ON A SOOTY wall in the heart of Georgian Dublin today there is the remnant, barely visible, but visible, of the work of a man who flourished in the late 1960s.
The grime of ages has nearly concealed the crayoned traces of his violent thoughts on life and death. But since this is one spot in the 18th-century city that has not been cleaned up or knocked down, the graffiti handiwork of the man some called Lee Burns shows through, if weakly – just about legible to those who know what is written there.
These were not the artless daubs of latter-day graffiti merchants who spray their name or nickname on clean gable walls. This was more like some odd branch of literature, a story being told one line at a time on different surfaces around the city; the reader, in happening upon these lines, decided what order they came in. There was correspondence on the matter in The Irish Times Letters page, and comment in An Irishman’s Diary; a cult rock band incorporated some of the graffiti into a song.
The rediscovery of traces of the graffiti of “Lee Burns” reminds us of a time when people were not over-interested in the things that have more recently preoccupied us: money, houses and cars. This was a time when the public domain, and what you might give to or derive from it, was worth attention; when wordplay and wit were priced above rubies.
EMPEROR POLICE BUTLER POWELL KILLS KINGS OUTRIGHT THEY ARE YELLOW is the message on the wall near a busy junction by one of the Georgian squares. The tone is forthright, accusing, declamatory as a newspaper headline. The lettering is small compared to the spray-paint excesses that followed. The spiky script is unmistakably that of the man who wandered the streets and lanes at night 40 years ago, setting down his cryptic messages in crayon or chalk.
Violence was a recurring note of these messages – a lot of killing, burning, raping. But there was no pleasure in the violence; rather, a sad and philosophical acceptance that such is life. WHITE BURNS WHITE.
Usually there was a declaration about some person; the cast of characters was long, with references to people from history and from the present day. But their names shifted. LEE turned up frequently, as did ROY. LEE sometimes became LE and ROY became KING. Sometimes you had LEROY, the king.
Sometimes LE appeared at the end of a word: as in KINGLE, or HUGHLE.
The latter in turn became HUGH LEE, or HAUGHEY, and the way the letters were written it was often hard to see just when the LEE had turned into EY. HUGH LEE BURNED MY WIFE TO DEATH and HAUGHEY BURNED MY WIFE TO DEATH both appeared on hoardings along the portico of the GPO at Prince’s Street. (Even before the Arms Trial, and long before he became taoiseach, the name of Haughey aroused strong emotions). But they were quickly erased and HITLER BURNS QUIN TO DEATH appeared.
Also near the GPO was the message DEV WAS KILLED IN 1913 (Eamon de Valera was alive, and president, at the time). But not far away, the conundrum IF I KILLED DEV IN 1913 WHO IS HE NOW? HUGH became HUGE, as in HUGE GATE KILL KINGS, which appeared on the Bank of Ireland in College Green, beside the huge gates of the old Irish parliament house. This was also a nod to the former British Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell. Later there was WHITE HUGE GATES KILL QUIN (possibly Pat, polonecked progenitor of the Quinnsworth chain).
HUGHLE metamorphosed elsewhere into BUGLE, and from there to BUTLER.
This might have been “Rab” Butler, a Tory contemporary of Gaitskell and an appeaser of Hitler. Or BUTLER POWELL, mentioned above, who was US army commander in the Atlantic during the Cuban missile crisis.
Pursuing the Cuban connection, Lee also referred to the killer of John F Kennedy six years earlier, as in the message seen near the Olympia theatre, around the time an African dance troupe was performing there: LEE WORKS WITH HARVEY OSWALD ANN IGGER.
WHO BURNS WONDERFUL MAN TO DEATH? was the first of these plaintive messages spotted in late 1968 by two recent ex-schoolboys. In the year that followed they came upon more of them on their rambles at night through the capital on a trajectory from Gardiner Street to the Grand Canal.
The identity of Lee Burns, if that’s who he was, remained a mystery, though someone claimed to have seen him in action one night, and described a Schubert-like figure with plump face, ruddy cheeks, tiny spectacles and wild hair, and a long overcoat. It sounded like him all right.
He continued his work for about a year, on ledges, walls, in plain view and down dark alleys. It became the sport of a select few to find each new message as it appeared; there were letters to The Irish Times, and a song by Dr Strangely Strange.
We had PATRICK PESE KING OF GERMANS (like Butler an appeaser?). PEASE BEAST, as well as referring to Patrick Pearse and who knows what else, recalled Piaras Béaslaí, 1916 veteran and man of letters. Then, NOLAN SCREAMS HITLER TO PEASE. Later, JOE KING KILLED PEASE. But then again JOE KING ACTUALLY KILLED HUGH (you? who?). The department store McBirney’s lent its name to another frequent protagonist, as in MAC BURNEY DEMOLISH KELLY, or KILL LEE. It was a violent world.
Then, after more than 50 of his utterances had been noted, the writer stopped writing. Had he completed his work, or tired of it? Emigrated to the Bogside or Berkeley to join the revolution? Died? Been arrested? We may never know. But one of the last new messages to be sighted struck a new note, of serenity and forbearance: BIRD OF PREY FOR ME.