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Listowel Shop in the 1930s
Galvin’s of William Street Listowel.
Another lovely old photo from the good folk at Tipperary Photos of Munster.
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Pres Magazine 1991
Presentation girls pay tribute to one of our iconic local writers.
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Then and Now
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Christmas in Ballybunion
From the Schools’ Folklore Collection 1937/38
Christmas Day
Christmas comes but once a year;
When it comes it brings good cheer,
When it goes it leaves us here,
And what will we do for the rest of the year.
When Christmas morning dawns everyone is up early and goes to early Mass, and many receive Holy Communion. When people meet on their way to Mass their salutes to each other are:- “A happy Christmas to you” and the reply is – “Many happy returns”. The children are all anxiety to see what Santa Claus has brought them.
When Mass and breakfast are over the children play with their toys while the elders are busy preparing the Christmas dinner.
The chief features of an Irish Christmas dinner are – roast turkey, or goose and a plum pudding. The remainder of the day is spent in the enjoyment and peace of the home, and the family circle.
Christmas customs vary from country to country but the spirit of Christmas is the same the wide world over. It is the time of peace, and it is also the feast for the children, because it was first the feast of the Child Jesus who was born in Bethlehem nearly two thousand long years ago.
Collector Máighréad Ní Chearbhaill
Address, Ballybunnion, Co. Kerry.
Teacher: Máire de Stac.
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Some Christmas Windows 2021
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Our Perennial Christmas Story
(I never tire of this one).
The Christmas Coat
Seán McCarthy 1986
Oh fleeting time, oh, fleeting time
You raced my youth away;
You took from me the boyhood dreams
That started each new day.
My father, Ned McCarthy found the blanket in the Market Place in Listowel two months before Christmas. The blanket was spanking new of a rich kelly green hue with fancy white stitching round the edges. Ned, as honest a man as hard times would allow, did the right thing. He bundled this exotic looking comforter inside his overcoat and brought it home to our manse on the edge of Sandes bog.
The excitement was fierce to behold that night when all the McCarthy clan sat round the table. Pandy, flour dip and yolla meal pointers, washed down with buttermilk disappeared down hungry throats. All eyes were on the green blanket airing in front of the turf fire. Where would the blanket rest?
The winter was creeping in fast and the cold winds were starting to whisper round Healy’s Wood; a time for the robin to shelter in the barn. I was excited about the blanket too but the cold nights never bothered me. By the time I had stepped over my four brothers to get to my own place against the wall, no puff of wind, no matter however fierce could find me.
After much arguing and a few fist fights (for we were a very democratic family) it was my sister, Anna who came up with the right and proper solution. That lovely blanket, she said was too fancy, too new and too beautiful to be wasted on any bed. Wasn’t she going to England, in a year’s time and the blanket would make her a lovely coat!. Brains to burn that girl has. Didn’t she prove it years later when she married an engineer and him a pillar of the church and a teetotaler? Well maybe a slight correction here. He used to be a pillar of the pub and a total abstainer from church but she changed all that. Brains to burn!
The tailor Roche lived in a little house on the Greenville Road with his brother Paddy and a dog with no tail and only one eye. Rumours abounded around the locality about the tailor’s magic stitching fingers and his work for the English royal family. Every man, woman and child in our locality went in awe of the Tailor Roche. Hadn’t he made a coat for the Queen of England when he was domiciled in London, a smoking jacket for the Prince of Wales and several pairs of pyjamas for Princess Flavia.
The only sour note I ever heard against the tailor’s achievements came from The Whisper Hogan, an itinerant ploughman who came from the west of Kerry.
“ If he’s such a famous tailor,” said Whisper, “why is it that his arse is always peeping out through a hole in his trousers?.
Hogan was an awful begrudger. We didn’t pay him any heed. Tailor Roche was the man chosen to make the coat from the green blanket. Even though it was a “God spare you the health” job, a lot of thought went into the final choice of a tailor.
The first fitting took place of a Sunday afternoon on the mud floor of the McCarthy manse. The blanket was spread out evenly and Anna was ordered to lie very still on top of it. Even I, who had never seen a tailor at work thought this a little strange. But my father soon put me to rights when he said, “Stop fidgeting, Seáinín , you are watching a genius at work.” Chalk, scissors, green thread and plenty of sweet tea with a little bit of bacon and cabbage when we had it. A tailor can’t work on an empty stomach.
