The May-bush was decorated with lighted candles, ribbons and baubles in very much the same fashion as a Christmas tree is today and it took pride of place beside the bonfire before it was thrown into the fire at the end of the night.
In many rural parts of North County Dublin and Fingal it was part of the May Day tradition for gangs of young men and women to roam through their areas carrying emblems that represented their various trades.
Each May Day morning or on the following Sunday, known as ‘Sonnoughing Sunday’, they would set out from their homes; the women carried peeled hazel rods, or white wands, while the men carried a symbol that represented their trade. Labourers bore spades, sweeps carried their brushes, threshers flourished flails, while cowherds would carry a hazel rod which had had its tip blackened in the May Day bonfire for luck.
City Guilds
During the Middle Ages, the trade and religious guilds of Dublin were very much part of the social and commercial fabric of the city and they could be very loosely described as being the forerunners of modern-day trade unions. The guilds fall into two categories: social-religious guilds and trade guilds, which were divided into merchant guilds and guilds organised on a craft basis.
Myles Ronan’s general description of what the Dublin trade guilds were about, in an article written for the Irish Ecclesiastical Record written during the 1930s is as good as any: ‘They were essentially lay bodies, composed of women as well as men; assistance to brethren in poverty or distress, the settlement of quarrels without litigation, and the regulation of their trade or business, to the exclusion of all “intruders” were among their first principles.’
The first guilds were known in Italy and France as far back as the eighth century while they were common in Denmark, England, Norway and the Netherlands during the eleventh century. From the twelfth century onwards the guild was an important feature of the economic and social life of most European countries.
There were three different grades of membership of the guild. The master, who was elected by the membership on an annual basis, the journeymen and apprentices. A journeyman was someone who had served his time as an apprentice. Apprentices were bound to their masters for a fixed term of years. During the early years of the guild system this term was at the discretion of the master. However, some masters abused this system and the term of apprenticeship was later fixed to seven years.
There were approximately twenty-five guilds in Dublin at various stages with the Merchant’s Guild, also called the Guild of the Holy Trinity, being the most powerful. This Merchant’s Guild held a virtual monopoly on all trading activity within the city until the end of the seventeenth century.
The Tailor’s Hall in Back Lane behind High Street is Dublin’s only surviving guild hall. The Tailor’s Guild was formed in 1420. The original Tailor’s Hall was situated in Winetavern Street and was first mentioned in 1538. The new Tailor’s Hall was built in 1708 and several other guilds such as the barber-surgeons, brewers, butchers and shoemakers held their meetings there.
The Guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary, commonly known as the Weaver’s Guild, dates from as far back as the twelfth century and was at one time one of the biggest and most influential of Dublin’s guilds.
Other guilds in the city included the Goldsmith’s Guild, the Guild of Carpenters, Millers, Masons and Heliers (Slaters), the Cook’s and Vintner’s Guild, and the Guild of Tallow Chandlers, Soap boilers and Wax-light Makers. Royal charter established the Guild of Barber-Surgeons and Apothecaries in 1446.
Some other trades represented by guilds were: clockmakers, watchmakers, coopers, glovers and skinners, felt-makers, blacksmiths, bricklayers, plasterers, curriers, painters, butchers, and the brewers and maltsters.
The guild system lasted until 1840 when an act of Parliament allowed for the public election of members of Dublin Corporation for the first time. The act broke centuries of tradition whereby the guilds of the city had an automatic entitlement to hold a number of seats on the corporation.
Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, commander of the British forces at the Battle of Waterloo, otherwise known as the duke of Wellington or ‘Iron Duke’, was born at 24 Upper Merrion Street in Dublin on 1 May 1769. The Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park, built to commemorate Wellesley’s military triumphs, stands at 205 feet tall and is one of the tallest obelisks in the world.
