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
Fr. Anthony Gaughan, who has donated all of his awards to be displayed in Kerry Writers’ Museum is the author of 45 books, most of them scholarly histories of important people and places. His best known book of local interest is Listowel and its Vicinity which is now a much sought after collector’s item.
At age 91 he is still going strong and will launch another book, a collection of his reviews, at this year’s Listowel Writers’ Week.
Helen Moylan, mother of the silversmith artist, holding Fr. Gaughan’s Writers’ Week Lifetime Achievement trophy at the handover of his precious decorations on April 24 2023. This piece of Eileen Moylan artwork depicts Listowel landmarks, dear to Fr. Gaughan and it has a quotation from his dear friend, John B. Keane. . It is very generous of Fr. Tony to bring it back to Listowel, where it can be be displayed and appreciated.
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Gardaí Raise Awareness of Domestic Abuse
On Friday last, April 28 2023, Listowel Garda Station joined other Garda stations nationwide to raise awareness of domestic violence.
Purple day was winding to a close as I passed but I was welcomed in and treated to a bun.
John Ryan joined Sergeant Fidelma O’Leary and the representative of Adapt Women’s refuge in Tralee for my photograph.
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Steinbeck Letter
Found on the internet;
In 1955 John Steinbeck wrote to Marlyn Monroe.
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In Tralee
The telephone kiosk is back.
This is the new public telephone in Tralee.
The phone accepts coins and cards. There is a minimum charge of €2. Not cheap but it could be a lifesaver in certain conditions. Beside the phone there is a touch screen with vital phone numbers and other handy information. The sun was shining on it so I couldn’t photograph it for you.
This looks to me, like a welcome development .
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A Fact
Bagpipes were introduced to The British Isles by the Romans.
Éamon ÓMurchú took this photo of the bridge to Listowel Racecourse in December 2021
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Beautiful door on Courthouse Road
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Grave of the Presentation Sisters in St. Michael’s Graveyard
The last time I posted the nuns’ headstones I omitted one. It was missed. So for the sake of accuracy I’m putting them all together here now. Sisters who have died since 2013 have been buried “with their own people”. May they all rest in peace.
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Coming to Listowel Writers’ Week 2023
The future of Irish writing is in safe hands. Sarah Gilmartin is one of the new generation of Irish writers and novelists.
On Friday, June 2 2023 in Listowel you can hear Gilmartin discuss her novel with Una Mannion and Elaine Feeney.
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In Tralee
Tralee’s Pikeman
These are two of the inscriptions on the plinth of the statue
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My Weekend Visitors
Listowel looking beautiful in the sunshine As I welcomed the Kildare branch of the family.
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Important Donation to Kerry Writers Museum
Fr Anthony Gaughan is one of Listowel’s most prolific and respected writers. On April 24 2023 he donated all his awards to be displayed in Kerry Writers’ Museum.
Not all of the board of the Writers’ Museum could attend the hand over of this generous donation. Those present were Seán McCarthy, David Browne, Cara Trant, Fr. Gaughan, Jimmy Deenihan, Gabriel Fitzmaurice, Bernie Carmody and James Kenny pictured with the awards.
This unusual piece is in St. Patrick’s Hall. It is the work of Micheál Kelliher.
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Coming to Listowel Writers Week 2023
This is Elaine Feeney whose latest novel, How to be Build a Boat, is reviewed in all of last weekend’s newspapers.
I haven’t read it yet but it sounds like a fairly light summer read so I’m in.
I have only recently read Emilie Pine’s Ruth and Pen. I loved Eleanor Oliphant too. If you are familiar with these, you will know that the protagonists are neurodiverse people. Sounds like Feeney’s hero is too.
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In a Listowel Pub Window
I snapped these old artefacts as I passed Tankers recently.
My mother had a sewing machine just like this. Back then sewing machines were either hand operated or treadle. The treadle ones were brilliant as they left both hands free to manoeuvre the material that was being sewn.
This old wireless was once a luxurious item.
This item is a bit before my time. I think it is an early hot water jar used to warm the bed. I could be wrong in that though.
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A Different Kind of Concert
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Crowley’s Fest
Here is Raymond O’Sullivan’s introduction to Bealtaine and Crowley’s Fest:
Bealtaine approaches and we move into the light half of the year. Our Celtic ancestors originally divided the year in two, the dark half, and the new year, beginning at Samhain, and the light half at Bealtaine. Similarly, their days began in the darkness, at sunset. An ‘airy’ time of year when the ‘little people’ are moving house, from their winter to their summer lodgings, and also the time when music lovers move to the sunny south west for the annual Crowley’s Fest in Kenmare.
