Today is the birthday of the city of Dublin, founded in 988. The area had been occupied, more or less, since before the Roman invasion of Britain, and it appeared in Ptolemys Guide to Geography in the year 140, but the first verifiable settlement came with the Vikings in about 831. They called it Dyflin, which came in turn from the Irish Dubh Linn, which means black pool. The reason its considered to be founded in 988 rather than 831 is because thats the year the Irish king Máel Sechnaill reclaimed the city for Ireland. Its also the year he first forced people to pay him taxes, so Dublin has belonged to the Irish ever since, bought and paid for. Dublins contribution to literature alone has been remarkable. Ireland was one of the first countries to produce writing in the vernacular, and its long had a tradition as a nation of scholars. A partial list of writers who are from Dublin, or who adopted it as their home, includes Jonathan Swift, Francis Bacon, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Bram Stoker, Patrick Kavanagh, Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, Sean OCasey, Brendan Behan, John Millington Synge, and Seamus Heaney. When I came back to Dublin I was court-martialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence. — Brendan Behan When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin. — J.P. Donleavy [from The Writers Almanac]
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 11:10:28 +0000