Oblige with your blackthorns

• blackthorn: a spiny shrub of the prune family producing sloes. The wood is used for making waking sticks and shillelaghs.

• oblige with your blackthorns: leave your canes please (at the entrance)

• The Stewards of the Charitable Musical Society request the Favour of the ladies not to come with hoops this day to the Musick Hall in Fishamble Street. The Gentlemen are desired to come without their swords This famous request appeared in The Dublin Journal on 13 April 1742, the day on which Handel's Messiah received its world premiere at Neale's Musick Hall on Fishamble Street, Dublin.