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
Photo: Bridie Murphy in Newcastlewest with an infra red camera
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God be with the Days
I don’t know the year.
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Schooldays in the 1960s and 70s
Carmel Hanrahan remembers.
…My dad and Tom O’Halloran were great friends and worked at the same job of Agricultural Inspector. They golfed together in Ballybunion and later played Pitch and Putt in Listowel. My dad tried to get me interested in Pitch and Putt but, no, I didn’t get it. Couldn’t see the point – apologies to all golfers! Bridge was another thing, again, no…. I imagine his thinking was to have some skills for later social life. Thankfully, my work and social life depended on neither Golf nor Bridge. We spent quite a few Sunday afternoons at the Banna Beach Hotel with the O’Halloran clan and then the fight was on to get into the back of Tom’s VW Beetle for the return journey.
School photos were taken annually. I’m fairly certain that Xavier McAuliffe was the photographer but I’m open to correction here. Heads up parents……. those sweet youngsters are perfectly capable of manipulating events to suit their own end. Generally, class photographs were taken as a group at the railings in the play ground with the relevant nun standing at the side. However, our infant’s class (called Babies Class) and senior infants’ photos were taken individually and only siblings could be in the same photo. Hilda Fitzell and myself, having convinced the photographer that we were sisters had ours taken together. Here’s the proof. You have been warned.
Carmel and Hilda
Carmel with her real sister, Mary, taken around the same time. This occasion was Joanna O’Donnell’s birthday party, circa 1967.
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As January Draws to a Close
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A Fact
Tigers are the only predators who prey on adult bears.
Carmel Hanrahan has taken another stroll down Memory Lane. I will bring you some more of her memories this week.
Thank you, Carmel, on behalf of all followers of Listowel Connection.
And thank you, Judy MacMahon who started it all with this.
Did we really have better Summers back in the day, or is that nostalgia taking hold?
It seems the weather was more consistent. School holidays arrived and we never gave a thought to the possibility of rain. We didn’t seem to experience the current extremes, except of course, for that blissful heatwave in 1976. Then we spent our time hanging out in the Cows Lawn and more specifically in the tennis courts. Long hot days spent in Ballybunion and by then we were old enough to go on our own either on the bus if we had money but more often just walking out on the Ballybunion Road and thumbing (do you remember thumbing?).
Easter tended to bring the finer weather with it and was the catalyst for a change from the heavy tights of winter to knee socks then later (perhaps May) ankle socks and best of all sandals with no socks. Always Clarks shoes and sandals from the shop on the corner of Market Street and William Street. Brown lace ups for winter and strappy sandals for the summer. What was the name of that shop? The exception was white shoes for First Communion. I wore mine until I just couldn’t fit my feet in any more.
When did we fit in our Holiday jobs? I know we worked but don’t remember a job impinging on leisure activities. I had a job for two Summers and Race Week in the Spinning Wheel Restaurant in the Small Square, which was where there is now a shoe shop. Kathleen and John Scanlon owned it and I learned some cooking skills there. One of them being how to gut a trout through its gills! I got to be quite good and quick at this but it was very hard on your hands – a bit like tearing your hands on sewing needles. Making light fluffy omelettes was another skill I acquired and I remember showing Sadie Fitzmaurice how John Scanlon made them. Of course, the ultimate holiday job was working on the Island during Race Week. I once had a job on the turn-stiles and made (for the time) loads of money.
Further up Cahirdown, beyond the railway bridge and Hilliard’s, there was a group of houses commonly referred to as the Soldier’s Cottages. Does anybody know the history of why they were called this? We just assimilate these things as youngsters and never query the why.
Below is a photo of Carmel and some school friends
Left to right: Denise Mulvihill, Marie Keane, Carmel Hanrahan, Katsi Kenelly and Kyra Walshe. Taken in the garden at the front of the convent according to the back of the photo.
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Taking a Leaf out of Trump’s Playbook
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Storm Éowyn
The storm that hit our coast in the early morning of January 24 2025 was the worst ever experienced in Ireland.
These pictures shared online by Kerry’s Eye give you a small glimpse of the destruction it caused.
