Across the Square May 2025
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Clarification
This house which will be knocked down to make way for the new Lidl store was indeed occupied by a Dowd family. They were not gatekeepers.
There was another house at the nearer side of the railway track which was knocked down when the John B. Keane Road was developed.
Tom O’Connell lived in this house. He used to grow vegetables and flowers all along the banks by the railway track.
Vincent Carmody had another little bit of history about the field behind Dowd’s House for us. When fierce rivalry raged between teams in the Town League in the 1950s, the late John Molyneaux used to train the Boro team in the field behind Dowd’s house.
Vincent also told me that there were several gates along the railway line. A Scanlan family were gatekeepers at Ballygologue.
Martin Griffin shared these happy memories…Eugene Dowd lived in that house with his mother and he died aged 42 in 1963. He was a regular caller after a few pints with my father to our house in O’Connell Ave.
Eugene and my father Andrew Griffin enjoyed many a day fishing together.
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Pope Leo’s family
A very young Pope Leo on the far left with his mother and brother and sister on their way to mass. (source: the internet)
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Caps for a Cap Gun?
You have to be around my age to know what these are. They are rolls of caps that you could buy for a gun that had a hammer that made a loud noise and gave off smoke when you pulled the trigger. They were an essential piece of kit for every young lad playing Cowboys and Indians. Cowboys were armed with hand guns kept in holsters on a belt at the boys waist. Indians had bows and arrows kept in a quiver over the non dominant hand’s shoulder.
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Lovely Old Tradition
A group gathered at the grotto in O’Connell’s Avenue for the weekly May recitation of The Rosary.
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Bring Flowers of the Rarest
This song will be forever associated with Canon Sydney McEwan whose recording of this hymn is played widely during the month of May.
The song was written by an American composer, Mary E. Walsh and the lyrics were first published in the 1880s.
Bring flow’rs of the fairest,
Bring flow’rs of the rarest,
From garden and woodland
And hillside and vale;
Our full hearts are swelling,
Our Glad voices telling
The praise of the loveliest
Rose of the vale.
O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May,
O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.
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A Rose by any other Name….
It’s called Listowel but it is not the Listowel home of this man. Bernard O’Connell grew up in Listowel and loves to return to the town of his birth as often as he can.
He now lives in Canada. He sent us this picture of his visit to the Canadian town of the same name.
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A Fact
A ship abandoned off the coast of Alaska in 1931 was spotted, still adrift in the Arctic in 1969.
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