NEWTOWNSANDES
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Village Decline by Tom Moore
The sounds of the anvil as one entered the village
The rattle of the milk tanks on the cobbled street
The hum of the chatter from farmers around
The women in shawls, big boots on their feet.
These are the scenes from an age long ago
When our local villages were so full of life
Alas these days we’ll not see anymore
As our villages now are lonesome and quiet.
There once was a time when each door was open
Trading in groceries, hardware and more.
Dressmakers and tailors and butchers were thriving
Each door was wide open, each building a store.
There were no big supermarkets but none lacked for nothing
As each little shop had all one would need
Thimbles and knotting needles or brown bags of sugar
Shoe polish or wellingtons or some turnip seed.
The arrival of the motorcars soon brought some changes
As people got excited and travelled to towns
Where the shops were much bigger and seemed to be brighter
And more of a choice and a flavour were found
Soon along came the busses who gathered all peoples
Pick them up at their doors and drove on for miles
Sure it looked like great progress as they chatted and bantered
But their local shopkeepers were left without smiles
Now our shops are all closed down and our villages sleepy
And gone too is the banter and buzz of it all
Never more will we hear the sound of the anvil
Or the chop of the cleaver at the butcher stall
There’s none about now to tell of hear a new story
Walking the streets can be dreary and cold
With no doors wide open with someone to talk to
Our progress has backfired. My story is told
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Poetry Listowel Connection May 2023
Molly Twomey is one of the poet’s. Here is a poem of hers
recently published in the newspaper.
Have you ever lied to me? I ask. You reply,
that on our fifth date, you said a rock hit the wheel,
but it was a chaffinch. You didn’t turn and hand me
that small flame of news but drove into the mango
and gunpowder sunset. Afraid I’d make you pull up
to check that there were no quavers stuck in its throat.
That if its pulse didn’t react to my fingers
tap-dancing on its keel bone, I’d want to bury it
under heather and moss. You thought I’d make you pray
every time we drove from Lismore to Ballynoe, that our date
would become not the boardwalk, chips and the anemones
but broken wings and blood wet feathers. I think of your ex
in North Carolina. How she might have perched and looked out
to razed earth, waiting for you with your newly shaved beard,
hand luggage of notebooks and craft beer. Only for the fast
and brutal machine of my heart to catch you off guard.
Molly Twomey has won the Padraic Colum Poetry Prize, the Waterford Poetry Prize, and has been awarded the Eavan Boland Mentorship Award and an Arts Council Literature Bursary. She is currently working on her debut collection.
https://listowelconnection.com/2023/05/
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PLAYS , St Johns Listowel 2023; five emerging playwrights from Kerry present their own work.
our box office 068 22566.
Saturday 18th February at 7.30pm
Since July 2022, Paul Murphy, Judith Ryan, Dee Keogh, Ciara O’Grady and Barry Francis, 5 local playwrights in Kerry have been developing five new plays with St John’s Theatre Artist in Resident Richard Walsh.
Richard's plays include OneDay and Lixnaw 1752, he is currently working on his new play Westies and with St John's Theatre hopes to bring an international Summer School for Theatre in Summer 2023.
These are the playwrights and their plays....
Playwright: Paul Murphy
Bio: From Ballyhar he has written one short play staged as part of the Kenmare "small roads festival'. He has also had poems and short stories published in various publications around Ireland.
Title: Last Post
The play is set in a post office on the last day of its opening. It explores rural Ireland through one woman's relationship with her customers.
Playwright: Judith Ryan
Bio: a native of Kerry, Judith is a graduate of The Gaiety school of Acting and has worked professionally on Stage, Radio and Screen. She is delighted to be part of this year’s Listowel Playwright’s Group.
Title: Oranges and Chocolate.
The piece explores transgenerational trauma and healing through the story of three generations of one family.
Playwright: Dee Keogh
Bio Dee is a Dublin woman who moved to Kerry twenty years ago, and since started writing.
Dee is part the Playwrights’ group in Listowel, writes poetry, short stories, and monologues. Her first One Woman show which she wrote and performed in Ballybunion, Listowel and Dublin this year 2023 is called Why I haven’t met Oprah yet.
Title: The Easy Does It Treatment Center
This is her first full length play which about Addiction and the invisible threads that tangle and keep one bound in the battle of addiction.
Playwright: Ciara O’Grady
Bio Ciara is a Galway native now living in Gneeveguilla, Co. Kerry. She is a fan of all things arts, culture, theatre and drama, with her two young sons providing most of the latter in her life until she joined the Listowel Playwrights in 2021. She writes to help make sense of the world and her dream is to one day present something to the public as a creator, and give up her comfy safe seat as a passive observer.
Title: Roadkill
Sandra and Jenny are on their own paths, neither quite where they thought they would be. Where will they intersect and how are they bound?
Playwright: Barry Francis
Bio Barry Francis is a local actor who features regularly in plays in St. John’s Theatre. This is his first attempt to write a full length play.
Title: Looping Left
Set in a golf club in Kerry in 1985, local caddy Declan is still mourning the death of his young wife. One day a family of American golfers arrive and things begin to change.
This event is FREE of CHARGE to attend and we would encourage people to come along and support our latest emerging writers. These are all works in progress so they would welcome feedback from the audience.
There is no requirement to book in advance - show begins at 7.30pm.
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Poetry
An Emigrant's Farewell to Carrig and Corcamore
Scenes of my youth with a heart overflowing, I stand for the last time amid your gay flowers, To think with devotion and tender emotion, Of childhood and boyhood, those bright sunny hours, To view with affection and fond recollection, E're I'm parted forever from Erin's loved shore, The heart thrilling scenes spread in every direction Of fair verdant Carrig and sweet Corcamore.
Ah here 'mid those scenes I have gazed with emotion, Till the soft tears of sadness bedewed my young cheek, When I thought that e're long I shall cross the broad ocean In far-off Columbia my fortune to seek. And when far from dear Erin my barge shall be steering And I shall be feeling I'll ne're see you more, I'll say with emotion and tender devotion, "Fare-you well verdant Carrig and sweet Corcamore".
And when by Columbia's broad rivers I wander, With love for old Ireland still fresh in my heart; Of the home of my youth every hour growing fonder, Dim visions of Carrig's bright beauties still start, And if ever a fond mingled sadness steals o'er me, I'll think of my childhood 'mid valley and wildwood, And bless verdant Carrig and sweet Corcamore.
Then farewell to your bowers happy scenes of my childhood, The land of the stranger must now be my home, Adieu to those loved haunts in valley and wildwood, Where oft my young footsteps did wantonly roam, And when neath the sod of the stranger I'm sleeping, Perhaps from dear Erin some friends may sail o'er, Who'd plant o'er my grave, amid sighing and weeping, A shamrock from Carrig or sweet Corcamore.
http://www.ballybrown.com/Poems.htm
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John W. Sexton was born in 1958 and is the author of seven poetry collections, the most recent being: The Offspring of the Moon (Salmon Poetry 2013), Futures Pass (Salmon Poetry 2018), and Visions at Templeglantine (Revival Press 2020). A chapbook of his surrealist poetry, Inverted Night, came out from SurVision in April 2019.
Tickets for the Poetry Workshops are limited, please contact ballybunionartsfestival@gmail.com to book a space, price €20
He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem The Green Owl was awarded the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007 for best single poem. His poem In and Out of Their Heads, from The Offspring of the Moon, was selected for The Forward Book of Poetry 2014. His poem The Snails was shortlisted for the 2018 An Post / Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year Award. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.
During 2019 and 2020 he was Writer in Residence for the Dromineer Nenagh Literary Festival.
Join John for a three hour poetry workshop at The Bunker.
https://www.ballybunionartsfestival.ie/programme/john-w-sexton-poetry-workshop
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Poetry
Contented Diner
Glass House
John McGrath
I must have ordered onion rings for two.
They’re stacked above my steak like lifebelts;
Pepper sauce and wedges on the side,
salad and a subtle Chilean Red.
Beyond the glass I watch the river rise
swiftly with the tide. Swans
feed frantically, bottoms in the air.
Mine hugs lime-green leatherette.
The waiter smiles, tops up my wine
and leaves. I watch his bottom too,
then raise my fork and stab my plate
like a Polynesian fisherman.
Out on the river, the swans swim on,
pedalling frantically against the tide,
Diving, feeding, pedalling again.
I marvel at their weight-loss plan.
I put down my fork and sigh contentedly,
raise my feet onto the lime-green leatherette,
smile at the waiter as he takes my plate and muse
on why others choose to swim against the tide.
==================================
By John McGrath
Bang!
A finch against my window.
I felt the shudder as its world met mine,
Rushed to where it fell.
Sapped of sense and movement,
Eyes glazed, grey, lifeless,
Wings splayed, stone still.
I saw its small beak quiver,
Move as if to speak.
A tiny pulse throbbed in its downy throat.
Cupping it in my palm,
I felt the soft, warm beat within,
Willed life into stillness.
Restored by simple touch
It stirred, fluttered, faltered, flew
And healed the poet too.
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A Poem that will strike a Chord
Box
by John McGrath
I wondered why the box
was so much bigger than the book;
why the book the poet sent to me
was so much smaller than the box.
Then I opened the book
that was filled with love and lore,
with longing and laughter
and weeping and rivers
and oceans and pain,
so much wisdom and wonder and joy
and so many people and stories,
that I marvelled at the miracle
of how a box so tiny
could hold so great a book.
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<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Laborare est Orare
Cathedrals
By John McGrath
Walking with dolphins on a summer’s day
High over Ballybunion,
Talking with ravens in Ballyegan bog,
December morning after rain,
Watching a tumbling star
In a blue-black January sky,
The moon ringed with gold
Over Cnoc An Óir,
Listening to a choir of thrushes
Or the vespers of a thousand starlings,
Turning day-old hay
Towards a sweetening July sun,
Smelling the first rose of April
Or the first turf-fire of autumn.
Incense, mystery, music, majesty
And many places,
Many ways to pray.
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Elegy to Road Kill
Fox
by John McGrath
I killed a fox last night
outside the graveyard wall.
Too late to brake I caught
a flash of golden fur
in headlight’s glare,
Felt the thump and crunch
of steel on bone,
Slow-motion silence,
Disbelief and then,
certitude
that fate had mindlessly conspired
to lead us to this place,
this point in time,
this intersecting line
where two lives intertwine
with tragedy.
One of us remained
outside the graveyard wall.
One moved on
and died a little too.
=========================
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Poetry Newcastle West
http://ncwoldentimes.com/memories-of-the-past-episode-300/
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The Rattle Away Breed
by Paddy O’ Connor
I have written you verses full ninety five score,
On Hurling and football and fashion galore,
Camogie and racing and coursing as well,
From famous Clounanna to lovely Clonmel.
But I’m finished with hurling and football and togs,
For it’s plain to be seen that I’m going to the dogs.
Now I take up my pen with unusual speed,
For to write you a verse on the Rattle-Away Breed.
In Clonmel at the Derby we saw sixty four,
Of Ireland’s best puppies in action once more.
Each one there determined to bear home the Cup,
Though some that we saw, faith! they were hairy old pups.
Of the sixty and three there was none fit to lead,
The little red dog of the Rattle-Away Breed.
When his name was called out Dainty Man cocked his ear,
Then as fit as a fiddle we saw him appear.
He walked into slips as if he owned the park,
How he wagged his big tail at the slightest remark.
Twas no nickname at all for the dog “All Forlorn”,
His chances of victory to pieces were torn,
“Take him home”, Greaney shouted, “And give him a feed,
He’s no match for my dog of the Rattle-Away Breed”.
With our hearts stout and brave and with Pussy in view,
Sure the brindled dog there met his first Waterloo.
To slips with the dog from the Blackwaterside,
Sure a Kerryman’s courage can ne’er be denied.
Though running unsighted behind the great hare,
No one for one moment are we in despair.
The cradle of coursing it is famed Ballyduff,
In Tommyo’s kennel you’ll find the right stuff,
With that soar to sweep over the watery plains,
And the bluest of blood running right through their veins.
However, to Tommy the honour must go,
For there’s nought in the game that this genius don’t know.
Being a sportsman a thousand times over indeed,
It was famous for years in the O’Sullivan breed.
Three cheers for Tom Connor to give now we must,
That his hammer and anvil might never show rust.
That we may all in the future around Newtownsandes
See more Coneen Brosnans and more Dainty Mans.
Then our heart with emotion were ready to bleed,
When the Derby was won by the Rattle-Away Breed.
https://moyvane.com/culture/the-rattle-away-breed/
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Kathleen Forrestal this is one of her happy memories of her time in Pres.
Convent Garden
I recall the convent garden
It dispelled the classroom hours:
Lovely trees, flowering shrubs and every kind of flowers.
I loved the mossy path dividing vegetables and fruit.
Here my mind remained serene even though my tongue was mute.
A pink rose shed its petals, they lay strewn upon the ground,
I stood there caressing it, waiting to be found.
