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

Eamon Kelly, Billy McSweeney and I Remember Christmasses past and an Appreciative and Appreciated email

Lynch’s of Main Street beautiful Christmas Windows 2020


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Remembering Old Friends and Good Times


Knitting Group with Namir in Scribes at our Christmas Party in 2017

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Billy McSweeney relives a 1940s Christmas in Listowel


I remember one Christmas eve in the days of Ration Books and deprivation of the 1940’s. Darkness had fallen and the Santa tension was building in our house.

My mother was out shopping for some last-minute necessities, when she 

suddenly burst in the front door screaming “Santey, Santey. Come quick, 

come quick !”

My young sisters and I rushed out the door at the top of Church Street 

to clearly hear harness bells jingling and trotting hooves clattering 

off the road just past McAuliffe’s corner, barely 100 yards away but 

already out of sight.

“Aw, you just missed him!”

When a chasing charge was obviously forming in our minds we were told:  

“Get your coats on or you will get your death of cold!”

A riotous melee formed around the coat stand and a number of 

half-attired children took off down the street. Alas, by the time we 

reached McAuliffe’s Corner the sleigh with it bells and reindeer had 

vanished and we trudged home elated that we had nearly seen him but also disappointed that we had missed him.

My mother had a joyous smile on her face that her timing was impeccable.

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Ballybunion in the 1950s



Photo from Glin Historical Society


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Another Eamon Kelly description of Christmases in  the 1920s


The Season of Light by Eamon Kelly from 

The Rub of the Relic 1978

No word of a lie but Christmas was something to write home about when I was small. Oh, the way we looked forward to twilight on Christmas Eve, for when darkness fell it was Christmas Night, the greatest night of all the year. We youngsters would be up at the crack of dawn that morning to have the house ready for the night.

Berry holly would have to be cut and brought in to deck out the windows, the top of the dresser, the back of the settle and the clevvy, We’d bring ivy too and put a sprig of laurel behind the pictures, above the lintel of the door and around the fireplace. But we wouldn’t overdo it for, if we did our mother would cut it down a bit, reminding us that she’d like to feel she was in her own home for Christmas and not in the middle of a wood!

Well The transformation we would bring about in the kitchen with all the greenery! But we weren’t finished yet The Christmas candles would have to be prepared; these were of white tallow as thick as the handle of a spade and nearly as tall. In some houses, they’d scoop out a hole in a turnip and put a candle sitting into it.  A big crock we’d use. We’d put the candle standing into that and pack it around with sand. If you hadn’t sand, bran or pollard would do.

When the candle was firm in position we’d spike sprigs of holly or laurel into the sand about the candle and we’d have coloured paper too to put around the outside of the crock to take the bare look off it. With that same coloured paper the girls in the family, if they were anyway handy, could make paper flowers to decorate the holly. Then what would cap it all was a length of young ivy to spiral up around the candle – it looked lovely. That done, we would go through the same manoeuvre until there was a candle in a crock for every window in the house.

“““““

I Saw a Stable     by Mary Coleridge

I saw a stable, low and very bare,

A little child in the manger.

The oxen knew Him, had Him in their care,

To men he was a stranger,

The safety of the world was lying there ,

And the world’s danger.

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A Lovely tribute from a Listowel Connection Newbie


Words of praise and gratitude are so lovely to hear. This email made my day.

Hi Mary, 

I wanted to write just to say I’m glad that you chose to keep the blog open for a while.

Mr. Keane is correct. 

I realize I’m new to the blog and mostly an outsider, my connections are generational, and exist as almost genetic memory but, particularly in these hard times, those small connections are what define us. 

As leaves hanging from a thousand tendrils of web each helps us define our connection and place in the world. While one after another breaks or is cut, those that remain become that much more important, and strained.

In the same way that those disconnects make it ever more difficult for you to continue, it is also a stabilizing line to many that you do. Particularly for those most at risk in our troubling times.

I can not imagine the difficulty in finding stories each day, let alone in a world isolated from itself by the unseen, implacable, and terrifying enemy we now know.

I am heartened that your followers have reached out digitally to lighten your load. 

