The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl

Contributed by Léan Ní Chléirigh

It was with some trepidation that I arrived in the Duke Pub last Friday at 7.15 for the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl. Acting like a tourist in your own city is a dangerous business. As a Dub I get frequently irked by the twin pillars of Dublin Stereotype; Ross O’Caroll-Kelly and Dicey Riley. I feared the latter might be the principal focus of this tour. The tour begins in the Duke pub (and ends in Davy Byrnes on the same street) and there is a room set aside for the group to warm up between 7 and 7.30. The first item on the agenda is a brief introduction to the tour by your guides and the caveat that they are culture enthusiasts not experts so could we leave any really heavy questioning until the end. (I imagine this is the result of previous experience) We were also informed that there would be a quiz at the end of the tour in which one lucky punter could win the world famous Dublin Literary Tour T-Shirt.

The first hit of culture comes with a rendition of a few of the 27 verses of ‘Waxie’s Dargle’ a drinking song. Hmmm. I’ll keep an open mind for now. The performances are interspersed with banter, an extremely difficult thing to keep spontaneous night after night and, to be fair to the guides, while it may have seemed slightly forced to my ear, the bursts of laughter from the ‘real’ tourists showed that it was perfectly pitched. Then came a scene from ‘Waiting for Godot’ and the strength of the tour became immediately apparent.