DUBLIN MADE ME

Dublin made me and no little town
With the country closing in on its streets
The cattle walking proudly on its pavements
The jobbers, the gombeenmen and the cheats

Devouring the fair-day between them
A public house to half a hundred men
And the teacher, the solicitor and the bank-clerk
In the hotel bar drinking for ten.

Dublin made me, not the secret poteen still
The raw and hungry hills of the West
The lean road flung over profitless bog
Where only a snipe could nest

Where the sea takes its tithe of every boat.
Bawneen and currach have no allegiance of mine,
Nor the cute self-deceiving talkers of the South
Who look to the East for a sign.

The soft and dreary midlands with their tame canals
Wallow between sea and sea, remote from adventure
And Northward a far and fortified province
Crouches under the lash of arid censure.

I disclaim all fertile meadows, all tilled land
The evil that grows from it and the good,
But the Dublin of old statutes, this arrogant city
Stirs proudly and secretly in my blood. 

  Donagh MacDonagh

I have fun creating and trying to improve articles on subjects that interest me and just as much fun with subjects that don't, as I find out things I didn't know. One of the things I've tried to do is save articles from deletion by improving them. Ad astra and Newton Arvin are two I like.

• William Percy French wrote completely daft songs we can all sing at weddings.

• Bands I used to go and see in Dublin: Toasted Heretic. The Golden Horde (band). Rollerskate Skinny -- thanks to Angela for her work here.

• Edmund Cooper -- Richard Avery to those of us who read the trashy, fun Expendables series.

• Pediococcus after several batches of beer went south because of the stuff.

• Peter Matthiessen didn't have a page why, exactly? Forsooth.

• As Gaeilge, Peig Sayers. I'm not much of an Irish speaker but I'd like to contribute what I can -- the ga Wikipedia is very short of content -- and I thought that the bane of every Leaving Cert. student was the obvious place to start!

• Ray Campi -- I don't know rockabilly from a hole in the ground but I know it was a rare privilege to see him play.

• Thomas Heazle Parke -- I am pleased with this one because the first edit is good, and by creating it I killed a red-link on Emin Pasha Relief Expedition.

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