Brides Night Out at The Listowel Arms, the 1950s in Asdee and Fr. Pat Moore R.I.P.

Seán McInerney of Mallow Camera Club took this picture of People at Work

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The Wedding Saga Continues

The next step in our family’s wedding journey saw us back in The Listowel Arms Hotel on Friday evening April 21 2017 for Brides Night Out.

We nearly missed this one as our bride had deemed it too close to the wedding to be going to a Wedding Fair. We already  have most of the requirements in place. Luckily as we were in Finesse for a dress fitting, the lovely Mags and Liz persuaded us that we would be missing a great night by foregoing this one. They were right.

Here we are, mé féin, Cliona, the bride to be, with Mags and Liz Horgan of Finesse Bridal Wear

The hotel fitted us in at short notice and we were ready in jig time for a lovely night.

This is Clíona at our lovely sunny table

Firstly there was the wedding fair part with lots of exhibitors and lots of  tips. Clíona got her make up done at The Vanity Case stand and she looked a million dollars for the rest of the evening.

We met Siobhán with her eye poppingly artistic cake creations. They tasted delicious as well.

These ladies had a great idea worthy of Dragons’ Den. Anyone at the wedding  downloads their app. You take  photos and then you load them into the app and press print. The person who took the photo gets a printed souvenir photo/photos of their day at the wedding and the happy couple get all the printed photos on a memory stick. I thought this one was much better than a photo booth or the old  camera on the table lark.

Brendan Landy held a pop up workshop. He gave us loads of tips about posing for photos. Here’s a few free for you.

Don’t lean back. It gives you a double chin.

Bend your elbow out from your body.

Bend your wrist back and your hand will look better.

Don’t face full square to the camera.  Etc., etc.

Stylish Eilish was there. We met her chatting to the beautiful Maria Keane of MK Beauty.

The Listowel Arms as a wedding venue was on show and it looked absolutely stunning. We are so lucky to have everything one needs to hold a wedding at out fingertips in lovely Listowel.

Then it was time for the taster menu and the fashion show.

Finesse Bridal opened and closed the fashion show and their stunning dresses set the scene for the Mother of the Bride or Groom and wedding guest style which followed. There were some really  glamorous outfits on show. If I hadn’t bought mine already I saw lots that I would have liked.

The food and wine were top class.

If you have anyone in your family getting engaged this year, tell them to go to this before they make any decisions. It’s an annual event and a great night out.

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The 1950s  as remembered by Jim Costelloe and told in his book, Asdee in the 40's and 50s

... At that time in Asdee there were no Costelloes- they were all Custelloes, MacMahons were Mickmahons, O’Connors were simply Connors, McElligotts were Elligotts, Ruddles were Riddles and Moriartys were Maraartys. There were no cars then, they were all motors, a barrel of stout was a quarter tierse, hayforks were pikes and a dung fork was a four prong pike. There were high shoes and low shoes and we didn’t know which were boots. A stripper was a cow, a gallon was a container for sweets and a muller was an aluminium pot. We also had the skillet, the black pot with its three legs which hung over the fire with the pot hooks. The bread was baked in the oven which was placed on the brand over the coals.

These were the days of the settle beds, the po ( politely known as the chamber pot), the ticks of feathers, the straw mattresses and the  iron beds with the brass knobs at the four corners. The parlour was the sitting/dining room which was rarely used except on the morning of the Station when the priest dined there. It usually smelled of dampness and had old, decaying furniture with limp curtains and wallpaper with a flowery border which was almost always discoloured at the corners.

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eCar Parking and recharging

In the Square in Listowel there is this car charging station and it now has a dedicated parking bay for your  electric car.

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"...the best labourer dead, and all the sheaves to bind."

Fr. Pat Moore, R.I.P. and yours truly in happier times

Fr. Pat with his great friend, Mary Fagan

Fr. Pat in his element among his own at the great barbecue in Duagh

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North Kerry will be a duller place without him.

This is the poem Fr. Pat wrote after his mother died.

