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: Sive Page 2 of 5

Flavins

St John’s from St. Mary’s May 2022

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Flavins of Church Street

This is Flavins of Church Street today.

Part of this shop’s history is told in pictures by Maura McAuliffe on Facebook.

“Dan Flavin’s burnt to the ground by the Black and Tans. Dan Flavin was put in jail. They would have shot him only he had an American passport as he was born in New York and brought back as a child to Ireland.”

Martin Moore shared these receipts and this caption.

3 receipts from the 1920s, one is for a contribution to the North Kerry Republican Soldiers Committee, and another is for 200 copies of Irish Independent and is marked as the first received in nearly two months (due to the Civil War).

Dan Flavin

Micheál Flavin

Joan Flavin

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New Exhibition in Kerry Writers’ Museum

At the launch of Lifting the Curtain, an installation celebrating amateur drama in Kerry, our own Lartigue Theatre presented a compilation of extracts from Sive.

Billy Keane (standing behind Cara Trant) watches the enactment of extracts from his father’s play.

Liz Dunn of Writers’ Week is in the foreground.

Dr. Fiona Brennan, an amateur drama scholar, presented a brief synopsis of the history of drama in Kerry.

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Sr. Dympna R.I.P.

From Pres. yearbook 2002/03

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A Thought

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Listowel Square is changing

Jim MacSweeney

This rural image is part of the collaboration between Mallow Camera Club and Kanturk Community Hospital

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A Mighty Leap

This gem is from Beale School in the Schools’ Folklore Collection.

A Local Hero
The best hurler the oldest people ever remember was James Moriarty.He lived somewhere around Kilconly. One Saturday he and his wife removed to the border of the County of Cork. After going to bed that night his wife said it was better for him to be there than to be going to the “Moneens.” The moneens are in Flahives farm, Bromore. “What is in the Moneens” asked the man. The woman told him that she had received a letter that he should go and attend the hurling match which was to be held there. He made up his mind to go and jumping out of bed he went off to Bromore. When the ball was thrown up he was the first man that struck it and after striking the ball he leaped thirty three feet. There is a mark to this day on the place where he jumped. The place is pointed out above at Dan Flahive’s field of Bog.

Nora Griffin vi
Beale, Ballybunion
June 24th 1938
Information from people at home.

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Outdoor Dining and Performance Area

While I turned my back very briefly, work continued apace in The Square.

We got a lovely new standard light with two lamps.

Of course there is a bicycle rest. The people we imagine using this are tourists on The Greenway.

The tables and seating will be put back and then it will all be covered with three tent type structures.

Imagine yourself sitting in the sun, eating your ice cream from the new ice cream kiosk and listening to whatever performance is on offer.

If such pleasure becomes all too much for you, the defibrillator is at hand to jolt you back to life.

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Danny would be Proud

In 1972 Danny Hannon fulfilled a dream . He set up The Lartigue Theatre Company. In April 2022 the company celebrated it’s half century with a production of John B. Keane’s Sive.

I was in St. John’s on Sunday evening and I couldn’t have picked a better evening’s entertainment for my return to the theatre. After two years I had almost forgotten how enjoyable an evening of local theatre can be.

(All the photos are from St. John’s Facebook page)

The old hands were excellent, as always. If I were to single out one actor it would have to be Laura Shine Gumbo. Laura played an excellent Mena, with a mixture of good and evil. She brought out the painful conflict within this character, whose awful betrayal of Sive is motivated as much by her misunderstanding of the vulnerability of the romantic teenager as by her desire to improve her own lot in life.

There were new faces among the cast as well. A revelation to us all was Jimmy Moloney who played a blinder ss Mike Glavin. Mike is at heart a good man . He is tormented by the three women in his care. What we in the audience can see and poor Mike can’t is that he has married his mother. Nanna is the mistress of the hard word. She is as devious and manipulative as Mena, full of resentment and bitterness, bullying and taunting where she should lend support. It is a deeply unhappy household.

The final moving tragic scene is played with great pathos and empathy. Sive is let down by all the adults in her life. Such innocence could not survive in a hard mercenary world where love is lost in the hard realities and the poverty of 1950s Ireland. Everyone who should have protected her has a hand in her death.

Sive is a tragedy. Playing it out again in our times shines a light on an unhappy era, thankfully now behind us.

Thank you, Lartique Theatre Company for a great night.

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Schull and Dunamase

Photo; Breda OMullane

This image is one of a selection of photographs by members off Mallow Camera Club which are framed and hanging in Kanturk Community Hospital.

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From Pres Yearbook 2003

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Schull, Co Cork

Éamon ÓMurchú took this picture on a lovely weekend in Schull.

I was further east. I visited The Rock of Dunamase. I had so often wondered about it as I passed the signs on the motorway. This fortress once belonged to Isabel, daughter of Strongbow and his wife Aoife MacMorrough. Aoife, wife of Strongbow got Dunamase as part of her dowry from her father, Diarmuid MacMorrough.

It is now in ruins and more famous for the spectacular views it provides over the surrounding countryside.

Rock of Dunamase from the churchyard of the nearby Protestant church which is still in use

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Weather Signs from Beale School in the Schools Folklore collection

Michael Griffin, the schoolboy who recorded this, got the information “from people at home”.

Weather Signs
When bad weather is near at hand you will notice in this locality the foam rise and dash against the Cliffs off the coast of Clare. The Rooks and Seagulls fly to the land when severe weather is approaching searching for food. The cat sits on the hearth, the soot falls down the Chimney when we are near bad weather. You would also notice a circle round the sun and moon and the clouds are very dark. the wind is generally from the west or south west when we have bad weather.
When we have good weather in this locality you will hear the waves at the north or north east. When we have good weather the birds fly high into the air in search of food. This is generally the case with the swallow. The sun and moon shine bright and clear and the sea is quite calm.

