This is an exciting tour which mixes eras and brings alive the timeless spirit of our capital : from the dandies of the 18th century to the punks of the 1970s.
The tour goes from College Green and Trinity College up Grafton Street to St Stephen’s Green, taking in statues and buildings connected to famous characters.
We hear about Maud Gonne (pictured above) the beauty and rebel who inspired the love poems of William Butler Yeats – and still turned him down.
We look in on the literary pubs of the 1950s and 60s, frequented by Brendan Behan and Patrick Kavanagh. And we pass the former McGonagles nite club where Hippies and Punks danced over the decades.
Our guide Eamon Delaney, a teenage punk himself, tells us about the shows back then and an emerging band called U2.
Before that, in 1758, there was Whytes Academy, a ‘Seminary for the Instruction of Youth’. Pupils included Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The School for Scandal) patriot Robert Emmet and a young Duke of Wellington (below). Yes, he was Irish – up to a point.
We proceed to the statue of Robert Emmet, inside the Green. Eamon will recite some of Emmet’s powerful speech from the dock before he was taken away to be publicly executed by the British.
We see where Constance Markiewicz took over a building in 1916 as part of the Easter Rising : the bullet holes still visible on the nearby Fusiliers Arch.
We hear about the Dandelion Market, once famous for its colourful stalls and a big attraction for hippies and punk rockers. Our guide Eamon will give us more tales of his punk days (pictured below!)
There is a further personal angle : the tour begins at the Thomas Davis statue on College Green, sculpted by Eamon’s father, Edward Delaney RHA. And ends at the Wolfe Tone statue on St Stephen’s Green, also sculpted by his father.
We hear the stories behind these statues – Thomas Davis was the leader of the Young Irelanders revolt of 1848 and his statue replaced that of King William of Orange who was blown off his bronze horse.
Wolfe Tone was a leader in the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion. He helped the Revolutionary French to invade and was sentenced to hang by the British. But he cheated the hangman by cutting his own throat – he wanted to be shot as a soldier. His statue was blown up in 1971 but subsequently repaired.
His son Eamon (above) remembers these statues being constructed in the yard of his childhood home, and now shares these memories, as well as his knowledge of the city’s history and characters.
Next tour is in Sunday, 13 September, starting at 11.00 am, meeting inside front gates of Trinity College.
Book via PayPal or contact eamondelaney2@gmail.com or call 087 9465974.
Cost is 20 euros with payment in cash, or via PayPal here :
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/EamonDDelaney
The Lion and the Shamrock 