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: Mike the Pies Page 4 of 5

Horse Fair July 6 2017 and Pres. Girls in the 1950s

Theresa Collins of Mallow Camera Club took this.

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What a Boyo, What an obituary!


Seán Mac an tSíthigh shared this on Twitter


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Sign over Mike the Pies


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Scenes from the July Horse Fair in Market Street




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Pres. Girls in the 1950s


This old photo has set ladies of a certain age talking.  I had forgotten that I had posted it twice already. Marie Neligan who originally sent the photo has named most of the girls as best she remembers them.

Back row: Eleanor Leahy,
Eileen Barrett,    ?      , Celia Carroll, Rose Healy Fitzmaurice,
? Walsh,   Marie Neligan,   Doreen Stack, Nora O’Keefe. ?

Middle row: Kathleen
Fitzgerald,    ?, Margaret Sheehan, Mary ?,    Phyllis Horgan, Kathleen Dunworth,   ? Beasley, Kathleen O’Keefe,  Cathy Mae Leahy, Maeve Maloney, ? Murphy.

Front row: Nora Barry,  Margaret Horgan, ?,   Noreen Mahoney,  Geraldine Reidy (visitor from the USA)   Patsy Hartnett,   Marie Buckley, Terry Buckley, Dympna Carroll.


The nun is Sr. Dympna 

These are the girls as
Marie Neligan remembers them and she estimates the year as 1953/54.

Helen O’Connor added this back in May.   “My sister, Delia Walsh, 6th from Top L – beside
Marie Nelligan (sender of photo).  Delia married Peter Spellman and lives
in Manchester.  Her grown up family lives there too. Delia and her husband
come home every year to Listowl/Ballybunion.  She remembers most of her
class in picture but doesn’t know where they are now. 

Eileen Barrett (neighbour of Delia Walsh), 2nd top
from L married Connie Leahy and continued living in Listowel, but unfortunately
died a few years ago.”

Aspects of Listowel Childers’ park, Mike the Pies for Music and Phone box or WiFi hub

Chaffinch photographed by Chris Grayson

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Awakening Trees


Our trees in public places are a delight to watch as they change from the dullness of winter into the glorious colours of spring and summer.

These trees in the park were planted by Scoil Realta na Maidine.

This dense copse has grown really quickly.

Magnificent trees on the pitch and putt course will soon bud into leaf.

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More Progress on the commemorative garden



This beautiful golden sand adds to the jewelled effect.



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Prestigious Award for Mike the Pies




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We have Phone Boxes with Working? Phone in Listowel too



On William Street




According to the sign its a WiFi hub. I must test it out.

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When You’re making plans for Easter Monday…..



If you’ve overindulged with the Easter eggs or even if you haven’t, Listowel Writers’ Week’s Cruinniú na Cásca event is just the ticket:


Beginning at 11am on
Monday 17th April from The Seanchai Centre in Listowel Square, the morning walk
will take you around the beautiful and resourceful River Feale. You will see
and hear some dramatised stories, poems and excerpts from the plays of
Listowel’s literary giants such as Bryan MacMahon, John B. Keane, Dan Keane,
Maurice Walsh, Gabriel Fitzmaurice, Brendan Kennelly, Billy Keane and many
more.

The walk is free, and
will begin with the opening of an open art exhibition by local artists both
professional and amateur followed by a brief introduction to the walk. Along
the walk we will be entertained with short performances by local actors. After
the walk, we will return to the Seanchai Centre for complimentary tea &
coffee.

Ballybunion, Damien Dempsey and a William St. emigrant.

Jason at Ballybunion Prints is a brilliant photographer. Every day, often several times a day, he shares splendid shots of  Ballybunion with us all. I think the unusual angle from which he took this one might have something to do with his other job as a chimney cleaner.

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Mike the Pies












Aiden O’Connor with Damien Dempsey behind the bar in Mike the Pies   (photo; Denis Carroll)



This venue is now the best spot in North Kerry to catch a live gig. Last week they has another huge name on stage, Damien Dempsey.

