IRELAND: IF YOU VISIT ONLY ONE PUB IN DUBLIN ... NEARY'S

WINDOW SEAT: The view from Neary's upstairs lounge
and, below, the bar's famous cast metal arm lanterns

Two zombies walked into a bar in Dublin (sounds like a joke, but it isn’t). The male zombie, a well-spoken and polite young man, ordered a Guinness for himself and a gin and tonic for his girlfriend.

“Sorry, I’m not serving you,” said the barman after poking his eyes back into their sockets.

“What do you mean, you’re not serving us?” demanded the male zombie.

“Regulars only,” said the barman.

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“Sorry. House rules.”

I’ve been a Neary’s regular (some would say resident) for six years, and as far as I knew there were only four house rules — no music, no television, no gaming machines and no singing. But no zombies? That was news to me.

After they left, muttering angrily — they were more livid than living dead — I told the barman they’d been taking part in a big charity fundraising event.

“What! Why didn’t you tell me?” he said. “I thought they were a couple of messers.”

I hadn’t told him because I’d been too busy chuckling behind my Irish Times. However, following that little misunderstanding, zombies will be happy to know they’re more than welcome to eat and drink in Neary’s whenever they want. As long as they don’t go biting big chunks out of the hand that feeds them.

DAILY DELIGHT: Chicken salad sandwich is the top seller

To bite a big chunk out of one of Neary’s famed freshly-made sandwiches you’ll need a detachable lower jaw like a python, because they’re among the highest man-made structures in Dublin and, like Doctor Who’s TARDIS, there’s a lot more inside them than the outside would suggest.

My favourite, and the top seller, is the roast breast of chicken salad on white which, I must confess — with apologies to magician Mary in the kitchen who makes them — I’ve often passed off as my own creation when eating one in the office. It’s wrong, but you should see the admiring glances from my colleagues when I remove the foil. They’re thinking, now there’s a guy who knows how to make a sandwich.

Also on the menu that’s available Monday to Saturday from 10.30am until 2.45pm are fresh salmon which is poached every morning, rare roast beef which comes out of the oven as pink as a bride’s cheeks, smoked salmon, ham and Cheddar cheese, all from Irish suppliers and served on white or brown bread.

Which reminds me of the American customer from a visiting cruise ship who ordered a fresh salmon salad sandwich, but without the bread.

“Certainly, sir,” said the barman. “And would that be without the white bread or without the brown bread?”

SALM AGAIN, PLEASE: Try the fresh salmon salad

 A recent and controversial addition to the menu which drew gasps from customers of 20, 30 and even 40 years’ standing and just stopped short of outraged letters to the editor is the toasted special containing cheese, ham, tomatoes and onions. The significance of this seemingly innocuous snack will be lost on the general public, but for nearly 50 years onions were not allowed on the premises, except in the shopping bags of customers. Try as I might, and just stopping short of having a whip-round to hire a private detective, I’ve been unable to get to the bottom of the half-century-long ban and its equally unexplained lifting earlier this year.

That earth-shattering innovation, though, was nothing compared with the day when, horror of horrors, a flat screen TV appeared on the back wall of the downstairs main bar. It was there for no more than two hours, the duration of a Heineken Cup rugby match and the pundits’ post mortem because the TV upstairs was on the blink, but word leaked out and it was the talk of the town.

Next day, as soon as the bar opened, the first person in the door was a radio reporter hot on the trail of a scoop. And who could blame him? This was big news. Neary’s, lauded in guidebooks and on websites worldwide for being the real McCoy of Dublin pubs and which for generations has maintained the old-school qualities and standards eschewed by so many of the city’s brasher bars had, it appeared, sold its soul to Sony. But it was a false alarm, the newshound left with his tail between his legs and neither he nor the TV have been seen since.

TOUCH OF GLASS: Scenes from downstairs snug

 

You never know who you’ll bump into in Neary’s, which is in Chatham Street, just off the top end of Grafton Street (Dunne’s Stores and Monsoon corner). It’s the hang-out of visiting film stars, because while they might get a second glance or an acknowledging nod they’re never pestered by over-zealous fans seeking autographs or photos. Such indecorous behaviour would result in an invitation to drink up and take your custom elsewhere.

Mind you, it recently took a monumental effort on my part to avoid making an idiot of myself and sending a couple of drinks over to actor Lisa Edelstein and her new fella, artist Robert Russell, who dropped by for a Sunday afternoon snifter. I’ve had a thing for Ms. Edelstein since first seeing her in my all-time favourite TV show, The West Wing, in which she played Sam Seaborn’s (Rob Lowe) high-class hooker friend Laurie ‘Brittany’ Rollins, though she’s better known for her more recent role as Dr. Lisa Cuddy in House.

