Signing off for 2020 with Oiche Nollag in song and verse

Listowel Town Square; Christmas 2020

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That's all from me, folks for 2020. Happy Christmas to you all and I look forward to keeping on keeping on in 2021. I pray that this time next year we will all be in a better place.

1909 Christmas card from the National Museum collection

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Cuireadh do Mhuire

Le coinnle na n-aingeal
Tá an spéir amuigh breactha.
Tá fiacal an tseacha sa ghaoth on gcnoc
Adaigh an tine is teigh chun na leapan
Lúifidh mac Dé insan tigh seo anocht

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A Christmas poem from Junior Griffin

MY CHRISTMAS WISH

Oh Lord, when we give this Christmas time,

Do teach us how to share

The gifts that you have given us

With those who need our care,

For the gift of Time is sacred~

The greatest gift of all,

And to share our time with others

Is the answer to your call,

For the Sick, the Old and Lonely

Need a word, a kindly cheer

For every precious minute

Of each day throughout the Year,

So, in this Special Season

Do share Your Time and Love

And you’re Happy, Holy Christmas

Will be Blessed by Him above

Junior Griffin

                                                                                            

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A Kerry Christmas Childhood

Garry MacMahon

Now I cannot help remembering the happy days gone by,

As Christmastime approaches and the festive season’s nigh.

I wallow in nostalgia when I think of long ago,

And the tide that waits for no man as the years they ebb and flow.

We townies scoured the countryside for holly berries red,

And stripped from tombs green ivy in the graveyard of the dead,

To decorate each picture frame a -hanging on the wall,

And fill the house with greenery and brighten winter’s pall,

Putting up the decorations was for us a pleasant chore,

And the crib down from the attic took centre stage once more.

From the box atop the dresser the figures were retrieved,

To be placed upon a bed of straw that blessed Christmas Eve,

For the candles, red crepe paper, round the jamjars filled with sand,

To be placed in every window and provide a light so grand,

To guide the Holy Family who had no room at the inn,

And provide for them a beacon of the fáilte mór within.

The candles were ignited upon the stroke of seven,

The youngest got the privilege to light our way to Heaven,

And the rosary was said as we all got on our knees,

Remembering those who’d gone before and the foreign missionaries.

Ah, we’d all be scrubbed like new pins in the bath before the fire

And, dressed in our pajamas, of tall tales we’d never tire,

Of Cuchulainn, Ferdia, The Fianna, Red Branch Knights,

Banshees and Jack o' Lanterns, Sam Magee and Northern Lights

And we’d sing the songs of Ireland, of Knockanure and Black and Tans,

And the boys of Barr na Sráide who hunted for the wran.

Mama and Dad they warned us as they gave each good night kiss,

If we didn’t go to sleep at once then Santa we would miss,

And the magic Christmas morning so beloved of girls and boys,

When we woke to find our dreams fulfilled and all our asked for toys,

But Mam was up before us the turkey to prepare,

To peel the spuds and boil the ham to provide the festive fare.

She’d accept with pride the compliments from my father and the rest.

“Of all the birds I’ve cooked,” she’s say, “ I think that this year’s was the best.”

The trifle and plum pudding, oh, the memories never fade

And then we’d wash the whole lot down with Nash’s lemonade.

St. Stephen’s Day brought wrenboys with their loud knock on the door,

To bodhrán beat and music sweet they danced around the floor’

We, terror stricken children, fled in fear before the batch,

And we screamed at our pursuers as they rattled at the latch.

Like a bicycle whose brakes have failed goes headlong down the hill

Too fast the years have disappeared. Come back they never will.

Our clan is scattered round the world. From home we had to part.

Still we treasure precious memories forever in our heart.

So God be with our parents dear. We remember them with pride,

And the golden days of childhood and the happy Christmastide.

Christmas in The Square, Kerry Candlelight, an old football photo and help Sought in Tracing a Family

Listowel Town Square Christmas 2020

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Feale Rangers 

John Keane shared this on Facebook. He didn't give us the year.

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Sign  at Carroll's of Course

Didn't come out very well but I was fascinated by the detailed directions to the builders' yard.

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Molly's Back in Town

Molly is having a bit of a pre Christmas staycation.

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It's Time for our Favourite Christmas Song

People love to hear this old Bryan MacMahon poem at this time of year

Kerry Candlelight

1

I am standing here in Euston, and my heart is light and gay,

For ‘tis soon I’ll see the moonlight all a-dance on Dingle Bay. 