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Bernard O’Connell opens the family album

 



This is Bernard’s paternal grandfather’s brother, Edmund who grew up at 31 Upper William St. Listowel in the same house where Bernard, himself was reared. Edmund moved to the USA in the early 20th Century. He lived in Chicago, married a girl from Roscommon and had two girls. He was a Professor at Loyola University. He died tragically in an automobile accident in 1926. 



This photo was taken in the mid 1920’s.

When Bernard was in Chicago last year he went to visit his grave.

One of Edmund’s daughters married a Mr. Carp from Cleveland and he received a Bronze star for his heroic deeds of bravery in the D-Day Landings in Normandy. Bernard met the man over 10 years ago before he passed and found him to be an amazing man, very humble and did not mention a lot about the war.

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Athea










Elizabeth Brosnan took her camera to Athea Horse Fair recently



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A Callout from Junior to Former Badminton Club Members

 

The Listowel Badminton Club wish to advise you all that they will be holding their Christmas night out at John B.Keane’s on Friday night December 11th.

This will again be in the shape of the Table Quiz which has been most enjoyable for the past number of years.

 

As a member of the Club last season, or possibly in former seasons, we take this opportunity to invite you to attend. We would really love if you would take time to join us .

 

We will again hold our Kris Kringle this year, again bring something not more than €5 value, some thing seasonable or something comical, the choice is yours.

If you do bring something for the Kris Kringle do check it into me and make sure that it is numbered, don’t just lay it with the others and say nothing.

 

Unfortunately, I have deleted many of my last seasons contacts so do pass the word around to anyone you feel that might be interested in attending. There will be the normal fixed charge of €3 for the night and as usual, finger food will be provided, so for number purposes do let me know by Tuesday if you will be attending plus any other person whom you may make contact with.

 

Do try and be present for 8.10 pm as the draw and tables for the quiz must be sorted out by our quiz master Mark Loughnane and that takes time and is no easy job so your co-operation would be much appreciated.

Hope to see you all present on that Friday night, but why not join us also on Thursday night, Dec. 3rd for our Christmas Badminton competition, again let me know by Tuesday December 1st if you wish to take part in this Christmas fun tournament.

 

Junior

 

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New Website

 

St. Mary’s Listowel has a great new parish website HERE

Our Fire Fighters, Listowel Courthouse, Mike the Pies and a thought for the day

A Far Cry from the Smart phone

(photo; Irish Abroad)

Ah, those were the days!  Everyone carried one of these for emergencies in the 1980s. There were pay phones, in every town and even in some places where there was never a town. In the bad old days of the 60s and seventies you had to have a bucket load of change at the ready to use a pay phone. Coins were bigger and heavier in those days.

Cometh the hour, cometh the call card.

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Make a Wish type Gesture by Listowel Firemen

John Kelliher took this photo of Killian Browne with Listowel firemen recently. Killian has been very ill and, as a special treat, he got to dress like a fireman and see what happens in a fire station.

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Time Travel Kerry

This is a great website that puts the old and new from  around Kerry side by side. I took both the photos and the text from Time Travel Kerry;

“Listowel Courthouse-

Two views of the courthouse building firstly in the late 1960s and again in September 2015. There has been a lot of changes in the years between the two photos but the building itself hasn’t changed much. 

(Original photographer unknown)”

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Christmas Lunch at The Seanchaí


If you are planning a festive lunch for your staff or for a group of friends, consider The Seanchaí

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From John Kelliher and Mike the Pies

Legendary pool players Lofty Kelliher, Ned Broder, Jack Sweeney, Eddie Hartnett and Tom Lyons.  

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Thought for today


I have wept in the night

For the absence of sight

That made me to others’ needs blind

But I never once yet

Felt a pang of regret

For being a little too kind.

