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Poetry

 

 

 

Scenic Athea

 

Come and take a drive with me, we’ll pass an hour or two

 

As we travel round the parish its scenic sights to view

 

It’s always a mystery to me why natives go away

 

To view the far off places and leave behind Athea.

 

 

 

 We’ll start out on our journey from Glasha’s fertile plain

 

And travel west on the Kerryline and turn left at Blaine

 

As we drive on by the bend of Kyle we’ll view that lovely scene

 

O’er that picturesque valley of Lower & Upper Dirreen.

 

 

 

 We turn left at the crossroads, Knocknagorna fair to greet

 

As we drive along its sunkissed slopes overlooking Fairystreet

 

Then to Knockdown and Toureendonnell that’s sheltered from the breeze

 

By the hills of Knocknaclugga adorned with tall pine trees.

 

 

 

 As we drive up through Knockfinisk we can view the country wide

 

O’er Rooska, Glenduff and Ballinahane and o’er Keale’s lofty height

 

Driving along by the Clash road our hearts thrill to the core

 

As we view the green fields of Templeathea, Knockanare and Glenagore.

 

 

 

 The view o’er Cratloe and Dromadda would set the weary mind at rest

 

As you gaze down o’er Knocknabowl, Coole East and Coole West.

 

Driving by Parkanna brings pleasures all the way

 

With the greatest view in Limerick from the hill of Knockathea.

 

 

 

 By Lower and Upper Athea we pass, its beauty never fails

 

As its verdant slopes go winding down through the valley of the Gale

 

To end our pleasant journey through the village we will pass

 

And thank God for His blessings as we drive up Gortnagross.

 

 

 

 So if you ever want to enjoy a spin, no need to go far away

 

You’ll get pleasures in plenty here at home as you drive around Athea.

 

Paddy Faley- RIP 2011

 

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Poetry

 

 

 

Noreen O'Connell sends us this sad poem which was written by her emigrant great grand uncle, Paddy Histon from Listowel Connection.

 

 

 

 The Dear Little Shamrock

 

The shamrock you sent me

 

Fond greetings it brings me,

 

From the green hills of Ireland,

 

Far, far away:

 

And when I hold them

 

With care I unfold them,

 

For they grew near my home

 

In the hills of Athea.

 

 

 

The leaves were once green

 

Mow they are dried up and withered,

 

The tears from my eyes

 

Will refresh them like dew:

 

They recall to my mind

 

The long-cherished memories,

 

For it’s often I trod

 

On the spot where it grew.

 

 

 

Oh, could they but speak

 

What stories they would tell me,

 

Of the heroes who fought

 

To set our land free,

 

The martyrs who fell

 

By the sword and the  scaffold,

 

Are fondly engraved in my sad memory.

 

 

 

Here’s to the shamrock,

 

The flowers of St Patrick,

 

I will wear it to honour

 

The Saint’s blessed day:

 

But my footsteps will tread

 

On the shores of Columbia,

 

But my heart is at home

 

In the hills of Athea

 

 

 

Composed by Patrick J. Histon

 

In Conn. U.S. A . circa  1930

 

 

 

 

 

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Mum by Peg Prendeville

 

Who wants to be a Mum?

 

 

 

I iron the clothes, I wash the floors

 

I shine the windows, I polish the doors,

 

I bake the bread, I make the tea

 

I stick a plaster on a grazed knee

 

 Am I mad to be a Mum?

 

If needed, I’ll help to milk the cows

 

 

 

I hug a child and settle the rows

 

I weed the garden and mow the lawn

 

I haven’t even time to yawn

 

I must be mad to be a Mum!

 

I mend the clothes, I sew in patches

 

 

 

I feed the baby, I kiss the scratches

 

I darn the socks, I get the dinner

 

Is it any wonder that I’m getting thinner?

 

Oh, who would be a Mum?

 

Oh, but I also have to say

 

When I get a hug it makes my day

 

 

 

And I thank my God that I’ve been born

 

When I see a smiling face each morn.

 

Is it so bad being a Mum?

 

I’m the first to get told the news

 

“I love you, Mammy” will clear the blues

 

And before they hurry out to school

 

 

 

I get that last kiss as a rule.

 

Isn’t it lovely being a Mum?

 

Oh, yes it’s bliss when I can see

 

Those happy eyes look up at me

 

And everything seems worth the while

 

When I look down on that special smile

 

Yes, I’m glad that I’m a Mum!

 

=============================

 

2024 Diller Tikkun Olam Awards Spotlight Video

 

https://youtu.be/9SYxbNTHH4I?feature=shared

 

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Poem

 

A Nostalgic Poem from John McGrath

 

 

 

(from John’s anthology Blue Sky Day)

 

 

 

Once in the Long Ago and Far Away

 

 

 

Once in the Long Ago and Far Away

 

 

 

I ran barefoot along bright boreens,

 

 

 

Dashing through pools of morning blue.

 

 

 

Over the dry-stone walls I flew,

 

 

 

Crashing through cobwebbed meadows,

 

 

 

Dew-drenched; phlegmed with cuckoo-spit.

 

 

 

Paused to wish by the whitewashed well.

 

 

 

Fished in its never-ending silver stream

 

 

 

For shining silver treasures.

 

 

 

All through the ringing fields I ran

 

 

 

All through the live-long, lark-song day,

 

 

 

Tireless as Time

 

 

 

‘Til time and hunger called me

 

 

 

Back to buttermilk lamplight, Banshee dreams,

 

 

 

Once in the Long Ago and Far Away.

 

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Poetry from Margaret Galvin

 

This entry was posted on April 10, 2024 by huntrogers, in creative writing, Irish Culture, Irish poetry, Irish Studies, News, Poetry and tagged Irish poetry, Margaret Galvin. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments

 

 

 

AFTER MY MOTHER’S FUNERAL

 

After her funeral, we filled black bin bags

 

with her clothes and shoes,

 

readied for crude and random dispersal.

 

Her walking stick poked through the plastic.

 

 

 

Newspaper was wrapped, slapdash, around

 

her thick mugs and delicate china;

 

her forks and knives and buckled saucepans clattered,

 

anonymously, in cardboard boxes, marked ‘kitchen.’

 

 

 

The house was skinned raw with the cold,

 

none of us had her skill with  fire.

 

Outside the fading whine

 

of traffic echoed desolate in the distance.

 

 

 

We huddled, adult sons and daughters,

 

unmoored, listless as strays,

 

fearful of the random terrors of the road,

 

the hit and miss of chance, the casual blows of happenstance.

 

 

 

ANGELS

 

 

 

Duffy’s Circus: one night only, transient and vagabond.

 

The teacher lost us by lunch-time, even her snide remarks

 

about the half-crown entry fee didn’t matter.

 

 

 

Slapstick and clowning lifted us,

 

tricks of deftness mesmerised as we followed

 

the juggler’s toss and catch,

 

his hold of things in whirl and balance.

 

 

 

But when the ringmaster cracked his whip for the trapeze artists

 

we gasped at these beauties in sequinned leotards,

 

aerialists who’d spin and swing from stratospheric heights,

 

hang from their ankles, defy gravity and fly

 

like angels above us in a canvas sky.

 

 

 

As the orchestra drum-rolled the tension,

 

we peeped through lattice fingers,

 

feared our angels might fall,

 

all their precise timing, their nerve and judgement

 

thudding into the safety net,

 

held for them by the stay-rope men,

 

ordinary chaps who willed them on, as we did,

 

to the heights we’d never scale.

 

 

 

TWO MEN AT THE CINEMA

 

 

 

Every Wednesday, he took the Basildon Bond writing pad,

 

his fountain pen and ink from the biscuit tin,

 

to compose his order for the taxi man and grocer,

 

Jimmy Costigan of Barrack Street, Cahir.

 

 

 

In formal prose he detailed his unvarying list:

 

PG tips tea, Calvita cheese and always several bars of chocolate,

 

to be delivered to his house on Saturday evening

 

after which he’d need a lift to Clonmel to the pictures,

 

and ask  that the taxi man oblige him with his company.

 

He’d sign off ‘yours in anticipation,’ and end

 

with the full expanse of his signature, Thomas  F. Cahill.

 

 

 

In the plush dark of the cinema,

 

this shy, reclusive man rode out with the drunken Sherriff to El Dorado

 

understood why the lawman took to the drink

 

when the saloon girl left town.

 

Wept for his loss.

 

 

 

Each week, as he huddled into the back seat of the Zephyr,

 

he’d remind Jimmy to look out

 

for the usual letter, detailing his modest food order;

 

mention his standing request to hire the car,

 

the destination, long established.

 

 

 

Margaret Galvin is a Tipperary poet living in Wexford. She is a former Editor of Ireland’s Own. Her poetry and prose are regularly broadcast on RTE National radio on ‘Sunday Miscellany’ and ‘A Word in Edgeways.’ She has published six collections of work . Her poetry has previously been published in Tinteán. It was described by Dr Frances Glass, University of Melbourne as ‘gritty and unsentimental.’

 

https://tintean.org.au/2024/04/10/poetry-from-margaret-galvin/

 

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Poetry from Michael Patrick Moore

 

This entry was posted on April 10, 2023 by huntrogers, in creative writing, diaspora, News, Poetry and tagged Poetry. Bookmark the permalink.

 

 

 

MORNING

 

 

 

Woken by sunlight upon me that shone

 

Through my bedroom window the morning seen,

 

A raucous riot of red and green,

 

Lorikeets adorning callistemon.

 

An avian chorus announcing the day

 

From perfumed Eucalypts promising rain,

 

And now seeking flowers and seeking grain,

 

All manner of creatures at work and play.

 

Thankful am I for this sensory feast

 

Thankful am I for the gift of this day,

 

The return of light after night times’ fall.

 

Just to be part of this morning released,

 

For the few precious lines, mine in this play,

 

Just for the gift of this morning at all.

 

 

 

THE NEWNESS OF THINGS

 

 

 

The stars are fading,

 

To the east a match is struck

 

Heralding the dawn.

 

 

 

 

 

At one with the sun,

 

With gratitude I rise now

 

With the rising world.

 

 

 

 

 

Synchronicity,

 

My heart beats in perfect time

 

With the woken day.

 

 

 

 

 

The lines become blurred,

 

Between all that is and I

 

Such affinity.

 

 

 

 

 

No mere backdrop this,

 

I feel all, I am part of

 

The fabric of things.

 

 

 

I was born in Queensland the fourth of six children, Fourth generation Australian born on my mother’s side who were predominantly of Irish stock who came to Australia post the famine years (for the most part from the counties of Tipperary, Wicklow and Donegal). My father came to Australia from Dublin in the 1950s; his father was raised in Maam Connemara and later in Kilkee County Clare but the Moore family going back were from Kilmorna, later known as Kilmeany near Listowel. His mother, was a Barrett from Ennis, County Clare, that whole family very involved in those troubled years of the war of independence in Ireland. Also just out of interest I was part of a little Folk/Irish trio called Welder’s Dog for 10 years or so, with a brother of mine David and our friend Peter Harris, some of our music is still on YouTube I believe. If you listen to Castle Hill Patriots, that is my Dad singing Boolavogue at the start of that song.

 

https://tintean.org.au/2023/04/10/poetry-from-michael-patrick-moore/

 

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https://www.athea.ie/category/news/

 

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Poetry

 

I wrote the following recently on learning that Maria Vaughan/Reidy has moved her hair salon to her home place adjacent to Vaughan Furniture in Moyvane. I wish her luck in her brand new modern premises. by Peg Prendeville. April 2024.

 

Best wishes to Urban Angels

 

 

 

 My heart did break this morning

 

When passing up through glin

 

To see that URBAN ANGELS

 

Was bleak and bare within,

 

 

 

 It used to be my comfort spot

 

Where I threw away all cares

 

And enjoyed my cup of coffee

 

While Maria did my hair.

 

 

 

But now I’m in a tangle

 

And may have to cross the border

 

To Moyvane in Co. Kerry

 

To put my hair in order.

 

 

 

 Best wishes to you and staff Maria

 

As you start with a clean slate

 

You will go from strength to strength

 

Outside your parents gate.

 

---------------------------------------------------

 

==========

 

Belville Long Ago by Michael Dwane follows:

 

 

 

I grew up near Belville creamery on the banks of the River Deel

 

'Twas a Co-op in the parish of Kilmeedy

 

It was managed by John Sheehan a man as hard as steel

 

Though gentle with the poor and with the needy.

 

I went there at the age of twelve, just after confirmation

 

The war was on. thank God we were not in it

 

I drove a wicked donkey who oft caused consternation

 

And Lloyd's milk came from Heathfield with a jennet.

 

The wet turf had Dan Harrold at his wits end to raise steam

 

Long queues from Barry's Height to Harrold's Cross

 

Was it Feohanagh or Kilmeedy had the better hurling team

 

Paddy Mac and Seanie Enright argued the toss.

 

Men I have fond memories of Terry Liston and Paddy Gill

 

Befriended me when I was dressed in duds

 

Tim Keane, Tom Aherne, and Moss, I miss him still

 

And Dan Duggan that fine man who sprayed the spuds.

 

Sediment, Antibiotics, not to mention Methylene Blue

 

Were strange words that left us all in shock

 

For to fill our tanks in days of yore, all we had to do

 

Was wash a strainer , a bucket and a block.

 

Most of those men and women too have crossed the great divide

 

May the good Lord grant them eternal Rest

 

And if our passing Belville, remember them with pride

 

And pray they all have passed the final test.

 

=====================================

 

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Poetry

 

Christmas at The Claus House

 

 

 

Home Alone

 

 

 

A Christmas poem from Mary McElligott

 

 

 

‘What will I do Mrs Claus?”

 

 

 

Santa rubbed his head.

 

 

 

He really was exhausted.

 

 

 

His legs felt like lead.

 

 

 

His head was pounding, throbbing.

 

 

 

He was frozen to the bone.

 

 

 

Mrs Claus was too busy cleaning,

 

 

 

To listen to him moan.

 

 

 

He was like this every year,

 

 

 

I suppose you’d say, stressed.

 

 

 

She’d listen, support and encourage,

 

 

 

Take out his long sleeved vest.

 

 

 

Christmas Eve was looming,

 

 

 

Three more sleeps to go.

 

 

 

Was it his age? She wondered,

 

 

 

Gosh, t’was hard to know.

 

 

 

Mrs Claus was high dusting,

 

 

 

Changing sheets and beds.

 

 

 

Five hundred elves was no joke,

 

 

 

The last time she counted heads.

 

 

 

One hundred stayed all year

 

 

 

But in October that count went up,

 

 

 

Hard work for Mrs. Claus,

 

 

 

To get it all set up.

 

 

 

She cooked and cleaned their dorms.

 

 

 

She worked out their Rota,

 

 

 

24/7 their job,

 

 

 

Hard, juggling that quota.

 

 

 

She loved it though, being busy,

 

 

 

Loved caring for the elves,

 

 

 

They were like their children,

 

 

 

When they didn’t have any themselves.

 

 

 

Some poor elves were homesick,

 

 

 

In the North Pole for a whole twelve weeks.

 

 

 

She often saw tears flowing,

 

 

 

Down their little cheeks.

 

 

 

She had one big job to sort.

 

 

 

She did it through the year.

 

 

 

It was she who got the elves their gifts,

 

 

 

Brought them their Christmas cheer.

 

 

 

She made several trips down south.

 

 

 

There was a great service from The Pole

 

 

 

But her favorite place to go,

 

 

 

Was a place called Listowel.

 

 

 

It was so tidy and clean,

 

 

 

So pretty, down by the park

 

 

 

And even more beautiful at night,

 

 

 

With with all those blue lights in the dark.

 

 

 

She’d buy all their gifts,

 

 

 

Hats, scarves and gloves for the elves.

 

 

 

She’d pack them in huge cases,

 

 

 

Leaving a bit of space for a few bits for themselves.

 

 

 

She loved Christmas Eve,

 

 

 

Santa gone, the elves in bed.

 

 

 

She’d open up her cases,

 

 

 

Deliver gifts as she’d quietly tread,

 

 

 

Up and down, between the beds,

 

 

 

One hundred in each dorm,

 

 

 

Over and back until the cases were empty,

 

 

 

Finishing up near dawn.

 

 

 

They all get a Christmas bonus,

 

 

 

50 Euros and of course, some sweets,

 

 

 

After all it was Christmas

 

 

 

And you’d have to give them treats.

 

 

 

She’d only just be gone tombed,

 

 

 

When Santa would land in, FROZEN..

 

 

 

She’d leave out coke and cake,

 

 

 

Waiting for him, dozing.

 

 

 

‘How was it Santa?’ she’d ask,

 

 

 

‘Everything go all right with the reindeer?’

 

 

 

“Absolutely perfect Mrs Claus,

 

 

 

Thanks to you. Merry Christmas, my dear.”

 

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My Dear Old Kerry Home

 

 

 

From The Butte Independent 1927 a poem by D. M. Brosnan, Castleisland

 

 

 

“Tis Christmas Eve in Kerry, and the Pooka is at rest

 

Contented in his stable eating hay;

 

 

 

The crystal snow is gleaming on the mountains of the West,

 

And a lonesome sea is sobbing far away;

 

But I know a star is watching o’er the bogland and the stream,

 

And ‘tis coming, coming, coming o’er the foam;

 

And ’tis twinkling o’er the prairie with a message and a dream

 

Of Christmas in my dear old Kerry home.

 

 

 

‘Tis Christmas Eve in Kerry, and the happy mermaids croon

 

The songs, of youth and hope that never die;

 

Oh never more on that dear shore for you and me, aroon.

 

The rapture of that olden lullaby:

 

But the candle lights are gleaming on a hillside far away.

 

And peace is in the blue December gloam;

 

And o’er the sea of memory I hear the pipers play

 

At Christmas in my dear old Kerry home.

 

 

 

‘Tis Christmas Eve in Kerry, oh I hear the fairies’ lyre

 

Anear the gates of slumber calling sweet.

 

Calling softly, calling ever to the land of young desire,

 

To the pattering of childhood’s happy feet;

 

 

 

But a sleepless sea is throbbing, and the stars are watching’ true

 

As they journey to the wanderers who roam —

 

Oh the sea, the stars shall bring me tender memories of you.

 

 

 

 

 

D. M. BROSNAN, Close, Castleisland, Co. Kerry.

 

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Poetry

 

Feeding the birds

 

While eating breakfast each morning

 

It is my great delight

 

To watch the birds doing the same

 

As they pick with all their might.

