Listowel Connection

This blog is a personal take on Listowel, Co. Kerry. I am writing for anyone anywhere with a Listowel connection but especially for sons and daughters of Listowel who find themselves far from home. Contact me at listowelconnection@gmail.com

Month: March 2020 Page 3 of 5

Teach Siamsa Finuge, Presentation Convent and an artistic old post box

By

On March 18, 2020

In Uncategorized

Bridge Road, Listowel, through the Millennium Arch in March 2020

<<<<<<<<

The sod was turned for the building of Teach Siamsa in Finuge in 1974

Photo shared on Facebook by Siamsa Tíre

<<<<<<<<<


Presentation Convent Listowel 2007

Presentation Convent Listowel

by the late Tim Griffin 2007

Below is just a snippet of a long article by Tim Griffin R.I.P which he wrote following the closure of the local convent which was so dear to him.

As with all big houses of the 18th and 19th centuries, Listowel  Convent had a well in the yard. Up to quite recently, an electric pump was pumping water from that well. It also had a Laundry and a Drying Yard for the clothes lines. There was a big garden and a bountiful orchard. There was a cow-stall and cows, which had to be fed and hand-milked. Extra feed, such as hay, straw, turnips, mangels and potatoes, often had to be bought for them in the Market Yard. 

A number of Domestic Staff were also employed, e.g., carers, cooks, cleaners, nurses, and maids. Richard Mackessy from Glounaphuca would have been one of the first gardeners and farmhands there and his son, Richard (Dick), took over from him and was there until the late 1980s. As the schools got bigger, the cattle had to be sold off. Timmie Walsh worked at the Convent, as a gardener and maintenance person, up to the mid-1990s.

The Convent Sisters used to do visitations to the local hospitals and they recited the Rosary in the nearby funeral home at removals.

Visitors were always made welcome and were provided with refreshments. There was one group of visitors that always called to the Convent – they were, of course, the “Knights of the Road” or more commonly referred to as tramps. Some of them were decent people who had fallen on hard times. One of them I knew was from Wexford, a real gentleman, who told me he would “start his rounds” in early March and finish again in late October. Convents were always in his itinerary as well as B&Bs where he would have been known over the years. A pot of tea and a plate of sandwiches were always forthcoming at the Convent and were graciously received. He told me that the allocation of the Free Travel Pass had made life much easier for him. I have not seen him in the last few years but then don’t we forget the ceaseless toll of time.

The Presentation Convent has ceased to exist in Listowel but Presentation Sisters will still be working in Listowel, continuing the work initiated by their Foundress many years earlier. After being in Listowel for 163 years, it is very sad to see the Convent go. Over that period of time, the Presentation Sisters have made a wonderful contribution to Listowel and its hinterland. The people of North Kerry owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.

<<<<<<<


A Double Post-box




Someone who knows how much I love old postboxes sent me this card recently. Isn’t it lovely?

<<<<<<<<


Owen MacMahon needs your help

I have gone through all the Drama Group programmes since 1944, 

a task long put on the long finger.

However, I am missing the following
1961 -Autumn Fire – produced by John O’ Flaherty
1966- Two on a String – produced by Ml Whelan
1967 – a Letter from a General – produced by J O’Flaherty
1970 – The Couple Beggar – produced Bill Kearney

Would you be able to put on a plea on your blog in due course? 

I’ve no doubt there must be copies around somewhere. 

It would be great to a complete collection.

Thanks Owen.


Saturday Supplement, Ballyeigh, NCBI fundraiser and Global Pandemics

By

On March 17, 2020

In Uncategorized

Photo; Vincent Higgins, Mallow Camera Club

<<<<<<


Saturday Supplement



This photo was taken outside Jet Carroll’s a few years ago. In it Frank Lewis is interviewing Vincent Carmody for his programme Saturday Supplement on Radio Kerry.

