1829.3 Dounybrouk Fair. 259 



All this is nothing to Donnybrook Fair you will say — I deny that 

 too ; I have told you what Donnybrook Fair is not, now let me explain 

 to you what it is. 



To begin scientifically by describing the locality, the renowned village 

 of Donn)'brook is situated within less than a mile of the still more 

 renowned city of Dublin, on the banks of a pleasant rivulet, from which 

 circumstance it derives its name, Donnybrook signifying, literally, a 

 puny, or dwindled stream. The scenery around it is of a peculiarly gay 

 and lively character, well suited to the comical extravaganza there 

 enacted once a-year ; but in the distance is a threatening looking ridge of 

 barren mountains, scowling rather ominously on the lowlands, and they 

 too, suit the ideas which they inspire ; for within their recesses dwell a 

 pugnacious race, who, a few years ago, thought fit, for some reasons best 

 known to themselves, but hidden from the rest of the world, though,' in 

 all probability, just as satisfactory as most causes of war, to descend from 

 their fastnesses, and, as they pithily expressed it, " bate the fair," and 

 they carried their determination into effect with a vengeance. On the 

 appointed day the invaders were seen entering the fair, not in a body, or 

 with any note of martial preparation ; no, no, they were too " cute" for 

 that, but in detached groups, by tAvos and threes, apparently without 

 any organization, or connexion. During the forenoon, and while the day- 

 light lasted, they conducted themselves with perfect decorum ; never did 

 troops behave with more prudence, and prudence is the better part of 

 valour ; they ate of the fat, and drank of the strong, and paid their way 

 like a set of bibacious accomptants. Had they been clerks of the Bank of 

 England, or even of Messrs. Pugett and Bainbridge, who, I am told, 

 pique themselves on possessing still more accomplished accuracy in 

 financial operations, they could not have cleared scores more neatly or 

 punctually ; but when evening came with her treacherous shade, the 

 scene was changed — the forlorn hope, in the shape of a huge two-handed 

 fellow, a regular Irish giant, fi-om the glen of Imal, opened the cam- 

 paign by upsetting a table where a parcel of the " Liberty Boys," not 

 generous youths who burned with zeal in the sacred cause of freedom, 

 champions of the rights of man, but boys from a district called the 

 liberties of Dublin, were drinking. This, as the phrase goes, " riz a 

 fight ;" the townsmen flew to the assistance of their fellows ; the moun- 

 taineers, with the elevated spirit of their region, rushed to the charge, 

 and then began the " certaminis gaudia," as a gentleman of the name of 

 Attila, v.-ho would gladly have taken a part in the affair, had he lived at 

 the time, once said on a similar occasion ; tents were trampled under 

 foot by the combatants, like standing corn by a drove of bullocks ; booths 

 disappeared with the scene-shifting rapidity of a pantomime, though 

 certainly in anything but dumb shew ; publicans and di-unkards bit the 

 dust in promiscuous confusion ; theatricals Avere at an end, the curtain 

 dropped upon histrionic Avoe, and the real tracked}' of broken shins, and 

 bloody coxcombs assumed the stage; Punch and Judy forgot in an 

 instant, the bitter heart-burnings, and domestic dissentions of an age, 

 and fled in the amity of terror ; in short, to sum up all in the expressive 

 language of a spectator who described the scene to me, " the battle of 

 Watherlew was a cockfight to it." 



Donnyl)rook Fair is imicpie in every sense of the word : it has little in 

 common witli other Irisli fairs, and they resemble nothing else on the 

 face of the earth. From its proximity to Dublin, it is within the reach 



2 L 2 



