Thanks for that message derry, I have to confess that I do spend some time at work thinking up stories or songs, but generally the demands of the job are such (caring for adults with a learning disability), that my full time attention is needed.

In the meantime I hope everybody has recovered from Spaw's stag party for Joe. Some of the stuff going on in that Jell-o pit was mind-bending! Anyway, here's another story from the Dublin Underground to be going on with.

A Hotbed of Depravity

Following the decision to rename the Railway, the company placed an advertisement in the Irish Press. This contained a drawing of a smiling young couple on the new moving staircase at Fitzgerald Station, under the startling caption: Go Down With Cuinne Lingus.

The early morning edition of the newspaper had barely reached the streets when the editor received a telephone call from the Archbishop's Palace, demanding that the issues be recalled, and the offensive advertisement removed immediately. Mystified, the editor complied, and stopped the presses so that all the later editions, apart from a few which had already gone on the milk train to Tralee, appeared with a large blank space on page five.

The editor telephoned the Palace to report his success, and asked for an explanation as to how the advertisement had so offended His Grace. The young Dominican at the Palace who took the editor's call gave a detailed and scholarly explanation, with thorough definitions from Latin and Greek. After this exposition of etymology the poor editor was no wiser, but sat in his office all day with a worried expression on his face. When he returned home that night he told the story of his miserable day to his wife. After dinner, when the servants had withdrawn, he asked her, "What on earth is this Cunny Lingus anyway?" His wife had had the benefit of a classical education at an expensive convent school, so she took him upstairs and showed him.

The next day the editor went into work, while his wife remained at home with a smile on her face that puzzled all the domestic staff. The editor summoned his senior staff into his office, where he gave this memorable address.

"We must not go down on this hotbed of depravity. That would be giving head to every clever dick in the country. We must show that this newspaper is a stalwart and erect pillar of decency; we shall not descend to those muffled depths. This is a family newspaper, fighting in the cause of morality and patriotism; our job is to trade blow for blow with the forces of immorality and oppression, and, by God, we shall lick them!"

The Attorney General wished to prosecute the newspaper and the Railway under the Indecent Publications Act, but was advised that it would be against the public interest to have such unseemly matters aired. However as a mark of displeasure both the editor and the Chairman of the Railway were quietly removed from their positions as Knights of the Grand Order of St Patrick.

All the stationery and signs of the Railway bearing the new name were destroyed, and the company continued under the name of Raille Lingus. A few platform nameplates escaped the destruction, and these, along with the rare copies of the Tralee edition of the Irish Press, now fetch high prices at auctions.

Some memory of this seems to survive in popular speech in Dublin. You may overhear a Dublin housewife shyly tell her neighbour, "My old fella was on the Dublin Underground last night," and if the experience was especially pleasurable, she may add, "and he stopped at all the stations!"