The Kerryman Unbuttoned, Healy Father and son, Listowel Community Centre revamp

Photo: Paul Tips, Mallow Camera Club

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The Kerryman Unbuttoned, (Part 3) by Redmond O'Hanlon

The strange idioms of North Kerry speech

Nettles do no stink in Kerry. They burn or scorch. A prick is a pinch and soup is called broth. Leggings to the Kerryman are gaiters and it is only with difficulty he conveys the distinction between boots and shoes. Shoes and low shoes mark weekdays from Sundays. Mud is puddle and puddles are locks. The Kerryman wears his short coat, indifferent to the stranger’s perplexity as to the whereabouts of the counterpart. Surely, I reasoned, when I first heard the expression, there must be a long coat in his wardrobe. This does not follow at all. With a characteristic disregard for logic, your Kerry man, and still more your Kerry woman and most of all your Kerry girl will speak of a half twin when they mean a whole one, and a square of crackers hot from the oven when they mean a triangle.

Let us take a walk through the fields. See the bullock “itching” himself against the gatepost, when in actual fact he is scratching his hide. That horse standing at the fence may be false and one has to learn that this trait has reference not to a vicious disposition but to the animal’s uncertainty of foot while under a cart. Admire the riot of saffron buchalawns proclaiming at once the fertility of the soil and careless husbandry.  In early spring one may get a malicious satisfaction  from the Kerry farmers attempts to convey in words the distinction between freshly springing oats, barley and wheat. He lables the lot grasscorn and thinks you a purist if you insist that barley and wheat are neither grass nor corn.

(more tomorrow)

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Father and Son from the John Hannon Archive

 This is yesterday's picture of Jimmy Browne with Paddy Healy on left.

On the right of this photo is a young Liam Healy, son of Paddy. Any ideas who the lady and child are?

And

Forget Clouseau, Poirot, Miss Marple and the No. 1 Ladies detective agency. When the Listowel Connection network gets working on the case they leave no stone unturned. Many people identified A.T. Chute and Violet McCarthy but the second man and the two ladies were a mystery. The grapevine has gone into overdrive and through the intervention of Beta Whelan, Junior Griffin, and the super sleuth when it comes to identifying Listowel people, Margaret Dillon, we can now say with certainty that the man behind on the right is Charlie McCarthy. His son, Danny, confirmed his father's identity. The fact that he wasn't wearing his glasses threw most people but not Margaret.

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Listowel Community Centre Revamp

When I visited last week the front of the Community Centre was painted and there was scaffolding all round the side.

The reception area was gutted and the shop is relocated. I was delighted to see the same smiling face, Mike Molyneaux,  behind the counter .

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Hard Working Tidy Town Volunteers

I was in The Square at around 7.00 p. m. last evening and I met this happy crew setting out on their weekly tidy up. Years of relentless hard work and dedication is what it takes to win a gold medal.

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Nearing Completion

This corner of town is completely transformed. Listowel's newest pharmacy is looking well.

Kerry Idioms explained, Two of Listowel's old stock and Many Young Men of Twenty

Photo: Breda O'Mullane, Malow Camera Club

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Was That Summer 2018?

Beautiful sunshine in Ballybunion on April 19 2018

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The Kerryman Unbuttoned  Part 2

by Redmond O'Hanlon in Shannonside Annual

.....In those days rural Kerry was strange to me. I knew even less of the county, if that were possible, than the Customs man at the six county border post who inspected my pass on one occasion. "Ah, Listowel! I see” he remarked knowledgeably as he examined my right to pass from one part of my own country to another, “I hear they’re all six footers and Irish speakers down there.” Whatever about the physique, I was soon to find that Irish was a sub stratum of the talk of field and fair in Kerry.

Of words lifted bodily from the Irish and first heard in Kerry I like to hear talk of collops. This is a jewel in its English, a warm mouth- filling word, rounded in its saying as the calves of which it tells. A satisfying word! Plucks too is simple and expressive. Here I see a cherubic good humoured face., evidence of years of lush feeding and rosy with content. Incidentally I can recall a townland called Collops near The Tory Bush in Co. Cavan. But neither the land nor the people were satisfying.

When I was first told that the milk in the muller had cracked, I talked cautiously around the subject until I learned that the milk that was heating in the saucepan had curdled. Bread baked on a losset I found to be just as flavoursome as the farls from the bakeboard of my youth, but only just. Bacon and cabbage from the skillet came no different from the pot or oven. And the brand, I was to find out, had nothing to do with the stock round up, but was only a substitute for the bucket hoop that with us kept the griddle from getting too hot. A gruel stick has a personality of its own, I always thought, with a higher kitchen status in Kerry than the potstick came south from stirring the stirabout. Crocks refer not to ancient motor cars or old wheezy men but merely to jam jars. The woman of the house darns “broken” socks and in the interval puts down a couple of eggs for John’s tea. When John comes in he pulls the door in after him. Some feat this for a tired farmer, and costly in repairs........

