Tag: John B. Keane Page 1 of 20

Christmas in Cork

By listowelconnection

On December 19, 2023

In History, Just a Thought, Listowel, Poem

The big wheel for Christmas 2023 in Cork’s Grand Parade

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Cork at Christmas

My next spot of Christmas travel was to my home by the Lee.

Finn’s Corner, early morning

St. Peter and Paul’s, beautiful old city centre church

This took me back to opening term masses here when I was in UCC. I wonder if that tradition is still observed.

Statue of Our Lady in the grounds of St. Peter and Paul’s.

This was my first sight of the Michael Collins statue.

A great likeness

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Just a Thought

Here is a link to my reflections which were broadcast on Radio Kerry in the Just a Thought slot last week.

Just a Thought

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Serendipity

Serendipity is the making of unexpected and pleasant discoveries by accident.

Front (faded) and back (vivid) covers of a book discovered in a charity shop and purchased for 50c.

A story from the book… Pail but not Wan

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The Wran

I don’t know the year for this one.

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With Tambourines and Wren boys

Wm. Molyneaux

(Continued from yesterday…)

But then, about the Wren. How the wren derived her dignity
as the king of all birds. That was the question. An eagle issued a challenge between all birds, big and small as they were-wrens, robins, sparrows, thrushes, blackbirds, jackdaws, magpies, or else. They commenced their flight this day-Christmas Day-The eagle, being the bravest continues her flight and was soaring first. All the other birds were
soaring after, until, in the finish, after a lapse of time in her flight, the weaker birds seemed to get weary and could not continue their flight some ways further.
But the Wren pursued to the last.
The other birds got weak and worn out and in the heel of fair play, the eagle said that she was the king of all birds herself now. The wren concealed yourself under the Eagles feathers, in the end of fair play the Eagle got worn out. The wren flew out from under the Eagles
feathers and declared yourselves the king of all birds. That is how the Wren derived her dignity as being the king of all birds. So we hunted her for the honour of it.

Also, when St Stephen was in prison and as he was liberated the band went out against St Stephen, and it was a daylight performance and the wren, when she heard the music and the band, came out and perched yourselves on the drum. That’s how we heard the story.

Anyway we made our tambourines. You’d get a hoop made (in them days) by a cooper. There is no cooper hardly going now. You’d get this made by cooper for about half a crown. I used to make my tambourines always of goat’s skin. You could make them of an ass foal’s
skin-anything young, do you see. How? I’d skinned the goat, get fresh lime and put the fresh lime on the fleshy side of the skin-not that hairy side but the fleshy side of the skin-fold it up then and double it up and twist it again and get a soft string and put it around it and take it with you then to a running stream and put it down in the running stream where the fresh water will be always running over it, and leave it so.
You could get a flag and attach it onto the bag, the way the water wouldn’t carry it. Leave it there for about nine days and you come then and you can pull off the hair and if the hair comes freely you can take up the skin and pull off the hair the same as you would shave yourself. And then you
should moisten with lukewarm water. You should draw it the way it wouldn’t shrink. You should leave it for a couple of hours. You would get your ring and you’d have the
jingles and all in-the bells-you’d have them all in before you put the skin to the rim. You should have two or three drawing the skin to keep it firm-pull it from half-width, that would be the soonest way t’would stiffen. Let the skin be halfwidth and put it down on the rim and have a couple pulling it and another man tacking it with brass tacks.
That’s the way I used make my tambourines, anyway. Ther’d be no sound out of it the first night. I used always hang my tambourines outside. And then the following morning t’would be hard as a pan and a flaming sound out of it. And then after a bit t’would cool down. T’would be bad to
have them too hard, they’d crack. Ah, sure I made several tambourines that way.

To be continued…

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A Christmas Poem

Christmas

John Betjeman

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
   The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
    Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
    And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
    The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
“The church looks nice” on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze
    And Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze
    Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says “Merry Christmas to you all.”

