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

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Home and Away

Garden of Europe in late February 2025

Maintenance Work

When I was in the park last week, the coucil outdoor staff were busy clearing fallen and dangerous trees.

Lixnaw

A man called Alan Young posted this photo and the following text on a Facebook page about disused railway stations.

LIXNAW was a station in County Kerry on the line between Tralee and Listowel. Lixnaw closed in February 1963 when passenger services were withdrawn between Tralee, Listowel, Newcastle West, and Limerick. Goods services were then withdrawn in stages from the route, and the section through Lixnaw was closed to all traffic in January 1977. I took this photograph in April 2008 .

Pick Yourself Up and Dust Yourself Off

More from Kilkenny

Jenkinstown House is located in a lovely wood and forest park, popular with local dog walkers. On the Saturday of our visit some of us went for a stroll.

There were historical artefacts like this all around but no explanation nearby to satisfy our curiosity.

Anne and Aoife posed in front of a more modern shelter cun picnic area.

Aoifew having her nails painted in preparation for the birthday party.

Date for the Diary

Mattie Lennon on Pat Ingoldsby R.I.P.

By Mattie Lennon.

“In 1893, W. B. Yeats referred to Zozimus as ‘the last of the gleemen’ but he obviously failed to foresee the coming of Pat Ingoldsby- an old fashioned travelling bard to rival the best of them.” ( The words of Bobby Aherne in his book , D’you Remember Yer Man ? A portrait of Dublin’s famous characters.) 

Irish film  director Seamus Murphy made a  documentary film about much-loved Dublin poet Pat Ingoldsby.

Pat has presented children’s TV shows on RTÉ, written plays for the stage and radio, published books of short stories, and been a newspaper columnist but is mostly known for his unconventional and often humorous poetry.

The award-winning Murphy, speaking to RTÉ Entertainment, Murphy said, “Pat is suddenly back in fashion. I talk about him any time I’m doing interviews because I’m trying to raise money for the film but also because I’m trying to build his profile back up again and then there was a poetry festival recently where people were re-enacting his work.”

Writing for the website Just Six Degress, Murphy has said: “I got to know Pat while I was making Home is Another Place, a short film I made for The New Yorker over the summer in Dublin in 2013.

“Pat appeals to our reason through invention and surrealism, in a voice understandable to everyone. He is a rare and sympathetic witness and champion of the underdog – of which there are many in Dublin. Above all he is very funny.

“There is no better company than Pat and his poems to roam with around the streets of Dublin; absorbing its stories and conspiring with the mirth and darkness of the city.”

Murphy says that Ingoldsby, who  has recently passed away , was initially reluctant to appear on screen again.

He wouldn’t appear because he doesn’t want to appear in front of the public but these performers were performing his poems so there seems to be a bit of a comeback without him doing anything,” the director said.

“His poetry is extraordinary and every year he produces another book, self-published, and he could really have done with a good editor so this film will really try to pick out the best of him.

“He said to me, `you can make the film, I’d love you to make the film but I’m not going to be in it’. I said OK, it was almost like the PJ Harvey thing, but slowly I’d go out to him and I’d recorded him and we got to know each other and slowly he started trusting me and now I’ve got lots of stuff.”

“I’ve almost shot all I need of him, it’s the other stuff I need to do.”

Most of Pat’s poems are about his personal experiences, observations of life in Dublin, or mildly surreal humorous possibilities. 

Topics of personal experiences vary from the death of his father, or the electroconvulsive therapy he received (c. 1988), to his appreciation of the natural world or his pets (mostly cats, but also some fish). 

Observations of Dublin are mostly humorous conversations overheard on the bus, or the characters he sees and talks to while selling his books on the streets. Some observations are not so cheerful as he also sees the drunks and the homeless of Dublin city, and the some aspects of modernisation which he isn’t pleased with. 

His most distinctive style of poetry is his humorist style. A recurring character, Wesley Quench, appears in roles such as the driver of a Flying See-Saw Brigade. Another poem, “Vagina in the Vatican,” depicts a vagina sneaking into the Vatican unstopped because no one knew what it was – except for a few who couldn’t let slip that they did. 