I rescued one and smelled it, it's perfume was so sweet.
The others came and trampled them underneath their feet.
I cling now to the memory imprinted on my mind,
Some thoughts I’ll always treasure and some I leave behind
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The History of Siamsa Tíre
How Siamsa Tíre evolved, from its beginnings under the leadership of Fr Pat Ahern to the present day
Siamsa, pronounced “Shee-am-sa”, comes from the Irish language. The word itself expresses mirth and music, Tíre means ‘of the land’. At the heart of Siamsa Tíre lies a professional core group of full-time players supported by selected artists drawn from the local community but trained in the unique Siamsa style and idiom. Full-time and community performers, who have completed the company’s training scheme, integrate and blend into a dedicated and talented team.
Following the move to its custom built premises in 1991 the company embraced the role of operating an Arts Centre. Now, in addition to its remit as the National Folk Theatre, Siamsa Tíre also hosts a wide variety of events throughout the year. Contemporary drama, dance, classical music, comedy and literary events feature on a year round programme, as well as a vibrant visual arts line-up in the dedicated gallery spaces. Siamsa Tíre also hosts activities by local groups, arts organisations, and festivals.
Fr Pat Ahern founder of Siamsa Tíre
A Brief History
The origins of Siamsa Tire date back to 1957 when a young curate, Fr Pat Ahern, was sent to Kerry to establish a new choir in St John’s church in Tralee. The success of the choir and the talents of some of the members inspired Pat Ahern to stage a Passion Play entitled, Golgotha, in 1963. This performance met with such acclaim that a celebratory night was organised to acknowledge the performers and organisers. The night concluded with a special presentation of song, dance and music by some of those involved. This too was so warmly received that Pat Ahern and a number of others decided to continue to explore further possibilities for the informal group. They decided to call themselves, Siamsóirí na Ríochta.
A core impetus for the group was the preservation of some of the traditions in music, song and dance in North Kerry that were in danger of disappearing. Chief among these was the ‘Munnix’ style of dancing as taught by the travelling dance master, Jeremiah Molyneaux, or Jerry Munnix as he was known. Many of the pieces included in the initial presentations focused on the Amhráin Saothar or work song which accompanied many of the traditional occupations and tasks in rural Ireland. Threshing, tending to animals, scything, churning, cobbling, along with festivals such as Bealtaine and Lughnasa formed the core of these productions.
During these early years, Siamsóirí na Ríochta performed in a variety of venues in Ireland (including the Abbey Theatre) and abroad and were also invited to perform on a number of Raidio Teilifís Eireann productions. In 1968, Michael Maye, a Bord Fáilte representative in Tralee, suggested that the group stage a season of productions during the summer. This was to be Siamsa Tíre’s first Summer Season.
Pat Ahern prepared a plan to foster the development of Irish folk culture in 1972 and in the ensuing years he proceeded to implement it. With the formation of Siamsa Tíre Teo in 1974, Pat Ahern was appointed Artistic Director, a position he held until his retirement in 1998.
A vital element of Pat Ahern’s plan was the fostering of traditional Irish folk culture in a series of Tithe Siamsa or Folk Academies located in strategic, tradition-rich parts of rural Ireland. The first of these was built in Finuge in North Kerry in 1974 and the second the following year in Carraig in the Chorcha Dhuibhne Gaeltacht. Here, training in music, dance, song and movement continues was delivered to selected students over a period of three years, free of charge. Those students who show significant promise then graduate to an advanced class in Siamsa Tíre in Tralee, and from there to the Community Cast of the company. Whilst most of the training currently takes place in Tralee, the same system of training is still in place.
Martin Whelan General Manager of Siamsa Tíre up to 2002
The other key individual in the development of Siamsa Tíre was Martin Whelan. Martin initially became involved in a voluntary capacity when Teach Siamsa in Finuge was being built. His energy and commitment to this development lead him to take a more full-time role in the organisation and in 1974, he was appointed as General Manager of Siamsa Tíre, a position he retained until his untimely death in 2002. At the time of his passing, Martin Whelan had become one of the best known and best loved arts administrators in the country.
Martin, along with Pat Ahern and architect, Patrick (Paddy) O’Sullivan were instrumental in the building of the current theatre and arts centre in Tralee, travelling as far afield as the United States to study other arts facilities. The new theatre and arts centre was officially opened in 1991. Prior to this, Siamsa Tíre had a number of temporary homes, including the Ashe Memorial Hall and the old Theatre Royal in Tralee. The current theatre and arts centre is a testament to the vision of all three men and is still widely regarded as one of the best arts facilities in the country.
Siamsa Tíre continues to play a central role in Irish cultural life, regionally and nationally. Tours abroad over more than 40 years have also contributed to a growing international reputation for the company. Siamsa Tíre continues to place a strong emphasis on development, working with visiting choreographers such as Mary Nunan, Cindy Cummings, Sue Ellen McCarthy, directors and more recently, writers, including Michael Harding.
“There is a sense in which we do not own our culture, we are only trustees. The treasure is only on loan and we must take it, refurbish it in the light of our experience and hand it on."
Fr Pat Ahern.
https://www.siamsatire.com/about/history
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Song by John Mcgrath
And when our streets are green again
When metalled roads are green
And girls walk barefoot through the weeds
Of Regent Street, Saint Martin's Lane
And children hide in factories
Where burdock blooms and vetch and rust,
And elms and oaks and chestnut trees
Are tall again and hope is lost
When up the Strand the foxes glide
And hedgehogs sniff and wildcats yells
And golden orioles come back
To flash through Barnes and Clerkenwell
When governments and industries
Lie choked by weeds in fertile rain
For sure the few who stay alive
Will laugh and grow to love again
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SEÁN Ó h-AIRTNÉIDE 1928 - 2017
I met an old friend in Mountmahon today
And he said Jackie Thady had just passed away.
The great Seán Ó h-Airtnéide has gone to his rest.
Devon Road is in mourning. He was one of the best.
https://abbeyfealeonline.blogspot.com/p/poetry.html
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DEATH of Raymond (Ray) Keane, Killarney and Carlow, died on November 30th, 2020, in the excellent care of Kerry Specialist Palliative Care, University Hospital Kerry, Tralee. Much loved father of Laura and Lydia; predeceased by his wife Bernie and father John. Sadly missed by his partner Kasia, daughters, mother Pauline, sisters Majella, Eleanor and Geraldine, brother Paul, Laura’s partner Dale, uncles, aunts-in-law, brothers-in-law, nephews, and nieces. His father a native of Lisselton, and wrote several books.
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Sive Cast 1959 Dail Picture Listowel Connection
Front Row From Left:
Jeffrey O’Connnor (Cahirciveen, Sheila Keane’s Husband)
Brendan Carroll (Carroll Henigan, William St)
Margaret Dillon
John B. Keane
Cecile Cotter (‘Tasty Cotter’s’ sister – Scully’s Corner used to be called Cotter’s Corner)
Nora Relihan
Dan Moloney T.D., (grandfather of Cllr.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 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, grandmother Jimmy Moloney)
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)
=========================
Anne Mulcahy
Plassey
Spring smelled of Summers brink
- dew grass, mist lying close to ditches,
covering with whispers.
Plassey was my mothers retreat,
filled her lungs like air, salvation, ecstasy -
An addictive helium balloon.
The smooth river winding down the canal
would beckon, and from Spring to Autumn
she was its slave, fallen yellow leaves tangled
her sandaled feet in October,
while we, bumbled behind her
Ducklings behind a swan
Summer was her Byzantium,
long bright days ate her heaviness.
We stretched on coloured towels
on thick green bank-hills -
among its natives,
the butterflies and the bees.
then sizzled under sun’s rays,
like our frying sausages
smoking on the campfire
or twirled on the rope
looped over the trees arm.
Firewood flames flicker the summer breeze
mingling with scents of meadow spray,
Swans nests, cut grass, cow dung –
The scent of food
bid us to rise from the river floor
where in earnest we explore
the treasure the swans guard near the rocks.
Star spread swimmers splash from the black bridge
the unorthodox diving board -
where oft a rescue is needed -
I jumped - Laughing when I bobbed back
Ark my last jump failed me -
the river with her whithery branch
clasped my ankle in her iron grip
–air left my tight held lips.
The sun glittered above the waters head -
I sank - a stone cradled in the arms of the river.
I left this world -
I left Plassey and my mother,
As she sat on the river bank.
Alas, my story does not end -
Again I am reborn
air bellowed through me like a storm
- I blinked, my world had changed ,
no longer I the young boy
Of my mothers heart
Who dared a dare - who lived without care
Who at 10 still followed her everywhere.
No - I am a baby again
I cannot smell the riverbed,
the meadow or the swans,
I cried for my mother – I cried loud
Knowing she would be calling too.
But the rivers magic had done its trick and here I am anew -
Stuck in this alien place - while Plassey is my home
Through years I’ve trawled, and still explore
for the treasure beneath the worlds floor,
the re-born me has a memory
so sharp it cannot fade.
The scent of spring on Summers brink
The long hot days we played,
they call me night and day
possess my every breath -
are the source of my every pain
I am not alive in my past world
Nor in this world am I yet dead!
I’ve exhausted all there is to exhaust
and all to no avail -
A lunacy the Doctors diagnose
While Priests and Visionaries are vague.
I’ve tried retrospective Hypnosis,
Even the seven son of a seven son,
I told him my disarray.
He read my palm and slumbered deep
woke with a piercing scream -
you are a dead man alive again
His yellow teeth screamed at me!
I waste my life in chase of the other
travel sea and air, to be with my mother ,
to scratch this memory from my head
If you go to Plassey - tell her the door home has closed.
She waits by the big rocks where the swans guard,
watches the black bridge through frowned eyes,
scoures the river bed for our bobbing crowns,
while the suns glare glistens in her eyes.
Alas, I am doomed -a man between two worlds
Considered a lunatic or a fool -
No one believes my words
No one believes my memories are not dreams
No one believes the dead are alive!
===============================================
Ballydonoghue Festival 2020
Robert Leslie Bowland Award
Freedom Fighter by Margaret Sheehan
When they were finished with you
there was skin on the road.
There’s a man who says
that you are living still
chained to the memory.
All those years ago
you could not have known
you’d be held so long.
I would sprinkle water
on the four corners
of your house
to set you free.
That would be my
Contribution.
Ballydonoghue Bardic Festival- Results
https://ballydbardfest.com/competitions/
LOVE: Think of someone you truly love or have loved. What is the power of that love that draws you to that person? Do you love that person because you have to or because you want to? Does the attraction of love with that person draw you beyond yourself in such a way that if you stopped loving that person, something real and tangible would die, perhaps the spiritual bond of love between you? If you have had an experience of love, then you have had some insight into the Trinity of love. In fact, by loving another person you have been—yes, believe it or not—caught up in the Trinity of love. The Trinity is not three men at a tea party. It is a mystery of relationships—giving, receiving and sharing love. When we say “God is love” we are saying that God is a mystery of persons-in-love. The mystery of God’s love is like ever-deepening love. Within that loving embrace of God, our lives are brought into being and sustained in being. As we have been loved into birth, so, too, we are called to mirror God’s love for others so as to birth God anew in creation. For that is how God, the tremendous lover of life, delights in his creation.
—from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective by Ilia Delio, OSF
Love, John Lyons
The art of love
Two figures
drained of colour
sepia with just a hint
of blue
Sometimes more
is less
sometimes less
is more
Art is evocation
it suggests :
when it seeks to impose
it overpowers
in that way
art resembles
relationships
and love
in which
tenderness
and gentleness
are its strengths
John Lyons
Remembering Tralee
My mother was born
in the shadow of mountains
her old bones long since
laid to rest
I know the place
the house the houses
where she was a girl
I know the school
I know the shoreline
where she would go
in the summer to bathe
and walk along the beach
My bones
out of her bones
have grown old too
but my muscles retain
their youthful vigour
I know many things
and yet am ignorant
of so much more
Perhaps I long to return
to that place
in the shadow of mountains
where calm waters
run down to the sea
Perhaps is a word
I have used too often
in my life perhaps
John Lyons
Your final resting
Half-moon over November night:
snow on the ground and icy dusting
of snow in the boughs of trees
in the ancient woodlands by your last bed.
A barn owl sits motionless in the darkness,
in the half-light of the half-moon.
A lone cry in the woodlands,
the lone cry of the November owl
under the half-moon. And then silence.
And then peace. A final flurry of snow.
That you should love and be loved.
nothing more. That you should love
and be lived by that love. The two-way gift,
the life-gift and the love-gift,
and not the one without the other.
All life is two-way just as all love
is all life
in the giving and receiving.
And so Divina asks me where was she
before she was born,
because living and loving cannot understand
the state of non-being.
And I say to her:
You were there in our love
where you will always be,
there
in our love.
And you, my mother—
I gave birth to you
just as you brought me out of yourself
and into the light,
barely a half-moon from now,
barely three and forty years from here.
