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Our mutual friend described this place.

I said, "What do you think? You know, are you going to miss it?"

And he said, "Ah, it was just perfect."

"It was just perfect."

I think I fell in love with Dublin

when I started coming in here.

It was a place where musicians were welcome but the...

the musicians felt welcome.

Yeah.

And that they could come in here and just play

and listen to other musicians without any pressure to perform

or anything like that.

You see the best musicians in the country, in the world,

coming in here, and not playing at all, just listening, you know?

Yeah.

And, you know, it was just, just... such a privilege.

And, you know, for people like, who are not musicians, who love music,

to be sitting beside the best there is.

Yeah. You know, just...

what a privilege.

Aw, now, it's outstanding. Well, you DO play music.

I remember at some stage, you used to be sitting in here

and we'd be coaxing you. Yeah!

And your modus operandi was, kind of, every so often,

you'd kinda just... the hand would kinda slip in

as if you're gonna take out a little Derringer and shoot somebody, like!

And next thing this whistle would come up and hit your thing there

and you'd be playing down this way. And you have more music

in your little finger than half the pub has in their...

Yeah... It was just a...

...a very humbling place to be.

And I would imagine maybe the same for musicians as well.

And there was an unspoken etiquette, you know?

Don't get in the way of the session, you know.

Like, it was just an exercise in... I don't know...

Courtesy. Yeah.

But it was very funny listening to Martin

because I asked him, "How did you deal with that?"

And he said, "You know..." he said, "there was a fella in here now

and he was beating the drum very, you know...

so I just went down to him and I said, 'Eh...

listen, would you put that away? You're wrecking me head'!

He "suggested", you know?! He hinted!

He hinted, yeah!

At home, if there was a session, it was always the one.

There'd be music, and there'd be dancing and there'd be singing,

and there'd be storytelling. It was like a four-legged pot, like.

You had the whole thing. Whereas they came up here,

there was the Goilin and there was dancing maybe in the Teachers' Club

or in the Pipers' Club - and sessions and such a thing.

But I think there was a kind of a melting pot of them here.

♪ Come all ye broken-hearted ones

♪ and listen to my lay

♪ About a lovely damsel as fair as this blest May

♪ Who's caused much tears and sorrow and grief and heartfelt woe

♪ It's Kitty Quinn I'm speaking of

♪ The Pride of Pimlico...

♪ Well, just about a month ago

♪ unto this place she came

♪ And set our hearts a blazin' up in love's undying flame

♪ And made of every other lass about the place a foe

♪ Because she took their sweethearts

♪ did the Pride of Pimlico

♪ Poor Paddy Burke the tailor now can't do a stroke of work

♪ Nor Billy Shee the handyman, nor steady Jack McGurk

♪ And if you aks the reason, they'll just answer you with

♪ "Oh, 'tis all because of Kitty Quinn, the Pride of Pimlico

♪ There's Murphy the teetotaller, he's gone upon the spree

♪ And Kehoe the whiskey drinker now is taking milk in tea

♪ He's given up John Jameson and likewise Power and Roe

♪ Because his heart's distracted by the Pride of Pimlico

♪ Old Jimmy Kane the miser that no one could get around

♪ And young Tom Ray who owns a forge and near a hundred pound

♪ And Matt McCann whose father keeps the Irish Waxwork Show

♪ Are raving night and day about the Pride of Pimlico

♪ It's time the polis saw to it, or it will be too late

♪ And divil a man in all the Coombe will have a solid pate

♪ And soon beyond in Ridley's a sight of awful woe

♪ You'll see ten thousand victims of the Pride of Pimlico ♪

Good man, Barry! Bravo! Lovely stuff.

Who wrote that?

Arthur Griffith. Yeah, he wrote the words. It's lovely.

Lovely, eh... Unusual for Arthur Griffith. You wouldn't expect it.

-Yeah. - Most of his stuff was very political.

Brilliant. This is the centenary, is it?

Pardon? Yeah, he died August 1922. So...

Kevin Conneff now, set it to that traditional air, you know?

You wouldn't put it with Arthur Griffith really. Brilliant.

No. It's on 'Chieftains 10'. -Ah! - Yeah.

Really? So, em...

I think that's about the best version I've heard of it,

with the two of you playing along! The one we just did?!

