The Talbots owned this baronial estate from the time of the
Norman conquest in the late 12th century until its purchase by
the Dublin County Council in 1976. In return for services
rendered during the invasions, and, more importantly, for
pledges of continuing fealty to the distant English crown,
King Henry II granted one of his knights, Sir Richard Talbot,
an extensive piece of land adjoining an estuary well suited to
shipping. The Talbots soon built both a strong defensive
fortification and a useful harbor, and in 1476 King Edward IV
gave them the important title "Lord High Admiral of Malahide
and the Seas Adjoining," which conferred the power to regulate
local shipping and exact customs duties. Father Conmee thinks
of this title in Wandering Rocks: "Lord Talbot de
Malahide, immediate hereditary lord admiral of Malahide and
the seas adjoining."
In the next sentence, Conmee recalls a well-known incident
that occurred nearly 50 years before the conferring of the
title and that has only an incidental connection to the
Talbots: "Then came the call to arms and she was maid, wife
and widow in one day." In 1429 Sir Walter Hussey, son of
Lord Galtrim, married Lady Maud Plunkett, daughter of Lord
Plunkett, and was killed in battle later the same day. Very
soon after this, Maud married Sir Richard Talbot of Malahide,
Walter's rival for her hand. Sir Walter's ghost is said to
haunt the castle, filled with resentment toward his unfaithful
bride. Lady Maud too is said to haunt the castle, for
different reasons.
The Talbots' reign of nearly eight centuries was interrupted
only once. During the English Civil War, Lord John Talbot and
his lady were evicted and exiled to the west of Ireland by
Cromwell's parliamentary forces, who installed one of their
stalwarts, Miles Corbet, in the castle. With the Restoration
of King Charles, Lord and Lady Talbot resumed possession of
the castle but lost control of the port. They ordered the
castle's defenses to be torn down, so that it would never
again attract a usurper. (Most of the strong-looking towers
and battlements that now adorn the castle are later, purely
ornamental additions.) Miles Corbet was eventually captured in
the Netherlands and hung, drawn, and quartered in England. His
ghost too haunts the castle, and, like Nearly Headless Nick in
the Harry Potter tales, falls into four pieces whenever some
unlucky person encounters it.
Another threat to Talbot rule came at the end of the 17th
century, when a large branch of the family sided with King James against the
forces of King William. It
is said that on the morning of the Battle of the Boyne 14
members of the family had breakfast together at the castle,
and at the end of the day all 14 were dead. Even though many
Talbots fought on the losing side in this pivotal battle, the
Malahide estate remained in the family's hands. Responding to
the new political conditions, however, the owners of the
castle adopted the Protestant faith of the Church of Ireland,
a fact reflected in Oxen of the Sun when Mulligan
proposes buying Lambay Island from "lord Talbot de
Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour with our
ascendancy party."
Like Father Conmee, Leopold Bloom is well aware of the castle
and some of the legends surrounding it. In Eumaeus he
recalls a dubious rumor, uttered "with facetious
proclivities," that "Lord" John Corley derived his
nickname through connection with the Talbot family: "His
grandfather Patrick Michael Corley of New Ross had married the
widow of a publican there whose maiden name had been Katherine
(also) Talbot. Rumour had it (though not proved) that she
descended from the house of the lords Talbot de Malahide in
whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of
its kind and well worth seeing, her mother or aunt or some
relative, a woman, as the tale went, of extreme beauty, had
enjoyed the distinction of being in service in the
washkitchen." The very funny joke here, delivered in the
final five words, concerns the way in which Corley's
grandmother is said to have been "descended from the house" of
the Malahide Talbots. Her mother or aunt or whatnot did not
trace her lineage to the great family (a "noble house," as the
saying goes), but was quite literally a member of the
household: she washed pots in the mansion's kitchen.
Malahide Castle today remains "well worth seeing." It
features a Gothic-style country house displaying many
portraits from the National Gallery, splendid gardens and
parklands, and a scale model railway with structures and
landforms from the surrounding countryside. The nearby village
of Malahide, its harbor and marina, and its beach attract
summer vacationers from nearby Dublin. Today it is a far-outer
suburb of the city served by the DART line, but in Joyce's era
it was an independent seaside town, cultivated as a resort
since Georgian times. In Eumaeus Bloom recalls the
story of Mulligan rescuing a man from drowning "at
Skerries, or Malahide was it?" Skerries is another
seaside resort popular with Dubliners, several miles farther
up the coast.
