The Main Drainage Scheme

“The smell on Patrick’s Bridge is wicket

How does Farther Mathew stick it.

Here’s up em all says the Boys of Fair Hill”

As this traditional Cork ballad illustrates, the conditions of the river Lee was infamous throughout the entire 20^th century. As a boy I would observe with amazement the changing palate of its two stagnant channels. Abattoirs, Dyeing Factories, Breweries and Open Sewage pipes, all spilling their effluents, untreated, directly into the river itself. At low tide the stench of raw sewage permeated the City and during hot weather a toxic bloom turned the river a St. Patrick’s Day green.

In the first years of the new millennium, a grand plan was put into action. Every drain and pipe in Cork City was dug up and replaced, and a huge system of pumping stations carried our effluent ways from the river to a vast sewerage treatment plant. The disruption to the City life was Monumental. Every Street, Quay, and Laneway was dug up over a period of three years. Cork became a virtual car-fee zone as sections of the City were shut down to vehicular traffic for months at a time.

And the result? Well, the Cork City Swim was restarted, Seaweed now clothes the quay walls, Shrimp, Crabs, Cormorants, Cranes, Swans, Ducks, Mink, Seals, Otter and Stoat share the waters where once only Mullet could survive and more importantly, the only smells on Patrick’s Street these days are of freshly brewed coffee.

“De Banks”: “The banks of my own lovely lee” (Trad) The “Offical” national anthem of the Peoples Republic of Cork.

Pana: Patrick Street

Sunbeam: A former mill in Blackpool

Beoirs and Feens: Girls and Boys

Mick Lynch 2009

Lyrics:

The Main Drainage Scheme

(To the tune of “The Banks”)

O the Brave Father Matthew who’s stood for so long

His nostrils assailed by a murderous pong

Will along with the rest of us soon be relieved

To be walking up Pana and able to breath.

On loungers and lilos all summer we’ll loll

And stride at low tide on the beach at North Mall

We’ll be swimming with dolphins at Sullivan’s Quay

When the finish the Main Drainage Scheme

We’ll be reeling in salmon to keep in the fridge

Each day at high tide from the Christy Ring Bridge

And the ferries form Mahon and Passage to Cork

Will sail through the gale just to get us to work

Off Morrison’s Island on House Boats we’ll float

And leave out our scraps for the otters and stoat

We’ll see fish, fur and fowl that we’d never have dreamed

When they finish the Main Draining Scheme

When the weather is bad and the rain it pours down

There’ll be white water rafting from Sunbeam to town

Where in all of the restaurants and all the cafes

You’ll see freshly caught mullet as fish of the day

We’ll be bottling water called Eau De Chorcai

And out ales will be hailed as the cream of the Lee

There’ll be shouts of delight from the Beoirs and the Feens

When the finish the Main Drainage Scheme

Soliloquy

Decades and centuries Dying and Breeding

Spitting and coughing and shitting and bleeding

Swilling and spilling and scouring the pot

Pissing and puking and oozing the lot

Persil and petrol and diesel and Dettol

Brollies and trolleys and pieces of metal

Condoms and tampons and pampers and cones

Tin cans and bin bags, bicycle, bones

All the porter and stout

O’er the years we’ve pissed out

From the bank of my own lovely Lee