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

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Old Times in Ballyduff and Kentish town

Listowel Town Square at Christmas 2024

Ballyduff Reminiscence from Facebook

Ballyduff in Times Past

Padraig OSuilleabháin

Now long gone only fond memories remain of Ballyduff Creamery and the hardware store seen behind the milk lorry .

The creamery was an integral part of the agricultural community in the parishes of Ballyduff shopkeepers, butcher shop, post office ect all benefited every morning from the Milk suppliers 

Butter was made each day I can remember when local man John McCarthy was the butter maker, taking in the milk I can remember Tommy Sullivan Kilmore, Jer Kearney I remember a young Michael Godley from the Cashen before he became a Creamery Manager himself in West Cork 

The hardware store where Do Do Tracey worked was much much more than a hardware store ,you could buy your groceries, drapery, tools etc 

Every one bought the daily newspaper at Brendan O Neills and of course the Kerryman paper and on the way home you could buy your petrol and diesel as there was several fuel pumps in the village that time 

.The creamery was also a meeting place for people where good news and bad news was relayed to each other if a neighbor was unwell or if someone had passed away that was how news reached rural communities that time , a time when mobile phones weren’t even heard of.

The Post Man Jimmy Pearse would lessen his bag of mail each morning and save himself a long cycle around the by roads and boreens of North Kerry.

These are just my memories of a time when life was simple and people helped each other when everyone’s door was open to one  and all, I just mentioned a few people that i remember but there were loads and loads of beautiful people too numerous to mention and who have passed away now that we will always remember 

May the green sod of Rahela and other resting places rest lightly on their souls.

Norma O’Carroll added these names to the list

Other shops in the village were Murt O Sullivans food store & petrol, Guerins, Brendan Carroll’s, Sheehy’s, Neilans, Quilters, Mossie Neilan’s, Kit Mac Ellistrim’s, Nora Lynch’s, Bridie O Leary’s Chemist. Hennessy’s Butchers & dancehall,

Liam Supple’s butchers, Florrie Connor’s Chemist, Will Joe Ross’s food store & drapery, Liam Kearneys hardware and petrol, Buckley’s chipper, cinema, garden centre and antique shop,

May Leahy’s drapery,

Quilter’s shop- later to become Seán oOConnor’s,

Boland’s garage & petrol,

Johnny Lyons watchmaker, TomJoe Carroll’s garage, Miss Brosnan’s which was like Aladdin’s Cave with all the gifts etc there. Not forgetting the hair dressers, seamstresses, Garda station, 2 travelling banks and 5 public houses. Forgive me if I’ve forgotten any place but Ballyduff was and still is a thriving place with fantastic people.

A Charity Shop Treasure

When I was in Kildare I popped into the Vincent de Paul shop. They were having a Black Friday sale. I bought this treasure at the rock botton price of €2.

It is a great anthology of recipes, stories, pictures and poetry from members of ICA guilds around the country

A Christmas Essay

Christmas in an Irish house in Kentish Town in the 1960s

Maurice Brick  Irish Central December 2021

I was wiping the mud from a 20-foot length of half-inch steel reinforcing bar with a wire brush and cursing the frost from the night before, which made it harder. I had, by then, passed the “barra liobar” (frozen fingers) part and the blood was circulating well despite the freezing cold. Steel is about the coldest thing you can handle in freezing weather.

It just didn’t seem like Christmas at all. I received a card from home the day before and Mam said how they were looking forward to Christmas and going to Dingle for the day with Dad. The lads were fine, she said, and they were wondering why I wasn’t coming home and she told them work was tight in England and maybe I wanted to put a bit of money away. Poor Mam, she always thought the better of me.

Today was payday; at least there was something good about it. Tomorrow, Friday, was Christmas Eve, so we had money for a good booze-up if nothing else for the weekend. There were six of us staying in a boarding house in Kentish Town and since we were all from the other side, the mood, to say the least, was somber.

