‘There’s A Tesco Going There’ And More Irish Urban Legends

EVERY city, every town, every country in the world has its own urban legends; mythical, word-of-mouth tales about mysterious happenings in the lore of the locality. And Ireland is no different, except instead of hook-handed murderers and the like, ours are a bit more grounded:

1) The tale of the Tesco that never was

There’s a disused plot of overgrown land in every town in Ireland, where teenagers gather at the weekends despite the many ‘keep out’ warnings dotted around. Ask anyone in the area what’s going on, and they’ll all say the same thing; ‘there’s a Tesco going there’.

Nobody knows where the notion that a Tesco would ever be built on the site came from, and nobody can explain why it never went ahead, if there ever was such a plan. Objection by a local supermarket owner who holds sway over the council? The recession? The appearance of a big Aldi across town? We may never know.

2) The mysterious FaceTime from your Mam at 3am

Irish mothers and technology do not mix, this is simple fact. If this is indeed the case, why have so many Irish people received missed FaceTime calls from their Mams, usually at a time of night when she would normally have been asleep? In nearly every single one of these instances, the Mam in question will argue that she made no such call, that ‘she was in bed at that time’ and besides, she ‘doesn’t know how to use that phone you got me at all, what was wrong with the old phone I had?’.

Is it a sleepwalking dial, or does she in fact know rightly how to use the phone and accidentally slipped while snooping on you at night? The mystery remains.

3) The 12 Pubs of Christmas that was apparently good craic

Ask even the most foolhardy party people in Ireland about nights out and they’ll all agree on one thing; that the 12 Pubs Of Christmas pub crawl is a dire event that has never lead to anything except misery, bankruptcy, ruined relationships and hungover Christmas mornings.

And despite this, every year thousands of revelers take to the bars to attempt the 12-pint feat, bouyed by the myth that one year, somewhere in the past, lost to time, they had good craic. “Let’s do the 12 pubs again, remember it was a great night a while back!” they’ll say to themselves, while ignoring the fact that last year and the year before and indeed every year for as long as they can remember, it was a load of shite and they just ended up staying in one pub all night.