He also occasionally produces stories for children. These are a childish version of his mildly surreal style. 

During the rapid increase in the use of mobile telephones, he offered a “Mobile Phone Euthanasia” service on the streets of Dublin, where he would destroy phones for annoyed owners. 

His cousin Maeve Ingoldsby is a playwright. 

When Pat is selling his books, more often than not, he can be found on Westmoreland Street.

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His poem For Rita With Love was  selected as one of the  Ireland’s 100 favourite poems as voted for by readers of the Irish Times. 

You came home from school

On a special bus

Full of people

Who look like you

And love like you

And you met me

For the first time

And you loved me.

You love everybody

So much that it’s not safe

To let you out alone.

Eleven years of love

And trust and time for you to learn

That you can’t go on loving like this.

Unless you are stopped

You will embrace every person you see.

Normal people don’t do that.

Some Normal people will hurt you

Very badly because you do.

A Fact

Until 2008 Nelson Mandela was banned from entering the USA and needed a special waiver any time he wanted to visit.

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Remembering Tolka Row

Market Street, February 2025

A Charity Shop Find

One of the great joys of shopping in charity shops is finding treasures like this.

There are thousands of Irish books published each year. They are often short print runs and when they are gone they’re gone. Every now and again a great one turns up in a charity shop. This is one such.

Cora, My Little Footballer

This is Cora Darby, my granddaughter. She loves football, both Gaelic and Soccer.

When her team, Lakewood Under 14s, played Ballyouster of Kildare in the National Cup, Cora was captain for the game.

Lakewood girls Under 14

They won. Now their next game is against a Drogheda club and they have home advantage. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile in Dublin…

Sean is in tennis action with his intervarsity team.

Tolka Row

These two pictures were published in Ireland’s Own. The late Maura Laverty is also the same Maura who wrote Full and Plenty.

This scene from the soap depicts the the Nolans and their neighbours in the sitting room of the Nolan house. The Nolans and their neighbours, the Feeneys, were working- class Dublin families living in the North side of the city.

It was a very regrettable practice in the early days of Telefís Eireann, to wipe the videotape after an episode was broadcast and reuse the tape. So, only the final episode of the four year series is extant.

I loved the show and like me many others loved the glimpse inside a part of Ireland we never saw in real life. Before television, there was huge urban rural disconnect. Tolka Row and its successor, The Riordans, introduced city folk and country folk to one another. It was a great learning experience.

If you have Money Problems

Exciting Opportunity for “Mid- Career Artists’

St. John’s in February 2025

St. John’s Theatre, Listowel, Co. Kerry, and the Irish Arts Center, New York, are inviting applications for the County Exchange international residency for mid-career artists. 

Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Kerry County Arts Office, the County Exchange residency aims to connect artists from the experimental theatre, dance, and performance sectors in Ireland and New York. 

Seven selected artists (four from Ireland, three from New York) will spend two weeks in Listowel (19 May–2 June 2025) and one week in New York (January 2026, dates TBC). The residency provides accommodation, travel, a daily subsistence allowance, and a €1,000 fee. 

Interested applicants should submit a 100-word statement of purpose, contact details, a brief bio, and links to previous work by email to newyorklistowel@gmail.com by Monday, February 24th, 2025, at midnight.

A Fact

The first Winter Olympic Games were held at Chamonix in 1924.

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A school Tour and a Birthday

St. Brigid window in St. John’s church, Ballybunion

St. Brigid of Kildare

St. Brigid mural on a wall in Kildare town

According to tradition Saint Brigid was born in Faughart, Co Louth, where there is a shrine and a holy well dedicated to her. The Saint found a convent in Kildare in 470 that has now grown into a cathedral city. There are the remains of a small oratory known as Saint Brigid’s fire temple, where a small eternal flame was kept alight for centuries in remembrance of her. She is one of Ireland’s patron Saints and known as Mother of the Gael. She is said to be buried along with St Colm Cille and St Patrick in Downpatrick. Throughout Ireland there are many wells dedicated to St Brigid. 

