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

Author: Listowel Connection Page 10 of 482

Clounmacon Irish, McAulliffe’s and All Creatures

Sunset in Rattoo


Photo: Bridget O’Connor

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Irish in Everyday English


Up to the early part of the twentieth century, the influence of the Irish language on the daily interchanges of Irish people was evident in every aspect of life.

Dick Carmody is his lovely memoir of growing up in Clounmacon devotes a chapter to this phenomenon. He has kindly sent us this chapter, which I’m going to serialise for you this week.


As pupils of Clounmacon School we had our first introduction to the Irish language. While the emphasis was on reading and writing, we gained a very comprehensive knowledge of Irish grammar that would stand to us right through secondary education and, indeed, beyond. An opportunity to have acquired a basic fluency in our beautiful native tongue would have been an added bonus in a school that gave us such a good foundation in other dimensions of the language.

   Outside of school we often came across the influence of the language in everyday life, where Irish words would regularly feature in conversation. These could be used in many different contexts whether for emphasis or dramatic effect, to convey a compliment or an admonishment, an emotion or a frustration or merely to more accurately convey the speaker’s message. Our parents and our neighbours at the time gifted us an important dimension of our native language and culture.

   As children we would often be addressed as leanbh bán, leanb bocht, leanbhín, peata or creatúr, as in giving comfort or showing pity. Boyeen and girleen would sometimes be used in an affectionate way while garsún might be attributed to a boy with notions of manhood. To be described as an amadán or an óinseach was less than complementary as were the terms síofra, gligín, slíbhín or slabarer, while a pleidhce, bastún, clabhstar or a liúdramán left no doubt as to someone’s perceived status as a fool or incompetent being. A bacach could describe a lame or, indeed, an undesirable person. A straoill, used to describe someone, usually a girl , who was untidy or unkempt  might be further admonished as a right straip for persistent misbehaviour, while a fussy or fidgety person would be known as a fústairer. Silly behaviour by a girl would soon give her a reputation as an oinseog while foolish talk by someone would be dismissed as ráiméis or giobairis

   If someone was slow or indistinct in their speech, they might be dismissed as a balbhán. A ciotóg would surely be reprimanded by his teacher for writing with the left hand. Children were breast fed at their mother’s dide. To be seen to be ag cnáimhseáil was frowned upon as being someone with a tendency to complain regularly and unnecessarily. Someone sulking would usually put a pus on them whereas a person very upset by some event might take to ologóning. It might take a crust(a) of a fist to the gob to settle an argument while one could break someone’s meilt by persistant frustration.

(more tomorrow)


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Church Street Memories


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All Creatures Great and Small



Didn’t you just love it when the above were the main characters? It’s remade and its back on our screens on Sunday nights. I cant really judge from one episode but I think I’ll love it almost as much as the old version.


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Listowel Golfer comes Third


Photo Wikipedia


This is Corey Conners and he came third in the Arnold Palmer Invitational Golf Tournament at the weekend.

He is from Listowel. Not our Listowel though but Listowel Ontario. With a name like Conners, I wonder is there some Irish connection.

Remembering Cotters of Cotter’s/O’Connors, Scully’s Corner and West Wicklow Dialect

Misneach, the new céad coileán, joins Bród, the céad madra in Áras an Uachtaráin

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In Gurtinard, March 2021


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Listowel Races 1979

Dick Cotter sent me this photo. Dick can trace his Listowel roots back to 1809.  Jimmy Cotter was his grandfather. He lived in Glounaphuca. Timothy F. (nicknamed Tasty because of his neat appearance) was Dick’s father.

In the picture taken at Listowel Races in 1979  is Dick’s wife, Barbara,  presenting the Kingdom County Butter Churn trophy to the connections of the winning horse. Dick was food sales manager of Kerry Co-Op at the time. Dick is on the extreme right of the photo and Eddie Hayes, chairman, and Denis Brosnan, C.E.O.  are on the left.

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Coolard

Mary Foley,  shared  this old one on Facebook

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SPAKES FROM WEST WICKLOW

                    By Mattie Lennon

           Look what we’ve done to the old mother tongue

           It’s a crime they way we’ve misused it.

           

  So the song says. But did we do it any damage? John Dryden said that a thing well said will be wit in all languages.