You born again in the moment of my birth
into that deep love-gift of motherhood;
And I have loved you
as the father of your motherhood of me,
son and father to you
as the mother and daughter of my love.
And your dying — this two-way sadness
which we call your death
is also a kind of lying in,
is also a kind of new maternity,
a fresh maternity as you lie here now
in peace and at peace,
nurturing us into that new life,
that life with and without you,
that never-losing-you life of your death.
Your six children
around your last bed,
at the breast of your love.
November sun — and magpies soaring
in the chill air,
seen through the window of your last resting
A sadness yes, a grief
undeniably. And yet an overwhelming
sense of love undying.
Not of ashes to ashes
but of life to life
through love.
23 November 1993
From John Joseph Lyons
The poem below was written immediately after visiting her one day in the hospital when I, like all her children, had been stunned by her sudden decline. The accompanying photo was taken two years earlier, around the time of her seventieth birthday and that is how I like to remember her. She was born in Tralee, Co. Kerry in 1922, and her family emigrated to Welling in 1937
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/96239983/posts/1870
A Poem from Noel Roche of Chicago and Listowel
In Loving Memory of my sister, “ Jack’
I wonder if you’re up there
Irish dancing on a cloud.
I know that when you sing
You’re surrounded by a crowd.
Mam and Dad and Dick and Jim,
And all who passed are there.
I wonder what God’s thinking
Every time he hears you swear.
I know in my heart
There is one thing you will do.
I know you’ll ask Elvis
To sing The Wonder of You.
I know there’s angels laughing,
They all think you’re great.
Heaven has not been the same
Since you walked through the gate.
You left behind a lot of stuff
Clothes, jewellery and rings.
Your daughter got the promise
That you’re the wind beneath her wings.
I know your friends are sad
I know they’re feeling blue.
But I also know they’re grateful
That they had a friend like you.
Your brothers and your sisters
Are going day by day
And trying to accept the fact
That you have gone away.
Your nephews and your nieces
Every single one,
Are struggling with the fact
That their favourite Aunty’s gone.
I’m here in Chicago
Many miles away.
I’ve got a hole in my heart
That will not go away.
I’m trying to get over this
And make a brand new start
I know that I am not alone
You are always in my heart.
Kerryman of the Year
by Noel Roche of Chicago and Listowel
To my brother, Tom, who makes me proud
He was born in 1945 on the third day of July
Another child for Dick and Madge, a little baby boy.
Rumour has it he was late, they thought he wouldn’t come at all.
When he finally did come out, he was soloing a ball.
Just like all the other boys, he always loved to play.
It seemed he was a natural when it came to GAA.
His heroes were the Kerry teams, those men so big and bold.
His dreams were that someday he would wear the green and gold.
And wear the green and gold he did in 1963.
He won an All Ireland medal and became a hero to me.
Soon he moved to England and left Kerry behind.
“Twas his body that left Kerry, Kerry would not leave his mind.
Tom can talk of anything under the heavenly sky
But when he talks of Kerry he has a twinkle in his eye.
If you want Tom to help, all you have to do
Is throw in the word Kerry and he will be there for you.
How much does he love Kerry? To him its not a game
Tom has got a daughter and Kerry is her name.
And now I’m here tonight to cheer
As they name my brother Tom, Kerryman of the Year.
Theer is no better man and I will tell you why
When it comes to Kerry, Tom is do or die.
And if you cut him open this sight you would behold
There is no red inside his veins. His blood runs green and gold.
Literacy Awakening”: The Role of Study Abroad and International Service Learning for Preservice Teachers’ Literacy Engagement
Kristie O'Donnell Lussier, Lori Czop Assaf, Meagan Hoff
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore how preservice teachers (PST) became aware of literacies in global and local contexts and to understand how PST conceive of literacy after experiencing an international service learning (ISL) study abroad program in rural South Africa. For this qualitative grounded theory study, we used critical literacy and humanizing pedagogy as theoretical frames for designing the program and analyzing data. Findings show PST experienced a “literacy awakening.” They became more aware of nuanced and complex ways literacies function in a community and imagined how their understandings would shape future teaching.
Keywords
study abroad; international education; critical literacy; teacher education; humanizing pedagogy
Full Text:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32865/fire201952163
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The Ó Longáin Family
From the 18th century to the late 19th century the surname ‘Ó Longáin’ was synonymous with ‘scribes.’ Working as a scribe meant copying stories, poetry, histories and religious texts from manuscripts and printed works for patrons. Working as a scribe also involved translating texts from Irish to English. Frequently their patrons were from Cork merchant families, were Cork scholars themselves such as John Windele or from Cork clergy such as Bishop John Murphy. Working as a scribe had previously been a position of privilege but as the Gaelic order disintegrated following the Flight of the Earls in 1607, scribes found their living situation growing perilous and frequently lived in poverty. Micheál mac Peattair, his son Micheál Óg and his grandson Peadar were based in Carrignavar, Cork. Grandsons Pól and Seosamh were primarily based in Dublin.
http://blogs.ucc.ie/wordpress/theriverside/2015/09/09/o-longain-family/
Doors to the future
Written by Róisin Curtin 6thYear
We left the doors of the hospital,
Small and pink,
With loved ones gathered round.
Cute as buttons, innocent as day,
Our parents soothed by our sound.
We walked through the doors of education,
And finally here we stand.
A long way from A,B,C’s
We have learned to hold our own hand.
From doors to sports clubs,
To halls, filled with music and dance.
The things that make us who we are,
We can look back on in a glance.
There was and will be doors,
Where tough challenges lay behind.
Yet hope and joy will find us,
And we pray that life will be kind.
Now a knocking is loud in our ears,
The opportunities are endless from here.
However far from home you may wander,
Open each door without fear.
Adventure, Friendship and Fun are out there,
Let’s jump in and not be afraid,
It’s time to turn the handle now,
The door to the future awaits
Observing the Pieties
Garry MacMahon
I confess I’m a creature of habit, as down life’s road I go
Observing annual rituals is a must for me, and so
Before the crib at Christmas Eve I kneel with all the clan
And on the feast of Stephen go to Dingle for the wran.
Then for sweet St. Brigid’s Day a straw cross I have made
To hang upon the threshold whereon it will be laid.
In the house of my Redeemer I chant a hymn of praise
My throat criss crossed with candles on the feast day of St. Blaise.
Shrove Tuesday I eat pancakes dipped in honey from the hive
And thank the Lord that yet I live and another year survived,
And when the long gospel is read before the end of Lent
Home I take the blessed palm and breathe its sacred scent.
On Good Friday I buy hot cross buns and before the day is past
Gather cockles from the sea shore and keep the old black fast
And then on Easter morn I rise to see the dancing sun come forth
Not forgetting Patrick’s Day between, as the shamrock I still sport.
The coming of the swallow, the awakening of the earth
The promise of a primrose I await with bated breath,
And lest ill luck should follow me and give me cause to grieve
I never bring whitethorn to the house upon May Eve.
June bonfires once I lighted on the feastday of St. John
A custom all but vanished as relentless time moves on.
July sees me hit for Milltown and Willie Clancy in the County Clare
In Marrinan’s pub I pay my sub and a song or two sing there.
And then its Munster Final time and the piper must be paid
To Thurles, Cork, Killarney the pilgrimage is made.
Again I fetch my fishing rod before the season’s out
Take the time to wet a line and coax elusive trout.
To the Pattern of the Virgin, from thence on to Puck Fair
The Races of Listowel come next and I’m certain to be there.
Dew drenched fields provide me with mushrooms gleaming white
While plump and juicy blackberries for my sore eyes are a sight.
When comes November of the souls and all the leaves are shed
Will you light a candle then for me as I do for the dead?
You’ve heard an old man’s story, each word I swear is true,
Be blessed thrice, take this advice I now implore of you
Don’t turn your back on dúchas or on history’s learned lore
And pass it on before it’s gone and lost forever more.
Proud to be Irish
By Domhnall de Barra
A very happy St. Patrick’s Weekend to all. Yes, it is a time for people all over the world to join with us in celebrating our national feast day. It is hard to believe that a little country like Ireland, that could be lost into one of the states in America, can have such a high profile throughout the world at this time. To understand it we have to look back at our history and the fact that, due to oppression, famine and poverty, we had no option but to take to the emigrant trail and go to countries overseas to try and make a living. We are not unique in that of course as many other nations had similar experiences but there is something about the Irish spirit that drives us to success. The first emigrants did not have it easy. Most of them were uneducated and had to accept menial jobs and suffer prejudice to feed their families. Other nations looked down on them, especially in England where they were regarded as illiterate bog people who were only one step up from animals. Even up to the middle of the last century it was not uncommon to see notices in the windows of boarding houses that read: “No dogs, no blacks, no Irish”. Anything that did not make sense or was thought to be stupid was referred to as being “a bit Irish”. They had a mountain to climb but they were determined to do so and the first thing they did was ensure that their children got a good education. Through their hard work and diligence they gradually gained respect and got involved in their communities. As time went by they entered business and politics and became pillars of their communities. Through all this time they maintained a link with the homeland and created “homes from home” by having their own social clubs where they gathered every weekend to meet and immerse themselves in the culture they were raised with through music, song, dance and drama. They also played hurling and football and were proud of who they were and where they came from. Through all this they never forgot the families they had left behind and regularly sent parcels home with clothes and other items to help them out. There are many, still living today. who will remember the “parcel from America” and the excitement of ripping away the cord held together with wax and the brown paper to reveal the goodies within. They also sent money, something that helped the country get off its knees and become the vibrant place we have today.
In general the Irish had large families so, over the years, the numbers grew and the Irish influence became much stronger. In America, in particular, they took up office in the administration of towns and cities all the way up to when John F. Kennedy, whose people came from Wexford, was elected President of the USA. St. Patrick’s Day always played a big part in the lives of the Irish who created festivals around the event and paraded through the streets of their towns and cities dressed in the national colours and displaying Irish emblems. This caught the imagination of the general public and soon the Irish were joined in their celebrations by friends and admirers who had no contact with Ireland but wanted to become honorary citizens for the day. The custom has grown to such an extent that there is hardly a major city in the world that will not have an Irish parade next Sunday. Rivers will even be turned green and green beer will be drank in pubs to celebrate the occasion. Perhaps their is a little too much drink involved in the festivities but in general people are just out for a good time so, what harm!.
What are we celebrating anyway? Is it about St. Patrick anymore, I wonder. St. Patrick is attributed with bringing the Catholic Faith to Ireland and is our national Saint. The celebrations should then be of a religious nature but I am afraid that day is well and truly gone. Next Sunday we will see parades featuring everything but religious themes but it has become a symbol in itself of Irishness and a sense of pride for us all.
This week we are also celebrating “Seachtain na Gaeilge” when our native tongue will be to the fore on many programmes and papers. Some people will question having anything to do with the language saying it is a dead language and should be dropped in schools in favour of other foreign languages that may be more beneficial when abroad. Well, for a start, it is far from being a dead language as it is spoken daily in many parts of our Island called the Gaeltacht. There is also a big increase in attendances in gaelscoileanna, especially in urban areas, where all subjects, except English, are taught through Irish which is also the only medium of communication in the schools. My own grandchildren attended the gaelscoil in Newcastle West and they had no problem using the language from the word go. Unfortunately, outside of the gaelscoileanna, the teaching of Irish leaves a lot to be desired. It is treated merely as an exam subject and it is safe to say that it is hated by many of the pupils who are “forced” to learn it. We must be realistic and understand that Irish will never again be the spoken language in our country but that should not stop us having a knowledge of a beautiful language that was spoken by every Irish citizen up to the beginning of the last century. It is part of what we are and we should all try and use whatever “cúpla focail” we have whenever the opportunity arises.
So, enjoy the rest of the week, wear your badges and emblems with pride and don’t forget the shamrock, the plant St. Patrick used to explain the Blessed Trinity.
SWEET OLD MILL.
As I sit beside the fireside,
My day’s work it being through
My memories do wander back
When I was a lad like you
My poor old heart it skips a beat
When I think of the thrill
Of those happy days
When a youth like you
I spent round sweet Old Mill
The above lines were written by Tony Geoghegan of Glensharrold in 1989 describing the happy times he spent around Sweet Old Mill
Loughill/Ballyhahill Parish Drama; By Peg Prendeville
There’s drama in the parish
Is the whisper on the ground
It seems that “Sive” is being produced
So spread the word around.
The Parish Hall is where it’s at
On the 30th of November
As well as the 1st, and 7th and 8th
Of Christmassy December.
This team of local actors
Has been busy all the year
Learning lines and acting out
The aim it is quite clear.
It’s to bring a spark of levity
Into our winter season
So be sure that you support them
As it is their only reason
They’re from all parts of the parish
From very young to “getting old”
They have so much fun together
As their lines they try to hold.
Remember they are amateurs
Some have never been on stage
So do not be too critical
If their words fall off the page.
And though there is sadness in the play
There is laughter too you’ll see
For the witty lines contained within
We sincerely thank the late John B.