The Cíarraí Theas crowd certainly know how to pick an appropriate and auspicious time and place to throw a party. On Sunday evening, to the sound of music, we’ll SPRING into SUMMER as the golden sun sets in Inbhear Scéine. The exact time and place where, according to mythology, Parthalán led one of the first groups of pioneers to settle in Ireland.
“Samhradh buí ó luí na gréine,
Thugamar féin an samhradh linn.”
I may have strayed a little off the purpose of this post, but here it is, the list of the events for the weekend:-
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A Ghost Story from Ballybunion
A story recorded by Sheila Sheahan as told by her mother aged 52 in 1937 or 38. The story is preserved in the Schools’ Folklore Collection in the National Archives
About thirty years ago on Christmas night a man in Beale had to leave his own house and he had to take his candle in his hand to a neighbour’s house, because he was hunted by ghosts who asked him to leave as there was to be a fight that night between the Wrens and the Shines who lived in the neighbourhood some year before.
As he and his sister were leaving, a man whom they knew to be dead of years offered to lead them and when they went out in the yard, he had to divide the crowd to allow them pass. The day before the place was covered with magpies and he did not know what was to happen.
The morning after this he was going fishing. The moon had risen. When he got up, he thought it was day. He went to the boathouse and waited under his canoe until it was bright. As he was about to lie under the canoe, the man who told him to leave his house the night before came to the canoe and peeped in. He told him that if they went fishing that morning, someone would be drowned.
When it was bright he and four other men went fishing. They were not far out when a great storm came and overturned the boat and two men were drowned.
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A Fact
The term Honeymoon comes from the Babylonians. They declared mead, which is a honey flavoured wine, as the official wedding drink. The bride’s parents were required to keep the groom supplied with mead for a month after the wedding….the honeymoon period.
Some things in The Square have remained the same for centuries. Somethings are very new.
We have free Wifi.
We have a defibrillator
We have an outdoor public seating and dining area.
And we have 2 EV charging points.
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St. Mary’s at Eastertime
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Shortlist announced
These are the novels shortlisted for the prestigious award of Kerry Book of the Year at Listowel Writers’ Week 2023. The Kerry sponsored prize is a very generous €20,000. The winner will be announced on the opening night of the festival on May 31st 2023.
You can pick up a quick taster of this year’s programme in shops around town or on the website. The full programme will be available shortly.
Visit the website to book tickets for events or to volunteer to be part of this year’s festival.
My Aoife’s grandad is a gardener and an outdoor person. He found a new use for his wheelbarrow recently.
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Coming to Writers Week 2023
Joseph O’Connor’s latest book tells the story of a Kerry World War 2 hero, Fr. Hugh O’Flaherty.
At 3.00 p.m. on Sunday June 4th you can catch Joseph O’Connor in a Writers’ Week 2023 event with Richard Ford.
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A Fact
In 1945 a computer at Harvard malfunctioned while it was being tested. When the lady who was working on it at the time investigated she found a moth had got into one of the circuits and she removed it. Ever since, when something goes wrong with a computer, it is said to have a bug in it.
An Easter Window in St. Mary’s Listowel in April 2023
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Then and Now
On Church Street
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Beautiful Cherry Tree
In Listowel Pitch and Putt Course
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A Biden Story (Kind of)
From Mattie Lennon
When President Biden mentioned his great-grandfather Finnegan, the poet, it reminded me. The poet Paddy Finnegan was a friend of mine. He was from Galway and was no stranger to Listowel Writers’ Week. I don’t know if he was related to “the President’s Finnegans” and there again I don’t know that he wasn’t!
When Paddy died in 2014 two others and myself organised a “Finnegan’s Wake with an Apostrophe”, in Dublin’s Mansion House. President Higgins couldn’t attend but his daughter Alice Mary did. We made a DVD of the evening’s events,
I’ve a piece that I wrote about Paddy Finnegan after his death.
Paddy Finnegan passed away, unexpectedly, on 16th July.
