In the Clonliffe House pub, Ballybough, for a history talk one night recently, I crossed the road to visit one of Dublin’s more fascinating gardens.
“Garden” might be an overstatement – it’s just a landscaped street corner really, with flowers, shrubbery, and a pair of benches. But it’s remarkable that this is now a pleasant place to linger, day or night. Because in former times, it was somewhere to avoid or hurry through.
In his book The Neighbourhoods of Dublin (1913), Weston St John Joyce recalled a time when people “would have gone a considerable round rather than pass that unhallowed spot after nightfall”.
And as recently as 1990, when Ballybough featured in a Dáil debate, TD John Stafford spoke of a tradition whereby “spirits” were believed to haunt another green space nearby: “the park beside Luke Kelly Bridge”.
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A Dublin City Council sign at the landscaped corner explains the area’s reputation:
“By tradition, this site at the junction of Ballybough and Clonliffe Roads is an old Felo de Se burial ground. Felo de Se or the crime of murdering one’s self was an ancient Common Law practiced in England and current in Ireland from the sixteenth century up to the law’s reformation in 1823.
“A person found guilty . . . was sentenced to be buried at midnight at a crossroads and a stake run through their heart to prevent them returning to disturb the living.”
Long shunned by superstitious locals, the place seems to have had a conversely magnetic pull on writers, especially those of Gothic bent. The sign continues:
“In literature it has inspired the poets James Clarence Mangan, Thomas Caulfield Irwin], and Thomas McDonagh among others. It is widely accepted that the Clontarf-born writer, Bram Stoker, visited the site as a child and drew inspiration for his ground-breaking novel Dracula.”
But that was then. Now, it seems, the sinister associations have subsided sufficiently for the site to be a charming public amenity.
It was close to midnight when I visited. And I can honestly report that the only spirit I was conscious of was the one I had consumed in the pub earlier as part of a whiskey-tasting event: a practical companion to the talk by Sean Deegan on the history of Jones’s Road Distillery.
While there too, and still on the subject of corners, I was also given a tour of the pub’s exhibition of Ballybough history.
As revealed by curator Laura Williams, this included a “Frank McNally Corner”, which turned out to be a pair of framed Irishman’s Diaries about the area. So there it is. If I hadn’t previously achieved that status elsewhere, I am at last officially a corner boy.
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The aforementioned Mangan (1803-1849) was a vampirologist before Stoker (1847-1912) ever saw the dark of night. The former’s poems include one called “Enigma – a Vampire”. And although he was born and died in the southside Liberties, Mangan had enough of an association with northside Ballybough for it to feature undercover in one of his more elaborate pseudonyms.
His connection with the area was via a pub that in the early 1800s hosted a literary circle. This was enough for him to sign himself occasionally as “Peter Puff Secundus, of Mud Island, near the bog”.
A once-infamous part of northeast Dublin, Mud Island was said to be inhabited by “smugglers, thieves, highway robbers, and desperadoes of all description”. The desperadoes even elected a “king” from their ranks. As for the city’s official authorities, they were reluctant to set foot there.
Mud Island has long since vanished but may live on in the modern suburb’s name. Ballybough is usually said to derive from “Baile Bocht”, or the “poor town”. But as suggested to me by Dublin City Councillor and former city mayor Nial Ring, also in Clonliffe House that night, it was more likely a soft town: Baile Bog.
Getting back to the area’s writers, the most famous of them is the excuse the forthcoming Féile Bram Stoker, which runs from October 25th to the 28th, promising “four days and nights of deadly adventures”. And not just deadly adventures, according to the programme, but revelatory ones too.
Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital is better known for delivering tiny bundles of joy. Next Saturday (October 26th) in the Pillar Room, however, it promises a large, literary revelation: “An extraordinary Bram Stoker Discovery (Worldwide Exclusive)”.
The obstetrician will be Brian Cleary, “a lifelong Stoker enthusiast”, who has made “a discovery of major literary and historical significance”.
Miriam O’Callaghan will be the midwife, given the task of interviewing Cleary about a revelation described variously on the festival website as “heartwarming”, “fascinating”, and “incredible” and as having left those in the know about it “stunned and thrilled”.
As if all that wasn’t enough, the event organisers also promise a “very, very special unveiling”.
I am somehow reminded of another word here, meaning “to be very excited or happy”. It’s an informal term, used mainly in the US and Australia. But I think we can safely apply it to this case too and declare that all involved in the impending literary exposé are well and truly stoked.