The conversion went apace through Christmas and into the New Year. Snip snip, stitch, stich, sweet tea and fat bacon, floury spuds. I couldn’t see much shape in the coat but there was one thing for sure – it no longer looked like a blanket. Spring raced into summer and summer rained its way into autumn. Hitler invaded Poland and the British army fled Dunkirk, the men of Sandes Bog and Greenville gathered together shoulder to shoulder to defend the Ballybunion coastline and to bring home the turf.
Then six weeks before Christmas disaster struck the McCarthy clan and to hell with Hitler, the British Army, and Herman Goering. We got the news at convent mass on Sunday morning the Tailor Roche had broken his stitching hand when he fell over his dog, the one with the one eye and no tail. Fourteen months of stitching, cutting, tea drinking and bacon eating down the drain. Even a genius cannot work with one hand.
Anna looked very nice in her thirty shilling coat from Carroll Hengan’s in Listowel as we walked to the train. Coming home alone in the January twilight I tried hard to hold back the tears. She would be missed. The Tailor was sitting by the fire, a mug of sweet tea in his left hand and a large white sling holding his right-hand. I didn’t feel like talking so I made my way across the bed to my place by the wall. It was beginning to turn cold so I drew the shapeless green bindle up around my shoulders. It was awkward enough to get it settled with the two sleeves sticking out sideways and a long split up the middle. Still, it helped keep out the frost. Every bed needs a good green blanket and every boyhood needs a time to rest.
The ghosts of night will vanish soon
When winter fades away
The lark will taste the buds of June
Mid the scent of new mown hay.
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From the Top Shelf
Vincent Carmody has a new book out for Christmas. This one is a collaboration with Limerick historian, Tom Donovan. It is a must have for anyone with a Limerick connection. Even if you have no affiliation to the Treaty City this book is a valuable insight into trade in our part of the country in the recent past.
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Ballybunion in Winter
This very unusual picture of Ballybunion was posted on a Twitter site called European Beauty. I don’t know who took the photo.
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I make no apology for printing again this lovely Christmas story from SeánMacCarthy.
The Christmas Coat
Seán McCarthy 1986
Oh fleeting time, oh, fleeting time
You raced my youth away;
You took from me the boyhood dreams
That started each new day.
My father, Ned McCarthy found the blanket in the Market Place in Listowel two months before Christmas. The blanket was spanking new of a rich kelly green hue with fancy white stitching round the edges. Ned, as honest a man as hard times would allow, did the right thing. He bundled this exotic looking comforter inside his overcoat and brought it home to our manse on the edge of Sandes bog.
The excitement was fierce to behold that night when all the McCarthy clan sat round the table. Pandy, flour dip and yolla meal pointers, washed down with buttermilk disappeared down hungry throats. All eyes were on the green blanket airing in front of the turf fire. Where would the blanket rest?
The winter was creeping in fast and the cold winds were starting to whisper round Healy’s Wood; a time for the robin to shelter in the barn. I was excited about the blanket too but the cold nights never bothered me. By the time I had stepped over my four brothers to get to my own place against the wall, no puff of wind, no matter however fierce could find me.
After much arguing and a few fist fights (for we were a very democratic family) it was my sister, Anna who came up with the right and proper solution. That lovely blanket, she said was too fancy, too new and too beautiful to be wasted on any bed. Wasn’t she going to England, in a year’s time and the blanket would make her a lovely coat!. Brains to burn that girl has. Didn’t she prove it years later when she married an engineer and him a pillar of the church and a teetotaler? Well maybe a slight correction here. He used to be a pillar of the pub and a total abstainer from church but she changed all that. Brains to burn!
The tailor Roche lived in a little house on the Greenville Road with his brother Paddy and a dog with no tail and only one eye. Rumours abounded around the locality about the tailor’s magic stitching fingers and his work for the English royal family. Every man, woman and child in our locality went in awe of the Tailor Roche. Hadn’t he made a coat for the Queen of England when he was domiciled in London, a smoking jacket for the Prince of Wales and several pairs of pyjamas for Princess Flavia
The only sour note I ever heard against the tailor’s achievements came from The Whisper Hogan, an itinerant ploughman who came from the west of Kerry.
“ if he’s such a famous tailor,” said Whisper, “why is it that his arse is always peeping out through a hole in his trousers?.
Hogan was an awful begrudger. We didn’t pay him any heed. Tailor Roche was the man chosen to make the coat from the green blanket. Even though it was a “God spare you the health” job, a lot of thought went into the final choice of a tailor.
