The highly inaccurate guide to Drogheda

22/03/2024

Back in October

05/07/2023

Years before Shanks had his chips stolen, or the Council members ever had a motion, HIG-D was there telling it as it was, is and always will be.

It is with great saddness but also a degree of culinary excitement that The Inaccurate Guide To Drogheda announce the death of Captain Ratswing, esteemed pilot and erstwhile director of the Drogheda Swan flying core. An important figure in his own right, Ratswing was of course one of the Goodfeathers, an historic and noble family of the town, known to pearch on the banks of Boing since before the great Trolley invasion of 13th Century.

Few birds have shown greater loyalty to the cause of aviational defecation, or commitment to waste removal as he.
A long time resident of Meat Market lane, Ratswing is predeceased by most of his family who supplied Drogheda Hostileries with that famous delicacy Swan Curry, also known as Gull stew and poor mans chicken.
We would ask at this sad time that somebody supply a bag of rice and a few onions and peas in which to inter the juicy carcass of our esteemed friend.

Pictured here is Captain Ratswing, wearing the regimental flag and colours. This picture taken in 1994 when Millmount was temporarily removed for deep cleaning in the USA, reminds us of the unstinting devotion of the swan squadron to the skies and bins of Drogheds on the boing.

RIP Captain Ratswing . His likes will not be seen again...

09/12/2022

The ancient and venerable traditions of the election of the wizened elders of town and village, city and outhouse is as auld as the hills of Tullyallan. For example in a certain town to the north of us they employ a system called Dumbocracy. This requires that the dumbest of Dem gets the job to be really dumb. This is why that principality is known far and wide as Dumbdalk. Equally in the smelly quarters of Dublin, they double their numbers so they can be called a Capital city when everyone knows that Drogheda on the Boing is the true centre of Ireland, the world and indeed God's own bleeding heart. In Dublin they are governed by a king who takes an oath of allegiance to the devil himself.
Now in Drogheda the election of the chief of the elders is a complicated thing, and this proves that it's very old and works. Here we don't bother aaaksing folk who they want, sure they'd only squabble about it and pick someone they liked and not someone that the elders liked better.
The system used in Drogheda is called, according to the town ledger the "One leg shorter than the other, take a sniff of that ya mad yolk or we'll poke ya full of holes with our pointy swords (given by King Billy when he stayed in the local B&B on West street)" It is a wonderful spectacle to behold, and the purple "Paul Daniels magic set" only adds to the sense of mystery.
This ceremony is performed every year amid great celebrations and drinking. Indeed on one occasion the merriment had got so good that the soon to be Head muncho was accidentally done in by the rest and the peelers had to be called to give everyone a suitable affidavit.
Pictured here is the Election of Mayor Andrews after whom the laxative was named. He ruled for six months before anyone noticed he was a figment of the collective imagination and didn't really exist.
For those interested the smoke in the box is the collected hot air of the previous years empty promises and is said to be toxic to any but the most dedicated of principled citizens.

09/09/2022

Went to this tonight. Really amazing, beautiful, moving and just wow!

Read all about SONGBIRD in this week's Meath Chronicle.
Happening at 8pm Friday 9 September at Droichead, SONGBIRD, is a collaboration from Louth's own Dónal O’Connor and soulful Greek vocalist and percussionist Chrysoula Kechagioglou showcasing the best of Irish and Greek musical traditions.

Also featuring Greek traditional lute player Maria Ploumi and award-winning traditional singer and musician Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, don't miss this inique night of music.

BOOKING: https://droicheadartscentre.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873638121

Music Network The Journal of Music Donal O'Connor Chrysoula Kechagioglou Muireann Nic Ambróis Maria Ploumi

15/07/2022

The first ever train station was built in 100BC (Before Counting) long before train tracks, trains or time was invented. It was built of a Monday in Drogheda by some forward thinking citizens who just knew what the area needed was a great big bridge spanning the Boyne. The idea didn’t catch on and that station was burned down two days later and there is absolutely no evidence of its existence other than this paragraph.

Years later a rowdy gang of hoodlums occupied the site and built the first ever steam train, this time long before stations, tracks or accurate time keeping were invented. The steam train had no wheels, no cockpit and no overall design. It resembled a big kettle but due to a funny quirk in its design did manage to travel half a mile when it overheated and the steam caused it to achieve upwards propulsion. Sadly the event caused yet another fire and everyone died before they could share the tale until now.

