Bridge of Sighs (and Laughter)
Walking to Ringsend for Paul Durcan's funeral on Thursday, I noticed a crowd of locals gathered on the city side of the humpbacked bridge that crosses the Dodder just before the village.
They were waiting for the cortege, a man told me, to continue an old tradition whereby – even if they don't know the deceased - Ringsenders help the bereaved family carry the remains over the river to the church.
As I took up a position on the far side to get a picture, a woman emerged from somewhere in funeral finery (and a bright red hat). 'Are they going to carry Paul over the bridge?' she asked.
They are, I told her, pointing to where the hearse that had just arrived. 'Oh gosh,' he said, hurrying off to join in.
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Sure enough, from there to St Patrick's Church, the cortege became a local production, as the undertakers stood aside temporarily, and the villagers took over as pall bearers and funeral directors.
Not all those involved were dressed for the occasion. One leading participant had a baseball hat and shorts. But, the informality of the attire somehow only added to the poignancy.
The idea of crossing rivers to eternity is a staple of mythology. In James Joyce's Ulysses, where Paddy Dignam made the journey in the opposite direction to Durcan, the four rivers of Hades become the Dodder, the Grand Canal, the Liffey, and the Royal Canal, in that order.
But when I asked Father Ivan Tonge of St Patrick's about it afterwards, he thought the Ringsend tradition might have its origins in a more practical consideration.
The Dodder is notoriously prone to flooding on its last stretches and must have washed many early bridges away: 'Locals would sometimes have
had
to help carry coffins across.'
The custom may also, however, be tied up with the unusual traditions of dockers, a profession to which Ringsend has long been central.
It used to be the case – and maybe it still happens sometimes – that a docker's coffin was carried by a circuitous route involving the homes of all his friends, at each of which the door knocker would be lifted and dropped one last time, to say goodbye.
More mysteriously (according to a 1953 report in The Irish Press), dockers' coffins were also carried 'between the two gasometers': industrial landmarks of the area.
Whatever the bridge-carrying ceremony's origins, like many old habits, it might have ended in 2020 with the pandemic. Instead, that only increased the determination of Ringsenders like David 'Smasher' Kemple to keep it alive.
'The Covid ruined a lot of things, and we didn't want it to ruin
everything
.' he said in a short recent film for the Irish Hospice Foundation. He soon found himself performing the rite for an old friend, whose death first alerted him to the threat of Covid: 'He was a fit man going down to Galway that Friday,' recalled Kemple, sadly. 'Then a couple of weeks later, we were carrying Larry over the bridge.'
Mind you, Ringsenders tend to have a robust sense of humour, and 'Smasher' is no exception. He also jokes in the film that he'd like to hold his own wake before he dies, 'to see what it's like'.
In which vein, it struck me on Thursday that it was a pity Durcan – one of the funnier poets Ireland has ever produced - wasn't alive to enjoy his own funeral.
Among the poems read during the service was one inspired by the election of the pope in 2013, in which he compares Ringsend to the back streets of Buenos Aires and describes many of the landmarks of the funeral route as if they were stations of the cross:
'The Barber Shop, Tesco Express, HQ Dry Cleaners, the three public houses – The Yacht, The Oarsman, Sally's Return – The Bridge Café, the pharmacy, Ladbrokes bookmakers.' He would surely have got another poem from his last trip into the village.
The pallbearers do special requests on occasion. In an interview with the Dublin Inquirer newspaper in 2020, another regular participant Eoin Dunne recalled the funeral of a man who had spent his life working as a match-day steward in nearby Lansdowne Road, a stadium visible from the bridge.
On his final journey, as demanded, the coffin carriers did an about turn and bowed the departed in gratitude to the scene of so many pay days.
But comedy always vies with solemnity in the Ringsend tradition. Dunne also told the Inquirer about an occasion when the deceased was (a) a former scrap metal dealer and (b) very heavy.
As the carriers struggled under the coffin, Dunne recalled: 'One of the lads was saying, 'I think he has all the bleeding copper in it'.'
Then there was the time they overdid their enthusiasm for the tradition, stopping a hearse with three limousines behind it at the bottom of the bridge. They immediately launched into the routine of organising each other to carry the coffin into Ringsend, until the driver of the hearse intervened.
'Lads, lads stop,' he said (allegedly): 'This funeral is going to f**king Bray.'
