Back in the Town of the Lepers on St Stephen’s Day for the first time in a decade, I was struck by the aptness of the name.
Yes, the medieval hospital from which the corruption “Leopardstown” arose is long gone. But it’s funny that this of all Dublin suburbs should now be synonymous with the kind of racehorses known as “leppers”: ie, the ones that jump.
And although the racecourse has been there only since 1888, the etymology seems to have foreshadowed it. The original Baile na Lobhar was also known as “Leperstown” from 1624. But for a time in the 1650s, according to Logainm, the “Lepers” prefix became “Leepers”, before the original pronunciation reasserted.
That four-legged leppers now congregate there on St Stephen’s Day is apt too. The old hospital, dating back to the 12th century, was called St Stephen’s.
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Located in south central Dublin, where Mercer’s stood later, it was eventually relocated to the foothills of the mountains, for better air, but not before leaving its name to what became St Stephen’s Green.
In these more fortunate times for Ireland, the word leper is now reserved for figurative use, referring to social outcasts.
There weren’t many of those in Leopardstown at Christmas, either. Except perhaps for people who couldn’t get a corporate box because they were all sold out, or teenage unfortunates who couldn’t get in at all because of age restrictions.
The St Stephen’s Day crowd was much younger than I remember it being on the umpteen times I was dispatched there to write Christmas “colour” pieces between 1997 and 2014.
[ Leopardstown races: Faux fur, fake tan and f-f-f-freezing temperaturesOpens in new window ]
There was more of a party atmosphere now too, thanks to such innovations as “Buzzballz”: multicoloured cocktail drinks in small, round containers. Resembling liquid hand grenades, they came with the slogan: “Grab life by the ballz”.
Every hip, young thing in south County Dublin seemed to be present, partying it up. But admission rules insist that under-18s must be accompanied by parents or guardians, and there was vetting at the entrance.
If you weren’t the required age and couldn’t “borrow” parents at the turnstiles (as I overheard one intrepid teenager attempt to do), you might have felt like an outcast all right.
The party continued later in the Leopardstown (aka the “Lep”) Inn, to which I paid a brief debut visit after the races. When that pub was first built, it was so big that one local resident, Myles na gCopaleen, likened it “Croke Park roofed over”.
Last weekend, it was like Leopardstown Racecourse roofed over. Okay, there were no horses (I think). But the hip, young things were all there, as the party continued amid throbbing music and hormones. It was no place for the faint-hearted, or anyone over 25.
Getting back to the cheerful subject of leprosy, the first time I remember hearing about it was in Ben Hur, the 1959 biblical epic that must have been undergoing a revival when I saw it at the Stella Cinema in Carrickmacross sometime in the 1970s.
I still remember the dread with which the hero – even in the limited range of facial expressions available to Charlton Heston – visits his mother and sister in the Valley of the Lepers. So imagine my excitement to discover there was a Ben Hur among the runners in Leopardstown on St Stephen’s Day.
A three-year-old trained by Noel Meade, he had won last time out, at Fairyhouse. Now he was stepping up in class. But a four-legged Ben Hur, appearing in the valley of the Lepers/Leppers for the first time, was surely worth a tenner each way?
Alas for interesting coincidences, the horse finished a well-beaten fifth of 10 runners. Maybe he would have fared better in a chariot race.
Speaking of social outcasts, I had to write up my colour piece in a tent. There’s a press room in Leopardstown – very comfortable, I’m sure – but it’s not open to the likes of me.
That’s for the regular racing correspondents. Seasonal blow-ins are accommodated in an “overflow” marquee, erected opposite the finish line.
And in fairness, the three residents – I had a photographer and a reporter with one of the tabloids for company – were humanely treated, with soup and sandwiches, tea and coffee, etc.
But it was bitterly cold, as a stiff easterly breeze swept across from Foxrock, infiltrating every bone in a sedentary body.
The loneliness of the long-distance colour writer is always worse when the other journalists leave, as they did immediately after the last race. Then the racecourse empties, except for the cleaners. Then darkness falls, deepening the chill.
You’re desperate to hit “send” now, but your prose is still as lame as a three-legged horse. So bitterly, you make a mental note to bring a hot water bottle next year. Or better still, to be on holidays, with your phone switched off, when the news desk is marking up the diary for Christmas week.
