Strange Ireland E-Book

Jack Strange

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

In Ireland, truth, folklore, mythology, and legend are indistinguishably interwoven into a Celtic knot of strangeness.

From fact to fiction and the peculiar to the bizarre, unravel some of Ireland’s most curious lore: the Blarney Stone kissing ceremony, the giant behind the Giant’s Causeway, the escapades of Saint Patrick, and the myths of the 1690 battle of the River Boyne among many others.

Among the twenty-six chapters each detailing a unique Irish oddity, discover the history of Emerald Isle in a new light.

Leseprobe

STRANGE IRELAND

JACK'S STRANGE TALES BOOK 5

JACK STRANGE

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. A Brief History Of Ireland

2. In Dublin’s Strange City

3. Stealing The Dead

4. Abhartach The Vampire

5. The Black Dog Is Lord Norbury

6. Spooky Castles

7. Golfing With The Fairies

8. Strange Irish Creatures

9. Beware Of The Dolocher

10. Legends Of The Mountains Of Mourne

11. The Irish Curse

12. Kissing The Stone

13. Legends Of The Burren

14. Legends Of The Boyne

15. The Hill Of Kings

16. Where Is Hy Brasil?

17. The Irish Wake

18. RED MARY MacMAHON

19. Can The Dead Reappear?

20. More Ghosts

21. The Irish Diaspora

22. The Folklore Of Ireland

23. The Devil, A Demon And A Saint

24. A Causeway For A Giant

25. The Most Haunted Castle in Ireland

26. The Hellfire Club

L’Envoi

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2019 Jack Strange

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Edited by Marilyn Wagner

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

For Cathy

'There's nothing that happens here that isn't strange.'

INTRODUCTION

Once again, it was that most excellent of writers, A. J. Griffith-Jones, who persuaded me to write another Strange book, and for that I thank her. Ireland proved to be fertile ground for tales, beliefs, ghosts, myths, legends and general strangeness.

In this book, I have not differentiated between the two nations of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I am not a political writer, nor will I ever be. Where the two countries share similar folklore and history, it would be almost impossible to tell them apart anyway. Ireland is an island of the impossible, with tremendous legends and lore, a history of resistance to invasion and a bitter sense of humour, often directed at herself.

For those who are unsure, Ireland is that island to the west of Great Britain, an island the Romans did not invade and which has a unique culture that has spread around the globe. It is famous for St Patrick’s Day, for leprechauns and Guinness, for its friendliness, its saints and its greenness. It should also be famed for its ghosts; for I found so many that I could easily have written a book purely about them. Others have done just that, and far better than I ever could.

This book speaks of ghosts and monsters, of remote islands and airships, of demons and holy men, ancient sights and curses and much more. I have deliberately not included modern politics, or indeed any politics, and I have treated Ireland as a single entity, a unique island on the western fringe of Europe. Although the dominant culture for centuries was Celtic, the Celts were only one People who came to this island. Norsemen from Denmark and Norway, Normans from Wales and England, waves of English, Highland, Hebridean and Lowland Scots have all left their mark on Ireland and have added their quota of strangeness. Yet possibly the Peoples who preceded the Celts gave as much, in an understated, nearly indefinable manner. These people were the objects of many of the stories of the Celts and were possibly the only people in the world of whom the Celts were afraid. They became the fairy folk, the Sidh, and many of them will be encountered in the pages of this book.

This book is split into twenty-six chapters, each one illustrating one particular aspect of Irish strangeness, or one area of Ireland that caught my attention as holding strange stories. The first chapter is a very brief look at Irish history, so the reader can place the occurrences in context. Although the history is as factual as I can make it, in some ways the facts are as strange as any story, legend or myth, and that is the essence of Ireland. Truth and fiction, mythology and legend, overlap, so they become nearly indistinguishable, layer after layer of strangeness interwoven into a Celtic knot of strangeness. Welcome to Ireland.

