I met my love at the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
I kissed my girl at the factory wall
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Two blondes, barely older than 20, barrelled past me hand in hand, dancing their way through the pub’s melee, no pause for breath on their pilgrimage to the bar. ‘Tew dobble vodka sawdas, tanks!’ they signalled the barman.
I’d been knocked slightly off course by the young women, who’d managed to not break their grip on each other’s hands throughout their drink order and the opening verse and chorus of the 1949 classic, ‘Dirty Old Town’ by Englishman MacColl (which The Pogues covered in 1985, making it an Irish anthem). The song was being belted out live by an invisible singer somewhere in the sea of folly. I politely picked my way to a barstool at the furthest end of the counter. Bracing myself for a €30 round, with a wide-angle view of the beautiful chaos, the most profound thought I could muster to match the warmth in my chest was how wonderfully Irish Ireland had seemed so far.
We were in no Dirty Old Town; Dublin’s quite the opposite. The surgical grounds of Trinity College are an example, and you’re hard-pressed to find a cigarette butt on the ground, but listen to that song and I will tell you how Dublin feels. The evenings are full of emotion, and there is a pervasive sense of possibility in the streets.
My cousin Rory and I arrived in Dublin to the hum of the opening night of the 2026 Soccer World Cup. Bafana Bafana would play Mexico in the first game and I would stand proudly at Toners, one of the oldest pubs in Ireland (est. 1734) with “Keo” printed on the back of a green Bafana jersey, while Mexico belted two past South Africa to the apparent joy of the rest of the pub. Keohane is an Irish surname, and a large part of us visiting was to travel to Cork, the birthplace of the surname, and kiss the Blarney Stone, as our granddad once had years before.
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With Cork set for Friday, we had one glorious Thursday night in Dublin to tend to first, and a return on Saturday for more of the same.
Our accommodation, O’Donoghues Bar, was one block down from Toner’s. “A historically significant drinking establishment,” by TripAdvisor’s description, the lodging part of it was something Rory had stumbled on accidentally, and on both Thursday and Saturday night we would stumble up the stairs of O’Donoghues to a small hotel room above the bar. There’s live, Irish music, seven nights a week, and the atmosphere – be it among the barrels of bushmills in the courtyard or the generations of Guinness advertisements and newspaper clippings that fill the walls of the warmly lit bar lounges – is unlike anything I’ve experienced through an evening. There is a lightness to the environment and a calmness to the excitement. The people, the place, exude a deep understanding of the joy of life and it is infectious.
While South Africa weren’t a popular side to those packed into Toners, the jersey proved a hit, and one of the few who came to comment pointed us towards yet another drinking establishment: Doheny and Nesbitt.
Founded in 1803 – a spring chicken compared to its neighbours – Doheny and Nesbitt appears to be a street-level bar, but unfolds inside into a multi-story establishment with several different bars, each with its own personality. It was on the ground floor that I got beautifully bounced out the way and discovered what would become the anthem for our trip, Dirty Old Town. Cellar Bar lies below, with Paul’s and Tom’s found at different points up the spiral staircase and Marble Bar somewhere in the maze of brown leather, wooden panels and whiskey-lined walls.
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One main road in central Dublin, between Stephen’s Green and Merrion Square Park, was home to our two nights in Dublin. It was perfect. Ireland is, in fact, the brilliant green you dreamed of before landing in Dublin, said Stephen’s Green as we made our way through the park towards the accommodation on the first evening. Ireland is, in fact, full of heart, with a beautiful reverence for life, said the generational institutions that kept our pints of Guinness full for two nights.
“What do you want from tonight?” said Rory on the final evening. We were catching our flight back to London early the next morning. I had simple hopes of more Jameson and a live set. We were standing outside Toner’s smoking. Rory left for the bathroom and came back after a few minutes with the news that – of course – there was a cellar room, and a guy with a guitar and harmonica was about to start. An hour later his harmonica wailed the opening note to the closing song. We knew every word, we’d been playing it the whole weekend.
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