The Vasectomy Doctor (10 page)

At this point in the proceedings in this lecture hall in Grangegorman, the professor says that he would now like to introduce us
to a classical case of manic depressive psychosis. With that he stands
up and taking a big key from his pocket he walks over to a door at the side of the room, unlocks it and admits his poor unfortunate individual. We are then invited to ask this man whatever we like. This is like a scene from
The Elephant Man
. This is my first introduction to a person, or patient if you prefer, in which I am cast in the doctor's role and the man is being afforded about as much dignity as one would normally give to a head of cabbage. Why is he under lock and key in the first place? Does he not have some human rights? These were the kind of questions that I would have liked to ask, but wise undergraduates do not make waves.

* * *

We have all left the Abbey Tavern at this stage. We have had enough of it and they have made the venue much larger and the fun has gone out of it a bit. That said, I worked there for the best part of two years for two, three and sometimes four nights a week and never once did I think of this as work. It was always enjoyable and always different. But all things come to an end and besides I was offered a handier number that did not require our having to travel all the way out to Howth every evening. O'Donoghues of Merrion Row, the Mecca itself, were looking for some resident musicians and
singers and I am asked if I would be interested. I jumped at the chance.

This place is a phenomenon and an icon and it all happened
more or less by chance. It is not as if the owners, Paddy and Maureen O'Donoghue, set out to own an Irish traditional music and singing pub. Far from it. They in fact owned this pub for many years and doggedly persisted with the then Dublin convention of barring all singing in their pub. Singing, for some reason that I never quite understood, was associated, at least in the mind of the publican, with drunkenness and rowdiness and debauchery and no ‘respectable' pub therefore ever allowed singing. Indeed neither Paddy nor Maureen had any particular interest in or knowledge of traditional music as they freely admitted themselves. So how did it come about then that they ended up owning the busiest and most famous traditional Irish music pub in the world?

It did not happen by design but rather by stealth. The story goes that one evening towards the end of 1962 Johnny Moynihan was in there and was playing the tin-whistle with his coat over his head so as not to be seen. This serious breach of convention was tolerated for a while but Johnny was eventually asked to cease and desist. But at least the ice had been cracked, if not entirely broken. Now, as we have already seen, a lot of singers and musicians were already con
gregating in places like the Pipers Club, the Fiddlers Club, the Wren's
Nest out in the Strawberry Beds, Johnny Fox's up in the Dublin
Mountains and the Coffee Kitchen in Molesworth Street which hap
pened to be only a block away from O'Donoghues. Some of these people were also getting engagements to play in concerts and so on and badly needed a central place to practise. Johnny Moynihan was such a person and he already had a toe into O'Donoghues. Gentle pressure was brought to bear on Paddy and Maureen and a legend was born. Years later Maureen would often say ‘God was good to them'. He was indeed but it took some persuading.

Maureen O'Donoghue was a stout lady with a big heart. She administered to her minions from the tiny kitchen that opened into the space behind the bar. Here at lunchtime she presided over an enormous pot of homemade soup and she made up sandwiches to go with this – cheese and tomato, ham or chicken with lots of mustard. From this vantage point she could see everything that was going on, which was usually quite a lot. Maureen never missed a trick. She either loved you or hated you with very little scope in between. You could easily find yourself barred from the pub. For example, wearing your hair too long was a classic barring offence and a rather odd choice given that we all wore our hair longish in those days. It was of course a matter of degree.

But that said I do know for a fact that many is the time that she would discreetly look after people by way of not charging them for soup and sandwiches or indeed the odd pint of Guinness. These might be men who had fallen on hard times or perhaps who may have been the worse for the drink. Alcoholism and ballads are frequent bedfellows.

Paddy O'Donoghue too was a decent kind of a man with old-fashioned good manners and graciousness. He was bald, wore thick black-rimmed glasses and smoked St Bernard's plug tobacco in a twisted pipe. He kept an eye on everything and made sure nobody got out of hand. He worked behind the bar and always had a word for everyone.

We played there three nights a week – Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In our group at the back of the shop there were the McKenna brothers, Ted and Gordon, who between them played guitar and mandolin. They both also sang, Ted being the better of the two. ‘The Blackleg Miner' was one of their favourites:

It is in the evening after dark

That the blackleg miner goes to work

With his corduroys and his dirty shirt

There goes your blackleg miner.

There was Pat Pender, also guitar and vocals, and Pat Stokes who played concertina. There was myself on whistle and singing the odd song and there was Hughie McCormack, the Leitrim fiddle player who spoke fluent Irish. Other musicians like flute player Des Kenny would also join us from time to time. There were no hard and fast rules. Our job was to keep the craic going but if there were enough volunteers from outside our group who wanted to play or sing then that was fine with us too. We just let things roll and the evening often grew organically. We were on free drink for the night plus £3. There was a kind of gentleman's agreement that ‘free drink' was a maximum of four pints. There was also a kind of unspoken rule that you did not put it about too much that you were being paid for your contribution. The logic behind this rule was that if people got the
notion that certain artists were being paid to sing or play then every
one else would have a right to be aggrieved if they too were not given a free pint having sung ‘Fine Girl You Are' off key.

There are a lot of myths that have grown up about O'Donoghues
of Merrion Row over the years. One is that The Dubliners played there. One or two of The Dubliners might occasionally, indeed only very occasionally, call by for something or other but they never played there as a paid group. In the early days they may have practised here, not that The Dubliners were ever that pushed about practising. The fact of the matter is that they were too big and this place too small for such a thing to ever happen. It was, as it remains today, a tiny pub with a bar and window space to the front, a small lounge to the rear and that's that. There is no stage, no rostrum, no microphones or sound system. Whatever music there may be at any given time comes from the floor with the singers or musicians depending entirely on the audience's respect as to whether they will be heard or not and, often as not, the audience's respect leaves a lot to be desired. This place is not for the fainthearted.