Frank plans to come again in May to record a programme on 50 years of Listowel Writers’ Week



<<<<<<<


2013 NCBI Cake Sale



This photo was taken in the Mermaids. These kind ladies were all volunteers at the NCBI charity shop and they held a cake sale to raise extra funds.

<<<<<<

Covid 19

I am relying heavily on archive material these days as there is not much happening in town while we are on semi lock down due to the pandemic of Covid 19.

Vincents in Upper William Street, Listowel

I am going to share with you what I’ve learned about previous pandemics while I’ve been cooped up .

Spanish Flu spread like wildfire during the last year of the war, 1918. It killed more people than were killed in war, 50 million worldwide and 23,000 in Ireland alone.

TB or consumption was a very contagious respiratory illness which killed 10,000 Irish people in 1916 alone. It continued to ravage Ireland for most of the 20th century, until effective drug treatments and isolation hospitalisation brought it under control.

HIV/Aids was the dread of the 1980s when there were very poor prospects for people contracting this disease. To date over 9,000 people in Ireland have been diagnosed with Aids. Today, advances in drug treatment means that it is no longer a death sentence.

Sars killed 800 people in more than a dozen countries in 2003. Ireland had only one case.

Swine Flu was the pandemic of 2009. 27 people died in Ireland and half a million worldwide. A vaccine is now available.

Seasonal influenza comes our way every winter. while it is a serious illness, most vulnerable people protect themselves by vaccination.

The biggest difference between Covid 19 and previous pandemics is that it is very easily spread and, in a small but vulnerable cohort in the community it causes very severe respiratory problems.

As yet we have no vaccine or antidote.

<<<<<<<





Listowel March 16 2020



I was out around 10.00a.m. and I  had the town to myself, almost.

<<<<<<<<




The Ballyeagh Fight


In Ireland in the 19th century fighting was a favourite sport. Good fighters were heroes in the neighbourhood. Local fights between rival families were looked forward to and talked about afterwards much as football matches are today.

The father and mother of all fights took place on Ballyeagh Strand near Ballybunion in 1834. It was a bloody battle, fought with viciousness by men and women. It became the stuff of legend. Below is an account from the Dúchas Schools’ Folklore Collection

In June 1834 the Ballyeagh Fight took place on the White Strand Ballyeagh. It was one of the many faction fights of the time. At that time races would be held on the strand at low tide. Great numbers attended the meeting and tents lined the bank of the river on the Ballyeagh side – there is no strand at the other side. The factions engaged in this fight were the Lawlors principally from the Beal side and the Coolleens principally from the Ballyconry and Cashen side.

Evidently this was no sudden outburst for the parties were preparing for days before hand and came to the strand in military formation the Coolleens on horseback. Hacket and Aherne lead the Coolleens. They brought cart loads of stone to use in the fight. A little hay or straw was thrown over the stones and the women sat on top to allay suspicion.

Rev Father Buckley PP of Ballybunion met them a short distance from the strand and asked them to go home but they refused. Then he asked them to keep the peace and not spill blood but they told him they would.not return till they had defeated the Lawlors.

At the outset they chased the Lawlors towards the mouth of the River using the stones they brought with them.

When the Coolleens had used up the stones the Lawlors turned and using the stones strewn on the strand, hurleys and cudgels of all description routed the enemy. The women also joined in the fight filling their stockings with stones. The Coolleens made for the boats but the Lawlors gave no quarter and twenty nine were killed or drowned.

Three boat loads went down in a place Poll na dTriur. It was three weeks later when the last of the bodies was recovered from the river. Not one of the Lawlors was killed but twelve were badly maimed. These twelve bore the brunt of the fight and held the strand at the beginning of the fight. Aherne was killed in the fight but Hacket their leader fled.

Races were held in Ballyeagh up to 1858.

