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
Lovely Heaney Poem making an apprearance on Mothers’ Day
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Cora Update
Firstly, let me say a big thank you to everyone who enquired about Cora and her MCL injury.
She is doing well. The tear doesn’t need surgery. The hope is that with a dilligent adherence to her physiotherapy routine she will be back on her feet in 6 weeks.
I am very impressed with her two football teams who are including her in everything. While it’s hard to watch everyone else playing, it is heartwarming to be included even when you can’t make a contribution.
Here are Ciara and Cora on Saturday March 29th. The team won that one anyway.
They included Cora in the squad photo, far left, back row.
At the club award ceremony at the weekend, Cora got to celebrate last season’s success with her friends.
One of the great joys of shopping in charity shops is finding treasures like this.
There are thousands of Irish books published each year. They are often short print runs and when they are gone they’re gone. Every now and again a great one turns up in a charity shop. This is one such.
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Cora, My Little Footballer
This is Cora Darby, my granddaughter. She loves football, both Gaelic and Soccer.
When her team, Lakewood Under 14s, played Ballyouster of Kildare in the National Cup, Cora was captain for the game.
Lakewood girls Under 14
They won. Now their next game is against a Drogheda club and they have home advantage. I’ll keep you posted.
Meanwhile in Dublin…
Sean is in tennis action with his intervarsity team.
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Tolka Row
Tolka Row is an Irish television drama serial that aired on RTE One from 1964 to 1968, set in a fictional housing estate on the northsideof Dublin.[1] Based on Maura Laverty‘s play of the same name, Tolka Row was first broadcast on 3 January 1964 and aired weekly for five series until it ended on 31 May 1968.[2 Wikipedia
These two pictures were published in Ireland’s Own. The late Maura Laverty is also the same Maura who wrote Full and Plenty.
This scene from the soap depicts the the Nolans and their neighbours in the sitting room of the Nolan house. The Nolans and their neighbours, the Feeneys, were working- class Dublin families living in the North side of the city.
It was a very regrettable practice in the early days of Telefís Eireann, to wipe the videotape after an episode was broadcast and reuse the tape. So, only the final episode of the four year series is extant.
I loved the show and like me many others loved the glimpse inside a part of Ireland we never saw in real life. Before television, there was huge urban rural disconnect. Tolka Row and its successor, The Riordans, introduced city folk and country folk to one another. It was a great learning experience.
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If you have Money Problems
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Exciting Opportunity for “Mid- Career Artists’
St. John’s in February 2025
St. John’s Theatre, Listowel, Co. Kerry, and the Irish Arts Center, New York, are inviting applications for the County Exchange international residency for mid-career artists.
Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Kerry County Arts Office, the County Exchange residency aims to connect artists from the experimental theatre, dance, and performance sectors in Ireland and New York.
Seven selected artists (four from Ireland, three from New York) will spend two weeks in Listowel (19 May–2 June 2025) and one week in New York (January 2026, dates TBC). The residency provides accommodation, travel, a daily subsistence allowance, and a €1,000 fee.
Interested applicants should submit a 100-word statement of purpose, contact details, a brief bio, and links to previous work by email to newyorklistowel@gmail.com by Monday, February 24th, 2025, at midnight.
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A Fact
The first Winter Olympic Games were held at Chamonix in 1924.
While soccer fans were busy with The Euros, our little soccer player and her Gaelscoil Uí Riordáin team mates were given a moment of honour at half time in the Bohs versus Cork match on Saturday. They were all delighted to be in Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Tuesday to see Ireland beat France..
If you can see it, you can be it……
Meanwhile
in another stadium
The GAA was showcasing its up and coming talent at half time in the Kerry Armagh game.
Another admirable group was honoured.
We won’t mention the game.
Croke Park photos from Bridget O’Connor.
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Gatherings
Since time immemorial Irish people have gathered on summer Sundays on hilltops to eat, drink, dance and celebrate.
I never hard of a barbecue when I was young and when we ate outdoors it wasn’t ever referred to as a picnic. It was merely having your tea in the field so that there was minimum disruption to the work.
Originally, according to Kevin Danaher, people went to hills to pick berries. These outings were popular with young people and many marriages were made between people who first met on “Gooseberry Hill” or on “Heatherberry Sunday”
In Knockfeerina in Co. Limerick there is a tradition of gathering on the level top of the ridge where they ” played games., flirted, danced and sang, ate and drank the dainties they had brought with them, picked fraocháin and flowers, some of which they laid on the small cairn called the strickeen. In the 1930s, when this custom was at its height, a bonfire was lit on the strickeen in the evening time.
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A Definition
from The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
bore, n. a person who talks when you wish him to listen
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A Fact
Mongolia’s largest airport is called after Genghis Khan. He had more than 500 wives. and too many children to count. One in ten people in Central Asia today are his descendants.
Aisling Neville is a multi-instrumentalist who hails from Listowel in Co. Kerry. Aisling has spent many years on session circuits all over Ireland at various festivals and fleadhs. She holds 7 All Ireland titles, winning the Senior Banjo in 2003. Due to this success, she was selected for the Comhaltas tours of Ireland, Britain, and North America. Aisling completed the BAMus in UCC and was the recipient of the Doc Gleeson Award for performance excellence while in attendance there. She was also a member of The Bedford Cross Céilí band in recent years. Aisling is a primary school teacher in Co. Clare with over 20 years of experience teaching in various settings. She has adjudicated extensively at county and provincial level also.
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Between a Rock and a Hard Place
This image has gone viral. The unfortunate motorist changed his mind when driving through the Conor Pass and attempted to turn back. The car was removed later but our photographer seems to have left by then. I looked for photos of the removal of the car but couldn’t find any.
Wouldn’t you die….?
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Bibiana Foran
I brought you this photo last week.
Jer Kennelly found her mentioned in this newspaper clip
Killarney Echo and South Kerry Chronicle 1899-1920, Saturday, 22 April 1911
When an old age pensioner enters the Workhouse the pension is no longer paid. As the law is at present, such old persons entering the Workhouse cease to be pensioners. An effort is being made to change the law. ———–
Large numbers of the old people who became old age pensioners at the beginning of the year-have gone back to the Workhouses. The food, comforts, and accommodation of the Workhouse are something more than they can obtain for 5s. a week outside. Inmates of Workhouses, in Kerry and elsewhere receive better .treatment than they did in years gone by. Still, respectable old people do not like the Workhouse, and it’s only right that homes should be established for them.
THE MOVEMENT IN LISTOWEL edited,
The members of the Listowel branch of the Women’s National Health Association, met last week and, judging by the statements made at the meeting, it would seem that the movement against consumption and its causes has made much progress in that district. If any doubts were entertained regarding the assertions that the disease can be cured the statement made at the meeting in question, by Mrs. Foran P.L.G., should have the effect of removing them. She informed those present that some persons sent from the Listowel district to the sanatorium for treatment had returned quite restored to health.
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We Have a Winner
My granddaughter, Cora, plays soccer with her club, Lakewood, and with her school, Gaelscoil Uí Riordáin. The schools’ competition is a 5’s blitz. It is very hard on the nerves because if your team goes down a goal you have very little time to make it up. Last week Cora’s team, representing Cork, won the Munster Schools’ Final and are now into the All Ireland final.
Hopes are high for victory in her other discipline, Gaelic football. Gaelscoil Uí Riordáin is into the final of Sciath na Scol to be played later this week.
Cora with her proud parents
Gaelscoil Uí Riordáin team
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A Rallying Cry
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A Fact
In 1220 Henry 1 laid the foundation stone for Westminster Abbey in London.
