97. Pub Crawls

I don't drink much alcohol. Once in a while a margarita or a beer. It’s a social lubricant like breaking bread together. So I'm really stretching my boundaries by doing two Pub Crawls in the last two days. It's not for a dark stout Guinness, but rather for the storytelling and music that accompanies it.

This evening I was at the Ha’ Penny Inn right at the foot of the Half Penny footbridge over the River Liffey that divides Dublin from north to south. Historically the north had a rougher edge, more associated with the rebellions, or as they say “risings.” The south has Trinity College, Christ Church cathedral, all within the original medieval walls of civilization. And yes, back in the day there was a half penny toll paid to cross the Ha’ Penny Bridge. 

Tonight “Booster” and Owen are playing and talking, which the Irish famously do even more than drinking. The Irish Pipes are different in that they don’t have a mouth piece like the Scottish Highland pipes. Instead they have two bellows, one under each arm.

Between all the pipes, from canter to drones, one can perform up to thirteen different musical movements at the same time. To me that’s other worldly beyond my grasp. The deep drone pipes are akin to the didgeridoo of Australia or the deep Tibetan tones in chanting. Add in a tin whistle, a goat skinned hand drum larger than a tambourine, plus a guitar and you have the jigs and reels of Irish music which seem much faster and playful than their musical cousins in Scotland.

And then there’s the storytelling. Dubliners drink Guinness beer. Go south to County Cork and they only drink Murphy’s stout beer. It happened once in the past when there was a shortage of Murphy’s, but Cork refused to drink Guinness, and instead turned to hard apple cider which they had to import from England. Their common enemy.

After the Ha’ Penny we crossed the Liffey to the north side to Flanagan’s basement. There Owen played a small Irish harp. Ireland is the only country in the world with a musical instrument as its national symbol. No bald eagle here. This alone reveals how the Irish are different from all other countries who have their symbolic figures of strength as martial courage. The harp is not intimidating, on the contrary. This also mirrors Ireland's sensitivity toward any feeling of occupation by Britain and subsequently an empathy towards any country they see as occupied or colonized.

Flanagan’s basement had its own back story as it was the haunt of Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker of Dracula fame. Besides sharing a drink, the two authors enjoyed billiards, absinthe and the same woman. That was only part of their living outside the accepted norms. The father of their mutual love interest was a prior owner of now Flanagan's. So here they had a safe house, so to speak, that protected them from getting arrested.

The night before I was with a different pub crawl starting at The Duke before moving to O"Neill's.

This pub crawl featured actors instead of musicians. They recounted excerpts and stories of Irish literary giants such as James Joyce, Samuel Becket and again Oscar Wilde. All three eventually went into self exile in Paris. Dublin's censorship of their writing and life styles drove them to a more open society where they could speak more authentically, if not breathe freely.

But today Dublin is designated as a UNESCO City of Literature because of all it's renowned authors. This prestigious acknowledgement is given for a commitment to literary culture. I'm sure Dublin's self exiled writers would find this more than ironic, if not hypocritical.

While in Dublin, Joyce once was challenged to traverse the city of Dublin without passing a single pub. Like Alexander the Great he solved the Gordian knot with a simple solution. Joyce just went into every pub along the way instead of passing them up. Problem solved.

Joyce’s most famous work is “Ulysses” which chronicles the experiences of three Dubliners over the course of a single day. This stream of consciousness narrative left Joyce’s mind open to public scrutiny and even a trial for obscenity. Parallel to Homer’s epic poem the “Odyssey,” the main character Leopold Bloom faces challenges on his way home, as did Ulysses.

After O'Neill's, one of our stops was David Byrnes pub, a chapter eight event in Ulysses. I only know one friend who has read it. Not me. It’s too much work. The reader must have the will to become their own Ulysses to finish the journey. Our pub crawl finished late. Even though I drank my pint, I was hungry for an evening dinner. The pub kitchens were closing. My only choice was a popular Asian noodle restaurant with Uber Eats drivers parked out front and a lot of people in the street, all fifty years younger than me. Chinese curry rice with chicken was my take-out. Like Leopold Bloom I finally made it home. 

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P.S. For the record, why is a bar or tavern even called a “pub” ?

In the past, most Irish homes, if not all, made their own brew, what we’d call “moonshine” in the States. Even my father’s family during Prohibition had a secret brewing distillery (a still) in the woods on their farm. The safest time to work it would be at night, better yet in moonlight so you could see what you’re doing. But back to the Irish, they would invite friends into their home for a drink. Finally, the “powers that be” wanted to stop this practice of homemade liquor in private houses by licensing an establishment of alcohol and taxing it. The legal drinking would now be done in “public houses” or pubs, to put it simply. There it could be controlled. Actually, our U.S, Prohibition was repealed, not just because it failed, but because the government was missing out on all the revenue of taxing a very plentiful and popular human behavior.