The first train tracks where actually made by the Mushroom Men of Milmount (MMM), who would go on to also invent stitches, which is probably what the train tracks were. This was long before the invention of anything else, but unlike previous entries above there is evidence of this, but it is hidden under milmount in a secret vault that nobody knows about. A different theory suggests that the tracks were actually an atempt to make the first ever jigsaw puzzle, but early cartography enthusiasts mistook them for rivers and accidentally caused loads of people to die of unexplained drowning during the first ordnance survey of 1650AD.

In the early 18th century lady Serendipity shone her happy rays of inspiration upon Drogheda and Lord Balderdash, an industrious fella with a fondness for bankruptcy, almost invented the railway system. Unfortunately while he build a station, a train and even tracks, he was still way ahead of the swanky bridge. Also his train was pulled by an oversized shire horse on roller skates (hence the tracks) who sadly didn’t know the big bridge had not yet been built and met a messy end on the bottom of the Boyne ravine. This led to two important inventions though, the first was horse power and the second were roller skates (later patented by lord Withworth, space traveller and disco ball enthusiast).

We can now move on to very recent history when Zebedee, the grandson of Serendipity and Balderdash, invented the alarm clock and with it our beloved train station, train tracks, a man powered engine and the UTT (unreliable Time Table). The only thing remaining of this great innovation is the UTT which the high priests of Iarnród Éireann keep in the Tabernacle of Connolly Station, and occasionally read it out over the intercom for sh*ts and giggles.
As luck would have it Zebedee managed to do all this of a Friday, just as the beautiful Viaduct was completed and five Dumbdalkins were sacrificed to the river Goddess,- Boing, to keep the bridge safe from hurricanes, Hollywood movies and woodworm. We note that as of today the sacrifices worked and consider this proof that Paganism is the way to go if you’re an environmentalist.
Sadly Zebedee died of exhaustion after he pulled the first train all the way from the boarding platform to the far side of the Viaduct. His unmarked grave can’t be found but is certainly there if you don’t look.

Anyhow below is a picture of Zebedee pulling the first ever train on its maiden voyage. Behind him is none other than Malachy Murtagh inventer on the steam engine and green paint.

03/03/2022

Today we will discuss the various superstitions of Drogheda on the Boing, in particular counting rhymes. Like most places Drogheda has the magpie counting song, however the additional lines:
"8 for a tenner, it’s nine in t***s – you get one free"
Are perhaps unique to both our Nomenclature, and our wonderful cuisine.
Another counting poem, often heard in the schoolyards and hedgerows of Drogheda is perhaps a better example of Drogheda lore. The pigeons on the tower poem goes like this;

"One pigeon and it’s sure to rain
Two pigeons and it’s still raining
Three pigeons and it’s rain again"

This poem goes all the way to 100 without even once predicting good weather.

Then there is the bin poem,

"If the bin is over full
Count the cats and rats for fun"

This little Dittie was written by a small snotty nosed child during the fleath and won him a clip on the ear from the county council.

Of course, Drogheda also has romantic rhymes, our favourite is Thee Earth counting song:

"Ladies are free until midnight
After that it’s a ticket for one admits two,
You can sneak three cans in if you're clever
The four lanterns is a good place to hang out after 2am in the morning.
If you haven’t shifted by then, I’ll marry you."

Then there is the famous Tholsel bottle song, ancient but filled with a whole flotilla of “characters” Many of whom eventually moved to the steps of St Peters forming the first bottle choir of Drogheda or anywhere else form that matter.

As there might be children present we can only mention the seagull song, often mistaken for a sea shanty but certainly not one because even sailors have standards.

Of course many if not all these rhymes were once housed in the one volume, “singing for the scraps, a Childers book of Drawda verse”, complied by JP Reilly formally of James Street.

Pictured below is the famous “The local councillors counting song ” a musical broadsheet that was very popular back in the day.

28/02/2022

St Domino Augustine Francisco of Sorrento, is of course the patron Saint of take aways. His statue adorns the old Franciscan church where it was delivered in error by a delivery man who didn't know his Augustinian from his Dominican and ended up on Laurences St because of it.

