In the female prison there are seventy women and I wish it was with them that I did dwell.
Bobby O'Dylan (a wandering Jew of the lost Dooblin tribe!) gives his brogue a run out with a rare, and rather fine, cover of the seminal and powerful "The Auld Triangle" - from the legendary much bootlegged 'Basement Tapes' where the track is wrongly named "The Banks of the Royal Canal."
On the legendary Basement Tape reels - recorded by Bob and The Band in the summer of 1967 at Big Pink in West Saugerties, NY - Garth Hudson of the Band titled this song "The Banks of the Royal Canal" and all subsequent versions of the Basement Tape bootleg have referred to it by this incorrect title.
In any event, the beautiful slowed down and lyrical rendition by Bob and the boys has endured for four decades.
"The Auld Triangle" is a masterpiece of modern songwriting. A song that seems to exist out of time.
A song that rings out in a thousand Irish bars nightly! A song that must've been rattled out by a millionsingers down the years! Best of all though in the definitive version by Luke Kelly & The Dubliners.
"The Auld Triangle" is a tale of hard days in the slammer, set in Mountjoy Prison (aka "The Joy"), an establishment of British colonial legacy located in the parish of Phibsboro (on the north side of Dublin) and situated right on the banks of the Royal Canal.
The auld (i.e "old") triangle in the title refers to the large metal triangle which was beaten daily in The Joy to waken the inmates ("The Auld Triangle goes Jingle Jangle") early in the morning. It was, in earlier times, also rung to announce the last march of the latest "Dead Man Walking" before his impending death/murder.
It's still a cloudy issue as to who the real creator was!
The song was claimed to have been written by the famous Irish novelist and playwright (and professional drinker!) Brendan Behan for his 1954 play "The Quare Fellow", the first occasion the song was publicly performed. However, many sources suggest that the song had actually been written by his brother Dominic Behan!
Brendan, though, had spent time interred in Mountjoy. In 1942, during the timeframe leading to the IRA's Northern Campaign, Behan was tried for the attempted murder of two Irish police detectives. The assassinations were to take place in Dublin while at a commemoration ceremony for Wolfe Tone, the father of Irish Republicanism. Sentenced to fourteen years in prison, he was incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison. - these experiences being later recounted in his book "Confessions of an Irish Rebel."
Released under a general amnesty for IRA prisoners and internees in 1946, Behan's activist career was over by the age of twenty-three.
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