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: wireless

Radio Eireann, Ballybunion, Ball Alley Art and Brendan Kennelly R.I.P.

By

On October 19, 2021

In Ballybunion, Ballylongford, handball, Poem

In Listowel Town Park, October 2021

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“Le Coinnle na nAingeal”

Last weekend two of Ireland’s literary giants passed away.

Máire Mhac an tSaoi had a very small poetic output compared to Brendan Kennelly. She also wrote exclusively in Irish which meant that her poems were accessible to a limited audience.

Her work is well known by school children who identify with the teenage angst of her poem of first love with a local boy “Mac feirmeora ó iarthar tíre”, she had a crush on during a summer in the Gaeltacht of West Kerry.

She wrote a lovely sad little poem, a picture of a parent putting on the first shoe, “seoidín den leathar” , a step to freedom or the first shackles.

Probably her best known poem, Cuireadh do Mhuire, is a Christmas classic.

Guím leaba i measc na naomh di.

……………………………………

Brendan Kennelly R.I.P. was a prolific, popular, well known and loved poet and academic.

Throughout his long life he “walked with kings but kept the common touch”.

He never forgot his Kerry roots. He loved his large Kerry family, his Kerry friends and Kerry landscapes and values.

This prince of the Kingdom was a very proud Ballylongford man but he had many many Listowel connections and it was in this little corner of the world he saw out his days surrounded by his loving, caring and very proud family. It is they who will most feel his loss. His brothers, his sister and all his family will miss him greatly.

I took these photos in 2015 at the unveiling of the bust to Brendan Kennelly in Ballylongford.

Colm Tóibín, Liz Dunn, Chair of Listowel Writers’ Week, Brendan Kennelly, and Richard Ford

This is 2017 when Brendan was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by Listowel Writers’ Week.

These photos were also taken in 2017 at Opening Night Listowel Writers’ Week. In it Brendan is chatting to Eileen Moylan of Claddagh Design who designed and crafted the beautiful award piece depicting scenes from his two home towns, Ballylongford and Dublin.

Éamon Ó Murchú & Brendan Kennelly (Photo taken many years ago)

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Today’s Incredible Fact

A Disney themed café in Birmingham was once closed down temporarily because a customer spotted a mouse.

The café is inside the world’s biggest Primark. It is famous for serving mouse shaped pancakes and there are posters of Mickey and Minnie all over the shop.

But when a real living mouse was spotted, it brought business to a sharp halt for a while.

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Listening to the Radio

Photo from Vanishing Ireland website

In Ireland in the 1950s the main source of inanimate entertainment was the radio. Many houses had a set like this. This is a PYE. Our one was a Phillips. I remember waking up to the sounds of O’Donnell Abú. This was the signature tune of Radio Eireann. We never listened to any other channel.

After The News we had sponsored programmes. These were short music or magazine programmes sponsored by big business e’g. ODearest Mattresses, Batchelors or The Irish Hospitals Sweepstake.

The Waltons programme on Saturdays ….”If you feel like singing, do sing an Irish song” and Dear Frankie’s “This problem may not be yours today but it could be someday” became phrases familiar to every Irishman.

Memories, memories!

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Making Turf

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Public Art in Ballybunion

Have you noticed that, as you walk around any town nowadays there is so much to delight the eye. I took these photos on a recent stroll around Ballybunion.

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In the Ball Alley

This is just one of the many lovely pictures in the ball alley now. It says home; doesn’t it?

Winter, summer, old, new, commercial and residential, Listowel in all its loveliness.

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Junior Griffin, Gunsboro, Listowel before election fever takes hold, a very old radio and a voice of morning radio passes away

By

On February 1, 2016

In Uncategorized

Prize winning Photographer



From time to time I include a photograph here from my friend, Jim MacSweeney. So I am delighted to tell you that  at the Southern Association of Camera Clubs Photographer of The Year Competition Jim won a gold medal for this photograph. The  winning shot got 26 Marks out of a possible 27. 

Jim took the photograph in Killarney National Park during the rutting season in 2015.