And London shops on Christmas Eve
    Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
    To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
    And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
    And Christmas-morning bells say “Come!'”
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true? And is it true,
    This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
    A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true? For if it is,
    No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
    The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
    No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
    Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

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+ R.I.P. Maureen Sweeney+

As a tribute to a heroine who has passed away, here is her story from a previous blogpost…

Flavin Sweeney wedding 1946

2nd, lL to R, Maureen Flavin Sweeney Blacksod Bay, 5th L to R Theresa Flavin Kennelly Knockanure, 6th L to R, Peg Connor Moran, Knockanure

Billy McSweeney told us this story and it appeared in Listowel Connection in 2018

In my Grandparents time, Kerry people understood that they were cut off from the rest of Ireland by a series of mountains; they realized that they were isolated and had to look after themselves. Life was harder in Kerry than in the Golden Vale or on the central plains of Ireland. The mothers of Kerry especially, knew that they had to look to every advantage to help their children and prized education highly to that end. In the mid-19^thcentury the people of Listowel welcomed enthusiastically the establishment of St Michael’s College for Boys and the Presentation Convent Secondary schools for Girls, not forgetting the Technical School. The people who read this blog are most likely familiar with the Census’ 1901 and 1911 and will have noticed that many homes in Listowel housed not only Boarders but also welcomed Scholars who came from the villages and isolated farms scattered around North Kerry. These boys and girls spent 5-6 years in the Listowel schools to be educated for ‘life’.

The upshot of this was that from Listowel we sent out many young adults who were a credit to their teachers to take their places in many organizations and many whose names became nationally known for their talents and abilities, especially in the Arts.

Let me tell you about one such young girl, Maureen Flavin, who was born in Knocknagoshel, Co Kerry. When the time came for Maureen to go on from National school she was welcomed into the Mulvihill home in Upper Church Street who themselves had a young girl, Ginny, of the same age. Maureen and Ginny became fast friends and stayed so for life.

When Maureen finished school in 1930 she wanted a job; couldn’t get one in Kerry because of the times that were in it, so she answered an ad in the National Papers for an Assnt. Postmistress in Black Sod, in North Mayo. Her references and qualifications were suitable and in due course, as she says, to her own surprise she was offered the job. This was to set Maureen on a course where she would be an integral part of one of the most momentous actions of the age. Mrs Sweeney, the Black Sod Postmistress, was married to Ted who was the Lighthouse Keeper, both operating from the Lighthouse building in Black Sod. They had a son, also Ted, who Maureen fell in love with and married in due course. They in turn had three boys and a girl and life took up a normal rhythm for the family; that is until 3rd June 1944.

The WW2 was in full swing at this stage with Gen. Eisenhower as the Allied Supreme Commander and Gen. Rommel the German Commander in Normandy. Rommel knew that an Allied invasion was prepared and imminent. Conventional Meteorological sources at the time for the US and German military said that the coming days would bring very inclement weather so that the invasion would have to be postponed. Eisenhower postponed the action and Rommel left Normandy for a weekend in Berlin based on the same information. The British Chief Meteorologist had however visited Black Sod some years previously and knew the value of Black Sod as the most westerly station in Europe and when a break in the weather was reported by Black Sod on 3^rdJune he persuaded Eisenhower that 6^thand 7^thJune would be clear and to ignore the same conventional Met advice used by both the US and the Germans. Ted compiled the reports for the Irish Met Office and Maureen transmitted them. Maureen remembers receiving a telephone call a short time later from a lady with a ‘very posh English accent’ asking for confirmation of her report. Ted was called to the phone and he confirmed the readings, The rest, as they say, is history.

(R.I.P. Maureen, who passed away on December 17 2023, aged 100. She was a recipient of the US Congress Medal of Honour)

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A Fact

In one week from today it will be St. Stephen’s Day 2023

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In Kildare

By listowelconnection

On December 12, 2023

In Listowel

Kildare, Cill Dara means the church of the oak. This oak-shaped light is in Kildare Town Square. They were erecting the Christmas tree on the day I arrived.

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Another O’Connor/ MacMahon Christmas card

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A John B. Keane Christmas Story

Today’s story comes from this lovely Christmas anthology.

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Kildare

Everywhere in Kildare Town there are references to St. Brigid, Horse racing, sheep, bogs and history.

I stayed in this lovely olde worlde hotel.. I got a real key for my room door!

Here is where my granddaughter will have her Santa experience with real reindeer who are old and getting some TLC here.

Decorated boxes are dotted all over the town.

Their football heyday is behind them but Kildare still celebrate this hero, Bill Squires Gannon.

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A Winter Poem

Winter Walk in Courtown Harbour by Mick O Callaghan

I strolled down the south pier in Courtown.