I shall hope that with their help you may continue to find ways to express our strengths, links, that at heart we are one and as in all things we are stronger and wiser together. That together we can protect each other, hold back the shadows, deny the mentality driven by fear that allows us to justify devaluing or taking advantage of those around us.

I do not intend to put more pressure on you, more to thank you for the connections you have strengthened, or maintained, and all the work you have put in over the years.

To quote one who is I think not well loved there “We need only to endure to conquer”, We need “continuous effort not strength”. It is our community and all the ways that we define it that makes us invincible.

I shall hope that you are well, that beyond all your troubles there are blessings to light your way, that you realize the unspoken gratitude of all those your life and generosity has touched.


Bob


Lyreacrompane, Listowel Christmas in the 1950s, 2020 Communion and There’s always Books

Lyreacrompane Church at Christmas 2020

Photos from Lyracrompane Community Development

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Carmody’s Corner



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William Street Dec 6 2020

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Memories of Christmas in Ireland in the 40 and early 50 

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 with the crib set up. The candles would be lit by the youngest member of the house, I think at 7o 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 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!

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The Times they are a Changing


Christmas times and Christmas customs are changing and so is the language to describe them. Yesterday I published John O’Connell’s great memories as recorded in John’s  own words by his wife Noreen. Now I realise I should have added a glossary for the terms and words that have fallen  out of usage


A two pound jam crock; Jam used to come in one pound and two pound jars. The one pound jar was similar to jam pots today and the 2 pound one was double the size and so more suitable as a container for a big candle. A crock is another word for any kind of glass or earthenware container. It still survives today ion the leprechauns “crock of gold”.


A crib is today’s Nativity set.


An ass is a donkey. When I used this word recently in the phrase “an ox and an ass” when telling the Christmas story to my grandchild, she went “An ass?” 

She wouldn’t believe me that it was another name for a donkey so she Googled it and asked for an image. The first three pictures Google threw up were of ladies’ posteriors!!!!!!


Meal or yellow meal was a flour like substance used in animal feed and sometimes in human feed too.


Thick ha’penny biscuits….There was a time when one could buy one or two biscuits from a tin of loose biscuits. I remember huge ones we called currant bats. 

A ha’penny was a half penny. There was a smaller coin called a farthing worth a quarter of a penny but they were gone by the 1950s.


Hot toddy in a Snug… This was a hot whiskey drink with cloves and sugar, often credited with restorative powers and often given to visitors, including the postman, at Christmastime.

A snug was a small private area in a pub usually reserved for women. Women never drank at the counter. Allo’s in Church Street still has an old fashioned snug and some pubs have built some new ones during there pandemic.


Messages: Goods bought in shops were always referred to as messages. Today they are just “shopping”


Purties….these were toys, ornaments and other junk of no value except play value and sentiment. (Derry Fleming has a shop in Castleisland called Derry’s Purties)


Half tiers (tierce) ….. I think it’s tierce but John, like me, was very familiar with the word but never saw it written down. I think it was a small barrel of porter.


Now go back and read John’s memories again in the lovely old language of our parents and grandparents. It’s a story of a well remembered happy Christmas time. Thank you, John and Noreen for reviving and preserving those great old memories for us. I hope it inspires others to tell us about past Christmasses.


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Family Celebration Tinged with Sadness



First Holy Communion in a time of Covid. On Saturday December 12 2020 my beloved Cora eventually received her First Holy Communion in the church of Christ Our Light in Ballincollig. This is what I saw on my computer screen. The only family present were her parents. The children didn’t sing or read or play their tin whistles like other years. There was no big party in the school or at home. None of her grandparents or god parents were there.  Sad!




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Carrying On Keeping us Reading in Christmas 2020



Mary and Brenda in Woulfe’s are still cheerfully serving their customers and coping with everything Covid 19 is throwing in their path. The shop was busy on Saturday when I visited.


Upper William Street, Mrs Griffin, Christmas Carols and some Happy Christmas Memories

Upper William Street, Sunday morning, December 6 2020

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Vincent’s Charity Shop window display

Shop is closed until 2021

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Ah!

