TLRH | The History of the Irish Pub

Friday, 12 March 2021, 1 – 2pm With many Irish people mourning the closure of their local pub, we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by asking what place the Irish pub holds in our history and culture. How did people use pubs in the past, and what was the popular attitude towards them? Famous the world over, is the Irish pub indeed an imagined space embedded in the concept of “Irish hospitality”? In this panel discussion chaired by Dr Ciaran O’Neill, Deputy Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, speakers will look at Irish pubs through the ages and the perception of public houses a century ago; the place of the pub in the history of folk music and revolution; what the pub means in Irish theatre, and what it tells us about ‘Irishness’ and performance of culture. Prior to the panel discussion, four musicians from the Traditional Music Society of Trinity College Dublin (Claire Stafford, Sarah McKenna, Simon O'Connor, and Oisín Cullen) will be playing live music - make sure to tune in from 12:50 pm to catch some live tunes! Speakers: Dr Ciarán Wallace The pub has never been just a place where you bought alcohol. How did people use pubs in the past? Who went to pubs, who didn't? What was the popular attitude towards them? Ciarán will look at pubs in some cartoons published a century ago to see what they can tell us. Trish Murphy, Director of the College Health Service What is the personal impact of the pub environment on people’s lives and communities? This talk will examine the personal story of growing up in a pub in a small town in the West of Ireland--both the good and the bad. The story will also highlight the skills that were developed from pub culture, and how this speaker used these when working in detention centres, prisons, and travelling alone in far flung places. Jack Sheehan If the pub is to Irish folk music what the coffee house is to American folk music, what does that say about Ireland? From the White Horse Inn of Greenwich Village, where musicians mixed with politicians, writers and radicals, to the Bogside Inn of Derry, where music accompanied planning for revolution, how can we describe the musical culture of the Irish pub?, Jack Sheehan’s talk will be emotional rather than intellectual, a slightly shaggy wander in and out of various times, places and of course, pubs. Moonyoung Hong What are the links between two performative spaces – theatre and the pub – and their significance in Irish history and culture? The talk will examine the political, literary and cultural implications of J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World (1907), Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars (1926) – both of which caused riots at the Abbey Theatre – as well as the works of other contemporary Irish playwrights who use the pub as their plays’ setting, to interrogate the (problematic) ideas of “Irishness” and “platiality” (Chaudhuri, 1997). Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/