"Everyone should have a river in his life," an old friend used to say. He was thinking primarily of trout, it may be, but even on a blank, fishless day, he never ceased to be curious about the various whirls and depths, the colours of the stones, the animals in the fields and the birds - perhaps, above all, of the trees and hedges. Many a tree that subsequently flourished, came from his gathering of pine cones, acorns or beech mast, as he sauntered along, rod in hand, with always enough time to stop and chat with someone mending a fence or just wandering, as he was.
Southside Dubliners can experience some of the same delights in a new printing of Christopher Moriarty's Down the Dodder. And down the Dodder is a full, or surprisingly short to some, 18 miles. And from Kippure to Ringsend it runs through change after change. He is optimistic about the future of the river, even as more and more housing enters the valley. He tells us, that he has purposely refrained from dwelling on the negative side of "certain dismal parts of the river," meaning the bits of old cars, the abandoned trolleys from shops and the general rubbish that festoons hanging willow branches and banks. Optimistically, he argues that rubbish can be removed if there is a mind to do it. And he reminds us that in the past, in the 19th century and even in the first half of the 20th, the Dodder was a good deal worse than it is today. Factories, sewers, made of the river a very unsalubrious place at times. Today, you may sit at the window of a well-known hostelry at Milltown and, as you eat your smoked salmon or curried lamb, keep your eye on the river, just below you, and expect to see a duck cruising or a dipper bobbing. Certainly a wagtail is likely. There are, to be sure, a few cartons or tins or rags on the bank opposite. With luck this problem will eventually be dealt with by a more enlightened generation.
The concept of a footpath all the way along the river bank has not been realised, but there are green stretches of some magnitude in quite a few places. Dr Moriarty gives great credit to voluntary organisations and special mention to the Dodder Anglers' Club, founded in 1958. And on that note, somewhere between 1910 and the early 1920s, a reputable, honest man used to tell of getting white trout around Milltown. Came up in a flood? Was this unusual? This is merely a local glimpse of a lovely adjunct to life on the south side of Dublin. But the book covers the river from source to the sea. Splendid photographs. Y