So behind me, then, is London, with the magic of its night,

And before me is a window filled with Kerry Candlelight.

Chorus

‘Tis the lovely light of glory that came down from heav’n on high,

And whenever I recall it, there’s a teardrop in my eye.

By the mountainside at twilight, in a cottage gleaming white,

There my true love sits a-dreaming, in the Kerry Candlelight.

2

She’ll be waiting by the turf fire; soon our arms will be entwined,

And the loneliness of exile will be lost or cast behind,

As we hear the Christmas greetings of the neighbours in the night,

Then our hearts will beat together in the blessed Candlelight.

3

Now the train is moving westward, so God speed its racing wheels,

And God speed its whistle ringing o’er the sleeping English fields,

For I’m dreaming of an altar where, beside my Breda bright,

I will whisper vows of true love in the Kerry Candlelight.

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Do you Remember the O'Gradys of Church Street?

O Grady’s Shop & Bar 

The Arch, Church St., Listowel

This was formerly Coolahans.  

Nora O’ Grady nee Boland, was married to Comdt. Patrick O’ Grady.

Am not sure of this, but I have been told he was an American Army doctor. He is buried in Lislaughtin Abbey, Ballylongford. His headstone reads  Comdt P. O Grady, A.M.S., late M.O. Ballylongford Dispensary, died 1943. Beside him is Valentine Michael’s headstone, of Farnastack, died1953 and on other side John D. Boland died 1943 and his son Daniel, Tarbert , died 1978.

In St Michael’s Listowel there is memorial to Jenny O’ Sullivan, died 1970, Nora O’ Grady , 1976, Nuala O’ Grady 1982 and Rosie O’H Connell nee O’ Grady 2000. Does anybody know where Nora lived after she sold her premises in late 60’s or early 70’s. Also where did Rosie live? She was a lovely red haired girl. Seemingly Nora had 4 or 5 daughters, most of whom went to the U.S.

I have read that Bob Boland ( Robert Leslie) used meet Dr Bryan Mc Mahon in the snug of his relative Nora’s premises on some Saturdays to discuss poetry. 

Jenny O Sullivan worked at O Grady’s all her life, as did another lady named Minnie. Who was Minnie?

Nora had a sister Phil, married to P. Mc Elligott in Bridge St. Ballylongford. 

I would like to find out who was Nora O’ Grady’s mother and father? I am assuming her father was the John D. buried in Lislaughlin. Also any more of her siblings? 

My interest stems from my husband, who always says that his own mother visited Nora in Church St.,and claimed to be related to her. I need a lead to trace the genealogy here. I am grateful to  Liam Dillon and Geraldine Harmon for some info they kindly gave me.

I also heard that the O’Gradys lived in Ballylongford, before Listowel. I saw a death notice in the Listowel Parish newsletter that Patricia Alazar nee O Grady  , Ballylongford and Church St. Listowel died in California in Nov  2017.

I wonder if somebody out there can please  give me another missing  piece of the jigsaw. I read in your blog Mary, where Ms Angela Liston was searching info on the Coolahans who owned the said premises at an earlier date. 

Thank you, Noreen

My details are  with Mary Cogan, should you wish to contact me.

 

Lockdown Relief, Griffins of Convent Street and A Childhood Christmas relived

Back to Normal...Nearly

Lockdown restrictions were eased for Christmas 2020 and some of my family crossed the border from Cork to join me in Kerry.

On Friday evening we went to the cinema. We saw Wolfwalkers. This is the latest offering from Cartoon Saloon and the screen play was written  by my neighbours' child, Will Collins. It was lovely to relive the simple pleasure of a trip to the cinema to see a really good film.

This is me on Saturday in Ballybunion with three of the men in my family. We had Molly Madra as well. Hence the poo bag.

Carine, the only person in our family for whom English is not her first language won the Scrabble game.

My family love nothing better than a trip to Ballybunion. If they lived here they'd be there every day.

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A Few Listowel Shops that are Weathering this Storm

They are only closed because I photographed them on a Sunday morning

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Old Photos of Some of the Old Stock

Maura Lee shared these photos from her family album. Eamon ÓMurchú enhanced them for us.

My father with his good friend Jack Donnelly who in later years had a drapers shop in Tralee and whose daughter had a guest house in Ventry, Dingle. (M.L.)

This lovely photo  of Maura's mum and dad, Tony and Norah was taken in Limerick outside the Stella Restaurant a year before they were married.

This is a photo of Maura's dad, Tony Griffin, and friends at Kate Kearney's Cottage, Killarney. She doesn't know the other men.