In my part of Wicklow the transposition of vowels seemed to be almost as popular a pastime as locking referees in car boots. And did it do any damage? (no..I’m not asking about depriving the GAA arbitrator of his liberty on a winter’s day in Rathnew, I’m referring to a bit of readjustment of the A, E, I, O and U’s )

 In my part of the world the language of Synge survived into the final decades of the twentieth century and beyond.

Only recently a neighbour with a somewhat defective ticker told me that he had been fitted with a “Peace-maker”. I know of a case where a lady with notions asked an apprentice carpenter to make a “Mate-Seaf”. Nowadays incredulous gazes meet the disclosure that it used to take a lot of courage, in Kylebeg, to say tea instead of “tay” and to refer to unpolluted H2O as anything other than “clane wather” meant you were getting above your station

And you’d soon be reminded that it wasn’t long since you didn’t have an arse in your “brutches”.

The “hins” were fed off the “led” of a pot and when it was necessary to communicate with absent relatives the “pin an’ ink” were taken down and that reviled member of the rodent species was called a “rot”.

It would be said of the less-than-honest that he would  “stale the crass ev an ass”.

A welcome visitor would be invited to ” take a sate an’ give yerself a hate” and if you weren’t “plazed” by a frank comment you were said to be “aisy effinded” and you were sure to be “med game of”.

The single arch spanning a “strame” was a “brudge”.

Those who through hard work (or a windfall) would usually progress from thatch to a “toiled” or ” ganvalized” roof on their dwelling and every County Council cottage had an outside “labatery”.

A “dacent little girl” was an unmarried female, of any age, who wouldn’t let a male in a mile of her.

Whatever about the Catechism definition of Grace in our part of the world it was ” the juice o’ fat mate”.

And of course if you were of an argumentative dispossession it would be said that you  “would rise a row about the kay o’ the dure”.(Songwriting , of course, was easier than elsewhere because floor rhymed with sure and bowl rhymed with howl)

 A snob might have ” a collar an’ tie on his nick an’ a watch on his wrust” but no male would go so far as to sport a “gould” ring.

Nobody would admit to having “flays” themselves but would comment that a certain neighbours house was “walkin wud thim”. You could expect a “could day'” whin the win’ was from the aist”. Ewes “yaned”, you ploughed “lay” and you “Bilt” the “kittle” ( unless of course it “laked”.

You “gother” the sheep, “muxed” the pig-feeding and you could “bate” the living daylights out of someone  “whin timpers ed be ruz”. But in such “is-ther-no one to-hould-me-coat” situations there was usually someone to make “pace”.

The piece of binder twine used to restrict the movements of the canine was a “lade”.

Beyond was “beyant” and an old neighbour of mine went so far as to do a bit of consonant-juggling resulting in “belant”.

The clothes were held on the line by “pigs” and a brave man (or maybe one who didn’t have the courage to run away) was described as a “hairo”.

Looking back on it now I reckon that the hillbillies of the old black-and-white “Westerns”, with their “varmint” and “critters” would have fitted in perfectly in the Lacken of my youth. And I’m sure they would have adapted very quickly to describing the economy-conscious as “mane” and making stirabout from “yalla male”.

If you are not from my neck of the woods perhaps like D.H. Lawrence you will marvel: “That such trivial people should muse and thunder in such a lovely language”.  

If, of course on the other hand, you were reared anywhere between Knockatillane and Shillealagh you will recognise “…..that dear language which I spake like thee”.   



Fire Fighters, A 2009 Event and Pedlars and other Knights of the Roads

Everything seems an uphill struggle these times

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English


Miriam Kiely found this one. Surely the greatest legacy the English left us was their language. It is a really valuable asset to any career to be a native English speaker, particularly now that it is the language of the digital age.

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Fire Fighting

The upper photo is of Listowel firemen and the second photo is from my native Kanturk. Back in the day the volunteer fire service was an all male domain. Protective clothing seems to have been a mac and wellies.

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Bryan MacMahon Commemorative Event 2009

Maurice MacMahon addressing the audience in Kerry Writers’ Museum at the event celebrating his late father’s legacy.

Cyril Kelly remembers Mr. MacMahon, The Master

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Travelling People

Recently I watched the film News of the World. The protagonist in this film went from town to town in the Old West of the U.S. reading the news to assemblies of people. According to an N’ O’Sullivan in the Dúchas collection North Kerry had just such a person in the past.

There was an old man and nobody around would let him stay in their house and then every night when any door would open he would make a gush and lep the door and into the Bed.