Jack Strange.

ONE

A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRELAND

In the beginning, was the ice, and there was rather a lot of it. When it began to melt away, animals swarmed in, followed, around 8,500 BC, by people. These early Irishmen and Irishwomen were hunter-gatherers, gleaning what they could from the plants and trees, fishing the many rivers and loughs (that’s Irish Gaelic for what English speakers call a lake), and hunting the plentiful wildlife. Academics call this period Mesolithic, but we have no means of knowing what these people called themselves if indeed they had any collective nouns to describe who or what they were.

These Mesolithic people roamed around the island, hunting, gathering and producing little copies of themselves for a few thousand years, and then, around 3,500 BC, a fantastic array of now megalithic tombs sprung up across Ireland. The craftsmanship (or craftspersonship if you are politically correct) is as astounding as the astral knowledge. We will meet some of these places later.

These peoples lived in Ireland for another couple of thousand years before the Celts arrived, in approximately 600 BC. The Celts undoubtedly had a significant impact on Ireland, and the language and much of Irish culture, tales, myths and legends come from Celtic roots. When the Romans came to what is now Britain, they overran the island as far as the waist of Scotland, until the Picts repulsed them. Agricola said he could conquer Ireland with a single legion and auxiliaries, but did not have the chance to prove his boast correct. His failure to invade Ireland probably saved the Roman Empire from a great deal of grief, given the difficulties faced by later invaders.

While the Romans eventually brought Christianity to Britannia, Ireland, like Pictland, remained pagan. When the Romans withdrew, and possibly before then, Irish slavers raided Britain. One such raid captured a man that history has made an icon of Irishness; his name has been remembered as Patrick and legend says he was born in Dumbarton, then the capital of Strathclyde. After six years of slavery as a shepherd, Patrick escaped to Continental Europe from where he returned to Britain. According to an Irish poem, St Caranoc baptised him in Candida Casa, now Whithorn, in South West Scotland. Although historians debate the dates, it is likely that he returned to Ireland sometime in the fifth century, possibly in 431 AD. Patrick and his disciples spread Christianity through Ireland, founding a network of monasteries that also served as distribution centres for writing and other civilised culture. Pope Celestine had sent a man named Palladius to Ireland sometime earlier, although his influence seems to have been less than that of Patrick.

With the withdrawal of Rome from Britannia, hordes of Germanic tribes named Saxons, Junes and Angles, invaded their old territories, bringing paganism with them. There was a raid or two from the Anglo-Saxons who had invaded Great Britain, but nothing the Irish could not handle. As Christianity took root, Ireland became a shining light of hope for the western world.

This happy period of growing civilisation lasted until the end of the eighth century when a new force burst into the European theatre, spreading carnage and horror along the seaways and rivers. The Norsemen - or Vikings - had arrived and Ireland would never be the same again. The Norse' first victims were the monasteries, depositories of richly decorated manuscripts as well as of profound knowledge. The pagan Norse destroyed what they could not steal and murdered those they could not enslave. Celtic Christianity wilted under the onslaught. Worse was to come as rather than raiding, the Norse began to settle. Norse colonies sprang up along the coast, forming settlements for trade that in time would become Ireland’s major cities. After more than a century of intermittent warfare, the Irish got the Norse under control, and then came the next and even more dangerous invasion.

Ireland was not a single country, but a loose assembly of rival kingdoms, with a High King above all. This High King ruled from Tara, dispensing justice as he tried to establish some sort of order on the unruly sub-kingdoms who theoretically bowed before him. The primary kingdoms were: Munster in the south, Connaught in the west, Leinster in the east, Meath in the centre and Ulster in the north. It was a dynastic dispute in Leinster which led to the next traumatic event in Irish history.

