342) The Eagle of Main Street, Dundrum, D14

Perhaps the finest pub in this district, certainly from the Beamish perspective – a chatty barman concurred with our condemnation of the preceding Dundrum House whiles extolling the vastly superior quality of his stuff (trading for €4.50), owing to a single tap and short pipes. The small bar section is host to an exquisite open fire, flanked by a pile of turf on one side and a pile of chopped logs on the other. The barman confided that, while the pub did not serve food and was proud of the fact, they were wont to occasionally stick a spud on a knife and bake it over the flames of the featured fire – but only before 6pm, mind you. The larger (and, at the time of our visit, largely deserted) lounge is graced by an impressive vintage phone – a local drunkard (complete with cut on his brow, perhaps courtesy of a crazy shave gone wrong) encouraged one to call him on it, adamant that it was still operational and not just decorative.

The same drunk, conspicuously more sozzled than either of his easygoing companions, engaged in a bit of friendly banter with the barman, egging him on for a final stout with side order of spirits, but the barkeep would have none of it, citing the likelihood of the drinker's subsequent demise by roadkill in consequence of his inebriated failure to look at the lights, expressing further his unwillingness to be taking responsibility for scraping the bits of the body off the pavement. (Still, he caved in eventually, the money-grabbing impulse winning out in the end – the very same drunk was later seen slurping from an overflowing tumbler brimful of the very whiskey he had previously been begging for.) 

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