The discovery of a third surviving Dublin fanlight horse, this time in Ringsend, might have persuaded me to take the species off the endangered list. But as reader Conall (surname withheld) – who found it – suggests, that would be premature.
“This particular specimen could be considered doubly endangered,” he warns, “because the house is up for sale.”
Sure enough, it is. And describing the Bath Avenue property as a “double-fronted, Victorian residence dating from the 1870s”, the estate agents say it requires “complete refurbishment and modernisation throughout”.
So I fear for the horse: an unusual example of the genre in that it has all four hooves on the ground.
This appears to contravene what Seumas O’Sullivan said in his 1917 essay on the subject, at a time when the white fanlight horse was a classic feature of Georgian Dublin: that the figurine invariably had a raised foreleg, as if awaiting an order to charge.
Conversely, in his childhood mythmaking, no doubt influenced by the story of Oisín and Tir nan Óg, he imagined some great or terrible change overcoming the city if this occupying army of horses ever dropped the hoof.
Perhaps, he suggested in the more optimistic scenario, the raised foreleg “was but a symbol of that uncertainty of purpose, that ineffectual grasp on the things of earth, which had left his native land so many ages behind all other modern countries, and the setting down of it would be the signal for the release of a great and long-latent force of national character, which, once roused, would place it in the forefront of the world”.
That’s a lot of responsibility to place on a mere figurine. But whatever happened when the horse on Bath Avenue put its foot down has happened already, clearly. I’d be more worried now that the sale of the house will be the signal for the release of a great and long-latent force of refurbishment, in which there may be no place for an old-fashioned equine statue.
[ Another sighting of the lesser-spotted Dublin fanlight horseOpens in new window ]
Mention of Monto, Dublin’s former red-light district, last week evoked memories for a Cork reader of days, long past, when he was a foot soldier in the Legion of Mary.
The flood of recollection was prompted party by his confusion as to where Monto is or was, and my mention of its proximity to the Loopline Bridge (the one that crosses Amiens Street from what is now Connolly station).
Because by the time he joined the fight against vice, it seems, the front line had followed the Loopline across the Liffey to the south quays, operating there in the shadows of other bridges.
Anyway, his email is a reminder that, although the legion and its founder Frank Duff famously closed Monto down in the early years of Irish independence, the battle then and later was not all one way.
My correspondent was a “young, impressionable lad” when a friend persuaded him to join the organisation in (he thinks) Dún Laoghaire, from where they launched occasional forays into Dublin: “When we weren’t reciting prayers and imploring God to right the wrongs of the world, two of us were tasked with taking the bus into the city to try to rehabilitate some of the ‘Ladies of the Night’ who plied their trade in the dark lanes behind Tara Street train station, as it was then.
“One night we approached what to us at the time seemed to be an elderly lady lurking in the shadows, to try to convince her to mend her ways. Her response was to tell me to ‘go home to your mother, son’.” He thinks she may also have told him that this was the only way she could put food on the table for her family. This “was certainly food for thought for me and made me look at the bigger picture”.
Another night, he and his comrade were dispatched to Benburb Street, which predated Monto as a red-light area, thanks to the enormous Royal (now Collins) Barracks, and lingered on a smaller scale well into the last century.
[ Take a tour of Monto, Dublin's one-time notorious red light districtOpens in new window ]
It lingers no longer: the only echo of red lights there now is the Red Line Luas, which speeds along the street on the stretch between Smithfield and Heuston Station.
The Dún Laoghaire missionaries’ work in Benburb Street was more convivial but no more successful: “We had a great chat with two young ladies and a good laugh too. They told us that they couldn’t afford their lifestyle by working at anything else.”
No conversions resulted, or at least not among the women. The reader’s email concludes: “We wished them a good night and good luck and took the number 8 bus home. I suppose it was part of my education about life and the end of my relationship with the Legion of Mary.”