 

Their table is outside my window

 

On which I place some nuts

 

Immediately they flutter in

 

And start to fill their guts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They can be quite competitive

 

And push each other aside

 

Like squabbling children, they want to be

 

The first to grab a bite.

 

It is like a busy airport

 

With planes lining up to land

 

These little birds come swooping in

 

Their breakfast to demand.

 

 

 

 

 

They get their bite and then fly off

 

To a nearby tree

 

But as soon as the nut is swallowed

 

They are back again, I see.

 

They are a lively family

 

And bring colour to my day.

 

As they dine with me each morning

 

From their little window tray.

 

November 2023 By Peg Prendeville

 

-----------------------------

 

Two more poems from Michael Patrick Moore reminding us of friendship and loss and love during this month of remembering

 

 

 

Fire Side Conversations

 

(For Joe)

 

 

 

Shades of colour

 

Rainbow like still

 

Occupy our minds,

 

Tumbling into one another

 

Shades of many kinds.

 

 

 

Music we can almost taste

 

And dripping off the tongue,

 

Old as parchment paper

 

And yet altogether young.

 

 

 

Peace descends upon us

 

Like a blanket

 

Warm and soft,

 

Conversations Fireside

 

Are what we’re dreaming of.

 

 

 

The universe will keep for us

 

This promise,

 

I am sure;

 

Waves though restless

 

In their making

 

Always find the shore

 

 

 

BROKEN GLASS

 

(Vale Jo-Anne)

 

 

 

Shell shocked; all we who were there to mourn your death that dark day in April.

 

 

 

Said our goodbyes and then quietly, tearfully and almost gratefully

 

Withdrew from that place and embraced once again our lives and the living where you could not follow.

 

So we left you instead in that tear-stained earth.

 

 

 

Or did we?

 

 

 

Was it I alone who heard it;

 

 

 

A sound like breaking glass.

 

Your spirit dispersing as we dispersed a shard for each of our hearts.

 

 

 

That private tempest you weathered alone, is spent now at least I guess and serenity sought but dearly bought

 

 

 

Eternally yours; my friend.

 

 

 

https://tintean.org.au/2023/11/10/poems-of-rembrance-by-michael-patrick-moore/

 

 

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Poetry by Peg Prendeville

 

Around the fire

 

 

 

Around the fire we sat each night

 

Chairs pulled together nice and tight

 

Dad made sure the turf was in

 

Mom sat knitting with a happy grin.

 

From a ball of wool in a wellington

 

A sock grew longer as the night went on.

 

The sound of the latch and in comes Mick

 

Tapping the flags with his blackthorn stick.

 

We make some room for another chair

 

Widening the circle gathered there.

 

Soon the stories would be told

 

 

 

Each one more daring, dark and bold.

 

Just when we thought we could take no more

 

Someone would stamp on the stone flagged floor.

 

The “Panny” mugs with the milky tea

 

Calmed the nerves and helped us see

 

That twas all in fun, no need to fear

 

We were all family gathered here.

 

Soon cousin JohnJoe would lilt a reel

 

And we young children danced toe to heel

 

And Mick tapped the flags with his blackthorn stick

 

And Mom would raise the oil-lamp wick.

 

Thus we passed the winter nights

 

In semi darkness, no strong lights

 

And all too soon it was time for bed

 

But not until the prayers were said.

 

Mom tucked us up in our feather beds

 

With images of fairies in our heads.

 

We knew we were safe from hurt or harm

 

Cuddled up tight, all snug and warm.

 

===============================

 

Poetry

 

https://wordpress.com/tag/national-poetry-day October 2023

 

 

 

Today is National Poetry Day and to celebrate, I am sharing the work of Galway based poet Sarah Clancy, whose work really impressed me when she read at Seamus Heaney HomePlace this year as part of the commemoration readings for the tenth anniversary of the poet’s death.

 

A page and performance poet, she has three collections to her name, Stacey and the Mechanical Bull (Lapwing Press, Belfast, 2011), Thanks for Nothing, Hippies (Salmon Poetry, 2012), and The Truth and Other Stories (Salmon Poetry, 2014). Along with fellow Galway poet and recent Booker Prize shortlistee,  Elaine Feeney, she released a poetry CD called Cinderella Backwards in 2013.

 

 

 

She has been placed or shortlisted in several of Ireland’s most prestigious written poetry competitions, including the Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize, the Patrick Kavanagh Award, and the Listowel Collection of Poetry Competition.  In performance poetry Sarah has won the Cúirt International Festival of Literature Grand Slam Championships, and has twice been runner up in the North Beach Nights Grand Slam. In 2013 on her second go at representing Connaught in the All- Ireland Grand Slam Championships she was runner up.

 

 

 

While her collections are inspiring to read, Clancy’s work benefits from hearing her read it aloud, as her wit and deadpan humour leavens the difficult issues that she covers in her work. She is a campaigner as well as a poet, interested in climate change, immigration, the treatment of women in Ireland and questions of gender identity and social inequality.

 

 

 

I chose this poem – ‘Solutions for Homelessness’ – because it fits perfectly with this year’s theme for National Poetry Day, which is ‘Refuge’ and it displays Sarah’s playful use of humour to highlight serious social issues:

 

 

 

    Solutions to Homelessness

 

 

 

    Sure can’t you live in the drainpipes?

 

 

 

    Or on one of those windowsills with the thin metal spikes on them

 

 

 

    if the pigeons can manage it, I don’t see your problem

 

 

 

    are you a bird or a man? Can’t you fold yourself

 

 

 

    into the ashtray of an old Nissan Micra,

 

 

 

    these days no one is smoking

 

 

 

    so I’d say they’re all vacant, can’t you sleep in a chip punnet

 

 

 

    or better a snack box with a lid?

 

 

 

    Sleep in Eyre Square sure where Pàdraic Ó Conaire used to be,

 

 

 

    or if you stood in Browne’s doorway that might keep

 

 

 

    the rain off you, think outside of the box for once can’t you?

 

 

 

    You could sleep in a lobster pot or on the back

 

 

 

    of a swan down in Claddagh,

 

 

 

    you could line up a few ducks and lie down on them

 

 

 

    maybe you could sleep on the mudguard

 

 

 

    of one of those crooked-wheel bicycles the two Belgians left

 

 

 

    to be vandalised, or you could tell the Guards at Mill Street

 

 

 

    that you’re there to report a white collar criminal

 

 

 

    it would be decades before someone  could see you

 

 

 

    and at least you’d have a roof over your head while you waited

 

 

 

    Maybe you could study something in the Open University

 

 

 

    while you’re there in the waiting room, and better yourself

 

 

 

    you could build yourself into one of Macnas’s puppets

 

 

 

    you’d surely get at least the summer out of it,

 

 

 

    and if you’re not fond of the arts can’t you sleep in the fountain

 

 

 

    you’d be showered and all then, you could furl yourself

 

 

 

    in the sail of a yacht down at the docks

 

 

 

    or if you get a small trolley with wheels and you lay on it,

 

 

 

    you could sleep in one of the segments

 

 

 

    of the revolving doors in the Meyrick Hotel without blocking anyone

 

 

 

    will you go away and don’t bother me

 

 

 

    there is no housing crisis in Galway for anyone

 

 

 

    with even a shred of imagination, will you show some initiative

 

 

 

    even snails can find homes for themselves.

 

============================

========================

 

 

 

Momentary Insights

 

Poetry- Patrick O’Brien of Newcastlewest and Australia

 

Pages:  152

 

An eclectic mix of emotion, with themes of love, loss, despair, fear, anxiety and hope, where the catharsis of writing whilst in the therapeutic senses of nature brings the momentary insights of truth.

 

Truth…

 

“Though seemingly momentary, the ideal is of abiding eternal,

 

‘Tis the essence of our being, in every light and all nocturnal.

 

Freely exposed cognitions, bared naked in thought,

 

Given freely at no cost… priceless.

 

Now… Feel clothed in the warmth,

 

Of what in all of us is sought.”

 

https://www.austinmacauley.com/book/momentary-insights

 

 

 

========================

 

What is the ideal man?

 

 

 

This is a question that philosophers have pondered over and riffed on for millennia.

 

 

 

Many philosophers have sketched out a vision of an ideal man who, unsurprisingly, encompasses the values that represent the pinnacle of their philosophical beliefs. These conceptions of ideal men are similar in that they all require reaching beyond human defaults to develop greater excellence, but each differs as to which virtues should be more or less emphasized to achieve that excellence. While none of the ideals can ever be perfectly embodied, they serve as aspirational models, guiding individuals to strive for personal growth and virtuous flourishing.

 

https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/knowledge-of-men/the-ideal-man-according-to-7-different-philosophers/?mc_cid=fa690c416d&mc_eid=8bc7642aac

 

==================================

 

 

beachcomber australia

 

2mo

 

National Library of Ireland on The Commons I told ChatGPT you were speechless, and asked it to give you some words. Here is what came back in a few seconds ...

 

 

 

To the National Library of Ireland,

 

 

 

Though you may find yourselves momentarily speechless,

 

I have a topic that's sure to bring you some cheerfulness.

 

Let's talk about limericks, those whimsical rhymes,

 

With their clever wordplay and rhythmic chimes.

 

 

 

In a small Irish town, they first came to be,

 

Lively verses with a touch of glee.

 

Five lines they consist, in a pattern well-known,

 

With a rhythm and structure that's uniquely their own.

 

 

 

There once was a man from the Emerald Isle,

 

Whose wit and humor would surely beguile.

 

With just a few lines, he'd capture our laughter,

 

And leave us all smiling long after.

 

 

 

From silly tales to bawdy humor's delight,

 

Limericks can bring joy, morning, noon, or night.

 

They celebrate people, places, and absurdity too,

 

Entertaining us all with their rhymes so true.

 

 

 

So, let limericks fill your shelves and halls,

 

In the National Library, where knowledge enthralls.

 

Preserve the heritage of these verses grand,

 

And let their mirth and charm forever expand.

 

 

 

May the limericks bring laughter to your aisles,

 

And in your collections, spark countless smiles.

 

For words have the power to delight and inspire,

 

And limericks are a testament to that desire.

 

 

 

Keep the spirit of wit and whimsy alive,

 

In the National Library, where stories thrive.

 

Let limericks dance across your pages with glee,

 

And embrace the joy they bring, endlessly.

 

 

 

Sincerely,

 

A Lover of Limericks

 

Yikes!

 

 

==============================

 

Poem

Mossie’ by Brían De Vale  

 

    ‘Mossie’

 

    Had a cousin, name of Mossie,

    He was his father’s second boy,

    Born up in the hills of Kerry,

    He was his family’s pride and joy.

 

    Yes, and joy was just the thing that he was raised on,

    Love was just the way to live and die.

    Gold is Sam in Kerry and ‘The Sportsfield’

    And blue is just a Kerry summer sky.

 

    And all the things that he would teach me,

    Back when I was just a lad.

    How to cut the  turf, dig ‘praties’

    How to milk a cow by hand.

 

    Growing up a Kerry farm boy,

    Life was mostly having fun.

    Work the farm with all the fam’ly

    Church on Sunday, then the pub.

 

    Yes, and joy was just the thing that he was raised on,

    Love is just the way to live and die.

    Gold the Sam in Kerry and ‘The Sportsfield’

    And blue is just a Kerry Summer sky.

 

    Well I guess there were some hard times,

    Back in nineteen eighty three.

    He came to live in New York City,

    And he came to visit me.

 

    We’d hit the bars along Kantonah,

    Stay out late along McLean.

    But bright and early every morning,

    He’d head off to work again.

 

    Singing, joy is just a thing to be raised on,    Love is  just the way to live and die.

    Gold the Sam in Kerry and ‘The Sportsfield’

    And blue is just a Kerry summer sky.

 

    He worked with stone and brick and mortar,

    And laid foundations, all by hand.

    He built the New York City Skyline,

    And he came to be my friend.

 

    And so I wrote this down for Mossie,

    Up in Currow where he’s laid.

    I know we’ll meet again in heaven,

    For pints and music once again.

 

    Because joy is just a thing that you were raised on,

    Love is just the way  to live and die,

    Gold the Sam in Kerry and ‘The Sportsfield’

    And blue is just a Kerry summer sky.

 

    Adapted from Matthew by John Denver. RIP Mossie. Le meas agus grá, Brían.

 

========================

 

http://www.iverusresearchfoundation.com/editoruploads/files/FPM_concise_biographies.pdf

Brothers

Dower, James Eugenius (1897-1954)

James Dower, son of James Dower and his wife, Bridget

Relihan, was born in the family home, Rathoran,

Kilmorna, Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick, on 2 October,

1897, and baptised in the local parish church one week

later. He attended the local National School and entered

the novitiate of the Presentation Brothers, Mount St

Joseph, Cork, on 9 May, 1914, at the age of sixteen. He

received the religious habit, together with a new

religious name, Brother Eugenius, on 26 December,

1914. His new patron saint, Eugenius, was a saintly Bishop of Carthage, who

died in 505. On completion of his novitiate, Eugenius made his religious

profession on 13 October, 1917. He qualified as a teacher and was assigned

initially to the English province, where he taught for several years at St

Joseph’s Orphanage, Orpington, and was superior there for two 3-year terms

(1924-1930). He was a man of great energy, who loved to be outdoors. He

also liked gardening and his favourite exercise was walking.

On his return to Ireland, he was appointed Principal of the primary

school in Cobh, an appointment he retained from 1942 until his early death.

He was also superior in Cobh for two 3-year terms (1944-1950). It was while

he was principal in St Joseph’s school, Cobh, that Liam Nolan encountered

him. Liam remembered Eugenius him with respect and affection and

described his love of poetry, especially the rousing ballads of Robert Service:

Eugenius opened the door and strode in, a small red book in his right

hand, his forefinger crooked inside the covers, marking a page. He

settled himself on the front edge of a small table facing us, and said,

‘All right men. Listen to this. It’s called ‘The Shooting of Dan

McGrew’ and it was written by Robert Service.’ He opened the book

and began to read in a quiet voice, but loud enough to be heard at the

back of the partitioned classroom. The accent he used was

consciously Mid-Atlantic:

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;

The kid that handled the music box was playing a rag-time tune;

Back of the bar, in a Solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,

And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.

We were electrified at the unexpectedness, the muscularity and

vividness of the images. Eugenius didn’t lift his face from the printed

pages, but twice he stopped momentarily, and his eyes, for just a few

seconds, seemed to be focussed somewhere far away from that

classroom. His glasses glinted with the movement of his head...Yes,

Eugenius was an outdoors man even in his literary likes. (Nolan, in

Feheney, 1996, 68)

Towards mid-summer in 1954, Eugenius began to feel unwell. His doctor

advised him to spend a week in bed. Instead, Eugenius decided to go on his

annual summer vacation to the sea side in Kilkee, Co. Clare. He died there

suddenly on 29 July, 1954, aged 56 years. He was buried in the cemetery

attached to Mount St Joseph, Cork.

 

===========================

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, 24 December 1897, Page 9

 

Bartholomew Dowling, the writer of "Life's Wreck," was born at Listowel. County Kerry, about the year 1822. While still a child his parents emigrated to Canada, where his father died. Later the mother and children returned and settled in County Limerick, He wrote several poems for the Nation after its foundation. In 1848 he proceeded to California, where, after spending some time as a miner, he lived on a farm at Crucita Valley. In 1858 he was appointed editor of the San Francisco Monitor. In 1863 he met with an accident while driving, and soon afterwards died from its effects in St. Mary's Hospital, San Francisco. Dowling's best, and best known poem is probably "The Irish brigade at Fontenoy."

 

================================

Poetry

Sounds of Summer

 

Rocking in my garden seat,

 

Creaking gently to and fro

 

Watching life continuing on,

 

Like a stream in constant flow.

 

Listening to the chirping birds

 

Busy at their daily tasks

 

The leaves are whispering in the breeze

 

A honey bee goes buzzing past.

 

A tractor drones in a neighbour’s field

 

Boasting of a busy day

 

Taking advantage of the sun

 

Cutting silage, turning hay.

 

A cow concerned for her calf

 

Calls him back with a gentle moo

 

The clothes are flapping on the line

 

Peaceful times like this are few.

 

Children play out on the lawn

 

Sending out their squeals of joy

 

Laughing, singing, cheering on

 

Their playmates in a rugby try.

 

I close my eyes to appreciate

 

The restful sounds that I can hear

 

It’s easy to believe in God

 

When His presence is so near!

By Peg Prendeville

https://www.athea.ie/category/knockdown-news/

 

==================

© Neil Brosnan 2022

 

Until today, I’d thought of you as old,

But sixty-three is far too young to die,

And as I stand here in the rain and cold,

The question I am asking still is why.

Why pick on me to be your captive muse?

A toehold on your meteoric climb,    

Your love canard has made me a recluse,

Forever chained to your most hackneyed rhyme,

 

 And publicans not taken with your verse

Nor needful of your custom to survive,

Parade in sombre garb behind your hearse;

Your status greater now than when alive.

But fallen leaves and old ghosts must away

Like nightmares at the dawning of the day. 

 

-------------------------

Poetry

 

Sympathy

By Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!

    When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;  

When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,  

And the river flows like a stream of glass;

    When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,  

And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—

I know what the caged bird feels!

 

I know why the caged bird beats his wing

    Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;  

For he must fly back to his perch and cling  

When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;

    And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars  

And they pulse again with a keener sting—

I know why he beats his wing!

 

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

    When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—

When he beats his bars and he would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

    But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,  

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—

I know why the caged bird sings!

Paul Laurence. Dunbar, "“Sympathy.”" from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, )

Source: Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2004)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46459/sympathy-56d22658afbc0

===========================================

 

 

 

-----------------

============================

By JJ Leahy

 

The Silence

 

Andante moderato

 

You XY women, best you know who you are

You’re special, well strange, no sign of a scar?

 

Indifferent medical tests claimed all that it could

Not in tune with nature – be it bad or be it good?

 

Emotions over racked, believed better you had died

If not for the screaming – that’s coming from inside.

Resort to behavioural therapy, for those in denial

Society’s embarrassment itself – puts the innocent on trial.

 

I’m sure the fine Doctor will do everything he can

Says old ladies in shop doorways, what a lovely man.

He’s good with Arthritis – Septicaemia with pills

A practiced bedside manner with knowledge of ills.

 

Assessing every fact – next issue the medication

Then moves on at speed, with little hesitation.

