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

Tag: Christmas windows

The Goose is Getting Fat

By

On November 28, 2023

In Listowel, Poem

Putting up the Christmas lights in November 2023

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Stained Glass in St. Mary’s

I returned to St. Mary’s in the afternoon of Tuesday, November 22 2023 because I knew that by then the beautiful window pane would be back in place.

This is the one that was removed and releaded.

The newly renovated one is not as bright as the pane on the far right.

Now that the donor’s dedication has been fully restored I see that it commemorates both the McAuliffe and Boylan families. These families were connected through marriage.

Dave O’Sullivan has done a bit of research and it looks like the Thomas MacAuliffe who donated the magnificent window is one of the famous McAuliffe family, plasterers.

The rose window at the top is lovely now.

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Second Sign of the Approach of the Holy Season

I was in town on Thanksgiving Thursday and work was underway on several windows. The theme for this year’s Christmas windows is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The New Kingdom has gone for a jokey pun.

Harp and Lion Antiques never disappoints. The window was in the process of decoration by a delighted big child, who loves to give her creative talents free reign.

Mr. Duck was in his best Willy Wonka attire as he carried his golden ticket. BTW the tree is decorated with real sweets and the garland is made of candy canes and gold and silver chocolate coins. Gorgeous!

Another Listowel shop with a very creative owner is Taelane Store

Giant candy canes and muffins here.

Mags is in on the act as well with candy canes and treats galore.

Jade was just plotting out her window at Jumbos.

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Christmas according to another Local Writer

Unfortunately the booklet gives the names of all the writers but it doesn’t say who wrote what.

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A Fact

Today’s fact is a true Christmas story from a great storyteller, Mattie Lennon

My Best Christmas.

   It was mid-December in the third decade of the twenty-first century. I was at a Table Topics session. Because of my dubious ability to read upside down, I could make out the Topicmaster’s list of questions at the top table. One jumped out at me. “What was your best Christmas ever?”   I hoped I’d get that one. I had an answer.

    My best Christmas was Christmas 1956 but I didn’t know it at the time.  About the eighth of December that year I developed a pain in my stomach which didn’t feel all that serious. .  Various stages of discomfort, ranging from relatively mild to severe pain, continued until the end of the month.  By this stage a hard lump could be felt in my stomach. All kinds of remedies from the relic of Blessed Martin de Porres to Lourdes water to many folk “cures” were applied. None of them did me any harm. Medical intervention hadn’t been sought. And because of the thinking of the time and the climate in which we lived I don’t blame anyone. On Sunday December 30th Doctor Clearkin from Blessington was called.    As the December light was fading he examined me. His work was illuminated by lamplight as rural electrification was still in the future. . He told my parents that if it was appendicitis then I was “a very strong boy.” He was puzzled and didn’t make a Diagnosis. His best guess was that one of my testicles hadn’t descended and he insisted that I was too ill to be out of bed.

   He called the ambulance and on arrival I wanted to sit in the front but Mick Byrne, the driver, was adamant that I would be parallel with the horizontal in the back. I don’t know what time we arrived at Baltinglass Hospital but the doctor there was equally puzzled.

   I was loaded up again and hit the road for Mercer’s Hospital in Dublin. It was only my second visit to the Capital. The previous May my father brought me to  Frawleys in Thomas Street  to buy my Confirmation suit. Two years earlier I spent some days in hospital with a knocked-out elbow so I wasn’t all that perturbed by the clinical environment. My details were taken as well as  the name of the local postmaster as the post office in Lacken was our nearest phone.. I received a penicillin injection every four hours and I still remember the taste of liquid paraffin. Many doctors examined me and all were confused. One of them described me as “intelligent” but very few people have agreed with him since.

 Whenever I hear the ballad “Sean South from Garryowen” I’m transported back to the radio of Patsy Cavanagh from Craanford County Wexford, who was in the corner of the ward. It was New Year’s Day 1953 and the main news item covered the shooting of South and Fergal O’ Hanlon at Brookeborough, County Fermanagh.