The statue itself shows the moment poor brother Domino prays to God for a wholesome meal to feed his congregation. Legend has it that God sent him some flattened bread, tomato sauce and grated cheese, but the devil in a typical self defeating gesture caused them all to melt together and lo the papist Italians of Scilly invented pizza, sin and Gluttony all in one clay oven.

Poor Domino was exiled from the kingdom and following a brief sojourn working at the Apple markets of Eden, fled to Drogheda on the Boing where he set up shop in one or other of the churches preaching god's word via his mamas secret recipe (patent pending).
For years the monkish churches of Drogheda served up hot pizza on Sundays and religious fervour sliced the land in grand sections of holy pie.
Alas the lord do give with one hand and then he Takes away. So it was that in a plan to convert the pagans and protestants to the one true faith, the holy monks added some tasty sausages to the mix, and on that one Good Friday back when the pubs still closed, the diavolo was invented and every church going Christian of the jewel of the boing took communion and thereby sent their poor souls to hell for eating meat of a fast day.

Pictured here is the aforementioned statue of St Domino of Sorrento awaiting the patent for pizza.

25/02/2022

Few ladies get to be the little lady and enjoy the rule of Thumb, but Matilda Thumb (nee Potty) did just that.
Having entered the inaugural Battle of the Boing Cup diving competition and winning the first prize of an orange, she caught the eye of one Cornelius Thumb who whisked Miss Potty off to be married that very day. The registry office was closed though, so they had to hang around. Not having watches they passed time by counting it in rough approximations of sighs, skipped heart beats, and the time it takes to peel an orange in your pocket with just one hand, thus inventing the rule of Thumb. At midnight, just as the orange was peeled and Matilda’s hand was sore, they were married and Matilda Potty became a sore Thumb.
They would go on to have more children than was good for them, and even more that weren’t good for anyone else. As often happens to celebrity couples and little people, they soon fell to squabbling over every little thing, and many of the bigger things also, not least being a ginger bread cottage Cornelius had won in a game of chance with none other than the infamous syphilitic, Annie Takers. They resided for a time in the cottage hospital, a care home for aged and otherwise sickly cottages, such as the one Cornelius now owned and didn’t want to share. It was here that Annie Takers, realising Cornelius had cheated at chance, fed him to her pet parrot, reposessed her gingerbread cottage and framed poor Matilda for the whole thing. The peelers were called and an arrest warrant was issued.
Matilda fled the scene cunningly disguised as an Orange woman and ended her days in the Tullyallen home for the mistaken, destitute and with an endless craving for apples

Here we see Matilda in happier times with her prize Orange.

23/02/2022

Pictured here is Matilda Potty, a descendant of the Dry Diving Pottys, and a latter resident of the Tullyallen home for the mistaken, where she eventually died of the combustion, a rare malediction that often besets those who guzzle petroleum regularly.

In this picture, on the grounds of Townley Hall, Matilda, following the tradition of her family, had just won first prize in the cup diving contest, a contest hosted ever year without fail from 1901-1901.
The competition was inaugurated to commemorate the legendary battle of the tea caddy, a minor skirmish between the tea ladies that attended to both sides in the battle of of boing. Nobody is at all sure what the tea caddy battle was actually about, nor which side won. Although from all the shards of fine china found to this day in the fields surrounding the area, it must have cost a fortune in broken delft, and other counterfeit porcelain from Holland.

For those interested, the first prize in the cup diving contest was an orange.

20/02/2022

Dry diving, perhaps the most extreme of sports first evolved in the Town of Monopoli, Italy. Monopoli was once famous for it’s cliff diving, however smaller divers were constantly being eaten by Mediterranean fish and impaled on sea urchins, so they created their own sport which involved taking the dangerous water out of diving and replacing it with far more dangerous terra firma. The sport was eventually banned across the world, with the exception of Baltray, where the fad remained highly popular among some folk living in the environs of Drogheda on the Boing.
Such was the popularity of this craze that Giselle and Gepetto Potty travelled all the way here on the back of an escapee mange ridden parrot that had fled from a pirate ship, just to compete. They of course won, and would later also enter the tide staring contest and sadly lose by way of drowning. Their children would go on to live in the dark woods of Townley hall and eek out a living catching colds and selling them to quack doctors and new romantic poets.
The parrot of course would gain notoriety when it took up with Annie Takers who at this time had a wooden leg, swore like a sailor and like the pirate parrot had the mange.