 

Girl on the outside and what? A boy within

Quandary of a problem, you’re potentially a sin!

 

Prescribe medieval magic – of time it does unfurl

Chance one of two options, a boy or a girl?

When cornered for a answer, no comment and hide

Wash hands of this problem and let the parents decide.

 

This medical condition, left the qualified confused

No test is conclusive, No avoidance unused.

A freak of environment – has been encountered here

Little interest in the indivual so, better stand clear.

 

Civilization when confronted, will surely apply blame

It’s the parents, it’s the child’s, its nature’s total shame!

 

You upset harmony, so now you are on your own

No advice and no support, so just carry on alone.

 

Disenfranchised asunder from given defined gender

To a lifetime of doubt – must not to surrender.

Now we have a name for this endocromic ambiguity

Androgen insensitivity syndrome, 46XY continuity.

 

Well the medical profession, anxiously now make plans

For a better educated society – more likely understands?

 

But seeing the picture laid bear – not a comprehensive roll

Of the sad tortured heart of the confused lonely soul.

 

People should not be defined by their conformity to plan

As long as one is genuine, matters not a women or a man

 

Care not the attachment – to a label that we’re knowing

So is nature’s cruel experiment is still ongoing?

Poetry

==============================

Poetry

Peg Prendeville

Mid April 2023

I hear from a friend in Tipperary that the cuckoo has arrived! I just love to hear that news as it means we are into summer season whether we get summer weather or not. But we can look forward and hope. I take the liberty of including a poem I wrote years ago.

 

On a Summer’s Morning

 

The curlew calls way up in the sky,

The cuckoo’s song comes back in reply,

The cattle are lowing on their way to the barn;

Sounds on a summer’s morning.

The perfume of hay just recently cut,

The scent of the flowers as they open up,

The sterile fresh air as it sweeps in the dawn;

Smells on a summer’s morning.

The rustle of leaves in the pure gentle breeze,

The chirping of birds making nests in the trees,

 

The turf machine promises “I’ll keep you warm;”

Sounds on a summer’s morning.

The cloudless blue sky with its streamers of white

Whispers to us of its traffic all night,

The gorse all ablaze, the spray of whitethorn;

Sights on a summer’s morning.

Flower gardens resplendent in colours so bright,

Grasses all glistening from the dew of the night,

Bathed in brightness, all lovely and warm;

The world on a summer’s morning.

Heart light and airy, the world’s at peace.

With each breath of air all my worries cease,

God is in Heaven – the devil I scorn

 

Thoughts on a summer’s morning.

==============================

 

Lorraine Nash – Winter Sun (official video) – YouTube

 

Lyrics

 

You approached me in the darkness

A figure I knew well

The silhouette was known to me

But it was far too soon to tell

 

With each step that you drew towards me

I knew you less and less

A creature of your likeness

With a kind of hollowness

 

And all that winter sun

Has ever gave to me

Was a couple hours of light

And a heat I couldn’t feel

So don’t you come to me

So bright and bold

You promised me the world

But you left it in the cold

 

And I was waiting for the heat to come

The light it touched my skin

I kept waiting for the heat to come

But the cold came creeping in

 

Like stepping out onto a frozen lake

Hid underneath the snow

I put my trust in something bound to break

But how could I have known

 

And all that winter sun

Has ever gave to me

Was a couple hours of light

And a heat I couldn’t feel

So don’t you come to me

So bright and bold

You promised me the world

But you left it in the cold

 

And I’ve been blinded by sunshine

And oh I hate how sweet the world has seemed

Bathed in your cold light

 

And all that winter sun

Has ever gave to me

Was a couple hours of light

And a heat I couldn’t feel

So don’t you come to me

So bright and bold

You promised me the world

But you left it in the cold

 

And all that winter sun

Has ever gave to me

Was a couple hours of light

And a heat I couldn’t feel

So don’t you come to me

So bright and bold

You promised me the world

But you left it in the cold

 

Source: LyricFind

 

Songwriters: Lorraine Nash

 

Winter sun lyrics © DistroKid

https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/116273915/posts/21586

 

https://www.discoverireland.ie/kerry/carrigafoyle-castle

 

===============================

Poetry

 

Poetry from Michael Patrick Moore

This entry was posted on April 10, 2023 by huntrogers, in creative writing, diaspora, News, Poetry and tagged Poetry. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment

 

MORNING

 

Woken by sunlight upon me that shone

Through my bedroom window the morning seen,

A raucous riot of red and green,

Lorikeets adorning callistemon.

An avian chorus announcing the day

From perfumed Eucalypts promising rain,

And now seeking flowers and seeking grain,

All manner of creatures at work and play.

Thankful am I for this sensory feast

Thankful am I for the gift of this day,

The return of light after night times’ fall.

Just to be part of this morning released,

For the few precious lines, mine in this play,

Just for the gift of this morning at all.

 

THE NEWNESS OF THINGS

 

The stars are fading,

To the east a match is struck

Heralding the dawn.

 

 

At one with the sun,

With gratitude I rise now

With the rising world.

 

 

Synchronicity,

My heart beats in perfect time

With the woken day.

 

 

The lines become blurred,

Between all that is and I

Such affinity.

 

 

No mere backdrop this,

I feel all, I am part of

The fabric of things.

================================

Poetry

FOR THE TRAVEL(L)ER

By John O Donohue

 

Every time you leave home,

Another road takes you

Into a world you were never in.

 

New strangers on other paths await.

New places that have never seen you

Will startle a little at your entry.

Old places that know you well

Will pretend nothing

Changed since your last visit.

 

When you travel, you find yourself

Alone in a different way,

More attentive now

To the self you bring along,

Your more subtle eye watching

You abroad; and how what meets you

Touches that part of the heart

That lies low at home:

 

How you unexpectedly attune

To the timbre in some voice,

Opening in conversation

You want to take in

To where your longing

Has pressed hard enough

Inward, on some unsaid dark,

To create a crystal of insight

You could not have known

You needed

To illuminate

Your way.

 

When you travel,

A new silence

Goes with you,

And if you listen,

You will hear

What your heart would

Love to say.

 

A journey can become a sacred thing:

Make sure, before you go,

To take the time

To bless your going forth,

To free your heart of ballast

So that the compass of your soul

Might direct you toward

The territories of spirit

Where you will discover

More of your hidden life,

And the urgencies

That deserve to claim you.

 

May you travel in an awakened way,

Gathered wisely into your inner ground;

That you may not waste the invitations

Which wait along the way to transform you.

 

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,

And live your time away to its fullest;

Return home more enriched, and free

To balance the gift of days which call you.

https://www.johnodonohue.com/

 

https://aineminogue.com/jtl-pilgrimage?fbclid=IwAR3y81IS-E6h--SOhqEXhsV6SpWCziIlBUjsGgeeesQZDO871BR8r1icFDk

 

======================================

#OTD in 1964 – Death of novelist Maurice Walsh, author of the original story of The Quiet Man.

Feb 18, 2023

IrelandCo. KerryIrish NationalistNovelistThe Quiet Man

 

Maurice Walsh was born in Ballydonoghue, near Listowel, Co Kerry, and is best known for the short story The Quiet Man which was later made into an Oscar-winning movie directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. He was one of Ireland’s best-selling authors in the 1930s.

 

John Walsh’s main interests were books and horses and he himself did little about the farm, preferring to have a hired man. The most famous of these was Paddy Bawn Enright, whose name was to be immortalised by Maurice Walsh in his story The Quiet Man (though the name was not used in the movie version). John Walsh passed on to his son not only a love of books but also legends and folk tales and the theory of place that were later to be a feature of many of Maurice’s books.

 

Maurice Walsh was an Irish nationalist and made one of his main characters, Hugh Forbes, an active fighter against the Black and Tans in the Irish War of Independence. President Éamon de Valera attended Maurice’s funeral Mass.

https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/58539435/posts/120588

Poetry

Tae Lane, February 2023

 

John Fitzgerald remembers Tae Lane in a different era.

 

Places like The Casbah and The New Road will be familiar only to Listowel natives of a certain age.

 

I enjoyed this epic poem of deeds of yore.

 

The Battle of Tae Lane

 

John Fitzgerald

 

There’s a one eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,

 

there’s a cavalcade of cavalry lost in Death Valley too.

 

there’s the pharaohs in their pyramids and the Eiffel on the Seine,

 

but who of you remembers the famous Battle of Tae Lane.

 

Napoleon planned his sorties from a galleon out at sea,

 

and Hannibal crossed the Great Alps on an elephant you see,

 

Bush set his sites on Bagdad as  mighty Caesar did on Spain

 

and the Casbah planned new boundaries to encompass  sweet  Tae Lane.

 

‘Twas in the year of fifty nine, at the back of Sandy’s shed,

 

 long since Hitler went to Poland and Paddy to Hollyhead,

 

and of all the wars you’ll mention, there is none will hold a flame

 

to the fight fought by the Gravel Crushers defending their Tae Lane.

 

For weeks before the New Road was a tranquil place by day

 

as the boys played round the grotto and the old ones knelt to pray,

 

but at night behind the Astor, they gathered one and all

 

to plan their deadly battle and The Gravel Crushers fall.

 

The sally and the hazel were long stripped before the fall.

 

Nature played no part in this of that I well recall.

 

‘Twas the hand of Tarzan Murphy paring sticks both thick and tall

 

as he swung through trees and branches letting bows and arrows fall.

 

The signs were all apparent if only eyes would see.

 

Paddles Browne went round the town on an errand of mystery.

 

From Moss Scanlon’s up to Shortpants he gathered off cuts by the score,

 

leather pouches for the making of the deadly slings of war.

 

Bomber Behan scoured the backways, picked up bits from forge to forge.

 

Each scrap of steel, the point he’d feel, an arrow tip or sword.

 

‘Til at the back of Charles Street, as the last forge he did pass

 

he felt the boot of Jackie Moore go halfway up his ass.

 

His shouts and bawls off  backway walls went half way round the town

 

Mutts Connor and Gigs Nolan thought ‘twas the Bandsroom falling down.

 

But the ear of Tommie Allen, sharp as any corner boy

 

Heard the beans were spilt , they’d all be kilt , and he began to cry .

 

“The game is up”, he shouted from Scully’s Corner’s vantage point

 

“Poor Bomber he’s been captured as he was struggling to find

 

live ammo for the battle in the cold and p p pissing rain

 

Pat Joe Griffin must be warned to strike early on Tae Lane.”

 

Brave Victor of the Broderick clan defied the daring raid,

 

He called his troops together and ‘twas then this plan he made.

 

“We’ll meet them at the bottleneck” that went by the shithouse name

 

under Dan Moloney’s garage in the heart of sweet Tae Lane.

 

He marshalled troops to left and right, of the gushing sewer outfall.

 

No silver from these waters flowed of that I well recall.

 

 Half were placed on the market cliff and half on Dagger’s dump

 

and there they’d wait in soldier’s gait ‘til Victor shouted jump.

 

The Gravel Crushers ammo was got ready for the drop,

 

gattling guns and  gadgets from Fitzgibbon’s  well armed shop,

 

no trees they’d cut, no face they’d soot, yes, they’d face no blame or shame

 

those gallant lads from William Street who defended their Tae Lane

 

The butcher boys, the Shaughnessys were such an awesome sight.

 

Young Mickey climbed the saddle of the King’s Tree on the right

 

Titch  and Teddy ever ready,  pointed bamboos on the bank

 

As P.J. stood next to Victor, his brothers he outranked.

 

While Back The Bank they gathered just below the Convent Cross,

 

where Mickeen Carey taught us all the game of  pitch and toss.

 

John Guerin took no notice, no thoughts for God or man

 

only the rushing of those waters where the silver salmon ran.

 

Pat Joe was the leader of the Casbah’s fearsome band,

 

with the Nolans, Long John and Spats, he’d backup at his hand.

 

There were the  Reidys and the Roches, the Cantys and the Keanes

 

and they all set off together to capture sweet Tae Lane.

 

‘Twas a battle worth recalling, there were heroes more than few,

 

as the sky above grew darker when the stones and arrows flew,

 

and in the close encounters , it then was man to man

 

one a Gravel Crusher and one a Casbarian.

 

With blood flowing towards the river, it all came down to two,

 

the leaders of those fighting hordes, Victor Broderick and Pat Joe.

 

They wrestled in the nettles, in the rubbish they did fight

 

among stickybacks and dockleafs and Mary B’s pigshite.

 

The duel it was well balanced as they struggled on the grass,

 

a rabbit punch, an elbow  a kick in shin or arse.

 

No mercy would be given, sure the day would end in pain

 

such was the price one had to pay for lovely sweet Tae Lane.

 

The bold Mickey took a horsehoe  which he’d pinched from Tarrant’s forge.

 

No more in vain he could watch in pain his brother  poor Pat Joe.

 

The glistening shoe of steel he threw, it caught Pat Joe’s left grip.

 

“The odds have changed”, Eric Browne exclaimed “we’re on a sinking ship”.

 

Just then the sky above  them changed, the sun  shone through instead

 

as round  by Potter Galvin’s came the flash of Ollie’s head.

 

Mounted on a milk white stallion from Patrick Street he came

 

thundering to the brother’s rescue as he lay wounded in  Tae Lane.

 

There are mixed views of what happened next, but I was surely there.

 

No classic from the Astor or the Plaza could compare.

 

Mac Master or Mc Fadden could never stage the play.

 

Who won? Who lost?  What matter, all were Gleann Boys on that day.

 

That battle royal still lingers in the confines of my mind.

 

No time nor tide dare loose it as long as I’m alive.

 

‘Twas the battle of all battles  that held no blame or shame

 

fought fiercely by those boys of yore for the right to rule Tae Lane.

https://listowelconnection.com/2023/02/

===============================

Irish Proverbs

https://www.irelandxo.com/ireland-xo/news/irelandxo-insight-irish-proverbs?utm_source=Ireland+Reaching+Out+-+Full+Database&utm_campaign=0fd45eb1dc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_01_09_10_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-0fd45eb1dc-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

-------------------------------------------

                New York NY Irish American Advocate 1943-1945 - 0912.pdf

6 Jan 1945

 

 

-----------------------------

We could in vision visit the old land and see Wicklow the Garden of Ireland. Killarney's lakes and dells. Historic Wexford; Kilkenny, the marble county; Kildare, the home of Irish Sportsmen. Lava of the Kings. The lakes of Westmeath; Offaly of the Slieve Bloom Mountains; Cork with its Blarney Castle and Bells of Shandon. Limerick and the Walls of Garryowen; Clare with its many Cliffs; Tipperary with its Golden Vale. The Blackwater Valley in Waterford; Louth and its ancient Abbeys (now in ruins). T h e West with its Connemara and Hills of St. Patrick; Sligo the Killarney of the West; Dublin with its fine architecture. The Donegal Highlands; Cavan, where the River Shannon bursts forth. The Walls of Derry; Antrim with t h e Giant's Causeway. Co. Down a n d its Mourne Mountains Leitrim of t h e lakes. Roscommon with its Abbeys and beautiful bogs. Fermanagh and the winding

banks of Erne. The pleasing town of Omagh.

This is only a small sample of Ireland's historic and romantic natural scenery. T h e Irish Exile in large industrial cities of America appreciate now what he or she lost when taking the emigrant ship. We paid no attention to God's own Country that  was outside the door with us as we looked out into the Irish dawn. Now, let us stop roaming and dwell on our own little parish and locality where we first saw the light in a small thatched cabin by the side of the road with its small river and many streams going on to the ocean. Follow the little river as it joins hands with the Shannon in North Kerry and you find yourself in the beautiful seaside resort of Ballybunion. And I will leave the description to a little national school girl who attended the same school as I did as taken from the Kerryman many years ago.

------------------------------------

Hail Ballybunion

You may picture Madonna's of beauty's own grace

You may p a i n t the gay landscape and lend them a grace

But for me there's no charm in culture or art

'Tis the deft h a n d s of Nature appeals to my heart.

With a third for new pleasures I mended my way

To t h a t place Ballybunion, 'tis ancient they say,

When its hoary old Castle broke out on my view,

My mind in a maze back o'er centuries flew.

How majestic in ruin, of visage, how gray,

But it mocks the proud storm, it plays with the spray.

And the soul of sweet music, whose magic enthralls,

Is the song of the light wind t h at steals through its halls

O'er the cliffs what a flood of wild grandeur is thrown,

Knockanore frowns behind with a pride all its own,

As if telling the Shannon, whose bright water lanes

To disturb n o t the echoes t h a t Swell in t h e caves.

You may go to the Lyral and tread o'er its snows,

You m a y go to a land where b u t zephyr-wind blows.

On the cliffs, Ballybunion, 'tis sweeter to be,

To watch the broad Shannon—join h a n d s with the sea

 

You may  go to the land where the orange and vine

Cast their proud shadows o'er broad winding Rhine,

But, O sweet smelling Shannon what mighty power gave

Such a glow to thy water, such ease to thy wave.

 

All Hail! Ballybunion, thou stranger to wealth

Yet what richness is thine, thou safe harbour of health

Where the woe-begone toiler of h a n d or of brain

May partake at thy fountain—but never can drain.

—T. D. Curtin

------------------------------------

There's a spot that is hallowed by

mem'ries so sweet,

Tis the spot t h a t I always call home,

Where the Aves are told in that accent so sweet,

'Tis the land where the shamrock is grown.

Ah, yet haunts

See paper for more of poem by

(Sister) Mary V. McHale,

Native of Castlebar, Mayo, Ireland

--------------------

I hear in the chamber above me

The patter of little feet.

The sound of a door t h a t is opened,

And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

Descending the broad hall stair,

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,

And Edith with golden hair.

=================================

Poetry

 

 

A Seasonal Poem from 1927

 

Butte Independent, Saturday, June 11, 1927;

CHRISTMAS EVE IN KERRY

 

“Tis Christmas Eve in Kerry, and the Pooka is at rest

Contented in his stable eating hay;

 

The crystal snow is gleaming on the mountains of the West,

And a lonesome sea is sobbing far away;

But I know a star is watching o’er the bogland and the stream,

And ‘tis coming, coming, coming o’er the foam;

And ’tis twinkling o’er the prairie with a message and a dream

Of Christmas in my dear old Kerry home.

 

‘Tis Christmas Eve in Kerry, and the happy mermaids croon

The songs, of youth and hope that never die;

Oh never more on that dear shore for you and me, aroon.

The rapture of that olden lullaby:

But the candle lights are gleaming on a hillside far away.

