Dublin Folktales (12 page)

He lived on Mill Lane for more than forty years and later lived in Bridgefoot Street flats near the city quays. He suffered from bad eyesight and when his vision was almost completely gone he was housed in Clonturk House for the Adult Blind in Drumcondra, once more on the north side of Dublin. There he received visitors. He told those that would listen that he wished now to be known as Lord Dudley. Still using a title and a nickname Thomas Dudley passed away on 12 January 1981.

His passing was noted by all and sundry, the high and the mighty and his partners across the prairie of his mind. His death at seventy-five years of age even drew obituaries in the national newspapers, of which he would have been quite proud. He was buried in a clerical graveyard a few hundred metres away from the home he had known in his declining years.

Bang Bang lived his time when Dublin was still more of a large town than the sprawling city it
became. It was common to be given a nickname in Dublin and once given, the name stuck with you for life. Thomas Dudley would tell people that his name was Thomas Dudley, Thomas Dudley, D, U, D, L, E, Y, as if he wanted to be sure that people knew he was more than his nickname.

To celebrate his life and to mark the thirtieth anniversary of his death,
The Mooney Show
on RTÉ carried a feature dedicated to the Dubliner, during which his shooting key was presented to the Lord Mayor, Councillor Gerry Breen. The Lord Mayor passed in on to Dublin City Library and Archive on Pearse Street where Bang Bang’s key takes pride of place inside a glass display case.

Whether it’s still loaded or not is anyone’s guess.

Just be ready to duck when you approach the imaginary gun, for there is no telling whether or not the ghost of Bang Bang still rides the streets of Dublin. He might just ask you to join in a game of cowboys of the mind.

A man once came to the city of Dublin thinking the world to be a wonderful place and the city of Dublin to be sophistication itself. He was a dreamer and a seller of goods. He knew the people of Dublin would buy sufficient merchandise from him so that he would become wealthy and would be able to buy a house in Dublin or at least in one of the villages on its outskirts.

He rode a horse that was neither a new horse nor an old horse, but a horse that was good enough for the job. The horse was not a pack-animal. It carried just one person, himself, in comfort. For the carrying of goods for sale he had an ass, whose rein he tied to the saddle of his horse and so they moved along like a small caravan.

He wore a soft hat and leggings, and sported a fine black moustache that matched his black coat. He always had a jest and a laugh with his customers, as all good merchants do. His twin-animal caravan was unusual for the Dublin of olden times, for most goods transported by horse sat on a wheeled cart of some kind or other, the better to transport them through the city without tiring the draught animal. All goods essential to daily living were delivered by horse-drawn means in the city. Coal, milk, bread and all the necessities of life began and ended their journeys around the city by horse.

Dublin did not stretch much past the surrounding canals or past Islandbridge to the west. Everything was within a comfortable range for an Irish draught horse going about its business. The man found the size of the city to be comfortable for his purposes. He sold a little in the markets and he sold a little by standing on the streets offering his goods to passers-by who had not been to the market. Whatever was left over, he sold door-to-door at a reduced price so he might empty the packs on his ass who by now was tired of carrying things.

Most nights, the man passed the hours of darkness in Dublin, resuming his homeward journey on the following day. He chose accommodation that was close to the western outskirts of Dublin for his base and home was west to the midlands. He changed accommodation each time he stayed in Dublin lest footpads be watching him and rob him of his day’s takings.

One night, he went to some lodgings he had been told about near Bridgefoot Street. He was told there were stables in the back and a gate that locked to keep the animals safe and sound through the night. The landlady showed him to a small room at the top of the old building. He shared this with three other men. They all snored in their sleep. Afterwards, he blamed the noise from their snoring for his inattention to the security of his animals. He was a light sleeper, but had slept deeply when he did nod off from exhaustion in the early hours of the morning.

When he arose, he went to feed his animals. He found two animals in the stable, the same number that he had left there. The ass, however, was not the one he had said goodnight to the night before. In its stead was an animal of the same race, but one that would not pass the bridge of Islandbridge a half mile away without being carried by someone else. Its young days were gone as were its older days, almost. It was a morose ass who was fed up with life.

The landlady said the gates had been locked through the night. She showed the man that they were still secured.
It was dark when he had come in with the ass. Was he sure it was his that he had brought in last night? Did someone switch it on him while he was inside someone else’s house delivering the last of his goods? How tired had he been when he came in to sleep? Maybe even now someone else had an ass that was not his either. If he took the two animals that were there now and walked along the city quays for the morning, perhaps the owner of the ass he now possessed would make himself known to the man.

She went on like this until the man grew weary of her talk. His only opportunity of finding it was to take to the streets and to ask passers-by if they had seen it anywhere. But in a city filled with four-legged beasts of burden, it proved impossible to locate his stolen ass. He gave up eventually and gave the reins of the weak animal to a beggar man to take to the knackers yard, where he might receive a few pence for the carcass.

He headed for home on his horse at a faster clip than normal, for he wanted to be away from the scene of his misfortune as swiftly as possible. It was to be some time before he gathered together a new consignment of goods for sale in Dublin. He brought a new ass with him this time.

That night he returned to the lodging house near Bridgefoot Street and once more stabled his animals behind a locked street gate. On his way in, he witnessed a young man dressed in poor clothes being roughly evicted from the premises for claiming that he had been robbed while he slept the night before. His frame was skinny and he wore burst boots on his stockingless feet.