   I’m not sure if I turned off the immersion this morning but I’m amazed at how many names of my fellow patients I can remember after more than three score years. There was Seamus  Osborne also from Craanford, Tony Hand, from Arklow, who was younger than me and whose father was in the army. Pipe smoking Kerryman, Tim Toomey, who was a guard in Enniskerry. When he learned that his father had died he asked me to say a prayer for him. George McCullough, a farmer,  from Goresbridge who was a seanachai and didn’t know it.  

As an eleven  year old rus-in-urbe, who had a sheltered childhood, I was mesmerised by the antics of  one patient, “Midget” boxer and aerial acrobat Johnny Caross. He died in the same hospital a few months later.

  Later, on the first day of the New Year, my father came  to visit me. He was able to tell me that one of the surgeons in Mercers had “his hands blessed by the Pope.”  When, not quite out of earshot, he asked a doctor about my condition, he was told. “Well, He’s an unusual case.” ( I was still a mystery to the medical profession.)  

  I was operated on the next day. They found an appendix abscess which was removed and arrangements were made to remove the appendix some weeks later. The second operation was duly performed and I didn’t ever ascertain how close to death I was. I meant to look for my medical records before Mercers Hospital closed in 1983 but procrastination got in the way.

   Oh, at the Table Topic session I was asked “If you had to cook for eight people on Christmas Day what would you do” .  I wasn’t disappointed. How would I have fitted my prepared answer, to the other question,  into two minutes? 

   So far I have lived through 77 Christmases. But the best one was in 1956, because I was alive to see it.

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Artisan Food, A Poem of Exile and more Christmas Windows

By

On December 1, 2017

In Uncategorized

Happy dog following his owner in Listowel Town Park recently

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Artisan Food at Listowel Food Fair


On the Sunday of Listowel Food Fair there was a great market of artisan food in The Listowel Arms. It was the Sunday of November prayers for our dead in John Paul Cemetery so I was late getting to the fair. It was well worth the visit. Here are some of the goods for sale and to sample. Some people were already sold out by the time I got there.

 These chutneys and relishes are by Chicco. They are delicious. I bought some for the Christmas cold meats

This Kerry cheese is completely organic. I stayed clear of this out of respect for my heart but people who tried it said it super.

This Charleville man had cheese products as well and was proudly displaying the prize he won at the fair.

I didn’t even go close to this charming lady to photograph her. She makes the most delicious ice cream you will ever taste and its all handmade in Kenmare.

This happy crew from Killocrim school were promoting their unique cookery book. It is a collection of recipes that the children made with their families and the book has lovely photos  as well. It will be a treasure for years to come and a cause well worth supporting.

I ran into my friend Billy Keane and his family. They were very proud to have their recipe included in the book.

Norma Leahy and her family were there with their Carralea Kefir. This dairy product is really good for your gut health. I’m trying it at the moment.

This is the lovely family behind Brona chocolate products. Jimmy is just a friend. He had no part in making the chocolates.

Orla Walshe runs a cookery school at Ballydonoghue. Her chocolate biscuit cake is to die for.

Completely sold out. The picture tells its own story.

Wellness bread products are a Listowel success story.

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This poem is especially for Maria Sham, who loves it.

The Exile’s Return

(John Locke, 1847-1889)

T’anam chun Dia! but
there it is –

The dawn on the hills of Ireland,

God’s angels lifting the night’s black veil

From the fair sweet face of my sireland.

Oh! Ireland isn’t it grand you look,

Like a bride in her fresh adorning,

And with all the pent-up love of my heart

I bid you the top of the morning.

This one brief hour
pays lavishly back,

For many a year of mourning,

I’d almost venture another flight,

There is so much joy in returning,

Watching out for the hallowed shore,

All other attraction scorning,

Oh: Ireland don’t you hear me shout,

I bid you the top of the morning.

