Three Castles Burning podcast: Donal Fallon’s gritty history of Dublin riots and rebels

Fadó fadó we had Celtic bards chronicling heroic achievements, we had seanchaíthe with their spoken documents of Irish life, all part of an oral storytelling tradition that birthed Peig Sayers and her leithead. In other words, the Irish were podcasting long before podcasts. Take a listen to Three Castles Burning and tell me host Donal Fallon doesn’t sit squarely on that cultural continuum.

With an accent as Dublin as Lyons tea and a contagious passion for the city and its stories, deep into the dirty details, Fallon has created something as close to bardic as you can get in his ode to Blah Cliath.

Readers may first have encountered Fallon, the Kimmage historian and most recently host of RTÉ One’s Brainstorm, at the social history group blog Come Here to Me, which he left in 2019. Three Castles Burning is his next project, adding to a body of work that includes teaching at UCD, tour guiding and museum work, as well as regular contributions to Irish media on things historical.

The first episode treats the Bachelors Walk massacre in 1914, when, on their way back to their barracks, the King’s Own Scottish Borderers opened fire on civilians ultimately killing four and igniting support for the Irish Volunteers in the process. From there follow 120-plus instalments, chronicling everything from political events to social trends to specific locales to beloved figures, many of whom were overlooked or underserved by the history books we — or at least I — grew up with.

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Fallon sprinkles audio gems throughout: here’s Kathleen Behan, mother of them all, her gravelly voice singing Erin Go Bragh as we hear about her famous sons. Here’s Sylvia Beach, the first to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses, mimicking the sacred man of letters as she recounts the moment she decided to take on his “‘bewk’, as he pronounced it”. Here’s Charles J Haughey, the cheek of him, admonishing the nation for “living way beyond our means”.

Part walking tour, part academic chronicle, Three Castles Burning — named for the confusing Dublin coat of arms that nobody can agree on — has earned its place in our oral history tradition

There are deep and detailed dives into all manner of lore, from the creation of the Irish Museum of Modern Art to the Rolling Stones’ 1965 visit to the Adelphi cinema, to the gang wars between the weavers and the butchers in Georgian Dublin. Guests bring their expertise — historians Ruth McManus, Cathy Scuffil, Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc among others — but Fallon is the master narrator, his cadence dominating the show.

Three Castles Burning’s distinct, 30-minute episodes are evidently scripted, which can feel stilted and veer into the didactic, with Fallon’s personal politics often seeping through. But his joy in language and discovery is also apparent, and the occasionally laboured delivery somehow works to lend a gravitas that serves stories from the margins. He also grounds us in the geography of the city; part walking tour, part academic chronicle, Three Castles Burning — named for the confusing Dublin coat of arms that nobody can agree on — has earned its place in our oral history tradition.

Below those burning castles, a banner proclaiming the city motto unfurls: “Obedientia civium urbis felicitates.” The obedience of the citizens produces a happy city. Such condescension is in stark contrast to what we get in Three Castles Burning: riots and rebels and ruaille buaille, a far grittier, more colourful people’s history of a dearly beloved Dublin.