On 20 July 1813, Faulkner’s Dublin Journal gave details of a meeting to be held later that evening at the Rotunda rooms to discuss the erection of a ‘Monument to Lord Wellington’ in order to express what the newspaper described as ‘a nation’s admiration of the transcendent exploits of her son and hero’ in Spain, Portugal and France.
A year later, with subscriptions amounting to nearly £16,000 in the bank, a committee was established to decide on a suitable monument to honour Wellington and to select an appropriate location to house it. The committee, which consisted of eighty-five people, then held a competition to select the monument and they received a large number of entries. The top six models, which included two obelisks, three columns and a temple, were then put on display at the Royal Dublin Society’s premises at Hawkins Street and the obelisk designed by Robert Smirke was chosen.
The committee’s next task was to choose a location for the monument and Stephen’s Green, Temple Bar, the Royal Barracks (Collins Barracks), Merrion Square, the Rotunda Gardens and Mountjoy Square along with its present location were all considered.
The lord lieutenant laid the foundation stone for the monument on 17 June 1817 and the obelisk was completed – sixteen feet short of its original target – in 1820. The committee had run out of money at that stage and no one seemed to be willing to advance them any more cash to finish the project.
Following Wellington’s death in 1852, fresh efforts were made to have the monument completed and in 1856 three sculptors, Joseph Robinson Kirk, Terence Farrell and John Hogan, were selected to design the three panels on the monument depicting Wellington’s victories in the Peninsular and Indian campaigns and also his role in the granting of Catholic emancipation.
Kirk designed the panel depicting Wellington’s victory at Seringapatam while Farrell was responsible for the Battle of Waterloo panel. John Hogan was chosen to design the panel representing Wellington’s contribution to Catholic emancipation but he died just before it was completed. The panel was completed in Rome by Hogan’s son, John Valentine, and the famous Italian sculptor Benzoni. This panel depicts Wellington being crowned with a laurel wreath by Britannia while he hands a scroll of freedom to a figure representing Hibernia. On either side of the duke there are sixteen members of the Houses of Commons who had also voted for emancipation.
When a copy of the completed panel was sent back to Dublin for final approval, William Wilde (father of Oscar) and Charles Bianconi, who were the executors of the elder Hogan’s will, complained that there were too many mistakes in the design. Daniel O’Connell had been depicted without his wig and Bianconi insisted that the ‘Liberator’ wouldn’t be recognised by the public without it, while Hibernia’s wolfhound was depicted as an Italian greyhound! Hogan and Benzoni took the criticism on board and the mistakes and a few other minor errors were soon put right.
The Wellington Monument was eventually finished in 1861 and on 18 June of that year, forty-eight years after its original inception in the Rotunda rooms, the obelisk with its new panels was finally opened to public view.
Daly’s Coffee House
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Dame Street was home to a thriving newspaper and book publishing trade. Not surprisingly Dame Street was also well supplied with taverns and ‘groggeries’ such as the Half Moon Alehouse and the Robin Hood and Still, which was famous for its whiskey. However, all of these establishments paled in comparison with Patrick Daly’s coffee house, at 2-3 Dame Street. Daly’s was one of the best-known clubs in Ireland at the time and it was mainly frequented by members of the upper classes. It was particularly noted a
s a gambling joint and it was said that half the landed estates in Ireland had changed hands there during its time.
The club was also one of the watering-holes favoured by the bucks and rakes of the city and it wouldn’t have been unusual to see some of the patrons being thrown through the windows. Duelling with pistol and sword was a commonplace occurrence at the club and there were even tales of club members using the statue of St Andrew in St Andrew’s Church for target practice!
Daly’s moved to a new clubhouse in Foster Place right beside the parliament house building on College Green on 16 February 1791. The new club was, according to John Gilbert, ‘furnished in a superb manner, with grand lustres, inlaid tables and marble chimney-pieces; the chairs and sofas were white and gold, covered with the richest Aurora Silk’.
