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

Category: History Page 7 of 31

January 2024

By

On January 8, 2024

In History, Listowel, Poem

Simon and Carine on the Flesk Cycleway, Killarney, January 6 2024

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Greetings to January 2024

New Year 2024
New year 2024 has dawned.
We’ve had January 1,2, 3,4
Relentless rain has fallen
Lashing on the windowpanes.
Streaming down the roof tiles
Gurgling down the drainpipes
Gurgling up the gully traps
Choking drains already blocked
Water gurgling up through manholes.
The lawn too has a well-watered look
With ponds appearing at every nook
Patio paving flags are well washed down.
Roads are flooding, edges muddying.
Dangerous conditions for driving
Weather forecasts are dreary.
Weak troughs, low depressions
Announcing rain followed by downpours
Falling in thunderous volumes
Yellow and orange weather warnings announced
Alerting us to more windy days ahead
This is now the Irish weather norm
With the odd tornado thrown in as well
Leitrim roofs and buildings damaged.
Trees are falling nationwide.
Fields are flooding far and wide.
Sporting pitches water logging
Clouds are darkening, the sky is weeping.
All is drabness.
With sickly dreary darkness
Kids are tetchy, bored, and gloomy.
Confined to houses, some not too roomy.
Too much screen time
No outdoor healthy playtime
With boredom thresholds
And patience levels lowering.
Too many treats on offer
From stressed out weary parents.
Trying to bribe them with sweetie presents
We hope for fine weather soon.
To clear the winter gloom and doom.

Happy new year Mary
Mick O Callaghan January 2024

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The Dream Lives On

Maeve Binchy believed that everyone should have something to look forward to. She always had an airline ticket in her desk.

Listowel Emmetts have booked us all a ticket to Croke Park.

Result; Emmetts 1-11 Laherdane 0-3

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The Night of the Big Wind

(This account and image comes from a Facebook page, Ireland and Peg’s Cottage.)

Storm at Fanad…photographer name not recorded

It happened on a Saturday. It was January 6th, 1839, and heavy snow had fallen overnight. All over Ireland people awoke to a strange calm. As the morning went on the temperature rose until it was well above the average for the time of year. While children played in the quickly melting snow, mothers and fathers were inside their homes preparing for the festivities of Little Christmas, the feast of the Epiphany. By mid-afternoon it had become so unnaturally calm that voices floated between farmhouses more than a mile apart. Something was going on, but no one knew what.

A deep depression was forming in the north Atlantic. As the warm front moved eastwards and rose in the atmosphere, it was replaced by a cold front which brought high winds and heavy rain.

The rain began before noon. It started in the west and spread slowly eastwards. By late evening wind speeds had increased and temperatures had plummeted. By 9 pm the wind had reached gale force and still it carried on increasing. By midnight it had reached hurricane force and it stayed at that level until 5 am the next morning. All along the west coast people made their peace with God, convinced the end of the world had come. There was a terrifying rumbling noise throughout the storm and it got louder as the gusts increased. The wind blew out lanterns and candles and it was impossible to see what was happening outside, except when streaks of lightning occasionally illuminated an area or when the sky cleared briefly and the Aurora Borealis could be seen lighting up the northern sky with a mantle of red.

On Monday morning the sun rose over a wasteland. Familiar objects were unrecognisable. Landmarks had gone and nothing was where it should be. The people were dazed and exhausted from lack of sleep.

As well as homes, historic buildings had either been destroyed or badly damaged, never to be restored. Tombstones were flattened, dry stone walls were toppled and roadways were rendered impassable.  Sea water had been carried inland by the force of the storm and flooded houses there. Seaweed had been carried for great distances and fish were found miles from shore. One of the most abiding memories of the night and its aftermath was the smell of salt. It lingered for weeks.

Given the storm’s ferocity the death toll was miraculously low. Perhaps 250-300 people lost their lives, most of them at sea in the disastrous wrecks. RIP.