Growing up in 1970’s Listowel

More memories and photographs from Carmel Hanrahan…

Do you remember the Lartigue Little Theatre?  No stage and the seats were on a steep incline.  I visited the Writers’ Museum on a recent visit and was surprised to find that nobody seemed to know about it.  That is, until a lady of my own vintage came in and remembered it.  Where I now live, they have a Theatre which is of a similar design.  Mind you, the cast don’t come out with tea and biscuits for the audience at interval time as they once did in the Lartigue.

We had a Youth Club which was held on Friday night.  I think the venue was the Sluagh Hall.  Every now and then we had a disco there and that was a highlight.  Dominic Scanlon usually provided the music being DJ (there’s a term no longer used) as he was probably one of the few of us with a comprehensive record collection.  I seem to remember there were parents on duty at these to chaperone us.  A bit like the “Ballroom of Romance” if you remember that film.  Seamus G, I know you’ll read this, I don’t remember you in connection with the Youth Club. We must have split into different groupings by then.  

December 28th was the date set in stone for the Student’s Dance/Ball.  Held in the Listowel Arms Hotel and the only proper dance for years.  My sister dressed quite formally for the first one she attended but I think it rapidly became more casual after that.  I certainly don’t remember dressing up a lot for it.  Later, we occasionally went by bus to Glin on Saturday Nights for a showband-type dance that was held there.  My memory is of an over-crowded, sweaty, marquee with little or no facilities.  But, I imagine we wouldn’t have complained too much at the time.   Who organised those buses I wonder?  Of course, there was also the Central in Ballybunion where we went for discos in the late 1970’s.  Possibly only during the summer months.  That was also the venue for our Leaving Cert Results night out.  What a motley crew we were.  

School tour, to Killarney (Lady’s View).  Left to right: Bottom Row; Catherine Lynch, Christina Caffrey, Catherine Sullivan, Violet Nolan and Linda McKenna.   Top row; Dana Mulvihill, Carmel Hanrahan, Sr. Edmund, Jacqueline Quill, Sr. Therese, and Denise Mulvihill

One of myself and dad sometime in the early 1980’s.  The dog arrived very shortly after I left.  I was so upset as a child when we lost “Sooty” our dog that dad swore there would never be a dog in the house again while I was there.

A Special Birthday

Four of my six grandchildren have birthdays in January. so last Sunday we had a combined celebration for them.

Sean and Killian, no longer boyeens, now grown men, are nineteen.

Aisling turned 18. Róisín is 16.

Róisín and one of her friends from the yard.

When Aisling was born her uncle Bobby and Aunt Carine lived in France. Every baby in France has a comforter which they call a doudou so they sent one to Aisling. It became her favourite toy. It was carried everywhere, on trips to Kerry and Dublin and on holidays abroad. It filled the role of a faithful friend and confidante over the years. But at 18 it is now the worst for wear.

Carine decided to buy a new one for Aisling’s 18th birthday. But this particular squirrel is a discontinued line, replaced years ago by the more popular teddies and rabbits. There was none to be got anywhere.

Not to be defeated, Carine put out a call on a website that sells old and discontinued items and there she found a second hand but little used one.

When Aisling opened her birthday present on Sunday she was overcome with emotion. It was like meeting a long lost child. It reminded her of how handsome and cuddly Doudou looked all those years ago.

Here are the two boys, Doudous mark 1 and 2, memory banks to treasure for ever.

Best birthday present ever!

A Fact

Popeye appeared as a comic strip for the first time in 1929.

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Christmas 2024 Remembered

Chris Grayson in Killarney on January 7 2025

Molly’s Visit

I had the pleasure of Molly’s company for a few days before Christmas.

In Ballincollig

Nothing beats a family Christmas. I spent it in 2024 with my family in Ballincollig.

Church of St. Mary and St. John

Nice touch from the 220 bus

A Postbox Story

Chris Courtney on Facebook

P & T POST BOX

‘SE’ Saorstat Eireann (Irish Free State) post box in County Monaghan. Cast at the Jessop Davis foundry Enniscorthy sometime between 1922 and 1937. (Source: Irish Archeology). Photos also include Thomas Jessop Davis born 1864, died 1946, founder of St. John’s Ironworks and Foundry which was located in Enniscorthy, County Wexford. Wall tie plates, Manhole covers, Agricultural machinery components, ESB and P and T items testify to some of the many contracts he undertook at the Enniscorthy plant.