And peace is in the blue December gloam;

And o’er the sea of memory I hear the pipers play

At Christmas in my dear old Kerry home.

 

‘Tis Christmas Eve in Kerry, oh I hear the fairies’ lyre

Anear the gates of slumber calling sweet.

Calling softly, calling ever to the land of young desire,

To the pattering of childhood’s happy feet; 

 

But a sleepless sea is throbbing, and the stars are watching’ true

As they journey to the wanderers who roam —

Oh the sea, the stars shall bring me tender memories of you

 

<<<<<<<<< 

 

MY CHRISTMAS WISH

 

Oh Lord, when we give this Christmas time,

 

Do teach us how to share

 

The gifts that you have given us

 

With those who need our care,

 

For the gift of Time is sacred~

 

The greatest gift of all,

 

And to share our time with others

 

Is the answer to your call,

 

For the Sick, the Old and Lonely

 

Need a word, a kindly cheer

 

For every precious minute

 

Of each day throughout the Year,

 

So, in this Special Season

 

Do share Your Time and Love

 

And your Happy, Holy Christmas

 

Will be Blessed by Him above

 

Junior Griffin

 

                                      Listowel

 

<<<<<<<<<< 

 

Christmas in an Irish house in Kentish Town in the 1960s

 

Maurice Brick  Irish Central December 2021

 

I was wiping the mud from a 20-foot length of half-inch steel reinforcing bar with a wire brush and cursing the frost from the night before, which made it harder. I had, by then, passed the “barra liobar” (frozen fingers) part and the blood was circulating well despite the freezing cold. Steel is about the coldest thing you can handle in freezing weather.

 

It just didn’t seem like Christmas at all. I received a card from home the day before and Mam said how they were looking forward to Christmas and going to Dingle for the day with Dad. The lads were fine, she said, and they were wondering why I wasn’t coming home and she told them work was tight in England and maybe I wanted to put a bit of money away. Poor Mam, she always thought the better of me.

 

Today was payday; at least there was something good about it. Tomorrow, Friday, was Christmas Eve, so we had money for a good booze-up if nothing else for the weekend. There were six of us staying in a boarding house in Kentish Town and since we were all from the other side the mood, to say the least, was somber.

 

There were two from Donegal and they worked in the tunnels and made tons of money. The work was hard but, I’ll tell you, they were harder. There were three of us from West Kerry and we worked straight construction – buildings, shuttering (concrete formwork) and the like. That was hard work, too, but not as tough as the tunnels with the compressed air. The other fellow was from Clare, a more respectable sort of chap and he worked for British Rail as a porter.

 

I tried the tunnels myself once. I persuaded one of the Donegal fellows to get me a start and to tell the truth it was the money that enticed me outright. But my venture was a disaster. I started and descended into the tunnel and while there the compressed air hit me like a shot after an hour and my ears screamed with pain.

 

They were worse again when I entered the decompression chamber and I couldn’t wait to get out. I gained a great deal of respect for the Donegal fellows after that. They both wore a medal-type apparatus around their necks that gave the address of the decompression chamber of their tunnel.

 

On Christmas Eve, we worked half a day. The foreman was a sly bastard. He was as Irish as we were, but when the “big knobs” from the Contractor’s office appeared on site he affected such a cockney accent that you’d swear he was born as close to “Petticoat Lane” as the hawkers plying their trade there on Sunday.

 

Anyway, we all chipped in and gave him a pound each for Christmas. This gesture did not emanate from generosity but rather preservation. Our erstwhile foreman could be vindictive and on payday, he would come by and ask for a light and you would hand him the box of matches with a pound note tightly squeezed in there and all would be well with the world.  Not a bad day’s take as there were twenty in our gang. But the job paid well and no one complained.

 

When I got to the house on Christmas Eve, I paid the landlady and took a bath and dressed in my Sunday best. I waited for the others and we all sat down to dinner. It had some meat and lashings of mashed potatoes, “Paddy Food” they called it. It didn’t bother us much for we knew we would have steak in a late-night café after the pubs closed anyway. The six of us were dressed and ready to go at half six and we headed straight for the “Shakespeare” near the Archway.

 

After a few pints, there we went to the “Nag’s Head” on Holloway Road. However, we encountered a group from Connemara there and rather than wait for the customary confrontation – for some reason there was animosity between those from the Kerry Gaeltacht area and those from Connemara, which was also a Gaelic speaking area in Galway – we decided to forego it on Christmas Eve. But we assured each other that the matter would be taken care of in the very near future. Just as I was leaving one of the Connemara chaps said, “láithreach a mhac” (soon, my son) and I responded, “is fada liom é a mhac” (I can’t wait, my son).

 

We ended up in the “Sir Walter Scott” in Tollington Park and I barely remember seeing a row of pints lined up on the bar to tide us over the period between “time” called and when we actually had to leave. This period could last an hour depending on the pub governor’s mood.

 

We ambled, or rather staggered, into the late-night café sometime after midnight and the waitress gave us a knowing glance and said, “Steak and mash Pat, OK” and we all said “yes.” Some of us said it a few times just to make sure we had said it. It was then I thought, Jesus, I never went to Midnight Mass. That bothered me. I had always gone to Midnight Mass, but it was only last year I started drinking and it went completely out of my head.

 

We had our feed of steak and left and we decided to walk to the “Tube” at Finsbury Park and that would bring us to Kentish Town Station. Somehow, we made it and truthfully I don’t remember a moment on that train.

 

We arrived home at two and as quietly as possible reached our rooms. One of the Donegal fellows pulled out a bottle of Scotch and passed it around and we just sat on the beds and took turns taking swigs descending deeper and deeper into the realm of the absence of coherence of any sort.

 

I remember thinking again about missing Midnight Mass and I must have voiced my disgust a number of times to the annoyance of the others and one of them asked me to “shut the hell up.” I approached him and hit him right between the eyes and he crumpled to the floor and fell asleep.

 

The others struggled and lifted me onto the bed and everything just blanked out and I remember awakening on Christmas Day and the fellow I hit was nursing a bruised cheek by the window. I asked him what happened and he said he didn’t know and that he thought he bumped into something in his drunken state. I told him that I thought I hit him and that I was sorry.

 

He came by my side and sat there and I thought I detected a tear or two in his eyes. He looked at me and said, “You know, this is no friggin’ way to spend a Christmas, is it?” And I said, “You’re right” and I shook his hand for I thought he was a better man than I. 

 

<<<<<<<<<<< 

 

A Christmas Poem from an Emigrant

 

lI KNOW SANTA’S ON HIS WAY 

 

GRANDPAW,  Will you tell me the story, of how Christmas came to be

 

About the baby Jesus, the presents, and the tree 

 

Why the stars all seem to sparkle, up yonder in the sky 

 

And why there’s so much laughter, amongst every girl and guy 

 

Can you tell me why the candles, seem to have a beacon light 

 

Will it be like this forever, or is this a special night 

 

Cometo me my little sweetheart, and climb up on my knee 

 

And I’ll tell you the story, just the way ‘twas told to me 

 

It started back many years ago, in a land far, far away 

 

In a little town called Bethlehem, or so the people say 

 

By a manger in a stable, so cold and all forlorn 

 

There on the hay, that December day, Jesus Christ was born 

 

You ask me of the presents, and what meaning they may hold

 

I guess it’s called affection, should the truth be ever told 

 

They’re little gifts that are bestowed, and we all understand 

 

On that special day we just want to say, God bless the giving hand 

 

Now, I know what you are thinking, by the way you look at me 

 

You want to hear the story, about the Christmas tree 

 

Well, every day in His own way, God sends us from above 

 

Some hurt, some joy, some strength and pain, but He does it all with love 

 

He gave us gifts like mountains, the deserts, and the sea

 

And mankind enhanced this beauty in the form of a tree

 

My little girl with golden curl, about the candle glow 

 

Should we get lost, by day or night, as on through life we go 

 

When we’re in doubt, as we sometimes are, as on and on we roam

 

It’s the twinkling stars and candlelight, that will lead us safely home

 

Well, now I believe I’ve come to the end, I have no more to say

 

So go to sleep my sweetheart

 

I KNOW SANTA’S ON HIS WAY!

 

By Richard Moriarty of

 

Ballydonogue, Lisselton

 

and San Diego, California

 

Christmas 2022

https://listowelconnection.com/2022/12/

 

------------------------------------------------------

A Kerry Christmas Childhood

 

Garry MacMahon

 

Now I cannot help remembering the happy days gone by,

 

As Christmastime approaches and the festive season’s nigh.

 

I wallow in nostalgia when I think of long ago,

 

And the tide that waits for no man as the years they ebb and flow.

 

We townies scoured the countryside for holly berries red,

 

And stripped from tombs green ivy in the graveyard of the dead,

 

To decorate each picture frame a hanging on the wall,

 

And fill the house with greenery and brighten winter’s pall,

 

Putting up the decorations was for us a pleasant chore,

 

And the crib down from the attic took centre stage once more.

 

From the box atop the dresser the figures were retrieved,

 

To be placed upon a bed of straw that blessed Christmas Eve,

 

For the candles, red crepe paper, round the jamjars filled with sand,

 

To be placed in every window and provide a light so grand,

 

To guide the Holy Family who had no room at the inn,

 

And provide for them a beacon of the fáilte mór within.

 

The candles were ignited upon the stroke of seven,

 

The youngest got the privilege to light our way to Heaven,

 

And the rosary was said as we all got on our knees,

 

Remembering those who’d gone before and the foreign missionaries.

 

Ah, we’d all be scrubbed like new pins in the bath before the fire

 

And, dressed in our pajamas of tall tales we’d never tire,

 

Of Cuchlainn, Ferdia, The Fianna, Red Branch Knights,

 

Banshees and Jack o Lanterns, Sam Magee and Northern Lights

 

And we’d sing the songs of Ireland, of Knockanure and Black and Tans,

 

And the boys of Barr na Sráide who hunted for the wran.

 

Mama and Dad they warned us as they gave each good night kiss,

 

If we didn’t go to sleep at once then Santa we would miss,

 

And the magic Christmas morning so beloved of girls and boys,

 

When we woke to find our dreams fulfilled and all our asked for toys,

 

But Mam was up before us the turkey to prepare,

 

To peel the spuds and boil the ham to provide the festive fare.

 

She’d accept with pride the compliments from my father and the rest.

 

“Of all the birds I’ve cooked,” she’s say, “ I think that this year’s was the best.”

 

The trifle and plum pudding, oh, the memories never fade

 

And then we’d wash the whole lot down with Nash’s lemonade.

 

St. Stephen’s Day brought wrenboys with their loud knock on the door,

 

To bodhrán beat abd music sweet they danced around the floor’

 

We, terror stricken children, fled in fear before the batch,

 

And we screamed at our pursuers as they rattled at the latch.

 

Like a bicycle whose brakes have failed goes headlong down the hill

 

Too fast the years have disappeared. Come back they never will.

 

Our clan is scattered round the world. From home we had to part.

 

Still we treasure precious memories forever in our heart.

 

So God be with our parents dear. We remember them with pride,

 

And the golden days of childhood and the happy Christmastide.

===================================

Poetry

The following verses were composed by poet Michael Hartnett for a Templeglantine Glór na nGael Christmas card in the 1970s. Michael, at that time, resided at Glendarragh

 

Tar a Chríost, tá fáilte in ndán duit

 

Ó loinnir na gcoinneal I dTeampall an Ghleanntáin:

 

Tá gach tigh ina ósta is leaba le fái lann:

 

Fáilte Nollag dod’ chlann ‘tá ar fán.

 

Christ come to Templeglantine

 

Where a thousand Christmas candles

 

Welcome You, White Star, new from the womb:

 

You will get a linen bed here

 

A goose-down pillow for Your head here:

 

For every house is an inn here

 

And every inn has room.

----------------------------------

 

hristmas townlands wait,

 

Carrig, Lenamore, road and field they undulate

 

To every open door,

 

Village, byre and frosty ways

 

Show farmer, townie, whining crone

 

Grow generous with praise’

 

from The Wren Boy by Brendan Kennelly.

=================================

Poetry

 

Knockdown News – 13/12/22

Christmas Morning

By Peg Prendeville

“Mama, Mama, wake up quick

 

Santa has arrived.”

I checked the time, it’s ten past four!

In the blankets I want to hide.

But it’s only once a year I suppose,

So I don my new bed jacket

And forced myself to tumble out

And faced the din and racket.

There is wrapping paper and boxes

All scattered on the floor,

 

A fire engine motors between my legs,

As it goes honking out the door.

“Look at my remote control,

And he even brought batteries!”

Two happy eyes look up at me

And all my tiredness flees.

The Season would not be the same

If Santa comes no more,

So I’m glad that he has never died

Even at ten past four.

 

 

 

Frosty Night

The Star sprinkled sky

reflects the lighted homes,

Folds of fog,

Tucked into pockets,

Create an aura of gentle peace.

Earth’s rich colours

Diluted by moonlight.

 

==================

Home for Christmas.

Matt Mooney sent us his Christmas poem

-----------

Snug in our house at home Christmas Day,

Condensation heavy on the window pane,

Hearing the sudden click of our small gate,

Someone saw him come and said his name.

Mother hovering over the Christmas dinner,

Up on the Stanley range – her engine room,

Looks out in hope and then she saw her son

Walking in again the sloping path to home.

 

Her heart filled with joy so warm and full,

She emerges as if a wave in a warm ocean

Is carrying her to let him in and greet him,

Her embraces laced with motherly emotion.

He smells roasting goose as he sips soup,

And talks farming talk with his eager father;

Soon he melts into the man he was before

He took the boat to England with his brother.

He was happy he had made the journey west,

He knew that it was not a time to be alone;

Here by the fire he felt it even in his bones –

That at Christmas it was great to be at home.

Matt Mooney.

 

Taken from ‘The Singing Woods’ (2017).

========================

The Writers’ Museum

 

Housed in a splendidly restored 19th century Georgian residence in Listowel’s magnificent Square, Kerry Writers’ Museum takes you on a stimulating journey of discovery through the poetry, stories and songs of our acclaimed Kerry Writers. You will be immersed in the words of John B. Keane (The Field), Bryan MacMahon (The Windows of Wonder), Brendan Kennelly (The Man Made of Rain), Maurice Walsh (The Quiet Man) and George Fitzmaurice (The Magic Glasses).  Experience the amazing themed installations in each writer’s room and view original artefacts and materials of the writers which forms part of the Museum’s vast collection.

 

Filled with an abundance of rich characters, humour, romance and tragedy drawn from the towns and villages of North Kerry, the works of the writers will make you laugh & cry, but, above all, you will come away from your visit to the Kerry Writers’ Museum with a sense of the people and places that shaped Kerry’s literary heritage

 

https://www.kerrywritersmuseum.com/writers-museum/

 

 

=============================

===========================

POEM

Round the Block

 

A Poem by John Fitzgerald

 

Let us go then, you and I

 

Round the Block, beneath the sky

 

Like two prisoners on a street

 

Back in time when young boys meet

 

Past busy lanes, bustling shops

 

Penny sweets and summer shots

 

Munched in silence when alone

 

Thinking of those friends now gone.

 

Up William Street, left and right

 

Pubs, clothes shops will catch the eye

 

Smell of commerce everywhere

 

Traffic vying to get you there

 

Coffee shops and restaurants

 

Fancy names when hunger taunts

 

“Hot dinners” there once in vogue

 

Pizzas, burgers now to choose.

 

At the Sheriff’s, Charles Street

 

Corner boys a vantage keep

 

Swapping tales and street reviews

 

Up to date with daily news

 

Live the painters, the wood grainers

 

Eagle eyes, true colour changers

 

Cut stone houses there to see

 

I know you and you know me.

 

Leaving Charles Street for Forge Lane

 

Halfway Round the Block we’ve come

 

Blacksmiths two and cobblers one

 

Artists each and everyone 

 

Short the street but great the craft

 

Lineage of a class apart

 

As we head down to Church Street

 

Last leg of the Block we reach.

 

Linking Church Street to the Square

 

Young and old pass everywhere

 

Shopfronts of an older day

 

Proudly boast an ancient way

 

Harp and Lion in God we trust

 

“Spes in Deo” is put first

 

Latin, French and Irish mix

 

In bold relief, in plaster rich.

 

As we walk we talk a lot

 

Writers, stories priming thought

 

Bryan, the Master and John B.

 

Raise the bar for all to see

 

Characters, an endless list

 

Can lift mood at a twist

 

Each time ventured Round the Block

 

Transformed but no memory lost.

 

Threaded beads of incident

 

To be found in every sense

 

Raise your head, they put you down

 

That’s what happens in my town

 

Lower it and they raise you up

 

That is what is called support

 

As the bell strikes in the Square

 

Our walk is timed to finish there.

 

---------------------------------

Christmas is Coming

 

Christmas is coming

 

And the goose is getting fat.

 

Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.

 

If you haven’t got a penny a ha’penny will do.

 

If you haven’t got a ha’penny

 

God bless you.

--------------------------------------------

Thomas Moore- 1779–1852

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-moore

 

-----------------------------------

November rain in Dublin.

 

I was born in Queensland the fourth of six children, Fourth generation Australian born on my mother’s side who were predominantly of Irish stock who came to Australia post the famine years (for the most part from the counties of Tipperary, Wicklow and Donegal). My father came to Australia from Dublin in the 1950s; his father was raised in Maam Connemara and later in Kilkee County Clare but the Moore family going back were from Kilmorna, later known as Kilmeany near Listowel. His mother, was a Barrett from Ennis, County Clare, that whole family very involved in those troubled years of the war of independence in Ireland. Also just out of interest I was part of a little Folk/Irish trio called Welder’s Dog for 10 years or so, with a brother of mine David and our friend Peter Harris, some of our music is still on YouTube I believe. If you listen to Castle Hill Patriots, that is my Dad singing Boolavogue at the start of that song.

https://tintean.org.au/2022/11/10/november-rain-in-dublin/

 

============================

 

--------------------------------

 

Poetry

 

A poem for Jim on Father’s Day.

 

By Peg Prendeville

 

 

 

A Different Love

 

 

 

It was easy to love each other when we were young and free

 

 

 

We reared our lovely children and enjoyed being family

 

 

 

We worked hard and kept busy while also having fun

 

 

 

We relaxed at night together when our working day was done.

