From Robert Gahan’s wonderful article ‘Old Street Characters of Dublin,’ published in Vol 2 No 3 of the Dublin Historical Record (March 1940), this gentle and poignant account of the obsessive-compulsive ballad-singer Miler, one of several non-legal eccentrics associated with the historic Four Courts:
“Let us now listen for a moment to the song of another character, ‘Miler’; it is necessary to get very close to hear anything at all. Miler wears a long grey overcoat down to his heels, demonstrating that he was dressed by a very careless tailor, or else (bright thought) that the coat was not originally made for him. He was a quiet and harmless character, and appeared to consider himself a failure as a singer, to judge by the surprise which showed in his eyes when a copper was contributed; his song was an old one, but as Miler was so sparing with the words one could hear only a few, such as: ‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen.’
If this was all that could be said of Miler he would scarcely be worth including in this paper, but Miler was an original, and showed it on one day in the week, Sunday; on that day he was always to be found in Church Street, engaged in the peculiar occupation of counting the bars in the railings which circles around the Four Courts from Church Street to Chancery Place – no mean task, as the number of rails must total several hundreds, if not thousands, yet Miler would put his forefinger upon each in turn. Many said that he was mad, others inclined to the belief that he was a wise fool; who knows which opinion was right?”
There are not many photographs of the Church Street/Chancery Street side of the Four Courts, but the above photograph shows the railings Miler so lovingly caressed – still intact after the bombardment of 1922.
Are they the same ones there today?
Gahan’s full article, with its fascinating accounts of many other old Dublin street characters, such as ‘Mary-Anne Night-and-Day,’ ‘The Bombay Deserter,’ ‘Tommy Atkins,’ ‘Soodlum,’ ‘Paddy Sugarstick’ and ‘Tom the Doll Man,’ is available on JSTOR. Law Library members can access this database from within the Library.
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