Of course, I don't listen to many versions!

Good stuff.

There's something decadent

about looking out through a pub window at, you know...

A sunny day!..a sunny day, the Four Courts. Look!

I often think when you'd see a guy

going for a jog outside, you know, when you're inside,

and you think, "What a flippin' eejit he is out there...

could be in here drinkin' pints!"

And then when you're out there passing by and you look in,

you just say, "My God Almighty! Wasters altogether!"

"What the hell are they doin' in there?!"

It's a bit of a Maggie Barry-type song, isn't it?

Yeah, you could imagine her singing it alright.

That'd be a better version probably.

It would be. A WAY better version,

especially the banjo playing on it.

Maggie was good alright!

You couldn't beat her!

That's me back in me box now. That's grand!

Story of my life! Little brother syndrome.

Yeah, you have to put up with that. Ah, you have to.

SEAN McGINLEY: There are moments, artistic moments in my life,

a lot of them happened in this pub.

You know, I've been in theatres and I've been in...

I've seen exhibitions and then... But some of the...

the most profoundly moving artistic experiences of my life

were in here, in this bar.

All the sessions that... They'd run for, for...

I mean Gay and Mary's, was it 33 years on a Sunday night?

Yeah. Um, Monday night,

there were 18, 19 years.

The lads, the guitar lads on Wednesday night - Paul and Ray -

they were 15, 16 years. I mean, they...

They just knew it was a space they could come, do their thing,

and be left alone basically. There was no football match blaring,

there was no DJ coming in at 10 o'clock: "Lads, you have to wrap".

There was nothing. Dad set a... Yeah.

...he set a welcoming tone. He did, yeah.

And the thing I learned from him was: if things are flowing,

and people are having a good time, and everyone's benefitting from it,

like, just get out of the way. Don't put your oar in.

You create a space for stuff to happen.

Some nights, nothing happens. Some nights, it's average.

Some nights, it's magic. But if you...

don't just leave that space there, you won't get the magic.

Here we are again.

Here we are again. Bit emotional isn't it?

That's what I'm gonna ask you about. How do you feel?

It is quite an emotional thing, isn't it?

It is emotional to walk back in again after being away from it now

for the last two... two years,

and especially after the amount of years we actually spent here.

Um... The only thing is when you come in, you kind of picture back

a lot of the memories that you've had

and a lot of the times, you know, special times particularly.

Yeah. It was just a way of life,

just a part of life.

I would have met Mary when I was about 12.

So we've been probably playing music since then together, you know?

So, um... this was like,

this was like the source of everything for us, I suppose.

We'd come in here and it was, you know...

Because we never knew who else was going to come in,

the great diversity in the music that you heard and we were so lucky.

Probably because it's in the centre of the city, the pub,

people passing through would come into Hughes's.

Yeah, yeah. So we heard the best of music

from the time we were young to...

to now that we're all old ones, like!

Hey, hey! Speak for yourself!

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Marie, it's a thrill to have you here:

mother of all the Hugheses. What's your earliest memory of the pub?

I suppose, when I met Michael over 50 years ago,

52 years actually, we were together.

At that time, of course, we didn't have the music

and it was very different to what developed later, you know?

And what was the nature of the pub then?

Just a place to drink and gather.

But it was an early house, right? Oh, it was an early house, yes.

So you had the markets, the courts then and all that.

Was that all happening at that point?

Yes. You'd have queues at 6.30 in the morning because we opened at 7.

Yeah. And in actual fact,

if they didn't see the lights on upstairs, they would be

pressing the bell and shouting: "Mike! It's time to open up!"

Looking for a coffee, were they?!

On an average day here, you'd have the market crowds in the mornings.

The place, at 7 a.m., would be packed.

They've all been working through the night.

So the traders from the fish market, the fruit market,

they'd all be in and they'd still be doing deals.

There'd be wads of cash going around.

It was like, um... really bustling trade.

And the snug would be full of Italians

the Italian traders who ran chippers and all that...

and they'd be drinking their coffee out of a glass.

Now, I've been to a few chippers in my life.

I'm not sure I ever got fruit and veg in an Italian chipper?

Potatoes.

Potatoes! Are they chips? Potatoes for chips.