The man waited until the burly guardians stepped back inside and closed the door behind them with a bang. He asked the younger man to tell him what had happened. He was not surprised to hear that he had been asked to sleep where three snoring men slept and that he had fallen asleep with exhaustion after hours of unrest. When he awoke his purse was gone. His good leather boots were replaced by the
old scrags of things he now wore on his feet. The landlady told him she had seen some young boys running away and that he should follow to see where they went. Most likely they had taken the purse, and his boots by mistake.

He learnt that the young man’s savings had been in the wallet. They spoke some more and they struck a bargain. The younger man would keep watch on the man’s animals through the night. When morning came, the man would see that he received full restitution for his loss.

When he entered the premises to greet the landlady, she was attentive in her responses to his questions on the availability of a bed for the night and a secure livery stable for his animals. He guessed correctly that she never forgot the faces of her guests, particularly one who had suffered a loss on her premises. They agreed on a price for a room where he would sleep alone. He inspected the room, expressed satisfaction, and fell into conversation with the landlady about the safety of cash and goods on the premises, in these dangerous times.

She was cautious in her responses, but more than a little interested in his conversation about cheques made out to the bearer to be paid from the account holder’s bank. Cheques were not commonplace in those times and the landlady was an easy subject for what happened next, for it is said that it is easy enough to rob a robber.

He told her that he had made a lot of cash that day as he had sold all that he had brought with him to the city. He had met a man from Liverpool at an eating place and they had made a commercial agreement to do with the Liverpudlian returning to that city and shipping goods to Dublin in return for the cash he had just now received from the man. What had that to with her, wondered the landlady. The man told her that there would be increased traffic between the two ports and most of the Liverpudlian visitors would need accommodation; he hoped that the landlady would be able to offer them lodgings. He recalled her assistance in the matter of the missing ass and it was this more than anything
else that had caused him to recommend her to others. The landlady’s cupidity made her lessen her defences, despite her initial reticence. The man then proposed a business proposition between the two of them. He was by now entirely without any money to pay her for her lodgings, or to buy a second ass on his way home on the morrow, a beast he would need to take care of the increased business that was sure to be quite close to realisation.

‘What has this to with me?’ she asked warily. It’s a cash establishment. You pay or you leave, now. The man agreed that this was an excellent way to do business. One he adhered to himself. But he had a solution: with the good lady’s agreement, he would write out a cheque for £100 and present it to the landlady in exchange for just £90 from her cash tin. She would show an immediate profit and he would have cash with which to pay her for his board for the night. If the landlady was a cute thief she was not a clever business person. Greed overcame her caution. She paid over £90 in notes and coins and waited while the man wrote her name on the cheque in copperplate with ink from a fountain pen and filled in £100 as the amount to be released to the holder on presentation to his bank.

Next morning, he paid over the cost of the night’s lodging for one person and two animals in cash. He thanked the landlady and reminded her, who had no need of reminding, that the longer she held onto the cheque the more valuable it would become as profits in bank shares rose. As they rose, so did the value of all cheques held out for encashment, he assured her. The man rode off then with his horse and ass safe, well and rested. On the way, he met the young man and paid him every penny he had lost in the boarding house.

In the boarding house, the landlady placed the cheque behind a mirror in the best parlour where sat the piano and where no one was allowed to sleep. Time passed and one month followed another in such an orderly manner that years followed on behind them, as was to be expected. The
man grew older and his sons took over the business and one fine morning in the month of June they discovered their father had passed away in his sleep.

The landlady too grew older and one day decided she should cash the cheque with its accumulated profits. The bank manger refused payment on the cheque. He told the landlady that, not only was there no such thing as accumulated profits on a cheque, but that the pay-by date had passed many years before so the cheque was invalid, in any case. Further, he told the astonished thief of a landlady, the cheque was issued on an account that had lasted just one day and there had never been any more than £5 in funds in the account. Also, no one in the bank had ever heard of a Patrick Asal in whose name the account was opened and closed in. The landlady went home and smashed the mirror but not before she had turned the cheque over and had read on the back a note that said the word
Asal
was simply the word for ass. And the issuer wished her well on her journey through life on her stolen ass.

In Dublin, long ago, people used combs to rid their itching hair of nits. When they finished with the combs, they threw them away. Many centuries later, the broken combs were dug up and discussed by learned people seeking clues as to how other people lived their lives in a different time. Various assumptions were made about the life and daily customs of a people who did not have access to showers, bathrooms or Jacuzzis to help maintain a high standard of personal hygiene. Few homes had a piped water supply and most relied on a communal standpipe or rainwater gathered in tubs. Personal bathing may not have been as regular as modern citizens now expect.

Mostly, Dubliners wanted to stop their hair itching, one supposes, and when the comb’s teeth no longer did that well, they threw it away and began afresh with a new comb. A nit-free life apart, hair is important to most people. Those who have it and those who do not have it alike.

Since our hair is often the first thing many people see of us, some people take extraordinary care that their hair and its styling is appropriate to the occasion. In genteel society in Dublin and after the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II – following the disastrous hair days of Oliver Cromwell – wigs were worn over the person’s natural hair.