tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post7074281602672677245..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Rowing Towards the Holy Well of the Insane on St Valentine's DayUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-24784502930179489522016-02-16T08:23:12.105-08:002016-02-16T08:23:12.105-08:00Great post Tom, quite a shock to see St. Michael&#...Great post Tom, quite a shock to see St. Michael's Lane then and now -- what a difference a hundred or so years makes . . . must be the luck of the Irish? And nice to find Ophelia's Valentine's song here (we'll be talking about it tomorrow in the Shakespeare class . . . would that we could here Tommy Tupper singing it).STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-32526398134171537632016-02-15T12:07:05.729-08:002016-02-15T12:07:05.729-08:00Terry, that's brilliant. In light of such glor...Terry, that's brilliant. In light of such glories, one is left to wonder how anyone can ever have left Mullingar. The spacious workhouse and airy barracks sound particularly worth boasting about. Those lasses with tapered ankles that scrape the ground might have hoped for pavement, but then, I suppose the great days of the improvements still lay ahead, like us... Though are we improvements? And if so, upon what?<br /><br />I see there are a number of enthralling renditions of the Mullingar Song, none lacking for spirit, one must say,<br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbJXkpqYKJ0" rel="nofollow">Tommy Tupper sings in praise of the City of Mullingar in Clonakilty GAD grounds, County Cork</a><br /><br />Obviously Baltimore was going to have some catching up to do, but with its crime-free streets and majestic Bromo-Seltzer Tower, the dazzling cosmopolitanism sounds almost a fair match.<br /><br />(Another charming element in the mystical halo or aura which surrounded Mullingar and its region in my childish imagination was the ambient woodland or shall I say bogland leprechaun population. My grandmother had a stereopticon viewer with magical 3-d slides in which the "little people", as she called them, seemed to be hiding out behind every magical incandescent tree; she assured me I would be able to see them once my eyes had been trained to do so; but alas I fear any useful education I was ever going to get was well over by that time, and all the rest would be nothing but mere sipping from the tarnished cup of mundane prose and myopic literalism.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-63375414751689707532016-02-15T10:16:59.037-08:002016-02-15T10:16:59.037-08:00Thanks, Tom. Another excellent post. A great sean-...Thanks, Tom. Another excellent post. A great sean-nós singer (and friend back in the day) named Tim Lyons recorded a mock-heroic song about Mullingar that I've always loved. Here it is by the late Seamus Creagh (known more as a fiddler): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dWcX-p129I; and here's one of mine inspired by the Mullingar song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRHqWPbnkBQtpwhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05909239000589253931noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-37347246904045771372016-02-14T18:00:47.136-08:002016-02-14T18:00:47.136-08:00Splendid of you to testify, Trevor.
Kathleen'...Splendid of you to testify, Trevor. <br /><br />Kathleen's tales of Mullingar were amplified over time in the family by the memories of her several siblings (Gaynors they were) as one by one they too migrated from Westmeath to America; I suppose such lore tends to change and grow as it travels, but the common sense of the thing seemed to be that the family kept a shop on the main road, selling all manner of sundries, which got its custom from those passing through -- and if such voyagers were ever to escape with any money still in their pockets, it was thought to have been a disappointment of sorts.<br /><br />(A matter of perspective certainly, on that latter point.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-30796720576423608682016-02-14T15:31:54.390-08:002016-02-14T15:31:54.390-08:00I knew Winetavern Street to pass through before th...I knew Winetavern Street to pass through before they demolished it, and loved the effect of height which the steepness of the hill accentuated in the buildings. Never, that I can remember, was in St, Michael's lane, though I remember many similar streets in the area. The newly built version is truly horrible, though. Hostile to play or conversation or any sort of lingering.<br /><br />Mullingar I recall just as one of the extremely long (it seemed at the time, to this child) station halts on the train route between Dublin and Galway. I think it was there that I was lifted to the window to talk with the driver or coalman in an engine going in the opposite direction. I just recall his overpowering, and very sooty, geniality.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04208181039361854827noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-85675482052967067362016-02-13T20:22:37.498-08:002016-02-13T20:22:37.498-08:00Bit of a personal note here. In the century before...Bit of a personal note here. In the century before last my maternal great grandparents ran a shop in Mullingar, County Westmeath (see sad parade of engines, bottom photo in this post), wherein my grandmother Kathleen, eldest of the brood, toiled till she had earned enough to cover the transatlantic passage that made possible the circumstance whereby she and a young man named Thomas from County Kerry were inclined in the direction celebrated on St Valentine's Day. <br /><br />The scene in the top shot seems to have been at least as impoverished as it appears. Improvement over the past century can hardly be described as dramatic. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3435573,-6.2723015,3a,90y,12.35h,82.41t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sqxnIfXroInok2d8mYG_RVA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656" rel="nofollow">Google streetview of same location seen in top photo: St Michaels Close, Dublin, May 2014</a><br /><br />We've all been to the Well of the Insane at one time or another. It's the navigating of the return leg of the voyage counts.<br /><br />The sad parade of engines going off to scrap touches the flinty old heart in a most curious way (wonder why that is).TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com