Found on the internet

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Christmas Carols

Carols did not begin life as Christmas religious songs. They began life in the 14th century as secular ring dances. that is why there are references to buck lepping and dancing in many of the lyrics. The carol form faded into oblivion for a while until it was rediscovered by folk song collectors and antiquarians. A cleric named Neale translated some of the Latin carols and in the 19th century the carol as we know it today was born. Much of the leaping and dancing was replaced by more Christian sentiments. Today we have old English folk carols like The Holly and the Ivy side by side with Hark, the Herald Angels Sing in the repertoire of most carol singers

Boys from Scoil Realta na Maidine carol singing at Garvey’s in 2018

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Christmas Memories

In response to Marie Shaw’s nice request for memories of past Christmas’, my husband John O’ Connell of Coolaclarig, but originally from Curraghatoosane has narrated quite a lot of his memories to me, so I ( Noreen Neville O’ Connell his beloved “ other half “of over 50 years) have documented these for our family and posterity. So I share with you some part of his memoirs, therefore  I am only the  scribe. 

For Marie’s info- John supplied milk to her aunt and uncle Mae and Dick Fitzgerald. 

 

“In our house in Curraghatoosane ( Botharín Dubh), Christmas preparations started with white washing. Lime was mixed with water and a little bluestone added and this was painted on with a wide brush or sometimes the sweeping brush. Red berried holly was picked up in the Hickeys and a few red or white candles were stuck in a turnip or a 2 pound jam crock filled with sand and decorated with a piece of red crepe paper if we had it. The crib was set up on the wide window sill and decorated with holly or laurel. On Christmas Eve I went off shopping with my mother and  our ass and cart. My job was to hold the ass  as mother leisurely shopped, in all the shops ,where she left her  loyal custom throughout the year. Here she got a “Christmas box” as a present. This was usually a fruit cake wrapped in festive parchment with a lovely little shiny garland around it or a small box of biscuits. There was no rush on mam, or no great worry about poor me in my  short pants, patiently awaiting ,by his docile ass. Throughout the long shopping  trek , I got   a bottle of Nash’s red lemonade and a few thick  ha’penny biscuits. It was up  Church street to Barretts  shop and bar, Lena Mullalys,  O Grady’s Arch store, , to Guerins in Market street, John Joe Kennys in the Square and many more smaller shops in town,  for flour and meal, tea and sugar, jam, biscuits, jelly  a cut of beef, lemonade,  and lots of stout and a bottle or two of sherry. Eventually with our cart laden with the provisions and the bottles rattling away  in long wooden boxes ( which would be returned with the empties after Christmas), we set off home, poor Neddy and me, tired and cold but mother content and fulfilled and warmed by perhaps the drop of sherry or perhaps a  little  hot toddy she might have shared in a Snug  with a friend she met on her shopping expedition!! The last stop was at Jack Thornton’s for a few black jacks, and slab toffee which revived my drooping spirits. As we travelled home the homes were ablaze with lighted  candles . It was a sight to behold, which I can still see as plain today as it was 70 years ago. There was very little traffic back then but I lit the way home  with the torchlight for mam, me and Neddy . The “ Flight to Curraghatoosane”!

Next it was to  untackle and feed and water our gentle, compliant ass, unload the messages and join my father and 3 brothers for a welcome bite. I was the 2nd eldest of four boys and felt high and mighty to be chosen to chaperone my mother. “Mother,s pet” says Noreen!!

 Next morning we were awake at cock crow to open our purties. (These were sometimes hidden in the meal bin and one year we were informed of this by an older neighbouring boyo and when the coast was clear one day, we searched and found the hidden cache.We were smart enough to remain  silent  so nobody  spilled the beans. ) We  walked, fasting down to 7 a.m Convent Mass.  Then home to play with and maybe dismantle a purty to investigate its workings. The stuffed goose was roasting in the bastible. What a glorious smell . I loved the delightful brown gravy, carrots, turnips  and pandy, all from our own garden. As well as supplying milk in town, we had a fine market garden and so we had plenty of fresh vegetables. The trifle dessert was such a treat. 