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My First Fact of 2024

The Wat Pa Maha Chedi Temple in Thailand is also known as TheTemple of the Million Bottles. It is constructed using Heineken and Chang beer bottles.It is a kind of Buddhist reuse recycle project.

Collection of the bottles began in 1984. The temple took 2 years to build. The monks had collected so many bottles that they added extra wings to the original plan.

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Christmas in Cork

By

On December 19, 2023

In History, Just a Thought, Listowel, Poem

The big wheel for Christmas 2023 in Cork’s Grand Parade

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Cork at Christmas

My next spot of Christmas travel was to my home by the Lee.

Finn’s Corner, early morning

St. Peter and Paul’s, beautiful old city centre church

This took me back to opening term masses here when I was in UCC. I wonder if that tradition is still observed.

Statue of Our Lady in the grounds of St. Peter and Paul’s.

This was my first sight of the Michael Collins statue.

A great likeness

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Just a Thought

Here is a link to my reflections which were broadcast on Radio Kerry in the Just a Thought slot last week.

Just a Thought

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Serendipity

Serendipity is the making of unexpected and pleasant discoveries by accident.

Front (faded) and back (vivid) covers of a book discovered in a charity shop and purchased for 50c.

A story from the book… Pail but not Wan

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The Wran

I don’t know the year for this one.

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With Tambourines and Wren boys

Wm. Molyneaux

(Continued from yesterday…)

But then, about the Wren.  How the wren derived her dignity
as the king of all birds.  That was the question.  An eagle issued a challenge between all birds, big and small as they were-wrens, robins, sparrows, thrushes, blackbirds, jackdaws, magpies, or else.  They commenced their flight this day-Christmas Day-The eagle, being the bravest continues her flight and was soaring first.  All the other birds were
soaring after, until, in the finish, after a lapse of time in her flight, the weaker birds seemed to get weary and could not continue their flight some  ways further. 
But the Wren pursued to the last. 
The other birds got weak and worn out and in the heel of fair  play, the eagle said that she was the king of all birds herself now.  The wren concealed yourself under the Eagles feathers, in the end of  fair play the Eagle got worn out.  The wren flew out from under the Eagles
feathers and declared yourselves the king of all birds.  That is how the Wren derived her dignity as being the king of all birds.  So we hunted her for the honour of it.  

Also, when St Stephen was in prison and as he was liberated the band went out against St Stephen, and it was a daylight performance and the wren, when she heard the music and the band, came out and perched yourselves on the drum.  That’s how we heard the story.

Anyway we made our tambourines.  You’d get a hoop made (in them days) by a cooper.  There is no cooper hardly going now.  You’d get this made by cooper for about half a crown.  I used to make my tambourines always  of goat’s skin.  You could make them of an ass foal’s
skin-anything young, do you see.  How?  I’d skinned the goat, get fresh lime and put the fresh lime on the fleshy side of the skin-not that hairy side but the fleshy side of the skin-fold it up then and double it up and twist it again and get a soft string and put it around it and take it with you then to a running stream and put it down in the running stream where the fresh water will be always running over it, and leave it so. 
You could get a flag and attach it onto the bag, the way the water wouldn’t carry it.  Leave it there for about nine days and you come then and you can pull off the hair and if the hair comes freely you can take up the skin and pull off the hair the same as you would shave yourself.  And then you
should moisten with lukewarm water.  You should draw it the way it wouldn’t shrink. You should leave it for a couple of hours.  You would get your ring and you’d have the
jingles and all in-the bells-you’d have them all in before you put the skin to the rim. You should have two or three drawing the skin to keep it firm-pull it from half-width, that would be the soonest way t’would stiffen.  Let the skin be halfwidth and put it down on the rim and  have a couple  pulling it and another man tacking it with brass tacks. 
That’s the way I used make my tambourines, anyway.  Ther’d be no sound out of it the first night.  I used always hang my tambourines outside.  And then the following morning t’would be hard as a pan  and a flaming sound out of it.  And then after a bit t’would cool down.  T’would be bad to
have them too hard, they’d crack.  Ah, sure I made several tambourines that way.