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Bíonn Siúlach Scéalach

Above is John, better known as Junior,  Griffin. I had the great pleasure of spending a couple of hours with him recently. Junior has hundreds of great stories to tell and he has a colorful and engaging way of telling them. He is great company.

I am going to share some of Junior’s stories with you over the coming days and then, I promise, I’ll go back for more.

Above is a photograph of Junior’s grandmother, Kate Hegarty Griffin. In this photograph she is bringing a beart (bundle) of reeds to the thatcher.

Junior reminded me of the lines from the song, Forty Shades of Green;

“…To see again the thatching with the straw the women glean

I’d walk from Cork to Larne to see the forty shades of green.”

Junior’s grandmother was one such gleaner.

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Gunsboro

photo; Historical Tralee

Gunsborough House, Listowel, Co.Kerry

Birthplace of Lord Kitchener of Khartoum.It was leased to Listowel Board of Guardians as an auxilliary workhouse. In 1837 Lewis records it as the property of Pierce Mahony who had recently purchased the estate. Bary writes that it had previously been in the possesson of the Gun family. It is now ruined.

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Look, No Posters! ……. Yet!



The party faithful are only waiting for the word and they’ll be out of the traps faster than any dog at The Kingdom Stadium. Our lovely town will be littered with election posters. Do they make a difference?

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A Really Really Old Radio….and a brand new one



John Griffin brought this radio all the way from Detroit to Knockalougha, Duagh  when he returned home to live in 1931. it was the first radio in Duagh and it made Griffin’s homestead into a kind of Mecca. The late Christy Downey of Knockalougha often told the story of how as a youth he remembered seeing droves of neighbours crossing the fields to converge on Griffin’s house. These people lit their way with torches which were lighting sods of turf held aloft on pikes. The reason for their journey was to hear on Griffin’s radio the results of the 1932 general election which saw de Valera elected to The Dáil for the first time.

Years later in 1951 Phillips held a competition during the agricultural show, pictured below.

The prize was a brand new Philips radio and the winner was to be the person with the oldest radio. Johnny Griffin was well ahead of the posse there and Junior remembers the delight when they brought the new radio home to Bridge Road.

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Look Who Got  engaged!




and look where VIP magazine chose for the phooshoot to tell us the good news. Bernard Brogan might have proposed to Kiera in Turkey but I agree with VIP; he looks best with a Kerry backdrop.


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Are you a past pupil of The Tech in Listowel?



If you answered yes to this question, read on because your old school has an invitation for you;





“As part of the 1916 commemoration, Colaiste na Riochta will commemorate the event on Saturday, March 12, at the school. We will also celebrate a special  anniversary of the school and open the school on that date to celebrate these two events simultaneously. We would appreciate if you could loan us any photos, articles, any form of nostalgia in relation to ‘the teck’ which you  or others may have in your archives and encourage people in your blog to join us on the day.
Any one who has anything of interest might drop them into the office to the Principal, Stephen Goulding or the Committee members, Ms. Iseult Glynn or Ms. Marion Sugrue.”



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I Never Met Terry Wogan




I read his book. I listened to him on the radio and I watched him on TV. Like so many others I felt I knew him. That was his charism. He connected with us all. As my late mother would say, “You could take him anywhere.”



His British audience loved him. He embodied all of the attributes they prize. He was charming, witty, relaxed, self effacing, open, chatty and impeccably polite. He followed in a line of Irish entertainers the British have loved: Eamon Andrews, Des O’Connor, Val Doonican and I’m sure there are more I have forgotten. Dermot O’Leary is the closest of today’s bunch to that mould.



If you look at the three I have mentioned, they were all cut from the same cloth as Sir Terry. They were utterly competent and professional, full of stories and great company. They “walked with kings yet kept the common touch…” And of course there was the voice. Terry never lost his Irish brogue. He spoke the queen’s English with a lilt, a smile and always a hint of roguery.



In the tributes I have read so far, the word legend occurs often. We seem to have lost a lot of legends in 2016 already. He will be missed.



Leaba i measc na naomh is na naingeal go raibh aige.

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