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: October 2021 Page 1 of 5

Life’s a Beach, Love at Midnight, Indian Elections and Molly in Kerry

Evening on Portmarnock Beach in October 2021 Photo; Éamon ÓMurchú
Beautiful image of dawn on Béal Bán strand in October 2021..Photo; Éamon ÓMurchú

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Poignant Memory

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Elections in India….Two facts

The indian Electoral Commission ruled that, in the period after the vote when exit polls are banned, it was also against the law to predict election results using tarot cards or astrologers.

In 2019 Prime minister Narendra Modi’s party won the election. In an effort to appeal to more ascetic followers, Modi was photographed meditating in a cave.. It later turned out that the ‘cave’ was man made, supplied full breakfast, lunch and dinner to its occupants and came with its own phone line, electricity and a bell for summoning a servant.

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She’s Back

It’s two years since Molly has been to Listowel for a holiday. I had to introduce her to all the changes in town. She pretended interest.

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The Man with the Cap

From Shannonside Annual 1956

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Halloween, a New Shop and Eamon Kelly’s Suit

Halloween 2021 at Scoil Realta na Maidine, Listowel

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Halloween, Irish or American Style

I loved this column in Monday’s Irish Examiner. Enjoy!

Explainer;

Sheeple is a derogatory term to describe people who are docile and easily led. It is often used by people who oppose mandatory vaccine certs or any other government imposed restrictions that they disagree with.

“Do your own research” is a slogan used by people who are anti vaccine. Basically they are saying distrust the science and find like minded people on the internet.

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Stylish New Shop on Market Street

Rose and Crowm, Market Street, Listowel

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This poem will take you back to the bad old days.

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Eamon Kelly, Seanchaí

Some of us who were lucky enough to hear and enjoy The Seanchaí in our youth. Mattie Lennon tells us something about the man who was the consummate Irish storyteller

Brendan O’Shea (O’Sheas Tailoring, Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin) told me the following story:

At the end of September 2001, Eamon Kelly brought a suit in to Brendan for some alterations. The suit was fifteen years old. Prior to one of his trips to America, Eamon had it made by another Dublin tailor who left the jacket minus an inside pocket and the trousers without belt-loops or a back-pocket. Now, Eamon, the perfectionist, asked his fellow-Kerryman to rectify the sartorial omissions, which he did.

When Eamon died on 24th October 2001, he had left detailed instructions with his wife, Maura, about the funeral arrangements and which suit he wanted to be laid out in. Yes, you’ve guessed it!

Did the man who wrote so lovingly of Con-the-tailor, who made his first Communion suit, and who had portrayed an unforgettable tailor in “The Tailor and Ansty” want to somehow, bring the work of a Kerry tailor out of this world with him? I don’t know. And neither does Brendan O’Shea.

As his coffin left the church, the Congregation gave a round of applause. The show was over and this time there was no encore. The final curtain had fallen on a one-man show, performed by a man of many parts. Actor, storyteller and writer, loving husband, devoted father and great Kerryman.

Shortly before his death, while lecturing North American Literature and Theatre students in the art of storytelling, he said: “My journeying is over. If the humour takes me, I may appear in some Alhambra, where angels with folded wings will sit in the stalls, applaud politely and maybe come round after and say;’ that was great’ “.

As he walked into that great Rambling House in the sky, can’t you imagine the opening line?: “Ye’re glad I came”.

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Savannah McCarthy, International defender

Photo; The WLN Show
Photo: The WLN Show

Savannah McCarthy of Listowel is establishing herself as a regular in the starting XI for the Irish Ladies Football team.

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A Fact

The Lion King or The Lion Queen

In the time between Disney’s 1994 version of The Lion King and its 2019 remake the world’s population of lions had halved.

Zoologist, Craig Parker, of the lion research centre at the University of Minnesota told National Geographic that lion societies are matrilineal. The lionesses rule the pride while the males come and go. It would have been Sarabi who hand over her dominion to Nala, Simba’s mate.