Apparently, they used to make chips out of potatoes.

Well! Well... run me down! You're welcome!

Maurice McAuley's load of cauliflowers

left his farm near Skerries before 5 o'clock in the morning.

Most of the vegetables for the Dublin market

are grown in the area north of the city.

It's all closed up now anyways. Closed up a long time.

'Tis yeah. Who knows what's going to happen to it but, um...

Wasn't the f... Is this the fish market then?

Fish market was here on the left-hand side

where this new building's being built.

And, uh, you could go through to the back of Hughes's pub here,

into that little cul-de-sac

which was right up against the fish market. Yeah.

You could go straight through like, from the fish market?

Yeah, from the front gate of it way up on that street,

right down and out the back there into Hughes's.

- In the back door? - In the back door. Yeah, you could!

I worked here in the '70s when I was in college.

Eamonn was there, and his uncle had the business there,

and he was very good to give us work when we needed a few bob!

But, eh... Yeah, I worked on and off.

I was trying to remember in the '70s because my whole, my whole life

is a blur basically.

It'd be '76 when I worked there, '77.

I'd have been going back to college as well then

'cause I remember going... I worked for about a month or something

in it as well.

My Mary's father

remembers coming in on a horse and cart from Rush

because they'd be bringing all their fruit and veg in.

And they'd come in. They'd be 20 miles out... Right.

bring the horse and cart into the market. And so that's his memory.

That was a kind of a day off for him, to come in with his da.

You know, on the horse and cart. Yeah.

In 1862, it was decided to provide

a market for Dublin but nothing happened for 30 years.

It was in 1892 that the Dublin fruit and vegetable market was set up

so that provisions for the city could be sold

in orderly and hygienic conditions.

It's quite an operation, isn't it? Yeah.

So that'd be from about 7 o'clock.

So Hughes's was the early start? Hughes's was an early house, yeah.

That's a city licence... Yeah.

...that they were allowed to open early. So it was a special licence.

There'd be a number of them around the Capel Street area.

And it's all to do with this place... Yeah.

...and the fish markets. The fish markets yeah.

So they had a special licence to open at 7 o'clock in the morning.

What's going to happen to - it? -Who knows?

Gonna be a fruit market again, completely refurbished

the whole building, and then it's gonna be refurbished

for fruit and veg.

Again? Bit of an English Market.

Oh right. Specialist. Gonna be a lovely job, yeah.

- That'll be fantastic. - My sister used to work here a long time ago.

Yeah? Your sister?

They used to have the prams, and then bring all the fruit up town

and sell it in Moore Street. That's right.

And there was loads. Loads and loads of them.

They're all dead and gone now but they all had a good life, you know?

Had a good life. Yeah, for sure, yeah.

God, it was a busy place, wasn't it though?

This was a massive place. Over there was a breakfast bar

where everyone got breakfast. They'd come in to get their flowers.

They'd get everything in here. Yeah.

The place was alive from four in the morning.

We're out of here the 8th April, and then it's county council.

They're coming in and they're gonna blitz the place.

So this is the last time we'll see - it like this? -Yeah.

God, we got lucky didn't we! Jeez, fair dues to you!

Thanks for letting us in. Brilliant.

You want to have a selfie, Brendan? Of course, yeah.

Might as well have one with you. You're looking well, Brendan!

You're looking well yourself! Doing great work.

Listen, thanks a million. That was brilliant now.

Jeez, that was unexpected. Thanks a lot.

Anyone asks, you didn't see me. No, I didn't see you

Any Saturday morning in the next couple of weeks, I'll be here.

Yous can come in anytime. We've only got the couple of days

so this is amazing. Brilliant. - Perfect. - Great to meet ya anyway.

-Yeah you too. - Brilliant. God Bless. Thank you very much.

Cool, isn't it?

Who are the fab four?

Eh, they're Pillow Queens. They're an Irish band

and their album's coming out in a couple of weeks.

Brilliant! Jesus, great stuff.

It's all going on here, isn't it?!

That's brilliant. Oh yeah, you were saying the motor tax office...

The motor tax office is here, yeah. You queued up in there to get...

You can see all the suits will start to walk around as well...

Yeah... for the courts. All the legal eagles.