Giselle and Gepetto Potty shortly before the tides changed, Baltray Beach circa 1891 or so.

15/02/2022

Yet again our researchers have outdone themselves, and the box of pictures we found in the dump continues to yield history gold.

Here we see Captain Waddington famous toy maker and creator of Beaulieu World theme park walking his dog on the banks of the Boing. In the background you can see the early stages of the construction of the Viaduct. With Captain Waddington is General Stores his close friend.
Of course the general is best remembered these days as a founder member of Woolworths on West st, along with Corporal Woolford and Sergeant Pennyworth, who sat out the war of independence holed up in Milmount where they survived on a diet of cucumber sandwiches with the crusts removed, whilst sipping Pimm’s listening to the BBC World service on the old bicycle powered valve radio (still housed in the museum, and further proof of this stories authenticity).
When peace broke out nobody knew what to do with them, and the government decided it was best to just give them a business grant and hope for the best. Sadly they squandered their wealth on cheap imitation fashion items and chipped jubilee cup sets, all sold at below market value to hard working mums and their shop lifting childer.

11/02/2022

Following much interest in our piece about Tiny Tim, we have decided to share this second picture.
We noted that many folks appeared to question our rigourous research methods and even the veracity of our account. In response to this we share this photo of the entire Thumb family collecting logs in Beaulieu wood.
Indeed the wise among you will know full well that Captain Waddington, master of the old house was the inventer of children's contraptions, toys and other things for adults to trip over, snub their toes, or play with on the sly.
What few realise is that the grand Captain created the first Train set, not as a toy but as a gift to the Thumbs, to recognise their lifelong commitment to chopping down that one small tree.
While nothing of the train set remains, this picture found in a box confirms their early career as lumberjacks.

06/02/2022

Tiny Tim of Thomas St, Son of Tom and Thimbelina Thumb, famed models for wedding cake figurines, and stunt doubles for King Brian during the filming of Darby O'Gill, had a strange if eventful life.
Soon after his parents were eaten by a stray cat, the county council reprocessed the Doll House at the bottom of some garden and Tim was left homeless. Not the kind of fella to let this stop him, he soon moved into the Clock tower of the Tholsel, and would squat there for ages. It was during this time that he became famous as the tiny tinkerer of time, who would on most days cause great trouble by turning the minute hand of the clock back ten minutes so the alarm wouldn't wake him to early. Indeed he performed this stunt so often that the clock of the Tholsel ended up out of time not by minutes, but by years. To this day the clock tells the time from at least two years ago and few if any depend on it for an accurate measure of the hour.
It was also during this time that the illicit trade in clock parts; cogs, wheels and the larger numerals was first noted up in the market. Although it was never proven, many believe that he was indeed the culprit. To this day (well this day two years ago according to the Tholsel) many a Drog will plead to do local Time with the magistrate, and hope for a shorter sentence because our grand old clock has only twelve hours in a day and not the full twenty four that others have.

Pictured her is Tiny Tim, allegedly cleaning the windows of the Tholsel around the time half the day went missing. He was evicted soon after and ended his days shacked up with a cookoo in Blavaria.

05/02/2022

Tonight HIG-D are delighted to share a very rare photograph from circa 1760. It is of course from the ill-fated wedding of Gerty Longlegs and her betrothed Lanky Liam.
Of all the scandals to befall the much loved jewel of the Boing, their wedding is perhaps the least often mentioned and yet the most well known. Few and far between are they who know not of the famous wall feature of St Peters cemetery, and yet many will express ignorance of the strange facts that led to this famous tourist spot.

It was a Saturday, the market was closing up and poor Gerty and Lank Liam had just tied the knot in the very church of St Pedro. The afters were planned for up the road in the The Market Bar and a grand spread was prepared!