 

 

 

The years passed quickly by and our children are now grown

 

 

 

Work and hobbies kept us busy – oh, how the years have flown

 

 

 

At last retirement was in view and we had many plans

 

 

 

We’d be busy in the garden and would visit many lands.

 

 

 

But, alas, that’s not what happened and our future was to change

 

 

 

We were given a bigger challenge, our life was re-arranged

 

 

 

We would show our love another way, we would not fail this test

 

 

 

Though you lost your independence we still try to do our best.

 

 

 

Now we show our love in a different way as we remind each other

 

 

 

How lucky we are in our own house and what we’ve

 

 

 

 endured together

 

 

 

So we spend our days in silence; we feed and listen to the birds

 

 

 

But our eyes can speak, our hearts still beat, there is no need for words.

 

 

 

=-------------------------------------------

 

===========================

 

A Poem from Anne Mulcahy

 

 

 

The River

 

 

 

For Hannah, my Friend

 

 

 

My friend is a Traveller and I am a Country-Buffer  –

 

 

 

 she has left an imprint on me like a fossil,

 

 

 

zig zag incisions that mould the hardest rock,

 

 

 

 planting themselves – living forever.

 

 

 

The delicate sprig of friendship has blossomed

 

 

 

became a mountain with flowing spring waters.

 

 

 

The shared moments caught for us a time of no divide,

 

 

 

a silver net catching the Salmon Boyne-

 

 

 

– like a sparkling clear river – our friendship swelled

 

 

 

 – each flow equal to the next –

 

 

 

 our laughter shattered the thin vail that hovers –

 

 

 

between prejudice and unity –

 

 

 

between the –  I’ll accept you –  on my terms, fallacy

 

 

 

 Prejudice acts as a lever to elevate our inferior selves

 

 

 

 to heights of dizzy disillusion –

 

 

 

Society feeding the layered segmentation segregation –

 

 

 

like ladders – steps of insanity to clouds of fanaticism –

 

 

 

no one wants the bottom rung!

 

 

 

Instead we cling foolishly to the middle ground, 

 

 

 

shouting –I’m good today –  I’m better than you!.

 

 

 

Refusing to be fossils in Rivers of friendship.

 

 

 

================================

 

A Poem from Joe Fahy

 

Exploitation

 

 

 

Culture to Cain, the importance of label

 

In expressing social status.

 

Economic power, its Everest, from the steppingstone

 

It’s foundation, the rock of exploitation.

 

It’s superiority, its status,

 

Who pays for the products on the table?

 

It’s resources from third world locations.

 

Mixed by and through manipulation,

 

Political in essence

 

The priesthood of power,

 

Political domination,

 

Economic exploitation,

 

Social and Cultural

 

Marginalisation.

 

Our menus,

 

From first world T.V. stations

 

Emphasis on ‘having.’

 

Children forever grieving,

 

Totalitarian values at the

 

Crucifix of consumption.

 

The two thieves of much

 

And more, on either side-

 

Twin towers of greed.

 

But resurrection is guaranteed-

 

The first of the Nazarenes’

 

Abel, in our era.

 

Remember apartheid,

 

Our contemporary Roman Era.

 

That fella of the sixties,

 

Nelson Mandela.

 

Romero in the eighties,

 

Ignacio Ella Curia in the nineties,

 

The new Holy Land Cuscatlán,

 

Meaning, ‘land of Rivers and Jewels’

 

El Salvador, our Saviour.

 

 

 

===============================

 

Bono’s poem for Ukraine

 

 

 

Oh, St Patrick he drove out the snakes

 

With his prayers but that’s not all it takes

 

For the snake symbolises

 

An evil that rises

 

And hides in your heart, as it breaks

 

And the evil has risen my friends

 

From the darkness that lives in some men

 

But in sorrow and fear

 

That’s when saints can appear

 

To drive out those old snakes once again

 

And they struggle for us to be free

 

From the psycho in this human family

 

Ireland’s sorrow and pain

 

Is now the Ukraine

 

And St Patrick’s name now Zelenskiy

 

 

 

===========================================

 

=========================

 

Poetry

 

Matt Mooney – A Stark Cross

 

Jan 7, 2022

 

 

 

Matt Mooney. A native of Galway, he lives in Listowel. His six collections of poems are: Droving, Falling Apples, Earth to Earth, The Singing Woods, Steering by the Stars, Éalú. Winner of The Pádraig Liath Ó Conchubhair Award 2019. Deputy Editor of The Galway Review and its Poetry Reviewer.

 

 

 

His poems have been published in a number of literary publications which include The Blue Nib, Feasta, Vox Galvia, and in anthologies at home and abroad. He continues to feature in many live and virtual poetry reading events.

 

A Stark Cross

 

 

 

The only thing I wrote

 

that end of March

 

to mark your burial

 

were six simple lines,

 

grief laden and finite:

 

 

 

‘The rain fell gently

 

on your grave

 

the day they buried

 

you in Lucan,

 

a victim of the Virus,

 

a stark cross above you’.

 

 

 

Out the door of life

 

alone in isolation,

 

the rest of us

 

in lock-down far away;

 

consolation later

 

in the loyalty of friends

 

’round your estate

 

on a grief-filled day

 

in their applause

 

as you passed by

 

and they sang

 

our Galway song

 

that says,

 

‘It’s faraway I am today

 

from scenes

 

I roamed a boy’

 

in your funeral film,

 

their last farewell,

 

their hymn from home

 

for you.

 

I have hesitated long,

 

maybe in denial,

 

to open up the book,

 

the story of your life,

 

its good times

 

and the bad as well

 

bettered bravely,

 

for maybe I’m afraid

 

I’d find myself

 

inside there with you

 

living it to the full,

 

listening to you Pat,

 

my own big brother;

 

taking it all in, then,

 

seeing the funny side,

 

laughing in the end.

 

https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/40745830/posts/13801

 

 

 

=========================================

 

 

 

I Want To Go On

 

 

 

By John McGrath

 

 

 

I want to go on looking in

 

 

 

when they let us out again.

 

 

 

I like what I found there.

 

 

 

Alone I was afraid at first

 

 

 

but then I realised

 

 

 

Searching for what matters

 

 

 

Was what we’re meant to do

 

 

 

How we’re meant to be

 

 

 

Nothing to fear but fear, and me.

 

 

 

Don’t get me wrong

 

 

 

I miss the hugs, the friends,

 

 

 

the buzz of conversation

 

 

 

But I love the contemplation,

 

 

 

So now and then I’ll look back in

 

 

 

when we get out again.

 

 

 

https://listowelconnection.com/2022/02/

 

---------------------

 

Holiday by the Lake

 

 

 

Peg, she had a great idea

 

 

 

She was dying for a break

 

 

 

But how would she mange Jim at all

 

 

 

Great plans she’d have to make.

 

 

 

So she rang Jim’s sisters and enquired

 

 

 

If they’d like to book

 

 

 

A few days in the Lake hotel

 

 

 

That would get her off the hook.

 

 

 

Fair play to them, they responded

 

 

 

And so it came to pass

 

 

 

That all of them had the best of fun

 

 

 

Walking to Muckross.

 

 

 

And Seamus enjoyed the company

 

 

 

Of his sisters and their men

 

 

 

And did not feel left out at all

 

 

 

Though he could not walk with them.

 

 

 

And Peg was very happy

 

 

 

Among the mountains and the lake

 

 

 

Which filled her soul with wonder

 

 

 

and helped soothe her heart which ached

 

 

 

To watch her fine strong husband

 

 

 

Confined to his wheelchair.

 

 

 

But her troubles soon were melted

 

 

 

By Killarney’s fragrant air.

 

 

 

Peg Prendeville

 

 

------------------------------

 

I Want To Go On

 

 

 

By John McGrath

 

 

 

I want to go on looking in

 

 

 

when they let us out again.

 

 

 

I like what I found there.

 

 

 

Alone I was afraid at first

 

 

 

but then I realised

 

 

 

Searching for what matters

 

 

 

Was what we’re meant to do

 

 

 

How we’re meant to be

 

 

 

Nothing to fear but fear, and me.

 

 

 

Don’t get me wrong

 

 

 

I miss the hugs, the friends,

 

 

 

the buzz of conversation

 

 

 

But I love the contemplation,

 

 

 

So now and then I’ll look back in

 

 

 

when we get out again.

 

 

 

----------------------------------

 

Contributed by ChloeFinucane@aol.com

 

http://www.finucane.com/

 

 

 

THE BEAUTIES OF LIFE

 

THE WINGS OF A DOVE

 

THE WILD OPEN SPACES

 

OF HEAVEN AND EARTH,

 

HOWLING OF THE WIND

 

HIGH IN THE HILLS,

 

HOWLING OF THE WIND

 

THE LOWLAND BRINGS.

 

A CLEAR CRYSTAL FOUNTAIN

 

A RAINBOW IN THE SKY,

 

A CLEAR CRYSTAL FOUNTAIN

 

IS DESTINED TO DIE,

 

A VEIN TO A HEART

 

A RIVER TO THE SEA,

 

A RING ON A FINGER

 

A LEAF ON A TREE,

 

THE BEAUTIES OF LIFE

 

HAVE ALWAYS BEEN

 

THE BEAUTIES OF LIFE

 

SHOULD ALWAYS BE SEEN.

 

 

 

JOHN FINUCANE

 

Contributed by ChloeFinucane@aol.com

 

============================

 

DANCE: https://youtu.be/zBpLphSZGJg

 

===========================

 

All Ireland Fleadh Ennis A August 2016

 

https://youtu.be/-JTd90xN1bQ

 

======================

 

Matt Mooney – A Stark Cross

 

5 Jan 2022

 

 

 

Matt Mooney. A native of Galway, he lives in Listowel. His six collections of poems are: Droving, Falling Apples, Earth to Earth, The Singing Woods, Steering by the Stars, Éalú. Winner of The Pádraig Liath Ó Conchubhair Award 2019. Deputy Editor of The Galway Review and its Poetry Reviewer.

 

 

 

His poems have been published in a number of literary publications which include The Blue Nib, Feasta, Vox Galvia, and in anthologies at home and abroad. He continues to feature in many live and virtual poetry reading events.

 

A Stark Cross

 

 

 

The only thing I wrote

 

that end of March

 

to mark your burial

 

were six simple lines,

 

grief laden and finite:

 

 

 

‘The rain fell gently

 

on your grave

 

the day they buried

 

you in Lucan,

 

a victim of the Virus,

 

a stark cross above you’.

 

 

 

Out the door of life

 

alone in isolation,

 

the rest of us

 

in lock-down far away;

 

consolation later

 

in the loyalty of friends

 

’round your estate

 

on a grief-filled day

 

in their applause

 

as you passed by

 

and they sang

 

our Galway song

 

that says,

 

‘It’s faraway I am today

 

from scenes

 

I roamed a boy’

 

in your funeral film,

 

their last farewell,

 

their hymn from home

 

for you.

 

I have hesitated long,

 

maybe in denial,

 

to open up the book,

 

the story of your life,

 

its good times

 

and the bad as well

 

bettered bravely,

 

for maybe I’m afraid

 

I’d find myself

 

inside there with you

 

living it to the full,

 

listening to you Pat,

 

my own big brother;

 

taking it all in, then,

 

seeing the funny side,

 

laughing in the end.

 

 

 

https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/40745830/posts/13801

 

 

 

----------------------------------------

 

Poetry

 

 

 

 

 

Orphans of Aleppo

 

 

 

I had a dream last night

 

of children – little fugitives,

 

refugees from Syria –

 

abandoned and bombed out,

 

crawling in a quest

 

for families they lost

 

like newly weaned lambs;

 

survivors of lethal waves

 

in overcrowded dinghies;

 

after the human chaos

 

then the frozen fear,

 

following urban air raids,

 

of those left alive

 

in honeycombs of horror;

 

and now they seek a lap

 

on which to lay their heads,

 

the orphans of Aleppo.

 

 

 

October 2016

 

 

 

----------------------------

 

Winterman

 

 

 

I do not like you winterman,

 

walking slowly towards me

 

with your long black coat

 

brushing against the bushes,

 

black as well this evening.

 

 

 

It’s your fault you old timer,

 

you stole the leaves of gold

 

and sent the sun to bed early,

 

donning your broad grey hat

 

for Halloween above us all.

 

 

 

Driving the grey road ribbon,

 

leaving Abbeyfeale behind,

 

headlights on at half past five

 

against your onward march –

 

dipping downhill to Duagh

 

through descending darkness,

 

ever trying to creep over me;

 

a rising string of street lights

 

up a glenside football village,

 

each orange glow my beacon.

 

 

 

Sameness

 

 

 

Couples on a mid-week break

 

in a hotel down Wexford way

 

descending from their rooms,

 

their children running free,

 

assembling for afternoon tea

 

with the same anticipation

 

as the seagulls I remember

 

hovering over the full tide,

 

and a shoal of mackerel

 

near the surface of the sea

 

off the promenade in Galway

 

and later landing on the rocks

 

showing off their seagullness,

 

searching us with steady eyes

 

in their brilliant whiteness

 

capped with backs of grey,

 

tails tipped with black,

 

orange beaks and orange webs;

 

we resemble them in ways

 

in the simplicity of our needs

 

and we gladly meet and mingle

 

to celebrate in our sameness –

 

the sealing of a common bond.

 

 

 

-------------------------

 

Glenageenty

 

 

 

A boorheen more than a road

 

looked like it might finish up

 

around a bend sooner or later;

 

yet it redeemed itself later on

 

in magnificent Mount Brandon

 

showing up on the skyline

 

as we were charmed to go on

 

along a wooded glen side

 

that towered above our heads

 

and sunk out of sight below

 

to the quietly flowing rivulet.

 

 

 

The heritage signpost heralded

 

a hideaway for an Easter rebel,

 

Captain Monteith of the Aud,

 

‘on the run’ from Banna Beach

 

after Casement’s capture there

 

and I climbed down, a pilgrim,

 

to see the plaque to our patriot

 

in the autumn of the centenary.

 

 

 

A simple cabin down below

 

reached only by a spiral path,

 

was a safe house for him,

 

down by the Ravens’ Waterfall;

 

the hazel and mountain ash

 

hid a hermit grey and bearded,

 

inside his forest family circle

 

of cow, donkey, dog and cat;

 

felt the peace of a place apart

 

and I stood to pay my tribute

 

to the old hermit and the hero

 

forging a link in our freedom

 

in Glenageenty woods for us

 

long before we were even born.

 

 

 

Burning Potato Stalks

 

 

 

Deep green barely seen

 

potato shoots coming up

 

in little firm bunches

 

thrilling from the clay

 

promising good times

 

in stepped out rows

 

headland to headland.

 

 

 

Growing up before me

 

in the land of summer

 

the straight stalks flower

 

in daisy white blossoms

 

tinged with purple –

 

time to spray they say

 

for blight a deadly enemy.

 

Digging time is looming

 

sometime in October

 

then the picking carting

 

and pitting for the winter.

 

 

 

Lying along erased drills

 

the stalks wilt fit to burn

 

in Indian summer time

 

we gather up with forks

 

myself and my father

 

on a hillside tillage field

 

tilted towards the light

 

from the sun’s journey

 

to Galway of the Races

 

we used as our timepiece

 

our weather vane as well

 

when we raised our heads

 

days ‘down in the garden’.

 

 

 

Piled up lit and burned off

 

leaving an undying flame

 

within me in his memory

 

bonfires of withered stalks

 

smoke like incense spirals

 

for a healthy crop given

 

crackling and consuming

 

smells that rock the senses.

 

 

 

The Elysian Fields

 

 

 

They looked like Elysian Fields

 

to me up in the sky above there

 

coming down the Hill of Leith

 

leaving the sun behind to sink

 

solemnly near Mount Brandon.

 

 

 

Above its rays had gone ahead

 

on red and purple pink and rosé

 

fleecy clouds in ridges running

 

towards the village of Kilflynn.

 

 

 

Perplexed as to its connotation

 

this glimpse of suspended glory.

 

 

 

Overhead our Champs – Elysée

 

furrows on the fields of heaven

 

where ‘Our God Reigns’ is sung

 

and the choirs sing Deo Gratias

 

for their lives for what has been

 

a land of no seasons and no sin.

 

 

 

Seeming to be so near from here

 

I’d like to climb its silken ladder

 

and see for sure our final destiny.

 

 

 

Matt Mooney

 

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Covid Sonnet

 

 

 

John McGrath (published in John’s anthology, After Closing)

 

 

 

The world has pinned us with a warning glance,

 

 

 

the kind our mothers gave us long ago,

 

 

 

the look that was designed to let us know

 

 

 

that this might be our last and final chance.

 

 

 

So grounded, we can only hope and pray

 

 

 

as, day by day, we inch away from fear

 

 

 

and tiptoe towards a future far from clear

 

 

 

our wounded planet showing us the way,

 

 

 

that voices raised in ignorance and greed

 

 

 

may yet be drowned by kindnesses and care,

 

 

 

together we may rise above despair,

 

 

 

united we will find the strength we need

 

 

 

as, all for one, we reach beyond the pain

 

 

 

and dare to dream tomorrow once again.

 

 

 

 

 

-------------------------------------------------

 

A Poem about Land and Legacy

 

 

 

John McGrath’s anthology, After Closing, is full of lovely poems to dip into. Here is one I like.

 

 

 

Foley’s Field

 

 

 

Dan Foley dug his field but not for gold,

 

 

 

Though long ago his father showed him how.

 

 

 

Plant trees! he said, The ground’s too poor to plough.

 

 

 

But sons don’t always do as they are told.

 

 

 

Dry summers gave a glimpse of buried store

 

 

 

And so Dan dug where mighty trees had grown,

 

 

 

Where cows had grazed and summer crops were sown

 

 

 

And men had thrived two thousand years before.

 

 

 

Great golden roots of long-dead deal he found.

 

 

 

Dan raised them one by one from acid ground,

 

 

 

And as he filled their void with fertile soil,

 

 

 

He knew the field would soon repay his toil,

 

 

 

For land is like a poem, it draws men back

 

 

 

To write another line and leave their track.

 

 

 

-------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

John O’Donohue

 

A Blessing For The New Year

 

 

 

On the day when

 

The weight deadens

 

On your shoulders

 

And you stumble,

 

May the clay dance

 

To balance you.

 

 

 

And when your eyes

 

Freeze behind

 

The gray window

 

And the ghost of loss

 

Gets into you,

 

May a flock of colors

 

Indigo, red, green

 

and azure blue,

 

Come to awaken in you

 

A meadow of delight

 

 

 

When the canvas frays

 

In the curragh of thought

 

And a stain of ocean

 

Blackens beneath you,

 

May there come across the waters

 

A path of yellow moonlight

 

To bring you safely home.

