“It’s been near on 20 years since 4 young bucks showed up in Trenton New Jersey searching for a bit of work and a good time. Well, by God we got them both in spades, due in no small part to the hospitality of one Billy Briggs. While we sit thousands of miles away now, back in Ireland, we have been known to greet each other with his “What it is Bro, What it is?” opening line. Hardly a night will go by when Shag, Figgs, Noel (when he is back from Spain) and I won’t reminisce about Billy’s and how we were always welcomed like family,
I was privileged to have been able to reciprocate his generosity in a small way when he and Bill O’ Neal visited us in Ireland. Irony of ironies, they were barred from singing rebel songs in The Patriot bar in Kilmainham of all places. Instead they resorted to a few hearty renditions in the house that to this day my folks recall with a mixture of enjoyment and nervousness (God could those 2 men belt out a song nice and loudly)
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to know Billy for long, but if the short period of time we got to enjoy his company has left such an indelible mark on us, I can only imagine the enormous loss to all those close to him, to whom I extend my deepest sympathies.”
Please God, we’ll get to meet him again when I’m sure he’ll greet us… “What it is Bro, what it is?””
Posted by Bill O’Neal for Colum O’Connnor, pictured below in 1990 on the Trinity College campus.
- Colum O’Connor and Fergal
Tags: Colum, Kilmainham, The Patriot bar, Trinity College
July 8, 2008 at 11:44 am |
I remember that night well, Colum. The night prior you and I and Bill went out drinking in Raheny, some country and western pub, as I recall. The following morning at breafast, you nudged me and looked at Billy, who was cutting his bangers into smaller and smaller pieces, but ate nothing. He looked the “snot-coloured green” Joyce mentions in Ulysses. Anyway, we three pile into the rental car and head for city centre. Near Moore Street, in the middle of the rush hour, Briggs pulls over and says, “I need… I need.. I need… to get some fresh air!”
He jumps out of the car and walks off to God knows where (we later learned it was to Strongbow’s sarcophagus) and there we sit. I never drove but once in Ireland and you never driving at all. So I pulled the Rover into the first car park I saw and we walked to Trinity and then to the place where Nelson’s Pillar used to be where we had a few pints.
We headed back to your place, where your mom made us pork chops for dinner, and Billy phoned from the Kenny’s in Ballyfermot, saying he’d meet us at The Patriot Bar that evening. There we sang two songs on the main stage with no problem while the band was on break. Then Billy started singing “The Eyes of the IRA” and the manager came running waving his arms frantically in the air. We were flagged.
So Billy and all the rest of the train (I think there were about 20 of us out together that night) moved down to a quiet room, I think it was called the Patriot’s Room, and there were paintings of all of the martyrs of the 1916 Rebellion hanging about. And we started singing again. After awhile the manager reemerged, saying “I thought I flagged you guys!”
Well, Billy went on about how come we cannot sing rebel songs here in the Patriot Bar, beside Kilmainham Gaol, and the portraits of the martyrs hanging right there and all, to which the manager replied, “Those guys are flagged, too!”
But then he looked around the room and saw that there were about two dozen customers drinking their full and I guess he did the math and so decided to just leave it at that, letting us go on until closing time.
Then Billy and I walked over to the gaol where the 1916 martyrs were detained and executed. He yanked on the iron gates and they gave, so we walked walked on, over to the front door and he started banging on it like hell. There was one light on in a window and it soon went off. No one showed, so Billy sang James Connelly while pissing on the main door of the gaol.