Acts of Neighbourliness

The internet was alive with amazing stories of helpfulness during the recent cold snap.

Beatrice shovelling snow on Charles Street

Pat rescuing a stranded motorist

Eddie cleared my path so that I could safely go to his house for Sunday lunch.

This is a milk delivery to Centra in Dromcollogher. The internet was awash with images of good samaritans delivering milk, drinking water, vital medicines, food, post and other essentials to stranded neighbours, friends and strangers.

Bridie Murphy’s picture of her husband heading out to help a neighbour almost broke the internet and rightly so. This picture of early January 2025 in Co. Limerick says more than 1,000 words.

In the midst of it all Mattie Lennon found a laugh.

Carmel Hanrahan’s Memories of Growing up in Listowel

Before you read today’s instalment, I have to give you an update.

Muireann O’Sullivan remembers the milkman. Here is Muireann’s comment

I think Carmel’s man on a bike delivering milk:cream was Martin Daly RIP late of Market Street ( the house now lived in by Máiréad Carroll). He certainly delivered to Charles St. on his bike. The late Tom Scannell, Skehenerin, took over the milk round when Martin retired. Our milk was now delivered in glass bottles with silver foil tops. The delivery was made extraordinarily early and, when we collected it from the window sill or doorstep, the cream would have risen to and settled on top – ready to pour on our porridge. 

If you have commented in the past, you will probably have noticed that comments no longer appear. I have no idea why. I will try to fix it. Meanwhile dont stop commenting. I can see and approve them even if I can’t upload them to the blog.

Carmel’s Story continued

… Tony O’Callaghan lived at the end of the road and I remember some of his brass works from the house especially a beautiful piece at the fireplace.  Working up the road, there were the Landers, then the Jones, Mai Watkins – sister to Aggie Nolan who filled in as surrogate mother to my sister and myself, a wonderful person and I can’t do her justice here, O’Donnell’s, Crowley’s, Us, Givens, Molyneaux’s, Nurse McMahon, Fitzmaurice’s, Moore’s, and a little further up O’Sullivan’s. (I hope I have the order right).

The Givens lived next door.  I can still remember our first morning in the new house when Seamus called to my dad through the fence enquiring if we were coming out to play.  Seamus, John and Peter were the sons of the house.  Pat had been to America which seemed a very exotic and exciting thing to us at the time.  Lisha and Pat drank coffee every day after lunch (my first introduction to that magic concoction) and I used to be given a cup also, made on milk and a spoonful from a little tin of Maxwell House powdered coffee.  Thus started my lifelong passion (some would say obsession) for anything coffee.  

Paudie and Sadie Fitzmaurice lived further up the road.  On Sundays, dad gave Sadie a lift to 12 o’clock Mass.  She used to allow several of us to come in and play with Mary’s dolls house which with retrospect was a spectacular affair and David’s Fort and his soldiers.  Personally, I remember that I preferred the soldiers.  Apologies here to Mary and David for commandeering their toys in their absence, but a great memory.  I also recall that Mary had a pair of Beetle Boots (white, if I remember correctly), the closest we ever got to a pair and a collection of Beetles records.  You must remember this was in the late 60’s when things like this were not common place.  Hilda O’Donnell also had a record collection which contained a lot of Elvis records.  I remember that Paudie went on holidays several times to Spain and returned with a gift for every child on the road.  A doll in Spanish costume was one and a Fan on another occasion.  I don’t remember what the boys got (too busy admiring my own).

More tomorrow

A Poem for all the stressed parents with children under their feet for too long

A Fact

Food rationing was introduced in the UK in 1940 due to shortages brought about by WW2.

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Christmas 2024

Lizzie’s with Fairytale of New York themed windows

Seamus Heaney Poem

A Delightfiul Christmas Present

This lovely gravity defying fieldmouse was carved for me from lime wood by a superb craftsman, Tony Woulfe.

Tony lives in Gorey, Co Wexford but he has family roots in Athea. He has a Listowel connection in that one of his many wooden creations was presented to the connections of a winning horse at Listowel Races.