Ho, Ho, upon Glen’s
shelving strand,

The surges are wildly beating,

And Kerry is pushing her headlands out,

To give us a kindly greeting,

Now to the shore the sea birds fly,

On pinons that know no drooping,

Now out from the shore with welcome gaze,

A million of eaves come trooping.

Oh! Fairly, generous
Irish land,

So Loyal, so fair, so loving,

No wonder the wandering Celt should think,

And dream of you in his roving,

The Alien shore may have gems and gold,

And sorrow may ne’er have gloomed it.

But the heart will sigh for its native shore,

Where the love-light first illumed it.

And doesn’t old Cobh
look charming there,

Watching the wild waves motion,

Resting her back against the hill.

And the tips of her toes to the ocean,

I wonder I don’t hear the Shandon bells,

But maybe their chiming is over,

For it’s a year since I began,

The life of a western rover.

For thirty years “A
chuisle mo chroi”,

Those hills I now feast my eyes on,

Ne’er met my vision save at night,

In memory’s dim horizon,

Even so, ’twas grand and fair they seemed,

In the landscape spread before me,

But dreams are dreams, and I would awake

To find American skies still o’er me.

And often in Texan
plain,

When the day and the chase was over,

My heart would fly o’er the weary ways,

And around the coastline hover,

And my prayers would arise that some future date,

All danger, doubting and scorning,

I might help to win for my native land

The light of young liberty’s morning.

Now fuller and turner
the coastline shows

Was there ever a scene more splendid!

I feel the breath of the Munster breeze,

Oh! Thank God my exile is ended,

Old scenes, old songs, old friends again

There’s the vale, there’s the cot I was born in

Oh! Ireland from my heart of hearts

I bid you the “top o’ the morning”


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Slavery and the Hiring Fair

This is a photo from the Library of Congress. It dates from the days of slave auctions in Illinois. I don’t think there was ever any official slavery in Ireland. Women who were forced by circumstances to work in the Magdalen Laundries might disagree. There were, however, hiring fairs.

These fairs were often held on the same day as a cattle fair when farmers were in town. Labourers weren’t auctioned as slaves were. Labourers agreed to work for a farmer, usually for a year, at an agreed wage. They earned little more than their bed and board. This system was in place in most European countries. In fact hiring out your labour goes back to biblical times.

In between the fairs if a spailpín or casual labourer was unemployed he would often walk from one farm to another in search of a few hours work.  Paddy Drury was one of these wandering workmen. Jim Sheahan remembers him coming to their house in Athea. Even if they didn’t have work for him, they fed him and he was content to sleep on a chair until he headed off again.

Fear of a lash of his tongue meant that Paddy usually could be sure of a chair to sleep in in most houses he visited.

Paddy was like the bards of old who could rhyme off a blessing or a curse on the spot.

Once when he and the other workers in a house where he was employed were served up bacon so tough that none of them could chew it, he extemporised;

Oh Lord on high

Who rules the sky

Look down upon us four

Please give us mate

That we can ate

And take away the boar.

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More Christmas widows


Listowel shop windows this year have a train travel theme. Utopia’s window is really stylish and minimalistic.

The IWA window is gorgeous.



The Mermaids features old photos of the real Lartigue.

Stack’s Arcade is gorgeous.

Betty McGrath’s Listowel Florist’s

The Gentleman’s Barbers

Kay’s Children’s Shop has an excellent replica of the Lartigue on its snowy scene in the window.

November’s butterfly, Unveiling a Famine Plaque and a Famine window in St. Marys’

By

On November 28, 2017

In Uncategorized

Photo: John Kelliher

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 A Timely Poem; November’s Butterfly  by Larry Belt

Sometimes in November

When the sun is sitting high

An Autumn breeze will steal the leaves

And cause the trees to cry.

Sometimes in November

A butterfly will appear

A cherished thought, a battle fought

For one you loved so dear.

Sometimes in November

Loved ones pass away

You wallow in grief, seek relief

And then you learn to pray.