Thade Gowran and John B. Keane and Mike the Pie’s before the All Ireland

A Lovely Little Corner of Town



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Promising Golfer with a strong Listowel Sporting Pedigree


John Molyneaux Jr. goes to US on Golf Scholarship

John, son of Des and Elaine Molyneaux, and grandson of John and Georgina Molyneaux Charles St., and Tommy and Alice Sheahan of the Square, having just completed his Leaving Certificate has now joined Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina on golf scholarship where he plans to complete a Business/Finance Degree. John spends his summers and as much time as he can at other times of the year in Listowel with his grandparents and in Ballybunion.  Having played golf as a tot with his grandfather on the bag at the now closed Listowel Golf Club he subsequently joined Ballybunion Golf Club. In the last couple of years he won an All-Ireland Junior Cup Winners medal in 2013 with the Club, is the 2014 Club Scratch Match Play winner, 2014 Kerry Boys Championship runner up, and was named the 2015 Club Junior Captain.  This summer he played on Ballybunion’s 2015 Munster pennant winning Junior Foursomes team and for Munster in the 2015 U18 Irish Interprovincial Golf Championship.

Footnote: John attended secondary school at St. Benildus College in Dublin, which has had a long-time Listowel connection through now retired teacher Maurice McMahon and author of “Mr Mac – A Blackboard Memoir”.


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Thade Gowran Descendants


Thade Gowran was a naive poet born in Meenscovane, Duagh. Thade, “was a part-time labourer, water-diviner, ballad-maker, composer and holder of Raffles at his cottage home in Knocknacrohy. He died at the youthful age of fifty seven probably from acute ulcers. He is remembered as a pale-faced, rather lanky man, the kind of man country people would describe as rawly.”  John B. Keane.


Thade was constantly writing verse and thankfully he wrote his compositions  down. So, unlike Paddy Drury, a local poet of similar ilk, his ballads have survived to this day . 


Thade’s descendants are anxious to learn more about him and to keep the memory of their famous ancestor alive. To that end Fran Blyth and family came to North Kerry this summer. They felt at home and connected to the landscape here. They’ll be back!



Michael, Alexis and Sean, great great great grandchildren of poet and balladeer, Thade Gowran at his plaque in Duagh earlier this year.

This is Thade Gowran’s granddaughter, Hannah Flaherty who passed away in 2003. She never forgot her Irish roots and her famous grandfather.

Fran Blyth with her mother, Hannah Flaherty R.I.P. on a previous visit to Ireland.

Hannah Flaherty Bardsley on her wedding day. Note the horseshoes which all brides used to carry (for luck) back in the day.

Thade Gowran was a great composer of impromptu verses. He followed in the ancient bardic tradition of writing ballads to chronicle the story of the times he lived in and the people who shared the locale with him.

Below is his poem about a neighbour of his who married late in life.

“I’ll sing a song about a man, O’Connor James is he,

A man who led the airy life to the age of sixty three.

One day as he sat in his lonely cot the sun was shining grand,

His temperature was rising high and the heat he couldn’t stand.

The day passed on and night came on the ramblers they showed up,

The brothers Keefe, Tom Danagher, Jeff Morrissey and Buck.

‘Cheer up’

Says Tom to Jim, ‘Cheer up again and aise your troubled mind,

The first of May’s not far away and a wife for you I’ll find.’

They tackled up Tom Frank’s grey steed as the bells did loudly ring,

And heading out beyond Knockmaol the arrived that night in Glin.

They got a great reception, they got porter by the tierce,

And then and there poor James did swear he’d marry Minnie Pierce.

But now that he is married his troubles are not o’er,

For when he’s out he wants no man to stand inside his door.”

John B. wrote of Thade Gowran;

“Thade Gowran never had a poem published in his lifetime. The intellectuals or so-called intellectuals of the time were trying to move away from the folksy rhymes which were so popular in the countryside. It was the dawn of modern verse, most of which was without rhyme or reason. The more nebulous and meaningless the poem the more praise was heaped on the head of the composer. Anything which was easily understood was frowned upon. There were some honourable exceptions but by and large there was little room for Thade Gowran’s ballads in the papers or magazines of the time. In fact, Thade would be looked upon by his urban contemporaries as a bit of a hick. His work failed to confuse and was, therefore, of little importance to those who might have encouraged its publication.

It is a shame indeed that he was not taken seriously beyond the countryside. Whatever it about the urban Celt there is a destructive drop in him which has little tolerance for his rustic brother or for his own beginnings.”

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A Little Hubris for All Ireland Weekend?







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Pinning his colours to the mast





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