On a cool and windy December evening.

I see a white teddy bear hanging from the railing

Lit by its own solar powered lighting

With accompanying white notice

I stroll across to read its contents.

It’s the Samaritans messaging.

Spreading A light in the darkness

Reminding people who might be troubled.

To remember

That their family and friends love them

Writ in striking emboldened green lettering

With their text hello 50808 number in stark red

And Samaritans on 116123 writ underneath also in red

It’s a message of hope and love here at water’s edge.

Meanwhile the waves coming in off the Irish sea.

Are all thunderously rolling on to the sandy shore

And powering their waters up the canal.

Where the huge swell makes navigation impossible.

There is no inward or outward shipping traffic.

Along the pier the empty fish boxes

Lie piled up, neatly caged away.

The few boats in the harbour bob up and down.

In the choppy waters of the inner harbour.

It is a bleak scene with an icy wintry breeze.

Blowing its chilly breath across the waters.

All walkers are feeling the Baltic blast.

Though well wrapped up, Michelin person style,

Heavy coats, gloves, hats, and snoods

Were all the rage in the harbour fashion stakes

With people treading the quay wall walk.

Across the bay the lifeboat house is open

Yellow light flickers across the water

Reflecting and flickering on a white boat in the bay

I walk around to the North pier.

The area is awash with festive lights.

The summer cone machines lie dormant.

Safely wrapped up in the locked-up kiosk.

The Christmas crib is now in place.

With its protective vandal proof Perspex front

While the Christmas tree is delivered

Waiting to be dressed up in all its finery.

With its lights and decorations

To show off its festive fashion regalia.

The amusement arcade looks bright and cheery.

Now transformed into a winter wonderland.

The Taravie Hotel is all aglow with Christmas lights.

Hanging like icicles looking so bright

A well-lit tree highlights the corner.

As I walk down towards the lifeboat house

Where the volunteers are busily engaged

Stringing lights along the roof

To give their base it’s festive glow.

Courtown has entered the festive season.

With its welcoming well-lit Christmas environment

Bringing lots of festive bonhomie

Conviviality, geniality, and cheer to you and me.

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A Fact

I told you about my new fact book but I haven’t completely abandoned my old reliable wacky fact source. So here;

Our eyes are always the same size from birth to death, but our ears and nose never stop growing.

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Listowel’s Back Lanes

By listowelconnection

On September 18, 2023

In Listowel, Schools' Folklore

Listowel Credit Union building in Sept 2023

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A Stroll Through a Back Lane

In these days of modernisation and urban renewal it is great to see so much of Listowel’s history preserved in the back lanes.

The stone walls were built by Listowel craftsmen in a bygone era.

We can’t hold back the march of progress. For me the stone walls hold far more charm and history.

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St. Michael’s Graveyard

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Progress Report on the John B. Keane Mural

Martin was painting the first letters of the quotation on Sept 10 2023

Sept 13 2023, Martin Chute, muralist and Pat Nolan, wall owner at Listowel’s newest mural in the Creative Walls initiative by Listowel.ie

This John B. Keane quotation from his song, Sweet Listowel, will be very well received by everyone with a Listowel connection.

Here is the full song from Listowel Emmets website

Sweet Listowel

A song by John B. Keane as promised to Eric

Oh sweet Listowel I’ve loved you all my days

Your towering spires and shining streets and squares

Where sings the Feale it’s everlasting lays

And whispers to you in it’s evening prayers

Chorus

Of all fair towns few have so sweet a soul

Or gentle folk compassionate and true

Where’er I go I’ll love you sweet Listowel

And doff my distant cap each day to you

Down by the Feale the willows dip their wands

From magic bowers where soft the night wind sighs

How oft I’ve roved along your moonlit lands

Where late love blooms and first love never dies

Chorus

Of all fair towns few have so sweet a soul

Or gentle folk compassionate and true

Where’er I go I’ll love you sweet Listowel

And doff my distant cap each day to you.

(A link to one of the best singers of this song…Louis O’Carroll R.I.P. recorded and produced by Denis Carroll of Fealegood Productions ….

Sweet Listowel by John B. Keane)

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A Story about Marriage

From the School’s Folklore Collection, Boy’s National School, Listowel

There was three sisters in one house and no one would marry the old one. The two young sisters got married and she was culled. There was one man and he said she would make a good wife so they got married and those days they used ride side saddle after being married behind the husband.