Michael Griffin v.
Bromore,
Ballybunion
June 23rd -1938
Information from people at home

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A Poem for our Time

By Trista Mateer

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Look where I was Last Night

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Old Photos, Nora Relihan and A Bridge that no one was allowed to cross

Photo; Christopher Burke

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Jill Friedman’s North Kerry Photos

I don’t know whose  funeral is in the first one is. If you know, tell me. I think I recognise the man in the second photo. He is a fisherman from Finuge.  I have posted the last one before. I think the man with the harmonica is Faulkner.





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Maharees



In those heady days before the lockdown, Marie Moriarty went walking in The Maherees. Here are a few of her photos.





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Nora Relihan as Mena in Sive

Prize giving at Scarriff


Photo; Paul O’Flynn
Nora Relihan played Mena in the original Listowel Amateur Drama Group production of ‘Sive’. This production won the all Ireland drama award at the Athlone Drama Festival in 1959. When the play was produced by the Southern Theatre Group in June 1959, Nora Relihan was asked to reprise her role. Eibhlis MacSweeney later replaced Nora Relihan in the role of Mena until the end of the production. This production played in Fr Mathew Hall for 6 weeks, then travelled to the Olympia to play for 4 weeks before touring Munster

(photo and text from Cork County Library local studies section)

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The Forbidden Bridge over the River Feale

In the House of Commons on 1st April, 1898, Mr. Flavin, M.P., (N. Kerry),  Listowel, Co. Kerry, raised the following issue and asked the following questions of Gerald Balfour, Chief Secretary: 

“I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,

(1) if he is aware that the Grand Jury of Kerry erected a bridge at a cost of £3,496 10s. over the River Feale, between Duagh and Islandanny, and that three-fourths of the total cost is now repaid out of the public rates to the Commissioners of Public Works (Ireland), but that the general public are not allowed to use the bridge, although it has been completed and maintained for the past seven years; and 

(2), what steps will be now taken to obtain access for the public to pass over the bridge?”

Mr. Gerald Balfour: “I am informed that the facts are correctly stated in the first paragraph. The line of railway from Tralee to Limerick crosses the road or approach, at one side of the bridge, and no proper crossing has been provided by the railway company at this point. The grand jury, moreover, state they have no power to employ a person to look after the gates at what appears to be a farm crossing. I am advised there is no legal provision under which the railway company or the grand jury can be required to provide a crossing, and the Board of Trade inform me they have no power to intervene.”

Mr Flavin, M.P.: “I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman why the grand jury constructed this bridge—[Mr. SPEAKER: Order, order!] 

Mr. Flavin:  But, Sir, arising out of the question, I should like to know if the right hon. Gentleman is aware that a large number of people in the district are prevented from using this bridge.” 

Mr/ Speaker: “ Order, order! The hon. Member is continuing to argue a question which has already been fully answered.” 

Mr. Flavin: “I wanted to point out, Mr. Speaker-”  

Mr Speaker: “Order, order!” 

It would appear that no-one thought of the need for access to the bridge by those it was intended to carry across the river!  Could the bridge really have stood idle for seven years as a result of such incompetence? 

New Kerry Jersey, Gap of Dunloe and a Teacher Contract in 1923 and Christmas Parking

A Christmas Robin


Photo; Chris Grayson

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Do you Like the New Jersey?



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The Gap of Dunloe from old Kerry Photos


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Holycross and Sive


Billy Keane visited Holycross recently to lend his support to the local drama group who chose the John B. Keane classic, Sive. for their 2019 production.

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I missed this very special event in St. John’s. Poetry from the Pulpit was a great successs with local minor celebrities reading their favourite poems. I think this is our own recently retired Vicar Joe.

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The Good Old Days


Patrick O’Shea shared this on Facebook. It is from the US but I dont know if terms this side of the pond were much better.



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It’s No Ordinary Panto….It’s a Listowel Panto




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Christmas Parking in Listowel….Good News


Free parking arrangements will be put in place in Listowel in the run up to Christmas.

Beginning this Saturday, parking will be free in the town for up to two hours every day; this will continue until January 1st.

Parking on Sundays will continue to be free, as usual, during this period.

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Christmas Customs from the Dúchas Folklore Collection


Old Times Christmas
Long ago the people were not as well fed as they are now days. They had to buy meal when there was no flour, and then wet the meal with boiling water and in this way they made the bread. This bread was eaten with a cup of butter milk. There were no ovens or pans for baking but a griddle hung over the fire by means of the pot hanger and in this way the bread was baked in squares. Latter on in years they got a querns for grinding oats, and when it was ground the sieved was got and this used to keep all the shells of the oats, and leave the oaten meal through. They used also make bread from this and this bread was called oaten meal bread. This was given to the people for their dinner. The supper the people used to have that time was to get a fist full of oaten meal and put it in a wooden cup of butter milk and stir it with a piece of a stick. The people had nothing for Christmas but “stampy”. It was made a few day before Christmas. They would get the potatoes, and cut them up with a grater. Then they would get a flannel cloth and put the cut potatoes into it. Then they would twist the cloth and the water would come out though the cloth. Then it would be put down to bake, and this would be eaten on Christmas morning.
Collector, Jerry Moloney- Informant, Maurice Shanahan, Address, Liscullane, Co. Kerry.

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