O'Donaghue's Pub, Dublin

Dublin has many, many pubs, but the one I was most excited to visit was O’Donaghue’s on Merrion Row (not to be confused with the other O’Donoghue’s on Suffolk Street).This pub is famous for being the spiritual home of traditional Irish music, and the birthplace of one of Ireland’s most famous bands, The Dubliners. It’s fair to say that, were Irish folk music a religion, O’Donaghues’s would be the place people would take pilgrimages to.

The inside of O’Donaghue’s is more or less exactly as it would have been fifty years ago. To the right of the entrance is an alcove below the front window, where in the evening you can usually count on finding a revolving cast of musicians engaged in a ‘session’, where each take turns in singing and accompanying each other in front of a huddle of reverent observers. Then there’s a narrow (and usually jam packed) thoroughfare in front of the bar which leads to a small seated section at the back, where, if you’re lucky, another session will be in progress. We were lucky, and parked ourselves directly across from the musicians, after furnishing ourselves with a pint of Guinness, of course.

The interior walls of the pub are covered from top to bottom with photographs of legendary musicians who had visited over the years; there were many pictures of Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly and the gang, but many more of other people I didn’t know, all of whom looked like they had interesting stories to tell.

Interestingly, the musicians were all playing totally unamplified, but they appeared to be using the building’s unique acoustics to allow their singing and playing to cut through the noise from other areas of the pub. The first group we saw were a duo, one musician playing the guitar and the other a banjo, which they occasionally swapped. Their repertoire wasn’t limited to traditional tunes either, as they transformed Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘El Condor Pasa’, Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, and The Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’ into ancient Irish folk songs.

On our second visit the next day, we listened to a different group headed by a singer named Victor Byrne, who sang amazing renditions of ‘The Lakes of Ponchartrain’ and ‘Caledonia’, before handing over to another singer who performed a beautiful ‘From Clare to Here’. I wasn’t familiar with these songs, but by this point I was taking copious mental notes of the songs I liked so I could look them up later. The musicians were very approachable, and glad to tell us the names of songs we didn’t know.

I will definitely coming back to O’Donaghue’s next time I’m in Dublin, and I’m looking forward to seeking out sessions at other pubs in the city. There are many, many pubs in Dublin, but I think I will be lucky to find another one as magical as O’Donaghue’s of Merrion Row.