PENS AND PINTS DUBLIN BALANCES LITERARY TRADITIONS WITH LIVELY PUB CULTURE - SOMETIMES SIMULTANEOUSLY.Byline: Story and photos by Eric Noland Travel Editor DUBLIN, Ireland - The two down-and-outers had come up with a clever scheme for coaxing money out of passersby. Standing on a Suffolk Street sidewalk, they would size up an approaching Dubliner, make an educated guess as to the person's religious persuasion, then break into either a Catholic or Protestant hymn, palms extended all the while. Despite a chilly evening drizzle, we stood by in amusement, noting that most of their assessments were off the mark, forcing them to switch hymns in midstanza. They were also taking great liberty with the lyrics. Finally, when all hope was lost, they'd lapse into profane mutterings. This was all in fun, though. Derek Reid and Jessica Freed were two actors guiding the exceptional Dublin Literary Pub Crawl, during which visitors are introduced to the real-life haunts of the city's astonishing a·ston·ish tr.v. as·ton·ished, as·ton·ish·ing, as·ton·ish·es To fill with sudden wonder or amazement. See Synonyms at surprise. roster of acclaimed writers ... and, uh, the watering holes that helped fuel their inspiration. This bit of street theater street theater n. Dramatization of social and political issues, usually enacted outside, as on the street or in a park. Also called guerrilla theater. Noun 1. wasn't entirely frivolous. The scene was excerpted from ``The Risen People,'' a James Plunkett For the U.S. athlete, see . James Plunkett was the pen-name adopted by James Plunkett Kelly (born Dublin 21 May 1920, died Dublin 28 May 2003), an Irish writer. He was educated at Synge Street CBS. play set in Dublin in 1913, when a transit lockout lockout, intentional closing up of a company, factory, or shop by an employer to prevent employees from working during a strike or labor dispute. The term lockout left 20,000 workers and their 80,000 dependents in desperate straits Noun 1. desperate straits - a state of extreme distress dire straits straits, strait, pass - a bad or difficult situation or state of affairs . The event set the stage for the 1916 Easter Uprising against English rule, which in turn triggered a successful guerrilla war for the establishment of the Irish Free State Irish Free State: see Ireland; Ireland, Republic of . As the drama concluded, Reid didn't dwell on any of these weighty subjects. Instead, he cheerfully led us to our next pub for our next pint. ``The tour is 2 1/4 hours,'' he said, ``depending on how slowly you walk or how quickly you drink.'' Thus was a visit to Dublin made complete - with a time-honored collision of passion, angst, humor and fermented beverage. The city today is inviting on many levels. Gone is the industrial grit of its port origins, replaced with a tech-based economy driven by an army of 20-something professionals. Warehouses have been cleaned up and turned into lofts. Boutique hotels have sprouted - including one, the Clarence, that counts members of U2 among its investors. The Temple Bar district, whose narrow alleys and cobblestone streets were spared the bulldozer in the 1970s, is now an enclave of trendy clubs and cafes. On a visit last fall, we easily mixed the refinement of Dublin's rich literary heritage with the rollicking rol·lick·ing adj. Carefree and high-spirited; boisterous: a rollicking celebration. rol good time for which its pubs are renowned. The Brazen Head provided a generous dose of the latter. Standing on the south bank of the River Liffey, which bisects the city, it purports to be the oldest pub in Ireland, a licensed establishment having operated continuously here since 1198. Late on a Friday night, the walls of a back room fairly shook with music. Two guitar players and an accordion player launched into a rousing program of traditional Irish songs, but this was no predictable show staged for the benefit of tourists. Rather, a mostly local clientele danced in the cramped spaces and sang at the top of their lungs. Turns out a young woman in the crowd was relocating to Australia the next day, and everyone was determined to give her a spirited send-off. The lyrics of one song expressed longing for Ireland, ``my home across the sea!'' On another night, at the Porterhouse, it was evident that the cultural migration flows in all directions. The leader of a blues band transported patrons to the Mississippi Delta with Dock Boggs' ``Sugar Baby,'' then launched into ``my tribute to Al Hooker.'' While listening, we overheard a just-arrived American woman ask a bartender if he had Miller Lite. He was aghast, then recovered to say, ``I doubt you'll be able to find one in the whole country, actually.'' No, the drink of choice here in Dublin is porter, the dark brew with the creamy head. The Porterhouse makes its own - and it is superb - but in most every other pub in town, Guinness flows freely. Ireland's official drink has been brewed in this city since 1759, and most visitors make a pilgrimage to the sprawling Guinness Brewery and Storehouse at St. James's Gate St. James's Gate, located off the south quays of Dublin, on James Street, was the western entrance to the city during the middle