Listowel Connection

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 3 of 5

Listowel Librarians Remembered, Stokers’ Lawn and Liam Miller R.I.P.

By

On February 13, 2018

In Uncategorized

A Magpie


Photo: Graham Davies

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The MacSweeney family, Librarians


A while back we were talking about Listowel library.  I received an email from Billy MacSweeney outlining his families long association with the library;

“Vincent is correct about the Carnegie Library. The original Carnegie
Library in Listowel was where Mick (“Four Goals”) Barrett has his Tyre
Centre on Bridge Road. In my youth it was a shell. I was told that my
Grandmother Annie (nee Carmody) Gleeson was the first Librarian,
followed for a short time by her daughter Jo and then by my mother
Maisie (nee Gleeson) McSweeney, each of whom did some training in
Trinity College. The Library burned down but I have no further
information. The next Carnegie Library at the top of Church St was built
sometime before 1940. My mother was the Librarian there until she
retired;  each of my brothers and sisters acted as unofficial librarians
in their turn as we grew up. It was a great education for us.”


Dave O’Sullivan said he’d look up a few things in the newspapers. Here are a few library related cuttings he found.




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Stokers Lawn, off John B. Keane Road, Listowel,


Winter  2018



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R.I.P. Liam Miller

Photo; Féach News on Twitter

Cork footballer, Liam Miller who passed away at the weekend at the age of 36, had played for Ireland, Cork, Celtic and Manchester United.

“Golden lads and girls all must

As chimney sweepers come to dust.”

Sad beyond words.

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A Few Corrections



Here are a few corrections to the list of Listowel people who went to Leinster House as the guests of Dan Moloney, T.D. after their victory in Athlone in 1959.

Front Row From Left:

Jeffrey O’Connnor (Cahirciveen,  Sheila Keane’s Husband)

Brendan Carroll   (William St)

Margaret Dillon     (She played Sive)

John B. Keane        

Cecile Cotter  (‘Tasty Cotter’s’ daughter– Scully’s Corner used to be called Cotter’s Corner)

Nora Relihan

Dan Moloney T.D., (grandfather of Jimmy Moloney)

Second Row Left to Right

John Cahill,  (Main St.,)

Hilary Neilsen, (Bridge Road)

Siobhan Cahill (Main St.)

Bill Kearney  (Lr. William St. – where The Shebeen is now)

Harry Geraghty  (Bank of Ireland or maybe National Bank?)

Eamon Keane 

Mrs. Peggie Walsh  ( The Square)

Back Row, Left to Right

John Flaherty  (Charles St)

Margaret Moloney (Gurtinard)

Kevin O’Donovan (Upper William St)

Seamus Ryle  (Nora Relihan’s brother)

Ina Leahy  (Leahys, Market St)

Dr. Johnny Walsh

Peg Schuster  (John B’s sister)


Listowel Town Park, a walking race and some more from the Sive archive

By

On February 9, 2018

In Uncategorized

Greenfinch


Photo; Graham Davies on Facebook

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In The Park, Winter 2018

The gas pipeline in a very wet town park.

The river rose much higher in the days after I took this photo.

Listowel Community Centre

Deserted tennis courts

Empty playgrounds

Blown down sign

Bleak house….The Dandy Lodge in the background. 1916 commemorative garden in foreground.

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Mad Speed Limit at Tim Kennelly Roundabout



Would you head into a roundabout at 60km per hour?

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Wren Boys and Tarbert to Listowel walking race


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Sive Revisited





When The Abbey Theatre produced Sive in 2014, some kind friends of the blog shared some of their memorabilia with us.

Kay Caball whose mother was the chair of the Drama Group kept the programme and some of the newspaper cuttings.

Margaret Dillon, who played Sive sent us this photograph of the cast visit to Dáil Eireann where Dan Moloney, T.D. received them and took them on a guided triumphal tour.

Kay Caball gave us the names of all the people in this photo.

Front Row From Left:

Jeffrey O’Connnor (Cahirciveen,  Sheila Keane’s Husband)

Brendan Carroll   (Carroll’s, William St)

Margaret Dillon     (She played Sive)

John B. Keane        

Cecile Cotter  (‘Tasty Cotter’s’ daughter – Scully’s Corner used to be called Cotter’s Corner)

Nora Relihan

Dan Moloney T.D., (grandfather of Jimmy Moloney)

Second Row Left to Right

John Cahill,  (Main St.,)

Hilary Neilsen, (Bridge Road)

Siobhan Cahill (Main St.)

