The Casbah

By Dicky Byrne

The Casbah was a famous, or perhaps notorious, eating house or nighttime café, run by two elderly sisters, Norah and Dilly Kelly, sometimes called Norah Crubes, by locals in Quay Street in Galway (now incorporated in the back room of Tigh Neachtain).

I have no idea when it started, but my first visit was in the early nineteen fifties, accompanied by two pals of mine, who were medical students and styled themselves as doctors to gain entry, as doctors were greatly respected as customers by the sisters. They had a special welcome for me though, as they had both been in school with my late Grandmother, Winifred Byrne, who passed away at a young age in her mid-forties, so I was inevitably greeted by Nora and Dilly with "poor Winnie God rest her come on in amaceen".

The room itself was a long kitchen/dining area with scrubbed timber tables and kitchen-type chairs. At one end was a range or stove on which the cooking was done, and halfway along the room on the right-hand side as you looked from the front door was a large dresser, on which the plates and other kitchenware was stored. Nora’s domain was all the cooking, while Dilly was responsible for serving and clearing it up. It was, to say the least of it, rough and ready, but I found it clean and I don’t ever remember it being in trouble with the health authorities.

Table cloths were newspapers and if you were a special client, as I often was, you got a clean sheet of newspaper on arrival. The menu mostly consisted of chips, fried in fat, soup (atin' or drinkin'), sometimes fried fish, but the specialty of the house was boiled crubeens (pigs trotters).

The clientele was mostly students but often dockers and sailors from the ships in the docks. Since they only opened at night and since the clientele was often drunk, after the pubs had closed, it was not unusual for there to be a ruckus. The sisters would tolerate no rowdyism and you could be suspended from their client list if you caused a racket; they ran a tight ship. Because of this, you might be refused entry, but business being business, they had the letterbox on the front door enlarged so that it would fit a large crubeen, once the money had been paid first of course.

Dilly was a bit fond of a jar and if things were quiet and she was in a good humour, she might take down her accordion from the top of the dresser and play a few tunes. Her party piece though, was a recitation of her favourite poem; The Claddagh Boatman and she always preceded her performance with the announcement; ‘I learned this poem from my school primer’, which she always pronounced 'primmer', before launching into ‘I am a Claddagh boatman bold and noble is my calling…..’ (a poem which is now perpetuated in stone on a plaque outside the building in Quay Street).

Of course, this performance was always greeted with thunderous applause and cries for encore, but I never remember an encore, which led me to believe that this was the only poem she had learned off by heart.

About sixty years ago or so I used to sing in the only folk club in Galway at the time, The Fo’castle in Dominick Street, and I was often joined by a friend of mine Shane Cleary who worked for Guinness in Ballinasloe. One night we were joined by a couple of ‘suits’ from Guinness Park Royal in London, who were over on a jolly from Head office. They enjoyed our session but when it came to a close, at about eleven o’clock, one of them wondered if there were any nightclubs in Galway, wishing to continue the night. I looked at Shane and he looked at me and I suggested the Casbah. He burst out laughing and immediately agreed and we left with the two suits, who were expecting something like a Soho night spot, so you should have seen their faces when we rolled up to the door of the Casbah. To say they were gobsmacked, would be putting it lightly, but they were game lads and we were greeted with a clean newspaper on our table and given the best table in the house at the bottom of the stairs. Dilly was in good form that night and played and recited for us. At the time the dock workers were on strike I think and there were several ships trapped in the docks waiting to get out and so, our clientele that night was mostly made up of Dutch sailors, none of whom spoke much English and a couple of local lads, who were a bit worse for the wear, who were tossing crubeen bones into the soup cauldron when Norah wasn’t looking. Apart from that, it was a pretty good night and we finished up at about half-past-one in the morning without any further trouble.

I can’t imagine the tales that were carried back to Guinness, Park Royal in London by the boys, but I’m sure they were good.

They are both dead and gone, may they rest in peace, and the old Casbah is closed and as I said, part of Tigh Neachtain now, but the memory and the reputation of this fine old Galway establishment lives on in the memories of old Galwegians.