The Bleeding Horse is a local pub, and from its many rooms, balconies and cosy corners you can see how this ‘alehouse’ has always been popular with both local gossips and the not infrequent solitary tippler, stout in one hand, whiskey in the other. Literary tourists may already be familiar with this pub, as it is not only mentioned briefly in James Joyce’s Ulysses' but also features in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1845 novel The Cock and the Anchor? And ordinary tourists in search of the ‘authentic Irish experience’ may be familiar with the pub from a favourite local joke: Disoriented tourist asks, ‘Do y’all know where the Bleeding Horse is at?’ To which the reply is, ‘Why, in the Weedin' barn, I reckon!'
One night while here at the Bleeding Horse I was treated to a story concerning the origin of this pubs unusual name. Admittedly I heard the story from one of the Horses own arch patrons, and I will not deny that the entire evening was jubilantly riotous and filled with stories of varying veracities, but I will tell you the tale as it was told to me. Though you may, as I did, wish to take it with at least a spoonful of salt.
Some of you may have noticed a painted sign affixed to the front of the building as we entered. For those who are not so observant, it depicts a giant, ash-grey horse's head with tiny droplets of blood trickling from a thin wound in its neck, though this last detail has almost completely faded from the weather-worn sign. Below the disembodied equine is written T649'. This obviously makes the Bleeding Horse one of Dublin's more venerable drinking establishments, but also — ah, I see a thoughtful eyebrow rise on the more historically minded of you. Of course I will forgive the others for not being at all familiar with the Battle of Rathmines, which occurred on 2 August 1649, the same year that the Bleeding Horse was founded. Admittedly the battle was a minor skirmish as far as these things go. It was something of a coda to the then recently concluded Second English Civil War and a precursor to Oliver Cromwell's subsequent and somewhat destructive invasion of Ireland.
Here is what happened:
James Butler, the first Duke of Ormonde and deposed Lord Lieutenant of Dublin, was encamped with his Royalist supporters in the area that is now Rathmines. On the previous day Ormonde had taken the strategically positioned Baggotrath Castle near present-day Bag-got Street. On the morning of the second, Ormonde was poised to reclaim the Parliamentarian-held city; though, by all accounts, he was an ineffectual military man. The Earl of Stafford once described Ormonde's demeanour as being that of a very staid head’, and although Ormonde's army numbered around 11,000 that day, he was still no match for his opponent, the newly installed Governor of Dublin, Colonel Michael Jones and his 4,000 troops.
Had Ormonde attacked immediately, the chances are he would have overtaken Jones’ men and restored Dublin to the monarchy. However, after taking Baggotrath Castle, Ormonde inexplicably relaxed his offensive. He decided to bide his time and attack at leisure. His disordered and undisciplined army, composed partly of recently allied Irish Confederate Catholics, had improperly fortified the rath and in the midst of this, as detailed in a letter to Charles II, Ormonde decided to take a nap to restore his strength.
Colonel Jones saw this opportunity and managed to rally a cavalry of 1,200 horses in addition to his 4,000 foot soldiers for an immediate attack. Ormonde awoke in a panic to the sound of cannons and gunfire. He was expecting the arrival of Major-General Purcell and 1,500 reinforcements; however, their arrival was long since overdue. Unbeknownst to Ormonde, Purcell had been led astray in the maze of local bohreens the evening before by a treacherous guide, and was still a day's journey away. The Parliamentarians launched their attack from a nearby garrison, reclaimed Baggotrath Castle, and then swept around the Royalists’ front line in Rathmines to attack from the rear. The Royalists and the Parliamentarians clashed, and for two hours the Battle of Rathmines raged.
