A Dublin Wake......
Alcohol
and ‘hod-carrying’ have never mixed and the two should be kept
miles and miles apart. Just in case anyone does not know what a hod-carrier is,
well let me put it this way. When a bricklayer is building a high wall someone
has to carry the bricks up the ladder. The faster the bricklayer is, the faster
the carrier has to run up and down the ladder. It is not a job for the faint-hearted………….
My Uncle Tim was an expert in two fields. He was one of the best
hod-carriers in all of Dublin and one of the best pint drinkers in all the Dublin
pubs. He loved his Guinness and now and again a drop of
the ‘hard stuff’ – that’s Irish whiskey, be it
the real McCoy or the illegal, home-made whiskey known
as potteen....
He could carry more bricks in a day than most good bricklayers
could lay in two days and the site foremen on the building sites were only too
willing to pay Tim the ‘double-bubble’, or double time, in order to
get the job done when time was of the essence. He could keep two, or if hard
pushed, three bricklayers busy all day from eight in the morning until six at
night. Then it was straight home for his only meal of the day followed by two
or three hours in a pub. Any pub would do.......
He was what is known in Dublin circles as a ‘dacent
man’ who would never see anyone go without when he had money in his
pocket. Auntie Betty didn’t mind what he did with his money
provided she was first in the queue on a Friday night for the housekeeping
money.
They had lived in 22 Walkin’s Street, off the Rotunda for all
his twenty-eight years of marriage. He was a ‘Jackeen’, or as they are
called more often nowadays, a ‘Dubb’, through and through......................
The worst day of the week for Uncle Tim was always the Mondays.
You see, he would have been drinking all day Sunday and always had a fierce
hangover come Monday morning. When it got too bad for him, he would have a
couple of swigs of the ‘creature’, (that’s another nickname for the
whiskey), to get himself started.
"Be Jazus" said Tim, one cold Monday morning as he stood in the March
frost on the building site, "but the shakes has got me
to-day". He slipped around the back of the building they were
working on and had an extra large swig from his half-bottle of whiskey.
He was beginning to feel a little better when the two
bricklayers climbed the ladder to the second floor scaffolding. Tim stuck a
dozen bricks on the hod and gingerly began to climb the ladder. He was shaking
and although it was bitterly cold, he began to sweat like a pig.
"Bloody hell" he exclaimed as his foot slipped off
the rung of the ladder causing him to almost drop
the hod and bricks.
No sooner had he deposited the bricks with the bricklayers, he
was down again to refill the hod. His second trip up the ladder was worse than
the first but he made it. The sweat was rolling down his face despite the frost
in the air. He continued working for the next hour or so.
It must have been about half-past nine when the bricklayers were
having their first mugs of tea in the old hut that Tim decided to get well
ahead of himself. If he continued working the hod, he could have a few hundred
bricks up on top before they restarted working.
He was all alone with no one in sight and had just got to the
top of the ladder when his foot slipped. Rather than drop the hod and bricks he
held on tightly but without warning the rung of the ladder he was standing on
snapped. Poor Tim sailed through the air, landed on the hard ground amongst
some rubble quickly followed by the hod and bricks. He lay there with several
large cuts and bruises to his head.
On hearing the racket outside, two of the bricklayers and the
site foreman came running out where they found poor old Tim. They checked for
signs of breathing but found none and likewise for a pulse of which there was
no trace. Poor old Uncle Tim was dead.....................
Arrangements were made to have his body taken home and all
Auntie Betty said on seeing him was "Sure he asked for it. He was
begging the good Lord to bring his punishment down on him, with his swearing
and drinking and gambling". Without any further ado, one of the
neighbours was sent to O’Neill’s Pub to get Dr. O’Grady
to fill in and sign the death certificate.
Now Dr. O’Grady was also an Olympic Drinker but
always ended up with only a Silver medal against Uncle Tim’s
first prize Gold. This morning was no exception. He too
had been drinking all day Sunday with Uncle Tim and had merely ‘topped-up’ with
four or five pints of Guinness already. He also liked his whiskey ‘chasers’.
To put it mildly, he was at least half-blind drunk when he arrived in Uncle
Tim’s bedroom..........................
"Arra now" he cried with his bowler hat in his hands "sure
don’t go crying tears all over the place Betty. Get the neighbours and we will
give auld Tim a wake that would indeed wake the bloody devil himself".
I stood in the corner and was only a little surprised that he
did not lay a finger on poor Tim. Instead he went into the kitchen, took a book
of forms out of his leather Gladstone bag and immediately
signed a death certificate. He spoke as he wrote. "Cause of death:
multiple traumas to the skull resulting in at least two fractures".
"There you are Betty, that should be good enough for you to
get the insurance" he said as he handed Auntie Betty the slip of paper.
Literally within a couple of hours, poor Tim was laid out on the
bed in a beautiful new white sheet. The neighbours had arrived with different
things to eat. There were cakes, which were being saved for Easter. There were
all sorts of cold meats – most likely leftovers from Sunday’s dinner. A large
punchbowl had been borrowed from O’Neill’s pub, which only ever saw the light
of day after funerals, weddings and Christenings. Its contents were almost
ninety-nine percent pure whiskey, with just a drop of lemonade added as an
excuse.
