WWI Armistice Day: Recalling the Exploits of the Fighting Irish

The First World War formally ended on this day in 1918. The armistice that ended hostilities came into effect 'on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month'.

All told, 16 million (counting combatants and civilians) are believed to have perished in what has gone done in history as one of the deadliest human conflicts and, at the time, no doubt the deadliest. The map of Europe was completely redrawn and the world was altered completely by the outcome of the war.

Ireland has its own experience and legacy arising out of the conflict into which it was drawn, even though it was not an independent country at the time. Indeed, the emergence of an independent Irish state was in no small part an outcome of the war: the Easter Rising of 1916 can seen as one small but important chapter of that war.

Conflicting emotions surrounding participation in World War I, as felt by many Irish people both then and now, are touched upon here in a poem by Joe Canning entitled, Once in a Dublin Bar Room, which we are reproducing here with the kind permission of the author.

For some, the fighting goes on!

Once in a Dublin Bar Room

by J.Canning

On a stool in a bar room in Tallaght,
Sat a young man returned from the war.
Lost in his thoughts, he sat silent
As the bartender polished the jars.
The silence was suddenly broken
By Dunleavy sat down by the door,
"Would ye look at yer man in the corner.
Just back from Gallipoli's shore.
That blackguard up there on the bar stool,"
He said, "Yes boy! I'm talking of you.
You dare to come back to this city,
Do you take us for eejits and fools.
When you were away on your travels,
Fighting for England at war,
Real men were fighting in Ireland,
Men fit to drink in a bar.
Have you not got a tongue in your head, Sir?"
Dunleavy continued to scowl.
"Have you no shame returning to Tallaght?
Have you nothing to say to us now?"
The stranger continued his sipping,
Looked at the bar man and sighed,
"Can you please tell that clown to be quiet,
Or I'll up and I'll blacken his eyes."
Dunleavy incensed by the statement,
Stood up and cast coat to the floor
Rolled his shirt sleeves to his elbows
And instantly crossed the pub floor.
"Is it fighting yer after, ye traitor?"
He clenched his hard fists with a grin,
"Be careful, Sir!" uttered the stranger.
"Contain yourself, reel yourself in.
I've heard you're a true Irish patriot,"
The stranger did say with a grin,
"Those medals you earned in the fracas;
You fought against cruel black and tan.
Be careful of what you are saying,
And it's true that I fought in the war,
Take care that you don't touch my person,
Or I'll scatter you all round the bar."
"Would you look at the face of the traitor!"
Dunleavy points out to the bar,
"Would ye look at the wounds earned at Suvla,
Would ye look at the Ottoman scars."
The bar man said, "Hush now, Dunleavy!
Leave this young man at his peace,"
But Dunleavy, the bully, continued to sully
As he spouted more scorn and disgrace.
The stranger then stared at Dunleavy,
"They tell me, round here you're the man,
But they don't know when you served in London,
You threw down your rifle and scrammed.
They don't know the 10th from the Curragh,
Have you marked as a rat and a coward.
Those brave men all fine sons of Ireland,
That the Turks with machine guns devoured."
Dunleavy now shamed and defeated,
Exposed as a shirker from war,
Spoke not a word and clearly disturbed
Did shamefully exit the bar.
The stranger then turned to the others,
"I care not what you think of me,
For I fell for the lie,'If you join in the fight,
You'll come home to an Ireland's that's free'.
He continued as all stood and listened,
"It's cost me my wife and my son.
It's cost me my friends and my neighbours,
Wherever I go I am shunned."
Dunleavy then entered the bar room once more,
To the stranger his fists he did draw,
'Till he stepped from the stool, called Dunleavy a fool,
And he clinically shattered his jaw.

Copyright (c) J. Canning 2015. All rights reserved. Published here by kind permission of the author - www.facebook.com/thebirdstownboy

Two Poems - MacDonagh and MacNeice

We were contacted recently by Niall MacDonagh, son of Donagh MacDonagh, who had this to say about Dublin Made Me, the title of the poem which also serves as the name of this website:

I just need to record that it upsets me that, of all the poetry, plays, stories my father left behind, THAT piece of verse is what is remembered. The thing is that it is not about Dublin at all but a put down of the rest of the country. Read it and you will see what I am saying.

Now, if you want a very fine poem about Dublin (by a non Dubliner) see this:

Dublin

Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals -
O'Connell, Grattan, Moore -
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.

This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades -
The catcalls and the pain,
The glamour of her squalor,
The bravado of her talk.