They all raced to be at the house the first and he rode too fast. There was a big ditch near the house. The horse would not leap the ditch. He came off and he told her to come off too. So he pulled out his gun and shot the horse. She asked him why so did he do that. “That’s what I do to anyone that wouldn’t be said by me” said he.

So at the wedding the three were drinking in the room. The three wives were playing cards in the kitchen. The three husbands were having a conversation on which of the wives would come to them at their first call.First girl that married her husband was to be called. The man that was married second was to be called second.

The first one that was called said she was dealing out the cards. The second one when she called she said she would when she have these five cards played. The man who shot his horse when he called her, she ran to him and he won the price of his horse back.This wife always answered his call when he called her.

COLLECTOR Joseph Cahill

Address Curraghatoosane, Co. Kerry

INFORMANT John Carmody

Age 81

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A Fact

The tern canter to describe the easy comfortable speed of a horse is thought to have come from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It described the slow measured pace of the pilgrims as they made their way to Canterbury.

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A Historian and An Artist

By listowelconnection

On February 7, 2023

In Listowel, Personal

I took a trip down memory lane recently. I visited by Alma Mater, UCC. The many changes have blended in beautifully and much of the campus was recognisable from my student days.

I entered by the Gaol gate. Any bikes that were here in my day were the students’ own.

In the 1970s the gate lodge was just that and the gatekeeper lived there.

The arch looking towards the quad was just the same.

The stoney corridor with its Ogham stones was where our exam results were posted for all to see.

The Aula Maxima was used for study and as an exam centre.

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Listowel Library

The library is a great resource. It seems to get better with each passing month.

February’s treat for us is a series of talks by local historian, Vincent Carmody. Vincent is a fount of knowledge about so many aspects of Listowel. These are bound to be great events.

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Listowel Emmetts

Listowel Emmetts have shared a 2002 letter from John B. Keane to Stephen Stack, chair of the committee fundraising to develop Sheehy Park,

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The Influence of Celtic Art

The place where you live, the sights you see everyday, inevitably influence you. There is a theory that people who live in Listowel become writers by osmosis. It appears to me that people of an artist bent who spend time in Listowel become artists in the celtic genre.

Literally every street corner is adorned with scrolls and swirls in the style of the old celtic artists.

One such artist was Vincent O’Connor

V.L O’Connor was born in Church St, Listowel on July 8th 1888 to Listowel natives, Daniel O’Connor and Elizabeth (Bessie) Wilmot. His father was a retired Sergeant Major of the 1st battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment. The family moved to Dingle where Daniel took up the position of Station Master. On his death in 1898 the family relocated to Tralee where Bessie ran a hotel on Nelson St.

Vincent was a very accomplished artist from an early age and took up a teaching post in the Christian Brothers in 1904. He also studied art under William Orpen.

Vincent emigrated to the USA in 1915 sailing on the Lusitania. He taught at Notre Dame university for a number of years. In 1916 he published a book of 18 caricatures of notable people of the time, including Douglas Hyde, Alice Stopford Green, GB Shaw and others.

When the Irish government was invited to take part in the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, also known as the Century of Progress International Exposition, they were initially reticent. Tariffs and trade barriers meant there was little prospect of any financial gain. Eventually they decided to participate because ‘considerations such as those connected with national publicity and prestige might outweigh the more tangible considerations of trading advantage’.

Ireland sent a cultural and industrial display that was housed in the monumental Travel and Transport building. When the Fair organizers decided to run the event again in 1934, numerous countries—including the Irish Free State—did not participate and their places were taken by private concessions. However, there were a number of events that the Irish State did participate in during the second manifestation, the most prominent was an open air theatrical pageant representing Irish history, The Pageant of the Celt. Irish Consul General in Chicago, Daniel J. McGrath, was on the executive committee of the production.

The Pageant took place on the 28th and 29th August, 1934, at Chicago’s main sports stadium, Soldier’s Field, in front of large ‘marvellous’ crowds. Although the pageant is credited to Irish- American attorney John V. Ryan, it was most likely co-developed with its narrator Micheál MacLiammóir, to whose work it bears similarities. Some contemporary reports credit it solely to MacLiammóir. The Pageant was produced by Hilton Edwards and covered the period of Irish history from pre-Christian times to the Easter Rising of 1916 and it had almost two thousand participants. Subjects like the imperfect resolution to the War of Independence with Britain in 1921 and the subsequent Civil War were still fresh in people’s memory and, as in the earlier MacLiammóir pageants, were avoided.