Other big-name customers when they’re in town are home-grown talent Gabriel Byrne, Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy and Jonathan Rhys Myers. David Soul and Jerry Hall were in just a few weeks ago; Glenn Close fell in love with Neary’s while filming Albert Nobbs in Dublin and made it her local; and Hollywood funny guys Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly had the bar in stitches last year when they staged an impromptu comedy routine.

STOUT FELLOW: Neary's regular Liam Manners

The back door of Neary’s opens on to Tangier Lane, a narrow alleyway where the stage door of the Gaiety theatre is also located, so the bar has a long association with those who tread the boards.

During a 1987 production of HMS Pinafore, Dublin actor Alan Devlin — a long-time Neary’s customer — was playing First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Joseph Porter, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Sir Joseph’s big number comes near the end of act one, and as the orchestra launched into the first few bars all eyes were on Devlin, who was supposed to sing: “I am the monarch of the sea/The ruler of the Queen’s Navee.” Instead, he said “F*** this for a game of soldiers. I’m going to the pub,” and stormed off stage. Two minutes later, the back door of Neary’s flew open and Devlin, resplendent in his admiral’s uniform, drew his sword and called for a pint.

That was bad enough, but his radio mic was still on, and the stunned audience in the Gaiety were treated to a curse-filled critique of the operetta he’d just deserted while the frantic stage manager tried to grapple the uniform from him. He later told an interviewer: “The fact of the matter is I was drunk, realised the task ahead of me was too much and I couldn’t hack it, and I just panicked.”

Devlin’s trademark drunken behaviour eventually got him barred from Neary’s, but that didn’t stop him trying his luck.

He walked in one day and demanded: “Gimme a pint of Guinness.”

“There’s the door,” said the barman. “You’re barred.”

He left, but 10 minutes later a man walked in with a brown paper bag over his head, with two eye holes torn in it.

“Gimme a Guinness,” he said.

“Get out, Devlin,” said the barman. “I told you, you’re barred.”

“Ah, Jaysus,” came the reply. “How did you know it was me?”

In later years the actor conquered his chronic alcoholism (“Alcohol was a poison to me,” he admitted), but he never fully recovered from heart surgery and died in May 2011, aged 63.

LOUNGE WIZARD: The upstairs lounge and barman Liam

 

Going back a few decades, Neary’s was a haunt for many of Dublin’s literary giants, including Flann O’Brien and Patrick Kavanagh, a pair as scarily cranky as they were supremely talented.

Kavanagh, who drank there in the mid-1950s, was sitting at the bar one day revising his latest poems when a trainee barman spilled a pint of Guinness all over them. A collective gasp was followed by a deathly silence as the staff and customers awaited the expected eruption. But Kavanagh was in a rare mellow mood and fixed his eye on the ashen-faced apprentice.

“Son, you may not make much of a barman,” he said, “but you’re a f***ing brilliant judge of poetry.”

John Ryan, the publisher of Envoy magazine for which Kavanagh wrote a monthly diary, was another regular. In his book, Remembering How We Stood, he tells the story of an afternoon spent drinking in Neary’s with the partially-sighted English poet John Heath-Stubbs. After several pints the pair adjourned to a bookies in nearby South Anne Street where Heath-Stubbs, hearing the noisy chatter of the punters and smelling the boozy atmosphere, thought he was in another pub, leaned on a counter and called for a couple of drinks.

Veteran actor Eamon Morrissey, who plays lovable old rogue Cass Cassidy in RTE’s Dublin soap Fair City, is a passionate admirer of Flann O’Brien and has been performing his one-man show, The Brother, based on the author’s novels and newspaper columns, for nearly 40 years.

Morrissey recalls being in Neary’s in the early 1960s and spotting O’Brien drinking on his own. Star-struck by seeing his hero, he went over and congratulated him on his novel, At Swim Two Birds. Big mistake.

“I told him how much I’d enjoyed it and he almost ate the face off me,” said Morrissey. “He said it was ridiculous of me to be praising such a silly book.”

Thankfully, the encounter didn’t sour him, and The Brother sells out every time it’s performed.

A-DOOR-ABLE: The view from the smaller downstairs bar

Most of the international visitors, especially Americans, who drop by Neary’s are following in the footsteps of friends or relatives who’ve been there on previous trips to Ireland. Word-of-mouth recommendations are what bring them through the door, where it’s never been necessary to post a bouncer. For me, a bar that employs doormen is a bar that needs them, not so much to keep undesirables out as to deal with potential trouble inside. Voices are often raised in Neary’s, especially when it’s busy, but never a fist.

