So you think we know how to party nowadays? Don't delude yourself. The Donnybrook Fair, which came to an end early in the second half of the 19th century, and which began back in the dim recesses of the Middle Ages, leaves anything staged today, by way of festival or party, in the halfpenny place.
In 1204, King John granted the Corporation of Dublin a licence to hold an eight-day fair in the village of Donnybrook, just outside the city. Henry III extended the permit to 15 days. Originally the fair opened on May 3rd, later changed to March 21st, and eventually to August 26th.
"Cullenswood Massacre"
But around 1209 a terrible event put a damper on the fair for much of the Middle Ages. On Easter Monday, a large party of Dublin citizens set out from their walled city for a day's festivities in Cullenswood (now Ranelagh), a short distance out. (It is hard to understand why they built walls to keep the "wild" Irish out and then ventured forth from the safety of these walls, unarmed, on this particular day.) While they were having fun at Cullenswood, the O'Byrnes and O'Tooles descended on them from the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains and what was subsequently known as "the Cullenswood massacre" followed. Some 500 of the citizens were killed.
The slaughter showed the rashness of venturing too far from the city's gates while the Irish controlled the mountains. In the 16th century, Dublin Corporation was glad to dispose of its right to hold the fair to the Ussher family. By the late 18th century, the right had been acquired by a well-known Donnybrook family, the Maddens.
It seems the site of the fair green is now the Bective Rangers rugby ground where Leinster play their home matches. The tents erected there were made from sods covered with old sheets, petticoats and rags. One disapproving commentator said that for long the fair had been a by-word for drunkenness, and an annual scene of behaviour that shocked the public conscience. Such things could never be said about what happens on the same site today.
All the cabins in the village were shebeens that served drink of every kind, including "mountain dew" from Glenasmole and Glencree. This probably packed a much heavier punch than any of the modern spirits.
At Donnybrook Fair there was plenty of jumping and rough riding as the dealers exhibited their horses. There were also exhibitions of boxing and (mud?) wrestling, but the real fun began at night when the wild noise of trumpets, fiddles and other instruments lured drunk and sober alike to riotous dancing on the green.
The night usually ended in a free-for-all. Sir Jonah Barrington, MP and judge of the Irish Admiralty Court, was a man who liked a bit of fun, as his racy Personal Sketches show. He enjoyed visiting the fair and did not believe anyone was seriously injured in the melee that brought many a night to an end. "No one was disfigured thereby, or rendered fit for a doctor," was his judgement. No more than a bit of "argy-bargy", as Bill McLaren might say.
Curious foreigners
But Faulkner's Dublin Journal for 1799 was "sorry to observe that the Magistrates of Dublin are so inattentive to its peace, as to suffer the continuation of that annual nuisance, Donnybrook Fair, so many days beyond the time which, unfortunately, it has a legal claim to exist". The Journal optimistically predicted that the fair would probably last "until it shall grow into such an enormity of riot and outrage as shall end itself".
It wasn't unusual for curious foreigners to visit the fair. One who described what he saw was Prince Puckler Muskau, who was there in 1828. His comments were not exactly flattering. Nothing, he said, could be more national than the fair: "The poverty, the dirt and the wild tumult were as great as the glee and merriment with which the cheapest pleasures were enjoyed. I saw things eaten and drunk with delight, which forced me to turn my head quickly away, to remain master of my disgust. Heat and dirt, crowd and stench, made it impossible to stay longer."
Ragged tents
Our fastidious visitor remarked that these things did not annoy the natives. He saw hundreds of ragged tents all round him, ragged like the people. One tent owner had hoisted a dead and half-putrid cat outside. The lap dancers of the day were not absent : "The lowest sort of rope-dancers and posture-masters exercised their toilsome vocation on a stage of planks, and dressed in shabby finery were dancing and grimacing in the dreadful heat until they were completely exhausted." I hope they were as well paid as the denizens of Angels in Leeson Street.
A committee was formed to campaign for the abolition of the fair. As the city expanded in the 19th century and Donnybrook became a much-favoured residential locality, the fair's days were numbered.
The Corporation bought back the patent from the Madden family in 1855 and Dublin became a duller, if safer, place as a result. The shebeen owners were pretty indignant with the Corporation and one, who had a field beside her premises, managed to carry on a fair of her own until her licence was eventually revoked.
The licensed vintners can't have carried as much political clout in those days.