Bill Kearney  (Lr. William St. – where The Shebeen is now)

Harry Geraghty  (Bank of Ireland or maybe National Bank?)

Eamon Keane 

Mrs. Peggie Walsh  ( The Square)

Back Row, Left to Right

John Flaherty  (Charles St)

Margaret Moloney (Gurtinard)

Kevin Donovan (Upper William St)

Seamus Ryle  (Nora Relihan’s brother)

Ina Leahy  (Leahys, Market St)

Dr. Johnny Walsh

Peg Schuster  (John B’s sister)


Listowel Town Park, A Listowel chaplain in WW2 and a Church Street landmark gets a touch up

By

On February 8, 2018

In Uncategorized

A Great Tit

Photo credit: Graham Davies

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Childers’ Park


Pedestrian entrance to Listowel Town Park with Dandy Lodge in the background

The newly enlarged entrance from Bridge Road

Sign flattened by the elements

1916 commemorative garden

Dandy Lodge



Listowel Community Centre

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Listowel Parish commemorates The Holocaust


This is Fr. Michael Morrison who was born in Listowel in 1908. He was a chaplain who attended at the liberation of Bergen Belsen concentration camp at the end of WW2.

His story is here

 BBC Archive; World War 2 People’s War

Photo: Kerry’s Eye

At Sunday mass in Listowel on January 28 2018, Holocaust Memorial Day, Fr. Morrison’s grandnephew, Finbarr Walshe of Tralee presented an icon to Listowel parish. The family believe that the icon was made by inmates in the concentration camp.

The Bergen-Belsen camp was built to hold 10,000 people, but on the day it was liberated 60,000 were crammed into appalling conditions. An estimated 50,000 people died there between 1941 and 1945.

Following the war, Fr Morrison served as a parish priest in Australia, before eventually returning home to Ireland, where he died in 1973.

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Plasterwork getting a Facelift



A little touching up to the famous plasterwork was in progress as I passed by on Church St. in January 2018.

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The Success of Sive in 1959



Some more newspaper cuttings from the Sive 1959 archive. Thank you, David O’Sullivan.






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Listowel in 1968



Newsbeat came to town to see if it was snobbery that was keeping local girls from applying for lucrative jobs in a new local factory. The interviewer was the late Bill O’Herlihy.

Newsbeat in Listowel

The Garden of Europe, Ogham and the cliff walk in winter 2018

By

On February 7, 2018

In Uncategorized

Lesser Redpoll


Photo credit:  Graham Davies

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Garden of Europe in Winter 2018


 The trees are bare and, after weeks of relentless rain, the ground underfoot is soft and soggy.

An evergreen tree relieves the uniform greyness.

Schiller is framed by the bare arms of the willow.

This lovely green hedge at the side of the lower entrance is coming along nicely.

The plaque indicating the MacMahon tree needs a facelift.

The McMahon tree is a bay which once grew in Bryan and Kitty MacMahon’s garden in Church Street.

 There was a solitary daffodil in bloom beside the sleeper steps.


The Town Council Depot is a bit unsightly from this path into the Garden.

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Ogham




Listowel silversmith, Eileen Moylan, of Claddagh Design engraving a name in Ogham on a ring

Seven Facts about Ogham


Ogham is the oldest form of writing found in Ireland. It dates from the 4th to the 6th centuries.

Ogham is an alphabet with letters based on the names of trees

All outstanding Ogham inscriptions are proper names.

Ogham was carved in stone.

Typically the name of a chieftain would be engraved in the edge of a stone monument.

Ogham reads vertically from the bottom up.

Ogham is now popular on Irish designed jewellery

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Ballybunion Cliff Walk


I took advantage of a short break in the wet weather to take a walk along the cliff at Ballybunion.



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Sive at the Gaiety


This is now



That was then.



A modern interpretation of Sive is wowing audiences at the Gaiety.  Back in Feb 1959 Listowel people knew they were witnessing something groundbreaking. I think no one realised quite how enduring this great play by a local lad would be. 

Sive tells a story as old as time. It’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s Westside Story. John B. always had his finger on the local pulse. He was a great observer and recreator of characters. While Mena may be seen as the villain, I can’t help but feel sympathy for her. Look at the hard life she had and the bad match she made. She genuinely saw the advantages of marrying Seán Dota. John B. understood here well.

Dave O’Sullivan has been trawling through the newspapers for review and stories from the fifties. Here are a few of the cuttings he unearthed as the play swept the boards at the All Ireland Drama Festival in Athlone.

