Listowel Thread

AnBealBocht

Good to see you login, David.
Remember, if Land of a Thousand Lakes gets too wet or too cold for you, the Grand Canyon State beckons. M. ( No!, not the James Bond one.)

SandhillRoad

SandhillRoad

******************24,789
******************************

AnBealBocht

AnBealBocht wrote:

....as we in Listowel & throughout North Kerry looked forward to ' wran-boy day ' with almost as much enthusiasm as we did Christmas Day.

What else of value will we discard during this Third Millenium, I wonder?.

Ah, well. A Happy, Healthy & Prosperous New Year 2007 to all.

...and I just came across this piece by a son, grandson & nephew of an highly-respected, and famed, local family:

Ireland’s laureate of Christmas
Fergal Keane



On St Stephen’s Day, a day our English neighbours mystifyingly called ‘Boxing Day’, the men and boys of the locality would paint their faces with shoe polish, dress in old clothes or suits of straw and take to the roads to hunt for the wren. According to tradition, the wren betrayed St Stephen, the first of the Christian martyrs. In the old days the unfortunate bird would be chased until it collapsed from exhaustion and was then tied to a pole at the head of the procession.

By the time I first saw wren boys, the chase had become purely symbolic, and of course an excuse to sample neighbourly hospitality. To the accompaniment of tin whistles and bodhráns (hand drums made from goatskin) the wren boys would go from door to door in search of porter and Christmas pudding with a song that would have been known in rural districts all over Ireland.

The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
On St Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze,
Although he is little, his family is great,
I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat.

Kavanagh would have heard that song as a boy — as did my father, who became his friend in the 1950s. They had a rural background in common and a passion for poetry. When my father launched himself on the Dublin theatre scene, Kavanagh was already an established literary figure. He could count John Betjeman among his friends. The two had met when Betjeman was ‘cultural attaché’ at the British embassy in Dublin during the second world war.


Show me the stretcher-bed I slept on
In a room on Drumcondra Road,
Let John Betjeman call for me in a car.

It is summer and the eerie beat
Of madness in Europe trembles the
Wings of butterflies along the canal.
(‘I Had a Future’)

But Kavanagh would always remain a countryman at heart, or ‘bogman’ as the sophisticates of metropolitan Dublin would have put it. One of ten children, he had grown up in poverty and had left formal education at the age of 13. But, like many of his generation, he did not regard leaving school as the end of his education. His poetry is full of literary allusion, the fruit of his voracious reading.

Kavanagh had a natural sympathy for my father, the bright-eyed young man who declaimed from Keats and Shelley as they roamed the Georgian town. This was a decade before the property developers destroyed much of her most beautiful architecture. Dublin in those days was still a city where a poet would find himself bidden by the ghosts of history.

Crossing O’Connell Bridge in the centre of Dublin one day, Kavanagh turned and contemplated the young Keane’s ample poverty and aquiline profile.

‘Keane,’ he declared, ‘ye have a nose like the Romans but no empire to bring down with ye.’

Although he was a friend to my father, Kavanagh had a talent for alienating people. He did not fit easily into any scene and could be fiercely abusive when drunk. The stories are numerous of his drink-cadging and splenetic attacks on acquaintances. In his defence it should be said that any Irish writer who spends time in a public house is certain to command the unwanted attention of numerous bores and troublemakers. A man might easily be driven to hard words or worse.

( With thanks to The Spectator, December 16th., 2006.)

SandhillRoad

Have you a copy under the mattress, in the attic, under the floorboards , reading material in the "you know where"? Go search ! This item I found on the Internet:

Item Details

Format: Price:$499.95

Condition: Good
Other notes: Good; Hardcover with Jacket; 1973, Mercier Press; Jacket moderately shelfworn, but intact with no large scuffs or tears; Jacket is taped to insides of boards; Name on front endpaper, otherwise unmarked pages; Good binding with straight spine; Black & white jacket with title in yellow & white lettering; 611 pages; "Listowel and its vicinity," by J. Anthony Gaughan.
_______________________________________


'tis the truth !

___________________________________

AnBealBocht

I have a copy of this, bought from the very reliable Danny O'Hannain kiosk at the Plaza during Writers' Week x 2005 for Euro 15.00 and SIGNED personally by Fr. J. Tony Gaughan, WHOM I TALKED TO WHILE HE SIGNED IT FOR ME!.

So, what am I offered?.

SandhillRoad

Bob Dylan Fan

Hi all

My Fellow Listowel friends, I have attached a few Photos of our recent 70cm+ of snow we had......one of the biggest storms we had here in Southern Ontario since 1977.......I can't wait for summer.

