Category: Uncategorized Page 6 of 482

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.

John Kelliher’s Listowel

John Kelliher is an exceptional photographer. He captured the mood of Listowel perfectly on this St. Patrick’s Day in The Square  in 2021.

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Strange but True

Today’s fact for you

Having already given birth to 19 children, Emily, Duchess of Leinster (1731 to 1814) eloped with their tutor, William Oglivie, after the duke’s death. She had another two children with him.

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 Dilligent Tidy Town Volunteer

In the midst of a pandemic this intrepid volunteer is still weeding and sweeping and doing his bit to keep Listowel looking its best.

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Bridge Road Through the Millennium Arch

Photo taken in 2009

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An Unexpected Response

This is the earliest photo I have of myself and my sister. I’d say she is between 2 and 3 and I’m 14 months younger.

Last week I wrote about her and particularly about the weeks prior to her death. She was in hospital a lot of the time in her last year of life and she matured a lot during that time. It was as if she experienced old age as well as childhood in those few weeks. She made friends with a lovely cohort of much older ladies and she blossomed in their company.

I knew people would be moved by Ina’s story and I am grateful for the sympathetic response from blog followers and Facebook friends.

What surprised me was the number of people who contacted me to say that they remembered Ina aka Chrissy. It is now 57 years since her passing. I knew that she was fondly remembered by our family and by her ever faithful best friend, Marion, but many other people remember her too and the tragedy of her untimely passing.  

The heading that I put on last week’s piece was a line from Thomas Moore’s Believe me if all those endearing young charms…   “The heart that has truly loved never forgets’. 

How apt it was.

 

 Sheep in Firies

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Our Beautiful Old Coins

Here are some of our beautiful old coins which were replaced by the uniform european ones. Will we see the demise of coin in our lifetime?

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Remembering a Very Proud Kerryman

From Moyvane website  by Eileen McElligott

Maurice O’Connell was born at Glin Road, Moyvane in May 1936. His parents, Thomas and Mary (nee McMahon) O’Connell were both Principal Teachers in the local National School. Maurice must have been a very welcome addition to their family of six daughters! Another son, Thomas, followed later but died in infancy, and another daughter, Anna.

Following in the footsteps of his father and uncles, Maurice commenced his secondary education in St. Michael’s College, Listowel of which his grandfather, also Maurice O’Connell, was a co-founder and a brilliant Classics master for fifty years.

After a remarkable Intermediate Certificate in which he got first place in Ireland in Greek, he studied in St. Brendan’s Seminary, Killarney where he was also an outstanding student having got an illustrious result in his Leaving Certificate at sixteen years of age. He then went to Maynooth Ecclesiastical College and after three years he commenced a teaching career in Dublin, completed his M.A. in classics and subsequently taught in the International College in St. Gallen before returning to Dublin to embark on a Civil Service career. He was appointed Administrative Officer in the Department of Finance, and later Second Secretary in the same Department before his appointment as Governor of the Central Bank in 1994.

Married to Dubliner Marjorie Treacy, they have four adult children. Their sons Thomas and Martin, like five of Maurice’s nephews, chose the medical profession, while his two daughters Catherine and Marjorie is working on a Master’s degree.

Though he has traveled widely in Europe and beyond in the course of his career and has conferred with Princes and Prime Ministers, his family, his staff and the people of Moyvane – and his Glin Road neighbours in particular – come first.

Asked in a newspaper interview where his favourite place was, he simply replied “Kerry!”. 

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Listowel was a Different Place in 2009

This photo was taken on the Monday after the All Ireland Football Final 2009. We have just enjoyed a great race week and Kerry has just won the football. Jerry Ryan is doing his best to clear up after all the celebrations.

These times will come again.

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A Project for you (And time is running out)

This project is tailor made for some of you, my loyal blog followers. 

You can make the video on your phone.

Here is the message from Listowel Community and Business Alliance

Are you from Listowel Living abroad?
We’re working on a new project and need your help!
PM us or email us at info@listowelalliance.ie before April 1

November Walk

 Mallow Camera Club;  Grade 1. Third Place. Ann O’ Mara.

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“The heart that has truly loved  never forgets”

This is the last photo of my only sister. She was Nora Christina Ahern, called Ina at home and Chrissy in school.

This photo was taken in Mallow Hospital. She had put on the jumper over her nightdress so she would look “dressed”.

She is not smiling because it is a passport photo. Indeed she has little reason to smile anyway because she is very ill.

It is  March 1964. She is 15 years old. A month later on April 10th she passed away. She never got to Lourdes so the passport was never needed after all.

In this photo, Ina is wearing a yellow jumper she knitted herself. Because she was 15 she was too old for the children’s ward so she was in a ward with all the old women. They were lovely to her and she became one of them. Their pursuits became her pursuits. She knit with their encouragement and she joined in the exchange of patterns. She read Ireland’s Own and discussed the latest adventures of Kitty the Hare. Best of all she prayed with them. Every evening the women of the ward took out their rosary beads and said the family rosary. Ina, who, before her illness, had been a bit of a tearaway, fell into line with her new friends. She took consolation and support from the communal prayers. She knew that many of the older ladies were praying for a peaceful death for themselves and for each other. They desperately wanted their youngest patient to get better.

I know now what I didn’t know then. Ina was never going to get better. She was in the departure lounge too.

I think of my sister often, especially at this time of her anniversary. She is part of everything I do. Today she is part of my blog.

Through the years;

Aged 4 and 5

Aged 13 and 14 on our Confirmation day

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Another local phrase remembered

Mary, I like to phrase ‘out beside it.’  In South Meath, we say, ‘You’re out by the side of it’ when we point out to someone  that they are wrong or mistaken about something. One memorable instance of this was when a school-mate of mine, having had a few clips about the ear from the Master, retorted: ‘If you think you can ‘bate’ me like that, you are out by the side of it!’ Well, he would have been if it had happened these days… Nicholas L.