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

Easter 2023

By

On April 7, 2023

In Listowel

The Big Bridge on an April Sunday in 2023

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Then and Now

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My Easter Visitors

Grandchildren grow into teenagers and have their one interests and commitments so finding time for Nana is now a bit more difficult. Cora and her Mammy brought Molly for a welcome visit.

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Easter

First I must tee this up with a story.

A. C. Bradley is probably the most renowned Shakespeare scholar ever. He was required reading when I was in college and he was the absolute authority on Shakespeare’s tragedies. An anonymous student wrote the following;

I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s ghost

Sat for a civil service post.

The English paper for that year

Had several questions on King Lear

Which Shakespeare answered very badly

Because he hadn’t read his Bradley.

Now I’m going to do a bit of Bradleying myself as I interpret for an artist I never met and read something into a work that the creator may not have intended.

This simple artistic installation on Olive Stack’s window says Easter to me. The stone is rolled back and the tomb is empty. Jesus is risen.

Thank you.

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Winner alright

Remember this:

Dave O’Sullivan, our super newspaper researcher found this;

Are any of them still with us and do they remember their win?

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A Fact

China has a population of over a billion. It has only 200 family names.

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Celtic Crosses and children

By

On April 6, 2023

In Listowel, Schools

Listowel Town Square in March 2023

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Dough Mama

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.

The US Congress reauthorized the program in 1990. 

It is now known as the Diversity Visa programme and authorizes 55,000 visas annually worldwide.

Go raibh míle maith agat, Brian

( Source: Irish Outreach Centre, San Diego)

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A Listowel Ambassador in the New York Parade

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.

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More photos from St. Patrick’s Day in Listowel

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A Fact

Elephants are the only animals that can’t jump.

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Listowel Police Mutiny in 1920

By

On April 5, 2023

In Ballybunion, Listowel, Personal

Photo; Éamon ÓMurchú in Malahide

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Family Time

One of my Ballincollig grandchildren attends Gaelscoil Uí Riordáin.

I attend their show last week. It was hard to believe that they were just primary school fifth and sixth class pupils. They were superb.

There is my little Cora giving it socks as an exotic dancer.

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Tony O’Callaghan and the Listowel Police Mutiny

This is the Tony O’Callaghan plaque on display in Listowel Garda Barracks. It is a record of the names of the mutineers.

“On June 19th 1920, fourteen rank and file members of the Royal Irish Constabulary in Listowel defied the order of their superior officers and refused to hand over the control of the barracks to the British Military, and to adopt a shoot to kill policy against the local community. This incident – forever more known as the Listowel Police Mutiny – was a seminal event in the Irish War of Independence.” Kerry Writers Museum.

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Then and Now

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A Ballybunion Sunday

Essential training and practice for this vital service takes place on Sunday mornings in Ballybunion. My daughter-in-law took the photos.

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A Fact

A jiffy is an actual unit of time. It’s 1/100 of a second.

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Shop signs and artwork in an old Galway Hotel

By

On April 4, 2023

In Listowel

Photo: Éamon ÓMurchú in Malahide

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Martin Chute; Master Signwriter

Martin stopped for a chat as he was putting the finishing touches to Tadhg Horan’s sign in The Square.

The sign is top class as always. I’ll be back to photograph the finished sign soon. Martin was adding a border.

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A Few more from the St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Michael and Noreen Queally with Mary Browne

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Tony O’Callaghan, The Galway Connection

Dave O’Sullivan found us this story from July 1972

Tony O’Callaghan was commissioned by the owners of The Great Southern Corrib hotel to make 15 copper relief pictures in honour of the 15 tribes. The finished works hung in the hotels de Burgh Room.

The hotel was demolished in 2021. I wonder where the artworks are now.

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Then and Now

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Lartigue Production at St. John’s

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Winners

By

On April 3, 2023

In Listowel

Allos Restaurant in March 2023

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Then and Now

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Some Young Musicians on Parade on St. Patrick’s Day 2023

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Collectors on Daffodil Day 2023

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Something Old

Photo; Johnny Hannon

Looks like a Labour Party event in Dick Spring’s election campaign. Don’t know the year.

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I wonder who won

Gerard Flaherty shared this old ticket with Glin Historical Society

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And the winner is……

Listowel’s Community Rose and entrant to the competition to be the Kerry Rose is Debbie Woulfe. Debbie, who was sponsored by John R.’s was chosen at an event in The Listowel Arms on Friday March 31 2023

Photo from Listowwel.ie

Aishling Enright, Margaret Cahill, Theresa Flavin, Ann Woulfe, Debbie Woulfe, Nicole Tagney, Orla Joy, Pierse Walsh.

Photo; John Kelliher

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