Dublin Folktales (13 page)

While wigs were and are worn for style purposes, medical reasons, and to hide hair loss, wigs worn in Restoration Ireland resembled nothing more than a small sheepskin sitting on the head of the wearer. They covered the head entirely. Tresses fell fetchingly down the cheeks of wearers and the rest flowed around the shoulders and back of the wearer.

A wig used to be called a periwig and was then shortened to wig. They were made of horse hair, or the hair from humans who no longer needed it, either because it was too long and needed to be shorn, or they were dead and had no use for it anymore. This use of a dead person’s hair could have consequences for the wearer. The deceased might have passed on their head lice to their successor or they could have died of disease and the infection might linger in the wig.

A plague in the 1660s in London resulted in a reluctance among wig wearers to wear their new wigs lest their provenance proved to be that of a plague victim. The unhygienic conditions of the time meant that hair attracted head lice, which quite simply hopped from one head of hair to another, without any intimacy being involved at all by the host heads. It was a problem that could be reduced if natural hair was shaved and replaced with a wig that could be more easily de-loused. As practical life trundled along, wigs became smaller and sat instead on the scalp of the wearer. Many were off-white and powdered, and were obviously not the genuine hair of the person before you. Nor were they supposed to be. Nonetheless, since people like to change their appearance from time to time, dyeing of hair became popular.

A story is told that in the dying years of the nineteenth century, Isaac Butt, a founder of the Home Rule Movement, liked to tint his hair a different colour than the one nature blessed him with. He asked an employee to help out with a pair of bottles the hairdresser had left with him, for such an occasion. A mistake in mixing the content resulted in Butt
appearing with green hair, hardly an inappropriate colour, but not exactly what had been envisaged, by Butt or his hairdresser. This was neither the first nor the last time that a hairdresser was involved in a strange hair story.

While Butt was a nationalist and a busy lawyer, he lived life to the full and spent money as freely as he earned it. He was also reputed to be a man who loved women too often and too much. At one time, he found himself lodged in the Debtors’ Prison on Thomas Street for non-payment of his due bills. He was transferred to Kilmainham Jail and eventually managed to find a way to be released. Many many years later, another man came to grief over a head of hair on High Street, not far from where Butt had languished in imprisonment.

Simon and Michael were friends who had been to college together. Simon dropped out to live the life of a rover and to travel the road to self realisation. Simon vanished somewhere around India. He was last seen boarding the Magic Bus in Dublin with a backpack and his hair draped around his shoulders in memory of Restoration Dublin and as a salute to the new world he was to inhabit. For a while, he posted postcards of where he was to open the eyes of those left behind to the possibilities of the world. Then they stopped. Michael stayed on to the end of his studies and became a successful businessman. He joined the family shipping agency and soon took over the company. Years passed. Michael grew stouter and wealthier. Simon was nowhere to be seen.

Michael’s family grew up and left his home. His wife grew fatter and lazier and complained all day long. His business was so prosperous that he hired workers to do the work he used to do himself. So, when a young woman put her eyes on his wealth he was pleased with her attentions. Of course, she did not say she lusted for his riches. He believed her when she said she absolutely respected his life arrangement with his wife and family, and would not care
if he was rich or poor. She liked his companionship and she liked to hear how he bested the vicissitudes of life to get to where he was now. She said he was entitled to some fun in life. Her name was Tanya and she wanted nothing of him except companionship. And that is when Simon came home from his travels.

Michael was sitting in a bar on High Street awaiting Tanya’s arrival. Tanya was never less than ten minutes late for any date they had. She liked to keep Michael waiting for her. However, that ten minutes was her downfall on this fine June evening, for Michael wandered out onto the street to take the air. Simon, who had just returned from his travels, caught his old friend by the elbow and said it was high time they painted the town red. A startled but delighted Michael soon found himself immersed in the night life of Temple Bar as Simon swept him along in their recalled exuberance.

Tanya was abandoned, as the pals wandered from pub to pub up and down every narrow street of the old town. Simon challenged Michael to name the street before they entered it. The loser paid for the next drink. After a while, they could neither remember where they were or what anything was called any more. Simon still wore loose, flowing clothes and still wore his hair long although now it was tied in a ponytail so that it wouldn’t get into his drink.