The first fitting took place of a Sunday afternoon on the mud floor of the McCarthy manse. The blanket was spread out evenly and Anna was ordered to lie very still on top of it. Even I, who had never seen a tailor at work thought this a little strange. But my father soon put me to rights when he said, “Stop fidgeting, Seáinín , you are watching a genius at work.” Chalk, scissors, green thread and plenty of sweet tea with a little bit of bacon and cabbage when we had it. A tailor can’t work on an empty stomach.
The conversion went apace through Christmas and into the New Year. Snip snip, stitch, stich, sweet tea and fat bacon, floury spuds. I couldn’t see much shape in the coat but there was one thing for sure – it no longer looked like a blanket. Spring raced into summer and summer rained its way into autumn. Hitler invaded Poland and the British army fled Dunkirk, the men of Sandes Bog and Greenville gathered together shoulder to shoulder to defend the Ballybunion coastline and to bring home the turf.
Then six weeks before Christmas disaster struck the McCarthy clan and to hell with Hitler, the British Army, and Herman Goering. We got the news at convent mass on Sunday morning the Tailor Roche had broken his stitching hand when he fell over his dog, the one with the one eye and no tail. Fourteen months of stitching, cutting, tea drinking and bacon eating down the drain. Even a genius cannot work with one hand.
Anna looked very nice in her thirty shilling coat from Carroll Heneghan’s in Listowel as we walked to the train. Coming home alone in the January twilight I tried hard to hold back the tears. She would be missed. The Tailor was sitting by the fire, a mug of sweet tea in his left hand and a large white sling holding his right-hand. I didn’t feel like talking so I made my way across the bed to my place by the wall. It was beginning to turn cold so I drew the shapeless green bindle up around my shoulders. It was awkward enough to get it settled with the two sleeves sticking out sideways and a long split up the middle. Still, it helped keep out the frost. Every bed needs a good green blanket and every boyhood needs a time to rest.
The ghosts of night will vanish soon
When winter fades away
The lark will taste the buds of June
Mid the scent of new mown hay.
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Christmas Holidays
I wish all followers of Listowel Connection a very happy Christmas and a lovely New Year. I will be resting for a few weeks over Christmas. God willing, I’ll be back in 2020.
Go mberimid beo ag an am seo arís.
Church Street, Listowel, July 2019 with Fitzpatrick’s new bay window in place.
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Pictures from July Horse Fair 2019
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Peggy Sweeney by Mattie Lennon
Continued from yesterday
… Peggy has also judged competitions. That is not her favorite exercise either but her advice to young singers is: “Enjoy what you’re doing, I like to see a child – or an adult – enjoying their song”.
She tells beginners to pick a simple song and work up from there. She believes that a child competitor should always be put at ease and not pressurized into competing, by anybody.
Although she grew up among a lot of famous people (Bryan McMahon, et alia) from Listowel and the surrounding area, she says that she didn’t see them as famous; she knew them all so well.
Talk of John B. Keane brings her to her other great love, amateur drama. She says,”I love being somebody else for a couple of hours”.
I didn’t have the neck to quote David Mamet for a second time. And anyway I can’t vouch for the validity of his claim that ” … .the person onstage is YOU. It is not a construct you are free to amend or mold. It’s you. It is YOUR character which you take onstage”.
The great thespians of the world might not agree with Peggy’s claim that to do one of John B’s plays you have to be from Kerry. “The only accent that would lend itself to one of his plays would be the Kerry accent”.
She sang for Presidents … but her fondest memory is of the night she performed in the National Concert Hall with the late Eamon Kelly. She says; “I was nervous but Eamon was twice as nervous”.
She made her first album ” The Songs of Sean McCarthy” in January 1991, just two months after Sean McCarthy had called her to his deathbed and requested that she record his works. This was followed by “The Cliffs of Dooneen”, “The Turning of the Tide” and “More songs of Sean McCarthy”. “The Songs of Sean McCarthy” was released on video in August 1999.
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(Of course any Kerryman will tell you that there are only two Kingdoms: the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Kerry).
“One is not of this world and the other is out of this world”
Well, now there are three. “A Kingdom of Song” is the title of Peggy Sweeney’s new album of Kerry songs. As. The sleeve of “A Kingdom of Song” appropriately shows a map of Kerry. The 15 songs take you on a musical trip from Duagh to Dingle and from Tarbert to Rathmore.
