From Brosnan to the Bogey Boys... those were the Navan days

Navan native Mel Devlin recalls the ‘Twilight Zone’ of the Navan hostelries of his youthful days in his hometown

I’m really not sure what the initial attraction was of all those places that threw their tentacles around me and dragged me kicking and screaming inside, and then seduced me — before I understood the meaning of the word seduce.

Or when exactly I was finally lured in through the various front doors on Market Square, Ludlow Street, Trimgate Street, Watergate Street, and the others, down those dark, dimly lit wallpapered corridors and into a different world, a world that over the years would become my very own “Twilight Zone”.

To borrow from the opening line of the TV series from the 1960s of the same name, all who journeyed down those dimly lit corridors were about to “Enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. You unlock this door with the key to imagination. Beyond it was another dimension — a dimension of sight, a dimension of the mind only. You're moving into a pace of suspended animation of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas”.

Next stop, your seated on a high stool in any of the select bars of Everard’s, Loughran, Finnegans, The Royal Meath, The Boyne Bar, or The Lantern, just to mention a few scattered throughout the epicenter of my world, back in the days when I wore a younger man’s clothes, living in Navan town.

Maybe it was those part time, short time, Mass-goers, especially those select few who preferred to attend to their religious obligations from the street and skip communion before surreptitiously disappearing across the road into the pub for their preferred eucharist of banter, fags, and pints (parental warning to the PC brigade who may be reading this. Back in those un-PC days the colloquial name for cigarettes was fags.)

It could very well have been the image, sepiaed and over-exposed by the sun, that was thrown down inside the window of the various establishments over the years. It was a picture of Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins at a GAA match with both men seemly enjoying the game and each other’s company. That image was anathema to everything I taught as a young boy about the nature of their relationship.

The pair were in attendance at a GAA match and seated next to each other and were a far cry from having the gnarled looks of implacable foes out to settle the Civil War once and for all. They were smiling, moving towards each other, and looking like they were about to embrace.

Or maybe it was the old blackthorn football boots and kit bag carelessly flung under the same window; in my mind’s eye I was convinced belonged to one of the town’s or county’s illustrious football alumni — Paddy Carroll from Alexander-Reid, Pat Reynolds from Garlow Cross, or maybe it was Joe Cassells from “up the town” – a phrase we’d often used as an expression to identity a person from the town of Navan itself.

If the truth were to be told, the blackthorns’ DNA didn’t matter, because the mere hint of muck on the studs was enough to have us all dreaming of Croke Park in September and taking the once a year “Ghost Train” to Dublin for All-Ireland duty.

To be honest it was all these select bars and lounges, and a confluence of many things that reeled me in — but most of all, it was the proprietors themselves; Willie Curry, Henry Loughran, Willie Finnegan, Noel Foley the ‘Fear an Tí’, and off course not forgetting the ‘Bean an Tí’. Then there was Mrs Powderly, and Kay Geraghty to mention but a few that ensnared me from the time I was allowed cross the threshold and seek out the high stool or snug.

All except Noel have all long since shuffled of this mortal coil, but for some unknown reason last week I got to thinking and reminiscing on the days and times I spent in their various hostelries.

Days of future past and how with Willie Curry, Willie Finnegan, Henry Loughran, Noel Foley, Mrs Powderly, and Kay Geraghty of the old school publicans that I encounter in my time spent in Navan and how over the years with the passing of each one of them, an old piece of Navan is also passed to the other side.

It’s a duller place without those who have departed, simply because these sometime quiet, sometimes gregarious guys and gals were always that splash of colour around town, a beacon of light set against the greyscale palate — out there, larger than life around them and collectively looking the part too. Thank you, Noel, for being the remaining flagbearer of the group from those far off days.

The gravelly voices, the dark complexion and lived in face; the blazers and scarves; the purples and paisleys; the piercing blue eyes, Kay Geraghty’s swear box (Does anyone remember that? If you swore in The Royal Meath you paid 10p into the swear box which I’m reliably told was then then transferred to the Saint Martin poor box after closing time). And to crown it all, literally, were the signature hats that made them all look more Great Gatsby or Sunset Boulevard than Market Square, Navan.