The Dublin Neary’s is not related to the Irish bar of the same name owned by County Sligo man Jimmy Neary in Manhattan’s East 57th Street, which he opened on Saint Patrick’s Day in 1967. However, customers from both establishments make a point of visiting the other on their travels — a case of arms across the water. That’s appropriate, because the most recognisable features of Neary’s in Chatham Street are the two beautifully-crafted cast metal arms that support lanterns bearing the pub’s name beside the main door.

Inside, the red carpet, red velvet curtains, red stools and green upholstered banquettes, marble-topped mahogany bar and gas lanterns on polished brass columns lend a comforting feel of yesteryear to the main bar, whose mirror-panelled walls reflect the comings and goings. There’s a smaller bar to the left of the entrance with a three-person snug, and upstairs is the cocktail lounge, with some great paintings on the walls depicting scenes from the bar and the street.

While the splendid interior is an attraction in itself, it’s the staff who make Neary’s the treasure it is, so take a bow James, Dave, Martin, Paddy, Pat, Garret, Liam and Dorota who epitomise all that’s good and admired about a genuine, historic Dublin pub.

If you want the sound of bodhrans being belted and tin whistles being tooted, there are plenty of places in the city that provide traditional music, but in Neary’s it’s all about traditional values and the sound of convivial conversation. Mind you, the sooner the one-tune, guitar-murdering busker who deafens shoppers in nearby Grafton Street gets electrocuted by his own amplifier, the better. Then he, and everyone else within half-a-mile, can rest in peace.
PS: I've just discovered there was one exception to the 50-year onion ban. The late, great Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners who was a Neary's regular used to bring his own onion whenever he fancied a sandwich. He'd take it out of his pocket, hand it to the barman and it would be sent up to the kitchen in the dumb waiter. He was the only customer ever afforded the privilege.

*Donal Lynch’s 2011 article about Jimmy Neary in the Irish Sunday Independent is well worth reading (type both men’s names into your search engine and you’ll find it).

PAT'LL DO NICELY: Barman Pat in the main downstairs bar

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IRELAND: I LOST MY HEART TO A GALWAY GRILL

HORDE DAY'S NIGHT: A busy evening in Quay Street

IT was just before midday in Galway’s Eyre Square, and outside the Skeffington Arms an elderly English couple were enjoying a cuppa in the sunshine. At the next table a young fella in an Armagh GAA shirt who was still half-cut from the night before put down his pint of cider, nudged his pie-eyed pal and pointed to the husband and wife. “Imagine drinking tea at this time of the morning,” he slurred.

I don’t know where the two boyos had spent the previous evening — certainly not in their beds — but if there was an ounce of sense between them they’d have been in The Quays pub in Quay Street. Galway is party town, and The Quays is Party Central, a magnet for locals and visitors who appreciate the best in live bands. If you drop by when covers group Pyramid are playing, which is regularly, you’ll stay until closing time.

The Quays, at the heart of the vibrant Latin Quarter, isn’t the only music venue (check out the famed Roisin Dubh in Dominick Street), nor do you need a drink in your hand to be entertained, because the streets of Galway are the stage for Ireland’s best — and best-paid — buskers. If the piles of coins in their open guitar, banjo and didgeridoo cases are anything to go by, those medieval streets are paved with silver.

When it comes to traditional music, for which Galway is renowned, there simply aren’t enough hours in the diddly-aye day to sample the countless organised and spontaneous sessions that pack the pubs. The most popular places to spend an evening while the most talented musicians in the west of Ireland do their stuff are Tigh Coili (Mainguard Street/Shop Street), An Pucan (Forster Street), The Western Bar (Prospect Hill), Taaffe’s (Shop Street), The Spanish Arch Bar (Quay Street), The Crane (Sea Road) and Cookes Thatch Bar (Newcastle Road). Foreign visitors often ask how the publicans can afford to pay so many fiddlers, guitarists, flute and accordion players and singers, but the answer is simple — they provide the pints, the musicians provide the tunes.

HIGH NOTES: Buskers playing for shoppers

TAP CLASS: Dancing in the street

Don’t be surprised if an impromptu gig breaks out in the most unlikely of places. I was queueing for fish and chips outside Harry Fitz, opposite Taaffe’s, when three girls without instruments but with the voices of angels began singing the beautiful and haunting Isle of Inisfree (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xn7rjlOxfc to hear Orla Fallon’s version). Even the most boozed-up and boisterous members of that queue fell silent within seconds and passers-by gathered round to listen. The girls weren’t busking, they were simply doing what comes naturally in Galway, and that’s part of what makes the place so very special.