To be continued…

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A Christmas Poem

Christmas

John Betjeman

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
   The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
    Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
    And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
    The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
“The church looks nice” on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze
    And Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze
    Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says “Merry Christmas to you all.”

And London shops on Christmas Eve
    Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
    To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
    And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
    And Christmas-morning bells say “Come!'”
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true? And is it true,
    This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
    A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true? For if it is,
    No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
    The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
    No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
    Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

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+ R.I.P. Maureen Sweeney+

As a tribute to a heroine who has passed away, here is her story from a previous blogpost…

Flavin Sweeney wedding  1946

 2nd, lL to R, Maureen Flavin Sweeney Blacksod Bay, 5th L to R Theresa Flavin Kennelly Knockanure, 6th L to R, Peg Connor Moran, Knockanure 

Billy McSweeney told us this story and it appeared in Listowel Connection in 2018

In my Grandparents time, Kerry people understood that they were cut off from the rest of Ireland by a series of mountains; they realized that they were isolated and had to look after themselves. Life was harder in Kerry than in the Golden Vale or on the central plains of Ireland. The mothers of Kerry especially, knew that they had to look to every advantage to help their children and prized education highly to that end. In the mid-19thcentury the people of Listowel welcomed enthusiastically the establishment of St Michael’s College for Boys and the Presentation Convent Secondary schools for Girls, not forgetting the Technical School. The people who read this blog are most likely familiar with the Census’ 1901 and 1911 and will have noticed that many homes in Listowel housed not only Boarders but also welcomed Scholars who came from the villages and isolated farms scattered around North Kerry. These boys and girls spent 5-6 years in the Listowel schools to be educated for ‘life’.

The upshot of this was that from Listowel we sent out many young adults who were a credit to their teachers to take their places in many organizations and many whose names became nationally known for their talents and abilities, especially in the Arts.

Let  me tell you about one such young girl, Maureen Flavin, who was born in Knocknagoshel, Co Kerry. When the time came for Maureen to go on from National school she was welcomed into the Mulvihill home in Upper Church Street who themselves had a young girl, Ginny, of the same age. Maureen and Ginny became fast friends and stayed so for life. 

When Maureen finished school in 1930 she wanted a job; couldn’t get one in Kerry because of the times that were in it, so she answered an ad in the National Papers for an Assnt. Postmistress in Black Sod, in North Mayo. Her references and qualifications were suitable and in due course, as she says, to her own surprise she was offered the job. This was to set Maureen on a course where she would be an integral part of one of the most momentous actions of the age. Mrs Sweeney, the Black Sod Postmistress, was married to Ted who was the Lighthouse Keeper, both operating from the Lighthouse building in Black Sod. They had a son, also Ted, who Maureen fell in love with and married in due course. They in turn had three boys and a girl and life took up a normal rhythm for the family; that is until 3rd June 1944.

The WW2 was in full swing at this stage with Gen. Eisenhower as the Allied Supreme Commander and Gen. Rommel the German Commander in Normandy. Rommel knew that an Allied invasion was prepared and imminent. Conventional Meteorological sources at the time for the US and German military said that the coming days would bring very inclement weather so that the invasion would have to be postponed. Eisenhower postponed the action and Rommel left Normandy for a weekend in Berlin based on the same information. The British Chief Meteorologist had however visited Black Sod some years previously and knew the value of Black Sod as the most westerly station in Europe and when a break in the weather was reported by Black Sod on 3rdJune he persuaded Eisenhower that 6thand 7thJune would be clear and to ignore the same conventional Met advice used by both the US and the Germans. Ted compiled the reports for the Irish Met Office and Maureen transmitted them. Maureen remembers receiving a telephone call a short time later from a lady with a ‘very posh English accent’ asking for confirmation of her report. Ted was called to the phone and he confirmed the readings, The rest, as they say, is history. 