There were two from Donegal and they worked in the tunnels and made tons of money. The work was hard but, I’ll tell you, they were harder. There were three of us from West Kerry and we worked straight construction – buildings, shuttering (concrete formwork) and the like. That was hard work, too, but not as tough as the tunnels with the compressed air. The other fellow was from Clare, a more respectable sort of chap and he worked for British Rail as a porter.

I tried the tunnels myself once. I persuaded one of the Donegal fellows to get me a start and to tell the truth it was the money that enticed me outright. But my venture was a disaster. I started and descended into the tunnel and while there the compressed air hit me like a shot after an hour and my ears screamed with pain.

They were worse again when I entered the decompression chamber and I couldn’t wait to get out. I gained a great deal of respect for the Donegal fellows after that. They both wore a medal-type apparatus around their necks that gave the address of the decompression chamber of their tunnel.

On Christmas Eve, we worked half a day. The foreman was a sly bastard. He was as Irish as we were, but when the “big knobs” from the Contractor’s office appeared on site he affected such a cockney accent that you’d swear he was born as close to “Petticoat Lane” as the hawkers plying their trade there on Sunday.

Anyway, we all chipped in and gave him a pound each for Christmas. This gesture did not emanate from generosity but rather preservation. Our erstwhile foreman could be vindictive and on payday, he would come by and ask for a light and you would hand him the box of matches with a pound note tightly squeezed in there and all would be well with the world.  Not a bad day’s take as there were twenty in our gang. But the job paid well and no one complained.

When I got to the house on Christmas Eve, I paid the landlady and took a bath and dressed in my Sunday best. I waited for the others and we all sat down to dinner. It had some meat and lashings of mashed potatoes, “Paddy Food” they called it. It didn’t bother us much for we knew we would have steak in a late-night café after the pubs closed anyway. The six of us were dressed and ready to go at half six and we headed straight for the “Shakespeare” near the Archway.

After a few pints, there we went to the “Nag’s Head” on Holloway Road. However, we encountered a group from Connemara there and rather than wait for the customary confrontation – for some reason there was animosity between those from the Kerry Gaeltacht area and those from Connemara, which was also a Gaelic speaking area in Galway – we decided to forego it on Christmas Eve. But we assured each other that the matter would be taken care of in the very near future. Just as I was leaving one of the Connemara chaps said, “láithreach a mhac” (soon, my son) and I responded, “is fada liom é a mhac” (I can’t wait, my son).

We ended up in the “Sir Walter Scott” in Tollington Park and I barely remember seeing a row of pints lined up on the bar to tide us over the period between “time” called and when we actually had to leave. This period could last an hour depending on the pub governor’s mood.

We ambled, or rather staggered, into the late-night café sometime after midnight and the waitress gave us a knowing glance and said, “Steak and mash Pat, OK” and we all said “yes.” Some of us said it a few times just to make sure we had said it. It was then I thought, Jesus, I never went to Midnight Mass. That bothered me. I had always gone to Midnight Mass, but it was only last year I started drinking and it went completely out of my head.

We had our feed of steak and left and we decided to walk to the “Tube” at Finsbury Park and that would bring us to Kentish Town Station. Somehow, we made it and truthfully I don’t remember a moment on that train.

We arrived home at two and as quietly as possible reached our rooms. One of the Donegal fellows pulled out a bottle of Scotch and passed it around and we just sat on the beds and took turns taking swigs descending deeper and deeper into the realm of the absence of coherence of any sort.

I remember thinking again about missing Midnight Mass and I must have voiced my disgust a number of times to the annoyance of the others and one of them asked me to “shut the hell up.” I approached him and hit him right between the eyes and he crumpled to the floor and fell asleep.

The others struggled and lifted me onto the bed and everything just blanked out and I remember awakening on Christmas Day and the fellow I hit was nursing a bruised cheek by the window. I asked him what happened and he said he didn’t know and that he thought he bumped into something in his drunken state. I told him that I thought I hit him and that I was sorry.