Sometimes in November

An angel gets its wings

It’s good and bad, but always sad

the joy and pain this brings.

Sometimes in November

A family says goodbye

as Heaven waits

To open its gates

To November’s butterfly.

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A Photo from 1975


The occasion was a presentation to Bryan MacMahon by the teachers of Scoil Realta na Maidine

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A Famine Commemoration in November 2017

The plaque was unveiled.

We took a few photos of the dignitaries.

Then we repaired across the way to Ard Churam  for a cup of tea, a chat and a few talks about Listowel and The Famine.

First up was historian and genealogist, Kay Caball. She took us back to the dark days of the 1840s when sending your 14 year old daughter to Australia seemed like the only hope for her future.

I heard a quote recently when someone was referring to today’s awful refugee crisis.

“No parent puts his child into a leaky boat on rough seas unless he believes that he is safer there than he is on land.”

Listowel in the 1840s and 50s was similar. Parents sent their daughters to the other end of the world and an uncertain future in order to save them from the horrors at home.

Kay’s talk was laced with anecdote and human interest stories. The Earl Grey girls came to life before our eyes.

Bryan MacMahon of Ballyheigue has recently published his history of The Famine in North Kerry. He too brought the story to life for us, giving us some insight into the hard task of the relieving officer who had to decide on admissions to the workhouse. His job was at stake if he made a wrong decision.

Bryan told us a story that sent me searching in St. Mary’s as soon as I could. According to Bryan’s research, the parish priest of Listowel, Fr. Darby OMahoney was particularly kind and caring to his flock during their harsh time. He told us that there is stained glass window in St. Mary’s depicting Fr. O’Mahoney ministering to the sick and dying.

The window is in a fairly inaccessible place, in the sanctuary on the right hand side. It depicts Fr. Darby O’Mahoney who was Listowel’s parish priest anointing the sick during the Famine. Behind him are some nuns with their mouths covered to prevent infection. In the forefront of the picture is a dead child.

Beside the window is this plaque saying the window and plaque were erected by the people of Listowel.

On Saturday the last  speaker was John Pierse who told us of his desire to see the flower of the lumper on a postage stamp as a fitting memorial of those who were lost when this crop failed in successive years.

All in all, the Listowel Famine commemoration was a very worthwhile event that I am glad to have attended. Well done to all those who made it a success.

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Listowel Garden Centre, November 2017



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Some More Polar Christmas Windows



Here are some more polar train windows from Christmas 2017

Chic’s magnificent window with Olive Stack’s Christmas scene is a striking first impression for motorists entering town this Christmas.

Vanity Case

Every Woman

Flavins

Footprints

Gentleman Barbers

Horseshoe

Lizzy’s Little Kitchen

Lynch’s

Mc Gillicuddy’s

O’Connor’s Pharmacy

Olive Stack’s

Woulfe’s Bookshop

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McGillicuddy’s Toys; A Listowel Institution




McGillicuddy’s Toys shared this lovely family photo on Facebook. Seeing it, I was whisked back in time to the days before Facebook and online shopping when Jackie McGillicuddy’s was an integral part of a Listowel Christmas.

In the 1970s when I was in the market for toys, Jackie’s was a Santa’s workshop. He had every toy the heart could wish for and he was so so kind and obliging. He operated a credit scheme for those who found it hard to come up with all the money at once. He also offered free storage until Christmas Eve.

Once, when we had a Christmas disaster and the stylus of the Magna Doodle got thrown out with the wrapping paper, Jackie was the soul of patience and understanding and even borrowed another stylus until the lost one was replaced.

Mary Gore R.I.P. used to be his right hand woman. I remember the year of Polly Pockets. Mary predicted that they would never sell, overpriced and so small that a child might feel thy had got a very poor present. It was one of Mary’s few mistakes. She had her finger on the pulse of the children’s   toy scene long before we had The Late Late Toy Show to tell us what was a “must have.”

Happy days!

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