ages. Now central to a 64 acre industrial area, St. James Gate was the location of a yearly festival. to learn about the operation - even if they don't drink the stuff. A self-guided tour ascends the floors of a 1904 building where the fermentation once took place, but we were disappointed that the tour was mostly glitz glitz Informal n. Ostentatious showiness; flashiness: "a garish barrage of show-biz glitz" Peter G. Davis. tr.v. , with little authenticity. Lights blinked, drums thumped, wall-size video screens flashed, listening posts listening posts, n.pl in craniosacral therapy, the places on the body from which the therapist can perceive the flow of cerebrospinal fluid or energy in the patient. The ankles or the occiput (i.e., the base of the skull) are the standard listening posts. offered sounds of gurgling Gurgling is a characteristic sound made by unstable two-phase fluid flow, for example, as liquid is poured from a bottle, or during gargling. water and brewery workers at their tasks, but it was all so antiseptic. It would have been much more interesting to see some actual working elements of the brewing process - barley being roasted, perhaps, or a cooper making a barrel. The payoff at the end of the tour, however, is considerable. At the very summit of the building is the Gravity Bar, where floor-to-ceiling windows provide a 360-degree perspective on Dublin. Only the city's church steeples stab higher into the sky. A pint of Guinness is included with an adult ticket, and bartenders at the circular bar in the center of the room are kept busy. ``We'll pull 4,000 pints in a busy day,'' said one. This drink is so intertwined with the city's personality that St. Stephen's Green, a lovely park on the south side, includes a statue of Sir Arthur Guinness, a brewery magnate who put up money to restore the park in the 1880s. Of course, the park also has monuments to more conventional subjects, including writers James Joyce and W.B. Yeats (one of Henry Moore's blob statues commemorates the latter). Dublin's literary roots are also preserved - along with the buildings - nearby at Merrion Square, where rows of 18th-century Georgian town houses preen with elaborate fan-tail windows and doors painted in bright colors: orange, turquoise, yellow, dark red, blue, and of course the ubiquitous Kelly green. Yeats once lived here - a plaque marks the dwelling at 82 Merrion Square South. On the north side of the square, meanwhile, is the boyhood home of Oscar Wilde, and in peaceful Merrion Square Gardens is a whimsical statue of him - stretched out upon a massive boulder, a wry expression on his face. Panels nearby hold excerpts from Wilde's social comedies: ``Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast,'' and ``It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much and live with her too little.'' The written word is revered in Dublin, and has been for hundreds of years. At Trinity College's Old Library, some of the most important manuscripts of first-millennium Christianity are displayed under glass in a dimly lit room. The signature work is the ``Book of Kells Book of Kells: see Ceanannus Mór. Book of Kells Illuminated manuscript version of the four Gospels, c. late 8th–early 9th century. ,'' an intricately decorated version of the four gospels, produced in the ninth century at a monastery on the island of Iona. In their haste to see it, however, many visitors miss other treasures in the collection: the ``Book of Murrow,'' a pocket gospel in a worn leather satchel, used for missionary work in the countryside in the eighth century; the ``Book of Armagh The Book of Armagh (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 52) is a 9th century Irish manuscript. It is also known as the Canon of Patrick and the Liber Ar(d)machanus. It contains some of the oldest surviving specimens of Old Irish. ,'' a complete New Testament that was created about the same time as the ``Book of Kells''; and the ``Book of Durrow The Book of Durrow (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. 4. 5. (57)) is a 7th century illuminated manuscript in the Insular style made either at Durrow Abbey near Durrow in County Offaly Ireland, or in Northumbria in Northern England, with modern and traditional scholarship ,'' a version of the gospels that dates to the seventh century. Upstairs is the Long Room, where 200,000 of the college's oldest books are on shelves stacked two stories high. They're off-limits to visitors because of their fragility, and you'll surely yearn to climb one of the rickety rick·et·y adj. rick·et·i·er, rick·et·i·est 1. Likely to break or fall apart; shaky. 2. Feeble with age; infirm. 