The kitchen was packed with people smoking their pipes, cigars
that had also been saved for such special occasions, along with some
strange smelling tobacco cigarettes. There were as many strangers as there were
friends and it seemed that all you needed to attend was to have once met
someone who had once met Uncle Tim.
Auntie Betty didn’t mind as she had drunk a large glass of
whiskey when Tim had first been brought home. There was some dancing, singing
and storytelling. I heard things about Uncle Tim that were so far-fetched that
even if the storyteller had sworn on a stack of bibles, I still would not have
believed them.
According to one fellow, Tim had been a hod-carrier on
the Empire State Building in New York City and had carried
bricks for ten different bricklayers at the same time – and that included,
according to his story (or should I say his lies), he had to
climb fifty stories to get to where they were working.
As soon as lunch was over and even more bowls of punch had been
made and drunk by especially the women, the sounds of crying could be heard
from several directions. The men were pouring themselves pints of Guinness from
a couple of barrels in the corner but they were not making a good job of it.
The ‘heads’, that’s the top white portion, were what was known in
the trade as ‘Archbishops hats’ – four times bigger than a
priests collar.
Mrs. O’Brien from next door suddenly began sobbing as if it were
her own husband that had died. She began to mutter something about ‘love
for Tim’. Mrs. McGee from across the road knew only too well what she was
on about and shouted to her "Will you not be holding your gob
Biddy". Biddy, without any warning, threw herself on the bed beside
Uncle Tim and everything went as silent as the tomb. Mrs. McGee jumped and I
really believe she meant just to slap Biddy on the face to get her out of her
condition. In fact she hit her so hard that Biddy’s nose started to bleed.
"Be Jazus" screamed Mickey O’Brien, Biddy’s husband "sure
now yez are both out of order. Get back here Biddy". Biddy walked over
to Mickey and hit him such a wallop as I have never seen before or since in my
life. Mickey fell like a sack of coal onto the floor unconscious. With that all
hell broke loose. Every neighbourhood or family feud that ever existed came to
the fore with women fighting like Kilkenny cats and men using their
walking sticks or anything else that came in handy. It was as good a ruction
as I have ever seen in all my life.
As with all ‘good’ Dublin fights, soon the
bottles and glasses began to fly about the room. Mickey O’Brien got up off the
floor and realised what was going on. He saw his chance to get his own back on
Mickey Maloney who he had always suspected was ‘at it’ with
his wife Biddy. He threw a full glass of whiskey across the room at the other
Mickey.
The glass and its contents hit the wall above the bed and nearly
knocked the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus off it. The
whiskey flew around the place with most of it landing on poor old Uncle Tim’s
face.
"Mother of Jezus" a chorus rang out and at the same time,
total silence followed. There he was, Uncle Tim sitting up in bed and looking
around the place. "What the bloody hell is going on here?" he
croaked "sure it looks like a wake yez are having. Did yez all
think I was bloody dead?"
With that he was handed a pint of Guinness and a glass of
whiskey as some of the men told him that the reason they were celebrating was
the good fortune that Tim had at work when he ‘should have been killed
from that big fall’.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Dr. O’Grady was searching Mrs.
Finnigan’s purse for the Death Certificate. If the Irish Medical
Council discovered his mistake, sure he would definitely have
been ‘struck off’ again - - - - - - for the fourth time...........
-------------------------
Suggested by an old
Irish song:
TIM FINNIGANS WAKE:
Tim Finnigan lived
in Walkins Street, a decent Irishman, mighty odd,
He had a brogue so
rich and sweet, and to raise in the world, he carried a hod.
You see, he’d a
sort of a tippling way, with a love for the liqueur poor Tim was born,
So to help him on
with his work each day, he had a drop of the creature every morn.
Whack fal a toura
loora laddie, whack fal a toura loora lay,
Whack fal a toura
loora laddie, whack fal a toura loora lie.
One morning Tim
was rather full, his head felt heavy which made him shake.
He fell from the
ladder and he broke his skull, so they carried him home, his corpse to wake.
They rolled him up
in a nice clean sheet, and laid him out upon the bed,
With a barrel of
porter at his feet, and a gallon of whisky at his head.
Whack.........................................................................
His friends
assembled at the wake, and Mrs. Finnegan called for lunch,
They first brought
in tea and cake, then pipes, tobacco and whisky punch.
Then Biddy
O’Brien, began to cry, such a nice clean corpse did you ever see,
Ah Tim movourneen,
why did you die, arra hold your gob said Mrs. McGee.
Whack........................................................................
Then Mickey
O’Brien takes up the job, he says now Biddy, you’re wrong I’m sure,
Biddy hits him a
skelp in the gob, and laid him out upon the floor.
Now soon the war,
it did engage, ‘twas woman to woman, and man to man,
Shillelagh law was
all the rage, and a row and a ruction soon began.
Whack.......................................................................
Then Mickey
Maloney ducked his head, when a naggin of whisky flew at him,
The whisky landed
on the bed, the liqueur scattered all over Tim.
Now Tim revives,
see how he rises, Timothy rising from the dead,
Said whirl me
whisky round like blazes, thundering Jazus do you think I’m dead.
Whack..........................................................................
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