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Carroll’s, Peppa Pig, Eamon Kelly and a Big Win for Asdee

Dún Chaoin by Éamon ÓMurchú

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Another Lovely Restoration Job

Work is in progress at Carroll’s of William Street. Lovely job!

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by John McCarthy

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A Fact!

Parents in the U.S. noticed that their children were talking with British accents. They took to social media to describe what they called the Peppa Pig Effect. Not only were the children speaking in English accents, they were using words like lorry and petrol instead of truck and gas.

Linguists pointed out that saying a few words in a different accent doesn’t mean you have acquired the accent. The effect wears off when the kids start interacting with other children.

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Asdee, A Village on the global Map

Photo of some of the committee by Dominick Walsh and background story from every news outlet in Kerry.

Karol Kissane, Lorraine McElligott, John Kennedy, Eoin Kennedy and Mary Mulvihill of the Asdee Community Development Association. Picture: Domnick Walsh 

“We’re absolutely over the moon really, we’re ecstatic. It’s a huge honour for a small village in North Kerry, and it’s recognition of what the committee and wider community have done over the years as part of the Asdee Development Association,” said John Kennedy, chairman of the association.

Mr Kennedy said the secret ingredient of the winning plan was buy-in from everyone in the community.

So what have they won?

They have won gold in an international competition for their five year community development plan, all done by consultation and facilitation with the local community.

Well done, Asdee. Check out their great website at Asdee Village

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Memories of Wirelss Days

Talk of the old days and old Radio Eireann programmes reminded Mattie Lennon of a piece he wrote once about one of the most familiar and best loved voices on radio in the 1950s and 60’s, Eamon Kelly, The Seanchaí.

It was 1959. The National Council for The Blind of Ireland gave my visually impaired mother a wireless. It was our first radio. At the time my contemporaries were clued in to the highlights of Radio Luxemburg and the Light Programme. But, always one to live in the past, I had a preference for the folk programmes on Radio Eireann. My adrenalin was really let loose by the prologue to one in particular:

The rick is thatched
The fields are bare,
Long nights are here again.
The year was fine
But now ’tis time
To hear the ballad-men.
Boul in, boul in and take a chair
Admission here is free,
You’re welcome to the Rambling House
To meet the Seanachi.

The Seanachi was, of course, Eamon Kelly.

I was to follow Eamon’s stories, on the air, and later in Dublin theatres, through his one-man shows, for decades.

His trademark introduction was: “In My Father’s Time” or “Ye’re glad I came.” In between tales of “The King of England’s son” and “The Earl of Baanmore” he would tell his own life-story.

And those who knew his style could always differentiate between the fact and the fiction.

He was born in Rathmore, Co. Kerry, in March 1914. In his autobiographical work “The Apprentice” he tells of how the family moved when he was six months old. He was brought to Carrigeen on Maurice O’Connor’s sidecar. (Of course when he’d be wearing his Seanachi’s hat he’d tell you he remembered it).

Eamon grew up in a Rambling House and in later life said: ” … my ears were forever cocked for the sound that came on the breeze. It wasn’t the Blarney Stone but my father’s house which filled me with wonder”.

He was only a child when this country gained independence but he had his Kerry ear cocked long before that to accumulate stories such as this: ” ‘Will I get in this time’ the sitting MP said once to one of our neighbours, coming up to polling day. 

‘Of course you will’ the neighbour told him. ‘Didn’t you say yourself that it was the poor put you in the last time and aren’t there twice as many poor there now?’ “

Eamon didn’t lick his storytelling ability off the ground. He said of his father that he was ” … a friendly person, a good talker. Neighbours and travelers were attracted like moths around a naked flame into his and my mother’s kitchen”. Their kitchen had ” … all the rude elements of the theatre; the storyteller was there with his comic or tragic tale, we had music, dance, song and costume”. When he left school Eamon became apprentice to his father who was a master carpenter and wheelwright.