Diarmais Mac Murchada had been king of Leinster until a rival grabbed his throne. Diarmais was aware of the century-old Norman conquest of England and later occupation of much of Wales and asked for Anglo-Norman help to regain his kingship of Leinster. That decision was to prove costly for Ireland and altered the course of Irish history for the next seven hundred years.

The Anglo-Norman lords agreed, with their soldiers defeating the incumbent king of Leinster and placing Diarmais on the throne. Not content with that, the Normans began to attack the other Irish kingdoms. Worse, King Henry II of England supported his knights’ interference in Ireland, and the Pope also thought it a good idea. The following year, more Normans invaded Ireland, with Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, leading them.

Ireland being the strange place it is, the effect of the Norman-English upon Ireland was foretold by a now-unknown scribe.

Wicked is the time which will come then; envy, murder, oppression of the weak, every harm coming swiftly… the hypocrites will come, they will assume the shapes of God – the slippery ones, the robbers.

The Norman- English invaders conquered much of the country, lost some to a counter-attack led by Ruaidri Ua Conchobair, the High King, but retained the main ports and hinterland. In 1171 Henry of England led another Norman- English invasion and grabbed more Irish land. After that disaster, the Norman-English aggression and expansion were met with increasingly bitter Irish resistance. Treaties were made and broken as the Norman-English treated Ireland as if they had a right to own the country and the Catholic Church supported the invaders.

However, although the mailed Normans had an obvious military advantage, the Irish refused to give up. Year after year, decade after decade, Irishman fought the invaders, with gradual success. As in Scotland, the Normans intermarried with the local women, and the children spoke Gaelic and became as Irish as the natives. The Irish slowly rolled the English back until they were enclosed within the ‘Pale’ – Dublin and the immediate hinterland. Only when the Tudors were on the English throne was there another concerted English attempt to conquer Ireland.

Henry VIII of England, he of the many wives, self-declared that he was King of Ireland and sent over his armies and the Protestant faith. Decades of fighting saw an English occupation by the end of the sixteenth century. When King James VI of Scotland added England to his thrones, he tried a new tactic to quieten Ireland. He settled Protestants from both Scotland and England in the north of the island, Ulster. King James wished to place a Protestant barrier between Catholic Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland, from where many thousands of fighting men had sailed to help the Irish in their struggles. A secondary reason was that Ulster had been the part of Ireland most resistant to English control. The native Irish watched the spread of the Scots-English colonists until 1641 when they rose against them in war as bitter as any in history. A Scottish army was sent to Ulster, with mixed fortunes, and later Oliver Cromwell crossed the Irish Sea. By 1652 Cromwell’s soldiers had reduced much of Ireland to a smoking ruin and heaped the dead in piles. More land was taken from the Irish and given to Protestant settlers.

As the Protestants tightened their grip on Ireland, new laws struck at the Roman Catholic majority. For instance, Catholics were not allowed to hold public office, follow a professional career or own arms. Despite the repression, the vast bulk of the population remained loyal to the Roman Catholic faith. The island seethed with frustration that occasionally boiled over into risings against the Protestant rulers. Politically, things altered in 1707 when the Scottish and English parliaments merged to form the union known as Great Britain although Ireland had her own parliament, with only Protestants allowed to make the laws.

In 1798, with Europe aflame with the French Revolutionary War, thousands of Irishmen rose against the administration. The British crushed it with some brutality got rid of the Irish parliament and united Ireland with Great Britain. That move was not altogether negative, for in 1829 a Catholic emancipation bill gave more equality to that faith. For centuries, famine had been a constant threat to the largely rural economy of Ireland and in the 1840s a series of bad years helped blight spread across the potato crop, the staple crop of much of the island, particularly in the west. Around a million people died, and another million or so emigrated. Many blamed the British government for the tragedy, intensifying the bitterness already felt. In the 1880s, demand for land reform led to increased violence, and as the nineteenth century ground to its finish and moved into the twentieth, the British government promised Home Rule for Ireland. The First World War intervened, Home Rule was put on the back burner, and Irish anger erupted in the Easter Rising of 1916. To the British authorities, heavily involved in the First World War, this rising was seen as treason, and when the smoke cleared from Dublin, they ordered the execution of the leaders. Ireland watched, seethed and remembered.