He came by my side and sat there and I thought I detected a tear or two in his eyes. He looked at me and said, “You know, this is no friggin’ way to spend a Christmas, is it?” And I said, “You’re right” and I shook his hand for I thought he was a better man than I. 

Christmas Windows 2024

This window display at Sweet Times is absolutely beautiful.

The Lingerie Room

A Fact

Mary Poppins is the only Walt Disney movie to get a best picture nomination in Walt Disney’s lifetime. It didn’t win.

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Looking Forward

Ballybunion September 2024

Giving Friends a Sneak Peek

Jim and Liz Dunn are among the first to peruse the book. They are on page 72. They pronounced themselves “honoured” to be in it. They will be with us in the ballroom at The Listowel Arms Hotel at 7.00p.m. on Saturday next, September 21st.

Another Mona ad.

David O’Sullivan found this one from November 22 1960 in The Cork Examiner.

A Photo from 2015

Two men, Pat and Berkie, who love Listowel Races.

Anthony O’Carroll Fundraiser

His local community came out in force to help Anthony O’Carroll’s family raise money to defray the expenses involved in his care and recovery following his motorbike accident.

The biking community came to Ballyduff to support a fallen brother.

Jack Cummins painted this mural on a wall in The Square.

Bikes on display in the community centre

Names of the bike owners were displayed in front of the bikes. Men who love bikes love to chat to other bike lovers and to ask them about their machines.

Some men had images of their families on their bikes.

The most poignant display was Anthony O’Carroll’s bike and gear.

A Definition

from The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Horizons

On Sunday last 15 Sept 2024, Mary Fagan interviewed me for Horizons. Here is the link. My interview is Part 1.

Horizons

A Fact

Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal if it has been hit by lightning.

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In Kildare Village

Dandy Lodge in Winter 2023

Pres. Day in Pres. Listowel

November 21 was always a big deal when I worked in a Presentation school. It was lovely to see Srs. Consolata, Theresa and Eilish back in the school for Pres. Day 2023.

I took the photos from the school’s facebook page.

Kildare Village is No Place for a Two Year Old

The two year old hates wearing coats so the first struggle started before we left the house. When your Nana loves taking photos you just have to wear your beautiful red Christmassy coat.

Second hiccup; We were too early. Gates closed.

Nothing for it but to repair to the nearby coffee shop. Soother had to be unearthed to persuade her to leave the coat on.

To persuade her to relinquish the soother a smoothie is promised.

A piece of tea cake!

Some kind of unhealthy snack is next. The coat is still on but by now the hair bobble has been pulled out and lost.

Next bribe ( inducement) is a story.

Finally, it’s time to return to the shopping village. Coat is still on but by now it’s raining. Photoshoot back on track…kinda!

I’ll leave the story of how it all went pear shaped ’til tomorrow.

In Portlaoise Train Station

Victorian, I think

+ R.I.P. Sr. Helen Hartnett+

Every now and again I have felt that I was in the presence of a saint. If Sr. Helen is not a saint in heaven at the right hand of God, there is no hope for the rest of us.

Sr. Helen’s Listowel connection is strong even though she never lived here for long. Helen’s family moved to Listowel after she had already entered the convent.

Sr. Helen who passed away on December 2 2023 was a Salesian sister who spent her working life in South Africa, living and ministering among the poorest of the poor.

Sr. Helen “never missed an opportunity to do good.” She believed that every child deserved at least two good meals a day and she believed that education was the way to improve the lives of the children she worked with in the squatter camps.

Sr. Helen was frail in stature but she had the heart of a lion. She lived in a very politically turbulent environment in Johannesburg. She lived surrounded by staff and pupils who were constantly being indoctrinated by political activists to believe that she had no place in the school her order had built, and to which she had given her life.

The most frightening day of her life was the day she arrived to school to be met with open revolt. Teachers, parents and pupils met her chanting, “You are stealing our school and our money.” Terrified, she had to barricade herself in her office until eventually the police, through the intervention of a local supporter, allowed her to go free.

