Molly, Macroom, Hidden Treasure and Listowel Drama Group

Molly at Home

I haven't given an update on Molly for a while. Here she is in her happy place with her Christmas toy. She has been to the groomers since and is looking even more handsome these days.

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I was in Macroom, Co Cork

Last week I met a friend in Macroom for lunch. We ate in Granville's and it was lovely, good food, friendly staff and cozy dining room.
I parked in the square just opposite this well named premises. It is truly a golden treasure, a throwback to the days of my childhood.

Once upon a time many shops had bars like these fitted outside their windows. This was in the days when fairs were held on the streets and shopkeepers needed to protect their very expensive plate glass. It's lovely to see this one still in place.

Further down the street in this blue and yellow shop there was another of these fair day protectors. This one was removable but seems to be being left up permanently here.

Back to Golden's and it's old advertising hoardings... This one exhorts us to smoke a brand of cigarettes no longer available.

This place was certainly a general store, a virtual cornucopia judging by the goods displayed in the windows.

Among the mirrors and jugs was a jewish menorah and some various christian imagery.

It was not clear to me if these items were for sale or merely for decoration.

I was fascinated to see an old fashioned ring board and a skipping rope.

The sign inviting musicians to the monthly sessions had been updated since I was last here.

The Guinness toucan was on the wall and in the window was the old Guinness advertising slogan; Guinness is Good for You.  Are we allowed to make unsubstantiated claims like that nowadays?

Is that cctv I see beside the golden finial? The plasterwork depicts the oak leaves and acorns below some sheaves of corn, a rich harvest image for a lovely lovely old bar.

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From the Schools' Folklore Collection

A Hidden Treasure

There was a very old woman who lived in a small little house close to the village of Newtownsandes. She seemed to be very poor and the village people used to give her food. One day the priest said to her, “You seem to be always looking for charity”, and the old woman said, “Sure what else could I do. I haven’t a pig, a goat, or a man”. In a short time after, the old woman grew sick and was ordered to hospital. The neighbours went to her little house. As the ambulance came they were preparing her for the journey, and on no account would she allow them to take off a flannel skirt. So when she got to the hospital the nuns ordered the skirt to be removed, but the old lady screamed aloud and thought to hold on to the skirt. However they succeeded in removing the skirt. The nuns got suspicious and stood by after giving orders to two wardswomen to get a scissors and open up the skirt. To their surprise, there were nineteen sovereigns sewed in a tuck to the skirt. She lived for one week after, and during that time the other patients in the ward could not sleep as the old woman was all the time shouting for the flannel skirt.


Collector- Pat Stack- Informant- Nurse Stack- Age 62 Address, Newtownsandes, Co. Kerry

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Listowel Drama Group

The curtain has come down for the last time on A Daughter from over the Water. This 2020 production by Listowel Drama Group entertained audiences  in the dreary evenings of early March 2020....great cast and excellent set, as usual.

Cast of Listowel Drama Groups production of A Daughter from over the Water

Ballybunion, Launch of a minute of Your Time and a Mad Shoemaker

Sanctuary, St. Mary's, Listowel

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Ballybunion's old toilet building is Demolished

Photo: Danny McDonnell

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What a Night!

If you're getting a bit tired of photographs from the launch of A Minute of Your Time, you'll have to help me out. I knew that material for this blog would eventually wear thin and that time has come. I'm struggling to find something to share with you every day so if you have any material that would be of interest to people with a Listowel connection, do help me out please.

Meanwhile here are some more of Breda Ferris' photos from October 19 2019

Liz Dunne

My lovely neighbour, Michael Salmon

Mike Moriarty

Miriam Kiely OGrady

Some more lovely neighbours and former neighbours, Alice, Eileen and Eddie Moylan

Namir, Kay and Roza Karim

Nancy

Noreen O'Connell

From Ballyduff and New York, John, Bridget and Pádraig O'Connor

A great supporter of Just a Thought, Pam Brown

Pat Murphy and Vincent Carmody

Pat Galvin

Pat Given

My only brother, Pat Ahern

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A Wintry Walk

Nothing beats Ballybunion on a clear day.

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Only a Few Weeks left

This photo of Namir Karim and Michael Dillane was taken in Flavins just before Christmas. Sadly all that stock is now sold off and there remains but a few last bits and pieces before Joan locks up for the last time, closing the door on an important chapter in Listowel's history.

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Shoemaking In Listowel Long Ago

From Dúchas, the Schools' Folklore Collection

About fifty years ago in Listowel in addition to men making boots there was also men who used to make cheap brogues or low shoes. Every time there would be a fair in Abbeyfeale they would take an ass load of these brogues to the fair and sell them in the fair just as people sell second hand clothes now. The best known one of those was called Johnny the bottoner (O Connor) a brother to famous Patsy. Patsy used work hard making brogues up to the time of the fair. On that night he would be mad drunk. Most of the houses at the top of church street at this time were thatched houses. Patsy would roll home about midnight and break most of the windows up on his end of the street. He would take the road the following morning and would not come back again till things were forgotten again. These brogues were stitched by the hand but at that time the shoemakers used work by "lamplight" and often worked well after midnight.

COLLECTOR

W. Keane

Gender

male

Address

Listowel, Co. Kerry

INFORMANT

Mrs M. Keane

Gender

female

Address

Listowel, Co. Kerry

Ballybunion, What our Forefathers Ate and some Listowel Premises getting a Facelift

Molly's Back

Trouble -the -House is back for her Kerry holidays. You'll spot us out and about these days as I reintroduce her to her second home.

