The Roaring Donkey Bar, Cobh

Serving pints, craic and music since the 1880’s

​HISTORY

A long time ago, in the land first discovered by Saint Brendan (for the ignoramuses out there, the aforementioned land is America – don’t believe all you hear about who got there first from Europe!), our glorious leader, Chancellor and Emeritus Professor Dave, set off on an epic trip to the Roaring Donkey. His journey was to celebrate the centenary of this fine public house’s foundation. In honour of the event, it was decided by an esteemed committee, chaired by our trail blazing Founder Noel, to establish a seat of learning at the third table on the left. A vast library was installed (please see above) and it has since become a world leading pedagogical institution, with graduates being conferred on a nightly basis. Our current Professor of Studies is Killian, dispensing learning and wisdom in the time-honoured fashion of one from the Land of Saints and Scholars.

EDUCATION

Our lecture halls are small and intimate, with the close seating arrangements encouraging lively debate, discourse, verbal diarrhoea and verbal abuse. There are resident tutors on hand who are experts in absolutely everything from shipping lanes to theatre, global politics to tsetse flies, etc. We have the added bonus of an external space facilitating the connection to nature that has been scientifically proven to aid learning, working memory and cognition (see bibliography below).

COLLEGE SOCIETIES

Like any self-respecting university, we’re advocates of socialising through passions and our oldest club is The Society of Cheeses which meets in our main lecture hall every Monday evening (apart from bank holidays when we switch to Tuesdays) at 7pm with tasting plates of cheese and cured meats.

Some of our recent graduates are:

Eoin – 1st class honours in Stout Creation. Has cross-trained to an electrician. Bright spark.

Caoimhe – 1st class honours in Eating the Head off Revellers. Has downgraded her qualification to being a hospital radiographer.

Hollie – 1st class honours in Cocktail Design & Testing. Yet another down-grader to a professional career in the healthcare sector as an OT. The shame.

Ronan – 1st class honours in Barring Customers. He’s gone on to become a carpenter. Nailed it.

Jeff – 1st class honours in Log Fire Starting. Another disappointment – gone on to be a teacher. No learning some people.

Emma – 1st class honours in Pint Pulling. She is our unparalleled success story as she’s gone to where the streets are paved with gold to pursue a doctorate in Pint Pulling (we’re awaiting the thesis title but will revert as soon as that’s been approved by her tutor). We couldn’t be prouder!

As you can see, we’re proud of some, others not so much, but we love them all the same.

Bibliography:

1 – Irish Journal of BS. O’Driscoll N, Tighe K, Mulcahy A. 2012. The effects of external education environments on data acquisition, comprehension and memory retention.