Trees on the Pitch and Putt Course, Famous Visitors and GAA field still closed

Canty's Shebeen and Coco Kids on June 5 2020

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Some Beautiful Trees in Listowel Pitch and Putt Course

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Meeting the Famous

(Photos by Tom Fitzgerald)

 John B. Keane with Charles Haughey

Patrick Sheehan and Eamon Kelly at Sheehan's Cottage in Finuge

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A Fascinating Tale with a Listowel Connection

Schenectady NY Gazette 1952 

   GAZETTE,   TUESDAY,   AUGUST   5,  1952  

NEW   YORK,   Aug.   4   (AP)—An   ex-GI  explained  for  Ireland  tonight  for    his    first    meeting    with    the    Irish    milkmaid    -who    found     his     name    and    address    in    a    bottle    washed   up  by   the  sea  on  her   village  beach.  It    was    Christmas    night,    1945,    that    Frank    Hayostak,     returning     aboard     ship     after     three     years     overseas,  tossed  the  bottle  into  the  ocean   100  miles  from  New   York.

   THE    LONELY    medical    corps-wrote   a   wistful   note   giving   his    name,   his   address,    184   Iron   street,   Johnstown,  Pa.,  and  a  personal   description.   Breda     O'Sullivan     of     Listowel,     County   Kerry,   now   23,   found    It    near   a   farm   where   she   lived   on   the  southwest  Irish  coast   on  Aug. 23,   1946.   She    wrote     Hayostak,     27,    an    electric  are-welder   In  a  Johnstown  steel  mill,  telling  him   of   her   find.   The  pair  have  exchanged  70  letters.

[This story must ring a bell with someone. I would love to know who Breda is. Was there a happy ever after ending to this romantic story?]

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Emmetts Grounds still out of Bounds

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Out and About (with camera)

As I was having a socially distant picnic with friend in the park I met Marjorie Morkan and Eithne Galvin on their way to the pitch and putt course

North Kerry, Clounmacon boots, Eamon Kelly and Alison Spittle at the Young adult Bookfest 2018

St. John's, Bryan MacMahon statue and Seanchaí

Entrance to Kerry Writers'Museum

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Visiting North Kerry

Patty Faley took these photos on her recent holiday.

The visitors  were disappointed to find Carrigafoyle Castle closed.

Patty took this on the way to Lislaughtin.

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Clounmacon and Boot wearing

From the schools folklore collection in Dúchas

“Some of people used not wear boots until they were eighteen or nineteen years long ago.”

Some of people used not wear boots until they were eighteen or nineteen years long ago. They used to work in the fields and in the dikes and the frost cracking under their feet. Jack Mahoney used never wear boots and he could walk on any thing and he would not feel it. he used to walk on bushes and on briars and he would not feel it.

Most of the children go barefoot in the summer but they put them on in the winter. They throw the water they use for washing wash their feet if they did not throw out the water after washing their feet they should get up in the middle of the night and throw it out.

Some people used to wear clogs locally. They used to wear them in the winter but they are not worn now at all.

There was a tannery in Listowel about three miles form here. The National Bank is now built where it stood. About fifty or sixty years ago brogues used be worn. They were made of cheap leather and stitched. In Listowel up near the top of church Street lived a man named Johnny the Cottoners or Johnny O' Connor. He used make brogues and sell them at the big fair in Listowel and Abbeyfeale. In the same street lived two men named Mick 

the Nailer and Jacky the Nailer. They used make the heavy nails that were driven into the soles of the shoes.

Most shoemakers at that time used cut out the uppers themselves and sew them and the boots used hold a long time.

Collector- Martin Kennelly, Address  Dromin, Co. Kerry

Informant  John Shanahan- Age   69- Address,  Dromin, Co. Kerry

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More Local Doors

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A Seanchaí remembered at The Seanchaí

I took the two photos below at The Seanchí, Kerry Writers' Museum. I grew up listening to Eamon Kelly on the radio. I was a child in pre TV times when people sat down and paid attention to the radio. My mother loved a good story and Eamon Kelly was far and away her favourite storyteller.

BryanMacMahon, John B. Keane and Eamon Kelly

Passing on the stories.

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Young Adult Bookfest 2018

On November 15 2018 over 800 North Kerry and West Limerick second level students gathered  in Listowel Community Centre for a great day of entertainment and education, organised by Listowel Writers' Week.

Among the inspiring speakers was Edaein O'Connell.

Eilish and Máire met Alison Spittle at the centre.
Alison was a photographer's dream, willingly posing for all my snaps, with Kay Halpin, Catherine Moylan, Seán Lyons and Joanne O'Riordan.

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1938 Ireland

This story, which I found shared on Twitter, falls into the category of truth stranger than fiction.

Eamon Kelly's 1920s Christmas Customs, a poem and a photo for Christmas '17

Love consists not in looking at one another but in looking together in the same direction.
Khalil Gibran

Photo taken in The Gap of Dunloe by Chris Grayson

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Eamon Kelly Remembers Christmas Long Ago

.....Then we’d be praying for night to fall. for you couldn’t see the right effect until the candles were lit. The honour would fall to the youngest in the house. The father would lift the child up saying “In the name of The Father, The Son….” And when the child had blessed himself, he would put the lighting spill to the candle, and from that candle the other candles would be lit, and he’s be half daft with excitement, enjoying the blaze of light, and running fro the rooms into the kitchen and out into the yard to see what the effect was like from the outside. When we’d get tired of looking at the candles in our own windows, we’d turn and try to name the neighbours’ houses as the bunches of lights came on, two windows here and three windows there, across the dark countryside and away up to the foot of the hills. And sure as anything, someone would be late and we’d rush in to my mother saying, ”Faith then there’s no light on yet in Rossacrew!”