3. Of, having, or resembling rickets. ladders and thumb some ancient, leather-bound volume. Over the years the ``Book of Kells'' survived invasions and fires and Protestant purges. The Irish can note with smug satisfaction that the book endures to this day because Viking invaders who got their hands on it 1,000 years ago were content to pry the jewels out of the cover binding - they had no interest in words on pages. That was never the case in this country. Ireland has produced four winners of the Nobel Prize Nobel Prize, award given for outstanding achievement in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, peace, or literature. The awards were established by the will of Alfred Nobel, who left a fund to provide annual prizes in the five areas listed above. for literature: Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw (1925), Samuel Beckett (1969) and Seamus Heaney (1995). Other prominent writers include Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, Bram Stoker, Wilde and Joyce. The legacy of these and many others is safeguarded at the Dublin Writers Museum The Dublin Writers Museum was opened in November 1991 at No 18, Parnell Square, Dublin, Republic of Ireland. The museum occupies an original 18th-century house, which accommodates the museum rooms, library, gallery and administration area. on the city's north side. Display cases hold manuscripts, first editions, photographs, play bills, typewriters and eyeglasses eyeglasses or spectacles, instrument or device for aiding and correcting defective sight. Eyeglasses usually consist of a pair of lenses mounted in a frame to hold them in position before the eyes. . Be sure to avail yourself of the outstanding audio program. It transports visitors into this world of letters, with recitations, period music, scratchy recordings of the writers themselves, and intriguing details about their lives and careers. You might get a chill when the narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. reads a passage from Stoker's ``Dracula,'' describing the book's central figure. You might wince to hear that Wilde was sent to prison for two years in the 1880s for having engaged in homosexual acts. Ireland's women writers are well-represented here, too, among them novelist Maria Edgeworth, playwright Augusta Gregory, poet Katherine Tynan and short-story writer Elizabeth Bowen. Give Ireland's writers points for spunk, too. An exhibit notes that a controversial stanza from a Patrick Kavanagh poem was censored before it went to press ... but here it is restored in the margin in Kavanagh's own hand! It was this rich heritage that drew us to the Literary Pub Crawl in the first place. The actors who lead the tour not only perform scenes from plays, but also spin biographical anecdotes and recite - often from memory - long passages from novels and poems. Along the way, stops are made at pubs that have literary significance - either they found their way into fiction ... or the writers of fiction found their way into them. The tour concludes, for example, at Davy Byrnes, the real-life pub into which Leopold Bloom, Joyce's protagonist in ``Ulysses,'' stops for the sustenance of a Gorgonzola sandwich with mustard and a glass of Burgundy. (Have the same thing if you wish; the sandwich is on the menu for 4.95 euros.) The two actors leading our tour really brought the literature to life. At the Duke pub, where we first assembled, they acted out a scene from Beckett's ``Waiting for Godot Waiting for Godot tramps consider hanging themselves because Godot has failed to arrive to set things straight. [Anglo-French Drama: Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot in Magill III, 1113] See : Despair Waiting for Godot ,'' their natural Irish brogues n. pl. 1. Breeches. enlivening en·liv·en tr.v. en·liv·ened, en·liv·en·ing, en·liv·ens To make lively or spirited; animate. en·liv  en·er n. the dialogue. Then we were conducted to a cobblestone quad at Trinity College, which was a higher-learning crucible for Swift, Goldsmith, Stoker, Wilde and Beckett. Reid quoted some of Wilde's observations of Trinity, and Freed recited a Wilde passage about lecturing on art before a room of uncouth silver miners on a trip to America. In the midst Adv. 1. in the midst - the middle or central part or point; "in the midst of the forest"; "could he walk out in the midst of his piece?" midmost of it all, the moon peeked from behind the college's Campanile campanile (kămpənē`lē, Ital. kämpänē`lā), Italian form of bell tower, constructed chiefly during the Middle Ages. , and organ music could be heard coming from a nearby chapel. It was a magical moment. Later, after the scene from ``The Risen People'' conveyed the despair of Dublin's citizenry a century ago, Reid led the way to the Old Stand, noting as we entered that this pub was frequented by independence leader Michael Collins. It was a warm and lively place on the night of our visit, and it was comforting to think that Collins, even in the midst of a revolt, might have sat on one of these very stools, finding relief from his tribulations in a song, a laugh or a pint. As Dublin often does, then and now. Eric Noland, (818) 713-3681 eric.noland(at)dailynews.com IF YOU GO BRAZEN HEAD PUB: 20 Bridge St. (011-353) 1-679-5186. DUBLIN LITERARY PUB CRAWL: Through Nov. 28, the tour is offered nightly at 7:30 p.m., also Sunday at noon. In winter, it is offered Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 p.m., also noon Sunday. The tour costs about $14.50, $11.50 for students, and can be booked in advance at the Dublin Tourism Office on Suffolk Street, or at the Duke pub, where the tour begins, a half-hour before it is to begin. The Duke pub is on Duke Street, off Grafton Street. www.dublinpubcrawl.com; (011-353) 1-670-5602. DUBLIN WRITERS MUSEUM: 18 Parnell Square. Open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday and public holidays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. In June, July and August, stays open until 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Admission is about $9.50 for adults, $5.80 for children. www.writersmuseum.com; (011-353) 1-872-2077. EDEN Eden, in the Bible Eden, in the Bible. 