Distant City, Close Experience
Gaza and Granard, both experienced revenge attacks from insurgents activities, bar Gaza is on a greater scale than anything the Black and Tans did. Thats Palestine in perspective. Distant city, facing...
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Wake at Ballinalee
My mother told of attending a wake when a child in her native village Ballinalee, where the pipes that were smoked cermonially at the wake were swiped by her and her freinds. Having no tobacco to...
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Saintjohnstown – So Beautiful A Name
Saint Johns Church of Ireland Ballinalee. Image from their Facebook page. My mother grew up outside the Longford village of Ballinalee. She always said she preferred the English name on it, St....
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No Dancing Sun This Easter Morning
Dawn at Ballybrit this Easter Morning – the sun is not dancing in the sky but hidden behind clouds. There is a Longford tradition – referred to in my poem of two years ago “Sleeping I Did Not See the...
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Gurteen Lake and the Curse of the McCarthys
Verse from another legend from Longford recorded by the Irish Folklore Commission Gurteen Lake in Ballinalee (Image: Google StreetView) From Clonbroney the priest was travelling Was making his weary...
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Let Death Not Sneak In Our Door
The Parlour in old Lislea – always kept for the important visitors as per Irish tradition… In the days gone by during the War On the family farm in old Lislea My mother but a child she was The family...
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Reading a take on memory from a fellow North Longford writer
John Connell is from outside my families home village of Ballinalee. Author of “The Cow Book” – which was given a different title for our American cousins! – he comes from the similar storytelling...
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The Ambush at Clonfin
The North Longford Flying Column – was the fight worth it, when they ended up shooting fellow Irishmen in the following Irish Civil War? Man for man, and gun for gun, Mere peasants stood to the test,...
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Memories of Grandmother at Drumnahara
The shaking hands that set the plate Of ice cream and jelly that vibrate With an old woman’s smile under curled hair I remember the jelly, wobbling there. Some old yarn with my mother, recalled I sat...
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Turning the Big One Hundred – A North Longfordman Remembered
How it Started – Dad and Ma on their wedding day Dad would have been 100 if alive today. While he always said his date of birth was the 22nd as the “all the twos” birthdate looked cool, we always...
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