A Robin, Beef Tea by John B. Keane and Fr. Danny Long and Maisie McSweeney

Closeup of a Robin

Photo: Ita Hannon

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Garden of Europe Update

This corner of our lovely town is looking very bare these days.

signs of spring

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A Fruity Poem  by William Cole  (from For Laughing Out Loud)

I thought I'd win the spelling bee
And get right to the top.
But I started to spell "banana",
And I didn't know when to stop.

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Bridge Road

This is the old Neodata site. It looks like it is going to be a car park, for the foreseeable future anyway.

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Beef Tea  (concluded)

by John B. Keane

....There was another man in the street at the time, a notorious rogue albeit a likeable enough fellow. He was greatly addicted to all forms of intoxicating drink and as is the case with such people he often found himself with an insatiable desire for meat. He would insist, on his arrival home from the public house, that his wife did not look at all well. As it happened, she was something of a hypochondriac and liked to hear such things.

“I haven’t been feeling well all day,” she would agree.

“What you need,” he would say,” is a nice mug of beef tea. If you have a shilling or two handy I’ll go down and knock up the butcher and get a pound of the finest round.”

All beef tea consisted of, by the way, was the water in which the beef was boiled.  As soon as she started to partake of the beef tea our friend would start to partake of the beef. It was a good ruse and it kept both of them in good health for many a year.

Nowadays there is no talk of beef tea and more’s the pity because I might not be here at all only for it. There were occasions when it was supposed to have brought people back from the very mouth of the grave. Under no circumstances was the fat of beef to be used. A nice lean cut off the round was the very man for the job.

People may look askance at it now but in my boyhood it was held in reserve to the very end much like a crack battalion in time of battle. Then when all seemed lost the beef tea like the battalion would be unleashed on the enemy, the battalion upon the opposing army and the beef tea upon the harbingers of human extinction.

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Fr. Danny Long and Maisie McSweeney

Billy McSweeney writes;

Fr Danny Long was President of St. Michael's College from Sept 1954. I
remember him fondly, not only because he was a relief to all the
students from his predecessor, but also because he had a sharp sense of
humour. His arrival at St. Mike's on my first year definitely saved me
from an 'uncomfortable' 6 years.

In my memory we have a story of when Danny Long visited the Library and
asked my mother for 'Dr Zhivago' by Boris Pasternak. This was out new at
the time and was all the rage. There was a long queue of borrowers
waiting their turn to read it.

Danny was insistent that she put him at the head of the queue, which she
rejected and refused to do as it would be unfair! She told him so!

"You know that I could turn you into a goat!" says Danny. (To non-native
Listowel readers this was a well-known piseog of old!)

"BeGod Father, if you do I'll puck you," was the reply.

He had met his match!