The conversation moved to Michael’s neat back-and-sides hairstyle. He said he liked it like that. Simon said it was time he stood out from the ordinary and re-claimed his youthful zest for life. In short, he needed a new hairstyle.

Many a decision made early in the morning, in the company of like-minded souls can come to be regretted. To wit: Simon now revealed himself as the owner of a chain of men’s barbers across Europe. He started his business in Vienna years earlier, when he had grown weary of the road and wanted to settle. The chain was known as ‘Simple Simon’s Really Nice Barbers. They’d cut the hairs of heads of state, according to Simon. They’d cut the hair of semi-bald
men requiring just the short sides to be trimmed. In fact, movie stars and celebrities of all sorts were secret customers of Simon’s flying scissors. He was in Dublin he revealed, to open a nationwide chain of ‘Simple Simon’s’.

As it happened, there were premises nearby to which he had the keys and on which he was about to sign the lease. He suggested going there and they would re-style Michael into the man he always was. Michael agreed it was an excellent idea. They went to the premises and Michael blinked as a row of blinding lights came on in predictable succession. ‘Take a chair’, said Simon grandly. ‘This is the first day of the rest of your life.’

Michael wondered if now would be a good time to tell the companion of his younger years that he was completely bald beneath his very expensive hairpiece. The barber chose the chair in the window that passers-by could see. Michael became worried about being embarrassed in full view of the passing populace of Dublin. But he need not have worried, for an eagle-eyed Simon had already spotted the wig. A good barber was a man of immense discretion. A necessary characteristic for one privy to such confidences as which way a man parted his hair and, for that matter, which hair was the man’s own and which hair was imported, either from a horse or someone else’s head.

Simon said it would be best if he used a new Viennese method of trimming a man’s hair without having to wash it. So Michael got comfortable in his chair and became so relaxed that he fell asleep with the mesmeric clicking of a hand scissors and the swirling comfort of a bellyful of intoxicating liquor. Simon became so absorbed in his work that he removed the hair piece altogether and brought it to a brighter light deeper in the shop to work upon it while his friend slept the sleep of the just.

There were a number of spare wigs there awaiting collection by their owners for one reason or another. Simon placed his friend’s hair piece beside one that was dyed green
for a stage comedian’s next show. He quite forgot about it when he turned and saw Michael hiding behind the chair. There was a face at the window, staring in. It was Tanya, furious that she had been left behind by Michael. She had spotted him in the chair and was banging the window, shouting something or other that was probably inappropriate for a girl friend to be shouting at a married man. She was having a bad hair night, for sure. Michael was hiding from her, for he had seen his present state in the huge mirror in front of his chair. His baldness was there for all to see. He did not wish to be uncovered by this young woman with the wicked tongue. Simon, ever the soul of discretion, hurried back and caught up the wig for Michael to don as quickly as possible. Michael grabbed the hairpiece, stuck it on top of his head and opened the door to the street. An astonished Tanya stopped complaining in her shock at the green-haired man before her. For Simon had picked up the comedian’s novelty hairpiece in error in his haste.

Michael, sporting his green hair, trotted after her into the night, for there was no knowing what she would do. Simon watched them and sighed for the days of the Magic Bus and the gentle lunatics with long hair that travelled on it. At least he knew that the journey was going to end. Dublin had grown too hectic for him while he was away and he longed to be somewhere else.

When a newly-married couple told their Dublin wedding guests that they were touring Ireland for their honeymoon, it meant they were going to an auntie down the country for a week or less, depending on funds and the auntie. Income levels were not so high, at the time, so that couples couldn’t fly off to the southern hemisphere on their first married holiday together.