 

 

 

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

 

May the clarity of light be yours,

 

May the fluency of the ocean be yours,

 

May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

 

 

 

And so may a slow

 

Wind work these words

 

Of love around you,

 

An invisible cloak

 

To mind your life.

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry

 

 

 

=========================

 

 

 

The Missionary who came to the Rock

 

 

 

 

Bishop Ray came last June, on a visit,

 

Poor Niall, he got a big shock.

 

‘cause a move was in hand,

 

a successor was planned.

 

So sad to be leaving the Rock.

 

 

 

He spent 14 years in Kenya,

 

There, he was tending God’s flock.

 

But Kerry, he reckoned,

 

As the Lord had him beckoned.

 

In 2017, he arrived on the Rock.

 

 

 

He wandered around in his sandals,

 

No toes, just a view of his sock.

 

Since in Africa he wore,

 

Bare feet on the floor.

 

But we don’t have such heat on the Rock.

 

 

 

He puts on odd wager on horses.

 

Well versed on their breeders and stock.

 

Paddy Power was unsure,

 

Of this guy looking mature,

 

Who cleaned him out, once he came to the Rock.

 

 

 

He loves to play golf on his day-off,

 

On fairways in Kerry, not Cork.

 

With a swing and a smile,

 

The ball goes a mile,

 

No hope of that game on the Rock!

 

 

 

He’s proud of his hair and his moustache,

 

Plenty follicles and many a hair-lock.

 

Sure his hair was like thatch,

 

even plaiting his moustache.

 

While cocooning up here on the Rock.

 

 

 

He’s chaplain now to David Clifford,

 

The latest kid on the block.

 

But we’ve heroes galore,

 

Outside our front door.

 

The Street of Champions up here on the Rock!

 

 

 

Our congregations come from all over,

 

From Fenit to Tursillagh.

 

His stories were many,

 

Insightful or funny.

 

As he nurtured us here on the Rock.

 

 

 

His gentle manner won us over,

 

Sincere and never to mock.

 

He ministered to us,

 

Without stress or without fuss.

 

We’re so grateful up here on the Rock.

 

 

 

Best wishes to you Niall in Fossa,

 

In the shadows of Aghadoe and of Torc.

 

They’re blessed to have you,

 

May God bless all that you do.

 

All praying for you here on the Rock.

 

 

 

(By Fr Padraig Walsh)

 

September 2020

 

==========================

 

==================================

 

Poetry

 

I penned the following ballad about Seamus Maguire; it was put to music by John Hoban

 

 

 

SEAMUS MAGUIRE By Mattie Lennon

 

 

 

The soup-runs of well meaning people

 

 

 

Could not heal the souls or hurt pride

 

 

 

Of the Irish in alien doorways

 

 

 

With no one but God on their side.

 

 

 

Through decades of drink and misfortune

 

 

 

Returning was out of the frame;

 

 

 

The streets and the hills of their homeland

 

 

 

Were but specks on an ocean of shame.

 

 

 

Despondency fed by resentment

 

 

 

Ran loose like an unbroken colt,

 

 

 

‘Til a hero, unsung, from Tipp’rary

 

 

 

Gave the conscience of Ireland a jolt.

 

 

 

“We’ll bring some of them home for next Christmas,

 

 

 

Who haven’t seen loved ones for years.

 

 

 

All we need is the will and the courage”

 

 

 

He blasted at pessimist ears.

 

 

 

Chorus;

 

 

 

Dreams dreamt, under cardboard in Camden,

 

 

 

Of a whin-bush, round tower or turf fire

 

 

 

Were realised beyond expectation;

 

 

 

We were brought home by Seamus Maguire.

 

 

 

The captains of business he badgered

 

 

 

While his care-workers beavered away,

 

 

 

Collecting the cash and resources,

 

 

 

And then came the memorable day

 

 

 

When the “rescue coach” left Dublin’s quayside

 

 

 

In December of seventy nine,

 

 

 

Taking fifty glad hearts to the country

 

 

 

With their loved ones once more to entwine.

 

 

 

For the next twenty years every Christmas

 

 

 

Maguire and his team would ensure

 

 

 

That the birth of the Saviour was special

 

 

 

For those He called “Bless’ed”; the poor.

 

 

 

And many a parent died happy

 

 

 

Resigned to their ultimate fate

 

 

 

With the son or the daughter they cherished

 

 

 

United before ’twas too late.

 

 

 

Chorus

 

 

 

The date on a gravestone in Thurles

 

 

 

Proclaims ninety-nine as the year

 

 

 

That God gave to Seamus Maguire

 

 

 

The reward for his mission down here.

 

 

 

And his name in more permanent fashion

 

 

 

Is forever inscribed in that tome;

 

 

 

The hearts of our destitute exiles

 

 

 

Who once had no hope of going home.

 

 

 

Chorus.

 

 

 

(c)  Mattie Lennon 2004

 

 

 

For a man who was so good to so many it is very sad that in the end, he died alone. It is equally sad that nobody saw fit to keep Youth-in-Need going after his death.

 

 

----------------------------------

 

by Kathlen Mullane

 

 

 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

 

 

 

I’ll finish for 2021 with these lines: –

 

 

 

There’s something about Winter as the days draw to a close,

 

 

 

With curtains drawn, lamps all lit, turf fires and cosy toes.

 

 

 

There’s something about winter with warming winter dishes,

 

 

 

Soup with buttered  home made bread, fire gazing making wishes.

 

 

 

There’s something about winter when it’s full of Christmas cheer,

 

 

 

Present buying Midnight Mass, carols sung with families dear.

 

 

 

There’s something about winter cold winds and icy rain,

 

 

 

Then it loosens it’s Iron-Fist, and soon it’s SPRING again.

 

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL

 

 

 

 

<<<<<<<<<<<< 

 

Poetry

 

A Poem for our Exiles

 

 

 

Shared by the poet on Facebook

 

 

 

AN EXILE’S CHRISTMAS

 

 

 

It was Christmas Eve in London,

 

 

 

And an Irishman, called Joe.

 

 

 

Stood by an upstairs window

 

 

 

That looked on the street below.

 

 

 

He could see the shoppers passing by,

 

 

 

Their voices filled with cheer.

 

 

 

As they shouted Happy Christmas,

 

 

 

And a prosperous new year.

 

 

 

As he looked around the little room,

 

 

 

That for years had been his home.

 

 

 

He was fifty years in London,

 

 

 

Since he crossed the ocean foam.

 

 

 

His youthful days behind him now,

 

 

 

And his working days long gone.

 

 

 

In retirement, his days were spent

 

 

 

On his own, to carry on.

 

 

 

He could hear a church bell ringing,

 

 

 

On the street across the way.

 

 

 

Where mass was celebrated, on

 

 

 

The eve of Christmas day. |

 

 

 

Then a choir started singing and

 

 

 

The strains of silent night,

 

 

 

Came drifting through the window.

 

 

 

Into Joe’s old flat that night.

 

 

 

As he listened to the singing,

 

 

 

He began to shed a tear.

 

 

 

For he always felt emotional,

 

 

 

On Christmas Eve each year.

 

 

 

When old memories came flooding back,

 

 

 

And his thoughts began to stray.

 

 

 

To his childhood days in Ireland,

 

 

 

Long ago and far away.

 

 

 

He could see again the old thatched house,

 

 

 

At the corner of the lane.

 

 

 

Oh what he’d give to be a lad,

 

 

 

and be back there once again.

 

 

 

The candle in the window,

 

 

 

To light a welcome way.

 

 

 

For the virgin and the Christ child,

 

 

 

On the eve of Christmas day.

 

 

 

The holly and the ivy,

 

 

 

and the cards Around the fire.

 

 

 

And his mother’s Christmas cooking,

 

 

 

That would fill you with desire.

 

 

 

The boxes left for Santa Claus,

 

 

 

In the hopes that he would call.

 

 

 

With the toys to play on Christmas day,

 

 

 

The happiest times of all.

 

 

 

As his memories began to fade,

 

 

 

reality Set in.

 

 

 

He was back once more in London,

 

 

 

In his little flat again.

 

 

 

And he drew his coat around him,

 

 

 

as he sat back in his chair.

 

 

 

And for all those in his memories,

 

 

 

he began to say a prayer.

 

 

 

And he asked the Lord, to grant them rest,

 

 

 

In the land beyond the sky.

 

 

 

All the folks he once shared Christmas with,

 

 

 

In the happy years gone by.

 

 

 

Tomorrow at the Centre, he will meet o

 

 

 

His old friend Jack,

 

 

 

an Irishman just like himself.

 

 

 

That never made it back.

 

 

 

They will have their Christmas dinner,

 

 

 

and a glass or two of beer,

 

 

 

As they join their old acquaintances,

 

 

 

And the friends they love so dear.

 

 

 

Everybody has their party piece,

 

 

 

To raise a bit of cheer.

 

 

 

At their Christmas get together.

 

 

 

In the Centre every year.

 

 

 

So to all our Irish exiles,

 

 

 

in lands far off and near

 

 

 

The blessing of this Christmas time

 

 

 

we wish you all this year.

 

 

 

And although we are divided,

 

 

 

by land and sky, and foam,

 

 

 

A very Merry Christmas,

 

 

 

from the Irish Folks at home.

 

 

 

Martin O’Hara © 29/11/2021

 

=================================

 

Poetry

 

By Peg Prendeville- 15 Dec 2021.

 

 

 

Rudolf’s Red Nose

 

 

 

You know I suppose about Rudolf’s red nose

 

 

 

But do you know how it got there?

 

 

 

Just sit back a while and I’ll make you smile

 

 

 

When I tell you what happened his hair.

 

 

 

Now Rudolf, one day, got bored with his play

 

 

 

And decided to dye his long hair

 

 

 

He went to the shop, there wasn’t a drop

 

 

 

So he had to go to the fair.

 

 

 

Says he to the man who had the red van

 

 

 

“Will you colour my hair a bright red”

 

 

 

“Begor”, said the man, “I’ll do what I can

 

 

 

But if your mother sees it you’re dead.”

 

 

 

So with his face in a frown Rudolf sat down

 

 

 

While his hair was lathered with paint

 

 

 

He looked in the mirror and froze with the terror

 

 

 

And nearly fell down in a faint.

 

 

 

To the man in the van he said “Do what you can

 

 

 

To get it all off my head

 

 

 

I can’t go home now or there will be a row

 

 

 

Come on, hurry up” Rudolf said.

 

 

 

So the man got some soap and muttered “you dope”

 

 

 

And started to wash Rudolf’s hair

 

 

 

It flowed down his face and all over the place

 

 

 

There were puddles and soap everywhere.

 

 

 

Rudolf started to cry when it got in his eye

 

 

 

And out of the chair he arose

 

 

 

He looked in the mirror and started to shiver

 

 

 

When he saw the red paint on his nose.

 

 

 

To Santa he ran, away from the man

 

 

 

Crying Santa my nose is all red

 

 

 

Now Mam will be mad, and say I am bad

 

 

 

Oh Santa please save me he said.

 

 

 

“Oh ho ho ho” laughed Santa, “you know

 

 

 

It shines like a light in the snow

 

 

 

Now drink up your tay and we’ll fill up the sleigh

 

 

 

All the children are waiting you know.”

 

-------------------------------

 

 

====================================

 

ONLINE EVENT | POETRY

 

16TH VIRTUAL POETRY EVENT

 

In association with Ó Bhéal

 

14 JUNE 2021, 8.30pm-11.00pm

 

FREE

 

Don’t miss Ó Bhéal’s 16th Virtual Poetry event will feature three parts, a Five Word Challenge (max 30 – after 15 minutes writing time); Featured Guest Poets (Theo Dorgan and Lang Leav and Open-Mic Session for original poetry (max 30).

 

We will live-stream the session at obheal.ie/live and via Ó Bhéal’s Vimeo, Facebook and YouTube channels. The event will be hosted on Zoom and limited to 100 participants.

 

MORE INFO & TO REGISTER: https://corkharbourfestival.com/2021/o-bheal/

 

 

 

 

===============================

 

Poetry

 

By Peg Prendeville

 

 

 

The following poem is a light-hearted version of my weekend.

 

 

 

Booster Shot

 

 

 

Everything seemed to fit just right

 

 

 

When I got my Booster call

 

 

 

My hubby was in rehab

 

 

 

So I had no care at all.

 

 

 

And then I had a great idea

 

 

 

Now that I have time to spare

 

 

 

I’ll go to see some family

 

 

 

In Fanore in Co. Clare.

 

 

 

On the way to Patrickswell

 

 

 

My battery light flashed red

 

 

 

So I had to make a detour

 

 

 

And get that fixed instead.

 

 

 

But with guidance from my angels

 

 

 

I got my battery replaced

 

 

 

And got my booster shot, no bother,

 

 

 

And headed to Co. Clare.

 

 

 

Some Neurofen and water

 

 

 

Was the advice I took

 

 

 

I had no symptoms, pains nor aches

 

 

 

I did everything by the book.

 

 

 

But when I went to bed that night

 

 

 

And was thanking God in prayer

 

 

 

I got a fit of shivering

 

 

 

In Fanore in Co. Clare.

 

 

 

The cold attacked from inside my bones

 

 

 

And invaded every pore

 

 

 

I couldn’t warm up at all

 

 

 

I was frozen to the core.

 

 

 

I wrapped up inside a duvet

 

 

 

Tucked pillows here and there

 

 

 

But not a wink of sleep I got

 

 

 

In Fanore in Co. Clare.

 

 

 

I yawned and tossed and turned

 

 

 

As I counted down the hours

 

 

 

And now my body was on fire

 

 

 

And I could not cool it down.

 

 

 

I was not the best of company

 

 

 

As I rested all next day

 

 

 

But thank God I slept on Sunday night

 

 

 

In my bed in Co. Clare.

 

 

 

And now I hear of Omicron

 

 

 

And I wonder will I dare

 

 

 

Accept another booster?

 

 

 

It’s hard to know, I swear!

 

 

 

Now I’m cuddled up in my own bed

 

 

 

And offering up a prayer

 

 

 

For the people who put up with me

 

 

 

While shivering in Clare.

 

====================================

 

 

 

 

 

======================================

 

By Peg Prendeville

 

 

 

I was sorry to hear of the death of Tom Normoyle, Drumrisk. Sympathies to his sons Michael and Tom and sister Mary and all his extended family. I am sure he is dancing in Heaven right now.

 

 

 

Halloween has passed and what an awful evening it was for those who might have wanted to go Trick or Treating. I am sure it stopped many from venturing out.

 

 

 

I have been holding back from commenting too much on the poetry books launched by my sisters recently simply because they are family but then I thought if they weren’t family I would be very eager to lavish praise on them so I hope you don’t mind me rambling on about them. I know that Paddy Faley would be delighted that the poetry gene was passed on to his children and would delight in the fact that they published their own collections. He, himself, took great pride in his own book The Life and Rhymes of Paddy Faley back in 2003.  Bridie Murphy’s book Connections is on sale in O’Riordan’s Chemist, Athea and in the Knockdown Arms among other places. It is a beautiful book of colour photographs interspersed with lovely rhymes and evocative articles. All Bridie’s poems are based on real events in her own family or in the area and her witty lines are a joy to read. I find it very uplifting, especially on these dark nights to pick it up and read one or two. It would make a lovely Christmas present for anybody with a love of reading or anyone who is handy with a camera. It is priced at €20, which is very reasonable for a hardback colour book. Ger White’s book “Newspapers on the Floor” is selling through www.amazon.com   and is another collection of poems, long and short, funny and serious, light and dark. Ger lives in East Grinstead in the UK but has a great love for her home place and many of her poems refer back to her time living in Turraree with her Uncle Dan and Ciss. The poems range from quite funny to spiritual to imaginative to a hint of darkness. Her sense of humour is infectious and the title itself sucks one in and makes one curious to read more.  It is a black and white paperback. Poetry, as I’ve said before, is only really enjoyable when read aloud and read more than once. At each reading more of a story is told and more sentiment and emotion is expressed. If anybody would like a copy let me know. My mobile is 087 6826878. As I said it is sold through Amazon but for those who would prefer a copy put into their hand I can get some for you for €15. Again, another lovely Christmas present. I wish both my sisters the very best and encourage them to keep writing. The funny thing is that both were intending to publish this year but had kept it to themselves and surprised us all and each other when they let us in on their project. Sure their launches nearly clashed!

 

 

 

https://www.athea.ie/category/news/

 

===============================

 

John W Sexton - Poetry Workshop

 

 

 

    Saturday, September 11, 2021

 

    10:00 AM 1:00 PM

 

 

 

    The Bunker Ballybunion, KY Ireland (map)

 

 

 

    Google Calendar ICS

 

 

 

John W. Sexton was born in 1958 and is the author of seven poetry collections, the most recent being: The Offspring of the Moon (Salmon Poetry 2013), Futures Pass (Salmon Poetry 2018), and Visions at Templeglantine (Revival Press 2020). A chapbook of his surrealist poetry, Inverted Night, came out from SurVision in April 2019.

 

Tickets for the Poetry Workshops are limited, please contact ballybunionartsfestival@gmail.com to book a space, price €20

 

 

 

 

 

He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem The Green Owl was awarded the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007 for best single poem. His poem In and Out of Their Heads, from The Offspring of the Moon, was selected for The Forward Book of Poetry 2014. His poem The Snails was shortlisted for the 2018 An Post / Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year Award. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.

 

 

 

During 2019 and 2020 he was Writer in Residence for the Dromineer Nenagh Literary Festival.

 

 

 

Join John for a three hour poetry workshop at The Bunker.