So be sure to book your tickets
-To be got in Paddy’s store
You will definitely not regret it
And will be coming back for more.
William Upton 1845
ArdaghLimerick
Edit
William Upton, carpenter, Fenian, novelist, poet and rural labourers' leader was born on 27 August 1845 in the village of Ardagh, Co. Limerick, one of eight children born to Frank Upton (1799-1881) and Catherine Nolan (1800?-1854). Frank, a carpenter, and his Catherine had married locally in 1829.
The Upton’s were artisans and Roman Catholic but their forebears, just a few generations back, had been Protestant landholders. It is unclear precisely why or how William Upton's line became tradesmen but it is probable that the marriage of his Protestant grandfather, Edward (born 1742), to a Catholic named Mary Dunworthy (or Dunworth) led to a familial exclusion.
William became a carpenter and cabinetmaker, and in common with many young nationalist artisans he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood during the mid-1860's. On March 5th 1867,as part of the ill-fated rising, he joined Limerick Fenians in an attack on Ardagh police barracks. Police reports identified him as one of the leaders and as having organised efforts to burn out the barracks when the frontal assault failed.
Richard James Hayes born 1902, died 1976; Born at Abbeyfeale.
During wartime Europe, Dr Hayes and Colonel Dan Bryan, the head of Ireland's intelligence service G2, led the secret Irish counter intelligence group to decode wireless messages being transmitted through Morse code from a house owned by the German Embassy.
“He masterminded the counter-intelligence program. He ensured Germany felt they could not certainly directly invade Ireland,” said Mr Hull.
Hayes has been referred to by MI5 as Ireland’s “greatest unsung hero” and the American Office of Strategic Services as “a colossus of a man”.
“The heroic thing about this, with both Dan Bryan and Dr Hayes, is they are doing this in some measure without their own government’s approval or knowledge,” said Mr Hull.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard James Hayes (born 1902, died 1976)[1] was a code-breaker during World War II and was Director of the National Library of Ireland.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_J._Hayes
Irish Press 1931-1995, Wednesday, May 01, 1940; Page: 6
A DOZEN YEARS ago, or so, Dr. R, J. Hayes of the National Library published a fascinating book on this subject— "Comparative ldiom: " (Hodges, Figgis)—from which I have drawn my examples.
He takes most of the great languages of Europe, and; traces resemblances and contrasts, in matters like this; for, as he says, one of the most interesting things about national languages is the light, that (see paper for more)
Irish Independent 1905-current, Saturday, November 30, 1940; Page: 5
HEAD OF NATIONAL LIBRARY Limerick Man's Post
Dr. Richard J. Hayes, Thornfield, Sandymount. Dublin, has been appointed Director of the National Library in succession to Dr. R. I. Best, who has been appointed to the Institute of Advanced Studies.
Dr. Hayes, who was born in Abbeyfeale, was educated at Clongowes Wood College and Trinity College. He was the first student of Trinity to take three Moderator ships in one year when in 1924 he took Modern Literature, Celtic Languages, and Philosophy in that year he entered the National Library as Assistant Librarian, and four years later took his LL.D. degree.
He has had several works published, including three volumes in Irish by An Gum.
Evening Herald 1891-current, Tuesday, April 01, 1941; Section: Front page, Page: 1
Copy of Newspaper on Silk
A copy of the “Bendigo Advertiser " printed on silk, published in Sandhurst. Australia, containing an account of the arrival of William Smith O'Brien in the city, was shown to members of the Bibliographical Society of Ireland by Dr.R . Hayes, National Library, at, a meeting in Dublin. Dr Hayes spoke on recent, acquisitions by the Library, including a manuscript translation of Giraldus Cambrensis by Richard Robinson.1575, earlier than the printed copy; relies of the Edgeworth family. Including manuscript poems, dated 1819 never printed.
Mr. B. F.Bowen read a paper on the " Comet" newspaper, published in 1831 by the Comet Club. Dublin. It ceased publication in 1883
Irish Press 1931-1995, Thursday, July 31, 1941; Page: 2
HIDDEN TREASURE
The romantic discovery by Dr. Hayes, Director of the National library, of two folios from the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick—lost for some three hundred- years—is one that will interest more than scholars and bibliophiles. Anything, however small, that is added to the scanty biographical material relating to Ireland's patron saint, will be welcomed.
The Tripartite life, which is the foundation of all Patrician lore, was compiled before the end of the ninth century. It consisted, as its name implies, of three dissertations on the Saint's life and death, which were intended to be recited at the annual three day festival held in his honour.
The missing leaves, long given up for lost, were found in an old book in a house near Dublin.
Irish Press 1931-1995, Saturday, May 29, 1943; Page: 3
Flew To Lisbon For Irish Books]
Dr. Richard Hayes, of the National Library, returned last night from Lisbon, where he attended the six-day auction of the library of Jorge O'Neill, of the family of the Counts de Tyrone, descendants of the O'Neills of Ulster. Dr. Hayes was sent by the Government to search for Irish books and manuscripts, and travelled by air from and to Foynes. Interviewed by an IRISH PRESS reporter, he said that the library included an enormous collection of books, most of them relating to Ireland and the Irish abroad. He had to face keen, opposition from Portuguese booksellers, whose interest in Irish books amazed him. Prices went high, but he secured over 100 rare volumes for the National Library. While in Lisbon Dr. Hayes searched the libraries and archives. In the National Library of Lisbon and in the Archives he discovered documents, hitherto unknown, and arranged to have them photographed. In the Bibliotecha d'Ajuda, in one of the Royal Palaces, he made friends with the librarian, a grandson of " Miss Murphy, of Cork." In order to attend the auction Dr. Hayes had to leave Ireland -without seeing the catalogue. There was the likelihood that this branch of the O'Neill family, which settled in Portugal in the 18th century, might have carried ancient manuscripts, or documents, of intense interest to Irish historians. As it turned out, the only manuscript sold was a copy of Keating's Foras Feasa, of which there are many texts here already.
SOLD PETROL COUPONS
Henry D. Farquharson, 59 Whitworth Road, Dublin, was sentenced to 18 months by the Special Criminal Court for selling petrol coupons during 1942.
The Court ordered that he be released after 12 months if he entered into bail to keep the peace for two years.
Irish Press 1931-1995, Thursday, October 07, 1943; Page: 2
Dr. R. J. Hayes, Director of the National Library of Ireland, has been appointed by the Government as a member of the Irish Manuscripts Commission.
Evening Herald 1891-current, Saturday, December 09, 1944; Page: 2
LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
Professor F. E. Hackett was re-elected President, and Dr. E. J. Hayes, National Library of Ireland, and Mr. James Wilkie, Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, Vice-President, at the annual general meeting of the Library Association of Ireland, held at the Country , Shop, St. Stephon's Green, yesterday.
Irish Independent 1905-current, Saturday, November 12, 1949; Page: 7
NATIONAL LIBRARY DIRECTOR LEAVES FOR U.S.
Dr. R. J. Hayes, Director of the National Library, by an arrangement with the Rockefeller Foundation, has left for the U-S. to study libraries and library methods there. Among the centres he intends to visit are New York, Princeton, Washington, Boston, Providence, New Haven, Michigan, and Chicago.
The National Library has already recorded on microfilm over a million pages of documents of Irish historical interest in England and the Continent, but so far the vast quantity of material in America has been untapped.
During his ten weeks visit to the States. Dr. Hayes will found the Friends of the National Library of Ireland, a society which, it is hoped, will help to collect and microfilm documents in America for the archives of the National Library.
Irish Examiner 1841-current, Thursday, April 12, 1951; Page: 7
LIBRARY ASSOCIATION EXECUTIVE
Mr. Eugene Carberry, Librarian, Cork City, was re-elected president of the Library Association of Ireland at the annual general meeting in Dublin. Other Executive Board Officers elected were: Dr. R. J. Hayes, Director, National Library.; and Mr. James Barry, Vice-Presidents; Mr. G. Byrne . Dublin Municipal Service. Hon. Auditor; Mrs. M. K. McGurl, M.A., Librarian, Co. Meath, representative to An Chomhairle Leabharlann. Members elected by postal ballot were, (see paper for list)
Irish Press 1931-1995, Friday, April 17, 1959; Page: 2
Dr. R. J. Hayes, Director of the National Library (left), examines one of a six-volume edition of the works of Handel presented to the library yesterday by the German Minister, Dr. F Prill (right), on behalf of his Government. The composer's bicentenary is being celebrated this year.
Irish Press 1931-1995, Tuesday, March 19, 1963; Page: 8
AS GUIDES
The office of the Director of the National Library, Dr. Richard Hayes, is not spared from the crowding of books and documents and records.
"A library's business", he told me is not just with books. It's job is to collect information. It only has books because there is information in them and also because they provide guides to other forms of information."
The core of the National Library's collection of over 500,000 books was the collection of the Royal Dublin Society which was taken into state care in 1877. The books were then housed in the R.D.S. premises at Leinster House. The new building to house the Library was completed in 1890.
As the largest public library in Ireland it aims to provide a general survey of all branches of knowledge but its specific interest is in Irish books, books about Ireland and Irish manuscripts and records. Information, as Dr. Hayes suggested, is no longer confined within the covers of books. There are, for example, in the library over 200,000 photographic plates including the famous collections of Poole, mainly pictures of people, and Lawrence, chiefly pictures of places.
Irish Independent 1905-current, Tuesday, November 15, 1966; Page: 11
DR. RICHARD J. HAYES, Director of the National Library, and a member of An Chomhairle Ealaion (the Arts Council) for many years, has not sought reappointment to the Council for a further term of office. The Government has appointed Mr. James J. Sweeney, Curator of the Houston Art Gallery in Texas, to replace Dr. Hayes on the Arts Council. Mr. Sweeney, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, lives for part of each year in Co. Mayo. Five of the six outgoing Ordinary Members of the Council have been reappointed for a term of five years in accordance with the Arts Act, 1951.
Irish Press 1931-1995, Monday, August 07, 1967; Page: 3
DR. Richard James Hayes, director of the National Library of Ireland, has retired after 44 year service. Dr. Hayes joined the staff as an assistant librarian in 1923. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he had a distinguished academic record and became a specialist in comparative Linguistics
His knowledge of European languages is immense and he wrote a book on the subject and also a French-Irish dictionary.
In 1929 he was promoted senior assistant librarian, and in 1940 he succeeded Dr. Richard Irvine Best as director.
His principal publication up to recently was his three-volume bibliography of modern Irish literature, " Clar Litriocht na Nua-Gaeilge," a massive work which includes not alone books published in Irish, but also prose and poetry which appeared in periodicals since the beginning of the language revival movement.
Micro-films
Within the last year or so he was responsible for yet another major work, an eleven-volume catalogue of manuscripts relating to Irish history in Irish and foreign libraries. It will remain as a monument to his scholarship for many generations.
Kerryman 1904-current, Saturday, September 10, 1927; Page: 5
A factory where ready-made concrete houses are made. Specially designed motor trucks deliver them to their destination. They are built on the unit or one-storey plan, and it’s claimed for them that they are permanent, damp-proof, vermin proof, very nearly heat-proof and cold-proof, as they are constructed of monolithic reinforced concrete. A house costing approximately £300 of our money contains a combination living and dining room 12 by 12 ft, a kitchen 8 by 5 ft., a bedroom 12 by 8 ft , a bath 5 by 4 ft., and a sun parlour, dressing rooms, etc. The houses have been designed to avoid waste of space. Thus, when mealtime comes a mirror is let down from the living-room wall, and forms a comfortable table for six. A revolving service connects the table with the kitchen and brings in the dinner; when the meal is finished, it takes the empty dishes back. Beside the window of the retiring room hangs a pulley that lets down a bed from a panelled space in the ceiling. A similar bed is on the sun-porch. The houses are constructed of the commonest of materials, sand and gravel, cast over galvanised steel reinforcements. The house is poured in one solid concrete unit, and is virtually indestructible. After the concrete gets its initial "set" air heated to 130 degrees is circulated through the cores that render the walls hollow to facilitate their removal, and then the house is left standing for two weeks to permit the cement to harden. In the interval the roof, the plumbing, the electric wiring, and all the other interior fittings have been added. The originator—bearing the Hibernian cognomen of Lafferty—asserts that these houses will last for ever, with almost no upkeep expenses.
By Peg Prendeville
Time moved on but the little box, which had been relocated, was so small it was difficult to fit even a small envelope into it and was becoming useless. Even the postman/woman found it a nuisance. So another letter or two in recent months plus a few coaxing words from Ta did the trick. We’ve got our Post-box!
So now we are rejoicing
We’ve no more need for frowns
We can post our letters now in peace
In our new post-box in Knockdown.
It has a bigger mouth, you see
And can easily swallow down
A4 business envelopes
This new post-box in Knockdown
Birthday cards? No problem!
And when Valentine comes round
It will be overflowing
Our new post-box in Knockdown.
To make the task more easy
Mullanes have won renoun
With their selection of greeting cards
Which can be posted in Knockdown.