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Ballybunion is Buzzing

Ballybunion loves a Summer Sunday. The Bunker was full to capacity and overflowing on to the street.

Flash had set up outside the Railway Bar and was entertaining the whole street on Sunday July 7 2019

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Food in Olden Times

from the Dúchas Folklore collection 

(Read to the end. I think he got the bit about the tea wrong.)

In olden times the chief food of the people was potatoes three times a day and sour skim milk and sometimes porridge made from yellow meal for supper and two meals of potatoes. 

Breakfast was usually taken at nine o’clock in the morning so that three hours work was done before breakfast. 

At each meal the table was placed in the centre of the floor and all sat down and commenced eating. In later years meals became more plentiful and bread was made from it by mixing with boiling water and afterwards baked in a griddle. The breakfast consisted then of yellow bread and sour skim milk filled out in wooden mugs. In the morning the bread was often heated in front of the fire before being eaten. In those days very little meat was used but salt mackerel for supper but potatoes were not unusual, supper hour being about nine o’clock. 

Easter Sunday was a feast and each member of the house was allowed as many eggs as he or she could eat. 

Tea was scarcely known until some sixty years ago and was not drank only at Christmas. Then it was made in a parcel and put away until the arrival of Christmas again.

Location: Cappagh, Co. Kerry- Teacher:T.F. Sheehan.

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Running Repairs in Listowel 

Fitzpatrick's iconic bay window in Church Street is being replaced.

Jumbo's is being repainted

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A Trip Back in Time

Dont forget to take a trip on the Lartigue in summer 2019. Open every afternoon.

Michael Guerin, Lartigue Driver. Oxana Sean, Seamus Kyritz from Tampa, Florida. Diane and Robert Moloney from Ennismore Listowel Canada. Pat Walsh Lartigue wayman.

These visitors to the Lartigue on Wednesday are descended from  families who left Listowel for Canada under the Peter Robinson Resttlement Scheme of the 19th century.

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Weekly Guided Walks

This photo was taken before the start of the first guided walking tour of the town on Saturday last. It is planned that these walks will take place every Saturday until the end of August, starting at 11.00a.m.

The cost is €5 and includes tea or coffee and a scone in The Kerry Writers Museum at the end of the walk.

If you are planning on taking the tour tomorrow,  July 13 2019, your volunteer guide will be................me.

A Goat, Our Tidy Town Seat, Winding Wool, a ghost and an Old Album Cover

Irish Wildlife Photography Competition

Feral Goat: Neil T. Halligan

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We Care with a Chair

Thank you Tidy Town people. I rarely pass the seat in this fine weather but there is someone taking their ease. These two local ladies were waiting for the bus.

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Newspaper Pins its Colours to the Mast in 1912

Kerry Weekly Reporter  Saturday, October 12, 1912

THE POST OFFICE AND THE PARTY.

The 30th September, the fatal day when an Englishman was to be brought in to ride roughshod over able Irish officials, has come and gone. Mr. Norway has been duly installed as Secretary of the Irish Post Office: an office, we believe, he never previously put his foot in, and no explanation good or bad is vouchsafed by the Irish Party in the Irish Press -why an Englishman who never was in Ireland should be placed on the necks of the whole Irish Post Office staff. One can only, ask is this one of the fruits of the Balance of Power.

If this rotten job be one fruit of the Balance of Power and Mr. Runciman's Regulations are another, and Mr. Winston Churchill's Home Rule for Ulster scheme is yet another, and Mr. Birrell's anti-Irish, anti-Catholic educational balloons are yet some others, everyone will shudder at what the Balance of Power may bring to Ireland out of the womb of the future. "Sinn Fein "

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Winding Wool

It is May 6 2019 and my little girlies are learning a social history lesson. A friend recently gave me some skiens of pure wool and I took the opportunity to teach my little granddaughters a lesson.


Do you remember when all wool (It was wool. No acrylic back then) came in 1 oz. hanks and you had to wind it into a ball before you could start on your knitting project? The girls were full of enthusiasm to start with but they found the job a bit tiring on the arms. Happy days!

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Scary Story from Ballybunion Convent School in the 1930s

From Dúchas, the school's folklore project

About thirty years ago on Christmas night a man in Beale had to leave his own house and he had to take his candle in his hand to a neighbour's house, because he was hunted by ghosts who asked him to leave as there was to be a fight that night between the Wrens and the Shines who lived in the neighbourhood some year before. As he and his sister were leaving, a man whom they knew to be dead of years offered to lead them and when they went out in the yard, he had to divide the crowd to allow them pass. The day before the place was covered with magpies and he did not know what was to happen. 

The morning after this he was going fishing. The moon had risen. When he got up, he thought it was day. He went to the boathouse and waited under his canoe until it was bright. As he was about to lie under the canoe, the man who told him to leave his house the night before came to the canoe and peeped in. He told him that if they went fishing that morning, someone would be drowned. When it was bright he and four other men went fishing. They were not far out when a great storm came and overturned the boat and two men were drowned.

Sheila Sheahan 

Beale Middle

Co Kerry

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Old Album Sleeve

Liam OHainnín found this one.

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Meeting a Blog Follower

I was lucky enough to meet (by chance) one of my most faithful blog followers in Flying Saucer on Monday.
Noreen Holyoake - Keese grew up in Listowel and now lives in New York.