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From John Hannon Archive

These men have been identified as Paddy Healy and Jimmy Browne

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Another smiling ESB Girl

Her brother, John Antony Hegarty, sent us this photo of his sister, Josephine Hegarty at work in the ESB shop in Church Street in the 1990s.

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Many Young Men of Twenty

There is nowhere better to see a John B. Keane play than in Listowel and there are no better interpreters of the great playwright's work than his own North Kerry folk and you will find nowhere a more appreciative audience than in Listowel.

If one were  to single out one actor in a really strong cast in the latest production in St. John's,  Batt O'Keeffe put in an outstanding performance as Danger Mulally on Friday's opening night. I have seen Batt  play many parts over the years. His Michael James O'Flaherty in Synge's Playboy of the Western World was top class. But it would be hard to find a more professional performance than the one Batt put in on April 20 2018. I am delighted I was there to enjoy it.

Jack McKenna, Jamie Mazzelle, Annette O'Donnell, Sonny Egan, Rebecca Stapleton, Margaret Flavin
Oliver McGrath, Batt O'Keeffe, Barry Francis, Frances Kennedy, Tommy Denihan, Conor Foley and Gearóid O'Connor
Caitríona Dillon is missing from the photograph.

In the interval I met up with three lovely ladies who were remembering John B. with great fondness and I'm sure he was smiling down  on them....Anne Keane, John B.'s grandaughter was with a great Keane family friend, Sally O'Neill and Anne's aunt, John B.'s daughter, Joanna O'Flynn.

Aileen Hayes/ Scanlon was making a return to Listowel for the weekend. Aileen was a teacher in Presentation Secondary School, Listowel before her marriage. Joanna Keane was one of her star pupils.

Glashas, The Building of O'Connell's Avenue and Women in Media in Ballybunion 2018

Photo; Pat O'Meara, Mallow Camera Club

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The Kerryman Unbuttoned

From a Shannonside Annual, Redmond O'Hanlon writes of his experience of the distinct idiom and expression of Kerry speech

The woman of the house where I stopped to enquire told me that the people I was looking for lived only the pelt of a stone from the road. “Mary here will carry you up to the headland, sir, ”  she added, “but you will have to jump the glasha.” My proferred escort was a minute barefooted maiden of about ten summers. Looking at the wisp of femininity and remembering my eleven and a half stone, I thought of Sinbad, the Sailor and The Old Man of the Sea. But the glasha was still a problem. What was it at all and how did one go about jumping glashas? I wondered as we walked on. And did the daily jumping of such obstacles in Kerry account in any way for the ease with which the county’s ball players rose for the high ones in Croke Park?  And then light dawned. “Glasha,” I repeated as I walked along with the wee one, that must be the Irish glaise, a stream. And so we came to it. I said goodbye to my guide at the headland and duly jumped the glasha. No bother this to me in those days. A rangy leggy lad I was then and the jumping of glashas for years to come was to be one of the privileges of a job that brought me all over North Kerry and West Limerick.

(more tomorrow)

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Communion Class in Scoil Realt na Maidine

Photo credit; Ned O'Sullivan on Facebook

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Building O'Connell's Avenue

(Photos and Story from Vincent Carmody's Living History on Facebook 2016)

In the 10 years after our Civil War, very little was achieved, nationally, in the building of local authority housing. Around 1930, the members of, the Listowel U.D.C. were concerned with severe overcrowding in many properties and the use of many more with very poor sanitary conditions. Following a survey of the town's housing stock, they presented their findings and sent a plan to the Department Of Local Government. In response they were informed that the Listowel Council had been granted funds for the building of 104 houses. At this time, it was to be one of the largest local authority building contracts in the country.

The contracting tender, in 1932, was won by a local building contractor, M.J. Hannon. This in itself was a great bonus to the town, as it guaranteed a substantial number of years' work for the town's tradesmen and laborers, with, of course, a great spin off for the town's businesses.

Some years ago, I spoke at length, and took notes, from Mr Jim (Red) O'Sullivan of Charles Street. Jim, who had worked with the Hannon Builders since he left school, was officer manager at the time of the construction, (he is pictured in the second last row), unfortunately, with the passage of time, the notes were misplaced.  However, I can recall a number of the things which he told me. The council took soundings on a possible name. One of the early contenders, before they decided on O'Connell's Avenue, was Eucharistic Avenue, this was on account of the Eucharistic Congress which was been held in Dublin, in the summer of that year. He also explained, that the wage bill per week was, if I remember correctly, in the region of £400. At the time, this would have been an enormous sum of money, Jim would collect the money from the bank first thing each Saturday morning, after which, he would be escorted by an armed detective back to the office. There he would make out the pay packets in readiness for paying each man, at the conclusion of the half-days work on Saturday. All the blocks for the building work were manufactured on site.