The program itself has a richly decorated cover and small illustrations and decorated capitals throughout by Irish-American artist Vincent Louis O’Connor (c.1884-1974). The cover contrasts Celtic Ireland with modern Chicago. Round towers are juxta positioned with skyscrapers, separated by clouds, both icons of their time and the spirit of their respective ages. A man and a woman in distinctive ancient Irish dress festooned with a Tara brooch, stand on Ireland’s green shore facing the Atlantic. These and Saint Brendan’s ship anchored, trademarked with a Celtic cross, signifying the Irish-American connection. This was an Irish pageant suitable for diaspora consumption, with its mix of the mythical and ancient, cultured and catholic, distinctive and unique, oppressed but not beaten, leading to phoenix-like revolution and rebuilding.

David O’Sullivan found all of this information for us and he also sourced these obituaries to the artist.

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Different Kinds of Art

By listowelconnection

On January 27, 2023

In History, Listowel

Snow – Killarney – 17-01-2023 Photo: Kathleen Griffin

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Incidents at a Fleadh

When researching Listowel Marching Band stories for us, Dave O’Sullivan came upon this amusing account from John B. Keane in The limerick Leader

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It’s the Little Things

I am blessed in my friends. I have a friend who, when she makes scones, makes me some and a friend who, when she makes marmalade makes me some. Thank God for friends.

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Celtic Art

Work is still ongoing at Kerry Writers’ Museum in preparation for the Michael O’Connor exhibition planned for later this year.

As research continues, and Stephen Rynne is locating examples of O’Connor’s work here there and everywhere, Dave O’Sullivan has unearthed this really interesting article about our great illuminator.

In this article, OConnor cites celtic artwork he saw in newsletters from Ballykinlar as an early influence on him.

Dr. Michael OConnor was one of several republican prisoners interned in Ballykinlar Internment Camp during the War of Independence. Another prisoner was the “Michael Reedy” referred to in the newspaper article.

Google had nothing on Michael Reedy, Killarney artist. I knew that Frank Lewis would be the man to know something about him. I was right.

Frank told me that he went by the name Micheál O’Riada and he told me that this artist had a huge influence on Eamon Kelly, Seanchaí. Frank pointed me to the exact pages in Kelly’s autobiography, The Apprentice where he tells of the massive influence this artist woodworker had on him.

The library didn’t have the book in house but they ordered it for me. In the meantime I knew that my friend, Éamon ÓMurchú was a great friend of the late Éamon Kelly. He was sure to have the book.

Eamon scanned the pages for me and then the library came up trumps as well.

“Meeting this man, Michel O Riada was his name,
was the means of changing the direction of my footsteps and
putting me on the first mile of a journey that would take me
far from my own parish. He taught me and others the craft
of wood and in time we passed examinations set by the
technical branch of the Department of Education….”

“O Riada didn’t tell us, but we discovered that he had been
interned in Ballykinlar Camp during the trouble. While there
he made an illuminated book in Celtic strapwork design in
which were the names of all the prisoners. This book is in
the War of Independence section of the National Museum.”

Reading further I discovered that O’Riada’s ” Celtic strap work” adorns shopfronts in Killarney and “as far away as Listowel”.

ORiada also introduced Kelly to music, acting, astronomy and the great big world in general.

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Something for the Weekend

Barbara Derbyshire sent us this invitation:

The Just Write creative writing group in Listowel is celebrating its 20th year in existence. I was not there at the beginning, but am now a member. We are celebrating this great achievement at St John’s Theatre on Saturday 28th January from 2pm until 4pm. There will be some music and readings and general mingling! There is also a book stall where members will be able to sell some of their published works. John McGrath is hosting and we’re hoping to have a bit of a party. It’s free to the public and if you feel you would like to come along, you would be more than welcome, of course. There are a few original members there, I think – Helen Broderick and Dee Keogh, Teresa Molyneux, Ena Bunyan. Marian Relihan now facilitates the group. There will be some poems read which were written by members who have passed away.

Helen Broderick shared online this early photograph of the group

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