Next day –St Stephens day was gambling day in our house, when the neighbours congregated to play 110 which could last for days, even into weeks. Plenty porter was gratefully accepted and savoured as well as  tea and cake. As I got older St Stephen’s day was the day for the wran (wren). We started getting ready early in the day and it was the day that the fancy cake garland that came around the  “Christmas box” cakes, were recycled and transformed into part of the” wran “head dress. We had a fantastic wrenboy group, known as the Dirrha wrenboys, captained by the well -known Sonny Canavan. A wren dance followed in a few weeks, hosted often in our  home and was the event of the year with music, song and dance and 2  half tiers, and attended by locals and visitors and denounced from the pulpit  by the parish priest, if he came to hear of it.” 

 

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 Bean Uí Ghríofa

Hi Mary,

I read with interest the recent Connection notes on Mrs. Griffin

 who lived four doors away from my home in Upper Church Street. 

I remember her as a quiet, reserved and gentle woman. By then 

Mr Griffin had died and her children, Michael and Betty, 

had moved out of Listowel. She lived alone in no 95 and taught 

the boys in the National School. How she controlled 40 odd,

 unruly boys in First Class with such consummate ease is 

a mystery to me; and she did this year after year. In 1948

 I was one of these ‘scholars’ and my time under her tutelage

 is remembered with pleasure. Bean Uί Grίoffa was a treasure.

My older brothers all attended this school in turn and even

 as a 2½ year old I felt that anywhere my brothers  could go

 then I could also go, so on odd occasions I made my way

 to the school which was no more than 100m up the street. 

I still remember the hollow sound of the latch on the door of

 First Class as I lifted it, entered the room, saw a friendly

 face and planked myself on the desk at the head of the class

 beside Bean Uί Grίoffa.

I was jokingly told in later years that I was plied with sweets

 by the boys in the class as my opinion used occasionally

 be sought as to whether the stick should be administered!

 An exaggeration on both counts certainly.

It is a testament to the freedom and safety of the town of Listowel 

that children in those years could wander all around the town

 with little sense of trepidation in either child or parent. 

Mind you, if a child was judged by any nearby adult of being 

n danger of misbehaving he or she was swiftly reminded of a 

greater authority and sent home with a flea in his ear. 

You also learned that if you then complained at home 

you got a clip around the ear for your trouble. 

The 30’s, 40’s and 50’s were hard times and communities all

 helped each other as much as we could.  I well remember

 in those years seeing the deformities and scars left from,

 among others, Diphtheria, Tuberculosis, Polio, ‘Flu, 

Pneumonia, Measles, Whooping Cough, Scarlet Fever, 

Tetanus and Hunger, on people unfortunate enough to have

 caught them but fortunate also to have recovered. 

These visible reminders terrified me because the showed me 

how vulnerable we were. It was primarily the community spirit 

that got us through those dreadful times. Today’s Covid-19 

is just as dangerous and it will again be community spirit, 

helped in no small way by science and volunteerism that will prevail today.

Billy McSweeney

Holly, Christmas in 1920 and in the 1950s and Convent Street Clinic on Market Street

Wintry Feale December 2020

 Once upon a time, holly was part of everyone’s Christmas. The custom of decorating the house with holly seems to have fallen out of favour.

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Childhood memories of Xmas.

from Philomena Moriarty

Walking the country roads looking for holly which would be put behind each picture, buntings going up in the kitchen from corner to corner and a bell in the centre, a jamjar filled with sand wrapped in xmas paper and a candle stuck in the middle which would be lit and placed by the window, this was for the souls of those gone and to give light and guard those abroad who might be traveling home for xmas what a lovely tradition.Then going to midnight mass I loved the frosty air, dark sky filled with bright shining stars after mass bells ringing and everyone wishing merry xmas,then running home into the kitchen opening the cubbard hoping to find Nashes Lemonade and Marietta biscuits.This was luxury in those days as we only got them at xmas. We didnt get presents but who needs presents when you have a warm home a burning fire and the smell of xmas cooking. So with these thoughts Id like to wish all near and far Merry Xmas and Happy new Year. Fröhliche Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr… My wish for Xmas is Peace in the world,

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Courteous Raiders In Listowel Workhouse on this day in 1920