Alas the afters afterwards were never to be, for Tragedy was to strike. Of all the Saturdays to be wed the poor couple chose the very Saturday that a load of cement had been ordered by the town council for the building of bollards in St Peters place. The cement truck was reversing up the narrow alley just as Lanky Jim and Gerty Longlegs were posing for the wedding photo. They stood upright and proud against the back wall, she dressed in a white shiny long thing, he in a long not so shiny not so white thing, when Splurge and splat, the cement mixer emptied it's load of high grade, quick drying, preservation special, industrial standard cement over the wall on top of the newly wedded couple!

They were interred as they stood, much to the horror of their guests, nosey parkers, beggars and other diverse but predictable spectators at such historic events!

Nowadays, they look a lot more threadbare, and indeed some mistake the frozen couple for giants, or a cautionary warning against tallness and dieting. You, dear reader, now know the truth though.

RIP Gerty and Jim, your likes will never be seen again....

04/01/2022

Drogheda jewel of the Boing, home of the "accelerated snail" and the "plumbers numbchock", both fabulous dances invented by the step dancing folk of ye olden boxen club.

The boxen club, sometimes referred to as shed, or the jumping disco, was of course the cradle of the "rock and roll sausage*, the *roller-skate o**y*, and the famous "wall-shag", yet more dances invented on its tilted floor of delight.

It was here that Pelvis Priestly first invented the electrical guitar when he accidentally plugged a banjo into the mains having mistaken it for a vacuum cleaner. The resulting jolt sent him flying into the hull of a coal scuttle destined for America. Where Mr Priestly changed his name and made a fortune teaching the young-uns of the Mississippi delta a few pelvic moves he had learned in the Great hall of dance, the boxen club.
Our story does not end here however, for while many places will content themselves with one great moment, the boxen club would be the perpetrator of at least one more.
Around the time the beadles were making it big in the cellars bar, and up beyont in the Markeet bar, Ronin Stone and his brothers were beltering out ditties like "I can't get noo sassy-action", a new and dangerous dance craze was infecting the nether regions of the disco generation.
The Drogheda wrecking ball thrust, or "Dwerking" as it was colloquially known, was the ruination of many a lad and lassy. Indeed the pope himself had to say a novena to protect even the godless russians from its hypnotic powers.
A young man would stand himself before his desired partner and placing his hands upon his hips would jerk forward with all the Gallup of a gobbling turkey, even as he thrust himself forward in the mid regions whilst never moving his legs, then he would shake his head and turn 360 degrees before bending over, looking out from under his own legs and shout "howaya!" at his happless victim. Now if the partner was inclined, s/he would reciprocate with a not dissimilar dance, however the person was required to perform the whole thing with a shoe missing and a jug of punch on their head. The resulting chaos would lead to total anarchy on the dance floor, rioting on West Street and the early closing of the off-licence by presidential decree.

Sadly this dance craze would ultimately lead to the demise of the great boxen club, which was blown asunder by a terrorist jager-bomber from Balbriggan who had suffered a slipped disc whilst attempting the Dwerk.

Pictured here is the great Pelvis Priestly engaged in what is believed to be an early form of the Dwerk, which would later cause the collapse of all decent society in the USA..

02/01/2022

There aren't many left who remember the great Drog-smog of olden Drogheda. Way back around the time of the second famine, the one where there was a shortage of chips but not potatoes, and American fries became a staple of the childer of Ireland, there was an awful fog so thick you could chisel bricks out of it and build houses (and still do better than the present government).
Of course the good folk of the Boing, were not to be beaten by a simple mist. The entrepreneur spirit of the St Peters parish Film Noir society surely flourished that day, and pretty soon a host of yanks and other Hollywood types invaded the town for its brief but important stint as a hub for the American film industry. Movies such as "Cassy Blanca" a movie about a woman called Cassy from Marian Park who got lost in the fog, or "Incandescent Milkmen and the cement truck of desire" a continental movie about a milkman who glowed in the dark and became a fog light for the cement trucks" were if not hits then definitely missed opportunities for the movie magnates of yesteryear.
Even so the eventual civic plan to remove the smog with wheel barrows, while doomed to failure was perhaps a decent stab at wasting good money of bad plans, and would later inspire many such community projects not just in Drogheda but as far afield as Dunleer.

Of course these days details of the wheelbarrows of smog are as scant as decent social housing, and indeed like plans to house the not-rich have long since disappeared in a puff of nonsense!