Shortly after his death poet and writer Stephen James Smith wrote, “Paddy was a wonderful man who inspired me with his poetry and acted as a great supporter of other young poets too. . . as he speaks to me beyond the grave his verse is still unnerving me with his gravely pitted voice holding my ears. . . .Paddy you’ll always live on in my memory, you’ll always be one of the first people who made poetry sing to me, you’ll always be a writers’ writer, a warrior with words. The Fionn mac Cumhaill of verse.“
Paddy was born “between two years” either in the dying moments of 1942 or just after midnight on New-year’s day 1943 in Dereen, Kilkerrin, County Galway. Like everywhere else in rural Ireland clocks weren’t all that accurate at the time.
While a pupil at the National School in Kilkerrin a teacher convinced his father, Michael, that Paddy had academic potential. He got a Scholarship to St Jarleths College, Tuam, in 1956 and continued his formal education in UCD.
Paddy had a fantastic knowledge of the English language, was fluent in all dialects of Gaeilge and had a good grasp of Greek and Latin. His versatility was increased in the year he spent in Wolverhampton as one of “the men who built Britain”. He became an expert on how to fry steak on the head of a shovel.
He joined the Irish Civil Service in 1962 but office work wasn’t for Paddy. Apart from being on a higher mental plane than most of his colleagues he was an open-air man. During his stint there I’m sure Sigerson Clifford’s line often went around in his head, “They chained my bones to an office stool and my soul to a clock’s cold hands.“
He worked as a bus conductor with CIE from 1971 to 1980.
When I got a job as a bus-conductor in 1974 I was sent to Donnybrook garage. I didn’t ask who was the most intelligent person in the garage but if I had the reply would have been concise, “Paddy Finnegan.” As a conductor he could reply to any criticism from an irate passenger; in several languages if necessary. During this period Paddy and a few of his fellow intellectual would assemble in a city centre flat which was known a Dáil Oíche. It was a later edition of “The catacombs” as described by Anthony Cronin in Dead as Doornails. With such a collection of intelligentsia you can imagine (or can you?) the topics under discussion. He lived for many years in Lower Beechwood Avenue, Ranelagh. If ever a house deserved a Blue Plaque it’s Paddy’s former residence.
He brought out a collection of his poetry, sadly now out of print, titled Dactyl Distillations. I know dear erudite reader that you know the meaning of dactyl but I had to look it up. It is, “a foot of poetic meter in quantitave verse.”
He was inspired by everyday events. His “Post from Parnassus” was inspired by the annual Saint Patrick’s Day commemoration of Patrick Kavanagh on the banks of the Grand Canal.
Post From Parnassus
(after Patrick Kavanagh)
by Paddy Finnegan
Here by my seat the old ghosts meet. Here, the place where the old menagerie Relentlessly soldiers on Remembering the old green dragon, me, On the feast of the Apostle of Ireland.
Ye greeny, greying catechumens Will cease to stage this ceremony Only on the command of Sergeant Death. Then break not the heart of poet past Nor that of preening poet present: But know, ye prodigies of prosody That multitudes in times to be Will listen to my lays And look askance While cods forever fake Their own importance.
More recently he recorded a, limited edition, CD, Fíon Ceol agus Filíocht. I hope that somebody will now bring out an “unlimited” edition. Since 1995 he was a familiar sight selling the Big Issue outside Trinity College and more recently at Bewleys on Grafton Street.
Paddy always had a story, like the day he was chatting to his fellow poet Professor Brendan Kennelly at the gate of Trinity as dark clouds hung overhead . “ . . . I asked the Ballylongford wizard for a meteorological prognostication. He replied in the immortal words: ‘ There’’ be no rain; it’ll be as dhry, as dhry as a witches tit.’ He wasn’t gone fifteen minutes when amazingly the cloud dispersed and as our old friend Pythagoras used to say: ‘ Phoebus played a blinder for the rest of the day.” That was Paddy.
I asked his brother James if there were poets in their ancestry. He said no, that their father was a farmer but, in the words of Seamus Heaney, “By God, the old man could handle a spade.”
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Listowel Success in The Rebel County
Elaine and Seán O’Sullivan with Bobby Cogan and Carine Schweitzer.
They won the weekend table quiz in The White Horse, Ballincollig.
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An old Post Box
This post box is on the street in Tralee at the corner of Day Place. These pillar boxes date back to an earlier era when they were painted red and had the monarch’s cypher on the front.
This one is one of the ones that had an angle grinder taken to it and the cypher shorn off.
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Just a Thought
My Reflections, broadcast last week on Radio Kerry are here;
Absolutely pure gold is so soft it can be molded with the hands. A lump of pure gold the size of matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court. An ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire 50 miles long.
Samhradh buí ó luí na gréine,