I didn’t get to enjoy my meal. Not that I wasn’t hungry — I was starving, as was my pal Aleks. But a pitiable little man standing nearby kept glancing at me every time I raised a chip or a piece of fish to my mouth. And then he came over. He wasn’t looking for money, which came as a surprise. You can’t walk 100 metres in Dublin or go to a cash machine without being hit upon, either by some unfortunate homeless person or those pests in the vests who ambush pedestrians and shove a direct debit form under their noses. But the little man outside Harry Fitz was different. He pointed to my snack box and, in broken English and with a breaking voice, asked if he could have whatever I left. I handed him the box, along with my bottle of water and €20 (he got €10 from Aleks), and he burst into tears and plastered the back of my hand with kisses. I was so overcome I had to walk away, leaving the little man to wolf down the first food he’d eaten in two days. It was a sobering moment in a prosperous city where the social life revolves around drinking.

CLAN-TASTIC: Coats of arms of the 14 Galway Tribes

Galway is known as the City of the Tribes, but this has nothing to do with the stag and hen parties who flock there every weekend. Rather, it refers to the 14 Anglo-Norman merchant families — the Athys, Blakes, Bodkins, Brownes, D’Arcys, Deanes, Ffonts, Ffrenches, Joyces, Kirwans, Lynches, Martins, Morrises and Skerrets — who ran the place between the mid-13th and late 16th centuries and still retained some influence into the 19th century.

The 14 bamboozling roundabouts that surround the city bear the tribes’ names, but much as those long-gone movers and shakers are held in esteem by the locals, mystified motorists from elsewhere curse them. If Oliver Cromwell’s murderous marauders had encountered such formidable obstacles, they’d have called it a day and gone home. As it was, they invaded this once walled city on the banks of the River Corrib in 1652 and wreaked havoc. In 1691, following the Battle of the Boyne, King Billy and his boys finished the job, and it was nearly 300 years before Galway struggled back to its feet. Today, the city stands proud, and the only invaders are tourists who are welcomed with open arms rather than boiling oil.

Described by WB Yeats as the Venice of the west, probably because it’s more often wet than dry (yet glorious when the sun shines), Galway is famed for its festivals, including the Arts Festival (www.galwayartsfestival.com) which takes place every July (next year from the 16th to 29th). This is the daddy of them all, a two-week test of stamina for performers, exhibitors and the 80,000 Irish and international visitors who fill the streets, galleries, theatres, pubs and cash registers from mid-morning to midnight. The Macnas procession that brings the festival to a close and the packed city to a halt is a wonder to behold as the most marvellously crafted giant puppet figures accompanied by youth and community groups in fancy dress, colourful floats, stilt walkers, dancers, bands and drummers parade from the Spanish Arch to the Fisheries Field. Fifty thousand people lined the streets this year to watch this loud and colourful spectacle.

MANE ATTRACTION: Big race action at Ballybrit track

HAT A GIRL: Glamorous Ladies Day at Galway Races

The Arts Festival is immediately followed by the annual Galway Races at Ballybrit (www.galwayraces.com), which next year will be held from July 30 to August 5. The meeting, immortalised in song, was attended this year by 150,000 racing fans who gambled around €33 million, begging the question, what recession? It also begs the question of why I don’t just host an annual bonfire party and toss tenners into the flames instead of handing them over to sniggering bookie Paddy Power, whose children I’m putting through college.

The Continental Christmas Market in Eyre Square (www.galwaychristmasmarket.ie) is a treat. Held for the first time last year, it was such a phenomenal success — 600,000 visitors, with 130,000 saying they came especially to Galway to do their shopping — that it’s back, from November 25 to December 18. More than 70 traders from throughout Ireland and Europe will set out stalls laden with festive goodies as the irresistible aromas of gluhwein, churros and chocolate, pretzels, apple dumplings, paella and Polish sausages hang over the square. I went to the first market and spent most of my time wandering from one fast food outlet to the next, more interested in stomach-fillers than stocking-fillers. Thanks to the German guy who was selling the big fat sizzling frankfurters, I lost my heart to a Galway grill.

The annual International Oyster Festival (www.galwayoysterfest.com) at the end of September coincides with the harvest and is the longest-running weekend celebration of all things seafood in Ireland. Established in 1954, it has grown into what the AA Travel Guide described as “one of Europe’s seven best festivals, on a par with Munich’s Oktoberfest” and the Sunday Times called “one of the 12 Greatest Shows on Earth”. In 1960, festival-goers consumed 3,000 oysters. Last year, they swallowed 100,000. I’ve no idea what the organisers do with all those empties, but I do know that when crushed to grit they’re a valuable source of calcium that helps ensure hens lay eggs with strong shells. I guess they’d also make nice earrings.