For the convenience of the MP, a special footpath was constructed which led from Parliament House directly to Daly’s. As well as being a favourite resort of the MPs, Daly’s was popular with members of the Hell-Fire Club and other similar clubs whose sole aim was the pursuit of pleasure.
When Daly died at his other establishment, The Curragh Club in Kildare, the Dublin operation was continued by Peter Depoe, who ran it until 1823 when it was finally closed.
There is a very dubious old tale, which connects Daly’s Coffee House with the coining of the modern-day word ‘quiz’. The story goes that a drunken member once accepted a bet that he could invent a new word that would become commonplace in the English language. The member is said to have left Daly’s during the early hours of Sunday morning and spent the rest of the night travelling around the city and chalking the word ‘Quiz’ in large letters on the doors of all the main churches.
The next morning, mass-goers from all over the city were said to have been ‘burning with curiosity’ to know what the word meant. The tale has been dismissed as fictional by several ‘experts’ but none have been able to come up with a convincing alternative.
Another famous coffee house of a slightly earlier vintage was Lucas’ Coffee House at Cork Hill, which was in use at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Just like Daly’s, Lucas’ Coffee House was very popular with the rich and young rakes of the day. One of these was Talbot Edgeworth, a young eccentric who spent his time and money on duelling and fashionable clothing. Edgeworth, who was related to the author Maria Edgeworth, spent his days in Lucas’ parading his finery and challenging strangers to fight him. Edgeworth eventually had a nervous breakdown and died later in a Dublin prison having been disowned by his family.
Lucas’ continued in use until 1768 when it, along with several adjoining buildings, was demolished to improve access to Dublin Castle.
Dublin Exhibition
Following the success of the Cork International Exhibition of 1902-1903, the editor of the Daily Independent , William T. Dennehy, came up with the idea of holding a similar event in Dublin in order to promote the city’s commercial and industrial interests.
A committee was formed to this end at a meeting held in the Shelbourne Hotel on 4 February 1903 and a fund of £150,000 was raised over the following months. The committee had originally inspected three possible sites for the exhibition in the Phoenix Park but eventually decided to hold it on an area of waste ground at Ballsbridge belonging to the earl of Pembroke. The site, which is now Herbert Park, contained fifty-two acres and it was given to Pembroke Urban District Council by the earl to celebrate his son, Lord Herbert’s birthday.
The Irish International Exhibition began on 4 May 1907 and it ran until 9 November of that year. During that period, nearly three million visitors passed through its turnstiles. The buildings, housing over 1,000 exhibitions, were elaborate-looking structures constructed from steel frames covered over with plywood and plasterboard and painted white.
The most impressive of these buildings was the Grand Central Palace with its 150-foot-high dome. This giant structure covered nearly three acres of Herbert Park and took 300 tons of steel, 70 tons of galvanized iron and a huge amount of plate glass to construct.
Other major buildings on the site were: the Gallery of Fine Arts, Palace of Industries, Great Palace of the Mechanical Arts, Concert Hall and several restaurants. The exhibition also housed many attractions and amusements including a helter-skelter, water chute, crystal maze, rifle range, an ants’ and bees’ display, rivers of Ireland and Indian jugglers.
One of the most popular exhibits was the authentic Somali Village, which contained – along with spear-wielding Somali tribesmen – huts, a Somali schoolroom, sheep and goats. A legendary Dublin character – ‘The Bird Flanagan’ – created uproar at the exhibition when he attempted to kidnap a member of the tribe for a bet!
Another popular exhibit was the giant Battle of Waterloo model that formed part of a Napoleonic art exhibition. The model, which measured 1,250 yards by 520 yards, was built during the 1840s and was said to have closely represented conditions at Waterloo on 18 June 1815. At the time of the exhibition, the model was in the possession of a Mrs Malone of Glendruid in Cabinteely.