Two years later Sinn Fein, ‘We Ourselves’, the party for Irish independence won the democratic vote and formed a government in Ireland rather than sitting in Westminster. In 1919 the War of Independence began, lasting until 1921. The result was a treaty between Ireland and Great Britain that set up the Irish Free State for most of the island, with the Six Counties of Ulster voting firmly to remain British and forming Northern Ireland. However, there was still no peace as civil war disrupted the new Free State between those who supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty and those who wanted more. In 1949 the Irish Free State declared itself a Republic. The majority of people in Ulster wished to remain British.

Behind the politics, the people struggled on, each intent on his or her own life and worries. And all the time, people lived with their superstitions and strange happenings.

TWO

IN DUBLIN’S STRANGE CITY

‘In Dublin’s fair city,’ the song Molly Malone claims, ‘the girls are so pretty’, and there is no arguing with that fact. Nevertheless, for anybody hunting for a haunting, or anything else strange, Dublin is a greedy city with more than its share of ghosts. The first time I visited Dublin, I did not know what to expect. Perhaps, I thought, a city of slightly faded Georgian elegance with a centre famous for stag parties and pubs. I did not expect such a vibrant, cosmopolitan city with amazing architecture, beautiful parks and open-hearted people. Since that day, many years ago, I have been back many times and used Dublin as my base to explore first the hinterland and then further afield. As the capital of the Republic of Ireland, I think that Dublin is the best place to begin.

It was not until my second or third visit to the city that I began to learn of Dublin’s many ghosts. Growing up in Edinburgh, I had come to believe the Scottish capital was the most haunted in Western Europe, but now I would say that Dublin is at least a match. I used my now standard method of educating myself: use published books as a background, consult copies of old newspapers and then visit the localities to taste the atmosphere and, where possible, find the houses and areas supposedly haunted. Finally, when the theories are absorbed, sit in the corner of a local pub, wait until a few obvious regulars enter and ask them if they know about such-and-such a ghost. The results, as always, were fascinating.

Sometimes I was greeted with derision, at which point I thanked my adviser politely and hurriedly left. There is no point in staying where one is not welcome. More often, I was given a garbled account, less concise than I had already learned and one that added nothing to my store of knowledge or details. Occasionally, I met a gem of a Dubliner. Possibly the most significant of these Dublin meetings was when I spoke to a married couple in a pub called Darkey Kelly’s. The fact that the pub itself was haunted was not a coincidence, for an Irish friend of mine had happily compiled a list of Dublin pubs reputed to harbour a ghost and recommended which ones to visit.

It was a hard job, touring the pubs in Dublin, but to borrow a well-used cliché, somebody had to do it. Darkey Kelly’s is well marked by flags outside and has live entertainment inside, yet my two companions still managed to speak in low voices that conveyed tremendous ghostly atmosphere. That must be an Irish skill. Both asked me not to name them, ‘in case somebody ever reads your book and recognises us,’ so I have altered the names to Monica and Hugh.

Monica had a knack of widening her eyes when she told me of the darkest parts of her story, which combined with her raven hair and husky voice, added much to her story. She claimed that she was distantly related to the original Darkey Kelly, who was burned for witchcraft, or other offences, back in the bad old days. When I asked if Darkey had really been a witch, Monica touched her hair, made the sign of the Cross and said, in complete innocence. ‘Oh, no, she was much worse than that. Darkey was a murderer. Did you not hear about the bodies found right under this building? They were right under where you are sitting, in fact.’ I think she was not telling the truth with that statement.

