30) Mulligan's of Poolbeg Street, D2

A very fine pub, mostly unspoiled by modernity. Supposedly serves the finest pint of Guinness in Dublin, though many others make such spurious claims to lure in tourists, with whom this elderly pub does much trading. One may bang the bar for a Beamish, it’s on the pricey side, but a rarity in this part of the city. Famed for its Joycean and JFK connections – once popular with actors due to its proximity to the now demolished Theatre Royal, and mentioned in the story of ‘Counterparts’ in Dubliners - the room in which the famous arm wrestle takes place still stands and is now called ‘The Joyce Room.’ A mural on the wall outside celebrates this connection.

A tall antique grandfather clock contains within its tower the ashes of an American tourist named Billy whose favourite pub in the whole wide world was Mulligan’s of Poolbeg Street. Squint closer at some of the posters on the wall and one will see vintage playbills from past productions of the 1900s (The Idler, The Colleen Bawn, Faust, Peter Pan, Robinson Crusoe...), replete with the names of forgotten stars of yesteryear (Herbert Beerbohm Tree! C. Aubrey Smith! H.B. Warner!). A tall barrel has been halved and transmogrified into a cask chair. A shrine on the wall in the lounge commemorates the late-blooming sportswriter of national fame Con Houlihan ‘who used be a regular imbiber.’ A photograph of the big man captures him holding his peculiar usual: a double brandy with a dash of milk. One shudders one’s shoulders.

The building sits uncomfortably in the depressive shadow of the ghastly Hawkins House, yet the atmosphere within is generally cheerier. Several barmen have spoken of a ghost haunting the cellar. Snuff is served and a wooded back room contains very high and looming ceilings, long mirrors and a glorious fire which helps to wane the winter. Approximate location: in the bar, on the right, under the front window - survives a tiny hole in the wall which once apparently served to pass communications back and forth during more volatile historical times. Andrew Stephens once slipped a cylindrified five Euro note from outside the pub through the same said hole to which a seated Sam Coll collected cheerfully.

The pub features in the celebrated film My Left Foot, where Ray MacAnally (as Mr. Brown) is initially seen drinking solo to drown his sorrows over his crippled son Christy and is subsequently seen introducing said son to drink, in honour of his literacy. The author John Banville (whose sentences, according to fellow writer and ass-licker Sebastian Barry, ‘are like hits of some delicious drug, those sentences…’), in signature scarf and porkpie hat, has also been seen drinking here, rapt in conversation with his friend, the architect Maurice Craig (who, in Banville's book Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir, is granted the grandiose pseudonym of 'Cicero'). The Dubliners would occasionally play here in their pomp [1]. Such is the prestige of this bar that it has inspired a book-length study called Mulligans: Grand Old Pub of Poolbeg Street by Declan Dunne, rich in anecdotes and data. Copies are available behind the counter – other pubs should be similarly written up, one thinks of the Addison Lodge.

What magnificent rings! A former tree trunk now the counter at Mulligan’s

FOOTNOTE

[1] https://www.rareirishstuff.com/blog/the-dubliners-in-mulligans-pub-of-poolbeg-street-.5622.htm

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