The land on which the houses were built had been purchased from Lord Listowel, prior to it being built on, it had been used as meadowing by the O'Donnell family, family butchers in Listowel. The main entrance to the houses was from Convent Street, Later a roadway was built to connect up with Upper William Street. The building of this later facilitated the erection of St Brendan's Terrace. 

The official opening was on Monday, June 17th 1935. It was presided over, by then Government Minister, Sean T. O Kelly. ( He, ten years later, in June 1945, became Ireland's second President, replacing the outgoing Douglas Hyde).

The first residents had taken over their houses, prior to the official ceremony. In the main these were couples with young families. Today, a third generation of these families own many of these houses. Over the years there has been mass emigration from the area. However, those who remained, have contributed greatly, to the, social, cultural and sporting history of the town. 

The pink photograph is of a  pamphlet which was distributed to the local businesses, asking them that they allow their employees time off, to participate in the ceremony.

Local men who were part of the official party are seen here in conversation withe the minister. They are Eamon Kissane, T.D., Eddie Leahy and John McAuliffe in conversation with Minister Seán T. OCeallaigh.

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Women in Media 2018

I was in Ballybunion at the weekend for this super event. John Kelliher photographed me with some of the Writers' Week gang who were there enjoying a festival at which they didn't have to work.
Of course I was working away on your behalf. John snapped me as I snapped another photo for Listowel Connection. I'll bring you my report during the week as well as an account of my trip to St. John's for Many Young men of Twenty and to the Seanchaí for the history lecture.

John Kelliher's photo of me taking a photo of some Limerick ladies with Rachel English

Elizabeth Dunn, Annette Fitzgerald, Rachael English, RTE journalist and author, Mary Cogan and Elish Wren
Photos; John Kelliher

Tarbert children 1809, De Valera and Fleadh Cheoil 1981

Signs of Spring...tulips in bloom in Market Street in April 2018

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Tarbert pupils in 1809

Somebody doing a bit of ancestor research found these names on this website

Ancestor Network

A list of 39 schoolchildren in Tarbert, Co. Kerry in 1809 from NLI Ms 17,935 (5). if you make a connection, we would love to hear about it to jim.ryan@Flyleaf.ie 

‘A list of the Scholars educating (sic) at the english school founded at Tarbert by the Governors of Erasmus Smith’s Schools. May 1809. 

Mary Kelly
Sarah Fowler (?)
James Fowler (?)
Michael Finucane
Ann Finucane
Catherine Finucane
Elizabeth McCormick
Catherine Ware
Mary Ware
James Supple
John Eggleston
Hannah Nott
Charles Conner
Mary Conner
George Ware
William Dillane
Margaret Dillane
Michl. Dillane
John Dillane
William Murray
John Enright
Edmond Fowlove (?)
John Finucane
Michael Finucane
William Cummins
Pat Cummins
Margaret Cummins
Abigail Murray

A list of Free Boys
Francis Kelly
Thos. Kelly
Willm. King
David Ferguson
Henry McCormick
John Nott
Thos. Nott
Thos. Murray
Charles Murray
Thos. Ware
George Farrel ‘

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Dev's love of Turf

This story and picture are from Bord na Móna Living History blog

When Todd Andrews took charge of the Turf Development Board in 1934, Eamon de Valera made sure to inform Andrews of the importance which he personally attached to the development of the bogs. He also assured Andrews that he would always be available to help with any problems he encountered.

Dev was deeply interested in the progress of bog development and took pains to make his support known in public. Year after year from the beginning of the scheme he visited the bogs every Good Friday. Frank Aiken usually tagged along as he was even more interested in the success of the scheme. There was a picnic lunch on those occasions and Andrews and the other Board members tried to get Dev to drink a bottle of beer as proof of his assertion that he was not a teetotaller. On the bog visits Dev made a point of greeting the staff at all levels and discussed issues with them.

During the war Dev toured the bog areas of the west in support of the Emergency turf campaign.

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Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann  in Listowel

Johnny Hannon took this photo during Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann 1981. The hunger strikes in Long Kesh were on at the time and you can see posters of the hunger strikers on a caravan in the background. During the fleadh, sympathisers with the cause of the hunger strikers held a mock funeral  and some people hung black flags from their windows.

Love lost, Ploughing up The Cows' Lawn and an old photo

Listowel Pitch and Putt club now maintains a course in the Cows' Lawn.

