Canal Bridge

Detail from the 1836 Map. See below for full interactive map. From the David Rumsey Map Collection Online.
Detail from the 1836 Map. See links (1836 and 1883) for full interactive maps. From the David Rumsey Map Collection Online.

The “Canal Bridge,” mentioned in “An Encounter,” is the rendezvous point for the narrator and his two friends on the morning of their excursion:

“We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal Bridge” (21).

Mahoney is the only friend to show up, and so the boys, giving up on Joe Dillon, walk northeast along the bridge into North Strand Road. Though in the story it’s only called the “Canal Bridge,” two maps from 1836 and 1883 (from the David Rumsey Collection) name this bridge that crosses the Royal Canal in northeast Dublin, Newcombe and Newcomen Bridge, respectively. Why the name was left out would be an interesting question to explore in more depth. However, it is safe to assume this is indeed the bridge in question as it feeds directly northeast into the first street the boys enter.

The canal is the first body of water the boys cross. They eventually ferry across the Liffey, and, depending on where the ferry lands on the south side of the Liffey, they may also cross the Dodder to get into Ringsend. In any case, they end up on a sloping bank of the Dodder where they meet the josser and then discuss the possibility of returning home by train. This mode of transportation would be quicker, and they could avoid the more liquidy parts of Dublin, which, by the end of the story, carry more salacious implications than the waterways of the city’s topography.

Author: Jasmine Mulliken

Jasmine Mulliken is Digital Production Associate at Stanford University Press. Prior to that she spent five years as Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. She has a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and specializes in 20th-Century British Literature, Digital Humanities, and Digital Literacies.