Weddings had to be planned and guest lists agreed. Mortal enemies had to be seated away from one another. That is, if the reception was to be in a hotel or a marquee in the back garden or something posh like that. Mostly, it was a hooley in the kitchen of the bride’s family home. The bride’s family paid for the reception by and large, as best they could. Everyone had to save up for it from their weekly wage. A wedding cake was bought, as was porter and stout and beer and perhaps a few bottles of whisky, to cut the phlegm for the volunteer singers before they launched into their well-rehearsed party pieces. There would be a few bottles of sweet sherry for those that declared themselves to be non-drinkers. Once the food was gone and the drinking commenced, a space was cleared for dancing, and whoever had an instrument and knew how to play would start the music. And so the evening would progress.

When it came time for the happy couple to depart, the tradition was to mess up the groom as much as possible and to leave him dishevelled and disoriented. It was a big day in anyone’s life, especially in a country with no divorce. The first week was often the biggest trial for a new couple. If they survived seven days of one another’s unremitting company they were over the first hurdle. For if they did not go away on a honeymoon there were customs to be adhered to.

Newlyweds who could not afford to honeymoon somewhere else were supposed to stay indoors for a week. Perhaps in the hope that people would think they were away somewhere if they were not seen in their usual haunts. Custom dictated that a sharp knife was not to be used in preparation of food for that week. This might result in near starvation and a severe trying of matrimonial bonds if the two people did not meet one another half way.

Certainly one couple were observed attacking one another with hatchets on Gloucester Street outside their new home on the morning after their wedding reception. It caused quite a stir, for they had been dancing to waltz music on a melodeon played by Christy McGrane until the small hours. They were disarmed eventually, and the families concerned began to negotiate and propose possible solutions. No one knew what had caused the falling out. After all, they had saved money well; even walking home from the picture house to save the bus fare in the weeks before the nuptials. They managed to save £119 in the run-up to the off. They bought a bedroom suite, a dining-room suite, a kitchen dresser and two chairs. The flat already had a gas cooker in it with three rings that worked. The bride’s mother gave them a pair of curtains for the window and all was set fair. Until the hatchets came out.

What perplexed a good few people was the presence of two hatchets in a new household. Most agreed that there had probably been a double up in the wedding presents list, though a few bags of coal would probably have served the
new family better than a pair of China-made hatchets with blades that would go blunt very easily.

Someone said the ill feeling started when Ned carried Olive across the threshold with more enthusiasm than accuracy. It was believed that if a wife stumbled over the threshold, then bad luck would come to her marriage. How much worse was it when she entrusted herself to her new husband and he fell over the threshold and let the two of them fall down on top of the presents. When a confused Olive arose, it was to find that one of the three ducks that were to be hung on the wall was now wingless. There were only two ducks left worth talking about. She pointed this out to her new husband Ned, who said he did not care who gave the gift to them: two ducks were as good as three and twice as good as one. One word let to another until they spilled out onto the street the following morning, intent on an immediate separation of the other from the planet. Matters calmed down after a new set of ducks was produced by a woman on the husband’s side and they agreed to give their marriage another try.

These were the days when marriages were either arranged, or took place among people from the same community, which was much the same thing for if an unsuitable match was in the offing, wagging tongues would point out the unsuitability of the pairing. Few courtships survived a disapproving parish.

Consider then the case of the woman who met a man on the internet. When they met in real life, they fell in love straight away and agreed they would be married before a year had passed. They were both from Dublin, but hailed from the suburbs at opposite ends of the city. So large had Dublin become that the old bonds of community were weakened and neither knew the other’s background as well as they might.

The man was rich but did not tell Lara this for he wanted to test her love for him first. She told him, often as she could
that she considered happiness and love to be wealth, not possessions. But Steve doubted her love and told her a lie to see how she would respond. His parents had left the bulk of his inheritance to him in gold coins that lay behind a hidden door in the cellar beneath his old inherited house. One day, he told Lara he owned a single gold coin. He said it was hidden in the depth of the garden for fear his house would be robbed. He brought her to the place in the garden to show her. He made her swear to tell nobody their secret, which she did to humour him, though she thought him even more loveable for asking such a thing. Then, he wrapped a piece of lead, the size of a large coin, in a cloth and buried it there when he was alone. Each day the girl visited, Steve watched to see that the ground was undisturbed. Each day, the girl smiled and told him she would love him even if he penniless. Still he watched his garden.