During the 1960s O'Donoghues of Merrion Row was a ‘head place' more so than a traditional musical pub. It was perhaps more interesting to be there around lunchtime on a Tuesday rather than late on a Saturday night when things were mad. At quiet times like these you might get a song from Joe Heaney who might have an audience of four people, all who would have known and respected what he was doing. Joe was an angular and slightly angry Connemara man with that hard Spanish look often found in people from
the west of Ireland. He felt very bitter about how he had never really
been appreciated in Ireland or by Irish audiences. He had no time at all for Radio Éireann for example and other organs of the state that he thought should have been more helpful. He may well have had a point of course. It is just that he did tend to go on a lot about it. But I loved him. He was such a superb singer, so true to note and ornament singing with his eyes open and fixed to his right in an ancient and sad vernacular that would bring tears to your eyes and make you proud to be Irish. That this man should have ended his
days as a porter in a Manhattan hotel is a serious indictment of us all.

Or Seamus Ennis might take out the uilleann pipes just to tune them up before going off onto his next gig and then, while he had them strapped on, he might play a few tunes. It was a workshop, a school, a meeting place, an office, a club and a boozer and eating place all rolled into one. At the street end of the counter was a large message board a bit like the tree outside the New Stanley hotel in Nairobi, where people left messages for each other not knowing if they would ever be received. But the mobile phone was yet to be imagined and landlines and coin boxes were at best problematic, so this notice board was extremely important if, for example, you wanted to ask someone to do a gig on such and such a date. I got plenty of work from this notice board.

There was another thing about O'Donoghue's that was very useful: it was a great place for keeping up with what else was going on in the music world outside of Dublin. Someone in there would always know which was the best Fleadh Cheoil that weekend and who was going to it and you could always go into Merrion Row the Saturday morning of a Fleadh weekend and try to bum a lift. During the 1960s I must have been to at least twenty Fleadh Cheoils in all. Some stand out in my memory above the rest. The All Ireland in Boyle 1967 is a good example. All Irelands were always held over the August bank holiday weekend and those in the know would always stay back until Tuesday when all the cowboys and messers would have gone home. This was the day that the more serious collectors and artists had the place to themselves and my brother Davoc and I were in a pub next door to Grehan's at the top of the square in Boyle. Here by chance we found Willie Clancy and he in full flight. Willie at that time would have been one of Ireland's best known uilleann pipers and it was a great privilege to be in his company and to be at what amounted to a private audience with him.

My brother, who was and still is a better whistle player than I am, played along with Willie as best he could and I played a slow air or two during the afternoon which Willie very graciously ack
nowledged. The truth of the matter is though that my playing in such
elevated company was almost laughable. Willie sang three songs also that afternoon. These were all new songs to me and one was funnier than the next. He sang ‘The Gander', ‘The Family Ointment' and ‘The Taylor Bawn'. To this day I still sing ‘The Gander' and would consider it among my top five songs in popularity:

One evening of late as I strayed and I rambled through fields

Where oft times I've wandered with haste and with very quick speed.

I'd be going to a frake where rakes and fractions they do meet

There'd be drinks and strong tae, hot cakes and things that are sweet.

Now this evening was freezing indeed then it was very cold

There was frost in me heels me Boys and there were cramps in me toes

So I thought it no harm to warm me shanks by the fire

Expecting Maura and her daughter that they surely would me admire.

The tae pot came round in spouts we got stuff that was strong

Oh Maura says spake or make a verse of a song,

Old Bill in the corner he cursed and he swore with the fright

Since his gander was stolen and roasted last Saturday night.

Now Bill's gander was old he was noble both sturdy and strong

He never grew cold although he lived very long.

His beak and his legs were as yellow as the gold it do shine

And his gub it could bore an inch hole in a very short time.

And I have travelled Killarney, Killgarven, Kanturk, and Millstreet

Along by Cork Harbour I'd be hawking in turkeys and in geese

But in all of my rambles and travels no finer did I meet

Than the likes of Bill's gander for grandeur and very fine breed

Now the girls they all came for game and they were looking for breed

When they heard of the name and the fame of Bill and his Geese

They measured this gander's fine legs with a carpenter's rule

But they never could part him once they saw the fine length of his wings.

There is a wit and a genius threaded through this song of internal rhyme and rhythm that is a quintessential Irish mix of the brilliant and the utterly absurd, the beautiful and the ridiculous. The song is about nothing and everything all at once. The genius is buried deep inside the nonsensical. I love it. My only great regret is that, like most great songs, we have absolutely no idea who wrote it. If I knew who the man was I would visit his grave every year and place goose feathers by his tombstone. May he rest always in peace for he has given me much.

Had I not wandered into that pub beside Grehan's on that Tuesday after the All Ireland Fleadh Cheoil in 1967 I would never have met Willie Clancy and I would never have learned ‘The Gander' and my entire life would have been just that fraction less enriched. Chance is an extraordinary thing all the same, is it not?

Attending Fleadh Cheoils during the 1960s was a hazardous business and never quite risk free. First of all there were the messers and the cowboys to be contended with. These were kind of benign lager louts with guitars and bodhráns who roamed the streets in droves singing or rather shouting out some of the words of ‘The
Black Velvet Band' or ‘The Shoals of Herring', it had to be a ‘Clancy
number'. They were usually naked from the waist up. You could only put up with so much of these gobshites. Where they were really annoying was when someone, maybe a child even, was playing or singing something sweet and delicate that the rest of us wanted to listen to. Although in actual fact I have never been in a fight in my life, fighting with some of these yobdaws was always on the cards.