I was a barrister in the '90s,

and all the big criminal trials at the time took place across the road.

So the guards, the solicitors, the barristers and some of the parties

would be over here for lunch, and especially in the snug...

lunchtime was bustling, and the rumours and the discussion

and so on. And it was it was an electric place.

The atmosphere was always electric.

So when you say "the parties", eh... are you talking about criminals?

Well, sometimes yeah. I mean, it was a mix and gathering of people.

You could find anybody. There was all little nooks and crannies

in this place. This was a neutral zone?

It was a neutral zone, and it's exactly the same now

as it was then. There was no pretensions. It was just a place

where you came in, you sat down, you sat beside somebody,

and they took you as you were, and you took them as they were

and that was it. That was the great thing about it.

It's a pub that was old school with personality of its own.

And that was the great thing about it:

everybody was equal when they came in here you know.

Good man.

There was so many different times of day actually.

Like, the mornings when the fish market was open,

you used to have everyone coming in having their one-and-ones,

which was a glass with either tea or coffee in it, and a shot of whiskey.

Right. That was a - one-and-one? - That was a one-and-one.

And then the courts would start up

and you'd get all the barristers and the cops and a few accused

but then the music sort of came in and it changed it, just...

It changed the vibe of the place, which was great

because it actually made it feel more like a home away from home.

In the music community, so many people,

when they come together, that's their family, and...

you'd see, like different groups all the time during the week

coming in and you'd have sort of set dancers coming in.

That was their family gathering for the week.

I remember the summer - of '85. -Yeah.

'Cause I remember the nights here when Brendan started playing,

Brendan Begley. We knew Brendan through

my mother's brother Vincent...

God rest him, he died. He was married to Brendan's sister,

the singer Eileen Begley.

So Brendan started playing a few tunes on a Monday night,

and within weeks, the place was packed.

You talk about the bush telegraph...

Yeah! ...it took off like wildfire!

Faster!

I was only about 12 at the time. I'd be out getting glasses.

The place would be heaving. And the thing that really struck us

was that everyone knew each other. It was like this instant party...

Yeah... and we're kinda goin', "Who are these?"

You know, "What is this scene?" You know, "Who are these people?"

And they all were great socialisers, great, um...

They just loved music and chatting. They were just a brilliant crowd.

Fun. And that's... -And fun! - Yeah.

And it was like a gift, you know, because it kind of... um...

You don't know how anything's going to turn out in a place.

No. You can't... It's...

You can try to set a tone but, sure, that never works, you know?

-Yeah. - So the tone that lands in a place,

you know, you never know what you're going to get.

So, Brendan, you're the genesis of all this carry-on

from what I hear! Is that true?

Well, as Sean Garvey used to say,

"If the cat had fish gills, I'd get blamed for it!"

Well, I remember in maybe around 1984,

Terry Moylan contacted me: would I play for set dancers.

And I had got a scalding from set dancers from competitions

and the arguments that ensued, so I kind of gave him the slip.

He rang another time then and he said, "Would we have a ceili

down at the Ormond Hotel?" and I said "Who else is there?"

And he mentioned a few people like Aidan Vaughan.

- Ah, lovely. - Sure, I gave it a go. I had a great night.

That summer of '85,

my sister and her husband Vincent Loughnane,

he said "My sister has a pub here called Hughes's

and they're trying to... They have a fairly low trade at nighttime."

Yeah. "All their business is daytime".

So we came in here on a Monday night.

I think it was Gerry Bevan, Steve Cooney and Vinnie Kilduff

and maybe seven or eight set dancers from the Pipers' Club.

Yeah. It kind of grew from there,

and it... it was fantastic.

'Twas the first pub in Dublin that had set dancing.

People started coming in on Tuesday nights then

and sometimes there was such a crowd here,

there'd be another session inside the snug, and the two would be going

and one wouldn't hear the other. The place would be thronged.

Yeah. I think what happened here

then was actually magical. It was brilliant for music. I really do.

I think it was amazing for music, to be honest with you.

And the other thing that was great about here, especially for me,

like, I was playing with Brendan so you'd have tunes from West Kerry.

Then Dermot with tunes from Donegal, southwest Donegal,

all of Dermot's great tunes. Mary McNamara was another one

who also played here so you had all these East Clare tunes

and then I had my tunes from Navan Road.