Badly shaken and, of course, hugely disappointed by her experience she, nevertheless went on to move to Capetown to revive a school building project post Covid. She was working on this in conjunction with Irish workers when she fell ill with cancer.

Helen’s family and her religious community looked after her well until God called her home.

So, if you were reading the death notices in R.I.P. ie and you saw someone you never heard of before, here is who this humble holy walking saint was.

Sr. Helen’s Listowel family, her brother Dan, sister Carmel, cousin Eddie Moylan and their families are very proud of her and the work she did. They will miss her gentle presence but are happy in the knowledge that she lived a good life of service to the most disadvantaged of God’s children. She was well prepared for death and accepted whatever God had planned for her.

R.I.P. Sr. Helen. “The day thou gavest Lord has ended.”

Another old card

I don’t think this one is an O’Connor one. Symbols are Ballyduff landmarks and the tone is very republican, The Irish greeting reads Nollaig maith suairc duit, roughly I pray/ wish a good merry Christmas to you.

Christmas Long ago in Ballyferriter

Christmas in Boulteens Ballyferriter by Maurice Brick (Facebook 2015)

MEMORIES OF CHRISTMAS IN GORTA DUBHA.  

                            There was a touch of frost, enough to stiffen the grass but it limbered with the noonday sun. The grown ups were in good humor and we were very sensitive to that. The farm work was done and only the cows needed tending. There was an easiness. 

A great day was when Mam and Dad went to Dingle to bring home the Christmas. Dad had rails on the cart. We were bursting with excitement upon hearing the cart coming with its iron band wheels which could be heard for miles. They had a sack of flour, a sack of yellow meal, various foods, wellingtons, some clothes, decorations and most important, sweets and biscuits and icing clad Christmas Cakes. They also had several bottles of Sandiman Port which were presents from Dingle merchants in appreciation of their custom through the year. 

Searching for discarded jam jars which we would wash and fill with sand to hold the candle we put in each window of the house. Holding the ladder for Dad as he retrieved some ivy from the gable end of the house. Going to the Reen, a field on our land that was reputedly a Fairy Fortress and had some scattered Holly Bushes. The house would be spotless and there was a silent buzz as we went about our chores. The turf fire was blazing and added to the glow. 

On Christmas Eve for dinner we had Langa (Ling), a long stringy fish that had hung for weeks from the ceiling. It was salty and boney but Mam’s white sauce with onions, pandy (potatoes mashed with generous helping of butter) and spices made it palatable. After, there was lashings of Christmas Cake with inch thick icing and we made short work of that. 

Going to Midnight Mass to St. Vincent’s in Boulteen was a treat. We went up the Tóchar a Bohereen and pathway through the fields. Dad had a lantern and led the way. At one point we climbed a few steps to climb over a claí (an earthen stone fence that separated fields) and on top you could see all the houses in the Parish with candles in the windows and it was like a glimpse of Tír Na nÓg (Land Of Youth) if such a place ever existed. 

The Church was small and comfortable. It was full and the smell of molten wax permeated the air. And there was a quietness. My Dad sang in the Choir and his cousin Paddy Brick, Riasc played the violin. It was magical listening to them, performing for us a hauntingly soft rendition of Oíche Chiuin (Silent Night) in honor of the Birth of the Baby Jesus. I remember now, I will never forget, Dad singing his heart out & Paddy Brick his cousin on the violin, watching one another with sideway glances making sure each of them was putting out the best. 

After Mass all the people greeted one another and offered Christmas Blessings. All was done in hushed and calming voices and that has stayed with me down through the years. My friend Pad accompanied us once going home by the Tóchar and he was given to speeching all the way. When we passed by the Cemetery he proceeded to name everyone who died in Gorta Dubha for the past fifty years. I shifted closer to Mam and Dad for the rest of the journey. 

At home, we put up our stockings for Santí and reluctantly went to bed. Dad went to the haggard and pulled a gabháll (bunch) of hay which he spread at the front door to feed the Donkey that was bringing the Holy Family for a visit to our house on Christmas Night. 