SHELL-SHUCK: Oyster opening at the annual festival

When they’re not slurping live molluscs (don’t fret, they’ve no central nervous system) washed down with Guinness, visitors can watch nimble-fingered competitors vying to become the national and world oyster opening champions, have their picture taken with the Oyster Pearl — a young woman chosen as the face of the festival (if there was a male equivalent he’d be Mister Mussel) — and dine at restaurants participating in the Seafood Dinearound. For those who like to dress up for a glamorous night out, the black tie Gala Ball and banquet on the Saturday is the hottest ticket in town. Mind you, everyone who visits Galway has a ball.

The evening before we headed home to Dublin, the little man I gave my snack box to spotted Aleks and I standing outside The Quays and, after some more hand kissing and the blessings of every saint in heaven, offered to sell us his sister for the night, “special price for my friends”. In the space of 24 hours he’d gone from pitiable to pimp. I gave him a mouthful — and this time it wasn’t fish and chips.

STAY IN GALWAY

Look no further than the 4-star Radisson Blu Hotel & Spa (call 091 538300 or see www.radissonblu.ie/hotel-galway) if you value comfort, top-class service and all the facilities you’d expect from a respected worldwide chain yet at unexpectedly affordable prices. And, joy of joys, there’s free wifi in the rooms, which is something I always look for when choosing a hotel — if it charges for guests to go online, I go elsewhere.

The 282-room Radisson, which also offers adjacent serviced apartments, is tucked out of the way in a quiet location in Lough Atalia Road just three minutes’ walk from the train and bus stations, making it an ideal base from which to explore the city. That’s if you can drag yourself out of bed — they’re the most comfortable I’ve ever slept in. As for the breakfasts, you’d have to travel far and wide to find a more impressive, extensive selection of hot and cold dishes with which to start the day. Go up to the buffet more than twice and the only travelling you’ll be doing is back to your room for an early siesta.

BLU-MING LOVELY: Galway's fab Radisson Blu Hotel

One of the big attractions of the spacious and light-filled Marinas Restaurant, where those knockout breakfasts are served and which overlooks Lough Atalia, is the Scandinavian-style buffet option. Offering a wide selection of cold meats, smoked fish, salads, vegetables and freshly-baked breads, it’s a favourite with local people in the know who enjoy a less formal dining experience ahead of, say, a night at the theatre. The extensive a la carte menu is big on seafood, but the succulent rack of lamb and the char-grilled fillet of beef are fabulous too. Vegetarians are well catered for, and there’s a good selection of wheat-free and weight-watching dishes, too. The Atrium Lounge serves bar food from 3 to 10pm daily, and a resident pianist keeps guests entertained on Thursday through Saturday evenings. If you’re there in summer there’s the added bonus of enjoying a drink on the veranda and watching the sun go down on Galway Bay, as the song goes, while the tune tinkles in the background. It never fails to move visiting exiles and Irish-Americans to tears.

The very thought of even stepping inside a gym moves me to tears, but hardier — and healthier — guests will find all the exercise equipment they need to keep their hearts pumping in the hotel’s leisure centre. A lot less energetic, and therefore right up my street, is the Spirit One Spa (www.spiritonespa.com) with its wide range of facials and energising head to toe treatments for women and men. Equally enticing if you’re wheezy or have skin discomforts is the Salt Spa, where the watchwords are inhale, exhale, recover. Breathing constantly clean salt air is of proven benefit to those suffering from asthma, bronchitis, hay fever, eczema, psoriasis, sinusitis and allergies. It even helps to alleviate snoring, so lads, don’t be surprised to find an envelope containing a gift voucher under the Christmas tree.

EAT IN GALWAY

Visitors to Galway are spoiled for choice when it comes to fine restaurants, but Aniar (www.aniarrestaurant.ie) in Lower Dominick Street merits a special nod, not only for its exciting terroir-based cuisine but because it has the decency to offer more than 20 wines by the glass from its list of 40 from small artisan producers. The head chef is Enda McEvoy, who probably gets locked in a cupboard every night by husband and wife owners JP McMahon and Drigin Gaffey in case other restaurateurs try to lure him away. McEvoy, who recently spent an inspiring stint in Copenhagen at Nama, the San Pellegrino World’s No.1 Restaurant this year and last, wields not a wooden spoon but a magic wand. With a reputation like that, it’s no wonder it’s wise to make a reservation. McMahon and Gaffey also own the Cava Spanish Restaurant (www.cavarestaurant.ie) next door, and it’s no exaggeration to say it serves the best tapas on the island of Ireland.