(R.I.P. Maureen, who passed away on December 17 2023, aged 100. She was a recipient of the US Congress Medal of Honour)

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A Fact

In one week from today it will be St. Stephen’s Day 2023

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Christmas Then and Now

By

On December 4, 2023

In History, Listowel, Poem, Schools' Folklore

Courtyard at Listowel Castle 2023

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Craft Fair in Kanturk

Sunday, November 26 2023

The annual Christmas craft fair is organised by the local Men’s Shed. The Edel Quinn Hall is the venue and it was mobbed.

This lady’s knitted toys and ornaments were very popular.

It is always a pleasure to meet the Two Crafty Ladies at a fair. It was their first time in Kanturk.

This lovely lady’s company is called The Rebellious Goat and she produces lovely soaps and balms using goats milk and honey from her bees. My friend, Lil is trying out some hand salve.

Paddy, Gael and Lil were sampling mulled wine all the way from Listowel.

Will you look at the lovely group of choristers I bought.

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Booker Winner

Couldn’t believe my luck when I got this in the library. Just started but so far it’s lovely, very poetic but I know the subject is far from pleasant so I’m prepared.

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A Seasonal Poem

A Kerry Christmas Childhood

Garry MacMahon

Now I cannot help remembering the happy days gone by,

As Christmastime approaches and the festive season’s nigh.

I wallow in nostalgia when I think of long ago,

And the tide that waits for no man as the years they ebb and flow.

We townies scoured the countryside for holly berries red,

And stripped from tombs green ivy in the graveyard of the dead,

To decorate each picture frame a hanging on the wall,

And fill the house with greenery and brighten winter’s pall,

Putting up the decorations was for us a pleasant chore,

And the crib down from the attic took centre stage once more.

From the box atop the dresser the figures were retrieved,

To be placed upon a bed of straw that blessed Christmas Eve,

For the candles, red crepe paper, round the jamjars filled with sand,

To be placed in every window and provide a light so grand,

To guide the Holy Family who had no room at the inn,

And provide for them a beacon of the fáilte mór within.

The candles were ignited upon the stroke of seven,

The youngest got the privilege to light our way to Heaven,

And the rosary was said as we all got on our knees,

Remembering those who’d gone before and the foreign missionaries.

Ah, we’d all be scrubbed like new pins in the bath before the fire

And, dressed in our pajamas of tall tales we’d never tire,

Of Cuchlainn, Ferdia, The Fianna, Red Branch Knights,

Banshees and Jack o Lanterns, Sam Magee and Northern Lights

And we’d sing the songs of Ireland, of Knockanure and Black and Tans,

And the boys of Barr na Sráide who hunted for the wran.

Mama and Dad they warned us as they gave each good night kiss,

If we didn’t go to sleep at once then Santa we would miss,

And the magic Christmas morning so beloved of girls and boys,

When we woke to find our dreams fulfilled and all our asked for toys,

But Mam was up before us the turkey to prepare,

To peel the spuds and boil the ham to provide the festive fare.

She’d accept with pride the compliments from my father and the rest.

“Of all the birds I’ve cooked,” she’s say, “ I think that this year’s was the best.”

The trifle and plum pudding, oh, the memories never fade

And then we’d wash the whole lot down with Nash’s lemonade.

St. Stephen’s Day brought wrenboys with their loud knock on the door,

To bodhrán beat abd music sweet they danced around the floor’

We, terror stricken children, fled in fear before the batch,

And we screamed at our pursuers as they rattled at the latch.

Like a bicycle whose brakes have failed goes headlong down the hill

Too fast the years have disappeared. Come back they never will.

Our clan is scattered round the world. From home we had to part.

Still we treasure precious memories forever in our heart.

So God be with our parents dear. We remember them with pride,

And the golden days of childhood and the happy Christmastide.

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A Fact

A Christmas fact from the schools’ folklore collection…

The Big Wind

In the year 1839 on little Christmas night there was a fierce storm. The people were very happy and enjoying Christmas ; they had the Christmas candles lighted and the night was very calm. At ten o’clock they went to look at the cows and took lighted splinters as candles were very scarce in those days. It was so calm that the splinter kept lighting till they had secured the cattle for the night.