Monica told me that Darkey Kelly was only accused of witchcraft after she said a city official, possibly Sheriff Simon Luttrell, Lord Carhampton, was the father of her child. Luttrell, according to Monica and some other accounts, was a member of the Hellfire Club, a notoriously immoral organisation that flourished in the Dublin area in the eighteenth century. One version of the old tale says that Darkey asked for financial support for her illegitimate child, and in return, Luttrell had her burned as a witch and murdered the child in a satanic ritual.

I had thought the name ‘Darkey’ related to the colour of her hair, but according to Monica, it was a shortened version of Dorcas. This lady was a Madame who ran a very successful brothel known as the Maiden Tower, in a place, Copper Alley, which branched off Fishamble Street. As Monica said, ‘Maiden Tower was a very ironic name for a brothel, but at a time of poverty, Copper Alley is about right for what the girls earned.’

In the dark old days of the seventeenth century, witchcraft was very much frowned on in the British Isles, ever since King James VI of Scotland who later also took over the English throne, had experienced a stormy sea passage that his wife blamed on witches. Indeed, all across Europe, it was open season on witches or anybody who might be a witch, or who looked like a witch, or who was wise in a different manner. By the eighteenth century, the horror had faded away, so it was unlikely that Darkey was executed for witchcraft. More likely is the story that she was executed for murder, with a shoemaker named John Dowling her victim. Darkey killed him on St Patrick’s Day 1760 and paid the penalty on the 7th of January, 1761. Her death was gruesome, being hanged and then burned on present-day Baggot Street, once known as Gallows Road.

In the old Irish tradition, her friends held a wake to celebrate her life, but when it escalated into a riot, thirteen of her former companions, prostitutes all, ended up in jail. According to Monica, who knew the legend, the Dublin authorities dug up the ground under the Maiden Tower and found the remains of five men. I never found out if that was another pile of bodies or if Monica was pulling my leg about the dead under my seat. I strongly suspect the latter. Irish people to have a flair for the dramatic and don’t seem to allow the truth to spoil a good story.

Darkey’s ghost has been seen in the pub, possibly listening to the music or trying to convince the punters that she was never a witch. But Darkey Kelly’s ghost also haunts St Audoen’s Church, which in itself is worth a visit. The church was built in 1190 and was dedicated to the patron saint of Normandy, which must have rubbed salt into the wounds of the native Irish, still reeling under the impact of the Norman-English invasion.

St Audoen’s also has the ‘lucky stone’ or blessed stone’ which is a ninth century grave slab with a now-faintly inscribed cross. Since mediaeval times, people have touched the stone for luck. After a period when it was at Glasnevin Cemetery, the stone was brought back to the church in the latter years of the nineteenth century, and now the Reverent Alexander Leeper guards it against vandalism. Very few visitors see him because he is dead. His ghost is there though, watching.

St Audoen’s has steps stretching downward to the sole surviving gatehouse of Dublin’s City Wall. Apparently, this gate was known as the Gate of Hell because it opened into an area of Dublin notorious for brothels and other interesting places of nocturnal entertainment. I counted forty steps on the way down and thirty-nine on the way back up, which brings John Buchan’s famous book to mind, and on these steps, Darkey Kelly may also be seen, dressed all in green. Halfway down, while looking for her ghost, I heard a slightly different version of her story, for I was told that Darkey was executed for the murder of her unborn child.

I did not see Darkey, but there again; it was raining, so perhaps she was more comfortably ensconced within her nice dry pub, like all sensible ghosts should be.

This whole area of the city is ancient, with charming old streets with a plethora of legends and stories. Another piece of strangeness occurs on the 13th of April, every year when Handel’s Messiah is performed in Fishamble Street. Apparently, the Messiah was first played here in 1742, or so the barman told me!