After a fitful night’s sleep we arose with excitement and checked our Santí stockings. We compared what we got and though at times it wasn’t much we were happy. Off we went running to every house in the the village. We’d get a piece of sweet cake or a bun and sometimes, even a sip of lemonade. We joined the other children and traipsed about joyfully in and out of the houses. It was Gorta Dubha and all the houses were ours. NOLLAIG SHONA……..HAPPY CHRISTMAS.

A Fact

Cheetahs can change direction in mid air while chasing prey.

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History and Food

Harp and Lion Antiques, Church Street

In Listowel Garden Centre Christmas Shop

If you haven’t been there yet, do drop into the Christmas shop and be a child for a while.

Stairs are no obstacle to this explorer.

Aren’t these Victorian carol singers only gorgeous?

My first time in a ski lift.

In Kanturk Library

I made my first visit to the beautiful new library in my hometown. This is the children’s corner.

There I ran into my cousin, Donal Desmond. Donal is profoundly deaf. He was joined in the library by Eric Johnson, a fairly recent resident of Kanturk. Eric was a teacher of the deaf in Canada for 27 years. Eric signed for Donal so we didn’t have to do all the usual writing to communicate.

I was back in the library later that day for the launch of Seanchas Duhalla. Here I am with Noreen O’Sullivan of the Duhallow Heritage Society.

Denis Twohig is the chairman.

I met my old friend, Mary Lynch, chatting to Noreen Meaney

I met Mary Corbett for the first time in years.

Catching up was great.

The magazine committee have published the story of my Uncle Bernie and the combine harvester which you read first here on Listowel Connection.

There are lots of great stories in the book. i can’t wait to read them.

A gem from Facebook

Listowel Food Fair Food Trail 2023

Stop number 2 on our trail was in John.R.’s

Jimmy, Pierce and the wine expert.

They certainly believe here that we eat with our eyes. Feast your peepers on this spread.

John Relihan with John Mangan of the organising committee

John and Thalita with our host, Pierce Walsh.

The people who brought us this wonderful feast….John R’s lovely workers.

Having gorged ourselves here we moved on to Daisy Boo.

A Fact

Every known dog, except the chow, has a pink tongue. The chow’s tongue is black.

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Sport and an Entertaining Story

Draghunt in Ballyduff….Photo: Bridget O’Connor

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An Edwardian Pillar Box

Edward V11

This pillar box in Tralee was put there sometime between 1901 and 1910. It’s at the corner of Day Place. These old postboxes are a valuable part of our history.

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On the street for the Garda Centenary Celebrations

November 30 2022

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My All Time Favourite Christmas Short Story

The Christmas Coat   

Seán McCarthy  1986

Oh fleeting time, oh, fleeting time

You raced my youth away;

You took from me the boyhood dreams

That started each new day.

My father, Ned McCarthy found the blanket in the Market Place in Listowel two months before Christmas. The blanket was spanking new of a rich kelly green hue with fancy white stitching round the edges. Ned, as honest a man as hard times would allow, did the right thing. He bundled this exotic looking comforter inside his overcoat and brought it home to our manse on the edge of Sandes bog.

The excitement was fierce to behold that night when all the McCarthy clan sat round the table. Pandy, flour dip and yolla meal pointers, washed down with buttermilk disappeared down hungry throats. All eyes were on the green blanket airing in front of the turf fire. Where would the blanket rest?

The winter was creeping in fast and the cold winds were starting to whisper round Healy’s Wood; a time for the robin to shelter in the barn. I was excited about the blanket too but the cold nights never bothered me. By the time I had stepped over my four brothers to get to my own place against the wall, no puff of wind, no matter however fierce could find me.