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Irish Times
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John Simpson: ‘It's been great to watch how Ireland went from a pretty backward country to a real powerhouse in Europe'
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A number of paths led Simpson to a career in journalism. 'I found when I was at university in particular, that I was good at writing and love the sound of my own voice,' he says. The other was reading George Orwell's 1984 when he was 15. 'I was so horrified by the thought that you could scrub out the past and rewrite it according to the interest of the government of the day, that I remember thinking very, very clearly then ... I want to do something to make sure that doesn't happen. READ MORE 'The desire to see things as they are, and present them to people as they are, and to make sure that people don't forget what they were like – that was something that mattered to me when I was 15 and it still matters to me now that I'm 80.' He continues to present Unspun World with John Simpson, which is broadcast on BBC2 . 'That's a high even in [the sense] of, with one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana skin, I can still have a real enjoyment of journalism.' 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Irish Times
3 hours ago
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Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio: ‘David Bowie was dressed like a European dad on vacation. He could wander around NYC unnoticed'
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Irish Times
3 hours ago
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Creative escapes: ‘A studio isn't a luxury – it's a necessity'
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Photo: Bryan O'Brien / The Irish Times 'It's not the brightest space, but there's a softness to the light and it gets a lot of sun,' says Treacy. 'When my dad saw it, he said, 'You can mess away in there to your heart's content Edel.'' Working from home is nothing new for many artists, who were operating from kitchen tables, spare bedrooms and draughty garages long before lockdown. A rented studio space seems increasingly out of reach for a lot of Irish creatives, with the housing crisis, rising costs and the closure of a number of shared workspaces in recent years. But despite the challenges, carving out space to make art is as vital as ever; whether it's in a 'room of one's own', to borrow Virginia Woolf 's phrase, or just a quiet corner. Work of artist Edel Treacy at her home studio in Inistioge, Co. Kilkenny. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien/The Irish Times In winter, Treacy prefers to work in the warmth of her house. But she enjoys the separation between the two buildings. 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Seamstresses in Stoneybatter then turn the colourful fabric into Italian silk kaftans, cushions, hair accessories and blankets. Georgina O'Hanlon O'Hanlon's latest collection, Fairytales on Silk, recalls magical childhood summers with her grandmother in Co Clare. But she insists she has plenty of access to nature in her urban location, wandering through the park or nearby Botanic Gardens when she needs 'brain candy'. 'I'm close enough to the energy of town when I need it, but day to day, I get to enjoy the slower pace of local life,' says the artist, who purchased the house last year with her husband. The couple are expecting their first child in July. Cushions based on Georgina O'Hanlon's illustrations O'Hanlon does miss meeting fellow creatives in shared studios, and with no commute, 'there's no clear line between where your day begins and ends'. The National College of Art and Design graduate previously worked in shared spaces such as Moxie Studios, which closed in 2014. 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'I've scrubbed the walls, the blinds – and don't lift the rug!' laughs Coll, whose beautiful, striking paintings can take a month to create and employ a range of techniques – such as burning paint with a hot gun to add texture. A graduate of Manchester School of Art, Coll worked as an artist in Manchester 'from the kitchen table in our flat'. She returned to her hometown in 2013 and got a job with the local library service. After taking a career break due to baby loss, Coll took up painting again. Returning to her passion proved therapeutic, and demand for Coll's pieces began to increase. Working from home made sense from a cost perspective, but as an artist who loves to 'work big', and with prospective customers wanting to view the paintings, the small, dark livingroom wasn't fit for purpose. In 2022, garden rooms were enjoying a surge in popularity post-lockdown. Coll decided to invest, enlisting a local company to build the stand-alone structure in her back garden. Hedges were cleared, Coll's son gave up his trampoline (happily – 'football was taking over anyway') to make space, and her husband installed the electrics, plastering and flooring to save money. Lorraine Coll works in her garden studio The 3.8m x 3.2m space has large double doors to let in plenty of light, low-maintenance vinyl flooring, and paint-splattered walls which currently display two large canvases with moody burgundy hues, florescent pinks and oranges. 'They're at the 'ugly stage' where I'm building up vibrant colours underneath,' Coll says. 'I'll layer them up and they'll look totally different at the end.' The traditional model of selling at art fairs, or to galleries, is changing. Most of Coll's sales now come via social media and her website. She has recouped her spend on the garden room, and it's also added value to her home. 'I've sent pieces to Australia, America, and connected with people all over the world,' Coll says. 'It's lovely to be able to do that from my back garden in Derry.' ; ;