Bob Stack was an old travelling man and he used go round the country sleeping in the peoples houses and he often slept in Ned King’s house in Astee.


There was an old man and his name was Paddy the Gom and he used go around the country reading stories for the people and every person around used come in and listen to him reading from a book that he had. He had a big beart of books with him which were handwritten.

Long ago pedlars were common in the country. The pedlars used sell racks and combs and hairpins and necklaces and tie pins and studs and hankies and they used have them all hanging from a tray.  If the farmers wifes would not have enough money for the pedlars they would exchange for bottles and meal and flour and other things.

COLLECTOR
P. O’ Sullivan
Gender
male
Address
Listowel, Co. Kerry
INFORMANT
N. O’ Sullivan
Age
40
Address
Listowel, Co. Kerry

Memories of the Grotto, A Commemoration, A Poem and the New Central Ballroom, Ballybunion

A sunny Gurtinard walk in February 2021. We are blessed to have such lovely places to walk within our 5km permitted limit.

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Church Street

Rob Cross’s restored picture of Church Street.

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Bryan MacMahon Commemorative Weekend 2009

The surviving MacMahon brothers at an event to commemorate their late father, Bryan MacMahon in the Kerry Writers’ Museum in 2009

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Marie Neligan Shaw remembers the grotto well.

The Grotto on O’Connell’s Avenue brings back so many memories. Remember well when it was dedicated. A Mrs. Collins lived in the house on the right of the photo and I believe that Margaret Dillion lived next door, right behind the Grotto. Think that it was the first Grotto built in Listowel at the time. Maybe even the only one. The one at Convent Cross came much later.


The Marian Year, when the grotto was dedicated, was a time when Ireland was firmly under the thumb of the Catholic Church. John Charles McQuaid, archbishop of Dublin, was one of the most conservative of clergymen. Unfortunately he had the ear of the government of the time and we are only now unravelling the disastrous consequences of that alliance.


Paddy Fitzgibbon, who remembers the Marian Year, sent us this poem.

GHASTLY TIDINGS 
FROM TERMONFECKIN

( Omnia praesumuntur rite esse acta. )

Recent reports suggest 
That once, in County Louth,
John Charles McQuaid 
Did not avert his gaze,
When suddenly a breeze 
Out of the south,
Lifted ( to her distress )
An Irish Countrywoman’s dress, 
It then revealed arrays
Of intimate intricacies. 
Now furthermore, 
It seems that this 
Regrettable event,
Took place
In the ecstatic bliss 
Of the Marian Year 
Of nineteen-fifty four 
( And during Lent !)

No doubt it was a test
Sent to assure His Grace,
That  steadfastness 
And holiness
Would banish fear
And see him through.
Of course, he could construe
What twenty centuries 
Of foppish prelates knew:
It is impossible to sin
When publicly arrayed 
In  silk and braid
And crenellated 
Crepe de chine.

So say no more,
Leave it at that, 
And thank The Lord: 
The Earth is flat !

Regards,

Paddy FitzGibbon



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Central Ballroom Grand opening

I saw this poster shared on Glin Historical Society’s Facebook page and I was so fascinated by it I included it on the blog with the line hoping it lived up to the hype.

Apparently it did. David O’Sullivan did a bit of research in the newspaper archives and here is what he found.



A Photographer’s Photo of a Photographer and The Joys of Book Promoting

This is Paddy Fitzgibbon’s photo of local wildlife photographer and videographer, Charlie Nolan. 

 He snapped Charlie beside his beloved Feale in Listowel.

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We’re Going to have a Kayaking Club


They are seeking permission to build a pontoon. Great to see new life coming to the river now that fishing seems to have come to a standstill.

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R.I.P. Ann Lyons


When I was promoting my recent  book, one of the places I called to was Ann Lyons shop in Abbeyfeale. It was one of the loveliest experiences of my book tour. This old fashioned sweet shop was a joy to enter. I’m calling it a sweet shop but it really was so much more. The two lovely ladies, Ann and Mary, who ran it were welcoming, kind and generous.

I was very saddened to hear that Ann has passed away and the shop is closing. She will be sorely missed. Ní fheicfimid a leithéid arís.

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Listowel Through a Lens


In October 2009 I published a book of photographs of Listowel. I took a copy around with me and I asked people I met to take a look. I took photos of these early readers. I came across a few of those photos receently.

 

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