INFORMANT
Mike Griffin
Gender
male
Age
73
Address
Ballyeagh, Co. Kerry

Moyvane Concert, Woman’s Way Cover 1969 and a Poem from Australia

By

On March 16, 2020

In Uncategorized



Photo: Christopher Bourke, Malow Camera Club

<<<<<<<



Dioscesan News 


Letter from Frances Rowland


While we will not be able to participate physically in Mass this weekend, we will be able to pray the Mass with the celebrations being held online. If you wish to look at the Mass being broadcast over the internet, here are some of the churches in the diocese where Mass is being broadcast. 

http://www.stbrendansparishtralee.net/            Saturdays 6.30pm, Sundays 10 am, 11.15am, 12.30pm,

Weekdays 9.30 am

http://listowelparish.com/                          Saturdays 6.15pm, Sundays 9am and  11.30am

Weekdays 10.30 am

http://www.killarneyparish.com/            Saturdays 6.15pm, Sundays 8am, 10.30am, 12 noon,

Weekdays 10.30 am and 6.15pm

https://naomhmuire.wordpress.com/   Saturdays 8pm, Sundays 11.30am

https://www.churchservices.tv/castleisland       Saturdays 6.15pm, Sundays 11.30am, Weekdays 11am

It is only in the gravest circumstances that Masses are cancelled. Being unable to go to Mass this weekend will make us more conscious of the gift of being able to attend Mass usually and realise the importance of the Eucharist in our lives. We can revive the practice of Spiritual Communion as we unite ourselves, from our homes, with the sacrifice being offered. We can also be in spiritual communion with all those throughout the world who are not able to attend Mass for different reasons.

We unite as sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ, standing together in the hope he brings.

With kind regards,

Frances

<<<<<<<<

Moyvane Concert


Elizabeth Brosnan took some great photos at the recent concert featuring Liam O’Connor and family band, Brian Kennedy and local dancers which was held in Moyvane church to raise funds for the upkeep of the church.

<<<<<<<

The Light of Other Days


Mattie Lennon sent us this screen grab of the cover of Woman’s Way from November  1969. The cover featured the Housewife of the Year and her family.

The winner of the Calor sponsored competition was Mrs. Ann McStay and she was the first Dublin winner of the title.

<<<<<<<

The Diaspora

Around the world there are millions of people whose ancestors came from Ireland. Many of these people were raised on stories of life in Ireland in their forefathers time. They have grown up with a love and appreciation of our Irish songs and dances, our traditions and our gift for poetry,

One such person was the late Australian Bush poet, Martin O’Brien. His ancestors on both sides fled Ireland during the Great Hunger. He knew that his great grandmother on his father’s side was evicted with her 9 children. The mother died and how the children made their way to Australia is unclear.

In this poem Martin echoes the longing of many emigrants to seek out the place of birth of their Irish antecedents. Many long to walk in the footsteps of their forefathers, to reconnect with the land they were forced unwillingly to leave.

THEIR    LAND

I hope one day I’ll leave this land

to go from whence they came,

and travel far across the sea

so there at last my eyes will see

the land from which they came.

I know I never will belong
to my ancestors’ land,
but still I’d like one time to see
(if God should grant that time to me),
the land that was their land.

I want to see the sights they saw
and hear the sounds they heard,
because that land still holds some claim  –
more than just an Irish name  –
some thing unsaid, yet heard.

I want to feel the living soil
they felt beneath their feet;
to watch the sun rise there, and set,
and go to places where they met,
and then to make complete …….

I want to walk some ancient track
where their young feet once lept,
to feel the pain as they had done
when their own exile had begun,
and weep where they once wept.

I know I never will belong
to my ancestors’ land,
but still I’d like some time to see
(if God should grant that time to me)
the land that was their land.

July, 1994.

I found this poem on a great website called  Tinteán

 About Martin O’Brien

Martin grew up on the O’Brien family dairy farm at Mount Burrell in the upper reaches of the Tweed River. After high school at St John’s College, Woodlawn, he spent many years as a seasonal worker – cutting cane and picking fruit – mainly on the Tweed, at Tully (Nth Qld) and in Mildura (Vic). In the off-seasons, he returned home to work on the farm. After the dairy crash in the mid-1960s, the family moved out off dairying into beef cattle production, building up (from their AIS milkers) one of the first herds of Charolais cattle on the Tweed. With increasingly lower beef prices towards the end of the 1970s, Martin was only able to work part-time on the farm, and obtained local off-farm work – mainly in sawmills. Tragically, on Christmas Eve 2013, Martin was killed in a tractor accident on the family farm.

