A Pint of Plain

by Bill Barich

  I’ll tell the story of Biddy McGrath

  Who strangled two sailors with the straps of her bra

  They tried to dope her with foreign liquor

  But even at that they couldn’t lick her

  She remembered she was told by her ma and da

  To keep both hands on the straps of her bra

  She put the straps of her bra around the big fella’s neck

  And tossed him in the Liffey like a crust of bread

  Then the small fella came up and said, “Hee-Haw”

  So she stuffed his gob with the rest of her bra

  Ringsend isn’t quite so colorful or dangerous anymore. Its pubs, like so many others in Dublin, try to drum up some business with gimmicks and promotions. Hobblers End hosted Bingomania on Monday nights and an evening with the King of Karaoke on Wednesdays. The Oarsman had a Halloween costume party scheduled and live rock every Friday. Sally’s Return featured Texas Hold ’Em and also karaoke, although with no royalty attached. The only entertainment Willie Murphy could remember from his youth was listening to the radio—Flash Gordon and big boxing matches from the U.S. were favorites—and going to the movies if he had the price of a ticket. He gravitated to the pub almost as a reflex, imitating the behavior of his elders. For a young man, the first legal drink amounted to a rite of passage, but hardly anyone engaged in the rite now.

  Hobblers End drew me in, anyway, with its nautical associations. A hobbler was a small boat, so called because it rocked back and forth at sea. The skippers, also called hobblers, acted as pilots for schooners and cargo ships, guiding them to port. (The chief cargo was malted barley, destined for the Guinness brewery.) With no way to contact a ship in advance, the skippers raced toward it and used a catching pole to hook it, fighting each other for the reward of a payday. Hobblers were deemed unsafe, though, and banned in 1936, hence their “end.” Christy “German” Lawless, the last of the skippers, whose shipmates included Lockjaw, Wee Chucks, Handspike, and Bluenose, lived into his eighties, and his battles with Highwater Flanagan, so grubby he passed as a pirate, haven’t been forgotten in Ringsend.

  I hoped Hobblers End might have a flavor of the sea, some essence of Melville’s Spouter Inn, but it smacked of hotel bars and airport lounges instead, a neutral space that could have been miles from the water. That isn’t to say it was unpleasant. The pub was bright, clean, and streamlined, and the owners hadn’t scrimped on the furnishings. Food was flying out of the kitchen, an endorsement of the menu, but I still felt oddly detached and switched over to the Yacht, a warmer, friendlier, noisier spot with tons of ship-related ephemera on display, where the regulars clung to their elected perches like barnacles, apparently oblivious (as I was not) of the Elvis and Sinatra videos blaring from a big TV over the front door.

  Sally’s Return could not be said to beckon. In private, I referred to it as Sally’s No Return, because of a scene I’d witnessed outside it, where a man in Paddy Dignam’s condition dozed on the sidewalk in bright sunshine. A knot of Ringsenders had gathered to gape at him, among them a schoolboy in uniform about to poke him with a stick to see if he was dead or alive. The Dublin Fire Brigade resolved the issue by sending two paramedics in a yellow ambulance. They donned their sanitary gloves and hoisted the dozer to a sitting position. He opened his eyes and looked shocked to be the center of attention, but since he had no real emergency to address, except perhaps finding the money for his next pint, the paramedics drove off, and he rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Sally’s made me apprehensive, then, but I bit the bullet and stepped inside. Nobody was asleep on the floor—I suppose I’d been afraid of that. There was nothing to worry about, really. The customers were geriatric men, almost exclusively, and though a few must have been married or widowed, they still constituted a classic example of the bachelors’ drinking group, with the pub as their clubhouse and hideout. Some were smartly attired and just making a brief stop on their rounds, while others wore clothes chosen with a haphazard eye and were in for the long haul. The beer cost less than at Hobblers End, and that would matter to pensioners, particularly since many visited Sally’s every day. Sally is Sally O’Brien, I learned, who actually did return, having sold the pub in its incarnation as the Shipwright and then bought it back again.

  Only the Oarsman remained as a potential oasis of tradition. (The Raytown Bar proved to be an annex of Hobblers End, separated from it by an off-license.) The pub’s conversation piece was a massive fieldstone back wall hung with a gilded mirror such as a courtesan might select for her boudoir, and that was a far cry from the ideal. I might have skipped right out if I hadn’t recognized Jim, the barman, who used to work at the Waterloo by my twee apartment. He’s a softspoken, gentle fellow, and proud to be a consummate professional. You could see it in his clothes. Sharply attired in a black shirt and trousers, he created a favorable impression of order and precision.

  “A pint of goodness,” he said when he brought my Guinness, a signature remark I recalled from the Waterloo, where he’d been a fixture for more than a decade. Why had he quit? “Me and the woman were after taking over a pub in Longford,” he explained, “but the deal fell through.” The Oarsman was handy for him, just a short walk from his digs in Ballsbridge down the Dodder path I was so fond of. His usual shift ran from four in the afternoon until closing time, eight hours and a little more. He didn’t miss the Waterloo, he told me, because it had changed so much. He had a high opinion of his former boss Christy, who had to contend with the excesses of a “super pub” that could accommodate a huge crowd, but he didn’t approve of the new breed of bar staffers, often inexperienced, who glossed over the civilities.

  “I mean no disrespect,” he continued, adding that race wasn’t a factor. His parents had owned a pub in Cavan, so he grew up in the business and was hyperaware of how important a good barman can be in securing the loyalty of customers. (When Paddy O’Brien, a charismatic barman at McDaids during the literary era, tried to buy the pub and lost out to a British woman, he resigned and moved elsewhere. The writers followed him, and their desertion became known as the “flight of the faithful.”) A barman needed to interact and chat with people—more than ever now, in Jim’s eyes, because a trip to the pub was so expensive. On a night off, Jim might pick up some beer, rent a video, and order Chinese food rather than go to his local, where he could easily spend a hundred dollars, especially if he got coerced into swapping rounds, a practice he disliked.

  I agreed with Jim about rounds, of course. Moriarity had taught me the expense—financial, physical, and mental—of the system, but it’s been a ritual aspect of Irish pub life for so long that the habit is deeply ingrained. The sociologist Tom Inglis interprets it as an instance of Ireland’s “rule-bound society,” on a par with the fealty pledged to the church. It’s an exercise in social control, Inglis believes, whereas the use of alcohol in most other European countries is much more relaxed and celebratory. Paying for rounds is a way for an individual to gain acceptance—it demonstrates a desire to belong. The system encourages mutual aid and obligation, other critics have speculated, but whatever the case, Jim knew it to be a trap best avoided.

  Jim is slender, fit, and usually upbeat, yet he moved stiffly that evening, as hesitant as an old man, and when I asked about it, he revealed that he’d suffered a beating the night before. After he locked up the pub, he started home along the Dodder path, listening to the river and relishing the solitude, when three young drunks approached him from the opposite direction. They jumped him, knocked him to the ground, and kicked him in the ribs, but they didn’t rob him. “They were just in it for the craic.” He smiled as if to shrug it off, a hand massaging his sore back. “I still hurt everywhere.” From now on, he’d call a taxi for safety’s sake, and though he wasn’t one to moan, it was clear that something had been stolen from him—the right to a tranquil stroll along a moonlit river without any threat of harm.

  Jim’s story haunted me over the next few days. At its core was an ima
ge of loss that seemed linked to the decline of the traditional pub and the values it embodies—an accent on community, say, and the bonds required to forge it. You could accuse John Ford of being sentimental and manipulative, but The Quiet Man was based on aspects of Irish life that once existed—and still do if you care to believe the Tourist Board’s recycled images from the 1950s. In truth, though, the Ireland of the twenty-first century is a very different country, one of the most globalized on earth and suffering through growing pains and an identity crisis, all due to that powdery, transformative dust of change that continues to drift over the island and alter it, for both good and ill.

  In the A.T. Kearney Globalization Index for 2007, published in Foreign Policy, Ireland ranks fifth behind Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. (Ireland was first in 2003, at the height of the Celtic Tiger’s clout.) The Kearney index derives its results by a measure of four categories: Political Engagement (foreign aid, treaties, organizations, and peacekeeping); Personal Contact (phone calls, travel, and remittances); Technological Connectivity (the number of Internet users, hosts, and secure servers); and Economic Integration (international trade and foreign direct investment). Like the other leading countries, Ireland is tiny, with a smaller land mass than Indiana. It has no natural resources and a limited domestic market. “When you’re a flyweight,” the Kearney report states, “globalizing is a matter of necessity.”

  In some respects, the traditional pub can be seen as a potential victim of the global thrust, since its virtues have always been local and specific. Its gradual disappearance may have an unexplored cultural significance, too, that Perry Share of the Institute of Technology, Sligo, addressed in his paper “Toward an Understanding of the Pub in Contemporary Irish Society.” Share found it odd that the pub, so integral to Irish social life, has been studied so infrequently, and he looked to the writings of Ray Oldenburg, an American urban sociologist, to elucidate its importance. Oldenburg came to prominence in the 1990s with his theory of “great good places”—main streets, pubs, cafés, post offices, corner markets, and so on—that are “at the heart of a community’s social vitality and the foundation of a functioning democracy.”

  The great good places are “third places”—not home, the first place, nor work, the second. A third place provides neutral ground that erases the distinction between a host and a guest, impossible at a private party or gathering. It should have a leveling effect, as well, with no criteria for inclusion. Conversation must be the “cardinal and sustaining activity”—not bingo, karaoke, Texas Hold ’Em, or a televised football match. A third place is accessible, ideally on foot, and its success depends on the commitment of its regulars, who build up a network of trust over time. (Students of social capital put a high value on trust, because it’s so often violated.) Pubs that operate strictly for profit, or are bought as an investment—faceless pubs, where the publican’s an absentee—are less likely to inspire trust than a traditional pub, especially one that’s family owned, while super pubs are too big, noisy, and frantic to offer the intimacy necessary for meaningful relationships.

  A third place is plain and unpretentious, ordinary and everyday. “The modest décor sets them apart in an image-saturated society,” writes Share. (An overly fancy pub, in contrast, calls attention to itself and may lead to restrictive policies at the door.) Being neither home nor work, a third place lets people be playful, unafraid to express themselves, and willing to bend the rules. They get pleasure, says Oldenburg, from “mutually withdrawing from the rest of the world and rejecting the usual norms.” And though a third place isn’t home, it has some qualities of home—a sense of warmth and a freedom-to-be, along with a prospect of regeneration and restoration. Finally, a third place exposes its regulars to novelty, broadens their horizons, invigorates them, and allows them to form and sustain friendships that aren’t about “suitability.”

  “A central aspect of Irish life may be undergoing a significant moment of change,” Share concludes, in tacit agreement with Heaney, and my travels so far had done little to dispel that assumption. Change was general all over Ireland, to paraphrase Joyce. Could the traditional pub hold steady in the slipstream of globalization, or would it be swept away? A Starbucks might qualify as a third place, of course, but it would be a global third place that could be located anywhere, without any specific, defining, or peculiar characteristics to frank its Irishness. It wouldn’t expose its regulars to novelty, nor would it broaden their horizons. There’d be no temptation on the part of the customers, certainly, to reject the usual norms.

  Chapter 8

  THE COBBLESTONE

  To reach Poolbeg Street and the pub called John Mulligan, reputed to serve the best pint of stout in Dublin, you skirt Trinity College and pass a sign on Doyles, another pub, that reads, “There is a good time coming be it ever so faraway.” As a believer in omens, I’d have preferred a more blissful one such as, “Deliverance is at hand.” After so many wrong turns, I already doubted Mulligan’s could live up to its billing. Its Web site named Joyce as a regular—if poor Jim only had a nickel for every bar he supposedly graced!—and I worried I’d once again wind up among some well-intentioned but easily buffaloed tourists. The site showed photos of all the barmen, too, and gave their E-mail addresses in case you wanted to drop a note to Noel, say, and discuss the Sirens episode in Ulysses.

  Poolbeg Street is a half block from the Liffey, tucked behind some government office buildings. It once led to Poll Beag, or little pool, among the deepest anchorages in Dublin harbor. When John Mulligan leased his premises in 1852, moving up from the Liberties as Jack Birchall had done, he competed with two women publicans, a Mrs. McGrath and a Miss McCaul, for business, but he outlasted them. Dockers flocked to his pub, as did traders from the Corn Market on nearby Thomas Street. Actors from the Theatre Royal were also fond of Mulligan’s. Judy Garland, Nat King Cole, and Roy Rogers each put in an appearance, and so, too, did such elite members of the racing fraternity as Vincent O’Brien and Mincemeat Joe Griffin, a trainer/owner duo who combined to win the Grand National twice in a row in 1953–54.