The young apprentice missed nothing; seventy years on he could mimic a verbose mason who described how to put a plumb-board against the rising walls to “ascertain their perpendicularity”.

He also began taking a correspondence course with Bennett College in England. Then it turned out that the architect of a hotel enlargement project that he was working on was the craftwork teacher at the local Technical School. Eamon enrolled for a night course. The teacher’s name was Micheal O’ Riada and, in his autobiography, Eamon told how he ” … was the means of changing the direction of my footsteps and putting me on the first mile of a journey that would take me far from my own parish. He taught me and others the craft of wood and in time we passed examinations set by the technical branch of the Department of Education in carpentry, joinery and cabinet making. He taught the theory of building and how to read plans: he taught solid geometry which holds the key to the angles met with in the making of a hip roof or staircase”.

No matter how far from home Eamon was working he cycled two nights a week to Tech. He was soon to learn that Micheál O’Riada’s interests were not confined to sawing and chiseling. He introduced his pupils to books, writers and the theatre. On the head of this Eamon went to see Louis Dalton’s company, at the town hall, in “Juno and the Paycock”.

“It was my first time seeing actors on a stage and the humour, the agony and the tragedy of the play touched me to the quick”.

He was mesmerized by the actors and ” … their power to draw me away from the real world and almost unhinge my reason long after the curtain had come across”.

Micheál O’Riada was impressed with Eamon’s reaction to the theatre. He discussed O’Casey, Synge and Lennox Robinson with the young carpenter and advised him if he ever went to Dublin to go to the Abbey Theatre.

Mr. O’Riada also told him that if he kept making headway in his studies and passed the senior grade in the practical and theory papers he would enter him for a scholarship examination, to train as a manual instructor, in Dublin. Since Eamon had left school at fourteen, he also had to do additional study in English, Irish and Maths. He passed his scholarship examination, and the interview in Dublin, with flying colours.

He trained and worked as a woodwork teacher for years until he became a full time actor. His first acting role was as Christy Mahon in “The Playboy of the Western World” along with the Listowel actress, Maura O’Sullivan. He would later marry, and spend the rest of his life, with Maura.

They moved to Dublin and Eamon was employed by the Radio Eireann Repertory Players and later by the Abbey Theatre Company. He drew large audiences in villages during the ’50s as he traveled around Ireland with his stories. He was to spend more than 40 years as a professional actor. Working with the top actors and leading producers of his day, he performed in New York, London and Moscow.
As a storyteller, his vivid and evocative descriptions are unsurpassed. Whether it was about an emigrant-laden train gathering speed before fading from view at Countess Bridge or sparks flying when the blacksmith struck red hot iron, nobody could tell it like Eamon. Once, in the Brooklyn Academy, while telling one of his famous stories he mentioned an Irish town and drew a graphic word-picture of emigrants at the station. From the audience he heard; “Divine Jesus” and a man crying. Ever the professional, Eamon instantly changed gear, swung to comedy and in seconds had the homesick exile laughing.

Watching him on the stage, the Paps-of-Anu and Dooncorrig Lake almost materialized around you. There was a temptation to look up for the rising ground above Barradov Bridge.

In the Peacock Theatre in the 1980s, you were standing beside the young Eamon Kelly as he made a Tusk Tenon at the workbench beside his father or walked barefoot on the submerged stepping-stones with his first-love, Judy Scanlon.

As Anette Bishop described it in the Irish American Post:
“It’s a case of the past returning to raise a charming blush on the cheek of the present”. Everything Eamon Kelly did was tried, tested and honed to perfection. And he always expressed appreciation of the crafts, skills and talents of others. “The correct actions of a craftsman sawing, planning or mortising with the chisel were as fluid as those of an expert hurler on the playing field”.

When rehearsing for Seamus Murphy’s “Stone Mad”, which he adapted as a one-man show, he spent days observing stonecutters at a quarry in the Dublin mountains. In the course of the show he “lettered” a stone on stage.