So it was a great melting pot, meeting musicians

from different parts of the country. It was great.

Its loss is hugely felt in the city at the moment...

traditional musicians in the city have very, very few options

of places to play where the music is respected and understood,

and this was one of the places where it was.

In the early '70s, mid '70s like, there was folk clubs

every night of the week. There was so many of Jthem.

Some nights, there was two folk clubs going on in Dublin,

and that was kind of the way till the early '80s or so.

Around that time, singers' clubs started to pop up, like the Goilin,

and then the set dancing started to become very popular

around the country and here in the city.

So a lot of the people who went to the gigs

ended up going to the singers' clubs and set dancing clubs.

While it was great to bring musicians in here,

it did a lot of harm as well because, you know,

there was folk clubs in Slattery's. They had a great folk club up there.

The Tradition Club. The Tradition Club, yeah.

And I think it kind of killed that off because people had to pay

going in there, whereas there was great music happening here free.

Yeah, but there was a change of scene anyway wasn't there?

There was a change of scene. That change was coming, I think, anyway.

I remember going around Dublin, myself and Mary, in the early '80s

on a St Patrick's Day and we couldn't find anywhere with music.

I know! But it was hard. A lot of pubs didn't want it,

- - sure they didn't? - No. - They thought it was... There was no culture

of playing in pubs so playing music in sessions in pubs

wasn't something I grew up...

I grew up playing music in the Pipers' Club in Thomas Street.

It was very family-oriented. The McKennas, the Mulligans...

all of us were there. Also a lot of visitors.

Right. If there's matches on in town,

they'd come from Tipperary or Donegal or Sligo, wherever,

and they'd all visit the Pipers' Club on a Saturday night.

But on Thomas Street, it was sacrosanct that you listened,

you know, it was really important that you listen.

And Mick, in his own way, kind of developed that here.

So it was a really good fit for us because we wanted to listen

as well as play.

There's a lack of social spaces, like, in a real kind of a...

speaking about Dublin problems -

there's a lack of places to sit down and not spend money

and be in other people's company without having to buy something.

And, like, I know the whole idea of a pub is that you buy a drink but...

It was kind of...

Yeah, and The Cobblestone isn't really like that either.

You can sit down and drink a glass of water over there if you want to

as long as you're playing a few tunes. And there's not a whole lot

of other establishments around town where you can do that.

GAY McKEON: We used to invite people to come and sing

and often Frank Harte would come in and sit up there

and even... I wouldn't be inclined to play slow airs out in public

but he'd always ask me so I got into the habit

of playing airs here on a Sunday night if somebody asked me.

Or people would come in and dance, you know, solo-dance,

maybe the odd time there'd be a set.

There might be festivals down the country, and we'd always go home

and make it in here 'cause this was something different.

And this was a place

you could listen, and appreciate good music.

You could hear the jokes and the craic between tunes.

That's something that was special here,

that social spontaneity knitted the music together,

and people's relationships and personalities

were bonded between the tunes.

The music was kind of the magnet, and I think Mick and Martin knew

how to nurture and protect and foster that.

"THE HUMOURS OF BALLYLOUGHLIN/ FRAHER'S" CONTINUES PLAYING)

"Mr By Jove", yeah. A man came in, he was...

Who? "Mr By Jove".

Awfully nice man.

"Absolutely wonderful music!" And he left 20 quid in the jar.

Ah, go 'way? The "By Jove" money, we called it!

Jeez, we got about two years out of that didn't we!

SEAN McKEON: Jesus! Twenty quid goes a long way!

Twenty quid goes a long way in those days!

The chats are a big part of it, and even in Covid, like,

we stopped playing music all of a sudden

and I took out a banjo one day, and I was like, "This is rubbish".

It's no good by yourself,

and I realised how much the social connection

is such a definitive part of Irish music.

Yeah, wasn't he well into his 80s or something?

Right. He was fairly old. He loved the music.

He used to come over here on a Sunday, yeah.

It's not just any old pub. It's not replaceable.

It's like a habitat for...

If it was for some protected snail or something, you know,

it wouldn't be allowed to close, you know?

"A habitat"!

The musical equivalent of David Attenborough

would be asking people to preserve these type of things!

