Cutting the Holly

Cold and Frigid
like the graves
we trod upon
Indecent in our haste
to leave their mortality behind us
We clamber over the bough and sometimes fence
that divide the living and the dead in Carrig

"Be Still!"
In the quietness
"Can you hear it?"
"Like the running of a bath!"
Our young ears questioning
the sound domestic so familiar
"out here?"
"In the wild?"

Strange looking bushes
with leaves so sharp
as sharp as daggers
and berries so red
just begging to be eaten

"Don't!" warns Dad
as he tips the back of my
small and reaching hand
with a nicotine stained finger..
"poison to us but food for the fairies"

"We're here now.."
all the gang
Cathal & Len & Esther and Barry and Tommy
Reuby too and our Dads
out to cut the holly
for our street doors
....a Wexford tradition

..then I see it
as big as Niagara
and wider still
to my young eyes

Roaring forever into my consciousness
Carrig River
tumbles and falls
upon moss draped rocks
rushes past us on it's way to the sea

desperate like all of us to get away
though we don't know it yet
aching to return....

a Wexford tradition

A pilgrimage from the Republic of Davitt Road South....
I was barely three when I was first brought out to Carrig River by my Dad and Charlie Golden. Jimmy Whelan and Thomas, Jackie Kirwan and Barry as well while our next door neighbours Andy Nolan and Reuby came out too If I recall...it was an honour for us "out of towners"..the Kiernans (Dublin) and the Nolans(Kilkenny/Laois)to be included in this Christmas pageant that generations of Wexfordians had done....particularly in the hallowed confines of the Carrig River demense where Mother Nature is at her finest at any time of the year but particularly so in Advent.

The Graveyard is a shrine to our fallen of 1798 and the turbulent and sad history of those times before and since where rebel and yoeman deep in slumber lay, side by side, comrades in death if not in life.

This little brook rushes out to Wexford Harbour just above Ferrycarraig (pictured)....so many memories I have of this place, all of them happy but now tinged with sadness as the mortality we never dreamt of reaches out to take us home.

Famous Sons

Jim Fitzpatrick is one of Ireland’s foremost graphic artists. Forty years ago this week, he presented to the world his portrayal of Che Guevara, the revolutionary Argentinean who was one of the Leaders of The Cuban guerillas along with Fidel Castro.

I recall many years ago, Fitzpatrick being interviewed by Gay Byrne on “The Late, Late Show”. He told the audience of how as a young bartender in a Limerick bar, he met Guevara with some of his minders who were on a stopover in Shannon. Apparently the purpose of his visit to Ireland for Guevara was visiting his ancestral (Lynch) homestead in Cork. Guevara gave him some Cuban currency as a memento.

Guevara was killed in Bolivia in 1967 by Government troops, I understand Fitzpatrick then produced his masterwork…he never received a penny then or since for his work, he never intended to.

He tells the BBC of that time & that work…

Birth of an icon

Jim Fitzpatrick, who produced the ubiquitous high-contrast drawing in the late 1960s as a young graphic artist, told the BBC News website he actively wanted his art to be disseminated.

"I deliberately designed it to breed like rabbits," he says of his image, which removes the original photograph's shadows and volume to create a stark and emblematic graphic portrait.

"The way they killed him, there was to be no memorial, no place of pilgrimage, nothing. I was determined that the image should receive the broadest possible circulation," he adds.

"His image will never die, his name will never die."

Links to Jim's websites are on the right! (no pun intended).

Fitzpatrick's art is simply incredible....teaching the ancient legends of Ireland through the medium of his highly visual art, one could argue he was the latest incarnation of Yeats & the Golden Circle such is the impact he has made.

The Last Battle (1977)

Fitpatrick was also commissioned by various Rock Groups to create Artwork for various projects among them Phil Lynott & Thin Lizzy.....

Do yourself a favour and look at his work, you'll be richer for it!

FIELD OF DREAMS

The Lansdowne Roar.......yes I've been part of that many a day.....

Going, Going, almost gone.....

All that remained a few weeks ago was the West Stand, the railway tracks underneath causing the delay....

How many millions of memories are caught in this place above?

....I know I have hundreds stored in my memory banks if not thousands and not all football either!

Like the day a wag told the late arriving Larry Mullen of U2 and his gorilla like minders, "we know who the F**K you are but what do yeh call your monkeys?".

I remember Oleg Blokhin charging up the field for the USSR (or in those days, Dynamo Kiev & 1) with Chris Hughton in tow and a Cork voice telling Chrissy boy to use a rather sharp pointed stick to catch him -that was my first encounter with racism. I remember it just heightened my dislike of things Corkonian even more.

The images that are most vivid though are the players that graced the park.....

Maradona, Guillit, Van Basten, Rikjaard,Michel, Butragueno, Blokhin, Belanov, Cuellemans, Gerets, Pfaff, Rummeninigge, Voeller, Klinsmaan, Platt, Whiteside, Armstrong, the Laudrup Brothers, Poulsen, Figo, Brady, McGrath, Giles, Platini, Tigana, Rocheatau, Zimako, Fernandez, Rats, Kutznetzov, Boniek, Stoichkov, Zuker, Boban...the list is endless

I remember Niall Quinn taking time for every kid with autographs...simply a class act of a person.

Paul McGrath's master-class of reading a game, and now knowing of the demons he had to struggle with makes it all the more incredulous of the games he gave in that green shirt....if ever you have a chance, get his biography as told to Vincent Hogan.