With little or no interest in money himself, he was always on the side of the underdog and the marginalized. He was playing S.B. O’ Donnell in “Philadelphia Here I Come” on Broadway, in January 1972, when he heard the tragic news of Bloody Sunday. There and then he decided to play his part in trying to rectify man’s inhumanity; he became a vegetarian.

Eamon was shy, by nature. And even in his eighties he would be, by far, the most nervous artist backstage. This was because he was a perfectionist. A year before he died I saw him in a hotel about to do a piece he had performed hundreds of times. With the utmost humility he asked a staff member about facilities to do a last minute rehearsal: “Do you have anywhere where I could talk to myself for a while?”

More tomorrow…..

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Church Street Restoration, Asdee Chapel

Two pictures of Coomeenole in West Kerry taken by Éamon ÓMurchú on the same evening at almost the same time.

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Loyal to the Traditional Facade

Many premises in Listowel are undergoing refurbishment at the moment. In keeping with Listowel’s status as a Historic Town, Kerry County Council’s Heritage Officer is closely involved with the renovations. This house on Church Street is a case in point.

It is being lovingly restored by its present owner who takes her role as custodian of our traditional architecture very seriously.

Since I took the first photo the door has been painted.

This is a picture of the same house one hundred years ago. This picture was taken in the aftermath of the infamous Black and Tan raid in Church Street which saw the next door premises, Flavin’s, completely destroyed and much of Lower Church Street burned and looted.

Note how the present owner has restored the original look of the house and her new windows are absolutely faithful to the old design.

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The Story of Asdee Chapel Continued

From Shannonside Annual 1956

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M.S. Society Busking Day 2010

Musicians and volunteers in Main Street on one of the good old days.

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A Lovely poem from the late John McCarthy

(from John McCarthy’s anthology Hope on a Rope)

John was a passionate compassionate poet who tackled the subject of mental illness before it was fashionable to do so. He was an activist credited with starting the Gay Pride movement in Cork.

He was a great friend of John B. and Mary Keane.

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A Poem about Loss, Jerry Ryan R.I.P. and the Old Chapel in Asdee

Waterfall at Conor Pass by Éamon ÓMurchú

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Another Poem from Poetry Town

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A Permanent Reminder

This recent mural with a quotation by Brendan Kennelly is a poignant reminder of how fleeting all the living voices are. The man whose distinctive voice enthralled so many has left the stage. R.I.P.

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+ Pat O’Flaherty R.I.P.+

Pat O’Flaherty of Chic Boutique has passed quietly away. She will be a huge loss to Mary and to her many friends. May she rest in peace.

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A Fact stranger than Fiction

According to a story in The Sunday Times there are more than 50 billboards in the UK fitted with cameras and equipped with facial recognition technology. If you are walking past one of these billboards it can recognise your age, sex and mood and it will then display an advertisement it is programmed to “think” suited to you.

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The Old Chapel in Asdee

from Shannonside Annual 1956

Continues tomorrow….

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+Jerry Ryan R.I.P.+

Nobody’s child; everybody’s friend

“No Mommies’ Kisses and no Daddies smiles” but Listowel took Jerry Ryan to its heart and he was a valued member of our community.

The Monday after Listowel Races 2014

Jerry Ryan who passed away recently was the salt of the earth. He did his job diligentlty, keeping our streets clean for many years before his retirement from Listowel UDC. He always had a smile and a friendly word. He didn’t know my name. “Friend,” he called me. Jerry had many friends.

With Mark Loughnane
With Pat Hickey

I took these pictures of Jerry at work.

He was part of the fabric of Listowel life for years.

I invited Jerry to come to the launch of my book, Listowel Through a Lens, in 2009. He had never been to a book launch and he was a bit dubious about whether it was his kind of thing.

This is the photo of Jerry and Jim Cogan in Listowel Through a Lens

I can tell you all that it was my honour to have Jerry there and there was no guest more appreciative of the invitation.

May his gentle soul rest in peace.

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