Irish Examiner view: Where’s Fungie?

Fungie the dolphin in Dingle. Picture: Graham Murphy

Legend records that more than 1,000 years ago, during the siege of Valencia by Moorish forces, that after his death in battle the body of Spanish hero El Cid was strapped to his horse Babieca to lead one last charge to repel invaders. The ruse worked and the invaders fled, thinking El Cid had risen from the dead.

That legend may have some relevance in Dingle today as concerns around the town's star attraction, the dolphin Fungie, persist despite one local assurance that the mammal is hale and hearty. Fungie has been a star turn (unpaid) in the Gaeltacht resort for more than three decades and without it, several enterprises would sink faster than you could say hiss, hiss to a golden goose.

It is now possible to imagine the Kingdom without Sam Maguire, or even Hamlet without the Prince, but Dingle without Fungie? Let's hope that, as was the case with Mark Twain, reports of his death are greatly exaggerated.