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CHRISTMAS  MORNING 1952

By Mattie Lennon.

Pope Francis’s visit reminded  me.

Can one ever really relive a memory or successfully  re-capture a feeling?  

Yes, I think  so, if only fleetingly and infrequently..

   It was  Christmas morning 1952.  I was being led by the hand to early Mass in Lacken.  Why did my mother have me by the hand since, in the words of Patrick Kavanagh,  I was “six Christmasses of age”?  It was partly because my mother considered me “wild”; although in later life I would always claim that I was an eejit but didn’t tick any of the boxes that would constitute “wild.”

  Rural electrification was just arriving in Lacken and the surrounding area but had not yet been switched on. Post- dawn it would be possible to see  poles which had stood, complete with insulators, all summer, sentry-like across the countryside and now strung with high-tension cables.  

If you stood close to an ESB pole and looked up it appeared to be falling, something to do with an illusion caused by the rolling clouds. The term opto—kinetic movement would have meant very little to a young mind.    Not every house opted for the “’lectric light”. This was mainly out of economic necessity and the “cups” on the chimney became somewhat of a status symbol. The switching-on ceremony would be  performed in The Parish Hall, Valleymount, in January 1953 but for now the valley’s illumination was confined to candles in windows. Conversation in the area was dominated by several fanciful theories and adult Mass-goers spoke of the well- dressed men in Ford vans who were travelling  the district selling everything from irons, to kettles to Electric fires. 

   An ESB official, on Mr Heevy from Naas,  had called to the school to complain about the number of insulaters which had been the victims of stone-throwing.  The young schoolboys from the townland of Ballinastockan were the immediate suspects.  Not because they were more destructive than the rest of but they were all young marksmen with a missile.

   A feeling came over me that morning. Would it ever be repeated? Yes. On Saturday 29th September 1979 I was living in Blanchardstown and working as a Bus Conductor in Conyngham Road  Garage.  Pope John Paul 11 was arriving that day and it meant an early start for many of us.  As I drove down Knockmoroon Hill  at 5AM,  while the  endless line of tail-lights ahead of me barely moved,  it came back.  That feeling.  It was once again Christmas morning 1952.

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For Those Who Love Stories

To entertain and stimulate in these difficult times, since last March www.storiedkerry.com has published Kerry  stories every Tuesday and Thursday.   In rotation these came from the eight districts Kerry divides into.   In turn they were stories on legend, landscape, plants, animals, archaeology, history, folklore and our contemporary story.

Mangan's, now Spar, Elf on the shelf and Santa

A Gigantic Purty in The Square in 2020

Photos from St. John's Facebook page

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William Street, Listowel at Christmas 2020

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Then and Now

Mangan's Garage photo from Maura Griffin Lee. Her uncle Jimmy worked there.

Spar on Market Street is on the site of the garage and the next door McMahon house

Oops! Mea Culpa

I made a wrong assumption here based on half remembered "facts". I knew that Moloney's owned the garage after Mangans and I knew that Moloney's had a garage where Spar is now so I put two and two together and got five.

Wrong garage, wrong location.

Martin Moore has set me straight

Martin Moore

The photo of Mangans garage is fab. While this is headed 'then and now', the photograph is of the garage on William St. (Not Market St)

My father remembered Paddy Mangan, who was one of the heros of the 'Troubled Times' in north Kerry a century ago.

Paddy was from Kilfeighney in Lixnaw and went to America in the 1920s. He returned to Listowel and acquired the garage business. This previously was owned by the Galvins (still very much involved in business in Listowel) and subsequently by Dan Moloney)

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Things that go Bump

Marie Shaw sends us another of her Christmas memories

Hi Mary,

So much time has gone by since I was young and carefree that  I hesitate to remember. 

I was never a fan of Santa Claus, so I never wanted this man in the red suit come into my house while I was asleep. My mother wrote to him and explained this so he agreed to visit our house before I went to bed.

He usually visited me at my grandmother’s house since I always spent Christmas Eve there. My mother would be cooking a ham in the oven and the aroma of that ham would permeate the entire house. Back then, Christmas Eve was a Fast & Abstinence day so, there was no way that one could get a taste of that ham without risking going to hell for all eternity.

I also didn’t want Santa coming down the chimney, so it was arranged that he would knock on the door. My mother and my aunt would answer the door as I crouched behind my grandmother’s chair. They would hold a long conversation with Santa, thanking him for all the gifts and apologizing for the fact that I wouldn’t come to the door and thank him in person.