Other restaurants of note are Da Tang Noodle House in Middle Street, The Malt House in Olde Malt Mall, High Street, Kirwan’s Lane Restaurant and Goya’s, both in Kirwan’s Lane, McDonagh’s in Quay Street and Ard Bia in Long Walk, Spanish Arch.

˜For further information on visiting Galway, see www.discoverireland.ie

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THE MOVIE THAT PUT IRELAND ON THE TOURIST MAP

My favourite line from my all-time favourite movie is: “He’ll regret it till his dying day, if ever he lives that long.” Fans of The Quiet Man will immediately recognise it as having been uttered by fierce-tempered farmer ‘Red’ Will Danaher, played to blustering perfection by Victor McLaglen.

Danaher is the bullying big brother of beautiful redhead Mary Kate (Maureen O’Hara) who steals the heart of retired boxer Sean ‘Trooper Thorn’ Thornton (John Wayne) who’d killed an opponent in the ring in the States. Despite Danaher’s best spoiling efforts and aided and abetted by the colourful and conniving villagers of fictional Inisfree in the west of Ireland, Sean, who was born there but grew up in Pittsburgh, woos and weds Mary Kate and then has an epic fistfight with his new brother-in-law.

Based on the 1933 short story Green Rushes by County Kerry novelist Maurice Walsh, The Quiet Man was director John Ford’s pet project and his cinematic love letter to his parents’ homeland. “It will never make a penny,” was one snooty studio reader’s opinion of Frank S Nugent’s 179-page screenplay. I hope he enjoyed eating his hat. The film cost $1.75 million to make, took in $3.8 million in its first year and has earned umpteen times that in video and DVD sales and rentals.

Shot in the summer of 1951 mainly in and around Cong, County Mayo, and released the following year, it sparked a phenomenal influx of tourists eager to see the sights so gorgeously portrayed by cinematographers Winton C Hoch and Archie Stout. Their work earned them Academy Awards (Ford, whose real name was Sean Aloysius Feeney, got the Best Director Oscar) and put the town and county on the map.

REV'S RES: The Reverend and Mrs. Playfair's house

Today, the coachloads of Quiet Man pilgrims who descend on Cong year-round are thrilled to find not much has changed since the cast and crew packed up and headed home. Most of the buildings featured in the film, such as the Reverend Playfair’s ivy-covered house, are still there, and you’ll see fans, many of them moist-eyed Irish-Americans, wandering around doing more pointing than a bricklayer.

The house first appears when courting couple Sean and Mary Kate are out walking under the watchful eye of pipe-puffing mischief-maker, matchmaker and bookmaker Michaleen Og Flynn, who’s following in his horse-drawn trap. Fed up with the rigid formality, Sean spots a tandem bicycle propped against a window, tells Mary Kate to jump on and they go racing off down the street. The house is also seen near the end of the film when the Rev Playfair (Arthur Shields) collects his £15 winnings from his boss, the Anglican Bishop (Philip Stainton), who’d foolishly backed Danaher to win the fight.

Playfair, a former amateur pugilist with a big collection of scrapbooks full of boxing articles and pictures, is the only person in the village who knows about Trooper Thorn killing his opponent, but the tragic secret is safe with him.

Look! There’s Pat Cohan’s pub, where Michaleen’s horse, Napoleon, comes to an automatic abrupt halt, nearly catapulting him out of his seat and prompting the line: “I think ye have more sense than meself!”

PAT'LL DO NICELY: The most famous pub in Ireland

Michaleen was played by rubber-faced pixie Barry Fitzgerald, real name William Joseph Shields (brother of Arthur), who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Father Fitzgibbon in the 1944 tear-jerker Going My Way. However, his ‘gold’ statuette came to a sticky end. While practising his golf swing he knocked the head off it (during World War Two they were made of plaster because of metal shortages) and had to glue it back on.

Cohan’s is where Sean and Danaher take a break from their fistfight, which resumes when the latter comes crashing backwards through the closed front door after throwing a pint of porter in the Yank’s face, for which he gets a piledriver of a punch in his own. The pub was actually a dressed-up grocer’s shop and the interiors were shot in Hollywood, so the punch that was thrown in California puts Danaher on his backside 5,000 miles away in the street in Cong. Cohan’s opened as a fully-licensed bar in 2008.

Nearby is the house where dying man Dan Tobin makes a miraculous recovery, springing from his bed while being read the last rites when he hears the crowd outside running to see the big fight. Hopping down the street pulling his trousers on over his long nightshirt, it’s the biggest comeback since Lazarus. White-bearded Tobin was played by Francis Ford, the director’s brother, and the young priest praying by his bedside, Fr Paul, was Maureen O’Hara’s brother, James.

