Tag: Listowel Characters

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A Strange Tale from the School’s Folklore Collection

Little Hands and the Bread Shoes

Once upon a time there lived a man with his wife and son war broke in France, and every Irish man had to go there, and this man had to go also. He wrote letters every day to his wife, and one a wire came to his wife that her husband got killed in the war. She had only one little boy, and he was only a baby. It was a slate house they had.
One day as the little boy was sleeping in his cradle, a slate fell off over the window, and a branch of ivy went in the window and it grew around the child’s. The child was about four years when he went to school. After a time the children got the “flu”, and the little boy took it, and he was very sick, and it was worse he was geting, and at last he died.
His mother kept a little red pair of shoes under her bed, and when she went up in the room the mice had them eaten, and then she took out a loaf of bread out of the bin and softened it in boiling water; and while she was softening the bread a man went in and asked a piece of bread for God’s sake. The woman said that she had bread inside, and she had a loaf in the bin.
The man who asked her was Christ at last the boy was buried, and the threw herself on the grave, and the neighbours pulled her away, and she went to bed after going home, and a few nights after her son appeared to her and said I am in the first step of heaven mother, but the bread shoes are keeping me back, and the night he came he said he was in the second step of heaven, but the bread shoes had kept him back and the next night he came he said he was in the third step of heaven but the bread shoes had kept him back, and then they took off the shoes, and he went to heaven. After a short time the boys mother died, and she went to heaven
Collector; Eileen Hannon Age 14-

Informant- Mrs Ellen Foley-Age 74-

Address, Mountcoal, Co. Kerry.

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Wouldn’t it Lift your Heart?

This is my grandnephew in the U.S. dancing with his great grandmother at a family wedding.

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Drought 2021

The River Feale at the Big Bridge is at a very low level.

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Elegy to Road Kill

Fox

by John McGrath

I killed a fox last night

outside the graveyard wall.

Too late to brake I caught

a flash of golden fur

in headlight’s glare,

Felt the thump and crunch

of steel on bone,

Slow-motion silence,

Disbelief and then,

certitude

that fate had mindlessly conspired

to lead us to this place,

this point in time,

this intersecting line

where two lives intertwine

with tragedy.

One of us remained

outside the graveyard wall.

One moved on

and died a little too.

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The Mural is Finished

I took the following photos on July 24 2021 as the muralist just finished the artwork. I took a few long shots to give those of you not in town an idea of where it is and to put the scale of the work in context

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