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: Gerry O’Carroll

Soldiers’ Houses

By

On February 13, 2025

In History, Listowel, Poem

Market Street, February 2025

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A Kerry Castle

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The Big Wind in Family History

Lauren Davis wrote the following letter to us in October 2020:

Hi Mary ~
I wanted to let you know how much we’ve been enjoying your blog lately. Even with little “new”news to report on, you are keeping our interest here in America! My ancestors left Listowel around 1870 so even “news” from the 19th century in County Kerry is fascinating for me. For instance, when a piece you posted a few days ago said,
 “For three quarters of a century afterwards the people in this district and in North Kerry generally recorded events from the year the boat was drowned” or from the night of the big wind”.”I got so excited! Our family’s stories mention that my 2x great grandmother was born “the night of the big wind.” (She actually was born a few days before but everybody remembered her birth in connection with the storm.) My own granddaughter was just born a month ago here in Oregon. I’m sure we will be remembering her birth as “the time of the big wild fires.” Just knowing that other people from Co. Kerry remembered events the way my family did makes me feel so much more connected to our ancestral home.

Thank you for all that you do! Please keep it up!

Lauren Carroll Davis

Sisters, Oregon

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Hens and Eggs

Photo; Chris Grayson

Egg prices in the US have risen by 20% due to the many outbreaks of bird flu.

Did you read about the egg heist in Pennsylvania when 100,000 eggs were stolen? I must admit that with the CEO’s name given as Flocco and references to scrambling to improve security and cracking down on theft I think maybe the story was a wind up.

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Soldiers’ Houses

Since Carmel Hanrahan raised the subject, I have been fascinated by the story of the soldiers’ houses in Cahirdown.

A helpful blog follower told me that the late Gerry O’Carroll had written about them in his memoir. I borrowed it from the library.

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So True

So, grief walked up to love, 
and asked if it would dance. 
Love blamed grief for everything
and rudely answered “no chance.”

Grief stood there watching love. 
Knowing there was nothing it could do. 
It shared in every teardrop 
and felt the heartache too. 

Love hated grief so fiercely,
and prayed for it to go away. 
Grief could never leave though
and it was here to stay. 

Every day it asked the same question, 
“Love, please dance with me.”
Everyday was met with the answer
“Please just leave me be.”

Grief and love shared every moment.
Every thought was just the same. 
Every day they fought a battle,
Of love along with blame. 

Grief finally stopped asking, 
and pulled love to its chest. 
Together they swayed to memories,
and shared their empty nest. 

Grief never let go of love again. 
They made better music as one. 
After all if there was no love, 
then grief wouldn’t belong…

Joanne Boyle ~ Heartfelt 

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A Fact

In 1978 the song Mull of Kintyre by Wings went to No. 1 in January.

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The MacMahon River Walk at Writers’ Week 2015

By

On June 8, 2015

In Uncategorized

Heather at Bromore Cliffs, Ballybunion, Co. Kerry, June 2015

Photo: Bromore Cliffs

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A Writers’ Week Walking Tour

Vincent Carmody organizes a programme of walking tours every year at Writers’ Week. For many people these are among the high points of the festival and such is the reputation of the walks that it is now getting difficult to cope with the big numbers of people wanting to follow.

Last year’s river walk with Owen MacMahon was so talked about that this year I resolved not to miss it. So here I was (with my camera) at The Listowel Arms on Saturday morning May 28 2015 ready for a treat. I got it.

Owen MacMahon was our guide. Along the way he sang his late brother, Gary’s, songs, he read from his father’s works and he told anecdote after anecdote to the delight of his enthralled audience.

Our first stop was at Listowel castle. He told us a bit about the history of the castle and the famous siege.

We headed off for our walk along the banks of The Feale. We heard of a time when the river was teeming with fish and Owen’s late uncle, Bubs, liked nothing better than to slip away from his home and surgery on Market Street for a few hours fishing.

We learned that when the pontoon bridge linking the town with the racecourse collapsed into the Feale, the people who fell in were compensated with a new trousers. One man got two.

Owen telling another amusing tale of judges, courts of law and drinking.

Some people found a picturesque place to sit and listen.