It was the proprietors as much as the assortment of odd shoes, clogs, awls, spare leather, groceries, whiskey and stout bottles, hams, cheese and whatever you’re having yourself that adorned these old bar windows and their adjacent shops around the town. They were the props that made these pubs a rite a passage for people the world over, seeking the company of pints and people, bespoke whiskey, and banter.

It was my uncle Michael Carroll from Athlumney (who worked in Everards from 1962-1963) who told me the story behind that photo of the rapprochement between Dev and Collins over our many midnight escapades as we delivered furniture for Old Navan Furniture throughout the country. The “A Team” for those long journeys into night were, me, the late Michael Carroll, the late Aidan Smith, the late Paddy Smith, “Jasser" Sheedy, Johnny Farrelly, the late Jackie Carroll, and last but not least Stephen Dunleavy with one or two subs such as the late Dessie Clark and the late Eamon Lallaway called up in emergencies. All of whom were frequent and welcome visitors to the aforementioned establishments.

Navan was a great place to live near and grow up around as a young man, and continuedly gave us gave great times and favourite sons and stars from the town, like Hector, Dylan Moran, Tommy Tiernan, to mention a few, while Pierce Brosnan provided that splash of Hollywood glitter on his regular visits to the town from which his mother, May hails from.

But my favourite was the stories that emanated through the grapevine of Jimmy Smyth and the Bogey Boys (stories related to me through my great friends Austin Collins and Richard “Scobie” McDonald from The Borallion, Kilcarn).Why? because this was true rock n’ roll in its own way, right here, in my own town. Jimmy was a regular around the town for years, a giant of rock and roll, a man who would bring us back stories of his escapades from a “Parallel Universe”, were he and global rock stars rubbed shoulders, a world he would sometimes inhabit. The image is still vivid in my mind of Richard ‘Scobie’ McDonald just as we’d vanish in the side door of Everards, and on seeing Jimmy would give the Richie Blackmore “Rainbow Rising” clenched fist salute to which Jimmy would retort, “The Boys Are Back In Town”. They surely were glory days.

You can be sure Everards, Loughran’s, Finnegans, The Boyne Bar (long gone, and as Joni Mitchell sang, “Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone? They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”) The Royal Meath, The Lantern and many other establishments around the town played a part in us all ‘staying put’, or at least returning as often as possible because once you were gone, you were gone.

As Christy Moore (his mother was from Yellow Furze, so who knows, maybe even Christy was inspired by Navan hostelries) put it so perfectly in one of his songs from the early 1980’s: “You’d ramble in for a pint of stout and sure you’d never know who’d be knocking about” and that was it really, it was all about the “music of chance”, The moment when you crossed the threshold and into the “Twilight Zone” and into these most excellent of licensed premises, always expecting the unexpected.

For me, one of those moments was many years ago in March, when a traditional music session was in full flow. The door opened and in walked Declan O'Rourke who sat among us until his own show was due to start. It seems like the whole pub was the warm-up act for Declan.

The place was packed, and Noel was 'i lár an aonaigh’ as the locals would say. Where else would you want to be? It was noisy as people in their hometown toasted life and Irish traditional music.

Suddenly, one of the great Meath footballers from the 1980s (it may have been Robbie O Malley – the memory is hazy), stepped forward and stood tallest amongst the crowd, as GAA greats are supposed to do, and his voice rang out and soared above the din.

The pub fell silent as 'Those Were the Days’ rent the air:

'Once upon a time there was a tavern...' he began.

'Where we used to raise a glass or two…’

On it went…

It's a song about the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, New York City, but in truth it can be about whatever pub you want.

On this early March evening in 2009 it was about The Lantern Bar, Navan, but it could have been any of the brilliant traditional select bars in Navan town and beyond.

Noel loved it. We all did. It was electric; it was rock n’ roll.

Those were the days and we thought they'd never end…

-Mel Devlin

Sometimes Vilnius, Berlin, London, New York City, Montego Bay but always Johnstown, Navan, County Meath!