This  was the location of much controversy 100 years ago.

PLOUGHING THE COWS LAWN

One hundred years ago this week, a remarkable event took place in Listowel.   A courageous action by a group of leaders in the town, armed only with hurleys, struck a non-violent blow on behalf of the people of the town to be masters of their own destiny, and to ‘walk their own land’.  

The event itself was the ploughing of the Cows Lawn, the property of Lord Listowel which was eventually to lead to the provision of probably the best loved amenity in the town  -  the present Town Park.

While a group of people ‘ploughing’ might seem a harmless enough activity, this ploughing was anything but harmless.  It led to a number of clashes and confrontations between the police and a number of local men, thirteen of whom were sentenced to 12 months in Cork and Belfast Gaol

To understand what a momentous occasion it was we have only to see the headlines in The Kerryman the following week:

As World War I raged, shortages of food and rising prices in 1917 started to cause distress  in the town.   The British Ministry of Food set up a food control committee for Ireland on 31 August 1917 and many of its regulations, in theory, applied to this country.    Sinn Féin established Food Committees throughout the country and started to organise local markets, distribution of local food at fair  prices and  arrangements for the poor of the town to get small areas of land or allotments to grow their own food.   

In February  1917, Listowel Urban Council Chairman Jack McKenna had been involved in a fruitless exchange of letters with Lord Listowel looking for permission to use 15 to 20 acres of vacant land

to be distributed among ‘artisans, labourers and small traders of the town … on which they could raise food to supplement their small earnings’. While a number of small unsuitable fields had been suggested, these were not acceptable to the Urban Council.

The two fields identified as the most suitable for the purpose were  called at the time the Back Lawn and the Front Lawn . These fields were at that time leased from Lord Listowel by two local men and ‘negotiations’ were opened with them to give up their tenancies.  John Keane held the front lawn and was willing to give up his tenancy.’Mr Keane was prepared to forego his right for the purpose of enabling the Council to proceed with the scheme, provided that Lord Listowel was satisfied’.

Mr.   Kenny who had the grazing of the back lawn was not keen to give up his title. He had a butcher shop – it was absolutely essential to enable him to carry on his trade as a butcher in the adjoining Church St., however he was persuaded to ‘do the right thing’.

On 25^th February 1918, tired of waiting for permission, the Sinn Féin Food Committee with the help of the Irish Volunteers from Moyvane, Knockanure, Finuge, Rathea, Ballyconry and Ballylongford marched into the town ‘all armed with hurleys and headed by bands, while ploughs and horses brought up the rear.  They were cordially received by the Listowel Company of Irish Volunteers with their brass band.  The whole procession, composed of some eleven or twelve hundred Volunteers, marched to the estate office in Feale View at 1.30 o’clock where the above mentioned waited on Mr. M. Hill, who is Lord Listowel’s chief clerk’.

 Although Messrs. Kenny and Keane had given up possession, Mr Hill refused to hand over the keys as he had not got orders from Lord Listowel. The Volunteers then broke open the gates leading to the back lawn near the National School house.  The ploughs and ploughmen started operations and another section  of Vounteers took over the front lawn.  Over the following two months, local people continued with tilling the land despite visits from the R.I.C., and the threat of court proceedings which culminated in the imprisonment of thirteen of the ‘offenders’ in Cork and Belfast Gaols.

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This was just the start of an endeavour that fifty years later culminated in the acquisition of the two lawns  for the people of Listowel.  It had taken from the twelfth century, firstly  with the Fitzmaurices and then with earls of Listowel as overlords, to put the lands back into the hands of the people of the town.

An illustrated talk on the full history  of the Cows Lawn from this event onwards, entitled ‘Sinn Féin v. Lord Listowel 1918’ will be given by Kay Caball at the Seanchaí on Sunday 22^nd April 7pm.

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Today's love poem is a favourite with teenagers.

But You Didn't

By Merrill Glass

Remember the time you lent me your car and I dented it?

I thought you'd kill me...

But you didn't.

Remember the time I forgot to tell you the dance was

formal, and you came in jeans?

I thought you'd hate me...

But you didn't.

Remember the times I'd flirt with

other boys just to make you jealous, and

you were?

I thought you'd drop me...

But you didn't.

There were plenty of things you did to put up with me,

to keep me happy, to love me, and there are

so many things I wanted to tell

you when you returned from

Vietnam...

But you didn't.

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People I Don't know with a Motorbike

From the John Hannon archive

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In Case You haven't Booked yet

Tickets are selling fast for this John B. Keane classic in St. John's

Photo; Frances Kennedy

Many Young Men of Twenty opens on Friday April 20 2018