Time for another of my favourite Patrick Kavanagh poems, first published in 1953, full of wry humour and tongue-in-cheek self-appraisal. Kavanagh liked to present the persona of an awkward provincial, disliked by Dublin’s males but loved by its women and at home with its children. This seems to have been in reaction to what he felt was the patronising attitude towards him of Dublin’s literary sophisticates: you want rough diamond, I’ll give you rough diamond. Apparently his manner could indeed be a bit offputting, especially in later life. Seamus Heaney, who admired him greatly, recounts how as a budding young poet he met Kavanagh in a Dublin bar in 1967, a few months before Kavanagh’s death. He offered to buy Kavanagh a drink, but the older poet, who at the time did not know who Heaney was, rebuffed him with a curt ‘No’. Heaney’s friend, the poet Richard Murphy, then introduced Seamus. Seamus reports “Kavanagh then said ‘Are you Heaney’, rhyming with Rainey, as people did in the country at home. ‘Well, I’ll have a Scotch’. I took that as a pass”.

The poem’s folklike quality attracted The Dubliners, who set it to music.

Notes:

Kavanagh regularly walked to the Dublin city centre from his apartment in Pembroke Road via Baggot Street, the most direct route.

If ever you go to Dublin town

If ever you go to Dublin town 
In a hundred years or so 
Inquire for me in Baggot Street 
And what I was like to know.
O he was the queer one 
Fol dol the di do,
He was a queer one 
I tell you.

My great-grandmother knew him well,  
He asked her to come and call  
On him in his flat and she giggled at the thought  
Of a young girl’s lovely fall.  
O he was dangerous,  
Fol dol the di do,  
He was dangerous
I tell you.

On Pembroke Road look out for my ghost 
Dishevelled with shoes untied,  
Playing through the railings with little children  
Whose children have long since died. 
O he was a nice man
Fol do the di do,  
He was a nice man  
I tell you.

Go into a pub and listen well  
If my voice still echoes there,  
Ask the men what their grandsires thought  
And tell them to answer fair.
O he was eccentric
Fol do the di do,  
He was eccentric  
I tell you.

He had the knack of making men feel  
As small as they really were  
Which meant as great as God had made them  
But as males they disliked his air.  
O he was a proud one  
Fol do the di do,  
He was a proud one  
I tell you.

If ever you go to Dublin town  
In a hundred years or so  
Sniff for my personality,  
Is it vanity’s vapour now?  
O he was a vain one  
Fol dol the di do,  
He was a vain one
I tell you.

I saw his name with a hundred others  
In a book in the library,  
It said he had never fully achieved  
His potentiality.  
O he was slothful 
Fol do the di do,  
He was slothful  
I tell you.

He knew that posterity has no use  
For anything but the soul,  
The lines that speak the passionate heart,  
The spirit that lives alone.  
O he was a lone one,  
Fol do the di do, 
Yet he lived happily  
I tell you.

Patrick Kavanagh