Soon there will be lots of chirpy characters in boaters and striped blazers, along with ladies in long dresses, walking round Dublin to commemorate a fictional walk on June 16th, 1904 by literature's great common man, Leopold Bloom.
But on that very day 100 years ago, when James Joyce and Nora Barnacle stepped out together for the first time, another love affair, with just as much mythic, even operatic, potential, ended in a Dublin court in a trial for breach of promise.
The story has all the romantic ingredients - tender love letters, tokens of affection, religion, music, the Irish language, a hint of Pygmalion and final betrayal. It also has the advantage of being easier to understand than Ulysses.
Maggie from Kilkenny was a girl whom Joyce himself might have appreciated. She had a fine contralto voice, compared by one admirer to a piece of Kilkenny black marble. It was also said of her that her beauty and charms went hand in hand with a taste for the beautiful music of Ireland. The villain of the piece was Frank, Irish language enthusiast and secretary of the local Gaelic League.
It all began when Frank heard Maggie singing at the Oireachtas in Dublin in 1901 and convinced her that music lessons would raise her from "highly commended" to top prizewinner. He even paid for her lessons, given by the organist in Carlow cathedral. Soon they were walking out together every Sunday after Mass. He bought her gloves and took her and her sister to the Feis in Cork, paying the expenses for both of them.
After one concert he gave her a copy of Moore's Melodies, inscribed in Irish, "To Maggie, from her own love". It was stated in court that the translation failed to give the full flavour of the Irish original.
Triumph came at the Oireachtas in 1902. Maggie won first prize and Frank proposed marriage. Maggie accepted, but did not want to be rushed. She was no good at housekeeping, she said. Nonsense, said Frank, she could learn all that in a month once they were married.
But he still accompanied her everywhere and after a concert in Manchester he suggested buying a ring. When Maggie chose one costing £18, about seven week's wages, it was Frank's turn to be unsure and the ring stayed in the jeweller's window.
Then, in August 1903, he asked her to let him borrow the letters he had written her. But he never returned them.
It may have been Maggie's reluctance to learn housekeeping in a month that did it, but whatever the reason, by October 1903 there were reports that Frank was seeing another woman, named Catherine. He denied that he knew or had even spoken to Catherine; but then he married her the following February.
Outraged, Maggie sued for £500 compensation for breach of promise.
Letters that Maggie had kept were produced, in which Frank referred to her as "mo stoirín", "mo chroí", "a leanbh" and "mo ghrá". Maggie's lawyer asked if these were love letters or another infusion of the Gaelic revival.
In one letter Frank told her he would meet her after the Confraternity. A second letter said he would see her after the Rosary on Friday. And finally there was the one in which he hoped she was enjoying her coconut.
Maggie recalled some of the other Irish phrases he had written to her. There was, "Maggie my treasure" and, "To my little dark treasure, from your lover." So, were the letters his? He could not say if they were or not.
But had he not often kissed her? Frank thought he might have kissed her, but it was very unlikely.
By now, the judge was finding it hard to stay neutral. He suggested that since Frank took her to concerts in his capacity as a secretary of the Gaelic League, might he not have kissed her in the same capacity?
Frank's defence was that the acquaintance was purely to help Maggie sing in Irish. He gave her money only on the understanding that it would be repaid if she got first prize. It was an investment. At which point a juryman called out that it was a bad investment.
Confident of his legal skills, Frank did his own cross-examining and finally sprang his clincher. If they were to have been married, how come she had not told anybody about it? "Because you said you wanted to give the gossips a surprise," replied Maggie.
Undeterred, Frank cross-examined her brother and asked him if he was a member of a disreputable club. This, he explained to the court, was to show that the brother was an unreliable witness.
But the jury was not buying it. It took them only 20 minutes to find Frank guilty of breach of promise, though they were a bit unsure about damages. The judge decided that Maggie had not lost the best years of her life, and there was no imputation on her reputation, so damages should not be ruinous. The jury settled on £200, Frank's wages for about a year-and-a-half.
So you are all welcome to toast Molly Bloom and her banana on June 16th. I, however, shall toast Maggie and her coconut, while trying to imagine just what a voice resembling black Kilkenny marble actually sounds like.