Afterwards they went to bed, and were sound asleep when the storm arose at midnight. It was so bad that the people ran out of the houses. The houses were thrown down, cowstalls were flying half a mile away, and cattle were bellowing with no roof over them. The people were screaming for help, and tried to hold on to each other, and were very much exhausted.


The storm lasted till twelve o’clock at night till seven in the morning. Then the people collected and made up little houses that they could sleep in, until a time came when they were able to build their houses once more.

Afterwards when people talked of it they used to call it the night of the Big Wind.
Pat Stack, Told by Nurse Stack, Newtownsandes, 62 years.

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Lyre, Ballyseedy and Ballylongford

By

On November 24, 2023

In Ballylongford, History, Listowel, Poem

Scully’s Corner

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From the Capuchin Annual Archive

Horse-Drawn Ploughing, 1945 

This is an image of a farmer with a traditional horse-drawn plough in rural Ireland. The image dates to about 1945. Attracting an annual attendance of nearly 300,000 people, the National Ploughing Championships is the flagship event for Irish agriculture and is one of the largest outdoor exhibition and agricultural trade shows in Europe. The event runs for three days.

The photograph forms part of a bound volume containing a collection titled ‘Views of Irish life’ intended for publication in ‘The Capuchin Annual’. 

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What I’m Reading

The Lyreacrompane and District Journal is full of interesting little stories.

I was happily reading these when I spied a photograph of my postman.

Pat Hickey’s story is on page 12.

In 1979 Pat’s grandfather made a find in a bog in Banemore…a casket of bog butter that could be 2,000 years old.

This is just one of the great and extraordinary tales in this marvellous journal. The best value in town at only €15.

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In Ballylongford

I was in Ballylongford last Sunday for the annual craft fair. The community centre where the fair was held shares a carpark with St. Michael’s church.

I arrived at mass time. Big mistake! Cars parked and some more abandoned everywhere. I’ll know better next year.

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When Your Granny Played a Role in History

The Ballyseedy massacre has to be one of the the worst atrocities of a very bitter civil war in Kerry.

Here is Mick O’Callaghan’s story;

Granny Curran and The Civil War

Granny Curran said her rosary nightly and prayed for people who died in wars. We were always very aware of the significance of her home place and civil war politics. My granny played a role in saving a man’s life. On March 7th, 1923, nine republican prisoners, six from the jail in Tralee and three from the workhouse, were taken from Ballymullen army barracks in Tralee. They were taken in a lorry, lying down, to Ballyseedy, on the Killarney Road. They were secured by the hands and legs and to each other and arranged in a circle around a landmine at Ballyseedy and they were blown up.

This barbaric event was in reprisal for the killing of Capt. Michael Dunne, Capt. Edward Stapleton from Dublin, Lieut Patrick O Connor from Castleisland, Private Laurence O Connor from Causeway, and private Michael Galvin from Killarney. They were killed in a booby trap bomb set off by anti-treaty forces at Talbot Bridge near Knocknagoshel on March 6th1923.

     One of the men at Ballyseedy, Stephen Fuller, was blown clear. He landed in a ditch, suffering burns and scars. He crossed the little river Lee and hid in Ballyseedy Woods. He followed the stream until he came to the gable of a house owned by Mike and Hannah Curran, my grandparents.

They took him in and hid him in the hayshed and tended to his wounds. The following day they took him to the home of Charlie Daly. His injuries were treated by a local doctor, Edmond Shanahan who found him in a dugout. He moved often in the coming months including to the Boyle and Burke families in the locality. Then he stayed in a dugout prepared by the Herlihy family for seven months until they were able to contact people who could get him to safety and back to health. The Dublin Guards scoured the country for Fuller but failed to find him.

He joined Fianna Fail led by Eamon De Valera in 1926 after a split with Sinn Fein. He returned to full time farming. Later he became a TD for North Kerry and won elections in 1937,1938, 1943.

