Save Moore Street Awareness Week 436 – 28 January 2023

AIMSIR
Bhí sé fliuch agus fuar, drizzling lightly a lot of the time which had most people hurrying past. However it cleared up for the last 45 minutes or so and the street started getting busier again.
 
Our Cumann na mBan flag got soaked so Diarmuid took it home to wash and dry. If washed quickly and hung to dry, it should not need ironing.
 
DAOINE
B’iad Bróna, Orla agus Diarmuid an foireann beag inniu.
Despite miserable enough weather we had petition-signers from Cork, Dublin, Drogheda (including a Dub living there now), Georgia, Italy, Lithuania, Somalia (“We fought the British too”) and USA (via West London), many of them asking for campaign updates (see “Uasdáta” section below).
 
Thomas Geoghan from Crumlin told us about his relative Biddy O’Brien who had a fruit and vegetable stall near the butcher’s shop up near Henry Street of the street (i.e “the yuppy end”).
 
George Mulligan told us his relative Andy “Dazzler” in the Irish Citizen Army delivered the type for printing the 1916 Proclamation to Connolly at Liberty Hall. “Dazzler” collected the type but stored it overnight where he kept some pigs around the back of Buckingham Street, delivering it to Liberty Hall next morning. We know two printers worked through the night setting it up in two halves and had to create a few missing letters by adding bits of wax to change some letters into others. It was signed in No.21 Henry Street by the Seven, five of who spent their last hours of freedom in Moore Street.
 
Mention of pig-keeping reminds us that cows were kept in Dublin too and supplied milk for sale; also horses, in particular as draught animals. There are still some of those kept in the inner city for pulling tourist cars around Dublin city centre.
 
UASDÁTÚ
We wrote to some City Councillors again during the week to ask them to ensure the Council’s legal officers fight to defend the designation of a number of houses in Moore Street as of historical preservation status against property speculator Hammerson’s High Court challenge. Also to find out exactly the grounds for Hammerson’s objections. Only one Councillor had replied to our earlier letter: Donna Cooney and we await an update from her.
 
The tent market stalls returned to Moore Street this week but only for Friday. According to responses to our enquiries, they only plan to come back on St.Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day and then maybe more regularly after that. That is a pity because the market needs enlivening, having been (deliberately, we think) run down for years.
 
BRIDGET’S DAY
February First is the Celtic Feast of Imbolc, the start of Spring and when the ewes come into milk, with the Monday after a bank holiday in Ireland for the first time. It was in many parts of the Celtic world dedicated to the Goddess Bridget and transferred by Christianity to St. Bridget of Kildare, one of the three patron saints of Ireland. The importance of the personage of Bridget down through centuries is attested to by customs – many more than with the feast of St. Patrick — associated with her and with the feast date. In recognition of that, we placed a Brigid Cross on our table today.
 
Remember, you can be our media: scaip an scéal.

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