Book Launch in The National Library, Apprenticeship, Auschwitz Remembered and another great Healy photograph

Building at Ballybunion

Photo; Ballybunion Prints


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Sometimes a Book can be declared a Treasure

When Vincent Carmody launched his great book, (pictured above)  in the National Library a few years ago, he was surrounded on the night by his family and by some illustrious North Kerry people who now live in Dublin.
The book is still available from Vincent and should be in every home with a Listowel connection.

Standing are Kevin Carmody, Vincent's son, who returned from the U.S. for the event and Sr. Maura, Vincent's sister who, sadly, passed away before Christmas 2015.
In front are Vincent and his wife, Kathleen

Back L to R ; Eamon OMurchú, Katie Hannon, Maurice Hayes, John Coolahan and Cyril Kelly

Front; Vincent Carmody and Jimmy Deenihan

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An Apprentice's Lot was not a easy one

Jackie Lenihan of Charles St. Listowel, grandfather of Donal Linehan, rugby player was a carpenter. He took apprentices to train in to the trade. One of these apprentices was James Enright, father of Mike Enright of Ballybunion. Mike has his father's apprenticeship contract. It makes interesting reading.

It reads more like a monk's contract to me. Apparently it was the standard agreement for all apprenticeships back in the day.

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Do you Remember when Mill Lane looked like this?

(photo: John Kelliher)

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 Bob Geldof's wedding to Paula Yates in 1986

Photo: Rare Irish Stuff

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Seventy Years ago this week

Photo: Alien West

This image, taken at the liberation of Auschwitz, is just as shocking today as it was then.
We need to remind ourselves often of this enormous inhumanity.  Our ancestors who fought in WW11 fought to put an end to this.

We will get a chance to remember all the victims of war everywhere at Listowel Military Tattoo 

April 29 to May 1 2016

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Wow,Wow,Wow

What a snap!

There are three heroes here;

A great horse, Killultagh Vic, who recovered from this mishap  at the last to go on to win his race at Leopardstown yesterday, January 17 2016,

A great jockey, Ruby Walsh, who employed all of his considerable skills to stay on board and steer his mount to victory once again,

AND

 Listowel's great racing photographer, Pat Healy of Healyracing who captured the moment for all time.

Well done all.

Vincent's book,Knitwits, FCA and roadworks

Remember last week I told you that Vincent Carmody of this parish was related to the two White brothers whose writing is well known on both sides of the Atlantic. Now I bring you Richard White's review. 

"When my mother was a young girl, Listowel was at the far edge of her world. She lived outside the small village of Ballylongford in County Kerry in the west of Ireland. Listowel was only seven miles away, and only in rural Kerry would it seem a grand place, with its cattle fairs, its square and shops. A trip to Listowel meant a journey by donkey and cart, and she went only rarely until her early teens, when she became a servant there. Then she lived for a while in Listowel -- before sailing from Cobh, the port adjacent to Cork, and migrating to the United States in 1936. She was 16. All of that was long ago and far away. My mother now lives in Redwood City, as I do. She has dementia, and she rarely remembers Ireland or much of anything else.

I would like to think that, if she could remember, she would recognize the place Vincent Carmody captures in his wonderful and evocative book "Listowel: Snapshots of an Irish Market Town, 1850-1950."

From my family's perspective, it is ironic that Listowel is the sister city of Los Gatos, adjacent to San Jose. In the earlier 20th century, these places would have seemed distant cousins: both market towns and magnets for people on the farms around them. But now they are far different. The farms are gone from what was once the Valley of Heart's Delight around San Jose, even as they persist around Listowel. San Jose has become the third most populous city in California; Listowel has less than 5,000 people and is still physically much the same place my mother knew.

For me, at least, all that connects the modest Irish town (known for its literary festival) with the sprawl of Silicon Valley is my mother. She was a girl near Listowel when the place filled her with stories, and now she is an old woman living near San Jose bereft of memories and stories.

The beauty of Carmody's book (available at www.listoweloriginals.com) is that he captures both the kind of stories my mother gleaned from Listowel and a far more subtle set of transformations that changed the town. He tells his story through what the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss called bricolage, the art of creating something new out of surviving scraps of the past. This is a book of photographs, notes, bills, invoices, contracts and advertisements knitted together -- street by street, house by house -- so artfully and unobtrusively that you do not so much think the clean Irish prose is giving you an account of the past as that you are actually rummaging through that past and walking down the town's streets. A place that might seem initially foreign to you grows familiar.

On one level, Carmody's account of this Irish market town could be the biography of a dozen Irish towns. The years he covers were tumultuous everywhere in Ireland, and even more so in Kerry. There was revolution, independence, civil war, depression and migration, always migration. But he captures the more constant fabric of the place that endured beneath the tumult.

Anyone interested in Ireland can enjoy this book, but if you actually knew the place, as my mother did, it becomes something more. My cousin Anne met Carmody on the street in Listowel, and she identified her father-in-law in a picture from long ago. And even for me, as much a Yank as my cousins are Irish, this book seems to illustrate stories my mother told: the cattle fairs, the donkeys and carts, the days that once loomed so large in that distant world and here surface again, at once exotic and familiar.

Richard White is the author of "Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories."

Killarney

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Vincent held his second launch of the book in the National Library on Thursday last.

I got this next from John Fitzgerald  who was present on the night:

"The launch last Thursday in the National Library of Vincent Carmody's magnificent book Snapshots of an Irish Market Town will forever be treasured.

