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
They’re nearly ripe. These ones are in the Community Garden by the river.
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Poem about Listowel
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A Ballylongford Tale by Brendan Kennelly
from Shannonside Annual 1956
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A Lovely Memory of a Proud Kerry Man
Letter printed in The Irish Times, October 20 2021. The writer, Gerard Neville, comes from InchWest Listowel. He is now living and teaching in Littleton Thurles, Co Tipperary.
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A Good One
John B. Keane and Aengus Fanning, his friend and editor at The Irish Independent corresponded regularly. Here is an extract from one of John B.s letters.
Dear Aenghus
What father and son were beaten on the same day in Division One National League (football) in Kilkenny?
Kevin Cahalane was beaten by Maurice Fitzgerald in a scrap near the goals and his father was beaten by Alan Kennelly (Brendan’s brother) in a scrap in the stand.
These three pictures celebrate a very important part of Irish Culture; traditional music.
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Unseasonal Poem
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A Rare Brendan Kennelly Essay
The late Brendan Kennelly wrote an introductory essay on North Kerry parishes for Vincent Carmody’s North Kerry Camera. Vincent has shared it with us.
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A Fact
In Kentucky there is a fundamentalist Catholic theme park. The centrepiece is a replica of Noah’s Ark. It is one of the largest wooden structures in the world. In 2017 and 2018 there was really really heavy rain in Kentucky.
Landslides at the theme park damaged the ark and the company who ran the park sued for rain damage.
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Mary Young
I took my recent visitors to see the incongruous sculpture of a lady dressed for a ball sitting in front of one of the most magnificent churches in the diocese.
“Returning from Dublin, she had another house built on Church Road which would become Dr Hannan’s house. After meeting with Fr O’Connor, she proposed the building of a new church to be named St John’s in memory of her husband.
“She died on August 19 1894 and is buried in Kilahenny Cemetry. We the Killahenny Heritage, Historical and Arts Society wished to publicly honour Mary Young and acknowledge her immense contribution to Ballybunion,” Catherine added.
My mother never learned to drive. After my father died, she bought a donkey and from then until I was old enough to drive a car, a donkey was her means of transport when anything that could not be brought from town on her bicycle needed to be bought.
I always used to pay a visit to the donkey sanctuary when my grandchildren came for holidays. Now, like all other visitor attractions the sanctuary suffered a loss of income during Covid. So, if you have children to entertain during mid term, consider a trip to the donkey sanctuary.
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Ball Alley Art
Recent work in the ball alley celebrates Irish culture. In these two pictures our love affair with the horse and with horse racing in particular is honoured.
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A Bun Fight
There is a restaurant chain in the U.S. called Five Guys. Police were once called to the Florida branch of the chain because a fist fight had broken out there. They arrested five guys.
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I spotted this on a recent stroll through Ballybunion. It looks like an ATM that is not associated with any bank. Anyone know the story?
Last weekend two of Ireland’s literary giants passed away.
Máire Mhac an tSaoi had a very small poetic output compared to Brendan Kennelly. She also wrote exclusively in Irish which meant that her poems were accessible to a limited audience.
Her work is well known by school children who identify with the teenage angst of her poem of first love with a local boy “Mac feirmeora ó iarthar tíre”, she had a crush on during a summer in the Gaeltacht of West Kerry.
She wrote a lovely sad little poem, a picture of a parent putting on the first shoe, “seoidín den leathar” , a step to freedom or the first shackles.
Probably her best known poem, Cuireadh do Mhuire, is a Christmas classic.
Guím leaba i measc na naomh di.
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Brendan Kennelly R.I.P. was a prolific, popular, well known and loved poet and academic.
Throughout his long life he “walked with kings but kept the common touch”.
He never forgot his Kerry roots. He loved his large Kerry family, his Kerry friends and Kerry landscapes and values.
This prince of the Kingdom was a very proud Ballylongford man but he had many many Listowel connections and it was in this little corner of the world he saw out his days surrounded by his loving, caring and very proud family. It is they who will most feel his loss. His brothers, his sister and all his family will miss him greatly.
