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: John McGrath Page 3 of 7

Moran’s of Church Street

By

On August 25, 2021

In Listowel, Poem

Two different views of the same beach, An Clochar in Corca Dhuibhne. Photo: Éamon ÓMurchú

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Moran’s Hotel

I’ve had a few suggestions as to who the girls in Luaí ÓMurchú’s photo might be but no more definite than the leading three.

Miriam Kiely who lived in that part of town remembers her neighbours on the street well.

The building with the upstairs bay window was Moran’s Hotel, then Quirke’s and now Fitzpatrick’s. Various different catering enterprises operated in this premises.

Miriam remembers that the gardaí used to come there for their meals. The hotel is located opposite the guards’ barracks and back in the day the gardaí used to live in the barracks. Listowel often had a cohort of handsome young gardaí who made quite a stir as they made their way across to Moran’s every day for their dinner.

On First Holy Communion Day, the girls got their communion breakfast in the convent and the boys from the nearby Scoil Réalt na Maidine went to Moran’s for their repast.

For many years Morans did the catering on The Island for Listowel Races.

Eileen Moran married Joe Quirke. They bought Chute’s chip shop and added a fast food outlet to their catering offerings.

Miriam also has a theory about the car in the picture. She thinks it may have belonged to a Moriarty, a bookie. She remembers many trips to Ballybunion in Moriarty’s car and it looked very like this one.

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More from the Michael O’Connor Collection

Some more of the intricate, detailed works of art, painstakingly drawn and illustrated by the late Michael O’Connor of The Square.

I’m looking forward to seeing these marvellous works in reality. Hopefully they will soon return to their artist creator’s home in Kerry Writers’ Museum.

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A Poem by John McGrath

from his anthology, Blue Sky Day

A Time For Dancing

Our lives proceed in rhythms of their own,

Sometimes in waves that dash from stone to stone,

Sometimes a soothing, softly murmuring flow,

A ride to cherish, be it quick or slow.

A river by a highway, river-paced,

Not rushing by as if by demons chased,

With time for wine and dancing in the night

Or fiddle fit to put the moon to flight –

But lest you perish in the deafening din,

Life trades her fiddle for a violin,

Soft lights, sweet music and a moon that lingers,

Eyes that are smiling just for you, and fingers

To soothe your soul just like the murmuring stream.

A time for dancing and a time to dream.

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The Last of the Islanders

This photograph was republished in The Irish Examiner this week. It shows the boat carrying the men of The Great Blasket to their new homes in the mainland in 1953.

An Blascaod Mór was like a little independent republic for many years. Despite the many many hardships and deprivations, its people loved the island and they grew strong and resilient there. A corpus of literary work in size out of all proportion to the little scrap of land, grew out of that sparse but contented lifestyle.

Eventually the islanders relented and could take the harsh life no longer when the illness and death of a beloved local boy was the last straw for them. The death occurred during a storm when they couldn’t cross the sound. This proved a test too far. The islanders were getting old and less well able to take the hardship any longer.

They sent this famous telegram to De Valera “Storm bound, distress, send food, nothing to eat.”

The government heard their plea for help and they were uprooted from the only life they knew and relocated inland. The picture tells its own story. These men are being rescued but they look far from happy.

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Hay time, a reunion and Poetry Town

By

On August 11, 2021

In History, Listowel

Listowel Community Centre in 2021

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In the Meadow

Photo from the internet

This photograph will bring back memories to many of you. The four men are almost certainly neighbours because haymaking required manpower and that’s when comharing came into its own. You helped the neighbours in their meadow and they came and helped you in yours.

Fine weather was extremely important when you had “hay down”. This is the time when the hay is mown and lying flat in the meadow. It is at its most vulnerable. Heavy rain at this juncture meant the hay was drenched and had to be tossed and turned to try to dry it. Wet hay would rot and sour and the cows would refuse to eat it.

Two days of sunny weather after the hay was mown was ideal as on the first day the hay could be turned and raked into rows and on the second day the wynds could be made. Once the hay was in wynds, the farmer could relax as even if it rained then it would run off the cock of hay without damaging it.

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Reunited

I hadn’t seen my friend, Liz Dunn since the first lockdown. Ansence makes the heart grow fonder but I’m glad to be reunited.

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Nature Takes its Course in 2021

Crabs (at Carrigafoyle)

By John McGrath

By Carrigafoyle I found them on the shore,

catastrophe of crabs at Shannonside,

a hundred thousand corpses, maybe more,

abandoned high and dry by ebbing tide.

So small and white like pebbles by the sea,

I wondered what disaster had ensued,

what plague or poison shaped this tragedy

that wrought misfortune of such magnitude.

No massacre, I learned, but nature’s ways.

Somewhere beneath the wild Atlantic swells

these tiny creatures shed their carapace,

together they cast off their outgrown shells

and then, on cue, the mating games begin,

those age-old ecstasies of skin on skin.

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Listowel has been chosen as one of Ireland’s Poetry towns.

Here is what it says on the website;

“The people and communities of each Poetry Town will celebrate poetry in their everyday lives and surroundings, create communal experiences, and celebrate the pride, strength and diversity of each town. Watch this space for more, including the announcement of each town’s Poet Laureate in mid-August, and upcoming details on events. Poetry Town is an initiative of Poetry Ireland in partnership with Local Authority Arts Offices and is made possible with funding from the Arts Council of Ireland’s Open Call funding, and is also supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.”

I’ll keep you posted.

Shop Fronts and Sides

By

On August 5, 2021

In Listowel

At Vartry Reservoir by Éamon ÓMurchú

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Listowel’s Street Art

That was Then

This is Now

Listowel has a long history of unusual public building decoration. Now as then these big pieces of Art are not to everyone’s taste.

