DONNYBROOK FAIR. Who has e'er had the luck to see Donnybrook Fair?— With his sprig of shillelah, and shamrock so green, He goes to a tint, and he spends half-a-crown; He meets with a friend, and for love knocks him down, IRELAND'S glory and her shame,'-the great fair of the country, the annual revel so celebrated in song and story,-the unapproachable and unequalled Donnybrook Fair is to be put down! It is extremely probable that this may be the last year of its celebration, for, independently of the power of the law, which has been brought to bear against it, Father Mathew has given it a blow, from which it can never The march of intellect is not in the direction of fairs. recover. Fairlop is to be knocked up;' Bartlemy' gradually abolished;' and Donnybrook is virtually put down. This is no subject for regret; and with regard to the last, although it has been called 'the safetyvalve of the national spirit,' there need be no fear of a popular explosion when it is destroyed. It has been so renowned, however, in its day, that it is worth a parting notice, for many reasons; and as we have had the pleasure of visiting this once celebrated place of public amusement,' at the eleventh hour, an account of our observations may not be wholly uninteresting, more particularly to those who have often heard of, but 'ne'er had the luck to see Donnybrook Fair!' Donnybrook is a small village, not quite an hour's walk from Dublin. It consists principally of one long narrow street, at the end of which, with the high-road passing between, there is an extensive green, and on this green the fair was held. It commenced on the 26th August, and usually continued about a fortnight. Cattle, &c., were sold in it for the first day or two, before the amusements began; and it was always remarkable for being crowded with booths for eating and drinking. It has been said with regard to the latter, that as much whisky was usually sold in the fair in one day as in the whole of Dublin in a week! More properly speaking, the whisky was sold in the fair in the night, for this was the time when the fun was at its height. In Dublin a man can get more whisky than is sufficient to make him very comfortably intoxicated for twopence or threepence; and as the love of that blessed licker' by the lower orders surpassed their fondness for everything else-except fighting, it may readily be supposed that very few of those who went to the fair returned from it sober. In short, after dark, when the fair was filled by nearly all the lower orders of Dublin, it became nothing better than an immense assemblage of drunken men and infamous women. None of the wit and humour supposed to be peculiar to the place was to be found, but only an infuriated drunken mob quarrelling with each other, and plundering those who unhappily fell in their way. In Ireland there are unfortunately such an interminable variety of VOL. VIII. 24 |