What is it about an Irish Pub that draws James, Morgan, Bridget and I to it? Firstly, it’s not a bar. Some are actually named as such. Dan’s Bar, O’Sullivan’s Bar, etc. but they’re still pubs, not at all like an American establishment. People talk to each other, greet strangers, swap stories, tell jokes, and smoke cigarettes on the patio but the difference is it’s face to face. They’re not staring at a big screen barely acknowledging one another. I’ll give you a recent example. I was walking out the door of Ma Murphy’s and a man was sitting on the stool closest to the door. He catches my eye and I acknowledge him with a greeting. He’s got good eyes. He inquires, noticing my case, about what we’re doing in Bantry. I tell him we’re here for the music and culture and he asks if I’m attending the Bantry Festival. I admit that I wasn’t aware of it and he filled me in on the Classical Music festival going on at Bantry House as well as other venues. He clearly has a passion for it. I stand talking with him for several minutes, I ask his name, it’s Brian, and tell him I hope we meet again. The warmth and sociability of the Irish and by extension the Irish Pub is wonderful. There’s nothing like it in the states, not where I’ve been anyway.
Another feature is many of them are a piece of history. I’ll extend on the description of Ma Murphy’s in a previous post. When you enter the front door you notice it’s very narrow. There’s another inner door of the same width that opens into the pub space. If you look closer though you see a tiny room with benches, it’s the snug. Many old pubs have snugs, they can be tiny or pretty large, plain or decorated with etched glass and padded seats. When Ma’s was built it was a modest space. The snug was where women were relegated to sit while the men folk rollicked in the pub proper. The women also used them for matchmaking and I’ve no doubt they enjoyed their private chats away from the men. Mary tells us that her father took it over in 1981 and the snug was still in use. Most of his customers were farmers but it sounds like he was forward thinking and didn’t think that situation should stand. He kept encouraging the women into the pub and soon the snug was no longer obligatory. It’s use now is as a private space you can have a pint and a chat in. If you look up above the partition of the snug you’ll see shelves up to the ceiling. They run from the window down behind the bar itself. They were once stocked with essentials, food household items, whatever was needed. These transitioned into the back counter of the bar and the shelves there held bottles of whiskey and whatever else was stocked.
There’s another narrow door that leads past a staircase that goes upstairs to the living area and used to lead to the kitchen. The kitchen space is now the small room we played in last night. There’s a reverence about it, it carries the memories of Mary and her siblings running through the place, Pa and Ma managing the store and pub, the customers not always aware that the stairs they found themselves climbing were leading to private family space. When Mary was in the old kitchen space we were playing in she described where the family table sat and where the cooker was. Out back in what would have been part of the garden there used to be a forge. It’s full of memories and if you allow yourself to, you can feel them. It’s a community treasure and places like this need to be preserved. I highly recommend the film/video The Irish Pub. It’s a lovely documentary on the importance of the pub in Ireland.