“The Valley of Knockanure” (that all too familiar story of young Irishmen shot by the Black-and-Tans) has been recorded by many artists. But when I heard this version I couldn’t help thinking that the song was just waiting for Peggy Sweeney to sing it.
Mick McConnell’s “The Tinkerman’s Daughter” and “Brosna Town”, two very moving songs have taken on a new lease of life.
“The Hills of Kerry”, “Lovely Banna Shore” and the Jimmy McCarthy composition, “As I Leave Behind Neidin” are the stuff to moisten the eyes of an exile.
“Ballyseedy Cross” and “Lonely Banna Strand” tell further tales of men who gave their lives in the cause of Irish Freedom.
It features a refreshing rendition of a song that I hadn’t heard for decades; “The Young Youth Who strayed From Milltown” as well as “The Wild Colonial Boy” and “Killarney and You”.
That old favourite, the universal anthem of Kerry, “The Rose of Tralee”, “Lovely Banna Shore” written by Peter Kelly and the Stack brothers, John and Pat and “The Wild Flower of Laune” written by Myles Coffey and Peter Joy are all given suitable treatment by the woman that this reviewer calls “The Voice of Kerry”.
And there is of course that tribute to her own native town land, mentioned earlier, “Rathea in County Kerry”
I’m sure almost everyone in that close-knit community around Rathea would agree with the letter, which Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun sent to the Marquis of Montrose et al:
“…….if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation”.
Maybe you can’t make the laws of a nation…..or even write a ballad but you can enjoy the best recording of 15 Kerry songs that you are likely to hear.
Kerry, A Kingdom Of Song is now available on Cassette and CD from www.kerrymusic.com. It will also be available early next year on Video with the breathtaking scenery of Kerry added to the singing of these wonderful songs.
The perfect diction and beautiful voice moistened many an exiles eyes during her several tours of Britain, as Bean-a-Ti, with The Irish Rambling House Concert group. She agrees with Charlie Landsborough that the ability to give a spititual message through songs is “a Blessing from above”.
When her old school friend, Kay Forristal, brought out her book of poems New Beginnings Peggy wrote the Foreword.
“Spirituality is free flowing and ever changing. This aptly describes the connecting relationship between Kathleen and I. We have known one another since childhood yet, neither time or distance has failed to quench this unseen dimension of our lives.
“Our spirits have been inextricably linked through the medium of verse and song. Through this thought-provoking book, we celebrate decades of true friendship and inherent spirituality”.
What (more) could I say about Peggy?
© 2002 Mattie Lennon, printed with permission.
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Today’s Fun Fact
How does a shark track you?
Sharks have the most astonishing sense of smell. They can detect blood at a concentration of 1 part in 25 million, i.e. one single drop of blood in a 2,000 gallon tank of water. If you are bleeding, no matter how slightly, a shark will know. Sharks are brilliant swimmers and they swim at speeds of 25 mph so a shark who smells your blood from 400 metres away can be on you in sixty seconds.
Sharks also have excellent hearing and sight.
In case I’ve frightened the bejesus out of you, the book also has this interesting fact. Research from all US coastal states, averaged over the last 50 years, show that you are 76 times more likely to be killed by a bolt of lightening then by a shark.
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Something to Look Forward to
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Snapped on Bridge Road
On an early morning walk with my canine house guest I met John Bunyan, Martin Chute and Carmel Moloney taking a coffee break.
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Fancy a Walk, this Weekend?
What a Beauty!
Tree near Listowel Pitch and Putt Clubhouse
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Listowel Pitch and Putt Course
This part of Listowel’s Town Park is a tribute to all the people who have taken care of it over the years. There has been some magnificent planting done here over many years and the course is always beautifully presented. I have heard that the definition of unselfishness is planting a tree under whose shade you will never sit. Listowel has reason to be grateful to many many unselfish men.
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The E Smoke Store has moved
On Lower William Street
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Pat Del Savio’s Irish quilt
Pat had a greeting card that she liked so much she decided to use the design to make a quilt. Isn’t it lovely?
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A Highlight of Seán McCarthy Festival
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Molly has Gone Home
All good things come to an end. Molly has gone back home after her Kerry holiday.
Of course I miss her company on my walks, her sweet little face welcoming me home, her companionship in the house and garden.
But then there was the same Molly who ate the first 2 chapters of the book I was reading and the brat who got into my knitting bag.
So I don’t think I’ll be getting a puppy. I am assured that Molly is allowed to come to Kerry for holidays whenever I want her.
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