The Moth and the Candle

Brendan Behan. Writer. Drinker. Raconteur. Republican. Ex-convict. Bon Vivant. Irish. Dubliner. What is left over after pouring him into all those categories? How much of the man, of the person could there be to breathe free of the constraints he walked and talked himself into and which were placed upon him? My father was a doctor from north county Dublin. He was the son of a doctor and grew up in a solidly middle class background albeit living a peripatetic life as his father moved from post to post before finally ending up in a practice in the seaside village of Clontarf on the north shore of Dublin Bay. (For more click on the title) ) Growing up in 1940’s and 50’s Dublin did not involve the misery, depredation and violence that characterised much of the childhood of literary figures who have used the past to exorcise their demons and mine a literary stratum that played, perhaps not deliberately, upon notions of Irishness that depended more on stereotypes and the stage than was rooted in mundane reality. This is not intended to deny their stories. Far from it. Theirs is as much a part of the story of Ireland as anyone’s, perhaps even more so. No, this is intended to see what we as readers expect from stories of Ireland and the Irish. In that sense I suppose it is a posing a question: where does Irishness come from? Where do our identities come from? Our heads? Our bodies? The material conditions of our existence? Or somewhere else?

It is in the context of these questions that I was reminded of a story my father would occasionally tell. My father’s name was Emmet although he used the name Luke in his capacity as a doctor. The reason for this was never clear although I sometimes suspected that my father liked the duality and the inevitable confusion the use of the two names would cause among banks, insurance companies, lawyers and the like, people he enjoyed confounding. He had what I once heard a great-aunt of mine describe as an ‘imp of mischief’ in him although that imp was all too frequently drowned out by the tide of personal and mental problems that wore on his psyche in much the same way that water erodes rock. My father tried very hard to be a rock, a force stronger than the forces that he struggled with but in water versus rock there is only ever one victor. Still he was a man with a keen, if austere sense of humour. He could and did tell stories about his friends and acquaintances which even those who had never met the individuals involved would find funny. One story in particular was a favourite of his. It was not, however and unusually, a very funny story even though he and my mother would giggle at it each and every time it was told. One of the reasons for the levity was the swearing contained within it, a concept which was almost wholly alien to our household as neither my father and mother ever cursed in front of either my sister or myself and we never dreamed of transgressing this sacred and unspoken rule.


While listening to a Dominic Behan record one day my father told us a story which we would hear several times over the course of our family lives. It was about Dominic’s more infamous and celebrated brother, Brendan. Brendan’s fame went hand in hand with the notoriety of his conviction for political violence and it was his various stints in reform schools and prisons that were to form the spine of his literary inspiration. His fame as a writer grew as his work gained acceptance on the London and New York stages. He was feted by radio and television journalists for his insight and skill. Yet he was, as he felt himself to be, an ordinary ‘Dub’, a scion of the inner city working classes. As such the public house was Brendan’s real stage, the place where a king like him, famous feted and monied, held court for the hangers-on and the loyal the curious and the jealous. It was said that before he would go out drinking, Brendan would consume a bottle of whiskey as a warm-up for the evening. Although these stories may be apocryphal there is no doubting that the man was a prodigious drinker. Alcohol occupies an odd and evanescent place in Irish culture. One of the reasons for men like Brendan Behan’s lasting place in Irish, and Dublin, memories was that his heavy drinking merely reflected the society in which he lived. His was not the hell-raising exception to the rule, a loveable rogue at work. His was the rule. The only thing that differentiated him from other Irish men of the time was his ability to handle the amount of drink he took.

- I was out one night o meet the lads after college for a few pints. It was me, Conor Burke, Paddy Keating and Declan Walsh. We usually went drinking in the Toby Jug or maybe Neary’s but this night we were in The Bailey for some reason. Anyway we met up at the corner of Stephen’s Green and made our way down to St. Anne’s street. We went in and sat down at an empty table and I went up to the bar to order. At the bar there was a group of men talking and joking loudly with a big heavyset guy in the middle of the group holding all their attention. I didn’t pay them any mind at first as I was trying to catch the barman’s eye to order the drinks but when after I ordered I looked over and I realised that the big guy in the middle of the crowd was Brendan Behan. This was a big deal because he really was very famous at that time and I was a big fan of his so I smiled over at him and nodded hello. He must have thought I was smiling at someone else because he turned slightly to look behind him. Anyway before I could say anything the barman arrived with the pints and I handed over the cash.

- I rushed back to the table you see and as I handed out the drinks I said to the boys ‘don’t look now but you see that group of fellas at the bar? See the big guy with his back turned to us now?
- Yeah?
- Well that’s Brendan Behan!
- No it’s not.
- It is, I’m telling you! I was about ten feet away from him when I ordered the pints, it is definitely him!

- Well the lads didn’t believe me and when I argued and stood my ground Conor Burke, who was a lovely fella but had a bit of a temper on him, said ‘would you ever eff off Frank’ I said I would prove it. So I said I’d bring one of the pints back and say it was flat or something. Anyway I went up to the bar and caught the barman’s eye. He wasn’t exactly impressed when I told him the beer was flat but I didn’t care it wasn’t a regular haunt of ours and besides I was only interested in having a few words with Brendan Behan. So the barman went off muttering under his breath about ‘bloody students’ and I rocked back and forth on my heels to look over the heads of the group he was with. I was quite tall for that time, most people wouldn’t have been as tall as me so he spotted me after a while. I nodded and smiled again and this time he looked right at me and frowned. He opened his mouth to say something but one of the men he was with must have made a joke or something because they all erupted in gales of laughter and he looked away. When the laughter died down a bit I moved forward to say something to him but as I stood beside the group, my mind went blank. I just stood there, couldn’t think of anything to say. The lads said afterwards that I stood there with my mouth open but I think they were just spoofing to make me look an even bigger eejit. But I didn’t know what to say and this time the group Behan was with had noticed me as well and were all staring at me so when the barman came back, fresh pint in his hand and sour look on his face, I panicked and scuttled off back to the table.

- The lads were all very impressed when I got back...well not with me but the fact that Brendan Behan was out drinking in the same bar as us. Pretty soon we were all chattering away like a bunch of schoolgirls, laughing and joking and carrying on. The lot of us kept glancing over at the group at the bar and raising our glasses in salute. After I stared over at him and smiled and nodded for what was the umpteenth time a miracle happened. He shouldered his way past his friends and made for our table. This god of literary Ireland, this true blue celebrity, this friend of movie stars was on his way over to talk to us. Well we all fell silent. He got to our table and the breath caught in the back of my throat as I met one of my heroes and he said the immortal words that I will remember to the day I die....’what the fucking hell are youse looking at?’


This story never failed to make us laugh and we would practice the punchline in our best snarly Dub accents between us. Yet it wasn’t the joke or the swearing or even the presence of one of Ireland’s literary greats that captured our minds and resonated with us. It was the recreation of part of our father’s past, his history which so fascinated us. We would ask to hear more stories about their earlier lives in a bid to make a connection between the person past and the parent present. That connection was a difficult one to fathom at times as the person of the parent always seems to be inherently tainted with the relations necessary for the parent child bond to exist. But in meeting Brendan Behan we could see, truly see, the person of our Dad, young, jarred, awestruck and rueful. There were other stories of course, other jokes and tales that added to the weft and weave of our parents’ mythology but that meeting said a great deal about Dublin in the 1950’s, about their place in it and about him and even as young kids we knew it. The place of our birth, thecity of the past and the men behind the myths were even more intriguing for the fact that they could be brought to life through the collective memories of my mother and father.