Ill-prepared and worried by an erroneous report that Cromwell's army had landed at Ringsend, Ormonde's men broke rank and retreated south towards the Dublin Mountains with Jones in close pursuit. Jones7 cavalry caught up with Ormonde's men near the present-day intersection of Palmerston and Cowper Roads. A horrific massacre resulted. This absolute defeat both solidified the Parliamentarian victory and insured, at least for the moment, against further Royalist uprisings. As for Ormonde's men: they were buried in mass graves where they fell. And even though the area has been built up over the intervening years, it is still known today as the ‘Bloody Fields’; the Royalist army still, presumably, buried lifeless beneath the earth.6
By now you are probably wondering how the Bleeding Horse fits in with this history lesson. Well, it all has to do with one Sir William Vaughan, a cavalry commander who fought on the side of the Duke of Ormonde. He was an intimidating and loud man with a red face and a bushy white moustache. His heavy leather boots, fitted with thick soles so that he appeared taller than he actually was, made him an intimidating opponent in any venue, parliament notwithstanding. Sir Williams ferocious reputation extended to the battlefield and, true to character, he had put many Roundheads to the sword during the Battle of Rathmines. Augmenting the myth of Sir William was his pure-bred, ash-grey charger, Bucephalus, which he always rode hard into battle with a roaring, Viking-like cry. Sir William and Bucephalus together were an unstoppable war machine — until that day in August. At some point late in the skirmish, Bucephalus purportedly panicked. History does not record what spooked the horse, but we do know that Sir William was thrown from his mount and, in a manner fitting of his own brutality, he was decapitated by one of Colonel Jones’ men.
Hours after Sir Williams death on the battlefield in Rathmines, an enormous grey warhorse, wounded and bloodied from combat, wandered to the crossroads about half a mile north of the fighting, and into the main room of what was then known as the Falcon Inn. The astonished patrons watched the delirious beast stagger about the room knocking over chairs and tables and upsetting beer mugs. No one dared approach the injured animal for fear that it would topple and crush them beneath its mighty weight. But the patrons hardly had time to react before the beast emitted a final snort and collapsed into a bloody pool upon the floor. Later reports, including a brief account in Curiosities and Wonderments of the City of Dublin and its Environs (1736) by Stephen Venables Esq., assert that this bloody stain, despite all efforts, remained where the horse had fallen for decades to follow.
Now the landlord of the Falcon was known to support the Parliamentarians, and so naturally he assumed this horse was none other than the legendary Bucephalus. This may very well have been a reasonable assumption, but whether or not the horse in question actually was Bucephalus is a historical detail that has never been verified. Also unverified are the ingredients of the Bleeding Horses popular dish, ‘Sir Williams Stew’. From shortly after the Battle of Rathmines until the early twentieth century, the famous stew was served from ‘Vaughan's Pot’, a large kettle, perpetually heated, to which new ingredients were added daily to the old for over two centuries.
Of course as with all pub gossip it did not take long for the story of Sir Williams horse to spread from patron to patron, and from that moment on, the Falcon Inn was, and still is, known as the Bleeding Horse.
‘And that's just the half of it,’ added Jimmy Corkhill, who was behind the bar on that night when I first heard the story. Everyone’s attention locked on Jimmy as he picked up the threads of the tale: ‘One night, not long after I started here, I was upstairs wiping down some tables and collecting up the last of the empties. Everyone else went home, but I stayed behind to do a bit more washing up, you see.’
‘That's a good lad’ bellowed a red-nosed and scholarly-looking regular named Mr Egan. But the comment was only a pebble; Jimmy still had the floor and the ripple of chuckles subsided in seconds.
‘So I was wiping off this one table up there, and I heard something downstairs. A kind of banging, heavy like footsteps. First I thought maybe I forgot to lock the door,you see, so I yelled downstairs: “Sorry,buddy,were closed!” But whoever it was kept on walki
ng around down there. So I went downstairs and on my way I repeated, more forceful like: “Hey buddy, were closed! Come back in the morning!” But when I got down to the front room, there was no one there. I checked the side room, but it was empty. And the front door was all locked up tight!
At this point in the tale some wit from the other side of the pub roared in a thick, north Dublin accent, ‘Where’s my horse? Where's my horse!' and then emitted a long wailing moan meant to approximate a ghost, but only sounded drunken.
The whole pub erupted with laughter, a few people commented ‘nice one’ to Jimmy, more drinks were poured and the night continued with a fresh story.
Now I may take ghost stories a bit more seriously than most, and I think Jimmy sensed this because later in the evening, when everyone’s pint was topped up, he leaned over the counter and whispered in my ear: ‘It's all true you know. I told the owner Mr McClean about it the next day. I thought he’d fire me, you see, but he only nodded all grim faced. Said he’d heard it once too, and then he tells me this story.
