The Irish Times view on the Liffey: a river that defines Dublin

In his elegy to Dublin in the Rare Ould Times, Pete St John wrote: “Fare thee well sweet Anna Liffey”. But although long personified as the female spirit of Ireland’s capital city, the river Liffey has not always inspired such affection. For much of the 20th century, it was more maligned than loved by locals. Yes, it was immortalised as a “Ganges of the literary world” by James Joyce, writing from the safe distance of Paris. Back in Dublin, meanwhile, a cynical Brendan Behan noted that “sometimes the smell of the Ganges of the literary world is not all that literary”. That unsweet reputation was immortalised too, especially in Bagatelle’s 1978 hit song, remembering a summer in Dublin “and the Liffey as it stank like hell”.

But in this and other things, the river was unfairly traduced, taking the rap for pollution elsewhere. A report of the same period found that one of its right-bank tributaries, the Camac, would be “better classified as a sewer”. When the Camac’s industrial tenant, Clondalkin Paper Mills, closed in the 1980s, it was an economic disaster. It also resulted in a “spectacular improvement” in the Liffey’s water quality. Overnight, within 5 years of Bagatelle’s hit, the stink had gone.

The Liffey is not just Dublin’s river, of course. From its source in a Wicklow mountain bog, barely 20km from O’Connell Street, it takes a long, scenic detour through Kildare, serving three hydroelectric power stations and flowing through Newbridge and many other towns before a belated arrival in the capital with which it is synonymous.

It’s not the Seine, or even the Lee. Even so, Dubliners have learned to love it, after a fashion. It defines their city, by popular consent, into two rival tribes: northsiders and southsiders. And its indirect gifts include the many bridges that stitch the two halves back together. In some cases, notably the Ha’penny and Samuel Beckett, the results make picture postcards. But the Liffey itself also can be lovely, especially at dawn or dusk. There is no sweeter view of Dublin, looking east in the early morning or west at evening time, than the play of sunlight on the river.