The Unimportance of Being Mulligan

Having spent several days investigating both his own Irish roots and Hagar's Viking roots, he wandered into Mulligan's early one evening.

Journalists from the nearby Irish Press newspaper offices had just begun to gather. "So this is where Joyce set that famous arm wrestling scene," Browne enthused, hoping to strike up a literary conversation. "I can't tell you what a thrill it is to be in a genuine Joycean pub."

He drew nothing but blank stares and several turned backs. Finally a wearily wise barman leaned over and whispered, "Yank, a flea in your ear. Don't keep going on about that Joyce fellow. He's not very popular around here." Nor should he be, after passing the Mulligan name to Buck.

To atone for his impertinence, Browne made his way to the Pro-Cathedral and encountered another John Mulligan, no relation to the publican, sweeping wedding rice from the church steps.

"How come," the cartoonist asked the sexton, "Dublin, with the largest percentage of Catholics of any city in Europe, does not have a magnificent gothic cathedral instead of just a pro-cathedral?" Your man answered, without a touch of irony, "We've got two: St. Patrick's and Christ's Church. We're waiting for the Prods to get out."

My brother, John Mulligan, retired deputy fire commissioner of New York City, went straight to that eponymous public house on his first visit to Dublin, even before visiting the lads at the Fire Brigade headquarters just up the street. He posed for my camera in front of the twin etched glass windows proclaiming "Wines and Spirits."

This venerable facade adorns the cover of a scholarly tome, Irish Pubs of Character, and has been reproduced endlessly on tourist posters and linen tea towels. "Is there a John Mulligan still extant?" the brother asked the older of the two barmen before identifying himself as a possible kinsman.

"Ach, no," came the answer. "The last in the line passed on quite some time ago. He was known to one and all as a decent old skin." To which a scowling chap in the corner muttered into his foam-flecked mustache, "Mulligan was the tightest old skinflint that ever pulled a pint. He wouldn't stand his own mother a glass in the middle of the Sahara."

My wife is a Murphy, a descendant of Irish kings, so she keeps reminding me. And high kings at that. To determine whether the Mulligans ranked even among the low kings, I ventured into the genealogy office or whatever they call it at Dublin Castle.

I was attended by a tall mournful looking researcher whose thin smile, as Daniel O'Connell said of Sir Robert Peel, "was like the silver plate on a coffin." After a brief search though the files, he photocopied for me some slender data that did indeed confirm regal forebears, not quite Irish, somewhere back in the Mulligan begats.

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