Doon Road, Ballybunion
The remains of someone’s caravan wrapped around a pole in Ballybunion
Power lines down in Ballyduff
Banna
Listowel to Ballybunion Road
The big sign at the entrance to Farranfore Business Park
Tralee
Tralee
Just a small taste of the destruction that was caused. Thousands left without power and water.
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Some Weather Rhymes from a 1951 schoolbook
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A Fact
In 1963 the first cat in space was a moggy named Felicette.
First daffodils of 2025…The sweet little vase is from Woodford Pottery.
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A Brehon Law
I was in The Brehon Hotel in Killarney at the weekend. There are lots of Brehon themed little things about this hotel e.g. the resaturant is called after Danu, mother goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
Another Great story from the old Rathea and Irremore Journal
The parish of Lixnaw covers a big area of North Kerry. It stretches from the bounds of Ballyduff to Lyrecrompane. There are three churches in the parish, Lixnaw, Irremore and Rathea. Rathea was the last church to be built in the 19thcentury. My grandmother told me that before Rathea church was built the people of the upper region attended mass in Irremore. They came through the fields with their shoes in their hands and put them on when they were near the church. So much for the faith of our ancestors.
My grandmother was Mary Dillon and was born in Gortacloghane. She was known as “Marie the glen” as she was born down in the valley. There is a field there in Tim Kennelly’s farm that is still known as the Glennies field. Close by is Gleann an Aifreann (the mass glen). There is a mass rock there where priests said mass during the penal days. My father was Ger Lynch a native of Lyrecrompane and a tailor by trade. My mother was Liz Kirby from Mountcoal. They lived in a thatched house at the crossroads in Rathea where the Grotto now stands. There was another house joined to ours occupied by Maurice and Mary Mc Elligott and he was known as Maurice Bán. To look at that site today you would wonder how two houses fitted there never mind a rick of turf at the end of each house. Those were the days of the horse and cart – there were not many motor cars then. The crossroads were known as the “Tailors Cross”.
If ever there was a rambling house ours was one. All the elderly men of the locality would assemble at our house every night each one having their own piece of news of the day. Men like Garret Galvin – he was the Father of the house. Jack (Garret) Galvin Micky óg Galvin, Paddy (Con) Galvin, Jeremiah (Ger) Galvin, Tim Kennelly, Mort Donoghue and many more. Where they all got room I do not know but they did. My father had a big table at the end of the house for cutting out the suits of clothes on. Jack (Garret) Galvin would always lie up on it with his knees up and his hands under his head. When it would be nearing my bedtime I would slip up and lie flat inside Jack to keep out of my mother’s view trying to stay up as long as I could. I was very good for doing jobs for my mother especially bringing the spring water. I had a small container and I would make a number of trips to Micky óg Galvin’s every day. The daughter of the house Julia Galvin (Shiels I used to call her) would raise the water for me from a pump in the yard. When she had it she would always give me a cut of currant bread or failing that a cut of bread and jam. (You see now how I was so good for drawing the water).
Television was not even heard of then and the radio was just coming on the market. I remember the first radio to come to Rathea. It was to Jack’s (Garret) house in the early thirties and it was worked by batteries. People had to depend then on the paper for all the daily news. The paper came to our house every day. The price of it was one old penny and each of the ramblers would buy it in turn. It was bought by a young student from Lyrecrompane who was attending St. Michael’s College in Listowel a long cycle then over rough country roads. There was no tarmacadam then. That student was later to become Fr. Jack Nolan and he ministered in Australia. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. He is now retired in his native Lyrecrompane.
Since everyone could not get a piece of the paper, the set up was that Paddy (Con) Galvin would stand up to the oil lamp then and read out all the news to his audience. You could hear a pin drop while he was reading. When I look back on it now it was like watching the newscaster on the television.
I started school in Rathea at the age of four. The school was only a couple of hundred yards over the road. My first teacher there was Mrs. Peggy O’Shea. She was staying at Micky óg Galvins. She was later transferred to Dromclough and married the principal of that school Master Bartholmew Rohan. She was the mother of the present principal Master Kieran Rohan.
