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| Pat MacGill
A new parish priest told the people to cease dancing, but they would not listen to him. 'When we get a new parish priest we don't want a new God', they said. 'The old God who allowed dancing is good enough for us.' Notes: From the Children of the Dead End |
| In a letter to W.B. Yeats in August of that year, she wrote: "Our children's excursion was a great success, and everybody enjoyed the day immensely. Briscoe had prepared an enormous bonfire to be lighted in honour of the King of England's coronation. We felt it would serve a better purpose if burnt in honour of an independent Ireland so lighted it and sang A Nation Once Again. The constabulary didn't like it at all and danced and jumped with rage - they added greatly to the fun."
Notes: In 1902, Maude Gonne organised a children's excursion to Tara. |
| After the Easter rebellion of 1916, De Valera was sentenced to penal servitude. Enroute to prison, he took out his pipe and was about to light it when he stopped suddenly and said "I will not let them deprive me of this pleasure in jail!" He immediately threw away his pipe and from that day, never smoked again.
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| A switchboard operator at a small hotel in Co. Galway was making her morning alarm calls. At six o'clock she rang room 206, but, as a sleepy voice answered, she glanced at her list again and saw that the call for room 206 was down for eight o'clock. She said as sweetly as she could, "Good morning, Sir! You have two more hours to sleep."
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| In a literature class in Dublin some years back, students were given an assignment to write a short story involving all the important literary ingredients' Nobility, Emotion, Sex, Religion and Mystery. The winner was:"My God! - cried the Duchess. ´I'm pregnant. Who did it?"
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| Eileen Finney was so enamored of Sean O'Faolain's literary works that she wrote him a letter: "I hear that your writing yields you a retail price of $1.00 per word. I enclose $1.00, for which please send me a sample." Much amused, the witty O'Faolain kept the dollar and sent along one word: "Thanks." But O'Faolain had no monopoly on Irish wit. Shortly afterward, he received another letter from Miss Finney: "Sold the 'Thanks' anecdote for $2.00. Enclosed please find 75 cents in stamps, being half the profit on the transaction, less postage and handling."
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| Terry Eagleton
To be a fully paid-up member of Dublin, you have to eat polenta, send your children to fee-paying schools, have a superior attitude to rural Ireland, criticise the Catholic Church and the traditional political set-up, take holidays in Tuscany or Provence, own a cottage in the west of ireland, think nationalism frightfully old-hat, and regard Mary Robinson, the progressive-mind former President of Ireland, as a divine creature a cut or two above the Virgin Mary. To belong to Dublin 4, you also have to regard the whole existence of Dublin 4 as a myth dreamt up by the resentful masses who eat bacon and cabbage rather than polenta, send their children to state schools, can't afford to take a holiday, and when asked 'Have you read Marx?' reply 'Only where I sit down'. Notes: From The Truth about the Irish : a phrase used to refer to a certain intellectual elite in the city. |
| At Trinity Law School, the professor asked a student if he knew what the Roe vs. Wade decision was. He sat quietly, pondering this profound question. Finally, after giving it a lot of thought, he sighed and said, "I believe, sir, this was the decision George Washington made prior to crossing the Delaware."
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| The weather and the cab drivers in Dublin haven't changed much. According to Wakeman's Guide to Ireland (1890), a tourist asked a cab driver what the three statues on the top of the GPO represented. He was told the 12 apostles. When he inquired about the other nine he was informed, "With weather like this they only come out three at a time, takin' their turns regular."
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| Wicklow Councillor objecting to a proposal to boost tourism by putting gondolas on Blessington Lake: 'The idea is well and good in theory, but tell me this, who is going to feed them?'
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