I still think that local folk are the best interpreters of the play. As I listen to people these days, I am reminded of nothing but the crowd who claim to have been in the GPO in 1916. The whole of North Kerry, it would appear, was in Walsh’s fully heated ballroom for that first spine chilling production. Almost to a man and woman, they cite the stand out memory as the tinkers. The drum beat of the stick and the thud of the bodhrán added a dramatic dimension they had not seen before. It has been dinned into their folk memory ever since.

Christmas Craft Fair, some photos, a poem and a sugar tax in 1901

By

On November 23, 2017

In Uncategorized

May you have a happy, safe and thankful Thanksgiving all U.S. friends of Listowel



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Christmas is coming

And the goose is getting fat,

Please put a penny in the old man’s hat

If you haven’t got a penny

A ha’penny will do

If you haven’t got a ha’penny

God bless you.

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Sive Revival




In a week that saw Mickey McConnell’s Lidl and Aldi exceed 6 million views, John B’s ‘Sive’ launched in John B’s bar in the Gaiety Theatre. 

The Druid Production will run from the 26th Jan to the 3rd of March 2018

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Today’s November poem from Irish Stories of Love and Hope is from Rita Ann Higgins.

Our Mothers Die on
Days Like This

Rita Anne
Higgins  (Irish Stories of Loss and Hope)

Where there isn’t
a puff

And the walk from
the bus stop

To the front door

Isn’t worth the
longed-for

Out-of-the-question
cup of sweet tea

She can never have

Because doctor
do-little-or-nothing

Told her face to
face

It was the sugar
or the clay

The choice was
hers.

The choice was no
choice

He knew it, she
knew it.

When the heavy
bill on the hall floor

With the final
notice reminded her

Once and for all
she must turn out the lights,

Her Angelus bell
rang and rang.

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Photos from a Craft fair


I was at a craft fair in The Seanchaí, Listowel on Sunday November 12 2017. I photographed some of the lovely fare on offer.

Stephen Pearce, Louis Mulcahy, Nicholas Mosse and a slew of others have made their fortune as potters with a distinctive style. In Listowel we have our very own local potter with a beautiful product and a distinctive style.

Pat Murphy’s Woodford Pottery is based in Woodford, Listowel. His pieces are available in black,  dark blue and green. They make an ideal present for anyone who loves Listowel and likes to have a piece of home close by at all times.

AND by comparison with the big names mentioned above they are very reasonably priced. Pat is a one man operation so he obviously doesn’t produce huge quantities. My advice is get to him before the world discovers him.

Woodford Pottery

Beautiful hand knitter nativity by Ella O’Sullivan

Eileen O’Sullivan makes these and other ceramic pieces to order.

Listowel’s best knitter and tea cosy designer is Frances O’Keeffe.  Her charming creations are still available at Craftshop na Méar and at local craft fairs.  

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A Sugar Tax…..in 1901!



My friend, Nicholas wrote us the following;

” I came across this little piece in the British Parliamentary Papers. It concerns a sugar tax proposed in c1901. The fuller debate is fascinating as it goes into the ramifications of all types of sugar and associated products- honey  seems to have been exempt from the intended tax.


Extracted from The Debate on the proposed Sugar Tax in the House of Commons on 29th April 1901:

‘… MR. DILLON (Mayo, E.)

said that as an Irish Member he desired to enter his protest against this tax because it pressed severely upon the poorest classes of the population. He had listened with amazement to the doctrine laid down by the Hon. Baronet opposite, who said that he welcomed this tax because it would tend to discourage the unwholesome custom of using jam and marmalade and sugar, instead of porridge and milk.


‘In many parts of the country the poor people could not get milk. The working classes of Ireland were unable to give milk to their children because they could not afford it, and consequently they had to fall back upon jam and marmalade. There was no more necessary food than sugar for young children if they could not get plenty of milk and butter. Milk contained a good deal of sugar, and if they could not get the natural sugar contained in milk they were driven to buy sugar, and to supply it in that shape. 


A tax upon sugar was a tax upon one of the prime necessities of life, and that was a departure from the traditional policy of this country for the last fifty years, which was to remove all taxes from all the necessary articles of food. If they agreed to tax sugar he could not see why they should not tax corn…’ 



I think O tempora O mores! is appropriate in the light of the current sugar tax proposals, and the complete change in  Irish nutritional circumstances and health standards.” 





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New Windows for the Gardaí




Maybe they are getting the fancy new ones with the Garda logo in them

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