His Father’s Son
Photo: Paddy Fitzgibbon
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New Ballybunion Parody
Ballybunion in the Rare Auld Times by Ger Walsh
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From Saturday’s Irish Times (March 27 2021)
(Jenny, I think you’ll love this)
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An Old Postcard
Author: Listowel Connection Page 6 of 482
Ten Thousand saw I at a glance
Picture of Athea in spring 2021 from Athea Tidy Towns Facebook page
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Be Kind Always
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I Remember my first state exam
Before free secondary school education and before school transport many Irish children finished school after 6th class in primary school. Secondary education was fee paying and often unavailable if you lived in the country and couldn’t afford boarding school fees.
So that pupils didn’t leave school without any certification of their education the state gave them this exam called the Primary School Certificate.
Primary School education was very thorough and pupils got a good grounding in the three Rs.
Look at the Arithmetic paper from 1962 and see how you would fare.
The exam was finally scrapped in 1967
Photo shared with Vanishing Ireland on Facebook
Remember this is a test for 6th class children. How would today’s youngsters fare?
Photo of Helen Moylan’s Primary Certificate.
Still at a Distance
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Onwards and Upwards
On the left of my picture is Elaine Kinsella. I took her picture with Catherine Moylan at Listowel’ Writers’ Week Young Adult Bookfest back in the day when we could have bookfests.
Why is Elaine in the news?
Because she is to be one of three guest co presenters of the Today show on RTE 1, for the month of April 2021. Elaine is well used to appearing on the show as a panellist but now she’ll get a stint in Sinead’s seat beside Dáithí ÓSé.
We are familiar with Elaine on Radio Kerry’s Full Breakfast where her easy rapport with co presenter, Corkman, Andrew Morrissey makes the show required breakfast listening in households in Kerry and beyond.
I was honoured to have Elaine launch my little book, A Minute of Your Time, in the days when we could have book launches. She prepared meticulously for the gig and she did an excellent job on the night.
Elaine is a great choice for the new role as co anchor. I join with everyone in Kerry and particularly her native Listowel in wishing her the very best of luck.
Look out for her first show on April 19th.
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Two From the School’s Archives
TY girls on an outing to The Garden of Europe.
Joanne Kissane and her family at the presentation of her prize for essay writing in the An Post competition.
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From the School’s Folklore Collection
(Tullamore school, Informant Bríd Relihan, Coolkeragh)
This story happened in Coolkeragh. About sixty years ago, there lived a man named John Kelly, who was very fond of playing the harp. Every tune he heard he was able to play it immediately. Every night he used go rambling to a cottage about a mile away. On his way home he used have to pass an old fort. This night as he was passing he heard the most beautiful music he ever heard. Of course he was able to play it immediately and he started. A little man came out of the fort and told him he could play it two more times. John played it two more times going home. Next day there was a fair in Listowel and the bards said they would beat him playing. John thought of the fairy song and played it. All the people ran round him to rise him on their shoulders but he was a corpse.
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Today’s Oddity
(From Foster’s Irish Oddities)
Ireland is the only country in the world that has a musical instrument (the harp) as its national symbol.
Music in The Small Square
John Sheehan and Mickey McConnell in Main Street Listowel
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April 1st
The reason April 1 is known as Fool’s Day has been lost in the mists of time. The practice is falling into disuse and elaborate pranks are now a thing of the past.
This week, Woman’s Weekly published an account of some memorable British pranks of other years
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Great old Photo
Frances Kennedy shared this one. Back then work was work. Horses and men made up the workforce.
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Are you Left handed?
If you are a leftie, count yourself lucky to live in an enlightened age. The Latin word for left is sinister. From time immemorial, certainly since Roman times lefthandedness was considered a deviation from the norm. The sight of this handbook which was shared on the internet by Ger Greaney will strike fear into the hearts of many who grew up in the 1950s and 60s, when cruel measures and punishments were often employed to force children to write with their less dominant hand.
It is one of life’s cruel ironies that left hand people often have better hand eye co ordination than righties. Yet Ciotóg, the Irish word for the left hand is also associated with clumsiness. Many tennis and squash players are left handed.
Many world leaders, writers and philosophers too are left handed.
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A Great Interview
I dont know how to make a link to a podcast so you’ll have to go about this the long way.
Google Country Life with Morgan O’Flaherty and go to the episode with Dennis Hegarty (N.B. he has two ns in Denis’ name)
The podcast is a great interview with our own Denis Hegarty. They were meant to be talking about old tractors but they wander into all kinds of old days and old ways in Listowel and surrounds. It’s well worth a listen but set aside about an hour.
A Corner by The River
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Shops that used to be on Market Street
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The Songs of Moyvane
by Gabriel Fitzmaurice (1980)
From Moyvane website
I remember as a very small boy, Tomeen the boss coming into our kitchen singing “Foley’s Jackass”. I laughed at him; he was a funny man. His songs meant nothing to me then.
Years later when I was grown up (say about ten years old!) I heard someone mention a song called “The Rose of Newtownsandes“. I always wanted to hear that song. Call it curiosity or whatever but I wanted to hear it, and in 1975 I finally tracked it down. Donie Lyons of Dromerisk (the flute player) told me of an extraordinary man, Con Greaney of Rooska who sang the song.
Having come of age on a thin diet of Planxty-like folk songs I was not prepared for what I heard. I sat on a sugán chair in Greaney’s kitchen with the microphone in my hand. Greaney exploded into song. I got such a fright that I sat bolt upright in my chair, my heart having missed a beat!
That started me on the collection of trad songs. Since then I have met many men (why must it always be men!), some of them old some middle-aged but every one of them I loved. They had an infinite quality of lovableness and innocence. Their hearts were In their songs; the great Con Greaney, my uncles Billy and Jack Cunningham, Jack McElligott of Gurtdromagowna, the inimitable Jack Carroll, Jimmy Herbert and Mickeen Fitzgerald of sweet Athea to mention but a few.
The songs of Moyvane parish (Newtownsandes as it was formerly called for love of landlords) may be broadly divided into “three categories:
(a)Sporting songs; (b) Political songs and (c) Love songs.
Moyvane has a great and varied sporting history, she has given of her young men who have graced football fields, wearing the proud Kerry jersey in three continents, poets sang their praises as they did of the great Dainty Man, a half blind hound who took Ireland’s best to the cleaners that day in Clonmel when he brought the Derby home to Moyvane.
Moyvane has strong nationalist feelings as is evidenced by the selection of political songs printed here. Remember it was in our parish that the men of “The Valley of Knockanure” were sent to their doom at an early bloom, to spotlight just one tragedy.
And then we have The Rose of Newtownsandes, the best traditional song I’ve heard in years. The air, the mystery; it’s all there. Who was she, where did she come from, what was she, why did the poet write the song? All unanswered questions because everyone has a different answer.
If there’s anyone out there who knows any song, bit of song, poem or verse about the Moyvane/Knockanure area, I would be eternally grateful if you would give them to me.
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Down Memory Lane
I took this photo in Woulfe’s Bookshop during Writers’ Week 2010. Then, of the three subjects, I knew only Mary Doyle. Since then I have come to know Carol Stricks. I never knew her lovely husband, Bob.
Sadly both Mary and Bob have passed away since.