DAN DOMAIN: 'Dying' man Dan Tobin's cottage

Ashford Castle, on the near outskirts of Cong, is one of Ireland’s poshest, most palatial and magnificent hotels, and for the several weeks of filming it was home to Ford, Wayne and O’Hara. It was also home last weekend to me and my pal John Morrison, another lifelong Quiet Man fan, when we made a pilgrimage we’ve been promising ourselves for years. This was our base while we toured Cong and the surrounding countryside, visiting the places seen in the movie.

The castle dates from 1228 when the Anglo-Norman de Burgo clan who’d recently kicked the backsides of the native O’Connors decided they liked it there and put down roots. Three-and-a-half centuries later, in 1589, the de Burgos got a taste of their own medicine when English nobleman Lord Bingham and his boys decided they liked it, too, and sent them packing. In 1715 the Oranmore-Browne family took over, and in 1852 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness of the brewing dynasty moved in, extending the estate to 26,000 acres and adding two Victorian-style extensions either side of the French-style chateau. In 1939 the castle became a luxury hotel, and in 1970 a large part of the grounds were given over to a golf course.

WHERE STARS STAYED: Stately Ashford Castle hotel

The management are to be applauded for finding and recruiting the most professional, courteous and attentive staff I’ve ever encountered anywhere. As is the case with any successful business, the people customers deal with are the most valuable asset, and Ashford has hired the best of the best.

Several scenes in the film were shot on the castle estate, including that in which fly-fishing parish priest Father Peter Lonergan (Ward Bond) almost hooks the monster salmon he’s been after for years (out of shot, local man Jim Morrin was in the river tugging on the line). If only Mary Kate hadn’t come along moaning about her new husband bunking down in a sleeping bag – “with buttons!” – Fr Lonergan might have landed it. Bond, an epileptic who was rejected by the draft during WW2, was a close friend of Wayne and bequeathed to him the borrowed shotgun with which his buddy had once accidentally shot him.

Danaher’s house, looking much as it did except for the addition of a front door porch and garage door, is on the estate, too. This is where Sean comes calling with flowers in hand and Michaleen in tow to seek the irascible squire’s permission to court his sister, only to be sent off with a flea in his ear as a tearful Mary Kate looks forlornly from the left hand upstairs window. The third fairway of the castle golf course, which didn’t exist in 1951, is where Sean first spots the barefooted Mary Kate herding sheep with a black and white collie (Jacko, owned by local shepherd John Murphy).

MUCH THE SAME: Will and Mary Kate Danaher's house

This area is also seen in the run-up to the big fight when Sean, who’s had enough of Mary Kate’s bickering over her unpaid dowry, drags her along the ground by the collar, followed by the crowd. In a continuation of this scene but in a different location close to the Danaher house known as the Meadow Field, Sean dumps his wife at the feet of her brother who’s harvesting the hay with his workers and says: “You can take your sister back. It’s your custom, not mine. No fortune, no marriage. We call it quits.”

St. Mary’s Protestant church, whose exterior was used in the “patty fingers” scene where Sean is told off by Michaleen for scooping holy water from the font for Mary Kate to bless herself, is on the road out of the estate into Cong. But sadly, wealthy widow Sarah Tillane’s (Mildred Natwick) house, where Sean seals the deal to buy White O’ Mornin’, the cottage in which he and seven generations of his family were born, no longer exists, having been demolished years ago to make way for a car park for visitors to the estate. Saddest of all, the long-neglected White O’ Mornin’, by the Failmore River 13 miles west of Cong, has been reduced to a barely recognisable pile of rubble. It’s a crying shame.

Ten miles southwest of Cong between Maam Cross and Oughterard is Leam Bridge, also known as the Quiet Man Bridge and unchanged in 60 years. This is where Sean sits and views White O’ Mornin’ while his late mother’s voice reminisces: “Don’t you remember, Seanie, and how it was? The road led up past the chapel and it wound and wound. And there was the field where Dan Tobin’s bull chased you. It was a lovely little house, Seaneen. And the roses! Well, your father used to tease me about them, but he was that proud of them, too.” It would bring a tear to a glass eye.

SPANTASTIC: Leam Bridge, aka The Quiet Man Bridge

Drive 22 miles southeast of Cong and you’ll come to the now disused but still accessible Ballyglunin railway station which in the film was called Castletown. It’s here that Sean gets off the green steam train at the start and is immediately surrounded by curious rail staff and villagers as narrator Fr. Lonergan clears his throat and sets the scene in voiceover, saying: “Now then, I’ll begin at the beginnin’. A fine soft day in the spring it was when the train pulled into Castletown, three hours late as usual, and himself got off. He didn’t have the look of an American tourist at all about him. Not a camera on him. And what was worse, not even a fishing rod.”