After much arguing and a few fist fights (for we were a very democratic family) it was my sister, Anna who came up with the right and proper solution. That lovely blanket, she said was too fancy,  too new and too beautiful to be wasted on any bed. Wasn’t she going to England, in a year’s time and the blanket would make her a lovely coat!. Brains to burn that girl has. Didn’t she prove it years later when she married an engineer and him a pillar of the church and a teetotaler? Well maybe a slight correction here. He used to be a pillar of the pub and a total abstainer from church but she changed all that. Brains to burn!

The tailor Roche lived in a little house on the Greenville Road with his brother Paddy and a dog with no tail and only one eye. Rumours abounded around the locality about the tailor’s magic stitching fingers and his work for the English royal family.  Every man, woman and child in our locality went in awe of the Tailor Roche. Hadn’t he made a coat for the Queen of England when he was domiciled in London, a smoking jacket for the Prince of Wales and several pairs of pyjamas for Princess Flavia.

The only sour note I ever heard against the tailor’s achievements came from The Whisper Hogan, an itinerant ploughman who came from the west of Kerry.

“ If he’s such a famous  tailor,” said Whisper, “why is it that his arse is always peeping out through a hole in his trousers?”

Hogan was an awful begrudger. We didn’t pay him any heed. Tailor Roche was the man chosen to make the coat from the green blanket. Even though it was a “God spare you the health” job, a lot of thought went into the final choice of a tailor.

The first fitting took place of a Sunday afternoon on the mud floor of the McCarthy manse. The blanket was spread out evenly and Anna was ordered to lie very still on top of it. Even I, who had never seen a tailor at work thought this a little strange. But my father soon put me to rights when he said, “Stop fidgeting, Seáinín , you are watching a genius at work.” Chalk, scissors, green thread and plenty of sweet tea with a little bit of bacon and cabbage when we had it. A tailor can’t work on an empty stomach.

The conversion went apace through Christmas and into the New Year. Snip snip, stitch, stich, sweet tea and fat bacon, floury spuds. I couldn’t see much shape in the coat but there was one thing for sure – it no longer looked like a blanket. Spring raced into summer and summer rained its way into autumn. Hitler invaded Poland and the British army fled Dunkirk, the men of Sandes Bog and Greenville gathered together shoulder to shoulder to defend the Ballybunion coastline and to bring home the turf.

Then six weeks before Christmas disaster struck the McCarthy clan and to hell with Hitler, the British Army, and Herman Goering. We got the news at convent mass on Sunday morning the Tailor Roche had broken his stitching hand when he fell over his dog, the one with the one eye and no tail. Fourteen months of stitching, cutting, tea drinking and bacon eating down the drain. Even a genius cannot work with one hand.

Anna looked very nice in her thirty shilling coat from Carroll Heneghan’s in Listowel as we walked to the train. Coming home alone in the January twilight I tried hard to hold back the tears. She would be missed.  The Tailor was sitting by the fire, a mug of sweet tea in his left hand and a large white sling holding his right-hand. I didn’t feel like talking so I made my way across the bed to my place by the wall. It was beginning to turn cold so I drew the shapeless green bindle up around my shoulders. It was awkward enough to get it settled with the two sleeves sticking out sideways and a long split up the middle. Still, it helped keep out the frost. Every bed needs a good green blanket and every boyhood needs a time to rest.

The ghosts of night will vanish soon

When winter fades away.

The lark will taste the buds of June

Mid the scent of new mown hay.

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A Bit of GAA History

I dont usually stray into the realms of the GAA but when you live in Kerry….

Here is a piece from Monday’s Irish Examiner.

Wow, just wow!

The Advertiser this week was full of local footballing history.

2022 North Kerry champions, Listowel Emmetts and mentors.

Winning teams of the past….

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Lilac Time

Mary Nolan sent us this photo from 1979. We had no names. But Dave O’Sullivan scoured the papers for us and he found 2 accounts of the operetta.

This from The Kerryamn

Maybe someone kept a programme!

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A Plug

If you are in or around Clonakilty at Christmas, the cousin, Eugene Brosnan, is in de Barra’s on St. Stephen’s Night

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