When weather is wild it might be worse
27 Jan 1937Stormy Memories Of A Century And A Half Ago
WHEN the weather is wicked, it might be worse. Glancing over those chronicles of their times, the newspapers for November, 1787, we are scared by their stories of the savagery of the gales.
As in our own days, the country was concerned with projects of construction. On the mountains men were hewing stone for new spannings of the Liffey. Alongside the western wing of the Custom House plans were prepared for tho building of a dock or basin. Private owners,, like Mr. Talbot at Malahide, had occupied themselves with such schemes as the completion of a circular canal, into which the sea flowed and turned several mills for spinning cotton.
When the tempests were loosed, it is therefore no cause for wonder that the directors of the Grand Canal praised the engineering skill which saved their enterprise between Dublin and Monasterevin.
Startling phenomena had already been observed. Without any heavy fall of rain rivers had burst their bounds. Unaccompanied by storm or hurricane the sea had unusually swelled. Then came the dreadful earthquake which shook Lisbon to its base and affected Port Royal Harbour in Jamaica. Around the Cove of Cork and other Southern havens ships were torn from their anchorage and became the mockery of the winds and waves.
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BRADOGUE, DODDER AND PODDLE
Squashy, surely, was the state of our capital. The Bradogue, of no note since the effacement of Sfc. _JIary_’s Abbey, babbled over Green. Street. The Dodder spread like a sea, and defied man or beast to wade through it.
Then the Poddle and its tributaries sent the inhabitants from New Street to Bride’s Alley, or afterwards from New Row to the lower end of Meath Street, fleeing to the tops of their houses. Gradually it meandered to Crampton Row and Palace Street, until it at last startled dwellers even in the Lower Castle Yard. Yes, we have reason to be truly grateful for our calmer days.
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