At the stand belonging to the Grafton Street pharmaceutical company of Hayes, Conygham & Robinson – in addition to its usual collection of perfumes and soaps – it was possible to purchase a concoction intriguingly called ‘Haynes Desiccative Rat Paste’. If you needed warming up, the Bovril stand could supply you with a mug of ‘normal’ Bovril or Bovril lozenges and, if you fancied dessert, a product called Bovril Chocolate!
However, if there had been a prize awarded for the least -visited stand at the exhibition, it would surely have been awarded to the Dublin and Wicklow Manure Company of Annesley Bridge in Fairview which displayed several different varieties of manure at their stand.
Music played a large part in the event and a total of thirty-two bands performed in Herbert Park during the six-month period of the exhibition. The majority of these were British military bands but some local outfits such as the Dublin Operative Baker’s Band, the York Street Workman’s Club Band and the Dublin Total Abstinence Working Man’s Band also performed at the event.
After the exhibition had finished, all of the buildings were sold off to various interests within two years and the park was eventually thrown open to the public.
Bleeding Horse
The Bleeding Horse at the top of Camden Street is one of Dublin’s oldest pubs – it has been there for at least 300 years, and probably longer. There have been a number of legends concerning the name of the pub over the years, the most persistent being that it became the Bleeding Horse after the Battle of Rathmines in 1649, when horses that had been injured in the fighting were treated there.
This suggestion does have some merit as there were a huge number of horses used in the battle between the Royalist Army led by the duke of Ormonde and the Parliamentarians, who were under the command of Colonel Michael Jones. Ormonde suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Rathmines which culminated in him fleeing in the direction of Kildare with the remnants of his bloodied and beaten forces. Ormonde’s ignominious retreat was said to have been covered by his cavalry detachment of 1,000 horses.
Contemporary accounts of the engagement say that Ormonde barely managed to escape from Rathmines with his life by jumping his horse over a ditch, so perhaps the Bleeding Horse was named in connection with these events.
It has also been suggested that the name originated from the old practice of horses being bled as a remedy for all kinds of equine diseases. One British ‘bleeder’ called White, known as ‘Bleed’ em White’, said of the practice in 1825: ‘In almost all the internal diseases of horses, bleeding is the essential remedy; and the earlier and more freely it is employed, the more effectually will it generally be found.’
Horses were generally bled from the jugular vein in the neck and a sign depicting a horse with a bleeding neck hung over the door of the pub for many years.
The Bleeding Horse features prominently in Dublin writer, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel The Cock and the Anchor, published in 1845, in which he gave
the following description of the establishment:
Some time within the first ten years of the eighteenth century, there stood at the southern extremity of the city, near the point at which Camden Street now terminates, a small, old-fashioned building, something between an ale-house and an inn. It occupied the roadside by no means unpicturesquely; one gable jutted into the road, with a projecting window, which stood out from the building like a glass box held together by a massive frame of wood.
Le Fanu also described a painted sign similar to the one mentioned above which hung over the inn door. The sign, according to Le Fanu, represented a white horse, out of whose neck there spouted a crimson cascade and underneath, in large letters, the traveller was informed that this was the genuine old Bleeding Horse.
Le Fanu goes on to describe the scene when a shady character called ‘Brimstone Bill’ and his companion arrived at the inn, entered the stable yard at the back and entrusted their horses to the care of a ragged stable boy. ‘The lesser of the two men, leaving his companion in the passage, opened a door, within which were a few fellows drowsily toping, and one or two asleep.’
The Bleeding Horse also features in James Joyce’s Ulysses and Joyce himself was known to visit the bar on occasion. The pub is mentioned in ‘Nighttown’ when Corley says to Stephen Dedalus, ‘Who’s that with you?’
‘I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse in Camden Street with Boylan the billsticker,’ replied Dedalus. The poet James Clarence Mangan was also a frequent visitor to the bar, as was Oliver St John Gogarty and Sean O’Casey.
Hidden Dublin Page 9