He is a poet in the vernacular Bush Ballad tradition and was a finalist in the 1996 Poet Laureate Award at the Tamworth Music Festival.

Martin was deeply interested in his Irish heritage (on both his Mother’s and Father’s side of his family). These two poems are from Martin’s unpublished ‘Irish Collection

Message from Denise, Parish secretary at St. Mary’s Listowel

By

On March 14, 2020

In Uncategorized

Covid 19 Announcement

Historian in Residence, A Generous Maloney, Stained Glass Windows

By

On March 13, 2020

In Uncategorized

When there was a phone box on every corner

<<<<<<<<

Tom Takes up a new post

Ennismore native, Tom Dillon is a passionate historian. He is an expert on North Kerry men who fought in two world wars. He has recently been appointed as Historian in Residence by Kerry County Council.


Tom has always been a busy man and now he is about to become even busier. I heard him recently with Frank Lewis on Radio Kerry’s Saturday Supplement telling the fascinating story of one of Kerry’s most notorious faction fights between the Cooleens and the Lawlors at Ballyeigh.

Tom is on the far right with Jim Dunn, Mike Lynch and Rose Wall Volunteering at a Graham Norton event at Listowel Writers’ Week.



Tom is among North Kerry history lovers, Martin Moore, Declan Downey, Michael Guerin and myself in Ashe Hall where Tom gave an excellent lecture on the Fitzgeralds, Knights of Kerry.

<<<<<<<

A Duagh Philatropist

William Maloney was born in Duagh County Kerry, Ireland, in 1828, and died in Pittsburgh, Dec. 28, 1870.

All affairs bearing on the public good interested Mr. Maloney, and the weight of his influence and his moral and financial support were always forthcoming in aid of such activities. Charitable cause made and unfailing appeal to his warmly, generous and sincere nature, and he was especially friendly to St. Paul’s Orphan Asylum. He was a member of St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church, then at Fifth and Grant streets, and there was no branch of its work that did not owe a large part of its comfortable ease in financial relations to his never-failing donations. He was known for his ever-courteous manner and was a musician of accomplishment. His religious convictions were strong, and, practical man of affairs the he was, he believed that they were worthy of the best of his means.

William Maloney married Mary B. Mullin, daughter of Thomas and Mary Mullin, her father a linen manufacturer of note at Carrickmacross, a famous linen center of Ireland. Her mother, Mary Mullin, came to the United States a short time after her son John, Mr. Maloney’s partner, had made Pittsburgh his home. Mrs. Maloney, a devoted mother, and active charity worker, an accomplished home maker, died Aug. 25, 1914. 

<<<<<<<<


Listowel Convent Windows in their new home


A Corkman, Eddie Hyland has been studying stained glass windows from the Harry Clarke studios in Dublin. His research brought him to two windows in Presentation Convent chapel  in Listowel.

The chapel was deconsecrated and the windows dispersed. Eddie started a search that brought him to sources like Listowel Connection as well as the Presentation archive.

Here is his latest letter bringing the news that his search iOS over and has been successful

Dear Mary

I’ve located the Saint Patrick window; it is in the parish church [named Saint Patrick’s]

in the tiny village of Knockavilla near Upton in Co Cork.

I’m sending to you as attachments photos of both windows. As you can see the Saint Michael

window has been reworked somewhat to make it fit into the opening in Blackrock Church, Cork.

The Saint Patrick is however unaltered. It is not however fitted into a wall opening but instead

is located in a custom made wooden frame and artificially back lit

Again thank you for all of your help and encouragement

Regards

Ed Hyland 

 



Page 3 of 5

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén