Dublin is a city alive, alive-oh
Music is as much a part of life here as Guinness and politics, writes Jim Freeman
MOLLY Malone’s ghost wheels a barrow through Dublin’s streets broad and narrow… probably trying to find the bronze statue raised in her honour three centuries after her fictional life.
The statue – dubbed locally “the tart with a cart” – is of a comely young woman in a very low-cut dress pushing a barrow with “cockles and mussels, alive, alive-oh”, and gives a nod to the legend of sweet Molly as fishmonger by day and hawker of another ilk after dark.
Molly’s glamorous likeness stood on Grafton Street near Trinity College for 26 years before it was moved in 2014. By that time, students being students, certain parts of the statue had acquired a polish imparted by nearly three decades of wandering hands.
The brazen lass now peddles her wares in Suffolk Street between the Dublin Tourist Office and St Andrew’s Church.
She caught my attention not for the reason you think, but because I had time to spare while listening to a busker with his guitar and portable amplifier outside the church.
This feller was pure class, seguing between Carlos Santana and Mark Knopfler without missing a chord in numerous complex instrumental solos. His voice wasn’t half bad, either Good as he was, he wasn’t exactly coining it from the passers-by. Unfortunately for him, there are at least two buskers per block in the popular areas of St Stephen’s Green and Temple Bar, almost all of them extremely talented, and live music in every pub – of which there are a great, great many.
Music is as much a part of life in the city as Guinness and Irish republican politics, and Dublin is pretty much home to both.
Not far from Ms Malone is the statue of another music legend, one who might have enjoyed Molly’s reputed night-time persona more than her cart-pushing one.
The late Phil Lynott, front man and bassist of rock supergroup Thin Lizzy, was the epitome of the band’s anthem,
and used to hang out drinking at Bruxelles.
The life-sized statue is looking a bit bent and battered, because ( just after the picture was taken), a lorry driver backed his vehicle into it and broke Phil’s guitar.
The pub, however, remains something of a shrine to metalhead rockers, primarily because of the “live and dangerous” image Lynott projected in his 37-year life. If it moved and was female, it was wooed into a horizontal position. If it didn’t, it was drunk or injected.
Lynott’s mother was Dublin-born and though the future rock icon was born in England, he arrived in the Irish city as a 4-year-old to live with his grandmother. One of his high school friends was drummer Brian Downey, and Belfast son Gary Moore was lead guitarist in one of Lynott’s early bands. Both joined him later in Thin Lizzy.
Lizzy’s first hit, incidentally, was a rock version of an Irish classic,
It’s a song you’ll hear in Dublin pubs almost as often as the unofficial anthem of the city.
Political – that is, republican songs – aren’t often played in the tourist quarters but that doesn’t mean England’s perfidy towards the Emerald Isle is ignored.
is a popular request, especially among visiting Glasgow Celtic FC supporters, as is local group U2’s
Cross the Liffey River back to the general post office side of the city and take a walk up O’Connell Street.
Side roads are chock-a-block with little pubs and it’s clear from most of them that the live music scene of Dublin is flourishing. WARM YOUR HEART: Sweet Molly Malone, the “tart with a cart”, is still pushing her barrow through streets broad and narrow. GET FIRED UP: Dublin, home of Irish culture, saw the 1916 Easter Rising.
In fact, you’ll see more people walking around with guitars and saxophones slung over their shoulders than you’d see squaddies with rifles in the northern provinces in the bad old days.
You’ll get much more of the hardcore republican stuff – think The Wakes, Gary Og and Shebeen – by moving away from the main streets and tourist-focused areas. Look for the pubs where male patrons are wearing Celtic tops.
There are plenty of shops selling virtually the same shamrock-studded stuff and you can get any number of folk music CDs by The Dubliners and their ilk (Foster and Allen, The Corrs).
But I found some more contemporary rebel music at the Sinn Fein office on Parnell Street. Christy Moore and The Wolfetones remain popular with older, politically-conscious musiclovers.
Irish songs fall into three broad categories: soulful dirges (how ordinary Irishmen and women were starved to death or banished to Australia by the English); political anthems (how heroic Irishmen and women resisted the English and were slaughtered); and cheerful jigs and reels (how the rest of the Irish were driven to drink by the English).
The Dublin music scene is wonderfully complemented by its traditional and contemporary dance movements. Irish dance is best known through
the extravaganza made famous by Michael Flatley and Jean Butler, and performed by the company of the same name.
Some 25 million people have watched the show since it was first performed in 1995 and this number will undoubtedly be swelled when takes the stage at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre between June 21 and September 3 this year.
A much more informal (but equally enjoyable) production is performed every night downstairs at the very convivial Arlington Hotel at O’Connell Bridge in the city centre.
Described as “a lively mix of pulsating traditional Irish dance rhythms, jaw-dropping footwork and legendary Irish songs – all liberally sprinkled with lashings of sparkling Irish wit from our resident bad of balladeers”, the evening includes a three-course dinner.
Fans of contemporary dance have been travelling to the city each May since 2002 for the Dublin Dance Festival, regarded as the leading dance event on the Irish arts calendar.
Other modern Irish dance steps can be seen after pub-closing time and patrons walk home.
Note that in the Republic of Ireland, as with the rest of Britain, drink-driving is an absolute no-no … if you’re going to drink some distance from your place of accommodation, get there and back by black taxi.
The one element of Ireland’s cultural history that is often overlooked by visitors is the legacy left by a legion of literary legends, such as Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, WB Yeats and Brendan Behan.
There is a remarkable collection of literary memorabilia going back more than 300 years to be found at the Dublin Writers’ Museum on Parnell Square.
Alternatively, pop in to the Bachelor Inn on the banks of the Liffey. It’s a typically hospitable pub that celebrates Dublin’s literary heritage by displaying images and witty as well as profound quotes from the city’s most famous writers.
One of my favourites comes from Flann O’Brien: “In Boston he met a pretty lady, fat and forty, but beautiful with the bloom of cash and collateral.”
Now there’s a thought to mull over with your pint and that plate of cockles and mussels.