As well as wood carving, Tony likes to write. He is a keen family historian and a great recorder of life as it was in his young days. We will hear more from him here in 2025.

Christmas 2024 in Listowel

A few photos from our lovely town at Christmas 2024

Memories of Christmas in Listowel in the 40s and early 50s 

By Marie (Canty) Sham

Maria grew up in O’Connell’s Avenue Listowel. Here she looks back on a very happy Christmas time

I remember

Going to the wood to cut the holly which grew wild, and the moss to put on the crib. 

Christmas Eve cleaning the house, the excitement of setting up the crib filling jam jars with sand and putting the candles in them, decorating them with crepe paper, putting up paper chains, my mother would have made a large Christmas pudding in a gallon and put it aside 

The turkey or goose was bought at the local market and plucked by our neighbour Bill Boyle. He must have done it for everyone because the road would be covered in feathers. The innards were still warm when it was cleaned out, that was all on Christmas Eve so it was fresh.

We were not well off but we were lucky as my father was always working, we were not short of anything. At that time in Kerry there was a lot of unemployment.

The shops mam shopped in during the year gave a Christmas box. One shop would give tea, sugar and maybe a pot of jam. That shop was called Jet Stacks and it is not there now. The butcher Murphy’s would send Danny to deliver us maybe a large piece of lamb, of course it would be delivered by him on his bicycle with a basket in front

I can also remember a donkey and cart outside the shops with a tea chest and all the shopping would be put into it. These people would be from the country and would not come to town again until after Christmas.

There was a shop called Fitzgibbons and we would pay in whatever we could afford for toys or anything else. I paid in sixpence a week for a sewing box and I still had it when I got married. Mam paid every week for the Nativity figures for the crib. I have never seen anything so beautiful since.

The ham would be on the boil and the crib set up. The candles would be lit by the youngest member of the house, I think at 7 o’ clock .

Our clean clothes would be kept warm over the range ready for midnight mass.

Going out on the frosty night and seeing all the windows with lighted candles was wonderful.

Home after mass a warm fire in the range, a slice of the ham or maybe a fry! Our stockings would be hanging at the end of the bed. We did not get much; my dad was very good with his hands and would make things for us. He made a scooter once and a rocking horse.

My brother Neil wanted a mouth organ and it was like in the song Scarlet Ribbons, dad went to so many shops until he got one for him. I was too young to remember that but mam told that story.

Christmas morning I will never forget waking up to the smell of the turkey roasting.

Up quickly and look if Santa had come, our stockings might have an orange, we always got something. I remember getting roller skates; I also remember getting a fairisle jumper from Santa. The problem was I had seen my aunt knitting it. All the children would be out in the Avenue with their new toys to show off.

Before dinner our neighbour Paddy Galvin would come in to wish a Happy Christmas and mam would give him a bottle of stout. I think that was the only time he ever called in. We would have lemonade and stout in for Christmas.

Dinner was wonderful, our Mam was a great cook. There was Mam Dad, Nelie, Paddy, Doreen and myself. My brother Junie came along later, and after we would wrap up warm and visit the cribs; one in each church, hospital, convent and St Marys and bring home a bit of straw for our crib which I think was blessed.

More food when we got home 

Bed and looking forward to St Stephens day and the Wren Boys, no cooking on that day we finished up the leftovers.

What wonderful times!

Flavin’s Window

Moments of Reflection

Mary Hanlon met me on Church Street and I accompanyied her to Woulfe’s to sign my book for her.

If you are stuck for a Christmas present, don’t forget my Moments of Reflection is available in Woulfe’s, Eason, Listowel Garden Centre, Garvey’s, Prifma and Kerry Writers’ Museum.

It is also in Watsons in Duagh, OMahonys in Tralee and The Friary Bookshop in Killarney, in Presents of Mind and The Kanturk Bookshop in Kanturk

On Radio Kerry at around 7.25 a.m. and after the news at 12.00 you can hear me read my Thought for the Day. Some of this week’s Thoughts are in Moments of Reflection.

A Sean McCarthy Poem

A Fact

We know about fingerprints, but did you know that each of us has a unique tongue print?

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