It was Monica who suggested I visit the Brazen Head, a pub which was already on my list. I did not find it a hardship to enter this place, after reading the plaque on the wall that informs the curious that this is Ireland’s oldest pub, founded in 1198. In 1895, the Dublin Evening Telegraph advertised the Brazen Head as ‘The Oldest Established Hotel in the city. It has a frontage like a miniature castle and a strange jumble of rooms inside. In common with many Dublin pubs, the Brazen Head also serves food and hosts traditional Irish music, although I was more surprised to walk in and see Monica sitting at a table, waving to me with a grin on her face.

‘I thought I’d see you in here,’ she said.

‘I did not think I’d see you,’ I said.

‘I get around in Dub.’ Monica looked at me expectantly, forcing me to part with money for a pint.

Although I had read about the Brazen’s ghost, it seemed much more real as I sat inside the establishment with Monica telling me the story, complete with facial expressions and words I cannot write down. To Monica, history was not something that happened centuries ago, but something that concerned people as real as herself, and she is not wrong in that.

The ghost in here was a haunt of Bold Robert Emmet, one of the leaders of the 1803 Rising. The United Irishmen used the Brazen as their headquarters, according to Monica, because it was close to Dublin Castle, the seat of British power. Emmet took a room above the door, so he could watch the street for any double agents or known enemies. Emmet did not prove a great leader, and his 1803 Dublin uprising fizzled out in a bit of a riot in Thomas Street, but he was still hanged, drawn and quartered outside nearby St Catherine’s Church. Emmet might have escaped the abortive rising if he had not visited his girl, Sarah Curran, rather than running for safety. He was caught, of course, and the visit sealed his place in the nation’s gallery of romantic, if unsuccessful heroes. Despite being executed in September 1803, Emmet still pops in for an occasional visit. He can apparently be seen, sitting in a corner, while searching for the hangman who executed him, who was also a customer.

Other famous Irishmen have also frequented this pub, including Michael Collins, a leader of the 1916 Rising. Indeed in 1916 and again during the post-1922 civil war, there was fighting not far from the Brazen Head.

Mention of Robert Emmet brings Kilmainham Gaol to mind. This grim place held prisoners from various risings against the British from 1798 onwards. It closed in 1924, shortly after independence. Not surprisingly, many ghosts remain, particularly in the chapel. In here, in 1916, Joseph Plunkett, a leader of the Easter Rising, had a midnight marriage to Grace Gifford, a few hours before a firing squad made her a widow. Plunkett’s final words to her were said to be: ‘Goodbye, darling wife. In another and far happier life, we shall meet again.’ Gifford was only three hours married when her man was executed. Her sister, Muriel, was married to Thomas Macdonagh, another leader of the same rising, whom the British also executed.

When the jail was being restored in the 1960s, the workmen reported all sorts of strange activity. Footsteps behind them when nobody was there, lights flicking off and on, stray gusts of wind buffeting them as they worked on scaffolding and up ladders.

Another place Monica recommended was John Kavanagh’s, also known as the Gravediggers. Beautifully situated next door to Glasnevin cemetery, this pub opened in 1833. It is a place of myths, with stories that insist there was once a hatch between the pub and the graveyard, so thirsty gravediggers could come for a fly pint. Apparently, that never happened, although there was an arrangement whereby gravediggers could get drinks through the cemetery railings. There is also a ghost, of course, a well-dressed man with a winged collar and pince-nez spectacles. He sits at the back of the bar. Others claim that the spirit is dressed in tweeds while Monica told me that she does not talk to him because he never buys a round. We will return to this area, although not this pub, in the next chapter.

Another fascinating haunted pub is the Lower Deck, a cable’s length from Dublin Canal in Portobello Harbour and frequented by locals, which is always a good sign for a decent pint. Sometime in the nineteenth century, a lock keeper on the canal made a serious error and sunk a barge, with the deaths of the crew. His later death, not long after, was possibly connected. The lock keeper hangs about the pub, perhaps pondering his actions. Once again, I did not see him. For a man who seeks out the strange, I am singularly unfortunate in my sightings of ghosts. Nevertheless, I continued my pursuit, following an erratic trail of haunted hostelries across the city.