 Six old classmates pictured in the photograph of Mrs. Scanlon's class exchanged stories late into that night in Buswells. Vincent had travelled all the way from the Boro; whilst Johnny Guerin tripped in from the Rebel county. The City of the Tribes delivered Tony Barrett (up to then in one piece). The two Sullivans, Sean and Teddy flew in from the land of the Gall and by the end of the night I'd say were glad to get back, whilst Cyril Kelly walked over the Liffey appeared from the North Side. In that mix,Tae Lane was always going to be difficult to position geograpically but in sporting parlance, that night I played fairly for the Gleann. 

Attached is my take on what some of those stories evoked.

Tae Lane

I leave the street and wander down the lane.

Rusting sheds recede

and grey stone pierces whitewash.

Memory stirs and like a faint crack

of a ringmaster’s whip

the lane begins to breathe again.

 Atop my father’s shed I see Tommy Sib Sib

coil and uncoil from the ridge rope.

He sweeps swathes of hot tar

over a bubbling roof.

The black liquid tauts and glints of silver show

like a wave set on a sunlit shore.

Under Potter’s shed the nettles sting.

Beneath an elder tree stray stones

crush the red haw and an ancient  

trail of Navaho and Comanche appears.

Above the sycamore a crow calks

and distant sounds from the market

trumpet children wild at play.

Suddenly the lane twists and the river peeps.

Some say it was the greatest show on earth.

Dock leaves mark the fair day

Where farmers full squat on stone slabs,

lording over a gurgling sewer.

On the waterfront a fresh flood bustles.

Spillers vie for space on the narrowing banks.

A young boy wrestles with a twisting hook.

He cuts the curling conger from its clasp.

Above the bridge an old man waits.

After the flood fresh salmon run.

Flotsam gathers beneath my feet

 And now I go back to the street.

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If you have a minute to spare read this.

http://lilliemorris.blogspot.ie/2013/02/ard-na-sidhe.html

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Knitwits crosses the generations. On Saturday in Scribes we had

A grandmother and granddaughter; Patricia and Katie

A grandmother and grandson; Mary and Kiernan

 and

A mother and daughter: Mary and Clíona

Studies have proven that knitting is therapeutic. People suffering from dementia, if they have learned to knit when they were younger, when given needles and a ball of wool will settle to knitting. In Denmark some day care centers feature a knitting circle as part of their therapy. So, do your children a favour. Teach them to knit.

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Listowel FCA 1955

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The Square last Friday. I'm told the digging up was to lay a broadband cable.

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St. Malachy

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/9-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-prophecy-of-st.-malachy#ixzz2LwNYU2m1

An interesting read for any superstitious Catholic.

Gurtenard House, Vincent's Dublin launch

Gurtenard House, then and now

Old photo and text is provided by Jimmy Moloney. The later photo is from MyHome.ie

The list of families associated with the house are Collis, Church,

Fitzgerald, Crosbie ( all these 4 were agents of Lord Listowel),

Armstrong ( left circa 1921. He owned a sweet factory near where Carrolls

Yard is now), Bank of Ireland, Church of Ireland, 

Moloney 1948-2006,

Lawlor 2006-

The story of Armstrong is interesting. He ran a sweet factory near the

castle. After Arthur Vickars was shot and Kilmorna House burned in

1921 his wife stayed in Gurtenard House for safety. Shortly after this

Mr. Armstrong left Listowel.

The following is taken from Houses of Kerry by Valerie Barry

“No date is given for the building of Gurtenard, but in 1837,

S.E.Collis  was in residence, although it was probably built before

his time. Dr. Church later became owner, being followed by

Brinsley-Fitzgerald. James Crosbie, of Ballyheigue Castle (q.v), may

have used it as a town house for he was  possession early in the

1800s. Between 1870 and 1890, the Earl and Countess of Listowel stayed

for a season in the house and thereafter occasionally returned and

entertained the local families. Lady Listowel found the town very

congenial and spent a number of Summer holidays here. Between the

World Wars I and II, Gurtenard House had a chequered career and began

to deteriorate. In 1948, the Moloneys bought and restored it. It is

now open to Summer guests.”

(As far as I know, Gurtenard House is currently on the market.)

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It was just another paper sold for Joe Treacy until he looked up at the customer: a rather tall-looking Jimmy Stewart. Photo taken on O'Connell Street, Dublin on 1st August 1962.

I took this great photo and caption from a website called Irish Photo Archive

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 This photograph from The Kerryman celebrates Michael Barrett's great win in Clonmel in 1973 with his dog, Dashing Newdown.

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 If you are a Listowel person exiled in the capital, a great Listowel night is planned for February 21st. Vincent Carmody has assembled a great line up of high profile Kerry people for the Dublin launch of his acclaimed book.

Everyone is welcome; being from Listowel is not a requirement.

Put it in your diary now.

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Did you have one of these?

Lamb tongues???????

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Annie Kett

Ireland's oldest woman has died at the age of 107
Clare native Annie Kett was born Annie Hayes in 1905 in The Glen, Killaloe, Co Clare. After training as a nurse in London, she moved to Kilkishen where she farmed with her late husband, John who died in the 1970s.

She passed away at Thorpe's Nursing home in Clarina, Co Limerick on Sunday 3^rd Feb 2013, Annie celebrated her 107th birthday with family and friends just before Christmas 2012. Annie Kett is survived by her son and daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Before Annie,

Ireland’s oldest person was Laois woman Mary Kate Byrne, who celebrated her 108th birthday in August 2012.

Requiem Mass for Annie Kett at Garraunboy Church on Thursday 7^th February 20013,  burial in church grounds.

Picture from

http://kildimonews.blogspot.ie/

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