“Can we get stamps” I hear you asking
Now, you I will astound
When I tell you they’re available
In the supermarket in Knockdown.
So now we are all happy
Like a king with a new crown.
We’re queuing up to post our letters
In the post-box in Knockdown.
MORE Writers
VALLEY Of KNOCKANURE
By DAN KEANE
The bells of St. Bartholomew's rang in the morning air,
The mission bells were pealing to summon souls to prayer,
Three rebel sons of Ireland their fear of danger shed,
To kneel before God's altar and receive eternal bread.
Paddy Walsh and Paddy Dalton and their companion Dee,
Because they loved their Motherland they strove to set her free,
They little knew that morning what they shortly would endure,
As they took the road towards their last abode in the Valley of Knockanure.
The sun of May was rising, casting shadows to the west,
On a bridge in Gortagleanna those men sat down to rest,
They chatted there with Jerry Lyons their comrade from duagh.
But, alas! Too late to make escape when the Black and Tans they saw,
From lorries three in fiendish glee the Tans did leap and roar
With rifle-butt, with fist and foot they beat their prisoners sore,
Nought could they gain, the poured in vain rough language and impure,
No fear they showed in their last abode in the Valley of Knockanure.
They put them in the lorries and travelled towards Athea,
But there, again, they turned west and went the other way
Beyond the Gortgleanna cross a fort came into view
The Black and Tans hatched evil plans in a field behind Lisroe.
Again, their captives gave their names but nothing more they'd tell
Within their breasts beat hearts as brave as e'er for Ireland fell,
The tans foul breath or threats of death could nothing more procure,
For valour glowed in their last abode in the Valley of Knockanure.
With love undying they stood in line, clasped hands and said goodbye,
They shouted prayers for freedom when they knew they were to die.
No order had been given,they fired in random glee,
One dared to dash for freedom; a rebel called Con Dee.
In that lonely dell three comrades fell their tortures were all o'er,
In tale and song they still live on and will for evermore.
They met their God on their own green sod with stainless souls and pure
And their red blood flowed in their last abode in the Valley of Knockanure.
The Tans were raging furious as Dee kept gaining ground,
The hills around re-echoed the rapid rifle sound.
Though wounded early in the chase he held both head and feet
On towards the wild wide mountain where green and purple meet.
He prayed to those he left in death that they his life would spare,
God bless the hands that found him and took him in their care.
They nursed the worn weary limbs that bore him o'er the moor
As he fearless strode from death's abode in the Valley of Knockanure.
The bell of St. Bartholomew's still speaks in solemn tone,
The Patriot hearts who gave their all are still in memory known.
The graves that hold their fleshless bones a veil o'er life has drawn
But their souls have flown to that bright home of God's eternal dawn.
May they look down from Heaven's crown on the land they died to save,
God grant that we might ever be as fearless and as brave.
There's a cross to tell where those men fell our freedom to secure
And the sun of May shines bright today o'er the Valley of Knockanure.
By Dan Keane who was born Sept 17th 1919.
Walsh, Lyons and Dalton were shot by the Tans at Gortaglanna on May 12th 1921.
Con Dee escaped.
Description
GABRIEL FITZMAURICE
Based on the author's experiences as a teacher, as a parent and as a big kid himself, these newly composed rhymes present the really rotten moments that children relish. These are rhymes that children, young and old, will enjoy repeating to themselves and to friends - they're rotten and they're slightly, but nicely, rude. The children LOVE them, their grown-ups pretend to be less amused (but in secret they LOVE them too!)
When you paddle In the sea First you shiver Then you pee And the waves that licked your toes Suddenly Fizz up your nose And you stumble Oh the shock And you swallow water Yock! But it's sweaty summer weather And it's great fun altogether!
This book is the best! I love it. Its great fun and really makes me laugh - Jamie, age 8
About the Author
Gabriel Fitzmaurice was born in 1952 in the village of Moyvane, County Kerry, where he still lives. He is principal of the primary school in the village and is the author of more than thirty books, including collections of poetry in English and Irish; his books of verse for children have become classics. Gabriel frequently broadcasts on radio and television on education and the arts.
Title Really Rotten Rhymes
Subtitle
Author Fitzmaurice, Gabriel
Price €7.99
ISBN 9781856355445
Status In Print
Region General
Type Paperback
Category Childrens
Imprint Mercier Press
More titles by this Author
I and the Village
Poems from the Irish
Come All Good Men & True
Boghole Boys
World of Bryan MacMahon
I'm Proud to be Me!
Beat the Goatskin Till the Goat Cries
John Moriarty -
The Mangerton Shaman
By Tony Bailie
With a shock of white hair, ancient lived in eyes and a mildly eccentric dress sense, John Moriarty is someone who causes people to do a double take as he passes by. He exudes an easy going and
unselfconscious charm which enthrals the waitresses in the restaurant where we sit down to eat and they seem to squabble over who is going to serve him.
Our conversation is an almost hypnotic experience as Moriarty intones his sentences in a rich north Kerry accent, repeating key phrases two or three times to milk the full impact of the point he
wants to make, almost as if he is mimicking the chanting shamans who dominate so much of his writing.
He has published five books drawing liberally upon the legends of Ireland, classical Greece, American Indians, Australian Aborigines, Ancient Egypt, Islam, Asia and the Christian Gospels to try
and articulate the inner most mysteries of human consciousness.
John Moriarty pictured by Valerie O'Sullivan outside his home on Mangerton Mountian
Click here for larger pic.
His most recent book Nostos, published in March 2001, is a huge sprawling volume of autobiography containing nearly 700 pages of tightly crammed text, with no chapter breaks, setting out many of the ideas that he had already articulated in his previous books, but in a ``biographical context.''
He was born close to Listowel in Moyvane in 1938, educated at University College Dublin, lectured English Literature in Canada for six years before dropping out of academia to live in Connemara where he worked as a gardener.
``I baptised myself out of culture in Connemara and started to remake my mind again with new sensations, sensations the colour of red stragnum and the sound of the stream, the colour of sunset, the calling of a fox, the smell of heather,'' he says
``I went through libraries, I had been to the galleries and been to the concert halls and I was literally glutted with culture, I had to come out and put my head in a stream in a bog in Connemara and let it all wash out and start again and remake my mind.''
He moved to Kerry six years ago and currently lives in a small book filled house on the slopes of Mangerton Mountain about five miles outside of Killarney. He says he feels like an exile in modern Ireland and only comes down from his retreat to give an occasional lecture or to shop for groceries.
He continues: ``An old name for Ireland is Fódhla and I live in a dimension of the land of Ireland called Fódhla and when I am coming down to Killarney I feel like showing a passport sometimes at Muckross because I'm crossing into Ireland.''
Moriarty's first book was called Dreamtime after the Australian Aboriginal myth that their ancestors literally dreamed the earth, as we know it, into existence. He says that his writing is an attempt to bring this concept into an Irish and European context.
``I wanted to drop out of official Europe and find out is there an Irish Dreamtime in the way that Australian Aborigines walk their songlines. I feel that is where I live. I live in Ireland's Dreamtime, I live in Europe's Dreamtime. It is a dropping out of history and your responsibility to history, returning to the Dreamtime that was before history and so it was an attempt to go back and walkabout in Ireland's Dreamtime,'' he says.
For Moriarty myths are a means of articulating the inner most concerns of the human psyche and their retelling is a path to self-knowledge.
``The Minotaur myth to me is an enlightenment about the beast within me, it pictures the beast in me, it pictures who I phylogenetically am rather as opposed to who acidicly I am. They let me see myself in my deepest impulses, my darkest impulses,'' he says.
``I open my door to the wisdom of humanity with no customs and excise stuff. If I can touch the pulse of a myth or an Upanishad or of a Sutra from the Buddhist thing, or the Tibetan Book of the Dead then that speaks a truth to me, the truth isn't tribal, there are tribal truths, but my door is open and I listen extra-territorially, I listen outside of my own territory.
``We have not taken what the myths have said to us seriously, now some of them are stupid and silly, but there are quite a few which to me are places of great revelation and enlightenment and they enable me to know me and to inherit me.
``I am taking responsibility for the darkest impulses within me and saying `John ask this much of yourself but don't ask that much of yourself, don't stir up the beast within yourself.' You're not going to like what you find, you can be terrified by what you find.''
Moriarty had to spend many years battling the ``beasts'' within himself, an experience he says which could have ``blown me away.''
He continues: ``In the way that there is a physical appendix and that siphons off the poisons which if they burst would flood the body and poison the body, I think there is a karmic appendix and the karma of lifetimes is stored in it and a time comes in one incarnation or another that karmic appendix bursts and your mind is flooded with bad karma and there were nights when I felt that the windows of my bedroom were fogged up with the stuff that was coming out of me, it was a real witches cauldron.
``There was a time when I saw three doors before me, a door into a monastery, a door into a high security prison, because it was within me to commit the ultimate crime, the big crime, the kind of
impulses that would enable one to commit the ultimate crime were at large in me, and I saw a door into a mental home.'
Moriarty took refuge in an Oxfordshire monastery living there for 18 months as layman, participating fully in the monastic routine and returning to the Catholicism of his youth.
He says: ``I needed divine assistance, I needed to invoke grace, I mean I can't heal me, I need healing from outside the system that I am and that normally is called grace.... I found when I needed help I found myself falling back into mother tongue and mother tongue wasn't Hinduism, wasn't Buddhism, wasn't Taoism wasn't Australian Aboriginalism or Native Americanism.
``The Gospels really are a wonderful tall tale about Jesus and its as a tall tale in the best sense of the world that I see them, and I've gone so far as to say that even if the tale was ten times taller it would still only be capturing glimpses of the reality... it's the poetry of Christianity, not the dogmas, the Jesus that I hear instead of the lawyers, the people that would turn it into dogma.
``Christianity enables me to be much more radical than most of the secular radicals. Christianity is so radical that we have to water it down. I don't think it can be socially realised at all, which is usually the old problem with mysticism. How do you socially institute mystical insights? You could do a lot of damage while trying to do it.''
Moriarty says he felt as if he went through ``fire and purification'' and that in a way the books he writes are part of the healing process.
``It was very important to speak it and to name it... I had to learn the language and the vocabulary and a lot of the vocabulary was the old myths and then the mystics the Upanishads and the Sutras of Hinduism and Buddhism and the Christian mystics and the Muslim mystics,'' he says.
As well as working on another book Moriarty has plans to open what he calls ``a hedge school,'' based on a monastic discipline. He wants it to become a place of learning where people can come to study mythical and mystical texts, particularly the Hindu Upanishads which reflect on the nature of man and the universe.
The Upanishad may not fall within the canon of texts studied in most traditional
western monasteries, but as Moriarty says he wants to ``listen to the wisdom of the world.''
He continues: ``I don't think within the tribe, I haven't walled myself in to the tribal thinking. I listen to the wisdom of humanity.''
Phelan, Sheila
Edward F. Barrett (1869-1936), Abbey Playwright
New Hibernia Review - Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2006, pp. 139-146
Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas
New Hibernia Review 10.1 (2006) 139-146 _________________________________________________________________ [Access article in PDF] Edward F. Barrett (1869-1936), Abbey Playwright Sheila Phelan National University Of Ireland, Galway The extraordinary creative activity of Dublin's Abbey Theatre in the opening decades of the last century was the work not only of notable figures of literary and theatrical stature but, also of lesser figures who contributed in minor ways as their lives intersected for perhaps a year or two with the visionary project of Yeats and Lady Gregory. Edward F. Barrett, an accountant, wrote plays in his spare time, one of which was produced at the Abbey Theatre in 1918. His story is essentially that of an amateur who, in different circumstance, may have flourished as a playwright. Barrett was born on St. Valentine's Day, 1869. His mother was a Fitzmaurice from Listowel and his father was a publican. When Edward was a young boy, his father sold his pub and moved the family out to Newtown Sandes, a small village in the townland of Coolleen in North Kerry. As he grew up Barrett was interested in books and literature. After leaving school he trained as an accountant. He also taught for a time at St. Michael's College in Listowel. Dublin was an attractive prospect for an ambitious young man, and he soon obtained a position as business manager with Messrs. Smith and Sons, Silversmiths, of Wicklow Street. Although his move to Dublin was permanent, Barrett retained strong ties to Kerry and in 1898, at the age of twenty-nine, he married Nora Hunt, whose family farm at Knockanure was also in the townland of Coolleen. It was, by all accounts, a happy marriage. Nora and Eddie had one daughter, Maura, born in Dublin on October 15, 1906. Eddie Barrett grew up in North Kerry during a time of considerable political and social agitation. Farmers there suffered much..
Paddy Kennelly born 1946 Taught in Asdee from 1972 to 2001
Native of Ballylongford
Jim The Rubbish Man
Whatever you do,Mac an tSionnaigh,
when ever you write the latest history of
this place
And the story of our closing shops
And our empty classrooms, our deserted
streets,
And our fall from grace
Among the literati who see us now
As superstitious backwoodsmen
Out of step with the times,
Espousing an antiquated religion
In post-Catholic Ireland –
Whatever you do then,
Don’t, for the love of God
Go sentimental.