But it's hard to find and distinguish that from, you know...

Paddywhackery. Exactly, yeah.

The engine was just purring nicely, you know?

Everyone was enjoying themselves. Monday became Monday-and-Wednesday.

Then it became Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Then you'd have someone saying,

"Is there anyone playing in the snug on a Tuesday night?"

Yeah. "Oh, knock yourself out."

And then there'd be a session, say, that would go on for 15 years.

I know, yeah. Pearl O'Shaughnessy was there for ages.

Pearl was... decades, you know?

And she was extraordinary...

...such a generous... What a lady, yeah.

Such a lady, and so generous in her patience with...

- Yeah. - You know, she'd invited beginners in to play and foster them

and that session would become a jewel to them.

The session that my mother used to go to

she was the continuation from the old Church Street session

that a lot of musicians talk about.

That was a session that gave

an awful lot of musicians a start, and gave them a place to go.

It was a place you could go out without any intention

of playing a tune,

and you could meet people at the bar and have a chat.

Or, if the notion took you, if there was a session going on,

you could join in and play that, sit down and play a tune if you want.

It was great to have it and we'd have been lost in this city

for about 20, 30 years if we hadn't had it...

we'd have been seriously lost for a place to go out

and play a tune and relax.

Lovely, Paul.

In terms of the family then, they were all part of it too,

- weren't they? - Yeah, the memory I'd have of here as regards family is

when my eldest daughter was born, I was supposed to come in here

and play 'cause she was born on St Patrick's Day 33 years ago, Aoife.

And I remember on the way to the Coombe saying to Tom:

"Will you ring the lads and tell them I won't be in Hughes's?"

And I got a message back saying: "Tell her that's no excuse."

Brilliant!

And I had a similar story because I remember when I was

having the twins, I had the case in the boot of the car, and nobody knew

because I knew, "Ah..." And, like that, I had gone into labour

and I said, "Oh look, I'll just go in and have a few tunes,

and then I'll go into the hospital"!

Which is exactly what I did do!

We would sit down there and we would play tunes,

and the locals would be up here.

And there was a great respect from us for them,

and from them for us, you know?

And, over the years, we got to know each other.

Like, I mean Dolly and Jimmy would sit at the bar.

I think I knew everything about Dolly's children and grandchildren

by the time I was finished, you know?

There was weeks, I think Gay decided,

that they must have had a birthday every weekend

because there was a birthday cake handed in behind the bar,

and they'd send the birthday cake down to us!

But like there was a great respect.

When the pandemic happened, that social interaction wasn't happening

so did you find it rough, like?

I... couldn't play at all. I had great intentions,

and go and learn new tunes every week and all the rest of it.

Started off great, took the fiddle out and went:

"OK, what do I play?" 'Cause I NEVER play at home.

I only ever played when I went out. And, eh... after about two weeks,

I just had to leave it there because it just made me sad.

I felt so sad because the music just brought back the memories.

With the result now, I have to go and relearn everything

'cause I've all the second parts of every tune mixed up!

It is about the people, isn't it?

Who you're with, yeah. Very much so.

It gives the whole context to it. Without people around listening

to you, talking to you, mixing tunes with other people, it's... it's...

For me, it loses an awful lot. Loses nearly everything.

You had dancing, singing... Yeah. Yeah.

..loads of music, and eh... and lawyers,

and the people from the markets. You had everything! All human life.

I know. Antaine would have been here from the beginning too...

Oh yeah. BRENDAN: Because he - was set-dancing. -Yeah, he was.

So you'd see his big head bobbing away in there,

hitting off the roof, and then he'd be in here singing sean-nos.

Was it the Sean-Nos Cois Life?

They were here for donkey's years.

The last day would be on the Sunday in Hughes's

which was always a brilliant session.

I often went down to it myself. Generally the Sunday here now

would be...

because it was the...

♪ ..Agus, a bho, a bho, mo lao

♪ A bho, mo leanbh 's ce dearfadh nach i?

♪ O, cuirfidh me coiste faoi Bhaba 'Con Ri

♪ Cuirfidh me coiste faoi Bhaba 'Con Ri

♪ O, 's seanphoitin gliomach 's rothai 'gabhail faoi

♪ Agus, a bho, a bho, mo lao

♪ A bho, mo leanbh 's ce dearfadh nach i?

