump and mellow seed 5000 BC in Egypt. Of all the grains, it is one of the most adaptable to climate, ripening in the shortest time and needing less warmth. Now think of Ireland. Wouldn’t you know that in the winter winds of monastic times the drink whiskey was invented here. And being that this grain barely is the basic ingredient in the process of malting, and is alive and growing well across these many counties, the grand tradition continues, which in these fast passing recent years has made Ireland that rare parkland paradise at the western tip of Europe.
And this aromatic distillate first came to my attention when my good old ancient friend, Gainor Stephen Crist, now rumoured everywhere to have been the model for The Ginger Man’s Sebastian Dangerfield, would approach in his ambassadorial manner and ceremoniously rap the edge of his half crown upon the mahogany of a Dublin public house and in his own inimitable way say to the bartender, ‘A large Three Swallows Powers Gold Label, when you’re ready.’ And I’d always stop and think at these words, ‘when you’re ready’ as if it were possible that a Dublin bartender, the best in the world, would ever not be ready. Or whether the swallows mentioned were those meant to fly or winglessly go goldenly down the throat. In the case of Crist, from Dayton, Ohio, they went down the throat.
Crist was a stickler for purity and would always remind that the grain which provided his drink had been nourished by the clean soft moist winds from the Atlantic. And even I had known from an early age in America and through my own mother that every good thing came out of Ireland. That with her oats and grain burgeoning fresh and green up out of the mist moist loamy landscape, you were at the source of your good health and which ingredients I remember were indeed imported for my Bronx growing up well being. And if Gainor Crist stood in front of his pint of plain, which as Myles Na Gopaleen said was your only man, always next to it nearby Crist’s elbow was his large trusty ball of malt waiting to be sent down a slaked throat, an inspiration, as he said, for the soul to soar and for the gizzard to reblood the veins.
Now for longer years than most people can remember your Irish whiskey has been an exotic aristocrat of drinks and an important national product of Ireland that the natives who know their spirits have always relied upon to be drinking ready on their sideboards. And the scholars have come to help you if it’s more knowledge you’re looking for, you can grab a copy of Jim Murray’s scholarly almanac on the subject, or Andrew Bielenberg’s actually vivid portrait of Locke’s Distillery. And in a trice you can be a connoisseur of this whiskey, distilled three times and left in the pot sometimes for as long as ten, twelve or fifteen years. And names you’ll soon be learning to reel off. Bushmills, Coleraine, Jameson, Kilbeggan, Locke’s, Middleton, Murphy’s, Paddy, Powers, Tullamore and, last but not least of the rare flowers, the Tyrconnell single malt. If you can’t get all these in Dublin, and your thirst is still getting the better of you, and for you who can’t wait to taste the best, then go on your way on the autobahn or better on the train to Mullingar. For right now on a shelf there is a limited edition Dungourney 1964 Special Reserve Irish malt whiskey in a nice wooden box containing a fifty year old malt at the knock down price of two hundred and t
wenty five Irish punts and offered for sale at the Old Stand in this now Joycean famed town.
Ah but meantime in the meanwhile Ireland has gone jumping mad to be giving publicity to its great literary figures of the past, few of whom did not take their literary elixir of Irish whiskey and down a couple of large ones every day. And one such who bent his farmer’s elbow in this manner was the great poet Patrick Kavanagh, who, always a man he said for the great purity, be it either in the soul or in the whiskey, having come from his turf accountants and having placed his bet for the first day’s race, would growl across the bar.
‘While this ould nag is running with the brakes off, I’ll have a big one of Jameson to keep me in optimistic company.’
And another such great taster of the malt was himself Brendan Behan, a man always exploding with generosity, but a scourge to respectable social life in the capital and terror most terrible to the middle classes. He loved referring to where the clergy got their own special brew of whiskey from the midland’s Locke’s Distillery, at Kilbeggan. With their now graciously blended brands and the growing fame of their Tyrconnell. And you’ll be pleased to hear all is under the able aegis of a former foxhunting gentleman, Brian Quinn, who, a perfectionist, is as elegant as is his whiskey, and presides over this marvellous restoration of this fabled distillery which in fact can show you the very barrels to which Behan referred and from which the clergy religiously took their brew.
And a word more about this poet, playwright and novelist whose blazing presence was often heralded by his shuffling approaching footsteps as one did hear him come into McDaid’s pub on Dublin’s Harry Street, sockless in his shoes without laces and so far down at heel that Behan walked with permanently sprained ankles. And one would perk one’s ears to hear said beside me in his slightly quavering and stammering voice one of the most fervent requests for the native Irish whiskey refreshment ever given at any bar in drinking history.
J.P. Donleavy Page 27