Bob Dylan Fan

Is everybody on Vacation..........Not much activity on here lately

SandhillRoad

Also catching the bas***d that been eating out of my bird feeder

SandhillRoad

Need id on the dog breed.

SandhillRoad

Bob Dylan Fan

He looks like a Newfoundland Dog. I have attached a photo

AnBealBocht

Bob Dylan Fan wrote:

Hi all

My Fellow Listowel friends, I have attached a few Photos of our recent 70cm+ of snow we had......one of the biggest storms we had here in Southern Ontario since 1977.......I can't wait for summer.

This Sonoran Desert resident asks ' Bob Dylan Fan ' & ' Sandhill Road ' is ' snow ' the upright things that look like cacti, or, the white substance covering the ground in both Canada & Upsate New York?.
It is 77*F here in Phoenix, AZ. today.

SandhillRoad

QUOTE=Bob Dylan Fan]He looks like a Newfoundland Dog. I have attached a photo[/QUOTE]
_______________________________________
Thank you BDF

SandhillRoad

Bob Dylan Fan

Yesterday was a great day to be Irish...what more can I say...and for those bigots out there that live in the past...let them live there, and again those bigots who tried to drive a political wedge between Irish and English rugby fans got the answer they deserved - complete and utter indifference, and the much-hyped protest outside Croke Park if it could be called such, was a damp squib attended by some 150 misguided souls.

SandhillRoad

Bob Dylan Fan wrote:

Yesterday was a great day to be Irish...what more can I say...and for those bigots out there that live in the past...let them live there, and again those bigots who tried to drive a political wedge between Irish and English rugby fans got the answer they deserved - complete and utter indifference, and the much-hyped protest outside Croke Park if it could be called such, was a damp squib attended by some 150 misguided souls.

.


Can we have a vote on this?

UpTheAshes

Playing the British national anthem in Croke Park was fine, but they didn't play the Irish national anthem.They played that wishy-washy "Ireland Calls" to be politically correct. What a crock! It's no wonder the English team was so badly beaten; if I had to listen to "Ireland Calls" followed by repeated doses of "The Fields of Athenry" (the dreariest song ever), I'd be asleep too.

Bob Dylan Fan

The Irish Anthem was played...I have it on YouTube........I believe living in the North American Continent too long makes people think about the old ways and how we begrudged everyone and everything English. Ireland is a different place now and we have to accept that.

Lovely writer

Inside Croke Park 85, 000 people
Protesters outside 150.

Enough said.

Do those pitiful remnants of a bygone age still think they speak for the Irish.

UpTheAshes

Did they play Amhrann na Fhiann? I thought that they only play Ireland Calls.. That's what bothers me.I was not making anti-English comments(Heaven forbid).I have no problem with them playing God Save the Queen,as it says in the first line of my post, (take another look, before you rush to judge). After all it was always played in Landsdowne Rd. at Ireland/England games. And what I said about singing the Fields of Athenry still stands. It is dreary.

Bob Dylan Fan

Nobody is judging anybody...I would not dare. Just basically cant people just forget about the past an get on with it.....in that I am referring to the people back home whos ignorance keeps them in the past...this is not a judgement on these people but a fact.:)

Lovely writer

Bob Dylan Fan wrote:

Nobody is judging anybody...I would not dare. Just basically cant people just forget about the past an get on with it.....in that I am referring to the people back home whos ignorance keeps them in the past...this is not a judgement on these people but a fact.:)

I must strongly disagree with the idea of "forget ting about the past". We must learn from it and then move on. History has made us what we are. We can no more deny our history that we can deny our genetic makeup.

UpTheAshes

So why the comment about people "living in the North American continent too long" if you are referring to people back home?

SandhillRoad

Lovely writer wrote:

Inside Croke Park 85, 000 people
Protesters outside 150.

Enough said.

Do those pitiful remnants of a bygone age still think they speak for the Irish.

"Do those pitiful remnants of a bygone age"

An insulting statement to the memory of those who fought for Irish freedom.

SandhillRoad

Cherry Tree

SandhillRoad wrote:

This picture was not taken in the recent past but it is very interesting to note the changes
At the corner of the picture Carroll's window is boarded up after the fire.
Next to the bank is McGuire's house. This is now Cearnóg Dental Clinic.
Further on is the SWS Financial Centre.
There is a Nail Bar housed now over the North Kerry Community Advice and Job Centre.
Can anyone put a date on the picture?

SandhillRoad

SandhillRoad