♪ Nuair a bhionns mna mhuintir Uaithnin ag caitheamh cloth shawl

♪ O, ta Baba sin againne 's pluid ar a ceann

♪ Agus, a bho, a bho, mo lao

♪ A bho, mo leanbh 's ce dearfadh nach i? ♪

So who was the previous owner of the pub then?

It was a guy called Bill O'Hara.

He sold the place in '53. I don't know what became of him

but he was here for a long time.

After the shelling of the Four Courts,

a few stray shells had rocked the foundation

so they had to rebuild it in 1927.

So the previous state, we're not sure of.

It's a bit murky. I've been to the Land Registry and all but...

So Michael Collins blew up this pub?

He did, and the funny thing is

when, when, when... you were making that movie 'Michael Collins'

I got woken up the morning you were...

you were reproducing that! Oh!

This racket! Banging going off!

My father's father bought here in 1953,

and he's the M on the sign outside, and I was named after him obviously.

He was a Tipperary man. He took over here

and he ran it with his wife Rita who was a Dublin lady.

They both died of TB.

Dad was running here from when he was 19.

He went to college for one day, and he said:

"Nah! I think I'd prefer the pub." So he took over here.

It needs a certain kind of skill to be a particular

type of barman, and Mick had that innate quality, didn't he?

He was just...

He was an extraordinary man because he was like

one of those old conductors you'd see in black and white,

who'd make the tiniest gesture with his hand

but the guy 50 feet away knew exactly what he wanted.

He knew, if someone came in

and they just wanted a paper and wanted to be left alone,

he'd be handing them the paper by the time they got to the bar.

He was the Mr Consistency here for so many people,

and no matter who you were, you came through the door,

he'd give you the once-over look

and if he thought you were fine, you were in and that was it.

People spoke to Michael a bit like a confessional often.

You know, people came in. But they knew he would never repeat

which he didn't, stories that they would tell, personal things.

No, yeah. And he never did.

He wouldn't even tell me about what they were talking about, you know?

CONTINUES)

Myself and Eimear both have brothers who play music,

and they used to go off for sessions,

and we'd only ever find out about them after the fact!

And one day, we just got fed-up and we said:

"That's it! The women are going to have their own session."

And we just put the call out, and there was probably, on and off,

maybe 10 or 12 of us that would come in for a tune every Tuesday night.

Yeah. Often, the place would be empty,

and there'd be a session down the back and a session in the snug.

And that was it, just two sessions, and Mick on the bar.

Yeah. And, uh...

...he'd always land out with a few ham sandwiches!

And then after a while, we were like:

"No, Mick, no more sandwiches. We're watching...

...the hips!"

But it reached a point then with, you know,

typical women, there were nights we came in here and by 11.30,

we'd be like, "Lads, we haven't played a tune."

All we were doing was talking.

Yeah! And there'd be cake

and there'd be birthday celebrations.

There was always a celebration. Yeah, always.

And Mick would pop his head in, he'd be like:

"What are you celebrating tonight?"

Paula Hanley texted us and she wasn't going to make it

and she just wrote, "I'm not going to make Fanny Power tonight."

That was it. We became Fanny Power.

So for anyone who's not a musician,

Fanny Power is a tune written by O'Carolan!

But it evolved from Fanny Power into us becoming The Fannies.

-Yeah. - So then Mick, the hatch would open:

"How are da Fannies?"

And, uh, me mother was the Queen of the Fannies, and... you know?

Oh lovely! We had Fannies On Tour.

We went to London for the Camden trad fest, and...

Yeah, it evolved from there. So we've loads of great memories.

And we've had births, marriages, engagements, break-ups, the works.

Yeah, how does that work? All celebrated here.

CONTINUES)

Himself and Mum, they were down in Killaloe.

I was locking up here one night with Joe. Remember Joe who...

Yeah. ...who worked for my dad

since the late '70s. Joe Turner, brilliant man.

And, um... Joe was just leav...

I was closing the side door, I got a phone call from my mother

and she was upset and she said, "Your father's very bad."

And I knew there was something... I said, "OK, I'm coming."