  Mulligan’s looks humdrum from the outside, just a pair of dull yellow storefronts with a brick-fronted lounge bar in between. So little light filtered through the streaked windows I felt as if I’d stumbled into an old country manor only recently opened to the air again after the death of its owner. At a glance, it seemed an honest joint still in its original condition—no recorded music or bric-a-brac, just memorabilia specific to the pub, such as some playbills from Theatre Royal. I recognized the fellow behind the bar from the Web site—Christie, who wore a broad, inviting grin and had the sturdy frame of a baseball catcher.

  They say a barman never forgets a face, and I was certain that held true for Christie. (Once I walked into Paddy Cullens in Ballsbridge six months after my first and only visit, and the barman bellowed, “Welcome back!”) Christie studied me with an eyebrow arched in amusement, probably because I shifted from foot to foot in a nervous way to keep from blurting out that I knew him, sort of, from the Internet—exactly the kind of ridiculous stab at familiarity a tourist or an innocent would make, and I was neither anymore. Luckily, I repressed the urge and retreated to the lounge, a word that implies a comfort that did not truly exist at Mulligan’s.

  Instead, my sense of a country manor on the brink of decay was enhanced. The lounge was fairly empty, as if most of the furniture had been sold off to pay the late squire’s debts. (James Mulligan, a member of the clan, had banned stools and chairs in his day, because real men should stand up when they drink. The Mulligans’ reign ended in 1932.) The walls were a rich rose color and adorned with a half dozen framed etchings, some depicting scenes from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, an intellectual touch unusual for pubs—maybe Joyce had been a regular. If Mulligan’s ever resorted to quizzes, you might be asked some trivia about Sir John Falstaff and his buddy Poins. The customers seemed to be boning up for just such an exam, in fact, bent over books and papers
except for two lads from Trinity, who were talking about the meaning of life or the desirability of Polish women, or possibly both and how they were interrelated.

  I took a seat at a long, hard refectory table. As the seconds ticked by, I was eager to see if the Guinness Christie poured would match its reputation. By accident, through the sheer drudgery of tasting one pint after another all over Dublin, I’d become a semi-expert and approached my stout now with the severity of a veteran sommelier assessing a vintage Chateau d’Yquem. How does the beer look and smell? Has the temperature been monitored properly? Far too often I’d been handed volcanic pints that erupted like Vesuvius and spilled over the rim of the glass, soaking the coaster and causing a sticky situation. There were oddly flavorless pints, too, and pints with a taint of burnt barley, and pints so dreary I almost suspected them of being doctored with dirty dishwater, a practice not unheard-of in earlier centuries.

  Guinness was not the only stout on tap, and though I’d tried to escape its hegemony and indulge a lifelong habit of supporting the underdog, I couldn’t force myself to switch to Beamish or Murphy’s, its chief rivals and both from Cork. (Indeed, Murphy’s is difficult to find in the city and difficult to avoid on its home turf.) Beamish is usually the cheapest of the three, but I seldom saw anyone order it and didn’t like it when I drank a pint, while Murphy’s had more to commend itself, being lighter and more refreshing. Long before Guinness had advertised itself as a boon to health, Murphy’s had stolen a march and hired the world-famous bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, born Friedrich Wilhelm Müller in Prussia in 1867, to endorse its product. Renowned for his strongman shows in America, Britain, Ireland, and other parts of Europe, he specialized in bending iron bars and hoisting horses and pianos off the ground.

  Sandow wrote a bestselling advice book, Physical Strength and How to Obtain It (1897), that turned up in Leopold Bloom’s library. The exercises were “designed particularly for commercial men engaged in sedentary occupations,” according to Joyce, who had great fun with the book, and “were made with mental concentration in front of a mirror so as to bring into play the various families of muscles and produce successively a pleasant rigidity, a more pleasant relaxation and the most pleasant repristination of juvenile agility.” In the Murphy’s ad, Sandow lifts a horse and “strongly” recommends his sponsor’s stout. When he died at fifty-six while pulling a car from a ditch, an ambitious youth named Alex Kass volunteered to replace him. Kass proposed to hang from a crane and hold a barrel of beer suspended by a wire from his teeth, but the company’s directors rejected the stunt as “impracticable.”