 

https://www.ballybunionartsfestival.ie/programme/john-w-sexton-poetry-workshop

 

 

 

 

 

=======================

 

Poetry

 

by John Fitzgerald

 

Out from the pastures in early Spring

 

On trucks and on trailers, the loading begins

 

The tents and the tigers, the bright colored ring

 

John Duffy, the circus is callin’

 

Travellin’ the highways and tourin’ the towns

 

 Ringmaster, jugglers, the cats and the clowns

 

The posters are printed so word gets around

 

John Duffy, the circus is callin’

 

They drive the long nights without any sleep

 

Wire walkers, tight ropers, all hands to the wheel

 

 Each dawn a’peggin’ the circle of steel

 

John Duffy, the circus is callin’

 

They ring round our market, wagons galore

 

Tractors and trailers, the canvas and more

 

With riggin’ and cages, ropes by the score

 

John Duffy, the circus is callin’

 

Four beats to a bar, the sledges ring

 

Four men of iron their music to sing

 

The canvas is spread,” the heave-ho” begins

 

John Duffy, the circus is callin’

 

 

 

Its haul down the ropes, and let the tent rise

 

Like clockwork they know, each cog to prise

 

They heave and they haul ‘til the tent is full size

 

John Duffy, the circus is callin’

 

The brass band of old is pipe music new

 

Monkeys are scarce and the elephants few

 

The trapeze has nets and the safe rope has too

 

John Duffy, the circus is callin’

 

The circus, alas, is not that of old

 

The magic, the music, the laughs and the roars

 

See a child’s face when the sparkle’s gone cold

 

John Duffy will soon not be callin’

 

 

 

 

Poetry

 

POEM IN HONOUR OF THE LATE TERESA: Teresa Riordan was in her 98 th year when she died on June 23rd. last.  This poem, written by a young relation, was read at her funeral:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nana Teresa lived to ninety seven,

 

 

 

a place she got above in heaven,

 

 

 

always a lady for the rosary,

 

 

 

 evenings she’d say a decade or three.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She loved her holidays in Ballyagran,

 

 

 

down with her sister Joanie’s clan.

 

 

 

Or down to Anna in lovely Croom,

 

 

 

it was a good house for a lovely tune.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eliah’s daily visits for a run down on the farm,

 

 

 

Teresa loved his craic and his charm.

 

 

 

She loved TV and radio Kerry,

 

 

 

her dog Shizzy and a wine to make her merry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teresa was a noted baker,

 

 

 

& very little time it would take her.

 

 

 

famous for her bread and her scones,

 

 

 

a serious operator when in her zone.

 

 

 

Nicola would call for a cup of tea,

 

 

 

In her kitchen Shauna and Caoimhe learned their one, two, threes.

 

 

 

Teresa loved an Irish tune,

 

 

 

Caoimhe on the concertina could be heard in the room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teresa had a great circle of friends,

 

 

 

on the phone to them for hours on end.

 

 

 

Neighbours in Banard from above and below,

 

 

 

would always stop by to say hello.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In her early years she milked many a cow,

 

 

 

It isn’t something you’d often see now.

 

 

 

We are living on the farm for 26 years,

 

 

 

Nana Teresa always treated us with love and great cheer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A trip to Cissy for Saturday mass,

 

 

 

This is something she’d never pass.

 

 

 

First to the hairdresser and dress up in style,

 

 

 

up to receive from the centre aisle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Years ago Dan and Teresa’s was the only house with a phone,

 

 

 

rarely were they in the house alone,

 

 

 

She’d always have a huge welcome for anyone who’d call,

 

 

 

adults and children both big and small.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paud Woulfe and Mike Leahy would call every night

 

 

 

Teresa’s flowers and garden was a wonderful sight.

 

 

 

Jim Ahern used to call to fix everything,

 

 

 

while the nieces and nephews would drop by after a quick ring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teresa’s home help were super to her in Banard,

 

 

 

she’d love to see them pull into the yard.

 

 

 

A weekend away with James and Katherine in the Sheen Falls in Kenmare,

 

 

 

it was almost as good as a day with Dan at the fair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her last six weeks were spent in the hill,

 

 

 

with Norette and Nana Riordan she got to chill.

 

 

 

She loved her drives to BallyB,

 

 

 

sitting in the mobile looking out at the sea,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday you said goodbye to us,

 

 

 

like everything in life it was with little fuss.

 

 

 

We are sure you are reunited with your darling Dan,

 

 

 

Cissy, Ita and the rest of the Fam.

 

 

 

Rest in Peace Nana Teresa

 

 

 

==========================================

 

 

 

 

===================================================

 

Poetry

 

The Blessed Well in Kilshenane

 

 

 

From Closing the Circle, an anthology of the poems of John McGrath

 

 

 

Hare

 

 

 

I met a hare along the road today,

 

 

 

Tall as a greyhound.

 

 

 

He hopped towards me,

 

 

 

hesitated,

 

 

 

hopped again,

 

 

 

stopped to listen

 

 

 

to my freewheel click,

 

 

 

then turned and loped away.

 

 

 

I gazed in grateful awe

 

 

 

as with each simple spring

 

 

 

the distance grew between us,

 

 

 

marvelled how his quiet grace

 

 

 

belied his hidden power.

 

 

 

 

 

Then with one bound

 

 

 

he cleared a ditch

 

 

 

and disappeared from view

 

 

 

leaving me to wonder.

 

--------------------------------------------

 

 

 

By Peg Prendeville

 

 

 

I was saddened to hear of the death of Nancy Langan, Glenagragra last weekend. Sincere sympathies to Mossy and all  the family.

 

 

 

Knockdown was buzzing again on Monday night when the Knockdown Arms opened its doors after the long COVID break. Ta has done great work to ensure the safety of all patrons. Let us hope now that this will be the last of the shut-downs. But it is up to us all to abide by the rules as much as possible so as to enable the publicans to keep their businesses running smoothly.

 

 

 

Many local people, who would normally go on a sun holiday, are enjoying holidays in Ireland this year and claim to be enjoying them very much. There is no doubt we have a beautiful country only for the weather so the last week has been the icing on the cake for those on holidays. I hope we have not seen the last of the sun. It is like a feast and a famine at the moment. A little bit of consistency would be nice.

 

 

 

The literary bug is running rampant in the Faley family this year. I am informed that two of my sisters are producing poetry books before the year is out. Bridie Murphy, who writes lovely poems of local people and places and events, will be combining her photography with her poems while Ger White in the UK will not let Bridie away with it and might even get in before her with her collection, ranging from light to serious topics. I know Paddy Faley is smiling in Heaven and glad that the tradition lives on. Watch this space!

 

 

 

I know I am gone from the Library staff but I am still happy to visit all libraries and was glad to see that the Newcastlewest staff have a lovely display to honour native Carolyn Hayes who represented Ireland in the Women’s Triathlon on Monday night.

 

 

 

Don’t forget that Glin library is reopened. Danielle Byrne is delighted to get to know all the local readers.

 

 

 

https://www.athea.ie/category/knockdown-news/

 

 

----------------------------------------------

 

Poetry

 

Contented Diner

 

 

 

Glass House

 

 

 

John McGrath

 

 

 

I must have ordered onion rings for two.

 

 

 

They’re stacked above my steak like lifebelts;

 

 

 

Pepper sauce and wedges on the side,

 

 

 

salad and a subtle Chilean Red.

 

 

 

Beyond the glass I watch the river rise

 

 

 

swiftly with the tide.  Swans

 

 

 

feed frantically, bottoms in the air.

 

 

 

Mine hugs lime-green leatherette.

 

 

 

The waiter smiles, tops up my wine

 

 

 

and leaves.  I watch his bottom too,

 

 

 

then raise my fork and stab my plate

 

 

 

like a Polynesian fisherman.

 

 

 

Out on the river, the swans swim on,

 

 

 

pedalling frantically against the tide,

 

 

 

Diving, feeding, pedalling again.

 

 

 

I marvel at their weight-loss plan.

 

 

 

I put down my fork and sigh contentedly,

 

 

 

raise my feet onto the lime-green leatherette,

 

 

 

smile at the waiter as he takes my plate and muse

 

 

 

on why others choose to swim against the tide.

 

 

 

==================================

 

 

 

By John McGrath

 

 

 

Bang!

 

 

 

A finch against my window.

 

 

 

I felt the shudder as its world met mine,

 

 

 

Rushed to where it fell.

 

 

 

Sapped of sense and movement,

 

 

 

Eyes glazed, grey, lifeless,

 

 

 

Wings splayed, stone still.

 

 

 

I saw its small beak quiver,

 

 

 

Move as if to speak.

 

 

 

A tiny pulse throbbed in its downy throat.

 

 

 

Cupping it in my palm,

 

 

 

I felt the soft, warm beat within,

 

 

 

Willed life into stillness.

 

 

 

Restored by simple touch

 

 

 

It stirred, fluttered, faltered, flew

 

 

 

And healed the poet too.

 

 

 

===============================

 

A Poem that will strike a Chord

 

 

 

Box

 

 

 

by John McGrath

 

 

 

I wondered why the box

 

 

 

was so much bigger than the book;

 

 

 

why the book the poet sent to me

 

 

 

was so much smaller than the box.

 

 

 

Then I opened the book

 

 

 

that was filled with love and lore,

 

 

 

with longing and laughter

 

 

 

and weeping and rivers

 

 

 

and oceans and pain,

 

 

 

so much wisdom and wonder and joy

 

 

 

and so many people and stories,

 

 

 

that I marvelled at the miracle

 

 

 

of how a box so tiny

 

 

 

could hold so great a book.

 

 

 

=============================

 

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< 

 

 

 

Laborare est Orare

 

 

 

Cathedrals

 

 

 

By John McGrath

 

 

 

Walking with dolphins on a summer’s day

 

 

 

High over Ballybunion,

 

 

 

Talking with ravens in Ballyegan bog,

 

 

 

December morning after rain,

 

 

 

Watching a tumbling star

 

 

 

In a blue-black January sky,

 

 

 

The moon ringed with gold

 

 

 

Over Cnoc An Óir,

 

 

 

Listening to a choir of thrushes

 

 

 

Or the vespers of a thousand starlings,

 

 

 

Turning day-old hay

 

 

 

Towards a sweetening July sun,

 

 

 

Smelling the first rose of April

 

 

 

Or the first turf-fire of autumn.

 

 

 

Incense, mystery, music, majesty

 

 

 

And many places,

 

 

 

Many ways to pray.

 

 

 

=============================

 

Elegy to Road Kill

 

 

 

Fox

 

 

 

by John McGrath

 

 

 

I killed a fox last night

 

 

 

outside the graveyard wall.

 

 

 

Too late to brake I caught

 

 

 

a flash of golden fur

 

 

 

in headlight’s glare,

 

 

 

Felt the thump and crunch

 

 

 

of steel on bone,

 

 

 

Slow-motion silence,

 

 

 

Disbelief and then,

 

 

 

certitude

 

 

 

that fate had mindlessly conspired

 

 

 

to lead us to this place,

 

 

 

this point in time,

 

 

 

this intersecting line

 

 

 

where two lives intertwine

 

 

 

with tragedy.

 

 

 

One of us remained

 

 

 

outside the graveyard wall.

 

 

 

One moved on

 

 

 

and died a little too.

 

 

 

=========================

 

Photo by Éamon ÓMurchú of farm implements at Newbridge House

 

 

 

The Land

 

 

 

John McGrath

 

 

 

I stand in fields where my forefathers stood once

 

 

 

And feel the dreams of those who’ve gone before me.

 

 

 

I tramp through damp and half-remembered pastures,

 

 

 

The folds and features of the land that bore me

 

 

 

All around.  Above the sound of lark’s song,

 

 

 

Below the spring of earth beneath my feet,

 

 

 

The green and gold of April in the hedgerow,

 

 

 

The purple haze where sky and heather meet.

 

 

 

Where mighty men have thought to mark their passing

 

 

 

The furze creeps back to mock the spade and plough,

 

 

 

Those futile epitaphs of generations

 

 

 

In Folk Museums condemned to moulder now.

 

 

 

Where men have raised a fence or tilled a furrow

 

 

 

The land, as if to scorn their simple gains,

 

 

 

Erases each proud trace until tomorrow.

 

 

 

The men have gone; the land alone remains.

 

 

 

========================================

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

================================

 

Poetry

 

The Ball Alley

 

 

 

A poem by John Fitzgerald

 

 

 

The Alley

 

 

 

Standing on the dead line

 

 

 

I face the pockmarked wall,

 

 

 

it hides the bridge above me

 

 

 

fond memories I recall,

 

 

 

the side walls mark the theatre,

 

 

 

the concrete floor the stage,

 

 

 

four players take their places

 

 

 

the finest of their age.

 

 

 

The cocker’s hopped and hardened,

 

 

 

Junior’s feet fix solidly

 

 

 

he contemplates the angle

 

 

 

of the first trajectory.

 

 

 

His swinging arm begins the game

 

 

 

the ball’s hit low and fast,

 

 

 

a signal to John Joe and Tom

 

 

 

this will be no soft match.

 

 

 

Dermot standing by his side

 

 

 

sees his neighbour win first toss,

 

 

 

a simple game to twenty one

 

 

 

no ace is easily lost.

 

 

 

I watch them from the grassy mound

 

 

 

behind the dead ball line

 

 

 

 hear the cries of older boys

 

 

 

cheer each one at a time

 

 

 

and in the space of half an hour

 

 

 

the ball has weaved its way

 

 

 

through every nook and cranny

 

 

 

in this battlefield of play,

 

 

 

the long ball to the back line

 

 

 

the close one to the wall

 

 

 

the deadly butted killer

 

 

 

seemed to hit no wall at all

 

 

 

and in end the four of them

 

 

 

take leave just as they came

 

 

 

and beckon us to take our place

 

 

 

and learn more of their game,

 

 

 

the game that gave such pleasure

 

 

 

the game I got to know.

 

 

 

when I was young and full of fun

 

 

 

in the Alley years ago.

 

 

 

(The cocker was the name they had for the ball)

-------------------------------------------

 

 

-----------------------------------

 

A new poem from John McGrath

 

 

 

I Want  To Go On

 

 

 

I want to go on looking in

 

when they let us out again.

 

I like what I found there.

 

Alone I was afraid at first

 

but then I realised

 

Searching for what matters

 

Was what we’re meant to do

 

How we’re meant to be

 

Nothing to fear but fear, and me.

 

Don’t get me wrong

 

I miss the hugs, the friends,

 

the buzz of conversation

 

But I love the contemplation,

 

So now and then I’ll look back in

 

when we get out again.

 

 

 ====================================================

 

My days working in the library are coming to an end as I am retiring in June. This past year has seen the libraries closed more often than open so it has been a strange final year of work. I sent in my retirement notice in poetry as follows:

 

 

 

The 4th of June is a special date

 

 

 

‘Twas the day I wed my faithful mate

 

 

 

On that date too I began my career

 

 

 

As a branch librarian  for 19 years.

 

 

 

These years have given me much joy

 

 

 

And, in truth, this time has flown on by.

 

 

 

But now my life has changed its plan

 

 

 

And I must adapt as best I can.

 

 

 

So I pick the 4th of June once more

 

 

 

To hand in my keys of Glin Library door.

 

 

 

I am grateful for the years within

 

 

 

This lovely place in the town of Glin.

 

Poetry by Peg Prendeville

 

 

===========================

 

Poetry

 

Poll an Eas in the sunshine by Tom

 

 

 

Poul an Eas … never more shall I see thee dark Poul an Eas

 

Shall I behold or hear thy flood,

 

For thy loved banks no more I’ll pass

 

Or wander by Killeany woods. It was there the cowslips were first seen,

 

To deck those sheltered banks so green.

 

For they loved banks no more I’ll pass

 

Or wander by Killeany woods. Turn then to where my youth was spend

 

Long beside my native home

 

Where Saxon rents and Saxon Laws

 

Compelled us here from there to roam

 

But if her sons united were,

 

There need not be an exile here

 

For grave should be the grabbers end. Written by: Kathleen Dillane

 

Glin, Co Limerick Composed by: The Late Timothy Costello

 

Killeany Cross, Glin

 

https://glin.info/2021/04/25/poll-an-eas-in-the-sunshine-by-tom/

 

=======================================

 

                              Patneen Ahern Remembered                 By Tom Aherne

 

 

 

2013 is the 25th anniversary of the passing of the master fiddle player Paddy Ahern (affectionately known as Patneen) from Glenagore, Athea; He died on Saturday 26th November 1988 aged 87 years old. I compiled the following tribute to him about 10 years ago which I would like to share with our readers. Traditional music has been played for centuries all over Ireland. It has been handed down from father to son, mother to daughter, and from neighbour to neighbour, for Irish music is a living tradition. Since the dawn of time people have enjoyed making and listening to music. We are fortunate in Ireland to have a very rich tradition of instrumental music.

 

 

 

It is a most enjoyable pastime with much fun generated at the many sessions that take place, on a regular basis all over the country. Somebody once said music resembles poetry, -‘in each are numerous graces, which no methods teach and which a master hand alone can reach.’ Today the fiddle is one of the most popular instruments for playing traditional music in Ireland. Over the years we recall many famous fiddle players, such as Michael Coleman, Johnny Doherty, Padraig O’Keeffe, Sean Maguire, Denis Murphy, Seamus Connolly, Paddy Glackin, Martin Mulvihill and Johnny Donegan.

 

 

 

West Limerick has also produced many top class exponents of the fiddle and bow over the years, too numerous to mention here. An expression you often hear nowadays is ‘if the cap fits wear it.’ It was the name of a recording by fiddle player Kevin Bourke back in 1978. The expression brings to mind memories of the man with the cap in musical circles, in our locality Patneen Ahern, from the Glenagore/Knockfinisk border in the parish of Athea. He came from an area rich in music and he dedicated his long life to the promotion of fiddle playing.

 

 

 

Paddy Ahern from Glenagore was born in 1901 the eldest of five children. He had three brothers, Con Mick and Dan, and one sister Catherine, who died at a young age. His father was Patrick and his mother was Ann Madigan from Rooskagh. His grandmother was a woman by the name of Woulfe, from Athea, whose brother was a teacher there in times past. A very interesting link with his past relations was his great-grandmother, who was a woman by the name of Coll from Bruree. She was probably a relation of Eamon De Valera and they met up when Paddy’s great  grandfather was in service around that locality.

 

 

 

Paddy went to Carrigkerry National School where his teacher was Master Halpin and he was a keen scholar, being especially good at Maths. It was all walking in those days and the two miles plus journey was done morning and afternoon in all types of weather. When school days were completed along with his brothers and friends he entered service with farmers around the West Limerick area. His social life centred around the Village of Carrigkerry where his music was highly regarded and valued.

 

 

 

Paddy Inherited his music from the fine fiddle player ‘Jackson’ and he could trace back his relationship to the great man who was a legend at playing and composing music. Paddy’s ability to read and write music and to play the fiddle and tin whistle, helped him greatly to develop into a master musician and to be regarded as one of the best fiddle players of his generation. His collection of Irish traditional tunes was enormous, and many were from O’Neill’s Collection of music, which was the good musician’s bible at that time. He could play away all night without repeating a tune. In the early days of the century he was in his prime, playing for gambles, raffles, dances, weddings, socials and wren nights. His name was renowned not alone in Limerick but also in adjoining counties.

