The Citizen and the King

Barney mavourneen's be it, says I.

For The Session this month, Phil Cook has asked us to consider "beer and pubs in arts and fiction" and I'm glad he phrased it that way, not simply looking for made-up pubs. While my choice appears in a very famous work of fiction, it is a real place and still, just about, standing.

There are few more groanworthy topics in all of art and literature than that of James Joyce's Ulysses, and how impenetrable it is, and so easy to start and impossible to finish. That's not everyone's experience, and some of us made our peace with the more difficult parts as we went through it. To avoid it is to miss some wonderful prose, and the part I recommend to the casual reader, whether or not they have any intention of reading the whole book, is chapter 12: Cyclops.

The scene is not directly related to the story of the rest of the novel, and none of the main characters are at the centre of it, which is why it works as a standalone piece. For the most part it takes place in a pub: Barney Kiernan's of Little Britain Street in the North Inner City. While Joyce interjects with some very, err, Joycean paragraphs to the dialogue, most of it is a transcript of the everyday banter of a group of acquaintances, meeting for a couple of drinks one summer afternoon. The main aim is to capture the wit and repartee of such everyday occasions, and I like to think Joyce enjoyed writing it, stringing together all his favourite turns of phrase that he heard in Dublin pubs before he left the city many years before, and inhabiting the personas of Proper Dub pub characters as he remembered them.

The antagonist of the piece (whom I had always interpreted as the landlord, until the first comment below arrived) is mostly fictional. Named only The Citizen, he's a parody of spittle-flecked 19th century Irish nationalism, and reputedly based on GAA founder and teacher Michael Cusack. But the pub itself is real. At the time Ulysses is set, it was a sizeable concern, occupying three units along the street.

...the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co, limited, 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street, wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises.

The pub, I understand, was in the middle, with the wholesale office on one side and a goods yard on the other. That yard is now the location of a high-end cocktail pub which I've never been in, but which makes no mention of the literary connection in its menus or marketing. The building which housed the pub has been boarded up for decades. It gets an occasional lick of paint, it has had its brickwork repaired in recent-ish years, and it goes up for sale now and again, but nobody has ever put it to any new use nor relicensed it as a pub. Davy Byrne's, across town, is a Joycean pilgrimage spot, even though it's the location of a much inferior scene. Barney Kiernan's remains unloved, a victim of the dereliction that Dubliners like to decry in their city but nobody seems to want to do anything to fix.

Except the hoteliers, of course. The area next to Little Britain Street, and the North Inner City in general, has seen some gigantic modern aparthotels and hostels built on sites that were once warehouses, tenements, and other parts of the fabric of central urban life. A few minutes' walk from Barney's is Clink, an upmarket hostel for upmarket young'uns, part of a Dutch chain, with branches in Amsterdam and London. Beyond reception, there's a comfy lounge with a small bar and -- hello! -- a house beer. The AI which generated its pumpclip seems to have drawn on elements of the jolly Augustiner and St Bernardus friars, and given him six digits on his left hand, as is traditional in this artistic vernacular.

Clink Lager is 4.9% ABV and came served in a König Pilsner mug. Nothing about the taste suggested it wasn't a straight rebadge of König. That's not a beer that's commonly available here, though I have seen it on draught in a handful of other local pubs, and while it may not be Germany's finest, decent pilsner is not to be sniffed at, and certainly not at €6.50 a pint in central Dublin. There's a proper snap of noble-hop-accented lager malt, suggesting sun-dried grass clippings and pale straw. That's fun, but the real teutonic expertise shows in the finish: a strong herbal greenness that's almost oily, evoking basil or rosemary. Equally, you can happily ignore the understated complexity and enjoy it as a cold quaffing lager: the balance is perfect. I know that several Irish breweries are well capable of making and selling pilsner this good, but so few do. That's why I'm sticking with König as my guess for the provenance.

That's about as close to investigative journalism as you'll get on this blog. Clink also stocks a couple of beers from Black's of Kinsale, and from the décor, it looks like Rascals was one part of the offer too. I'm not sure I'll be making it one of my regular haunts -- dear god, I felt old in there -- but nipping in on a warm afternoon for a looksee with a pint of decent pils was no hardship. 

Ah! Ow! Don't be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a click.