The Druid of Grafton Street (aka The Diceman)

James was twelve when he saw his first real live druid.

The druid was moving very, very slowly across the junction of South Anne Street and Grafton Street. He was dressed in purple and looked pure weird.

James had been shoplifting in Dunnes Stores. He had a bottle of red lemonade up his sleeve, a pocket full of Mars bars, and half a frozen salmon shoved down the right leg of his shiny tracksuit bottoms.

The sight of the druid stopped James in his tracks. This was, after all, 1980s Dublin, we were not used to lanky druids.

His face was painted white and he wore a purple suit with a fabulous purple cloak.

He also had a deadly druid name.

He was called The Diceman.

Thom McGinty was the Diceman, a mime, an artist, a gay activist, and the druid of Grafton Street.

By the late 80s the Diceman had become a national oddity. RTÉ called him an eccentric, a weirdo, but he wasn’t. He was a druid.

To look at him was to be confronted with the strange and the unknown, and you could choose to react with fear or decide to be curious.

James was paralysed to the spot debating whether to run away or kick the multi‑storey purple prick in the bollocks, while a dribble of thawing salmon juice ran down his inside leg.

Usually the fearful walked to the other side of the street and pretended to look at whatever people used to look at before mobile phones were invented.

The curious, on the other hand, were rewarded with a playful wink or even the blow of a ridiculous kiss.

James didn’t know that the laughter and joy Thom created was a kind of magic.

He just thought he was dicking about, tricking people out of their money.

The Diceman was a living landmark.

No story about a night out in Dublin or a shopping expedition on Grafton Street could be complete without a mention of seeing the Diceman.

Grafton Street was pedestrianised on December 1st, 1982. Five minutes after it was closed to traffic, it’s reported that a guy called Michael appeared with a badly tuned acoustic guitar and began playing Wonderwall, even though the Oasis brothers were only ten and fourteen at the time. More followed Michael, kids with penny whistles, one‑man bands, puppeteers, jugglers, and Peruvian pipe bands. Dublin, was now a vibrant European capital with all the trappings of a modern city, museums, art galleries, concert halls, luxury shops, congestion, smog, heroin and street performers.

Paris had the Pompidou Centre, Barcelona had Las Ramblas, London had Covent Garden. Now Dublin had Grafton Street.

And towering over all the other street artists was the Diceman.

His costumes were stunning, he was fully committed to the game of mime, and of course there was the slow, methodical walk, a walk at the pace of a melting glacier, a snail paced pilgrimage of subversion.

He refused to run.

He refused to be invisible.

He refused to fit in.

He refused to be boring.

He refused to have a real job, because, whichever way you looked at it, druidry is not real work.

Each slow, deliberate step was a stoic act of defiance in the face of an outdated country gone stale from years of state and church oppression.

His magic was to conjure compassion from the masses, in a country where we were being told his kind was wrong, his kind were illegal.

Compassion was going to stomp very slowly and gracefully all over dogma.

Every crack in the pavement knew the Diceman’s walk, and the Diceman knew where every crack was.

And he would walk the length of the street and back again, and then the length of the street, and back, and up and down and up and down.

And the cracks submitted to him, and the Diceman could feel his walk rattling the old tar under the pavement, shaking the buried cobblestones and stirring the old boreen beneath, and further down past the pipes, cables and a plastic Viking hat, hiking, deeper into the earth to finally stop at the solid ancient rock.

The Diceman meditated on the rock and felt humbled by its weight and age. He became aware of a deep hum coming from it distant at first, but the more he focused, the louder it became.

The rock’s hum triggered a vibration in him. The Diceman and the rock quivered, shivered, and shook together. They pulsed and reverberated, bright white sparks appeared.

The rock hum roared and his head filled with noise and the sparks got, brighter and brighter the more the rock howled.

At the centre of the sparks an eye formed, a white eye, old and wise. 

The great white eye of the ancient rock studied The Diceman and The Diceman studied the great white eye. 

A great stillness settled on the druid, a stillness so complete it was as if the universe had stopped, and every moment fell into one moment of now. It felt like heavenly wonderment, made creamy.

A tear fell from the Diceman.

And then the great white eye of the ancient rock, winked at The Diceman.

In an instant the Diceman was back above ground, slowly pacing.

The light of the roaring ancient rock was gone, and slowly his head filled with the hustle of Grafton Street.

Flower sellers hollering, tinny tannoys playing paddy‑wackery for the tourists, schoolgirls chattering, a penny whistle being murdered, the drone of distant traffic and along with all the familiar noises, there was also a distinct whiff of thawing salmon.

Standing, looking up at the purple druid, was a confused twelve‑year‑old boy.

“Here mister, are you gay?” asked James.

The Diceman was not surprised.

The Diceman was not shocked.

The Diceman was not afraid.

The Diceman was not amused, but not really offended either.

He wanted to say “Yes,” but that would ruin the act.

The druid of Grafton knew what to do. He looked the kid straight in the eye and blew him a kiss.

The boy limped off laughing.

The Diceman was one of the street artists who legitimised Grafton Street as a place for performers and buskers in the mid‑1980s.

He appeared on national television and was often seen in the newspapers.

In 1991 the Gardaí arrested him for lewdness when he appeared on the street with his buttocks on display. He was found not guilty and made the Gardaí and the law look like idiots.

He was an advocate for gay rights and is seen as a gay icon.

In February 1995, at age 42, he died from complications of AIDS. Thousands turned up on Grafton Street to see this street performer’s coffin carried down his beloved pitch one more time.

I remember being in town that day. Me and my friend Steff took advantage of the large crowds and put our hat out and did a bit of juggling to get some cash for food and pints.

I dont remember if we made much but I think we might have done alright and I would also like to think that Thom would have approved.