The lights jig in the river
With a concertina movement
And the sun comes up in the morning
Like barley-sugar on the water
And the mist on the Wicklow hills
Is close, as close
As the peasantry were to the landlord,
As the Irish to the Anglo-Irish,
As the killer is close one moment
To the man he kills,
Or as the moment itself
Is close to the next moment.

She is not an Irish town
And she is not English,
Historic with guns and vermin
And the cold renown
Of a fragment of Church latin,
Of an oratorical phrase.
But oh the days are soft,
Soft enough to forget
The lesson better learnt,
The bullet on the wet
Streets, the crooked deal,
The steel behind the laugh,
The Four Courts burnt.

Fort of the Dane,
Garrison of the Saxon,
Augustan capital
Of a Gaelic nation,
Appropriating all
The alien brought,
You give me time for thought
And by a juggler's trick
You poise the toppling hour -
O greyness run to flower,
Grey stone, grey water,
And brick upon grey brick.
– Louis MacNeice

A good point and well-taken. Grateful we are too, to be reminded of Louis MacNeice's sombre yet elegant paean to the city. Irish people of a certain generation will possibly recall being taught both MacNeice's and MacDonagh's poems as part of English curriculum.

Donagh MacDonagh (1912-1968) was an Irish writer, judge, presenter, broadcaster, and playwright. According to Wikipedia:

He wrote poetic dramas and ballad operas. He published three volumes of poetry: Veterans and Other Poems (1943), The Hungry Grass (1947) and A Warning to Conquerors (1969). He also edited the Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1958) with Lennox Robinson. A play, Happy As Larry, was translated into a number of languages. He had three other plays produced: God's Gentry (a ballad opera about the tinkers), Lady Spinder (about Deirdre of the Sorrows and the Three sons of Ussna and by far his best writing) and Step in the Hollow a piece of situation comedy nonsense. He also wrote short stories. He published Twenty Poems with Niall Sheridan; staged first Irish production of Murder in the Cathedral with Liam Redmond, later his brother-in-law. Furthermost he was a popular broadcaster on Radio Éireann.

His books are no longer in print but we understand that a project is underway to publish all of his writings, in e-book form, or at least those that can be found: it appears that he was a very prolific writer. Websites that contains links to his poems and plays can be found here and here. The National Library of Ireland also holds some of his personal letters and papers, in addition to those of his father, Thomas MacDonagh, also a poet and playwright, who was among the leaders of the 1916 Rising subsequently executed for his role, his name appearing as one of the signatories to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast in 1907, to parents originally from the west of Ireland. It is recorded that when he was six, his mother was admitted to a Dublin nursing home suffering from severe depression and he did not see her again. Inauspicious beginnings you might say, to his relationship with a city that would inspire him to write those lines.

His first trip to Dublin appears to have been in 1934, when he met with William Butler Yeats. The poem, Dublin was written in 1939 and first appeared in a collection entitled The Last Ditch, which was published in 1940. The strength and endurance of the lines which he penned, are nowhere better exemplified than in this recital, given by a true Dubliner, albeit recorded on the streets of Galway, a city to be found amongst -

The raw and hungry hills of the West
The lean road flung over profitless bog
Where only a snipe could nest
Where the sea takes its tithe of every boat.
Bawneen and currach have no allegiance of mine

One can only wonder how words like "This never was my town ...and she will not have me alive or dead" must resonate in the heart of a homeless exile.


Reference Material:

• The MacDonagh Website
• Niall MacDonagh's Website
• Wikipedia - Donagh MacDonagh
• Biography of Louis MacNeice from Poetry Foundation
• Wikipedia - Louis MacNeice

By Way of Introduction: Dublin Made Me

Welcome to Dublin Made Me - the blog that explores the culture of Dublin, Ireland's capital city, as it has been immortalised down through the years, in music, literature, art.

What better way to start the ball rolling than Dublin's own Colin Farrell and his reading from the poem by Donagh MacDonagh which also happens to be the name as our blog. It's called Dublin Made Me.

Donagh MacDonagh was a writer, judge, broadcaster and playwright. He was born in Dublin in 1912, the son of Thomas MacDonagh, an Irish nationalist and poet, who was executed for his role in the Easter Rising of 1916. He died on 1 January 1968 and is buried at Deans Grange Cemetery in Dublin.

This is Dublin Made Me by Donagh MacDonagh read by Dublin-born actor Colin Farrell. Colin is still very much alive, earning fame and renown as Hollywood actor. He hasn't let it get to his head though as, on the evidence of this, he remembers where it started. 

Way to go Colin. Good on ya Donough. On ya boyos. No culchies here I tells ya. If there was I'd bate them wit me schtick.

Watch this space for more ...