Come Here To Me!

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the passing of Dominic Behan. Playwright, novelist and songwriter, his remarkable career was every bit as prolific as that of his brother Brendan, with whom he shared radical political tendencies and many characteristics. In Dominic’s honour, a night will be held in Liberty Hall on the 30th of this month with singers including Phelim Drew and historians. A new edition of his memoir has been published too (photo below, apologies for making a haims of this post first time!)

Born in Dublin’s north inner-city, Dominic Behan spent the formative years of his life in Crumlin, where the Behans were moved to from Russell Street. He would joke about the “jungle” of Crumlin in his memoir Teems of Times and Happy Returns, still one of the great Dublin memoirs, capturing both the stories of the inner-city streets and the new suburban experience.

A plaque on the Kildare Road house honours Brendan, but in truth it was a house of writers, singers and debate. It is difficult for us now to imagine how transformative Crumlin, Kimmage and schemes like them were in the hungry 1930s, and not just for those moving into them. Brendan would quip that there was “no such thing as suburbia, only Siberia.” Crumlin native Fiona Watchorn remembered how “we had never seen so many houses – all of the same shape and size, and wondered how the new kids could find their own.”

Dominic remembered Russell Street fondly, recalling that “the native industries of Russell Street were drink and cleanliness, represented respectively by the Mountjoy Brewery and the Phoenix Laundry.” It was far from the worst of tenement Dublin, with Dominic recalling how “Russell Street was the extreme tip of a jungle of north city tenements: Georgian, red-bricked, strait-laced, and, at this time, complete with closed hall-doors and mahogany railed staircases. Even a few of the windows were still intact.”

The atmosphere in which the Behan children were raised was fundamentally radical. Stephen Behan, Dominic’s father, was a veteran of the War of Independence, and took the Republican side in the Civil War which followed. By trade, Stephen worked as a signwriter, a trade Brendan would briefly follow him into. Stephen married Kathleen in July 1922, as the country was in the midst of Civil War. Her brother was Peadar Kearney, author of The Soldier’s Song, the national anthem. Not long after his wedding, Stephen was himself imprisoned. Family lore had it that Brendan Behan would first see his father through the railings of prison.

Dominic, born in 1928, arrived too late for the excitement of the revolution, but he found his heroes in that tradition. To him, “Jim Larkin gave a new meaning to Christianity when he decided to fight his cleric critics with their own cannons – a Bible and a plea for a true brotherhood of man.” He brought his politics into much of what he did; working on a number of building sites with his brother Brendan in the 1940s, with one foreman complaining to their father that they were “the greatest bastards I’ve ever come across.One wants the men to strike for an incentive bonus so that the other one can bring them down to the pub to drink it.’ His political activism would land him in trouble in the early 1950s, with his role in agitation for the movement against unemployment seeing him imprisoned.

Dominic’s lyrical output was unprecedented. He was quick-witted, and able to get songs into the public domain quickly as events unfolded. Arkle, his tribute to the greatest racehorse Ireland has ever produced (known simply as ‘Himself’) honoured a brilliant victory for the Irish Thoroughbred racehorse over hotly tipped English opposition:

They’re at the last and over, Pat Taffe has more in hand
He’s passing England’s Mill House, the finest in the land
My God he has us beaten! What can we English say?
The ground was wrong? The distance long? Too early early in the day?

Marble Arch Records cover of Arkle

Some songs were sweet, like Liverpool Lou, which became a top 10 hit for Liverpool group The Scaffold, and which Yoko Ono would select as one of her Desert Island Discs, noting that John Lennon had sung it to their child as a lullaby. Still, it is undoubtedly the republican songs that Dominic is best remembered for, Come Out, Ye Black and Tans and The Patriot Game among them. Behan would accuse Bob Dylan of plagiarising his song for his own With God On Our Side, leading to legendary tensions. In a scene in Don’t Look Back, the documentary of Bob Dylan on the road, Dylan retorts quickly that “I don’t hear nobody like Dominic Behan, man!” when his name is mentioned. Music industry legend has it that when Dylan suggested “my lawyers can speak with your lawyers”, Behan replied, “I’ve got two lawyers, and they’re on the end of my wrists.”

As a broadcaster, singer and playwright Dominic would spend his life between these islands. In Britain, he was fundamentally important to opening doors for emerging Irish acts, including The Dubliners, and was part of a golden age of Irish folk and traditional performers on the UK circuit, which could include talent as diverse as Seamus Ennis, Margaret Barry (honoured at this years RTÉ Folk Awards) and a young Luke Kelly. In an interview with this writer, Christy Moore (for whom Dominic produced the album Paddy On The Road) recounted that time fondly, but while acknowledging a profoundly important truth: “Dominic was pure Dublin to his very core. He mesmerized me with an enormous repertoire of songs, reflections and poetry. Himself and his wife Josephine were very kind to me. Like myself back then,he seldom put the cork back into the bottle. The sessions went on ’til the bitter end.”

At the time of his passing in August 1989, Dominic Behan was just sixty years of age. His ashes were scattered on the Royal Canal in Dublin, and an oration delivered by his friend Seán Garland, President of The Workers Party. He would be remembered in the pages of The Irish Times as “a funny man, garrulous, brilliant, infuriating, angry,lovable but never boring.”

Up Russell Street!, a night in honour of Dominic Behan marking 30 years since his passing, takes place at Liberty Hall on 30 November. Tickets available now from eventbrite.

2019 edition of Teems of Times and Happy Returns.