After asking directions to Inisfree and being sent off in all directions, first by the conductor (“Do you see that road over there? Don’t take that one, it’ll do you no good”) and then by a fishwife (“My sister’s third young one is living at Inisfree, and she’d be only too happy to show you the road — if she was here”), Michaleen appears, lifts Sean’s case and says: “Inisfree? This way.” And so they set off from the station in Michaleen’s trap and the adventure begins, to the comedic melody of “The Rakes Of Mallow”.

WHERE IT BEGINS: Disused Ballyglunin railway station

If you want to see Lettergesh Beach, where the Inisfree horse race meeting was filmed, drive 25 miles west of Cong to Renvyle, where the best view is from in front of Lettergesh post office. It’s during the races that Michaleen and Fr. Lonergan launch their plot, on which the movie hangs, to persuade Danaher to let Sean court Mary Kate.

The Quiet Man isn’t everyone’s cup of tea — or in Michaleen’s case, glass of whiskey. There are those who dismiss it as a mawkish dip into an over-romanticised world of shenanigans and blarney that never existed except in John Ford’s mind, but stroll through Cong on any day of the week and you’ll see there are many more devotees than detractors, all walking around with movie locations maps in their hands and a smiles on their faces.

Yesterday, the biggest smile in Cong was worn by Maureen O’Hara herself as the 91-year-old screen legend joined thousands of fans celebrating the film’s 60th anniversary. Fittingly, by her side were John Wayne’s daughter Marisa and his granddaughter Laura Monoz Bottini, and watching from the sidelines was 78-year-old local man John Joe Mullin, who in 1951 worked in Ashford Castle and served Ms O’Hara her breakfast every morning in the same room she slept in last night. “It was a lovely job and she was a lovely lady,” said an emotional John Joe. “Very, very gracious in her manners.”

Six decades after the cameras stopped rolling, the film clearly occupies a special place in the hearts of the people of Cong because, like Trooper Thorn, and the scenery so spectacularly portrayed in Ford’s fond salute to Ireland, The Quiet Man still packs a punch.

TAKE THAT: Sean lands a right hook to Danaher's chin

I’ll leave you with an anecdote I was told in Pat Cohan’s pub. On a day off from filming, John Wayne travelled to Croke Park in Dublin with a member of the crew to see the fiercely-fought All Ireland hurling semi-final between Wexford and Galway. At half-time, the crewman said to him: “You’re a big athletic man, I bet you’d love to be down there with a hurley in your hand.” Wayne took a drag from his cigarette and drawled: “Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t like to be down there without one.”

QUOTABLE QUOTES

1. Fr. Lonergan: “Now then, here comes myself. That’s me there, walking. That tall, saintly-looking man. Peter Lonergan, parish priest.”

2. Fr. Lonergan: “Ah, yes. I knew your people, Sean. Your grandfather, he died in Australia, in a penal colony. And your father, he was a good man, too.”

3. Fr. Lonergan (to villagers): “Now, when the Reverend Mr Playfair, good man that he is, comes down, I want us all to cheer like Protestants.”

4. Fishwife (to Sean): “Sir! Sir! Here’s a good stick, to beat the lovely lady.”

5. Danaher (to Sean): “Yer widow, me sister, she coulda done a lot worse.”

6. Michaleen (to Mary Kate): “Is this a courting or a donnybrook? Have the good manners not to hit the man until he’s your husband and entitled to hit you back.”

7. Mary Kate: “Would you be stepping into the parlour? The house may belong to my brother, but what’s in the parlour belongs to me.” Michaleen: “I will then, and I hope there’s a bottle there, whoever it belongs to.”

8. Mary Kate: “Could you use a little water in your whiskey?” Michaleen: “When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey, and when I drink water, I drink water.”

9. Feeney (Jack MacGowran, to Mary Kate): “I saw him today, as I passed by the chapel, a tall handsome man.” Mary Kate: “If you passed the pub as quickly as you passed the chapel, you’d be better off, you little squint!”

10. Feeney (to Mary Kate): “Is that a bed or a parade ground? A man would have to be a sprinter to catch his wife in a bed that big.”

˜ See www.ashford.ie and www.discoverireland.ie
˜ Author Des MacHale’s meticulously-researched books are a must-read for all fans of The Quiet Man. See the amazon website, where you can also buy the DVD, and Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle’s novel, The Dead Republic, about a fictional IRA veteran hired by Ford as an advisor on the movie.

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