Walkers hung on every word.

Owen and Vincent seemed to have identified appropriate perches along the way so we could see as well as hear them.

We stopped at the ball alley for another rann or two of a song.

At the Garden of Europe we listened amid reminders of Europe’s darkest hour. The tour finished in the nearby graveyard where  many of the people remembered along the way in so many anecdotes are buried. There were a few more footballing stories and a song or two before we dispersed, having made a great start to a memorable Writers’ Week Saturday. This Saturday was to end for me with a trip to Listowel Community Centre to see Graham Norton.

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Only in Kerry


Some well known local people pick the winning tickets from a very valuable ‘hat” in Brosnan’s Bar  at the charity fundraiser on Friday Night. Photos by John Kelliher.

Norah Browne
Sean Moriarty
Gerry O’Carroll

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Wild Atlantic Way Seaweed Festival

(Photo: Facebook)

This group were on the beach foraging for edible sea weed as part of the first Wild Atlantic Way Seaweed Festival in Ballybunion on Saturday June 6 2015.

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Adare, Saturday June 6 2015









These photos from the internet show the devastating fire that destroyed part of the picturesque terrace of cottages in Adare on Saturday. There was no loss of life but one lady who was renting one of the houses lost all her  possessions. It would appear that the fire started in one of the chimneys.

The last of 2014 Corpus Christi procession photos and some beautiful paintwork on Church Street

By

On July 4, 2014

In Uncategorized

Today is July 4th.  Have a great day all my American followers!

The stars and stripes are flying outside St. John’s.

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Liam Murphy and family


Liam, on the far left,  is pictured with his sister, Catherine (Kath) brother Tom and sister Mary. The photo was taken in 2012. The story of Liam’s emigration is a happy one. He loves Kerry and in particular his native Lyre but he made a good life for himself in the U.S. and he now loves both of his homes. The land of opportunity gave him a good job, a home and family. Now, in his retirement, he returns often to visit his family and renew old acquaintances.

 Happy Independence Day, Liam!

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Corpus Christi procession 2014



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Church Street Looking good

Lovely, absolutely lovely!

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In Herald.ie Gerry O’Carroll remembers his father who played his part in WW1

02 JULY 2014 12:00 AM

LAST Saturday marked the 100th anniversary
of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.

The shooting led, of course, to World War
i, a conflict which drew in millions of people around the world.

Among them was a young man from Listowel,
Co Kerry, named James O’Carroll. He was my father.

He was one of thousands of young Irishmen
who answered John Redmond’s call to join the British Army and fight for the
freedom of small nations.

My dad was just 16 when he left north
Kerry for London in 1916. There he joined the Royal Engineers and, after four
months of basic training, was sent to the Western Front.

He fought in France and later in Belgium.
Like thousands of his fellow countrymen he endured the horrors and hardships of
the Great War – the mud, the blood, the daily terror and struggle for survival.

In early 1918, having survived two years
of that living hell, he was seriously wounded during an over-the-top attack in
Ypres.

He was shot through the shoulder and,
following a mustard gas attack, lay blinded and choking in a shell-hole for ten
hours before he was rescued.

My father was taken to hospital and
recovered from the wound. Alas he suffered lifelong effects to his lungs from
the gas attack.

James O’Carroll remained in France with
his regiment until the Armistice in 1918 and was demobbed the following year,
after which he returned to Listowel.

My dad’s experiences in France and Belgium
left him a changed man. In later years he became a committed pacifist.

veterans

He also went on to raise a family of 15,
living in the soldiers’ houses in Listowel, a terrace built by a trust for
wounded veterans of the War.

Growing up In the staunchly Republican
heartland of north Kerry I always had the feeling that the houses were looked
on by many people as a curious anomaly.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this was
that our family would sell the poppy each November, not a common practice in
the town.

Sadly my dad, like many other veterans,
was seen by many not as a person who fought for freedom, but instead as someone
tainted by treason, for taking ‘the King’s shilling’.

Likewise no monuments were erected to my
dad’s many Irish pals who never came home.

Only now, at last, are they being properly
recognised. It’s taken a century but I’m glad to see it.

I’m sure my dear departed father would be
too.

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