Tynanwoods Day Seventeen

October 31, 2006
Day 17: Tricks and treats; Wilde in the streets

Today we got a late start, so Dan could file a column and Xtina could drag Ava kicking and screaming through some of her schoolwork. We wandered up Grafton, through Temple Bar and over the Ha'penny Bridge to the commercial district just north of the Liffey. We each bought a book at a delightful used book store on Abbey Street, then sat in a cafe off O'Connell Square, drinking tea (yes, tea) and reading.

One of the surprises after we arrived in Ireland was finding Halloween costumes in shop windows. Trick or treating has migrated across the Atlantic, though it's still relatively new. We went back to the apartment so the kids could put on the costumes they'd picked out earlier in Galway. Ava was a devil with cute little horns (hair barrets), a red choker and a pitchfork. Cole was a wraith, dressed all in black with a black cape and two plastic swords. Xtina applied makeup to make them look more devilish and/or wraithlike.

We took the rail back to Ranelagh and the kids knocked on doors where it looked like somebody might be home. It was still dusk, and we were the only trick or treaters in evidence. A couple of people grumbled that we were too early and told us to come back later. But nearly everyone was friendly and warm; at one house, a sweet old lady invited the kids into her kitchen, where they disappeared for several minutes. As Xtina and I discussed whether we should go in and find out if they'd been tied up and tossed into the basement, they emerged with all kinds of odd things in their bags -- digestive biscuits, tangerines, a bag of salted french fries. I suspect the woman was unprepared for the trick or treaters and came up with whatever she could find.

At another home a woman suggested we head to Marlborough Street where more families lived. There we found more homes with Halloween decorations and a few bands of trick or treaters. Xtina and I stood at the edge of the driveways and waved to the parents, chatting briefly with one or two of them. When we expressed surprise at finding Halloween over here, one of them said in rather a resigned way, "Oh yes, we're adopting all of your customs."

It was cold and we'd already walked a good 5 or 6 miles that day, but we headed over to the Burlington to have a farewell drink with the Gang of 20, who were leaving Dublin the next day, then headed off with Phil in tow to the Literary Pub Crawl.

This is a delight, and easily one of the highlights of our trip. It's run by two very funny Irish actors whose names I never caught -- a woman in her mid 30s and a man around 50. We starting upstairs at The Duke, where they performed about 10 minutes of Waiting for Godot, then stood under bell tower at Trinity College, where she read from a letter written by Oscar Wilde about his 1890 lecture on art and aesthetics to silver miners in Colorado. From there we went to O'Neills for 20 minutes of determined drinking, and to the Irish Tourist Office (a converted cathedral) across the street, where the pair performed a hilarious scene from TK about begging in the street during Dublin's 1913 labor strike.

After another 20-minute sojourn to a bar whose current name I cannot recall (but which was formerly known as Monico's), we turned back to The Duke to listen to boozy anecdotes about Brendan Behane. The tour ended up at Davy Byrnes, where an entire chapter of Ulysses is set (though the bar has since been remodeled in a ponce way and is now the kind of place neither Joyce nor Leopold Bloom would ever have set foot in).

All the while, revelers wandered by in costume while fireworks burst over our heads. In adopting all our customs, the Irish appear to have combined Halloween with the 4th of July.

We never found time to eat dinner, so our evening meal consisted of pints for the adults and candy for the kids -- as fine an example of Irish parenting as you're likely to see.