An Irishman's Diary

BOTH OF Dublin’s Luas lines are colour-coded: the trams that run to Sandyford and beyond being called “Green”, while those travelling between Tallaght and the Point are “Red”. But for various reasons, including local prejudice, I would argue that the Point-Tallaght line is by far the more colourful of the two.

I don’t say this just because of its intensely vibrant Zone 3, although like Picasso’s late period, that does feature an unexpectedly rich palette: including stops called Goldenbridge, Blackhorse, Bluebell (with connections to Greenhills) and Red Cow. No. Those aside, even the passengers tend to be colourful, at least in the figurative sense of the word.

Sad to say, some of this may be attributable to the fact that the line runs past both the Four Courts and the new Criminal Court complex on Parkgate Street, where some of the more interesting passengers get on and off. Sometimes you overhear conversations that, ideally, should be kept for the lawyer.

In fact, I recently found myself eavesdropping on a cryptic exchange between two men in which colour-coding was a notable feature. One of the pair was small, Irish, and clearly annoyed about something that had just transpired between them. The other was tall and Slavic, and was trying to get his friend to calm down.

But neither this nor the serene voice of broadcaster Doireann Ní Bhriain (courtesy of the recorded “next stop” announcements) could soothe the agitated one, who was further exasperated by his and his companion’s mutual inability to understand each other’s accents.

At one point, changing the subject abruptly, the small man ordered the other: “Gimme a bluey.” To which the Eastern European responded by handing him some change, an action that only annoyed the smaller man more.

“What are givin’ me two euro for?” he snapped. “A bluey, I said.” So then the taller man reached in his pocket again and handed something else over, more discreetly. And before the two got off (at Jervis Street), he further calmed the smaller one by saying that they were meeting somebody in town who would have certain produce: “maybe even brown”.

Brown, I guessed, was heroin. But I had to check with this newspaper’s crime correspondent later as to what a “bluey” might have been. There are a range of possibilities, apparently: including Viagra (unlikely in this context), various tranquilisers, and – most probable here – an assortment of products designed to string out an artificially-induced high.

THEaforementioned place-names of the Red line's Zone 3 hint at a time, not very long ago, when the countryside started just beyond Inchicore. It's hard to imagine this now as you head south along the unlovely Naas Road, which with its industrial sprawl, could be the edge of any city in the world. And yet, the colour-theme apart, the area's place-names still abound with local character.

At the ostensibly featureless junction with the (itself charmingly titled) Long Mile Road, for example, there is a suburb called “Fox Geese” to one side of the dual carriageway and a place called “Robinhood” on the other.

The latter name now attaches mainly to a road full of warehouses and an industrial estate. But there’s also a small tributary of the River Camac so-named. And among the people who grew up around here is the singer Colm “CT” Wilkinson, star of Les Misérables (and appearing in concert this coming weekend at Dublin’s Grand Canal Theatre), who recalls an idyllic childhood in an area that even then was still mainly rural.

I have no idea where this Robinhood got its name, or whether it has any connection with the legend himself. It very well might have, because there is a stubborn folk tradition that, after being run out of Nottingham, several of the Merry Men, including Robin and Little John, fetched up in Dublin, where they lived for a time in woods near Oxmantown.

The story also has it that in 1189, the same Little John publicly demonstrated his skills as an archer by firing an arrow from the middle of the Liffey – on what is now Father Matthew bridge – to the site of St Michan’s Church: a distance of “eleven score and seven yards” (about 206 metres).

His reputed grave in Derbyshire notwithstanding, there are even suggestions that he died in Dublin soon afterwards, and more particularly, that he was hanged (for robbery) at Arbour Hill.

Unfortunately, this is all much too long ago to be verifiable; although in that part of the city, you can still touch the very distant past. Like many people who have visited St Michan’s, I too have shaken hands with the supposed 12th-century “Crusader” in the vaults. And it strikes me that he might well know something about Little John, if only he could talk.

It’s a good story, anyway. I especially like the possibility that Robin Hood’s right-hand man could be buried somewhere close to his fellow socialist James Connolly.

And it doesn’t harm the tale’s credibility, in my view, that the area of Little John’s alleged Dublin activities is also on the Luas Red line. Nor, given the Merry Men’s well-known troubles with the law, that it’s located about half-way between what are now the two court complexes.