A pub with a story and strangeness is Mulligans, which has served drinks to the thirsty since 1782, if not always on the same site. Mulligans is arguably the most famous pub in Dublin, frequented by the great, the literary great, local students, those who seek a good pint and my good self. It is in the strangely named Poolbeg Street, a seemingly old-fashioned establishment with the aura of the past only enhancing the ambience of the present. Originally on Thomas Street, Mulligans flitted a few times before ending up where the pub is today. It has been standing here since 1854, the year that the Crimean War began and the Royal Irish Hussars won deathless fame at the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Among the famous people who were said to have watered here is one John F. Kennedy, once President of the United States, the television presenter Eamonn Andrews and the racehorse owner with the splendid name, Mincemeat Joe Griffin. Some people have never left, such as the American who is inside the clock, or rather his ashes are. Now that is strange. According to legend, the barmen have seen ghosts here, although when I made enquiries, the rather large fellow I asked denied all personal knowledge of things supernatural. ‘The only spirits here are in the bottles,’ he told me, straight-faced. He might have been pulling my leg, of course.

I did hear about the Garda’s raid sometime in the 1960s when the authorities were concerned that Mulligan’s was becoming too convivial at a time when the good people of Dublin should be quietly in bed. In smart uniforms and hard of heart, they knocked politely on the door like the crack of doom. At that time, the barman was one Thomas McDonnell, more commonly called Briscoe and he ushered his clientele into the cellar before allowing in the police. When the Garda entered, they found a respectably empty pub, had a look around and left. If they had gone upstairs, they would have seen the Abbot of Kilnacrott Abbey, happy with a bottle of claret.

Although the barman I spoke to disclaimed all knowledge of ghosts, there are tales of mysterious footsteps and a ghost who sits on a barrel in the cellar. Somewhat reluctantly, I thought, he revealed that a previous barman saw a bottle of brandy fall or rise from a shelf of its own accord, while sometimes footsteps are heard where there are no people around. ‘But I never heard them myself,’ he added.

It was hard to tear myself away from Dublin’s convivial public houses, but once outside, easy to explore what is undoubtedly one of the most storied and exciting capital cities in Europe, with a plethora of ghost and ghost related stories.

Sometimes the ghosts are not all they are meant to be, such as the incident that came to court in Dublin in February 1885. A solicitor’s clerk named Anthony Waldron claimed that his next-door neighbours, Patrick Kiernan and his family, had been banging on his door and throwing stones at his window since 1881. Waldron took Kiernan, the mate of a merchant ship, to court to claim £500 damages to repair his house.

Kiernan indignantly refuted the charges. Frowning to the court, he said that Waldron’s house was undoubtedly haunted, and rather than himself or his innocent family, some malignant ghost or spirit had damaged Waldron’s house. Or perhaps a lodger or other in Waldron’s house had caused the trouble. When Mrs Waldron was called to give evidence, she muddied the waters and maybe damaged her husband’s cause when she claimed to see a hand with a diamond cutting one of the panes of glass in her window. Mrs Waldron lifted a billhook (every house should have one handy) and hacked at the hand, chopping off a finger. However, when she later looked, there was neither a finger nor any blood. Waldron must have wondered whose side his wife was on.

Mrs Waldron also said that one of her maidservants had been frightened by strange noises, tripped, fell and spilt a pail of water over herself. Reading the court case, even after the passage of years, it is easy to see Kiernan’s expression of, ‘I told you so!’ The case for the spirit world seemed to be nearly proven until a policeman gave his evidence. He had seen another of Waldron’s servants hammering at the door with her heels at the same time as Waldron heard the knocking. Without investigating the case further, the court found in Kiernan’s favour. The moral of this strange case is – don’t put your hand through the window of a Dublin housewife if you wish to keep all your fingers.