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
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 is the Darren Enright sculpted seat in the grounds of Kerry Writers’ Museum aka The Seanchaí.
Darren’s clever and very apt design features an exact replica of Michael’s bodhrán, perfect in every detail, even the studs on the rim.
The bodhrán from the back.
Michael’s life was selflessly entwined with his Listowel community. Music was just one string to his bow.
Here is Michael front and centre among a group of Kerry Diocesan young people in Knock to see Pope John Paul II in 1979.
Michael with Derry Tatten and Gerard Lynch on a Gorta Walk in the 1980s
Members of the Listowel Mission Bazaar group making a presentation to Michael Dowling, Listowel , second from left, to mark his 44 years of service to the Bazaar committee at Scoil Realta na Maidne. L-R : Julie Gleeson, Michael Dowling R.I.P., Brendan Behan, Billy Moloney, Mary Hanlon & Kay Hanley R.I.P.
Michael was a great entertainer as auctioneer at these annual bazaars. If you have never been to one of these legendary events you have missed an iconic Listowel treat.
The night consisted of raffles for hampers and vouchers donated by local businesses. While the ticket sellers were wandering among the crowd selling the raffle tickets the auctioneer entertained everyone by selling items which have been donated. These items may be a Christmas cake, a bottle of spirits, a box of biscuits, a picture, or a set of ware. Michael, as auctioneer, would have no idea what was next for sale until he saw it in front of him.
A great source of amusement was Michael’s lack of familiarity with intoxicating drink. He was a lifelong pioneer and all wine to Michael was “a lovely bottle of table wine”. Before you put in a bid you had to strain to see if you were buying Cork Cream Sherry from the back of someone’s drinks cupboard or Chateauneuf de Pape from Galvin’s off licence.
He bantered continuously with the audience, commenting on their shrewd judgement in making a purchase or jokingly inviting himself to tea to sample the just purchased cake.
Michael was happy as long as he was raising money for a good cause.
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In Vincent’s
I met the lovely gentle Eileen O’Sullivan in Vincent’s recently. She was accompanied by her son who had come to Listowel for a while to look after her.
Eileen had surgery recently, but like the trooper she is, she is making a great recovery. She was delighted to be pampered by her sons but now ready to get back into the driver’s seat, literally and metaphorically.
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A Fact
Elvis Presley wore a cross, a star of David and the Hebew letter chi as jewellery. When questioned about this strange mix, he replied
“I don’t want to miss out on heaven due to a technicality.”
Cora felt that a trip to Ballybunion would be wasted without a bit of a dip. Her mother assures me she was well away from those dangerous looking waves. The camera foreshortened the distance.
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Listowel’s Presentation Sisters
Once upon a time the sisters used to be buried in a cemetery in the convent grounds. A nun’s funeral was a solemn ritual, full of ceremony and singing, her sisters chants accompanying their departed loved one into eternity. Now the local convent building and grounds, including the graveyard, is no longer sacred ground and the remains of the sisters are now interred in St. Michael’s Cemetery.
Many of the names on these simple stones are names of great women I knew as friends and work colleagues. They sacrificed much and their legacy will benefit Listowel and beyond for years to come.
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Retirement marked with a Tony O’Callaghan plaque
When Jim Cogan retired from St. Michael’s he was presented with a beautiful piece of Tony O’Callaghan’s artwork adorned with symbols of family, Jim’s work life and his interests. It is a treasure.
In the photograph with Jim are Bill Walshe and Fr. Seamus Linnane on behalf of the Board of Management and John Mulvihill, principal, St. Michael’s.
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Beautiful Signwriting
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A Fact
Both Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day, April 23 1616
When I was writing about the origins of our knitting group, I mentioned that our first home was in Off The Square café. Someone asked me where on earth was that. Well, here it is. It has had several changes of business. Probably the longest was Paul Slemon’s shoe shop. It has also been Oscar Wildes’ and Lizzie’s Little Kitchen before it’s present tenant, a piazza shop.
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Brian Donnelly, former US Representative and Ambassador, dies at 76.
(March 2, 1946 – February 28, 2023)
A descendant of Irish immigrants, Mr. Donnelly was the man behind the famous “Donnelly Visa” which in the late 1980s and 1990s liberated thousands of undocumented Irish in the US from the fear of arrest and deportation.
Brian Donnelly, as a congressman from Massachusetts, shepherded the visa scheme bearing his name that delivered 26,000 visas to the Irish at a time when Ireland could not provide many of its young people with jobs.
Listowel’s Paul O’Sullivan leading out a bevy of beautiful Roses in the U.S.’s biggest St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York in March 2023
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Celtic Crosses
A Celtic Cross headstone in St. Michael’s graveyard, Listowel.
You may remember I told you that the cross with the circle was a merger of pagan and Christian symbolism dating back to the coming of Christianity to Ireland in the ninth century A.D.
That is a widely held explanation for the cross. However it would appear that the symbolism may go back to even earlier times.
Mike King, an expert on things Celtic, posted on Facebook that in a Minneapolis museum there is an Egyptian textile dating back to the fifth century decorated with a cross surrounded by a wreath. The interpretation of this is victory over death, the wreath symbolising victory and the cross death.
This is the Kildalton Cross on the island of Islay in Scotland. It was carved in the 8th century and is considered the finest existing example of a celtic cross in Scotland.
Anti-government forces in the Irish Civil War attacked the Listowel and Ballybunion Railway several times in early 1923. Damage to the rolling stock and stations of the 9-mile monorail between the two Kerry towns, and the impracticalities of operating such a unique line in the newly consolidated Irish rail system, forced its permanent closure in October 1924.
Passengers and mail on the LBR had been targeted by Irish republican forces during the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921. In January 1923, during the civil war, armed men forced the Ballybunion stationmaster to open the line’s office, goods store, and waiting room, which they doused with petrol and paraffin oil and set on fire. Within an hour a similar attack occurred at the Lisselton station, about halfway between the two terminuses.
Such destruction is generally attributed to the IRA forces opposed to the Irish Free State. These “irregulars” also cut down about 1,700 yards of telegraph wire and six poles between Listowel and Ballybunion, matching attacks along other Irish rail routes.
Nicknamed the Lartigue after inventor Charles Lartigue, the monorail was “suspended indefinitely” in early February 1923 due to the sabotage. Nearly 40 employees lost their jobs, impacting about 100 family members and ancillary businesses.
With the train out of service, a char-a-banc and motor car service began operating between the two towns, but it also came under attack in March.Once the civil war ended later that spring, the Lartigue was repaired in time for the busy summer season at Ballybunion, a seaside resort. By mid-July, the Freeman’s Journal reported the Lartigue “has already, particularly on Sundays, been taxed to almost its fullest capacity in the conveyance of visitors.”
Like the Lartigue, however, the national newspaper also would have its run ended in 1924.
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Then and Now
2007 and 2023
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Friends Reunited
Mary Sheehy met this lady twenty years ago on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. They met last week by chance in The Flying Saucer café, Listowel.