This Much I Will Remember   _______ for Peg

It was a bright August morning, sunlight filled the kitchen.
I sat next to you remembering my birth.
Your heartbeat the first sound I heard.
A home you made around us, people you are now welcoming,
Alive and some dead.
And as I look past your shoulder at the glass on the windowsill,
That captures the sunlight inside the garden you once tended,
Which also drinks in the light.
Everything I see converges into a random still light,
Fastened together by colour.
It is fixed behind the foreground of what's happening around you
As you are now being looked after.
And I can feel it being painted within me,
And brushed on the wall of my skull.
Then all the moments of the past begin to line up behind that moment,
And all the moments to come assemble in front of it in a long long row.
It gives me reason to believe that this is a moment I have rescued
from the millions that rush out of sight
into the darkness behind the eyes.
When I forget I will still carry in my skull
the small coin of this moment
Minted in the kingdom that we pace through everyday.

e car as a symbol of Progress, Tasty Cotter, Writers Week Competitions and an Emigrant's Tale

Listowel January 2016; an ecar fuels beside the Bus Eireann shelter in The Square. In the background is St. John's.

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Tasty Man about town

(photos and text; Vincent Carmody)

Tasty Cotter

Timothy Fitzmarshall Cotter was also known as 'Tasty' Cotter. He was a well loved Listowel character. The family had a shop at the corner of Main Street and Church Street, Timothy worked with the Urban Council as a rent collector. He always dressed in style and was a familiar figure at all events, be entertainment, sporting or otherwise.

Tasty was a very efficient Hon.Sec.with the Listowel GAA club in the early 1900s and as you can see from this 1908 photograph of The Independents, he was a well turned out footballer as well, as were the rest.


Timothy trod the boards and was a prominent actor and performer with an early drama group, known as 'Listowel Dramatic Class'.  He also was a member of The Listowel Musical Society and he is included in that Society's rare and well preserved programme from their Grand Opening Concert in St Patrick's Hall on Tuesday March 4th, 1930.


There was a story told once by Bryan McMahon of a time when Maurice Walsh (of Quite Man fame), had invited a number of his friends from Listowel; Bryan McMahon, Tasty and a few more to attend an opening night in Dublin. Afterwards Maurice Walsh and his friends adjourned to Boland's, his local in Stillorglin for drinks. Here they were joined by some members of the press. As the evening progressed those present gave their various party pieces, Tasty sang his; an operatic number in Italian. The press people in particular, were enthralled. One was overheard to ask, how one from such a rural part of the country could have such clear diction in that language. Hearing this, Tasty's reply was spontaneous. He said, " Friend, if I had the benefit of a University education, like that lavished, like axle grease on the heads of newspaper reporters, then sir, I would have become Governor General of Hyderabad.”

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Do you know a Young writer?

If you know a young person who loves to write please encourage them to visit The National Children's Literary Festival.

The competitions are free to enter and the prizes are good.

There are competitions for adult writers too.

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One Listowel Emigrant's story

Junior Griffin and his late brother, Bert

Junior and Bert's father’s people come from Knockalougha outside Duagh. It was from here that Junior’s father emigrated to the U.S. in 1915. He remembered getting off the boat and seeing a paperboy announcing the main story; The sinking of the Lusitania. He found work in the Ford Motor Co. in Detroit and he worked there under the first Henry Ford. They were manufacturing the Model T.

John Griffin Senior experienced tragedy early in his life in the new world. He married a lady from Tipperary called Sheridan. Their son was very young when John’s wife died in the great flu epidemic of 1920. He brought his young son home with him in 1926 and this boy, Jimmy, was raised in Fourhane by Junior’s grandmother.

John married again. His second wife, Junior’s mother, was also Griffin from Fourhane. They married in Detroit and their first daughter, Joan, was born there in 1931. Junior’s maternal grandmother had 12 children, 11 of whom lived to adulthood but the eleven were never under the one roof together. The eldest two, Annie and Josie had emigrated to America before the youngest 2 were born.

When the Griffins returned from the U.S. they settled first in Knockalougha and their eldest daughter, Patsy was born while they were there. Her birth was well remembered in the family. Junior’s father had to travel through two feet of snow to Duagh to fetch the midwife on February 25 1933.

Jimmy Griffin, Junior’s older half brother joined the army and was one of Douglas Hyde’s official army drivers. After leaving the army he settled in Limerick and he married a lady called Eileen O’Riordan, a grandaunt of Dolores of The Cranberries. Jimmy has passed away.

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Renovation Work Underway here

Hammering banging and clouds of sawdust are emerging from here recently. A big refurb job underway apparently.

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Look Who Got the Golden Ticket

Bernard O'Connell, formerly of Upper William Street and his wife at the Bruce Springsteen concert.

Bernard took this picture as the stadium at the Air Canada Centre filled up.