| Donnellan’s Bar, Kilkishen |
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| Cormac MacConnell | |
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MY God, what an arse! I’m sitting in the big kitchen behind Donnellan’s bar in Kilkishen when I’m introduced to Becky of the liquid eyes and perfect smooth skin and that’s the first thought that comes into my poor married mind. My God, what an arse! But before ye rush to write letters to the Editor please read on. That was exactly what I was supposed to think. You see Becky is a five-year old smooth fox terrier, a champion many times over, and the man of the house Pat Donnellan said proudly to me as we were introduced, “She looks exactly the way a champion smooth terrier should look — the head of a greyhound, the neck of a swan and the arse of a barmaid!”  MY God, what an arse! I’m sitting in the big kitchen behind Donnellan’s bar in Kilkishen when I’m introduced to Becky of the liquid eyes and perfect smooth skin and that’s the first thought that comes into my poor married mind. My God, what an arse! But before ye rush to write letters to the Editor please read on. That was exactly what I was supposed to think. You see Becky is a five-year old smooth fox terrier, a champion many times over, and the man of the house Pat Donnellan said proudly to me as we were introduced, “She looks exactly the way a champion smooth terrier should look — the head of a greyhound, the neck of a swan and the arse of a barmaid!” What a special pub this one is, even forgetting altogether about the beautiful Becky. This is the kind of 200-year-old pub that Failte Ireland bring special visitors to for photo opportunities. This is the real McCoy. I don’t think I’ve ever been in its like before. It’s on the eve of the Shout Festival and the regulars are drinking their pints quietly around a traditional high-stooled bar as they prepare for the craic, Pat and his sister Nancy tending their needs and gentle sister Kitty reading and relaxing beside the big warm stove in the dressered kitchen which rings with music and dancing on Friday nights. And Nollaig, the huge cat that Nancy rescued last Christmas in the Lidl carpark, overflowing from a nearby high chair. And a front parlour with two couches and soft chairs grouped around the warm fireplace at the end of the bar, for the shopping matrons of Kilkishen and the tourists who stop for tea and wedges of Nancy’s amazing apple and raspberry and rhubarb tarts, cloved and succulent. And every inch of every ancient wall covered with prints and plaques and curios and writings and poems. You could finish a Maeve Binchy long before you’d have completed reading the witty walls of Donnellan’s of Kilkishen and that’s a fact. An absolutely huge ornate Gouldings Manures Clock, a century old, dominates one wall, a colourful contact print of a hunting scene another, ‘Twelve Reasons Why A Dog Is Better Than A Man!. Hundreds of pithy sayings on wood plaques, a copy of the witty Michael Neville’s poem about the recently installed Kilkishen Sewerage Scheme. The certificate of Kilkishen Stealaway (“She won 13 shows out of 13, all over Ireland and England”), the best dog the house ever produced. A framed photograph of the NASA spaceman Bill Reddy, who called here for a night’s craic “and waltzed a waltz with Ann Donnellan of Clashdubh during the evening”. Clashdubh, outside Kilkishen, is where it began back in the Famine era. The big Donnellan family were evicted from their small farm. A neighbour gave them a roof for one night. They moved into Kilkishen, somehow took possession of one house, later acquired the house next door, established what was almost certainly a shebeen before it became the pub it is today. The current generation inherited from grandparents Pat and Kate and parents John and Ellen. And Nancy’s baking skills did not come down to her from the wind. “There was a bakery here in our grandparents’ time”. Pat brings me into the big room on the way down to the toilet block. It was once the bakery. The aperture in one of the walls marks where the big oven once baked the breade and cakes for Kilkishen. The bakery walls are lined with scores of old prints and paintings. Again you could forget all about your pint just browsing the walls of a family’s history. I enjoy my pint of Guinness in the bar where the Spaceman danced, chat with the regulars readying themselves for the Shout Festival and maybe even more than the pint enjoy a savoury slice of Nancy’s warm appletart and tea while Pat shows me a three-wicked lamp head and tells me about the years he spent making candles in Bunratty as well as helping run the pub. And another male cat somehow called Cleo is out on the town, they tell me, and Nollaig sleeps peacefully away in this special pub where the great love for animals is reflected in the glass eyes of the great stuffed toy dog on one of those couches where the matrons and the tourists sit before the fire. “Duck Inn And Roost Somewhere” says one of the slogans behind them. In the kitchen, before the dresser with its willow-patterned delph gleaming, the benches near the stove await the talented backsides of the musicians like Enda Mulkere and Ryan and Duggan and the many others who fuel the hooleys in the kitchen with which Donnellans add fuel to the Kilkishen festivals. I leave with the regulars. I’ll be back again soon, very soon indeed... Above: Pat Donnellan and his sister Nancey Donnellan in their pub in Kilkishen. Eamon Ward |