None of your bullshit, please,
About our likes not being seen again.
Where’s your Knockorian sense of humour,
man!
So – concede their every argument
About this economic backwater;
Tell ’em that we apologise
For our location on the map,
That we go to our graves
Sorry we’re not from Dublin
And that we deeply regret any offence
We caused the sneering journalist
Who foraged here to gather
What might fill a page with mockery.
Don’t dare to mention
That bright young men and women
Who, each weekend, return
In jam-packed busloads,
rejecting the enlightened
And politically correct metropolis
for a dose of devilment,
Nor say, wherever men conspire
Around a winter fire
To tell fantastic tales
Of errant wives
Or husbands cuckolded,
Knocklore still lives.
DEATH has taken place Of Paddy Faley of Glenbawn, Ballyhahill. Requien Mass for Paddy Faley was celebrated in the Church of Visitation, Ballyhahill, on Thursday 20th October 2011, by Fr McGrath, Fr Madden and Fr O Leary. Maura and Donie Nolan provided the music and hymns. Paddy Faley a great historian, poet, photographer, actor and a man for all occasions was laid to rest at Templeathea on 20th October 2011, beside his wife and parents Denis who died in 1947 and Bridget who died in 1952, also remembered on headstone is Michael Faley who died 1920. Paddy born 92 years ago in Glasha Athea, he moved later to Glenbawn, Ballyhahill, his wife Ellen White died 1962 and he reared five daughters. Peg Prendeville, Helen Martin, Bridie Murphy, Gerardine White/ O'Kane and Philomena Daly, he is also survived by his brother Joe Faley in Canada, Paddy was immensely proud of his three great grandchildren, his sister and three brothers predeceased him. Members of Comhaltas provided a guard of honour for their great friend and supporter Paddy Faley.
The 'Boro' and the Gleann
Anonymous
The burning question of the day as we got into town
"Can anybody tell me will the 'Boro' beat the Gleann?"
The bets were on, the match began excitement filled us all
And the earth beneath us trembled when the ref. threw in the ball.
Chorus
So let us sing now all together,
Fill your glasses up with porter, gin and wine;
Let it be fine or stormy weather,
Up the Boro! Up the Boro! every time.
Right from the start the Gleann attacked as we looked on serene
When a punch from Fitz between the the sticks sent up the flag of green;
Another point soon after that our faces turned pale
And the Gleann men on the sideline said "the Boro boys will fail".
Chorus:
The ball in play, the breakaway, the Gleann again attack
But the storm was safely weathered by our Goalie and Fullback;
Each time they tried to rush our lines 'Twas glorious to behold
Their style and dash outwitted by our stalwarts from Glin Road.
Chorus:
From that until the ending the game became a rout
The "Boro" lead at half-time by six points or thereabouts:
The Brosnans and the Guineys, the O'Connors and Culhanes
Swung the balance of exchange round in favour of Moyvane.
Chorus:
Three cheers for Jerry Nolan who broke each Gleann attack
Another for O'Leary, Moyvane's stonewall fullback;
Three cheers for Connie Keamey, Jack Flaherty in the goals
Sure we'll never once be beaten when we've heroes such as those
Chorus:
We've heard much talk of small Sean T, of McCartin and McKeown,
They did their bit to set us free and have us stand alone,
But here's a brave Ger. Carmody, a man amongst great men
Whose opening goal did more than all to give our boys a win
Chorus:
A verse now for Jim Brosnan, the hero of the game,
A worthy son of great Coneen of six All-lreland fame;
Although in stature he is small, he's sure to win renown,
His brilliant goal was cheered by all when Newtown beat the Gleann.
Chorus:
From Scotland
http://www.nls.uk/broadsides/broadside.cfm/id/14615/criteria/hudson
1857 song
RISE UP
Noble Britons, Bundle an' go.
Curse on this Indian war that ere it began
And wae to the savages that formed the plan ;
But Britons are heroes we'll soon let them know,
That we'll seon be revenged so let's bundle and go.
Sae blaw on the bagpipe and beat on the drum,
Invite a' the lads that hae heart for to come;
That are young, stout, and able to face the black foe,
To protect our British subjects let us bundle and go.
Ye heroes of Britain that on listing are bent,
Gae join with the gallant and brave old tenth ;
For 800 savages they quickly laid low,
To be quick now to join them an' bundle an' go.
Ye heroes of Scotland that are able and free,
Gae join with the gallant and brave ninety three :
For they have gone to the Indies Sir Colin for to join,
And they will add another laurel to their Balaklava fame.
Ye lads of Banffshire and likewise Aberdeen,
Gae list wi' the lads wear the facings o' green ;
Seventy-ninth, seventy eighth and the brave old forty-twa,
For they always are ready to bundle an' go.
Let the bagpipes resound amang the hills o' the north,
Through Cromarty and Caithness to the lands o' Seaforth,
Tell M'Kenzie and Sutherland, M'Kay an' Munro,
That our women have been insulted, and they'll bundle an go
Ye heroes of Ireland, gae list heart and hand,
In the bold Connaught Rangers the pride of your land ;
Or the brave Faugh-a-Balloch, a regiment we know,
That will spend their herrts blood when they bundle and go
Let the harp of Old Ireland sound clear through the air,
From the County of Down to the Curragh of Kildare;
And through the mountains of Kerry to the county of Mayo
Just play Patrick's day and they'll bundle anl go.
In Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire there's plenty brave men,
Renfrew and Argyle there's a number that I ken;
And in through Glengary, Glenlyon and Glencoe,
Play the Campbells are coming, they'll bundle an' go.
Come west by Loch Carron and in by Kintail,
And down through Lochaber to the side o' Locheal;
And cogdah na sith tell the pipers to blow,
And ye'll soon raise the clansmen to bundle an' go.
Raise the standard of Scotland on the banks o' the Tweed,
On the banks of Galean and also the Jed;
The Armstrongs and Elliots, and the Douglas also,
Will shoulder their muskets and bundle an' go.
Brave Colin ye ken lads, he cares nae for blacks,
Gie him a wheen Britons to stand at his back;
Like a lion undaunted he'll rush on the foe,
And wi' his Glasgow sword gar them bundle an' go.
We are gentle as lambs but lions at heart,
But when we're insulted can take our ain part;
We're as hardy as oak and as fleet as the roe,
And to be revenged let us bundle an' go.
Heaven bless our Queen all her rights to maintain,
And grant her long life over Britain to reign,
And still may her brave subjects their loyalty show,
To rise up in thousands an' bundle an' go.
1830-1850
The Wonderful
Grey Horse.
My horse he is white, although at first he was bay,
He took great delight in travelling by night and by day;
His travels were great, if I could the half of them tell,
He was rode in the garden by Adam the day that he fell.
When banished from Eden, my horse was losing his way,
From all his fatigues, no wonder that now he is gray;
At the time of the flood he was rode by mony a spark,
And his courage was good when Noah took him into the ark.
On Babylon plains he ran with speed for the plate-
He was hunted next day, it is said, by Nimrod the great;
After that he was hunted again in the chase of a fox,
When Nebuchadnezzar eat grass in the shape of an ox.
He conducted him home straightway into Babylon Town'
Where the king was restored once more and solemnly crown'd
He was with King Saul, and all his troubles went through,
And was with King David the day that Goliah he slew.
When he saw King David hunted about by King Saul,
My horse took his leave and bid farewell to them all,
He was with King Pharoah in Egypt when fortune did smile
He rode him very stately along the banks of the Nile.
He followed Moses who rode him through the Red Sea,
He then led him out, and he sensibly galloped away ;
He was with King Cyrus, whose name is in history found
And he rode on my horse at the taking of Babylon Town'
When the Jews remained in chains and mercy implored,
King Cyrus proclaimed again to have them restored ;
He was in Judea when Judas Maccebus the great,
Had rode on my horse, as ancient historians relate.
The poor captive Jews received these news with great joy,
My horse got new shoes and pursued his journey to Troy.
When the news reached Troy, with my horse he was found,
He crossed over the wall, and entered the city I'm told.
The city being in flames, by means of Hector's sad fate,
My horse took his leave, and there no longer would wait;
I saw him again in Spain, and he in full bloom,
With Hannibal the great, and he crossing the Alps into Rome
My horse being tall, and the top of the Alps very high,
His rider did fall, and Hannibal the great lost an eye;
My horse got no ease although his rider did fall,
He was mounted again by young Scipio who did him extol
On African's Plains he conquered that part of the globe.
My horse's fatigues would try the patience of Job ;
He was with Brian the Brave when the Munster men he
did command,
Who in thirty-six battles drove the vile Danes from our land
At the battle of Clontars he fought on Good Friday all day,
And all that remained my horse drove them into-the sea;
He was with King James when he reached the Irish shore.
But, alas! he got lame, when Boyne's bloody battle was o'er-
To tell the truth, for the truth I always like to tell.
He was rode by St Ruth the day that in Aughrim he fell ,
And Sarsfield the brave, at the siege of Limerick town,
Rode on my horse and crossed o'er the Shannon I'm told.
He was rode by the greatest of men at the famed Waterloo,
And Daniel O'Connell long sat on his back it is true,
To shake off the yoke which Erin long patiently bore-
My horse being /ill / he means to travel no more.
He is landed in Erin, in Kerry he now does remain,
The smith is at work to fit him with new shoes again;
Place Lan on his back he is ready once more far the field.
And he never will stop till the Tories, he'll make them to yield.
1833
FROM MICHAEL M' CABE.
Just published, an interesting Letter from Michael
M'Cabe, now lying under Sentence of Death,
on the Gaud, in the Calton Jail, addressed to
Rebecca Hudson, Bell's Wynd, his Sweetheart,
which is published here by his own desire.
EDINBURGH, 4th Feb. 1833.
CONDEMNED CELL, CALTON JAIL
"To REBECCA HUDSON, '
' Bell's Wynd.
" MY DEAR REBECCA,
" No doubt but you would feel
truly sorry when you heard of my awful sentence, and I am
sure that you will have been watching every opportunity to
hear of any reprive having been sent to me by our Gracious
Sovereign ; but alas Reba, no such happy and welcome tid-
ings have as yet been transmitted to me. Every moment ap-
pears 28 an hour to me, fondly cherishing, as I do, the hope
that a reprive, or ar lease a respite, will yet be forthcoming.
But even when I reflect on our separation for life, death would
be still more welcome. In sorrow and bitterness do I repent
of my ill spent life, now that I see my days drawing nigh a
close. O that I had abided to the instructions of my youth-
that I had abstained from idleness and evil company-minded
the Sabbath day-that I had attended closely to my business,
theu might I at this moment of painful suffering, been as
happy as any of the innocent companions of my childish days,
I have now only to warn you and other associates in my
guilt, to abstain from bad company-to form a new erra in
your life,-to Remember the Sabbath day, and Keep it holy,
-to dash the venemous glass of ardent spirits from your
mouths, as you would do the most naucious drug, and then
your suffering on the bed on death, will be very different from
mine. These are the causes of a premature end, which the
fruits of life spent like ours, in dissipation, villany, and crime.
Every attention is paid to me here, the Jailors are very kind
aad' I am regularly attended by a clergyman, by whose assi-
duity and feeling-heartedness, I am led to turn my wandering
thoughts on the means of expiation, at that Tribunal where
the judgment of men has no controul. From the liberal ed.
ucation which I received from charitable institutions in Ed-
inburgh, I am, thank God, enable to read the Bible, which
has hitherto been too carelessly thrown aside. In it I feel
unbounded comfort, and I would strongly exhort you to read
it, for in it you will find more comfort, than any gratification
which your wicked companions can suggest. An advice of
this kind, coming from a preacher on the streets may have
little or no impression, but I trust and hope, that coming
from one of your late companions in guilt, it will have an ef-
fectual, and everlasting impression, and than I will have done
one good turn ; I will then be the cause of the saving of a
soul. Dear Rebecca, if you could get some printer to revise
this, and publish it, it may be the means of doing good, for
who can hear the groans of a eulprit, whose honors are so near
and bat will feel affected, and take his sayings seriously to
heart. O that it may make a lasting impression upon the
hearts of many, and turn them from the broad road of misery
destruction, and death. I had a visit from my sister, but
both her feelings and mine, were so overpowered, that I sunk
into a state of insensibility. May God bless her and all my
relations, and may they nor yov, nor any of my late com-
panions sorry in my death.-I must now bid you an eternal
adieu,
MICIAEL M'CABE.
This broadside begins: 'An Account of a wonderful Prodigy seen in the Air, on Tuesday the 15th Day of this Instant May, 1722, by John Moor, at Crawfords-dyke, near Greenock.' Unfortunately, but not unusually, the publisher's name has not been included on this broadside.
his report begins: 'A True and Particular Account of the Disastrous Circumstances attending the Horrible and most awful Appearance of a GHOST, which took place in a House in the High Street of Edinburgh, on Wednesday Evening, the 17th October, 1827.' What then follows is an extract from the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle of the 24th October, 1827. This broadside was printed by William Walters, and sold for one penny.