I took these photos in 2015 at the unveiling of the bust to Brendan Kennelly in Ballylongford.
Colm Tóibín, Liz Dunn, Chair of Listowel Writers’ Week, Brendan Kennelly, and Richard Ford
This is 2017 when Brendan was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by Listowel Writers’ Week.
These photos were also taken in 2017 at Opening Night Listowel Writers’ Week. In it Brendan is chatting to Eileen Moylan of Claddagh Design who designed and crafted the beautiful award piece depicting scenes from his two home towns, Ballylongford and Dublin.
Éamon Ó Murchú & Brendan Kennelly (Photo taken many years ago)
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Today’s Incredible Fact
A Disney themed café in Birmingham was once closed down temporarily because a customer spotted a mouse.
The café is inside the world’s biggest Primark. It is famous for serving mouse shaped pancakes and there are posters of Mickey and Minnie all over the shop.
But when a real living mouse was spotted, it brought business to a sharp halt for a while.
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Listening to the Radio
Photo from Vanishing Ireland website
In Ireland in the 1950s the main source of inanimate entertainment was the radio. Many houses had a set like this. This is a PYE. Our one was a Phillips. I remember waking up to the sounds of O’Donnell Abú. This was the signature tune of Radio Eireann. We never listened to any other channel.
After The News we had sponsored programmes. These were short music or magazine programmes sponsored by big business e’g. ODearest Mattresses, Batchelors or The Irish Hospitals Sweepstake.
The Waltons programme on Saturdays ….”If you feel like singing, do sing an Irish song” and Dear Frankie’s “This problem may not be yours today but it could be someday” became phrases familiar to every Irishman.
Memories, memories!
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Making Turf
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Public Art in Ballybunion
Have you noticed that, as you walk around any town nowadays there is so much to delight the eye. I took these photos on a recent stroll around Ballybunion.
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In the Ball Alley
This is just one of the many lovely pictures in the ball alley now. It says home; doesn’t it?
Winter, summer, old, new, commercial and residential, Listowel in all its loveliness.
Remember Liz Chute’s story that inspired a Bryan MacMahon short story?
It also inspired a poem by Listowel born poet, Noel Roche.
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Halloween 2021
This year Halloween seems to be a bit low key. We seem to be skipping straight to Christmas. Maybe it’s time to abandon the Trick or Treating and fireworks and return to remembering instead our dead loved ones and visiting family graves instead.
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School Lunches!
Photo from Vanishing Ireland website
Did you bring milk to school in a Chef Sauce or YR bottle? If you did you’ll probably be about my age and you’ll be cringing in horror at this sight. No matter how much you washed and scoured, getting the smell of sauce or salad cream out of one of these bottles was impossible.
Don’t even mention breakages! These bottles were glass and broke easily. I remember the first Thermos flasks and their innards broke easily too.
Schooldays were the best days of our lives?
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Ballylongford in 1910
1910 Main Street, Ballylongford, Co.Kerry.
L to R John Thomas Carrig Sr. John Thomas Carrig Jr. M Mahoney, ? Dalton, The Kelly sisters.
Thanks to Geraldine Brassil for photo and information.
Ballylongford Snaps on Facebook shared this image and caption
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A Very Different theatrical Experience
There was something for everyone in the audience in St. John’s on Saturday night. We all got a taste of ” one he made earlier”.
Manchán Magan was our entertainer for the evening. Dressed in a tailored tweed trousers, grandfather style shirt and what looked to me like homemade pampooties, he told us in Irish and English about the connectedness of everything, about history, etymology and our close connection with the fairy world, all while baking a sourdough loaf and churning some butter.
It was an extraordinary evening’s entertainment brought to us by an extraordinary man. Manchán’s depth of knowledge and infectious enthusiasm for his subjects are a sight to witness.
After the show, he chatted, signed books and shared his sourdough starter and his delicious bread and butter.
It was my first night back in St. John’s since Covid.
What a show to return to!
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Believe it or Believe it Not
Once Gillette recalled 87,000 disposable razors because, thanks to a manufacturing error, they posed a cutting hazard.