Pictured here is the only remaining still from the politico drama, "will ya f**k off with that wheelbarrow, and get me a taxi." Winner of the Pram door film festival hosted in the old parish hall on top of Peter St way back when....

01/01/2022

It was sometimes around the new year in the olden days when calender making had not yet been invented. In those days God had to tell people what month it was and so on. He invented the church to help him out with this, and pope Gregory the not very accurate decided to have three Christmas days in the one year, and five new years the following year without any Christmas days but with two extra Easters and no good Fridays.
So anyhow god sacked Gregory and gave the job of pope to Julian O'Brien, a Drogheda man well known for his love of months and stuff.

So to celebrate the big occasion of his succession to the throne of Peter, Julian ordered in a load of beer in kegs and a few pizzas for later in the night when the lads got hungry. He didn't order any sandwiches or cocktail sausages because in those days such things just appeared out of nowhere anyway.
It was December 31st by the old calender and also the same date by the new one. God was happy as a deity in heaven, and everyone else was happy to celebrate, especially the monks of St Laurance and Dominic, potato hollowers and masters of the distillery of St Alcoholous the martyr of hangovers and Monday mornings.

Disaster struck however when one monk fell upon the barrels and mistook them for his own. He invited all his friends around to Julian's cellars and they made merry as they say.
The new year came, an Julian popped down to inspect his purchase when what did he find, only the monk fast asleep among the barrels! His name was brother Felix, and the gods be good to him he was out for the count. Julian was furious, so much so that he stood gesturing his disapproval via his hand for long enough that somebody painted a picture of it.

Pictured here is the very painting, entitled "pi**ed, on the p**s, and pi**ed off: three monks but only one is in trouble!"

13/12/2021

Today we remember Mr Clarke's free school, a true example of the fine Drogheda tradition of loving something once it is gone.
Mr Clarke was (among other things) the inventor of shoes, and he made so much money that he made a school for free where childer could come and learn their three "Aws", that is "aw no the peelers are onto me", "aw jasus me mudder will kill me" and most importantly "aw for the love of God will ya stop."
Building on the school commenced at 17:40 of a Friday and finished at 17:49 the very same day. In those days people knew how to do things quickly. The man wot built the school was none other than Mr Willis, who later got stuck there on Christmas Eve (he had only gone there to collect his pay, a pair of shoes) and cut his poor feet on loads of smashed glass. The smashed glass was caused by a pantomime villain who belonged to a shadowy organisation sworn to stealing people's shoes whilst also turning fine buildings into ruins and then building shopping centres on them. This whole event was later turned into a Christmas movie that didn't even have Santa in it.
Anyhow, Mr Clarkes free school would remain a fixture of the Drogheda skyline for ages and ages. The city elders of course let if fall into such ruin that the school was granted protected status as an endangered eyesore until a few Celtic Tigers decided to knock the thing.
No sooner was it toppled than the folk of the jewel of the boing caused such an uproar that the good folks of Legoland were commissioned to rebuild the facade. This cheap replica remains there to this day, stuck gloomily beside the Withworth Casino and the crumbling gate of St Laurance O'Toole.

Pictured here is the people from Legoland rebuilding the facade of Mr Clarkes school.

03/12/2021

Competition time!

Today we remember the greatest 80s fad of them all. The Christmas charity album.

Of course Drogheda could turn to their very own Phil and Monica, the founders and only permanent members of The Drogheda Sings at Christmas choir to come up with the goodies.

The year was 1982, or thereabouts (circa). To great aplomb and a fine brass rendition of Jagger Bells, the album was launched on the steps of St Peters and quickly made its way into the sound shop bargain bin.

Of course track one was
"Dodey notknow it's Christmas at all"

Among some stellar songs the town favourites included

Arrest thee merry gentlemen (feat. An Garda Síochána choir)

Silent Fight. (Boxing Club remix)

Oh holy tights (feat. The Pennies Hosiery section)

Now to our competition. To be in with a chance of winning a copy of the album in our Christmas raffle, just name your favourite Christmas song from this album in the comments section.

For an extra raffle ticket (prizes to be confirmed) just share this post on your profile.

Original album cover: