JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF DONNYBROOK FAIR 17decaying city for the southern ·suburbs. The opening of the railway to Kingstown in 1834, and thebuilding of Anglesea Bridge, over the Dodder river at Donnybrook in 1832 no doubt gave impetus toconverting Ballsbridge, Donnybrook and Mount Merrion into middle class residential suburbs.Such an inverse residential redeployment of classes no dOl}bt made the continued existence ofDonnybrook Fair a social as well as a moral anomaly. Those involved in the abolition committee inthe 1850s admitted as much. Speaking at the foundation meeting in May 1855, the Marquis ofWestmeath insisted that' every person would consider the fair a nuisance, the moreso because .., Dublinhad now actually extended to Donnybrook'. At the same time Alderman Roe felt that 'the owners ofproperty in the vicinity of Donnybrook should contribute largely towards the project as they would begreat gainers by its success' .70 How right he was became evident when the abolition fund, havingreached two thousand of the required three thousand pounds, Mrs. Catherine Warren, a major ownerof property in the area, contributed the final one thousand. 7 !However, it was not simply the case that 'Dublin' had extended to Donnybrook, but that middle classresidential Dublin had done so, not just physically but culturally as well. In the eighteenth century,Dublin city, Donnybrook village, and Donnybrook Fair alike were more socially heterogeneous and thefair witnessed much more social interaction. The decline and exodus of the Irish aristocracy fromDublin and the simultaneous rise of the Dublin middle class put paid to that interaction. One of the mosttelling illustrations of this comes from a contemporary reminiscence of Donnybrook even as the fairitself was in its final days. Writing in the wake of a stroll over the Fair Green in 1861 a contributor tothe Dublin U nilier sity Magazine noted how the upper classes used to take their recreation there in thelate eighteenth century and gave 'friendly recognition of their humble friends', whereas by the 1830sthe labourers and tradesmen at the fair 'were in small peril of being recognised by any counsellormerchant or large manufacturer'. He went on to explain:'the spirit of caste is stronger among us than it was in the eighteenth century; and if we are more politeto our political and religious opponents we entertain rather less cordiality towards them than our outspokenblustering grandfathers did.towards their differing contemporaries.'72It cannot, perhaps, be sufficiently emphasised how far the decline and fall of Donnybrook Fair wasthe cultural consequence of class formation in Dublin. The cultural implications of the emergence ofclass society for the fate of popular sports and festivities have already been explored and revealed inthe British experience. These implications manifested a sequence beginning with gradual withdrawalof sponsorship, patronage and presence of the upper, gentry class in popular activities; the emergenceof separated, class-based cultures from the elite to the popular; and with the growing strength of themiddle class, a drive to abolish, emasculate or control and decisively alter the form and content of'popular culture as constituting a threat to social harmony in a class-divided society.Such a sequence is found to operate in the story of Donnybrook Fair. Barrington' s description ofsocial mixing in the eighteenth century fair and his own direct and personal experience of it is confirmedby early nineteenth century press reports which describe the presence of gentry and the moralparticipation of gentry ladies in the festivities. Indeed, in 1808 the Lord Lieutenant, the Duke ofRichmond, was an interested participant in the occasion. But gradually aristocratic favour andpatronage was withdrawn so that by 1855 another Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Carlisle, lent his nameand financial support to its suppression. The whole process, sobering and fateful though it was for thecultural autonomy of the Dublin common people, is perceived and rendered tellingly but humorouslyin the poem Lament for Donnybrook: 73'Saints be about us, what are they driving at,All sorts of people are taking their share,All have their hands together conniving at,At the destruction of Donnybrook Fair.