1 Son of Joah. 2 Priest. Perhaps this is the same as (1.) 3 See Eden, Garden of. 4 Unidentified trading center, possibly in Mesopotamia. : This restaurant is a good choice if you have plans for the early evening. It offers a three-course prix fixe menu for 24 euros, aimed at theatergoers. It's an airy restaurant, with an open kitchen and large windows overlooking Meeting House Square. Entree selections could be described as Irish comfort food: roast mallard mallard: see duck. mallard Abundant “wild duck” (Anas platyrhynchos, family Anatidae) of the Northern Hemisphere, ancestor of most domestic ducks. The mallard is a typical dabbling duck in its general habits and courtship display. , braised braise tr.v. braised, brais·ing, brais·es To cook (meat or vegetables) by browning in fat, then simmering in a small quantity of liquid in a covered container. lamb shank shank (shangk) 1. leg (1). 2. crus ( 2). shank n. The part of the human leg between the knee and ankle. , pan- fried fish filets, thyme-scented risotto ri·sot·to n. pl. ri·sot·tos A dish of rice cooked in broth, usually with saffron, and served with grated cheese. [Italian, from riso, rice, from Old Italian; see rice. . (011-353) 1-670-5370; www.edenrestaurant.ie. GUINNESS STOREHOUSE: St. James's Gate. Through June, open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. In July and August, stays open until 8 p.m. Admission is about $20 for adults, $13.50 for seniors, $7.15 for children. Family admission - two adults, up to four children under 18 - is about $43. www.guinness-storehouse.com; (011-353) 1-453-8364. MERMAID CAFE: This tiny establishment on Dame Street is wondrously innovative at dinnertime. You'll put down the menu the instant you spot the nightly specials written on a chalkboard on the wall. We ordered entirely from these selections, and were delighted with a wild mushroom, artichoke artichoke, name for two different plants of the family Asteraceae (aster family), both having edible parts. The French, or globe, artichoke (Cynara scolymus and Parmesan soup; a salad of rocket lettuce, tomato, feta fet·a n. A white semisoft cheese usually made of goat's or ewe's milk and often preserved in brine. [Modern Greek (turi) pheta, (cheese) slice, from Italian fetta, slice cheese, walnuts and beet roots; and char-grilled Hereford strip loin loin (loin) the part of the back between the thorax and pelvis. loin n. The part of the body on either side of the spinal column between the ribs and the pelvis. steaks, green beans, and potatoes mashed with sage, mustard, roasted garlic and truffle truffle (trŭf`əl) [Fr.], subterranean edible fungus that forms a mutually beneficial (symbiotic) relationship with the roots of certain trees and plants. The part of the fungus used as food is the ascoma, the fruiting body of the fungus. butter. (011-353) 1-670-8236; www.mermaid.ie. THE OLD STAND PUB: 37 Exchequer St. www.the oldstandpub.com; (011-353) 1-677-7220. PORTERHOUSE PUB: 16-18 Parliament St. (011-353) 1-671-5715; www.porterhousebrewco.com/templebar.html. TRINITY COLLEGE OLD LIBRARY: College Street. Open Monday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday from noon to 4:30. From May through September, will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is about $11 for adults, $9.30 for students and seniors, children under 12 free. www.tcd.ie/library/heritage/index.php. CAPTION(S): 8 photos, box, map Photo: (1 -- 4 -- color) A statue of Oscar Wilde in a jaunty jaun·ty adj. jaun·ti·er, jaun·ti·est 1. Having a buoyant or self-confident air; brisk. 2. Crisp and dapper in appearance; natty. 3. Archaic a. Stylish. b. Genteel. pose, above, pays homage to Dublin's literary traditions, while stacks of barrels on the Guinness tour, above right, honor another essential element of city culture. The Literary Pub Crawl, far right, led here by Jessica Freed and Derek Reid combines both. Dublin is a colorful city - literally on Merrion Square, near right, where the doors of Georgian town houses are painted in bright hues. (5 -- 7) St. Stephen's Green, above, offers a lush retreat amid the concrete, steel and paving stones of Dublin's center. But if you're up for a stroll (and a pint), visit some of the pubs of the city's core, including O'Neills, above right, which has been around over 300 years, and the Brazen Head, below right, Dublin's oldest pub, where a license has been held on the site since 1198. (8) Dublin Castle was the fortresslike seat of British governance over the Emerald Isle centuries; many Irish political prisoners were held in its tower. Eric Noland/Travel Editor Box: IF YOU GO (see text) Map: DUBLIN Jorge Irribarren/Staff Artist |
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