When I knew that he was long gone, I would investigate what he brought. There was always a book which I later realized was my uncle’s present. I remember a toy telephone, it was pink and a toy tea set which I loved. I doubt that I got all these gifts in one year but memory fades with age. Back then, we didn’t write letters to Santa. Whatever he brought us was what we got.

The kitchen was decorated with colored streamers and a large white paper bell at the center.

The Crib usually had it’s place on the window sill with the long red or white candle burning on the table in front of it.

The treats that were set up in the sitting room were what were incredible to our generation.

Sherry, whiskey, Guinness, lemonade, biscuits in a box, chocolates in a box, Christmas cake and trifle for the Christmas dinner.

As long as I live, I will always remember the excitement of not only Christmas Gifts but Christmas cheer, Christmas love, Christmas peace. Golden days!

Merry Christmas,

Marie

This lovely Christmas reminiscence brings me to the topic of Santa and his spies seeing you when you are sleeping and awake. It seems that many children have a dread fear of being constantly watched and judged by Santa. The idea of a strange man coming into a child's bedroom under the cover of darkness (even if and maybe especially if, he is bearing gifts) is the stuff of nightmares.

Like Marie, Stefanie Preissner in her autobiography tells of a horror of Santa prowling into her bedroom. Stefanie wrote to him herself assuring him she had been good and asking him not to come into her bedroom please.

This brings me to the recent "tradition" of Elf on the Shelf.

If you dont know this one it involves a naughty elf coming in for the month of December and every night while the house is sleeping he gets up to some naughty jape.

This year on December 1 he parachuted in on a face mask to a house I know.

This house would be familiar with  horseriding so it was no surprise to find the Elf discovering his inner jockey.

In the home of my Dublin family, their elf discovered my hand knitted garland and tried on the socks as he swung from the curtain pelmet.

All of this is great fun and will, no doubt, feature in these children's Christmas memories in 50 years time but there are children who are totally spooked by the idea of a bold otherworld spirit taking up residence in their house and doing things that should get one in big trouble.

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An Abbeyfeale Memory

This photo from The Limerick Leader turned up recently on Facebook. In the horse and trap are some of the cast members of the RTE soap opera, The Riordan's arriving in Abbeyfeale in 1973 to officially open Frank Dennison's shop.

Jumbo's, A New York Obituary and The Christmas Coat

Upper William Street in December 2020

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Jumbo's

Jumbo's fast food restaurant is an institution in Listowel. Just as people of a certain generation remember Chute's Chip Shop, younger people remember Jumbo's.

When I was a teacher of English, references to Jumbo's in children's essays were a frequent occurrence. Every good day out, every match won or lost, every trip to Ballybunion ended with a trip to Jumbo's. 

Once I was explaining to a class that when it came to the Junior Cert, it may be better to say McDonalds, or even Supermacs because not everyone who was correcting their essays would know that Jumbo's was a restaurant. "But everyone knows Jumbo's." came an innocent reply. I decided to leave well enough alone. If a Junior Cert corrector had never heard of the legend that is Jumbo's then that was his loss.

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Snippet from the papers in 1971

	Thu, Dec 10, 9:21 PM (11 hours ago)

New York,  Saturday, November 20, 1971

The death has taken place in Dublin of Mrs. Edith Karney, wife of Mr. Joseph Karney, De Vesci Court, Dun Laoghaire, former Aer Lingus pilot and control officer at Shannon Airport. Mrs. Karney, before her first marriage to Captain Bill Cusack, a one-time Aer Lingus pilot who was killed in a Berlin air-lift crash, was, under her maiden name of Edith Newman, a leading Irish fashion model. She then became Aer Lingus's first chief air hostess, trained many of the earlier hostesses and designed their first green service uniform. After the death of her first husband after one year of marriage she returned to Aer Lingus as Passenger Relations Officer. She was also a member of the teaching staff of the Rathmines High School of Commerce. 

When R.T.E. began its television operations she was appointed Head of Women's Programmes. On leaving R.T.E. she went to the United States where she married Mr. Joseph Karney. While there she filled positions including that of social secretary to Mrs. Heinz, of the food processing firm. She returned to Ireland early this year. Mrs. Karney is survived by her husband, five brothers (including the Rev. Antoine Newman, O.D.C., Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire), two sisters and their families. She was an aunt of the Abbey actress, Angela Newman.

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This story has become a regular feature of Listowel Connection Christmases. It is my favourite Christmas story from one of my favourite balladeers and essayists.

