Soft Wind Roses Catherine Quigley

A giant floated down the Liffey in the summer of 1988, this seventy-foot colossus was the inflatable body of Lemuel Gulliver esquire, laid out like a shipwrecked saint. Gulliver was of course the hapless of the allegorical Gullivers Travels written by the clergyman and genius (and great company to go on the jar) Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). A satirist and discrete saviour of the poor, Swift was a giant in his own right in the fields of theology and social progress, compared to his Lilliputian contemporaries in Dublin and London. He published Gullivers Travels anonymously in 1726 to huge success. Though it was sanitised to a kids story by the 20th century it is actually a savage satirical critique of human nature, European politics, customs and conformity. But back to that heady July of our cities Millennium year 1988, when Dublin proclaimed itself a thousand years old, dating its origins to that first Viking settlement on the banks of the Poddle. Now the DTM knows there were folk residing in these parts quite happily before then, but regardless the 20th century city father's decided to throw a year-long party, that gave us a gloriously crafted viking longship (which me uncle Vincent worked on) a Molly Malone cast in bronze and an excuse for endless commemorations and days off school. The giant Gulliver was the brainchild of Macnas, the imaginative troupe from Galway who would go on to redefine Irish street spectacle. This was one of their earliest masterstrokes, rendered in fibreglass, aluminium and plywood. The National Lottery put up £50,000 to help build the body that would drift through the capital like a fallen hero from some lost mythology. It was feckin awesome to witness regardless of age and value for money in my humble opinion. He began on Dollymount Strand, scattered on the sand as if dashed ashore like his shipwreck in the story. His monstrous form lay supine tied down with ropes, just like Swift’s original traveller pinned to the earth by Lilliputians. Children tugged at the rigging. Adults stared wondered what the feck was going on. With no camera phones they knew their partners and mates would never believe them. Then the artists floated him up the Liffey, past the docks and the Custom House, along that Viking route. Crowds gathered at the Ha’penny Bridge and watched the otherworldly foppish giant glide by, one the slow brown water. For a moment, Dublin was a foreign location in some storybook, god the buzz of imagination a sight like that in an ordinary place inspired. And then, as all good myths do, Gulliver travelled on beyond the horizon. After the Millennium year, Macnas brought Gulliver to such mysterious climes as Gateshead, Seville and exotic Derry. Five years later in 1993, he was dismantled. But his gargantuan yet vulnerable body is floating still through the memory of thousands.