‘One night, a few years ago, he was working here all alone, and he heard footsteps, same as I did, but he described them more like clomping, like a horse’s iron shoes on the floorboards. It sounds mad, and if I hadn’t heard it myself I wouldn’t ve believed him either. Then he says to me he heard a loud crash and pint glasses smashing on the floor. When he got downstairs he searched the rooms, checked the front door like I had done, but couldn’t find no one. But the owner, he knew something must’ve been in the pub because a bunch of tables had been tipped over and there was broken glass all over the place.
‘Mr McClean was trying to puzzle out what’d happened when out of nowhere something massive bowled him clean over, knocked the wind right out of him. At first he thought maybe he was having a heart attack or a seizure or something. He couldn’t move his arms nor legs, so he tells me, and his chest was pressed down so hard that he thought his ribs might splinter and snap. He was pinned under something warm, something invisible — something alive, and it was breathing heavy and strained. Whatever it was, the weight was such that Mr McClean couldn’t take even a nip of air to save his own life. He says he must have blacked out, because he didn’t wake until the next morning. He was still on the floor where he had fallen the night before.’
Jimmy started to pull another pint for Mr Egan, who had signalled from the far comer.
'Worst of all was the dark stain on the floor.’ The barman pointed to a bare and slightly scuffed spot near the comer of the pub by the front door. 'When Mr McClean came to, he was lying in the centre of a large ruddy stain. It hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t wet either - whatever it was had already dried deep into the floorboards, as if it’d been there for years. Mr McClean said he scrubbed it every night for a week, but scrubbing didn’t do nothing. It was nearly a full year before it faded and went away on its own. Some of the people here tonight’d remember it; Mr Egan would for sure.’
'What should I remember, Jimmy?’ enquired Mr Egan who had come to fetch his one drink too many.
‘That the prices went up last week,’ said Jimmy, smiling and giving me a conspiratorial wink.
'Well then, maybe I should just have the university pay my wages directly into your bank account then, eh?’ remarked Mr Egan as he took his pint from the bar and slurped off the excess foam. ‘Now don’t go serving our guest too many tall tales, Jimmy.’
When Mr Egan was out of earshot, Jimmy leaned across the bar and said: ‘They laugh about it now, but I know they wouldn’t laugh to see that stain again. Not even Mr Egan.’Jimmy paused and then added solemnly, 'It’s all true, you know. You couldn’t ever pay me enough to stay here alone tonight.’
You will notice as we leave the convivial atmosphere of the Bleeding Horse that the venerable structure is situated at an angle incongruent with the present T-shaped intersection formed by Camden Street and Charlotte Way. The Celtic Tiger scratched the layout of the original crossroads from the map when a large hotel the size of half a city block was erected just behind the pub in 1999. If you look at any recent Ordnance Survey map you will see how the vanished Charlotte Street would have extended from the intersection, through the Bleeding Horse's beer garden, until it connected with the still extant Charlemont Street to the south-east. This was the original highway to Ranelagh, Rathmines’ more village-like neighbour to the east.
The other road to disappear beneath the footprint of the hotel was the old Milltown path, which defined the Bleeding Horse's western wall and would have connected with Mount Pleasant Road just on the other side of the Grand Canal.
The third path from the old crossroads, the road to Rathmines, is the only one to survive to the present day. It is still heavily used by commuters who live in the southern neighbourhoods, and it will also be our path as we continue our stroll.
Another five southbound minutes brings us to one of the city centres most southerly neighbourhoods: tiny Portobello, and the evening's next story:
Oil on Canvas
The almost incidental neighbourhood of Portobello owes much of its existence to the Grand Canal, which forms its southern border, and to Portobello Harbour, which was lamentably filled in during the late 1940s. Beside the old harbour, overlooking the Grand Canal, is the former hub of the area: Portobello House, formerly a hotel, which was built by the Grand Canal Company in 1805. The hotel opened on 13 July 1807 and served travellers along the waterways between Dublin and Shannon. In his Guide Book of Dublin (1821), John James MacGregor wrote:
The Grand Canal Hotel, Portobello, is a very fine edifice, situated on the banks of the Grand Canal opposite the pleasant village of Rathmines. It has in front a very handsome portico, and the interior is fitted up with great elegance for the accommodation of families and single gentlemen. The beauty and salubrity of the situation, enlivened by the daily arrival and departure of the canal boats render it a truly delightful residence.’