 

 

 

His distinctive style of music attracted a host of top class musicians who wanted to claim the honour of playing with the master of fiddle and bow. Down the years he taught many pupils the art of fiddle playing at his cottage overlooking Ahern’s Glen.  They included Sean Lynch, Glenagore, George Walker, Rooskagh, Tom Ahern, Knockfinisk and John and Mike O’Sullivan, Carrigkerry. They are now scattered to the four corners of the World and to Heaven above, but his music has been transferred and still lives on. His style of penning down a tune was unrivalled at the time considering that he had very poor eyesight. It is true to say that he kept the Céilí music going when it was not fashionable or rewarding and that he left a legacy of his music and good musicians after him to carry on the tradition.

 

 

 

Timmy Woulfe, from Athea (who has done great work teaching and collecting dances over the years), has great memories of Paddy which he shared with me at the time. Timmy recalled many visits to Ahern’s house in Glenagore over the years. Colm Danaher and he would attend music sessions there along with many others from the locality. A gentleman by the name of Lynch, who was a bank manager in Newcastle West, was amongst the callers. Paddy was regarded as an icon by the people, who came from far and wide to play with him and also to hear him display his great talent. Timmy said ‘He had a rake of music and tunes, which many others had never heard of and he was always on the lookout to collect more new tunes. Timmy recalled writing out Cooley’s Reel for Paddy on one occasion. A warm welcome awaited all who came to his house, and tea and refreshments were always served.

 

 

 

Paddy is still remembered by the older generation around Athea, twenty four years after his death. He would attend Irish Nights arranged by the local Comhaltas branch and other events around the Village. Timmy recalled a Radio recording that featured Paddy which was held in Kelly’s Hall and Mick Lynch’s Bar. Ciarán Mac Mathúna visited Kelly’s Hall to record material for his Radio programme ‘A Job of Journeywork.’ The Hall was packed and the noise levels high, making recording near impossible. The crowd went wild when Paddy commenced his performance, stamping their feet and urging him on. To help the recording Dinny Kelly, a player from Knocknaboul, shielded Paddy from the crowd by opening his overcoat wide and turning his back to the crowd.

 

 

 

In frustration Ciarán left by a side window for the sanctuary of the pub and the enjoyment of a few drinks. The late Seán

 

 

 

O’Ríada made a recording one fine summer’s day at Mick Lynch’s which Paddy attended. A famous fiddle player John Kelly from Carrigaholt in Clare took a shine to him and the two spent a lot of the day playing together. Timmy concluded by saying that Paddy Ahern and Con Greaney were the two outstanding talents that came from the locality. They were generous with their time and music and singing was their fulfilment in life. They were blessed with great talent, but both remained modest and unassuming and a credit to their parish.

 

 

 

Paddy Ahern was always referred to as Patneen or Padneen in local circles. He was humorous and full of wit and many stories were told about him over the years. One of his famous sayings was that he could play the fiddle as good as Geraldine O’Grady (the famous violin player) if only he had her fiddle. He was asked on one occasion if he could play a certain tune. His reply was swift saying if it was in the book he could play it. Paddy never married, similar to the great Sliabh Luachra fiddle player Pádraig O’Keeffe. The latter always called his fiddle, ‘the missus’ because he thought so much of it. It was much the same with Paddy as he was always minding his fiddle, and being very careful where he left it.

 

 

 

A couple of more stories that come to mind are as follows: – He was at a wren party on one occasion and enjoying himself to the full. It was to finish up at a certain hour of the morning to allow the owners of the house to tidy it up and to get a few hours sleep. The leader of the wren boy group had a job to get Paddy out, but after some persuasion he got him out and pointed him in the direction of his home which was only a short distance away. When the leader had the house sorted out and all things put back in place he also headed for home. He received a big surprise when he lifted the latch and walked into his own kitchen, to see Paddy sitting on his armchair and fast asleep in front of the open fire.

 

 

 

On another occasion Paddy was in Stack’s Bar, Carrigkerry after collecting his pension. He was playing a few tunes for those present when one person asked for a loan of his fiddle. He played a few tunes and was inclined to boast of his ability as he handed back the fiddle. Paddy and a few others were discussing the merit of his playing a while later. Paddy’ sight was failing badly at this time and he turned to the person next to him, unaware that it was the fiddle player. ‘Take no notice of that family’ said Paddy ‘they are only a crowd of blow holes.’

 

 

 

My own memories of Paddy are mainly from the 1960s and the wren parties he attended at Kennelly’s house in Glensharrold. He was in advancing years at the time, but he was still very much sought after for his expertise on the fiddle. A driver was always sent for him, as he had no means of transport. He would sit near the fire and play away to his heart’s content. The slant of his cap and the head shaking as his foot kept time are visions I still retain after close on fifty years. He would keep the floor going for long periods, with rousing polka sets, siege of Ennis, foxtrots, and waltzes.

 

 

 

His only reward would be a few pints of porter and plenty of food to eat. Paddy had a habit of falling asleep and when he awoke rested would play on with renewed vigour. At one party the dancing continued late into the following morning until Paddy fell asleep. As he awoke from his slumber, he came out to the back yard to answer a call of nature. Rubbing his eyes that January evening as the dusk was falling, he looked to the sky and declared. ‘It’s a grand morning thank God; it’s breaking fine and clear.’

 

 

 

Paddy Ahern died in the Regional Hospital Limerick on Saturday 26th November 1988 aged 87 years. His remains were removed to Athea Church, and the burial took place in the family grave in Holy Cross Cemetery on the Monday. Musicians provided a guard of honour and traditional music was played at the graveside. It was one of the first times music was played there, and that would have made Paddy really proud.

 

 

 

Now close on a quarter of a century later it would be nice to see his memory recorded in some way in the parish. A memorial could be erected, or a music competition held annually to commemorate his name. A true son of Ireland, he deserves continued recognition for keeping the music alive, and teaching others to preserve our great musical heritage. I dedicate the following lines in his honour.

 

 

 

In Carrigkerry so fair, his music filled the air from June to May, through night and day,

 

 

 

Much music he taught, to all who were brought, and the tunes they sought, sure they were taught for naught,

 

 

 

He travelled the west, and played with the best, with fiddle and bow, he was always on the go,

 

 

 

His mind was at ease, from Glenagore’s heather breeze, with the jigs and the reels; sure, the music filled his needs,

 

 

 

Paddy is now at eternal rest, under a headstone three miles west, he should be forever blessed, as he was simply the best.

 

=======================================

 

 

 

================================

 

=============================

 

Jim in Rehab

 

 

 

Jim has been in rehab now for almost 14 weeks

 

 

 

In St Ita’s in Newcastlewest where therapy he seeks

 

 

 

After his life has been capsized due to a dense stroke

 

 

 

He’s had to start a different life and I tell you it’s no joke!

 

 

 

He was a right hand man to all and did the best he could

 

 

 

To help out anyone in need as he thought he should

 

 

 

But his right hand side has now shut down and taking a wee rest

 

 

 

While his left hand stepped up a gear and is proving to be best.

 

 

 

He was a man content to sit and listen while others spoke

 

 

 

But now he has no choice at all due to that dense stroke

 

 

 

His gentle therapist Elaine is trying to help him get words out

 

 

 

They are swimming in his head but won’t come through his mouth.

 

 

 

But his determination to get well is wonderful to see

 

 

 

He is not bitter, does not complain and is working

 

 

 

patiently

 

 

 

Helping his brain to make new pathways to replace those which have died

 

 

 

And soon we hope he will recover some of the life he once enjoyed.

 

By Peg Prendeville 16 3 2021

 

 

 

=======================================

 

To Winter

 

 

 

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

 

 

 

Away from here,

 

 

 

And I shall greet thy passing breath

 

 

 

Without a tear.

 

 

 

I do not love thy snow and sleet

 

 

 

Or icy floes;

 

 

 

When I must jump or stamp to warm

 

 

 

My freezing toes.

 

 

 

For why should I be happy or

 

 

 

E’n be merry

 

 

 

In weather only fitted for

 

 

 

Cook or Perry.

 

 

 

My eyes are red, my lips are blue

 

 

 

My ears are frost bitt’n;

 

 

 

Thy numbing kiss doth e’n extend

 

 

 

Thro’ my mitten.

 

 

 

I am cold, no matter how I warm

 

 

 

Or clothe me;

 

 

 

O Winter, greater bards have sung

 

 

 

I loathe thee!

 

 

 

Eugene O’Neill

 

 

 

Written in early December 1912 at his parents’ home in New London, Connecticut.

 

 

 

On December 9th of that same year, he embarked on a journey to a Sanitarium in Shelton, Connecticut, to undergo treatment for Tuberculosis from which he made a complete recovery.

 

 =============================

 

 

=============================================

 

Poetry

 

The Darkling Thrush

 

BY THOMAS HARDY

 

 

 

I leant upon a coppice gate

 

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

 

And Winter's dregs made desolate

 

      The weakening eye of day.

 

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

 

      Like strings of broken lyres,

 

And all mankind that haunted nigh

 

      Had sought their household fires.

 

 

 

The land's sharp features seemed to be

 

      The Century's corpse outleant,

 

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

 

      The wind his death-lament.

 

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

 

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

 

And every spirit upon earth

 

      Seemed fervourless as I.

 

 

 

At once a voice arose among

 

      The bleak twigs overhead

 

In a full-hearted evensong

 

      Of joy illimited;

 

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

 

      In blast-beruffled plume,

 

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

 

      Upon the growing gloom.

 

 

 

So little cause for carolings

 

      Of such ecstatic sound

 

Was written on terrestrial things

 

      Afar or nigh around,

 

That I could think there trembled through

 

      His happy good-night air

 

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

 

      And I was unaware.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This evening we study ‘After the Opera’ by DH Lawrence:

 

 

 

Down the stone stairs

 

Girls with their large eyes wide with tragedy

 

Lift looks of shocked and momentous emotion up at me.

 

And I smile.

 

 

 

Ladies

 

Stepping like birds with their bright and pointed feet

 

Peer anxiously forth, as if for a boat to carry them out of the wreckage,

 

And among the wreck of the theatre crowd

 

I stand and smile.

 

 

 

They take tragedy so becomingly.

 

Which pleases me.

 

 

 

But when I meet the weary eyes

 

The reddened aching eyes of the bar-man with thin arms,

 

I am glad to go back to where I came from.

 

 

 

================================

 

cummings’ poem is right.  Soon spring will explode into the opposite of tentative, but now:

 

 

 

Spring is like a perhaps hand

 

(which comes carefully

 

out of Nowhere)arranging

 

a window,into which people look(while

 

people stare

 

arranging and changing placing

 

carefully there a strange

 

thing and a known thing here)and

 

 

 

changing everything carefully

 

 

 

spring is like a perhaps

 

hand in a window

 

(carefully to

 

and fro moving New and

 

Old things,while

 

people stare carefully

 

moving a perhaps

 

fraction of flower here placing

 

an inch of air there)and

 

 

 

without breaking anything.

 

===============================================

 

 

 

Rambling Jack

 

Of the many characters who graced the streets of Bruff, Rambling Jack is one of the most colourful. Born in Darnstown, Martinstown just over the road, Jack would have known Bruff like the back of his hand. And he needed to, for Rambling Jack who was known all over Ireland, was blind. And he lost his sight fighting so you and I could be free.

 

Born Edmond Houlihan in the Year of the Big Wind in 1839,Rambling Jack was brought up in a staunchly nationalist household  .All his life his main aim was to achieve Irish freedom and his joining the famous attack on Kilmallock RIC barracks in 1867 comes as no surprise. Led by Capt. John Dunne, this attack, filled with Bruff men, was later to inspire Seán Wall and others in the War of Independence. However, the attack failed and large numbers of locals were rounded up and sentenced for up to 15 years imprisonment. But Jack suffered an even worse fate in the attack. He was blinded.

 

To be blind in the 1860s was to mean, almost inevitably, that the workhouse was your lot. But our man refused to enter the institution that symbolised the degradation of Ireland and he took to the roads, fiddle in hand. Up to now, he had played the fiddle for fun but now it became his passport to survival. All around the country, Ned travelled being known as The Fenian Balladeer or Rambling Jack. Ned, indeed, became probably the last in the line of centuries of roaming bards and wandering minstrels that once enriched the culture of Ireland. A sad loss to our society.

 

Jack only ever sang republican songs. Asked to sing the ballad, Master McGrath,(about the famous greyhound) he spat, “I only sing of Irishmen. I never sing of dogs. ”His favourite song was “The Smashing of the Van” which tells the story of the Manchester Martyrs. Other ballads in his repertoire were “Sliabh na mBan” and “Patrick Sheehan”. The latter song once showed his bravery as he sang it in his rich baritone voice at a British Army recruiting drive in Ferbane , Co. Offaly in protest at the Connaught Rangers assembled there. Often arrested for singing seditious songs, Rambling Jack refused to stop his keeping the flame of nationhood alive, the Offaly Independent reporting that his fiddle was “an instrument in the cause of Irish independence”.

 

Understandably, Rambling Jack was good friends with most of the nationalist leaders at the time. He was actually on the podium with Michael Davitt when he launched the Land League in Mayo. Davitt, with one arm missing from the mill accident he suffered as a child and Blind Jack would have been an unusual and eye-catching focus of attention. On hearing of the demise of the great Fenian, O’Donovan Rossa in 1915,Jack fiddled his way, blind don’t forget, across Ireland and heard Pearse give the oration at the graveside in Glasnevin cemetery.

 

Rambling Jack could be seen all over Ireland, his fluent Irish language songs interspersed with his odes to the Bold Fenian Men. He was attacked and beaten by a bunch of loyalists in the midlands who objected to him playing his rebel songs.But Jack merely moved on, blackthorn stick in one hand, the other behind his back, rosary beads dangling as always.

 

Time eventually caught up with Rambling Jack and he fiddled his way home to die so he could be buried in his native Kilbreedy, passing away in 1931 at the incredible age of 92.His relatives still reside in Bruff today. Rambling Jack is a forgotten hero of Ireland, one of those people who kept the light of liberty alive whilst sacrificing their own lives for the cause. A proud member of the Bold Fenian Men.

 

Sources:

 

The Republican File 1932

 

Capuchin Annual 1968

 

Offaly Independent 10 Jan 1953

 

An Phoblacht Dec 2007

 

With thanks to Mike Cronin.

 

===============================================================

 

Siegfried Sassoon was a British poet turned officer who served on the Western Front during the First World War.

 

He was decorated for bravery, but by 1917 had become disillusioned by the war and had written a letter of protest to Parliament, for which he was banished to a mental hospital.

 

Upon his release, he returned to France to fight because he cared deeply about his soldiers and felt it was his duty to return to them, and to tell their stories in a way no one else could.

 

In February of 1918, he published this poem, Suicide in the Trenches, along with other war poems.

 

                                    ~*~

 

Suicide in the Trenches

 

I knew a simple soldier boy

 

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

 

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

 

And whistled early with the lark.

 

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

 

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

 

He put a bullet through his brain.

 

No one spoke of him again.

 

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

 

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

 

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

 

The hell where youth and laughter go.

 

 

 

 

===============================================

It is such a pity that the libraries are closed due to Covid 19 as there are many people who relied on library books to pass the long winter evenings. I know that books can be read online but there is nothing like having a book in the hand ‘til you drop off to sleep and let it fall to the ground. Check out https://www.irelandreads.ie

 

 

 

 

 

By Peg Prendeville--  Poetry

 

 

 

The Curse of Covid

 

 

 

When someone goes to hospital

 

 

 

It was the natural thing to do

 

 

 

To go and sit beside them

 

 

 

And bring them all the news.

 

 

 

That was the way it used to be

 

 

 

‘til Coronavirus came

 

 

 

And got rid of nightly visits.

 

 

 

It should hang its head in shame.

 

 

 

We’re now left with window visits

 

 

 

Or talking on the phone

 

 

 

No tender touch to ease the fear

 

 

 

For each person is alone

 

 

 

With only latex touch for comfort

 

 

 

From a kind and caring nurse

 

 

 

With blue gowns and masks and shields

 

 

 

To keep out that wretched curse.

 

 

 

We all are longing for the day

 

 

 

When normal times return again

 

 

 

And we can hug and kiss our loved ones

 

 

 

Without fear of killing them.

 

 

 

I pray that day will come quite soon

 

 

 

Meantime I hope and pray and trust

 

 

 

That all the people we love so much

 

 

 

Will understand why we cannot touch.

 

 

 

=============================================

 

Life’s Surprises

 

 

 

      Life turns up surprises

 

 

 

      When you least expect it to.

 

 

 

On days when everything goes wrong

 

 

 

And it seems there’s no way through

 

 

 

 A chance word from a stranger,

 

 

 

A letter from a friend,

 

 

 

A glowing sky at sunset

 

 

 

God’s blessings never end

 

 

 

Then deep inside your weary heart

 

 

 

A little spark takes hold

 

 

 

And shattered dreams are swept away

 

 

 

As the flame of HOPE burns bold.

 

================================

 

From Tom Aherne -------- Feb 2021

 

Johnny Walsh on Song

 

 

 

The Bard of Sliabh Luachra Johnny Walsh  from Mountcollins is steeped in music song dance and Gaelic games. His latest The Mighty Men from the Shannonside composition pays tribute to the Limerick hurlers who won the All Ireland Championship last December. Written and performed by Johnny with a lovely music beat  the CD is priced €5 and on sale in select outlets due to Covid restrictions.  It is receiving great airplay on Radio Kerry, Cork and Clare etc and all proceeds will go to Milford Hospice Limerick. Johnny told me he is close to his sale target but copies are still available and all support will be greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

Johnny has been involved with West Limerick GAA, the County Board, and Scór since the mid 1990s, and his colourful match reports and poems have featured in all the local papers. Over the years Johnny has been very generous with his time and talents, (attending numerous functions and events)  to all clubs and organisations.  A born entertainer, composer and storyteller (pure true) par excellence Johnny has lit up many a  stage and venue, to the delight of all present. It is now peoples  chance to return the favour to Johnny and to support the great work that Milford  Care Centre do. Johnny can be contacted on 086-3517589 to arrange a copy