My grandparents were not actively involved in any movement but just did the Christian thing in saving a man’s life. They were shocked at the barbaric act that had been committed so close to them at Ballyseedy Cross.

This was a time when brutality was everywhere with pro and anti- treaty sides involved in terrible atrocities with brother fighting against brother and families split over civil war loyalties.

My first cousin Michael, who is now in his eighties and resides in Connecticut, lived with Granny Curran, and I asked him if he ever spoke to her about the Troubles and he wrote to me as follows: “She described the Stephen Fuller episode to me many times.  It struck me as a one-off event.  He came up along the river that runs behind our house and saw the gable in the distance and headed for it.  She said they put him up – I think in a loft, maybe in one of the outhouses overnight and passed the word to wherever they needed it to go that he was there.  I had the impression “they” came for him the next day in a pony and trap and took him away.  As I say I think it was a one-time event.  I don’t believe she ran a “safe house” although it was safe for Stephen Fuller that night.  She never impressed me as a fan of either side in the civil war.  I think she was too practical for that.  

She had a large family at home – my father was 14 at that time – and the civil war was an extension of what they went through with “the Tans”.  I think she just wanted to be left alone.  She was sympathetic to Fuller on a human level but was shocked by the atrocious brutality of what the Free State did on that night – the tying of the men (I’m told) to a landmine.  

But there was so much ambivalence.  I think she admired Michael Collins for his looks.  She talked about that.  

 I remember the crowning of Elizabeth II.  Our grandmother (and every other female I knew) was enthralled by the spectacle.  No resentment was shown about old issues.

Come to think of it, I teared up when the much older Elizabeth stood in Dublin, dressed in green, and gave a toast in Irish.  And when she got into the joking back and forth with the fishmonger in the English Market in Cork it was more than I could take. There’s so much more to all these relationships.

There was an RTE program presented by Pat Butler some years ago about Ballyseedy [a reprisal for an event in a field in Knocknagoshel]. My Auntie Kitty was interviewed for it and spoke about her mother’s role and her reluctance to speak about her role in it confirming my cousin’s story.

Our grandmother had a great interest in and knowledge of the family tree.  At one point in my teen years, realising that she would not be around forever, I asked her about the ancestors, one by one, going back through the generations.  She took me back three or four generations, I think.  I wrote it down, drawing it as a family tree or chart and kept it.  In fact, I was looking for it about six weeks ago to show to my granddaughter but couldn’t find it.  It was a pencil sketch of the tree as she described it to me.  We were raised as Catholics but there were Protestants in our background and people with German ancestry. The name was Poff, and they lived in Killorglin.   It may have been one of the Palatinate people”. 

Some five days after Ballyseedy another five republicans were chained to a landmine at Bahaghs near Cahirciveen, having their legs first being shot to prevent them from escaping. Five men were also chained to a mine in Countess Bridge in Killarney, but one Tadhg Coffey was blown clear. All this was done under the command of Major General Paddy O Daly, and all were exacting revenge for Knocknagoshel.

 It is interesting that during his life as a public representative Stephen Fuller never spoke about the Ballyseedy massacre. He spoke publicly about it for the first time in 1980 in an interview with Robert Kee’s ground-breaking BBC series Ireland: A television history. This happened a few years before his death.

 In this interview, as on many other occasions, he never mentioned my grandparent’s role in the rescue. They knew each other and respected their privacy.

He never wanted to influence his own family in their political beliefs. I remember reading that Stephen Fuller told his son that Civil War divisions should not be passed on to the next generation. He also stated that he bore no ill-will towards his captors or those who were involved in his extrajudicial attempted killing.

Granny Curran, like most women of her era, was a strong-willed person. She had her own strong religious and political beliefs, but they were not shared. She spoke about the five years she had spent in America at the turn of the century and how it had influenced her life and she in turn influenced us.  We heard a lot of stories about different cultures and beliefs. Her chats with us during our formative years had a very positive influence on our attitude to people during our lives especially in respecting difference. We had regular lessons in tolerance and inclusion, and this was very important to her since they lived in a mixed religion area.