“Go n ye’re knees,” my mother would say. The time she’d pick for the rosary, just when the salt ling was ready and the white onion sauce and the potatoes steaming over the fire. But I suppose there’d be no religion in the world only for the women. The rosary in our house did not end at five decades. Not at all, after the Hail Holy Queen our mother would start into the trimmings

“Come Holy Ghost, send down those beams,

Which sweetly flow in silver streams.”

She’d pray for everyone in sickness and in need and the poor souls and the sinful souls who at that very moment was trembling before the judgment seat above. She’d pray for the sailor on the seas. “Protect him from the tempest, O Lord, and bring him safely home.” And the lone traveller on the highway, and, of course, our emigrants, and, last of all, the members of our own family

God bless and save us all

St. Patrick, Bridget and Colmcille

Guard each wall.

May the queen of Heaven

And the angels bright

Keep us and our home

From harm this night.

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A Christmas Poem

Twinkle Twinkle    by Jane Taylor

Twinkle twinkle little star.

How I wonder what you are.

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,

And he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little light.

Twinkle, twinklw through the night.

Then the traveller in the dark

Thanks you for your tiny spark.

He would not see which way to go,

If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,

And often through my curtains peep,

Forr you never shut your eye

Til the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark,

Lights the traveller in the dark.

Though I know not what you are

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

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A Welcome Return

Jackie McGillicuddy made a welcome return to his old spot behind the counter at Corbett and Fitzgibbon's. The shop now names McGillicuddy's Toys is run by his son Seán who is with him in the photo which they posted on Twitter.

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Thought for the Season    from Dr. Suess

Winter in Goa, Slimming World and Christmas long ago.

The timeless unspoiled beauty of the Gap of Dunloe is captured in December 2017 by a man who appreciates the beauty of Kerry and captures it lovingly in photos....Chris Grayson.

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Winter in Goa

It's a long way from O'Connell's Avenue to Goa. Maria Sham is a loyal follower of Listowel connection and she has already shared her memories of a happy childhood spent in her O'Connell's Avenue home.

Maria Sham today

I don't know if Maria is in this photo but these are the people she knew growing up.
Maria now lives in England and from there she recently took the holiday of a lifetime to Goa. Here the weather, the lifestyle, the economy, everything is a world away from our side of the world. Here are some of  Maria's photos.

As you can see she spent much of her time on the beach.
This last photo is of a young man harvesting betel nut. Betel is the main ingredient in paan.

"If you’ve never tried paan — a post-meal mainstay at social gatherings and banquet halls in India — it can be a bit hard to explain to the uninitiated. Part breath freshener, part digestive aid, paan is essentially a wad of dried fruits, spices and seeds wrapped into a large green leaf from the betel nut plant. Think of those little candied fennel seeds you spoon into your hand at Indian restaurant, times 1,000. With paan, you pick up the entire triangular-shaped package and stuff it into your cheek pocket, chewing a few times to get the juices moving. The betel leaf, a mild stimulant, turns brick red as it’s masticated and puts a slight pep in your step. After all the juices have been released, you spit out the mushy bolus and toss it in the trash — breath fresher, stomach lighter and head abuzz." Source: Wikipedia.

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New Business on Charles St.

Do you remember I posted this photo and I told you I'd tell you what shop was going in here? Well the answer is that it is not a shop at all but Slimming World.

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My Favourite Shop

When I visited my favourite shop recently I saw some new faces. It's great to see some lovely sympathetic women joining the welcoming friendly and invariably cheerful staff in this excellent shop. You'd never know what treasure you will find in Listowel's Vincent de Paul shop and at a very affordable price.

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Another Eamon Kelly description of Christmases in  the 1920s

The Season of Light by Eamon Kelly from

The Rub of the Relic 1978

No word of a lie but Christmas was something to write home about when I was small. Oh, the way we looked forward to twilight on Christmas Eve, for when darkness fell it was Christmas Night, the greatest night of all the year. We youngsters would be up at the crack of dawn that morning to have the house ready for the night.

Berry holly would have to be cut and brought in to deck out the windows, the top of the dresser, the back of the settle and the clevvy, We’d bring ivy too and put a sprig of laurel behind the pictures, above the lintel of the door and around the fireplace. But we wouldn’t overdo it for, if we did our mother would cut it down a bit, reminding us that she’d like to feel she was in her own home for Christmas and not in the middle of a wood!

Well The transformation we would bring about in the kitchen with all the greenery! But we weren’t finished yet The Christmas candles would have to be prepared; these were of white tallow as thick as the handle of a spade and nearly as tall. In some houses, they’d scoop out a hole in a turnip and put a candle sitting into it.  A big crock we’d use. We’d put the candle standing into that and pack it around with sand. If you hadn’t sand, bran or pollard would do.

When the candle was firm in position we’d spike sprigs of holly or laurel into the sand about the candle and we’d have coloured paper too to put around the outside of the crock to take the bare look off it. With that same coloured paper the girls in the family, if they were anyway handy, could make paper flowers to decorate the holly. Then what would cap it all was a length of young ivy to spiral up around the candle – it looked lovely. That done, we would go through the same manoeuvre until there was a candle in a crock for every window in the house.

(more tomorrow)

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Christmas Jumper Day

Staff at Listowel Credit Union took part in Radio Kerry's Christmas Jumper Day for St. Vincent de Paul and they posted this photo on Twitter.