The black-faced clock that you see today, however, with its distinctive gold numerals and bells housed in the small, roof-top cupola, was not installed until 1914.
The Grand Canal Hotel ceased functioning in 1852 in the wake of the Great Hunger. Shortly thereafter the building became an asylum for ‘industrious blind women run by the Sisters of Charity, and from 1898 until 1971 Portobello House served as a private nursing home for the aged. It was in this nursing home that painter Jack B. Yeats, younger brother of Ireland's famous poet and statesman, spent his final years. Yeats stopped painting professionally in 1955; and in the months leading up to his death, he was unable to paint at all, much to his increasing frustration. This was primarily due to a decline in eyesight, an affliction he shared with his elder brother.
Yeats died on 28 March 1957 and was interred in Mount Jerome Cemetery in nearby Harold's Cross.
In the years following the passing of the celebrated painter, the nursing homes employees, with an alarming frequency, found ‘stains of complementary and contrasting hues daubed upon the walls’: the nurses reported ‘all shades of white, shadowy blues, lush yellows, dark greens, and poppy field reds’. The damage was often discovered in rooms known to have been locked, or on sections of wall that no one could have got at without having been caught out. Of course, the staff and residents invariably denied all responsibility.
The ‘artistic disturbances' became such a problem that Dr Bellowes, the nursing homes exasperated administrator, in a move that drew much public criticism, called on psychical investigator Colonel Roger W. Ogilvie-Forbes. Ogilvie-Forbes was at that time lodging in Rathmines while investigating the ‘Beast of Belgrave Square’ attacks. In addition to his many other proficiencies, Ogilvie-Forbes was a knowledgeable art enthusiast. During his investigation of Portobello House he noted that the texture and composition of the wall markings, though mostly indefinite shapes, were, exceptionally similar to Yeats’ distinctive expressionist style’, and that they were made with ‘nothing more mysterious than what appears to be oil paint’. Ogilvie-Forbes was un
able to offer a suitable explanation, though subsequent tests confirmed that the substance was indeed oil paint of the Windsor ôc Newton variety, available from any art supply shop.
For many years it was not uncommon for the elderly and even-tempered cleaning lady, Mrs Barry, to report loud stomping and banging noises during her pre-dawn rounds of the building. They always emanated from ‘near Mr Yeats’ old room’, she said, and had a manner of spoilt frustration about them’. The stomping occurred with such frequency that the unflappable Mrs Barry soon came to ignore it as she went about her daily chores. Perhaps this is why it came as a surprise when a nurse found her one morning seated on the floor in a dim recess of the upper hallway. She held one hand to her head as if in a swoon; the other was clutching a crucifix she wore around her neck on a thin gold chain. A hasty retirement followed, and until her dying day, Mrs Barry refused to speak of what had happened to her that morning in the upper hall.
The supernormal activity ceased altogether during a 1987 renovation when a previously unknown Yeats painting was discovered in a disused attic cupboard. The untitled and undated painting shows a weary, pale grey horse galloping across a shallow stream surrounded by meadows in a prismatic scintillation of moonlight. By all accounts the painting, posthumously referred to as Horse in Moonlight, is a masterpiece. Those who have seen it compare it to Yeats' famous oil painting For the Road (1951), although most feel Horse in Moonlights powerful atmosphere and haunting melancholy far surpass the better-known work.
There are two further facts in this case that, while extraordinary, are generally disregarded by the serious and sober-minded. The first is that the painting is not entirely unfamiliar to Yeats scholars at all. Among Yeats’ unpublished personal papers in the Yeats Archive at the National Gallery is a sketchbook filled with preliminary pencil sketches for Horse in Moonlight. While the finished painting has no date, the sketches certainly do. There are twelve in total: the earliest is dated 17 December 1956; the last is dated 27 March 1957 — one day before Yeats’ death. The second fact is even more peculiar. The worker who found the painting made an unusual comment about his discovery in an interview with the Irish Independent. ‘I accidentally smudged the corner of it with my thumb. I don’t think the paint was entirely dried when I picked it up.’
The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories Page 2