Turns out, he had a massive heart attack,

and, um, they brought him to Limerick General.

So I got in the car, drove up, collected Dave,

this was 1 o'clock in the morning,

got to Limerick General at 2.35 'cause, you know, I didn't know...

Now he never made it to the hospital as it turns out.

It was a huge shock because, you know,

he was still playing golf a couple of time...

He looked great. He felt great. Yeah! Yeah.

One thing though, I can say in hindsight

is that I'm so glad that he was such an active, happy guy.

I wish he had another 10, 15 years. Yeah, of course.

He was 75 years of age but the positives were that he, uh...

he loved his life, you know?

He adored my mother. He adored the family.

Um, he-he just... he was really the happiest man I know.

Thank you.

I was lying awake one night. I couldn't sleep

and I was flicking through YouTube, and up came a suggested video.

It was Elvis Presley, 'It's Now or Never',

and I remember goin'

"I'm getting a text message from the universe...

...through Elvis Presley!" Who better?!

Who better?! And if you...

You know, and I remember just goin', "It is... If the time to do...

"If I'm going to do it, now's the time to do it."

Yeah, yeah. It felt right,

and we were chatting about it as a family.

You know, I just came to a decision

that now'd be a nice time.

Like, we've had a great run. Yeah.

It would feel... This feels like a good time now to just wrap it up.

There was a lot of smelling of roses during the pandemic anyway

with a lot of different people in terms of their life.

You're going after the music?

Yeah, I-I... Teaching and freelance playing,

and, you know, which I always did a bit on the side

but I'd enjoy it a lot more now just with that bit of space to breathe.

What do I think of the legacy here in Hughes's?

You'll be seeing in the fullness, it having had an iconic role to play

in traditional music, song and dance in Dublin.

You know, when I go to places like, say, Paris, and, eh...

I always feel like somewhere like that, I'm 120 years too late.

Places like that, that Hemingway and Joyce and all these people hung out.

But I think we'll look back and be so fortunate

that we experienced and lived in something when it was at its height.

We're gonna miss this place so much.

I know. And we had no farewell night.

I have to say, I missed that. Yeah.

I mean, I would have loved to say:

"OK, this is going to be our last night. Let's give it socks."

You know? It kind of just filtered away.

Places like this come and go. Yeah.

And maybe it's part of the natural order that they go too, you know?

Like, I was thinking of Cullens', you know? Uh... here, you know?

I can think of other places like Hiudai Beag's

up in Gaoth Dobhair which, thankfully, is still going strong.

But maybe you can't pin them down. You can't...

You know, it's not a flag in the Arts Council map, you know?

Like, build a venue and tick a box.

And, you know, the place up the road as well, The Cobblestone, like...

they're almost like twins in that sense.

I mean, The Cobblestone is more out there public maybe.

Well, that's interesting too. It was really refreshing to me

that people began to value what The Cobblestone is

before they knocked it down. Yeah.

And the difference between that and here

is that this is, you know, this is closing its doors gently.

Not driven to it. Not driven out. Yeah. Yeah.

And so it feels... There's something glorious about just...

Well, its time has come maybe? You know, that...

...you know, like...

Thank God for Mick, and thank God for Martin:

the way they looked after this place and everybody that was in it.

Yeah. And we'll be forever grateful

to them for that. But sometimes maybe, you know...

things have to move on or change.

Yeah. But The Cobblestone isn't ready yet.

Yeah. And people need to continue

to value the places that are there, and just... and get out of the way

and stop... just leave them alone.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

♪ In Dublin's fair city

♪ Where the girls are so pretty

♪ I first set my eyes

♪ On sweet Molly Malone

♪ As she wheeled her wheelbarra'

♪ Through the streets broad and narra'

♪ Cryin' "Cockles and mussels

♪ Alive-alive-oh"

♪ Now, she died of the fever

♪ And no one could save her

♪ And that was the end of

♪ sweet Molly Malone

♪ But her ghost wheels her barra'

♪ through the streets broad and narra'

♪ Cryin' "Cockles and mussels

♪ Alive-alive-oh"

♪ Alive alive-oh-oh

♪ Alive alive-oh-oh

♪ Cryin' "Cockles and mussels

♪ Alive-alive-oh" ♪

Whee!

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