Pat MacAuliffe’s quirky stucco sculptures are now treasured and preserved. They are some of the images that define Listowel. Anyone would criticise them at his peril.

Back in the day when they were executed, people had mixed feelings about them. The image of a lion on top of a harp surrounded by a bit of Latin, a bit of French and a bit of Irish looked strange and out of place in an Irish market town in the 1920s. The Arts and Crafts era had arrived in Listowel. It took time for people to appreciate the originality of the work and to cherish the eccentricity and individuality it brought to Listowel’s streetscapes.

In 2021 the Listowel Characters project is also dividing local opinion. The first mural, executed by Garreth Joyce, is of its time. It is big, bold aerosol -can art. It’s graffiti as art and, like Pat McAuliffe’s text, the quotation requires a second or third reading. I think we should give it time. It will grow on us and we’ll come to love it as part of our streetscape.

There are two more large mural projects on the way this year. If you are slow in coming to like this one, reserve judgement until you see the next one.

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Lovely Spot for Outdoor Dining

Lynch’s in Main Street is a lovely spot for people -watching while you eat.

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A Thought provoking poem

In just a few lines John captures the pain and frustration of a lost generation.

Famine

by John MacGrath

Hungry land

Your people deserved better

Summer never wetter

Turf-sods floating in the bog-hole

Praties sick and dying

Like the people that sad winter

Heart of flint, you sent

Another sorry summer,

Scorned their plight. The blight

In every furrow sealed their fate

No hope and no tomorrow.

Yellow meal, too little and too late.

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Relihan’s pub, Horses and a Holocaust Poem

By

On August 3, 2021

In History, Listowel

Skerries by Éamon ÓMurchú

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Home on the Range

On my recent trip home Mr. Jiggs and Tana came for a chat.

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Upper William Street

I posted this photo of Sheahan’s on Facebook and it prompted Gerard Leahy to share the below photo of his grandmother, Mary Ann Relihan at the door of her pub which used to be next door to Sheahan’s.

This is what Gerard said “I don’t have any photos of the inside but great memories. The concrete floor, the “grocery ” part of the shop in front, dry goods: sugar, tobacco, snuff, flour etc. and the little pub counter next to it and the dining room and kitchen further back. Outhouses in the back and the gate to the backway close to the creamery.

My grandmother was a butter maker at the creamery for years and her husband Jack was the creamery manager in Coolard, it got burned down. Jack went to America and spent most of his adult life in NY. He used to come back on visits. Mrs. Quirke would send a note up to Mary Ann to say he was back. He would stay there until invited up to Pound Lane !!!

Donie Finnucane bought the place around 1976-77 after she passed.

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Wild Flowers on the Pitch and Putt Course

I think this is a nice idea. They have planted wild flowers around the base of the trees. Another lovely feature of the beautiful course.

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Lest we Forget

Auschwitz (Sixty Years On)

by John McGrath

Auschwitz!

Even the word is bitter

in this godless place.

No happy endings here,

only the ghosts of

poets, peasants,

doctors, lawyers,

fur-coated frauleins;

their single crime,

bloodline.

Children plucked from mothers,

snuffed like kittens in a sack.

Brick and barbed wire

mock survival for a few,

screams in striped pyjamas

dying time on time

before the works of death

are stilled forever.

Silence then

and silence now.

After the speeches

and the flickering candles,

after the ashes of a million dead

are scattered in the snow.

Old women, old men,

hold each other close,

look for answers

in each other’s eyes,

find only

disbelief.

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1956 Advertisement, The Land and an Old Pres. Photo

By

On August 2, 2021

In Listowel, Schools

Photo: Breda Ferris

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From Shannonside Annual of 1956

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Once a Tidy Towner……

Breda McGrath is not fond of having her photo taken. So she didn’t pose but I snapped her doing her level best to make sure we win that gold medal again. Breda is just one of the many volunteers who work round the clock keeping Listowel looking beautiful.

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A Very Strange Happening in 1842

Boston Pilot 9 July 1842

The Wandering Quakers. These silly fanatics arrived in Listowel from this town on Tuesday evening last, and formed their encampment in the extensive area in the rear of one of the houses in the square, under the shelter of which they sat in pious silence the greater part of the next day in expectation of obtaining followers, or at least hearers, and of being internally moved by the spirit to preach, sing or pray. Finding, however, after a great trial of their patience that, all their expectations were in vain, they rose and retired to Adam’s Hotel where they did justice to the good things of this carnal world, making atonement in the flesh for all that was wanting in the spirit. The next day the holy’ tribe set out on their peregrinations, after having excited the surprise and laughter of the good folks of Listowel. — Kerry Examiner.

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Photo by Éamon ÓMurchú of farm implements at Newbridge House

The Land

John McGrath

I stand in fields where my forefathers stood once

And feel the dreams of those who’ve gone before me.

I tramp through damp and half-remembered pastures,

The folds and features of the land that bore me

All around.  Above the sound of lark’s song,

Below the spring of earth beneath my feet,

The green and gold of April in the hedgerow,

The purple haze where sky and heather meet.

Where mighty men have thought to mark their passing

The furze creeps back to mock the spade and plough,

Those futile epitaphs of generations

In Folk Museums condemned to moulder now.

Where men have raised a fence or tilled a furrow

The land, as if to scorn their simple gains,

Erases each proud trace until tomorrow.

The men have gone; the land alone remains.

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A Passover Meal in Pres. Listowel

I could guess a few names but I’d probably be wrong so I’m hoping someone will help us out.

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