I was only eight years when my parents left Rathea and went to live in my grandmother’s house in Mountcoal. My three brothers went to Dromclough school, it was nearer but I would not change from Rathea. I had great school pals there in Denis and Bill Kennelly, Michael and Brendan Galvin, Seán (Neon) Trant and many more. It was a good journey for an eight year old but come early Spring I would jog along that road barefooted as happy as the birds on the trees. My first port of call every morning would be to Mary (Carey) Greaney. She was an early riser and she would be always baking her bread for the day when I would call.
It was in Mountcoal I grew from boyhood to manhood and I have many memories of those days. During the winter, Sunday would be spent hunting hares with Tom and Dick Fitzmaurice, Tom Fitzgerald, Tom Joy and that great huntsman himself Jerheen Hayes. During the summer there would be a great crowd playing football in Relihan’s field. Mountcoal Cross or “The Hut” as it was known was a great meeting place for all the boys around. There was a big population in Mountcoal then. About 1950 the crowd at the cross started to get small. Emigration opened up and all the young men and women took the boat to England. There was only a small number of us left.
Jim (Tade) Galvin was a great favourite at the cross. He was a Rathea man himself. He bought a farm near Mountcoal Cross in the estate of Arthur Gentleman and built a house there. He did not smoke – he always chewed his tobacco he said it was more satisfactory. He was a great man to tell stories of bygone days and if you quizzed him his answer would be “Tameneys man that was no treble”. Another man who was a great friend of mine was Denny Flaherty (Senior). He was a low sized stocky little man that would play cards until the cows came home. As a young lad he often played cards with me by the fire on a board on our knees. During the winter his house was a great gambling house. The players were John Hartnett, Ned Fitzgerald, Jerry Mulvihill, Jack Sullivan and many more. The stake would be a penny in forty one. The last game of the night would be for tuppence, this was called a rubber. You would be anxious to win that game as a shilling then was money when the farm wage was fifteen shillings a week. (75p today). Out of that you had to pay for your keep at home, you also had the money for the Crosses dance on Friday and Sunday nights not forgetting the packet of Woodbines and the bottle of Brillantine.
Here I must sing the praises of three great women in the locality. They were Mai Flaherty and the late Molly Mulvihill and Mary Joy. They were midwife and undertaker in our locality. They brought many a one into the world and laid out many more including my own father for their last journey. There was no funeral homes then. I am sure God will reward them for their work.
Dinny Flaherty went to the rambling house at Pike every Sunday night for a game of cards with his old mates. They would have the house to themselves that night as all the younger crowd would be gone to the dance at the Crosses. During that time I met Babell Mahony. She was later to become my wife. She worked for a number of years with Mrs. Trant in Tournageehy. On our way home from the Crosses dance we would nearly always meet Dinny coming from Pike. You would hear him coming along. He would be smoking his pipe and humming away to himself. I would say to him “well Dinny how was the going tonight “. He would say “Yerra I was left holding my own Teagheen. What about yourself, did you get a Kit-Kat”. He was one jolly little man. May God be good to his noble soul.
In 1954 Babell and I got married and I came to live at her place in Tournageehy. We had five children, four boys and one girl. They are all now fledged and flown, two in America, one in Belgium, one in Dublin. The only girl I had is married to local man Mike Dowling, Bunglasha, Duagh. We are once again back to square one where we started. The clock has gone well around. We will be celebrating our ruby anniversary (forty years of marriage) this year. Maybe with God’s help and a bit of luck we might see our golden jubilee.
“I remember the first time I met her,
Those days I often recall,
when we danced hand in hand,
to Bunny’s great band,
down in Regan’s dance hall”
Ted Lynch.
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A Fact
In 1858 the races at Listowel Harvest Festival were run in heats.
I found this story in a Facebook Group dedicated to old wrought iron gates. It was contributed by Michael Dempsey
Post box at Jamestown Cross Laois. When the key was lost the door was broken open in several pieces. While I was thatching the Cottage beside the box 2003, Ned Boland from the Pub across the road asked me if I could do anything with the box as it looked unsightly. We found 6 or 7 pieces of the cast iron which I brought home and welded. There was no key so I dismantled the lock and made a key. There was layers of red and green paint going back to V R which I stripped and repainted, it will need another coat shortly.