The account details two ghost sightings in Edinburgh, both of which occurred within the space of a week: one in Stevenlaw's Close and the other at 166 High Street. The first sighting appears to have been witnessed by a group of around 500 hundred people, whilst the spectre at 166 High Street was viewed by a solitary maid-servant. Accounts of apparitions and other strange occurrences were extremely popular amongst the broadside-reading public and, as such, always sold in large quantities..
The second last Speech of Mort Collins, who was execute at Glas-
gow on Wednesday the seventh of Novr, 1792, for the murder
of John Panton, giving an account of his behaviour in prison and
on the scaffold. To which is added the copy of a letter wrote
with his own hand to a friend. Also, the copy of a letter he
received from Capt. Cook, while under sentence of death.
The unfortunate Mort Collins, some days
Before his execution, seemed to be much a-
gitated in his mind, crying out at times so as
to be heard through the streets; on Monday
morning he received the sacrament from a
priest of the Roman profession, he was attend-
ed on Tuesday night and Wednesday Morn-
ing by some friends of that persuasion.-A-
bout two o'clock, the Magistrates accompa-
nied by the Revd. Dr. Taylor, who attend-
ed at their request went into the Court-hall,
where the prisoner was seated, holding in his
hand the Roman Catholic service book for
prisoners, from which he immediately began
to read, with seeming devotion; the prayers
for prisoners going to, and at, the place of e-
xecution. After these were ended, Dr. Tay-
lor took the opportunity of saying, that, if it
was not disagreeable, he wished to speak with
him a little, and to join in prayer: to this Col-
lins replied, that "your prayers may be very
good, but I do not know any prayers ex-
cept those of my own communion, and by
them I chuse to abide." He then read
the Apostles Creed, and the devotional exer-
cises annexed to it in the Service Book, on
faith, hope, charity, patience, and resignation.
After again declining to join in prayer with
the Minister present, he read, a second time,
the prayers for prisoners going to, and at the
place of execution. He then bowed respec-
tfully to the Magistrates; still declining any
conversation. Having drank a glass of wine,
he walked to the scaffold much agitated; where
he spent some time in reading prayers. He
then ascended the platform, and having taken
farewell of the executioner, he read for some
time on a book afterwards his cap was put over
his face, which he put up several times and
called for the innerkeeper of the tolbooth to
take farewell of him, and soon after he gave
the signal when he was launched into eterni-
ty a little after three o'clock, in the presence
of a great concourse of spectators; and having
hung the usual time, he was cut down, and
the body delivered to the professor of Anato-
my for dissection, agreeably to the sentence
of the Court. He was born in the County
of Clare, Ireland, and only twenty-two years
of age.
Copy of a letter from COLLENS to a friend,
Glasgow Tolbooth, 24th Octob, 1792.
DEAR SIR,
"I received your letter,
which gives me a deal of pleasure to hear you
are all well; my dear friends, you may be
sure that I intend to make the best use of my
time that I possibly can, and with the assist-
ance of God, I hope to die in peace with
God and the world, I am now visited by some
of my own profession, which gives me much
pleasure and relief, and in a short time I ex-
pect to have the benefit of some Clergy of
my own profession, which will make me quite
happy in my present miserable state, for no-
thing can give me greater pleasure than to
die in the religion I was brought up to. As
for writing to my parents, I know not what
to think of it; my dear friends, the shock of
it will be insupportable to them, who loved
me with such unbounded tenderness, it can
never be born by them; the distraction it will
cause in them, I am afraid, will end their
days. If possible, I should wish them never
to hear of it, my dear friends, it is not my
horrid destiny that afflicts my troubled soul,
but the unsupportable horror that will seize
my dear parents, that grieves me to the heart;
my dear friends, how different will be the
account that I must be forced to send them
from the last account they received from me,
that was a pleasing account which give them
much delight, but how horrid will this ac-
count of my ignominious death be to them,
they will hear it. O how happy would I be
if they never would hear of it, but it will be
known to them sometime. O blessed be the
name of God that has supported me since I
have fallen by these cruel wretches but it
seems it has been my lot to have fallen.
May he be a support to my afflicted parents
my dear friends, I will wait till those Revd.
Clergy come, and advise with them, for they
know best what to do in it.
Dear sir, I should be glad to see you and your wife, and
Molly before I die, it would give me much
pleasure: when ever you come, I suppose
there will be no hindrance to your seeing
me. You will tell Molly to send them shirts
to us as soon as possible, for the shirts we
have on are very dirty,"
I am,
your unfortunate
MORT COLLINS.
Copy of a Letter from Captain COOK.
Edinburgh Castle, the 30th of Octob. 1792.
COLLINS,
" I received your letter, and it
gives me great pleasure to find you so calm
and resigned in the midst of your present mis-
fortunes; and whatever your destiny may be,
I trust with the blessing of God, you will be
enabled to meet it with firmness and resigna-
tion to the divine will. I have done every
thing in my power for you, but cannot say
how my exertions will end. I hope you have
every possible comfort and nourishment affor-
ded you that your present unhappy situation
will admit. Put your whole trust and confi-
dence in the tender mercies of Almighty God,
and by so doing (tho' in prison) you will find
yourself light and easy; and be assured that
every happiness may attend you, is the pray-
er and sincere wish of"
W. COOK.
1849
MARY LE MORE
As I stray'd o'er the common on Cork's rugged border.
While the dew-drops of morn the sweet primrose array d,
I saw a poor female, whose mental disorder,
Her quick-glancing eye and wild aspect betray'd.
On the sward she reelin'd by the green forn surrounded,
By her side speckled daisies and wild flowers abounded,
To its inmost recesses her heart had been wounded,
Her sighs were unseasing - 'twas Mary la More.
Her charms by the keen blasts sorrow were faded
Yet the soft tinge of beauty still play d on her cheek;
Her tresses a wreath of primroses braided,
And strings of fresh daises hung loose on her neck.
Whilo with pity I gazed, she exclaimed "O my mother !
See the blood on that lash' 'tis the blood of my brother,
I'hey have torn his poor flesh!-& they now strip another
'Tis Connor- tho friend of poor Mary le More.
Though his locks were as white as the foam of the ocean
Those wretches shall fine that my father is brave ;
My father! she cried with tne wildest emotion,
Ah, no, my poor father now sleep in the grave ;
They have toll'd his death bell, they've laid the turf o'er
him
His white locks were b'oody, on aid could restore him,
He is gone! he is gone! and the good will deplore him,
When the blue waves of Erin bide Mary le More.
A lark from the gold blossom'd furso that grow near her,
Now rose, and with energy caroll'd his lay ;
Hush: hush !' she continued,' tho trumpet sounds clearer
The horsemen approach: Erin's daughter's away !
Ah ! soldiers, twas foul, while the cabin was burning.
And o'er a palo father a wretch had been mourning-
Go hide with the sea-mew, ye maids and take Warning,
Those ruffians have ruin'd poor Mary le More.
Away ! bring the ointment-O, God! see the gashes!
Alas ! my poor brother ! come dry the big tear!
Anon we'll have vengeance for those dreadful lashes,
Already the screech-owl and raven appear,
By day tho green grave, that lies under the willow,
With wild flow'rs I'll strow, and by night make my pillow
Till the ooze and dark sea-weed, beneath tho curl'd bil
low,
Shall furnish a death-bed for Mary le More.
Thus raved the poor maniac, in tones more heart-rending
Than sanity's voice ever poured on my ear ;
When lo ! on tho waste, and the march towords her
bonding
A troop of fierce cavalry chanced to appear,
'O, the.fiends she exclaimed, and with wild horror start-
ed,
Then through the tall [ ] loudly screaming darted ;
With an overcharged bosom slowly departed,
And sigh'd for tho wrongs of poor Mary la More
Robt. Mintosh Printer.96 King Street Calton.
Eric Bogle was sailing to Australia and his mother Nancy walked with him to the train
In comes the train,and the whole platform shakes,
It stops with a shudder,and a screaming of brakes,
The leaving has come how my weary soul aches,
I'm leaving my Nancy o.
You stand there beside me so determinedly gay,
We talk of the weather and events of the day,
But your eyes tell me all that your words cannot say,
Goodbye my Nancy o.
So come a little closer,
Lay your head upon my shoulder,
and let me hold you one more time,
Before the whistle blows
My suitcase is lifted and stowed on the train,
A thousand regrets whirl around in my brain,
The ache in my heart is now a black sea of pain,
I'm leaving my Nancy o.
You stand there before me so lovely to see,
The grip of your hand is an unspoken plea,
You're not fooling yourself, and youre not fooling me,
Goodbye my Nancy o.
Our time has run out the whistle has blown,
Here I must leave you standing alone,
We had so little time and now the times gone,
I'm leaving my Nancy o.
And as the train starts gently to roll,
and as I lean out for to wave and to call,
I see the first tears trickle and fall
Ah goodbye my Nancy o.
The Lights of Carrigkerry
By Pat Brosnan
Far away across the sea there's a place that's calling me,
As I gaze around this city grand and bright,
For here on this foreign shore, sure my heart feels sad and sore,
And for Limerick's hills and vales I long tonight.
Chorus:
I'll go back across the sea and contented I will be,
Then I never more will cross the ocean foam,
Sure ‘tis there my soul would rest in that spot I love the best,
Where the lights of Carrigkerry call me home.
In this fair land o'er the main, there is plenty wealth to gain,
There are pleasures too and friendships true and kind,
Yet I'd bid them all goodbye if today my plane would fly,
To that misty isle that's always on my mind.
Chorus:
I'll go back across the sea etc.
There is one who's waiting there, with blue eyes and dark brown hair,
Who was lonely when she saw me go away,
But to me she still is dear and the time is now drawing near,
When once more I will be coming home to stay.
Chorus:
I'll go back across the sea etc.
Soon my exile will be o'er and my thoughts with joy and soar,
When by Carrig's streams I'll wander free from care,
There old friends will welcome me, when again my eyes will see,
That most charming gem of Limerick grand and fair.
Chorus:
I'll go back across the sea and contented I will be,
Then I never more will cross the ocean foam,
Sure ‘tis there my soul would rest in that spot I love the best,
Where the lights of Carrigkerry call me home.
Tom Aherne
Researched this.
They wrote songs about Carrigkerry
P. J. Ahern R.I.P. Nora Dalton R.I.P. Dan Hartigan R.I.P. Dave O’Connor R.I.P. Patrick T. Aherne R.I.P. Pat Brosnan, Paddy Faley, Dan Keane, Tony Geoghegan and Mary Quinn.
The following is a brief synopsis of their work which I hope will be of interest to you, the reader-
“Carrig Town” – David O’Connor and Dan Hartigan
Written by tow locals and regarded as the village anthem. It is an immigration song about leaving Carrig and its lovely scenery and promising to return to Eileen some day soon. It has been recorded by the late Sean “Foxy” O’Connor in 1993 and Mike O’Connor in 2009.
“Carrigkerry Hill” – P. J. Ahern
Written about another local landmark it runs to four verses. A song about what the author could see and hear as he took a stroll along by Carrigkerry Hill.
“Carrigkerry” – P. J. Ahern
A very lengthy and fine piece of poetry in praise of the village and how it grew over the years. P. J., from Glensharrold, mentions the Church, School, River Arra, Bridge Sandpit and hopes for the future.
“An Emigrant’s Farewell to Carrigkerry” – Nora Dalton
Written by Nora Dalton around 1890 after leaving Ireland for America to join the nuns in a California Convent. A touching farewell to her family and home and the people and places that were dear to her around her native Carrigkerry West.
“The Road to Carrig Town”- Dan Keane
A newly composed ballad written in the summer of 1989 by Dan Keane from Knockanure and it won the newly composed County Kerry Fleadh Cheoil Competition. A description of the people and places Dan met on the road from Athea to Nell Flynn’s shop in Carrigkerry.
“The Lights of Carrigkerry”- P.J. Brosnan
Written by Pat Brosnan from Knocknagorna, Athea, and recorded in recent years by George Langan from Glenagragra. It tells the story of an exile who longs for a return to his native place and the girl that awaits him in Carrigkerry.
“Sweet Carrigkerry” – Patrick T. Aherne
Another emigration song written by Patrick T. Aherne from Glensharrold. The author had to leave his native place to work abroad in the fifties and he longed for the day when he could return to live out his remaining days in his native Carrigkerry.
“My Lovely Carrig Home” – Tony Geoghegan
Tony Geoghegan, from nearby Glensharrold, composed this song about 25 years ago. It tells the story of an emigrant who reminisces about his childhood simple ways and happy days spent in his Carrig home.