She said her rosaries and had the Stations in the house which were held with due respect and reverence. She was progressive in her thinking, but she never crossed the line with politics. She never wanted her political beliefs passed on to the next generation. As she often said to me ‘You are too young for that information” or “somethings are best left unsaid and kept to yourself”.

The Ballyseedy monument was opened in 1959 and the Curran family was represented but no mention was made of their involvement in the 1923 explosion or incident as it was euphemistically called. Ballyseedy was a sad event which happened long before we were born but the story has been part of the folklore of our lives down the years and whenever we pass the Ballyseedy monument on the way into Tralee we recall Granny Curran and the many memories we have of her long life.

It is interesting that the Curran and Fuller families, in Ireland and America, are still in contact. Although all members of the family are fully au fait with the tragedy of Ballyseedy, they never speak about it. Is binn béal ina thost.

Let the past look after itself as my granny used to say.

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A Poem

This poem by Robert Louis Stevenson was one of the first I learned by heart.

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A Fact

A sleeping man’s snore can be as loud as 69 decibels, i.e. the same as a pneumatic drill.

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Football and Poetry

By

On November 22, 2023

In History, Listowel

in St. Michael’s Graveyard

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November

No sun – no moon!
No morn – no noon –
No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member –
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! –
November!

Thomas Hood

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A Piece of GAA history from the Capuchin Archives

Maurice Davin, GAA Pioneer, 1903 

A rather mundane letter albeit one written by a towering figure in the history of Irish sport. Maurice Davin (1842-1927) was a farmer from Carrick-on-Suir in County Tipperary who achieved international recognition for his athletic endeavours in the 1870s. He is now chiefly remembered as one of the co-founders of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).

On 1 November 1884 Michael Cusack and Davin convened a meeting at Hayes’s Hotel in Thurles in County Tipperary, at which the GAA (Cumann Lúthchleas Gael) was established. Davin presided over the meeting and was elected as the organisation’s first president. He remains the only individual to have ever served two terms in that role. Although not actively involved in the GAA after 1889, he remained passionately committed to Gaelic sports. He organised matches on his farm at Deerpark near Carrick-on-Suir, and several Tipperary County finals and the All-Ireland hurling final of 1904 were played there. Davin was also responsible for drafting the early rules for both Gaelic football and hurling. The Davin Stand in Croke Park, Dublin, the principal national stadium of Ireland and the headquarters of the GAA, was named in his honour. Davin’s letter is addressed to Fr. Richard Henebry, a Waterford-born priest and Irish language scholar. It forms part of a collection of Henebry’s papers held in the Irish Capuchin Archives.

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“I asked my mother what will I be….”

This photo and caption shared on social media by Kerry Franchise is one of the sweetest things you’ll see today.

David (aged two – seated, squirming maybe, wearing the ‘goated’ 1998 Adidas jersey) and Paudie Clifford (four years old, standing snugly behind David’s buggie) at Kerry Airport to welcome the Kerry team home after 2000 All-Ireland win. 

Just two small boys lost in the crowd. But in 20 years time they’d be creating their own Kerry legacy. Stuff of dreams. And literally for them. 

Paudie now has 3 All Stars – and some said he didn’t have the ‘stuff’ for senior football when he was playing with the Kerry juniors; and now, after 3 years playing senior he has 3 All Stars; 3/3. Just goes to show – anything can happen if you will it into existence. 

As for David, well, what’a ya gonna say about Daithi that hasn’t already been said. It’s a pleasure to be around to just enjoy him. 

This photo shared by Fossa GAA shows Paudie and David on Friday evening last, November 17 2023 with their all star awards . David holds his Footballer of the Year trophy which he won for the second consecutive year.

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Looking forward to Christmas

One of my favourite anthologies from Moybella Press

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A Fact

The Lyreacrompane and District Journal has been published 14 times since its inception in 1990.

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