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A Poignant Tribute To people who Keep on Keeping On
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New Kid on the Block
Tattoo Shop in Galvins of William Street
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Native Americans and Us
In 1847 the Choctaw people sent money to Ireland when they learned that Irish people were starving due to the famine. The Choctaw themselves were living in hardship and poverty, having recently endured the Trail of Tears.
Kindred Spirits is a large stainless steel outdoor sculpture in Bailick Park in Midleton, County Cork. The shape of the feathers is intended to represent a bowl of food.
from Brendan ONeill August 2024
A life-size bronze sculpture entitled ‘The Gift’ has been unveiled outside the National Famine Museum at Strokestown Park. It commemorates the generous aid provided by the Choctaw Nation to Ireland during the height of the Great Irish Famine.
“Esteemed American sculptor Brendan O’Neill, based in Maryland in the USA, sculpted and donated ‘The Gift’ to the museum. It is a replica of his original piece displayed at the Choctaw Cultural Centre in Oklahoma and is now permanently installed in the courtyard adjacent to the National Famine Museum.
Measuring 29 inches tall and 41 inches wide, this poignant artwork depicts an elderly Choctaw woman and a younger Choctaw man embracing in a gesture of support and protection. They extend a hand of friendship to the Irish people as the woman holds an “ampo,” or eating bowl, symbolising sustenance and nourishment.”
Irish Heritage Trust
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A Fact
The number of days of racing at Listowel Harvest Festival of Racing has increased from 2 in 1858 to 7 in recent years.
Farewell to a smiling face and a marvellous business in Listowel town Square. Brendan Mahony will be missed.
The shadows were lengthening over Brendan Mahony’s shop when I called last week. Brendan is not being forced to shut shop by falling trade or any other economic circumstances. His business is booming and he is still doing what he enjoys. He is a people person and he loves the interaction with his customers. But 31 years is a long time in one job. Brendan is ready for a new challenge while he is still young. Life for a sole trader can be very tough.
Brendan Mahony Butchers will close in The Square on Saturday, January 25th 2025. it will mark the end of an era which began at No. 2 The Square in 1993. Time now for Brendan to have a holiday before starting in his new role.
Bridget O’Connor in the shop on Friday January 17 2025
Time now for taking a break, having a holiday and maybe even attending a few hurling matches.
Another very successful Listowel business is celebrating its 25h anniversary this month. Finesse Bridal Wear is a lovely business run by two lovely sisters. Liz and Mags offer a caring and professional service to brides. They know their business thoroughly, they work very hard and their care and attention to their brides is legendary.
The two ladies are a huge asset to the town, giving much back in the way of fundraising and Tidy Towning. Long may they continue.
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Death of a Chief
This was the scene in Listowel Town Square on Jan 1 2025 as the funeral of former Fire Chief, Antony McAuliffe, made its way from St. Mary’s.
Antony was one of the first people I got to know in Listowel. He and his late brother, Ray, built our house. When they opened a hardware shop at the end of our road, I was a frequent visitor. Antony was invariably kind and patient.
His cortege was accompanied by his colleagues in the fire service and friends from his days with Listowel Drama Group.
Many people also rmembered Antony from his evenings as a volunteer Bingo caller.
The funeral procession passing through the Small Square where so often Antony led his men in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
May he rest in peace.
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A Brehon Law explained
The Brehons were Ireland’s early lawmakers. I came upon a little book of some of their laws and I have been sharing them here. I have been surprised at how interested people are in their now quaint laws.
Many of the Brehon laws involve the husbandry of animals and many of the punishments involve the forfeit of some valuable livestock.
I shared this law concerning trespass by farmyard fowl. I confessed that I had never heard of a withe.
Then I received the following from Thomas Buckley;
Apparently it’s not such an obscure word after all. These withes were used in the making of St. Brigid’s crosses.
Every day is a learning day. Thank you, Thomas.
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A Fact
When the Races relocated to Listowel in 1858, there was no bridge to the course from the town side. A temporary bridge seved to access the course in 1911.