The Christmas Coat   

Seán McCarthy  1986

Oh fleeting time, oh, fleeting time

You raced my youth away;

You took from me the boyhood dreams

That started each new day.

My father, Ned McCarthy found the blanket in the Market Place in Listowel two months before Christmas. The blanket was spanking new of a rich kelly green hue with fancy white stitching round the edges. Ned, as honest a man as hard times would allow, did the right thing. He bundled this exotic looking comforter inside his overcoat and brought it home to our manse on the edge of Sandes bog.

The excitement was fierce to behold that night when all the McCarthy clan sat round the table. Pandy, flour dip and yolla meal pointers, washed down with buttermilk disappeared down hungry throats. All eyes were on the green blanket airing in front of the turf fire. Where would the blanket rest?

The winter was creeping in fast and the cold winds were starting to whisper round Healy’s Wood; a time for the robin to shelter in the barn. I was excited about the blanket too but the cold nights never bothered me. By the time I had stepped over my four brothers to get to my own place against the wall, no puff of wind, no matter however fierce could find me.

After much arguing and a few fist fights (for we were a very democratic family) it was my sister, Anna who came up with the right and proper solution. That lovely blanket, she said was too fancy,  too new and too beautiful to be wasted on any bed. Wasn’t she going to England, in a year's time and the blanket would make her a lovely coat!. Brains to burn that girl has. Didn’t she prove it years later when she married an engineer and him a pillar of the church and a teetotaler? Well maybe a slight correction here. He used to be a pillar of the pub and a total abstainer from church but she changed all that. Brains to burn!

The tailor Roche lived in a little house on the Greenville Road with his brother Paddy and a dog with no tail and only one eye. Rumours abounded around the locality about the tailor’s magic stitching fingers and his work for the English royal family.  Every man, woman and child in our locality went in awe of the Tailor Roche. Hadn’t he made a coat for the Queen of England when he was domiciled in London, a smoking jacket for the Prince of Wales and several pairs of pyjamas for Princess Flavia

The only sour note I ever heard against the tailor’s achievements came from The Whisper Hogan, an itinerant ploughman who came from the west of Kerry.

“ If he’s such a famous  tailor,” said Whisper, “why is it that his arse is always peeping out through a hole in his trousers?"

Hogan was an awful begrudger. We didn’t pay him any heed. Tailor Roche was the man chosen to make the coat from the green blanket. Even though it was a “God spare you the health” job, a lot of thought went into the final choice of a tailor.

The first fitting took place of a Sunday afternoon on the mud floor of the McCarthy manse. The blanket was spread out evenly and Anna was ordered to lie very still on top of it. Even I, who had never seen a tailor at work thought this a little strange. But my father soon put me to rights when he said, “Stop fidgeting, Seáinín, you are watching a genius at work.” Chalk, scissors, green thread and plenty of sweet tea with a little bit of bacon and cabbage when we had it. A tailor can’t work on an empty stomach.

The conversion went apace through Christmas and into the New Year. Snip snip, stitch, stich, sweet tea and fat bacon, floury spuds. I couldn’t see much shape in the coat but there was one thing for sure – it no longer looked like a blanket. Spring raced into summer and summer rained its way into autumn. Hitler invaded Poland and the British army fled Dunkirk, the men of Sandes Bog and Greenville gathered together shoulder to shoulder to defend the Ballybunion coastline and to bring home the turf.

Then six weeks before Christmas disaster struck the McCarthy clan and to hell with Hitler, the British Army, and Herman Goering. We got the news at convent mass on Sunday morning the Tailor Roche had broken his stitching hand when he fell over his dog, the one with the one eye and no tail. Fourteen months of stitching, cutting, tea drinking and bacon eating down the drain. Even a genius cannot work with one hand.

Anna looked very nice in her thirty shilling coat from Carroll Heneghan’s in Listowel as we walked to the train. Coming home alone in the January twilight I tried hard to hold back the tears. She would be missed.  The Tailor was sitting by the fire, a mug of sweet tea in his left hand and a large white sling holding his right-hand. I didn’t feel like talking so I made my way across the bed to my place by the wall. It was beginning to turn cold so I drew the shapeless green bindle up around my shoulders. It was awkward enough to get it settled with the two sleeves sticking out sideways and a long split up the middle. Still, it helped keep out the frost. Every bed needs a good green blanket and every boyhood needs a time to rest.

The ghosts of night will vanish soon

When winter fades away

The lark will taste the buds of June

Mid the scent of new mown hay.