“The Road to Carrigkerry” – Paddy Faley
A comedy piece written by Paddy Faley, Glenbawn, about a man and a lady in conversation about him killing her ducks with his lorry on the road to Carrigkerry. It had a happy ending with them getting married to each other.
“Carrigkerry Wrenboy Success” – Paddy Faley
From the prolific pen of Paddy Faley the master of tribute pieces. Here he pays tribute to the success achieved by the Carrigkerry Wrenboy Group who won the All-Ireland Wrenboy Competition for the third year in a row at Listowel in September 1999.
“Home in Carrig” – Mary Quinn
Written by Mary Quinn, a former Parish Clerk in Saint Mary’s Church for many years and now in her nineties. A nostalgic 5 verse look back at her life and times spent in the family home in Ballyloughane, Carrigkerry, following her house move to Newcastle West.
“The Fame of Carrigkerry”- Pat Brosnan
Written by Pat Brosnan and six verses in length, a song in praise of the fame of Carrigkerry mentioning its music and song, Irish nights and Wrenboys, Landlords and Black and Tans, people and places and football, trains and much more from his prolific pen.
Poet and Doctor
Mícheál Fanning died on Christmas Eve 2010 at the age of 56.
Blossom
Noreen arrives from the fruit-filled orchard
before I behold her in the distance.
She walks between the trees in the country estate.
Boats roll in the bay.
The flowers and shrubs bloom,
irises glow in the park.
Two conflate souls float in our Hegemony,
when the bees swarm
and the sun, an orange ball, quavers in the sky.
Noreen moves deeper
into the Bantry wood
under the trees' penumbra.
Sean O Histon
Interviewee: Sean Histon (part 1) Interview location: Athea, Co. Limerick Audio series: Limerick county, first series Product ID: CDLK01-06 Subject: Witchcraft in west Limerick Recorded by: Maurice O'Keeffe Recording date: 2001 Length: Track 1: Sean Histon was recorded at St Ita’s County Home in Newcastlewest. Brought up in Coyle and lived all his life there, he spoke about the Killeen (children’s burial ground). Track 2: He spoke about an old mill in Athea and the Roches who used to live there. The collecting of ureán for the cleaning of flax, being sent astray by the spirits is discussed. Track 4: Joan Grogan, a great-grandmother who worked locally in witchcraft, and her visits to Biddy Earley in Co. Clare. Track 5: A story about his time in the creamery given by Joan Crogan and her cures for local people. She was buried in 1871 in Knockanure
Mary Flannery O Connor who spent the last 13 years of her life battling lupus while writing some of the best fiction the world has ever known—all while living on a 455-acre dairy farm in Milledgeville, Ga. with her mother,
Mary Flannery O’Connor, the only child of Edward O’Connor and Regina Cline O’Connor, was born and baptized in Savannah, Ga in 1925.
Sweet Listowel
A song by John B. Keane
Oh sweet Listowel I've loved you all my days
Your towering spires and shining streets and squares
Where sings the Feale it's everlasting lays
And whispers to you in it's evening prayers
Chorus
Of all fair towns few have so sweet a soul
Or gentle folk compassionate and true
Where'er I go I'll love you sweet Listowel
And doff my distant cap each day to you
Down by the Feale the willows dip their wands
From magic bowers where soft the night wind sighs
How oft I've roved along your moonlit lands
Where late love blooms and first love never dies
The Minstrel Boy
The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone
In the ranks of death you will find him;
His father's sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;
"Land of Song!" said the warrior bard,
"Tho' all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!"
The Minstrel fell! But the foeman's chain
Could not bring that proud soul under;
The harp he lov'd ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said "No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and brav'ry!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
They shall never sound in slavery!"
Tom Moore
BOOK: A Year on our Farm was launched recently, The author is Ann Talbot nee Fitzgerald a native of Ardagh, and now living in Ballacolla, County Laois. Ann grew up on a mixed farm in Ardagh, and she studied Natural Science and Geography in Trinity and also worked for a time in Australia. She moved to Coole Farm, Ballacolla, when she married her husband Robin in 2002 and they have two daughters. She is a former livestock editor with the Farming Independent (1997 to 2004) and currently freelances for a variety of agricultural publications. She has also worked as a freelance agricultural journalist in the past for the Irish Farmers Journal and the Irish Field. The book is an account of the busy atmosphere and variety of work that occurs in Coole Farm throughout the year. The book is available at www.talbotsofcoolefarm.com
From Knockdown News
Sounds of Summer
Rocking in my garden seat
Creaking gently to and fro
Watching life continuing on
Like a stream in constant flow.
Listening to the chirping birds
Busy at their daily tasks
The leaves are whispering in the breeze
A honeybee goes buzzing past.
A tractor drones in a neighbour’s field
Boasting of a busy day
Taking advantage of the sun
Cutting silage, turning hay.
A cow concerned for her calf
Calls him back with a gentle moo
The clothes are flapping on the line
Peaceful times like this are few.
Children play out on the lawn
Sending out their squeals of joy
Laughing, singing, cheering on
Their playmates in a rugby try.
I close my eyes to appreciate
The restful sounds that I can hear
It’s easy to believe in God
When His presence is so near!
Woodman, spare that tree,
Touch not a single bough.
In youth it sheltered me,
And I’ll protect it now
Easter Reflection: Just Suppose
Here’s a reflection inspired by the events of Easter from Thom Shuman’s Prayers 4 Today blog.
just suppose
what if
the homeless are
right,
that affordable housing
for everyone is a
possibility
and not a problem;
what if
the poor are
telling the truth,
that we silence their voices,
stepping right past them as if
they were invisible,
in our rush to be their
advocate;
what if
the broken and the sick
are correct,
that they should
be able to receive
the medical care
we do;
what if
the testimony
of the women is true,
that the grave is empty
and the Gardener
is planting new life
for every one,
every one,
every one.
~ Copyright © 2013 Thom M. Shuman Posted on Prayers for Today. http://prayersfortoday.blogspot.ca/
RECOMPENSE.
Straight through my heart this fact to-day,
By Truth's own hand is driven,
God never takes one thing away.
But something else is given.
I did not know in earlier years,
This law of love and kindness,
I only mourned through bitter tears,
My loss in sorrow's blindness.
But ever following each, regret,
O'er some departed treasure,
My sad repining heart was met,
With unexpected pleasure.
I thought it only happens so,
But Time this truth has taught me,
No least thing from my life can go,
But something else is brought me.
It is the Law , complete, sublime,
And now with Faith unshaken,
In patience I but bide my time,
When any Joy is taken.
No matter if the crashing blow,
May for the moment down me,
Still back of it waits love I know,
With some new gift to crown me.
MICHAEL ROCHE Dromolought, Liselton Cross.
Limerick Leader 1905-current, Saturday, 09 September, 1967; Page: 11
An Mangaire Sugach
THE ROSE OF NEWTOWNSANDES
One evening fair, to take the air as the summer sun went down.
My heart was gay, I said I'd stray to the village o sweet Newtown.
In a neat abode beside the road where a neat plantation stands.
In it dwells my Irish belle, she's the Rose of Newtownsandes,
I stood and gazed and was amazed at the beauty I had seen,
Her nut brown hair waved in the air, and she was dressed in green;
She tripped along quite merrily with a rose-bud in her hand,
She's a charming maid I do declare, she's the Rose of Newtownsandes.
I'd give all earthly treasure if I could gain her hand,
All the gold and silver that glitters in the land;
But sad for me, it ne'er will be that we'll join in wedlock bands,
But I'll watch, and pray, I'll wed one day the Rose of Newtownsandes.
Now to sing the praise of this lovely maid I hope, I won't offend,
I've known her since my boyhood days. she's been my only friend;
Now, I suppose, God only knows wherein this journey stands.
Still I’ll watch, and pray, I’ll wed one day the Rose of Newtownsandes.
I'd give all Damer had in store if she were only mine,
All the land along the Bann and the waters of the Boyne;
America lies far, far away and her scenery it is grand.
But there is nothing there I can compare with the Rosa of Newtownsandes.
Now it's time to close for sweet repose, as time is fleeting by,
With pen In hand I think of her. she's been my only bride.
My dreams and thoughts lie in the west in some far distant land,
And my bones will mingle in the clay with the Rose of Newtownsandes.
Dan Keane, Limerick
A lady whose name is Eileen
Her house it is spotlessly clean
Some years ago
She wed Billy Joe
And their family grew up in Trien.
An illiterate poor fellow in Cahir
In his whole life had only one prayer
When he went on his knees
It was certain to please
"Dear God, I am here and you're there."
P4 Maurice Lenihan Papers
Introduction From Limerick County Library.
The Maurice Lenihan Papers held by Limerick Archives consists of correspondence, Lenihan’s research notes, and three scrapbooks kept by Lenihan himself, which consist of research material, newspaper cuttings, personnel reminiscences and other miscellaneous items. Additionally it includes a photocopy of Thomas Steele’s Practical Suggestions on the Improvement of the Navigation in the Shannon (1828).
Maurice Lenihan was born on 5 February 1811 in St. Patrick’s parish, Waterford. His father was a woollen draper of Waterford, while his mother was from Carrick-on-Suir, although her family was originally from Limerick.
In 1823 he was sent to Carlow College as a lay-student, where he showed great ability in the classics and in modern languages, though not in History. In 1831 he spent his summer holiday with a Mr. Hackett of Clonmel, a cousin, who was the editor of the Tipperary Free Press, and it was in this newspaper where he started his career as a journalist.
In 1833 he joined the Waterford Chronicle and eight years later, in 1841, he moved to Limerick to join the Limerick Reporter. The Reporter was a journal of liberal views started by Rutherford Brown in 1829. Lenihan was the editor of the Limerick Reporter until 1843, when he started working for the Cork Examiner.
His stay in Cork lasted only a few months, because by the end of 1843 he had moved to Nenagh and established his own newspaper, the Tipperary Vindicator. The aims of the Tipperary Vindicator included the disestablishment of the State Church and the repeal of the Act of Union by constitutional means. It was also in Nenagh where he married Elizabeth Spain in November 1843. Lenihan amalgamated the Tipperary Vindicator with the Limerick Reporter, which he purchased in 1849.
In 1853, he decided to enter public life as a member of Limerick Municipal Council, and from 1854 to 1887 (with the exception of two years in the sixties) he represented the Custom House Ward division. In 1870 he was made Justice of the Peace and in December 1883 was unanimously elected as Mayor of the city.
However Lenihan is probably best known as a historian. His most famous work is The History of Limerick, which was published in 1864. The book treats of the history of Limerick from the earliest times to the 1860’s. Lenihan had been encouraged to write this history of Limerick by friends such as Patrick Leahy, Archbishop of Cashel, and the Gaelic scholar, Eugene O’Curry. The book was academically a success. Lenihan’s merits as a historian were recognised by the Royal Irish Academy, when he was elected to membership in 1869. However the book was not a financial success, and contributed to Lenihan’s financial difficulties at the end of his life. Indeed, before his death, he was forced to sell many of the manuscripts he had gathered when writing The History of Limerick and when planning to write histories of Clare and Tipperary. Many of his manuscripts were purchased by the British Museum.
HOLY WELLS: In the May 2016, lecture of Kilrush & District Historical Society, Michael Houlihan will talk about how Irish sacred springs evolved. He will talk about the various types of sacred spaces in the Clare landscape, concentrating on West Clare holy wells and particularly those associated with St. Senan. He will also deal with non-Christian wells and the Holy Well pattern.
Michael Houlihan lives in Quin and worked in pharmaceuticals at Roche Ireland (previously Syntex) in Clarecastle for many years. He completed an MA in Arts (Local History) in 2015, having previously done courses in Archaeology and Regional Studies. He has published two books, "Puck Fair, History and Traditions" (1999) and "The Holy Wells of County Clare" (2015). He is currently working on a book entitled "The Sacred Trees of County Clare".
FR PAT
Bits from ‘frpatmoore.com’ May 7th 2016
The sun shone, the Angelus bell rang out along the river, an effort was in progress to elect a new Taoiseach when we arrived in the Lee Clinic in Cork. I was there with Ann and
Kathleen to receive my biopsy and scan results from the previous week. The biopsy has shown the presence of cancer in the upper oesophagus. It’s disappointing but it was always a possibility. It is a ‘local reoccurrence ,’and the fact that it has been picked up on so early, that the rest of my body is clear, that I have responded positively to radium before and that the medical team are prepared to deal with it opens up a way through it. ‘Second line treatment seems to be the way forward. As Bishop Ray said to me, ‘ I need another great dose of courage.’ I will be finding out in the next week the response of the medical team. Their care and professionalism inspires me. I’m in good form, and appreciate your concern, prayers and good wishes.
A message from Fr Pat: May 12th When I went for my six month check up a biopsy showed the presence of cancer. It's disappointing but not unexpected. After meeting the oncologist its manageable and treatable. Because I responded so well to treatment the last time, that it is caught early and in the one place, there are a number of treatments I can get. I start next Thursday and am in good form. I appreciate your prayerful support and we will continue to pray for each other because God is very near.