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Christmas Past in Asdee


Getting Ready for Christmas in Asdee in the 1950s


by Jim Costelloe in his book…Asdee a Rural Miscellany

Whitewashing the dry walls around the house was one of the jobs that had to be done for Christmas. The outer walls of dwelling houses had to be lime washed also. The lime had to be prepared a few days beforehand and I have a memory of rocks of lime in the bottom of a bucket being covered with boiling water as the mixture stewed a combination of steam and lime into the air,  Some blue dye which was also used for bleaching white clothes on washday was also added to make the lime wash brilliant white. The yard and the bohreen near the house were also brushed and a general clean up was done.


There were no commercial;l Christmas decorations for sale in the shops, or, if they were, they were not bought by most rural householders. Holly and ivy were the only decorations I remember with the odd simple crib. We were aware before Christmas of the holly with the “knobs” was as we would have been hunting and searching the fences for plums and sloes during the autumn.


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Convent Street or Market Street


Sunday morning Dec. 6 2020


Convent Street Clinic


Close up of sign on Convent Street Clinic

It would appear that in keeping with a Listowel custom where  streets often have an official name and a name that everyone knows them by, Convent Street Clinic is a more recent addition.



A Case of Tsundoku, Griffin Family of Convent Street and Christmases Past


Old Sluagh Hall on Sunday Dec 6 2020


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Vanity Case Christmas window 2020


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Tsondoku


Since I mentioned this condition last week, I have discovered that it is a very common complaint among Listowel Connection community. Here is one man’s story.

12:58 AM (11 hours ago)

I have that same condition, Mary. I have so many books to read that, of late, and with Covid  threatening, every time I see the books I say, “Will I ever have them all read before I die?” I have lately adopted the line, “Well, sure our children will make use of them when I’m gone.”  I always recall a story told in Home Thoughts from Abroad, The Australian Letters of Thomas F. Culhane, by Tom Donovan and the Glin Historical Society, a brilliant book of West Limerick lore, tradition and history. From memory,the story ran something like this: A learned bookman was sorting his many books one day when a visiting, worldly neighbour – who had no regard for books or learning- said: “B’fhearr liom carn phrátaí ná na leabhair sin!” The gentle but cutting retort he got was ” Bhéadh muc ar aon intinn leat.”  My favourite place to seek out books is the Charity Shop. It’s amazing how many almost new and expensive books end up in these shops- available for a few Euro. I bought a 25 Euro book, it had a family reference,  before the lockdown and within a week I saw the same book, almost new, in a Charity Shop. I bought this one too- for a pittance. Only fault with Charity Shop books, they are almost always too low down or too high up on display! One would need eyes like a hawk!. I remember many years ago being on my knees in such a shop In Newcastle West, searching out books. I was half covered up by the ladies clothes racks. A verbal altercation occurred between two women over an item that one had her eye on but which had been taken by the other! They got to ‘close quarters’ over the garment overhead, while I decided that discretion demanded that I stay low on my knees and concentrate on my books while various occupied and unoccupied female skirts and shifts skirted and shifted around me. Yes, book-searching can be interesting at times- even conducive to prayer for deliverance from women!

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Before it was Behan’s Horseshoe

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Convent Street Memories


The Griffin family who used to live near Convent Cross have happy memories of growing up there. Maura sent us these photos.



Convent Cross a few years ago

Eileen, Peggy and Delia Bunyan


The Griffin shop where Maura and her family grew up

The woman in the shawl is Teasy Barry


Maura and her Nanna Griffin on her First Communion Day

 Maura with either Joan or Maureen Doyle

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Christmas in the 1920s

Christmas for us small lads growing up in the 1920s was a pool of light in the inky darkness of winter. A soft pool of amber warm light which came from three sources- the big log and turf fire, the oil lamp with the hairpin straddling the glass chimney and the stately white candles, one in every window, spreading their light out into the yard and road showing the way, the old people told us, to Mary and Joseph should they be passing in search of shelter on Christmas night. My father used to say that that if they happened to be passing our house the blessed pair would have strayed a tidy step from the road to Bethlehem…. Eamon Kelly

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