Roy Keane's tigerish displays in midfield....people never give him credit for what he was...the engine - the boss ! ... Perhaps the greatest Irish player ever. Saipan was a sad episode and will forever taint his memory in the green shirt with many but his display versus the Netherlands put us there in the first place...McAteers wonderstrike in that game regardless. I empathised with him as I saw first hand the mickey mouse organisation that the FAI can be many years ago...I wished he could have gone onto Japan, I believe honestly that we would have been at least in the final four in 2002 and who knows......still what ever good came out of Cork, eh? .. :-)

Anyway, back to the future....

Lansdowne is being demolished and then "Phoenix like" will rise in it's new incarnation...

It looks absolutely stunning and a worthy home to our wonderful rugby team, here's hoping our Footballers can do it proud also.

Glad to be back

I take a while off from this page and the Sporting world turns upside down back home.

Ireland draw with Zimbabwe and beat Pakistan in Cricket, not in a friendly but in the bloody World Cup!

The Rugby team win the triple crown again and are ranked 4th in the world!. The gaelic footballers of Wexford are being talked about of possible Championship material meanwhile Mick Wallace secures his dream of National league Soccer and his young charges are leading the league.


One of Wallace's proteges Kevin Doyle is setting the Premiership alight for Reading while back over on Planet Rugby, the Glenville road's own Gordon D'Arcy is one of the best players in the world game.

Meanwhile Croke Park is open to soccer & rugby, the rugger buggers doing their part by giving England it's heaviest ever hiding by the Emerald Isle. Still on Rugby, Munster are European Club Champions and look a good bet to retain their crown.

The boxers are winning tournaments all over the shop which I am sure has something to with their coach, the Olympian, the legendary Billy Walsh of St. Josephs, a true gentleman!


The International Soccer team led by Stan Laurel & Bobby Hardy secure a momentous win over the superpower that is San Marino (the Leitrim of European soccer) and were hammered by the Uber-power that is Cyprus which when translated into french is pronounced like a wooly quadruped. I'll write more, soon, on the sick beggar that the Irish international football team has become under the auspices of the Gobshites of Merrion Square & their yes-men staff but now is the time to celebrate success not mediocrity.


Our Domestic league is gaining some notoriety at last. Derry City, Drogheda United & Cork City did the country proud in European qualifying last year yet there is clearly still some way to go. Great strides however are being made every season it appears to this distant but proud observer.


The tiddlywinks team beat Lechtenstein last week while the horseshoe duo of Connors & Connors gave the Albanians a run for their money in the over 65s in Taghmon at the weekend .


How the worm has turned for Irish Sport!

The Twenty Six Counties - a tour

Carl Zeiss Fenlon sent this to me today from the old Country, I may have added a bit or three!

Carlow = Mad for sugar beet, can’t get enough of it. Hobbies: Growing sugar beet. Site of many road crashes as the place is so boring, many fall asleep at the wheel. Also fond of rustling sheep from Kildare & Wicklow and depriving both Counties of a healthy sex life. Has a huge Braun factory for making moustache razors for the women of Leitrim.

Cavan = filthy, ignorant hillbillies, tight. Hobbies: discovering IRA ammo dumps and knitting black balaclavas. Still learning not to "sup tay" from the saucer. Cavan is also renowned for the discovery of copper wire when two men from Arvagh were fighting over a penny!

Clare = fiddle-playing charming people and, more recently, fine footballers. Hobbies: Falling into pot-holes and being never heard from ever again, setting up golf courses in their back lawns. Has a Giant US airbase called Shannon.

Cork = the loveable rogues of Ireland. Here for everyone else’s entertainment. Hobbies: Milking cows, being European capital of culture but not knowing what exactly that means or how they got it boy? Calls itself the Rebel County which is an oxymoron as they are known for being a shower of sell-outs & informing backstabbing bastards. Why do Seagulls fly upside down over Cork City? They're not good enough to shit on!

Donegal = away in their own world up there, not much known about this eccentric type. Hobbies: Stripping the Irish coast of fishies, running back up to their corner of the island and blaming the Spanish….aye twas the Spanish!! Winning an All-Ireland every century and playing host to Gay Byrne.

Dublin North = criminals, drug dealers and factory workers, dirty women, skinheads and all-round examples of human waste. Hobbies: Heroin and watching serial numbers being filed off stolen BMW's, joy-riding anything from a lexus to a washing machine.
Dublin South = west Brits, snobs, rich, easy glamorous women. Hobbies: talking shite and sleeping with their best friend's spouse or mother. Difference between a Northside & Southside woman having an orgasm, Southsider drops her voice, Northsider drops her chips.

Galway = sophisticated culchies, sexually adventurous, cultured and wealthy. Hobbies: Teaching sex acrobatics to foreign tourists, dropping acid, juggling with fire on the streets, paying a million euro for a three bedroom suburban house and pretending it was a bargain.

Kerry = God’s kingdom on earth, no doubt about it. Some of the best land in Ireland but they don’t tell anyone this. Hobbies: Football, swimming with dolphins, football, seeing how many foreigners they can score each year, football, hosting a massive festival every week, football, going to the south pole and football. Arrogant bastards - a kerryman with an inferiority complex is one who thinks everyone else is as good as him.

Kildare = is anyone really from Kildare or are they all just from Dublin? Hobbies: Denying they have anything to do with Dublin. Spending best part of 4 hours each day travelling to and from Dublin. Using Daz for whiter than white jerseys on a summer’s day. Known as the 3S' county - Short grass, Sheepshit & Soldiers.

Kilkenny = red haired alcoholics who refuse to believe not all land in Ireland is capable of growing barley and wheat “not a bother”. Hobbies = driving massive combines, hosting comedy festivals and having red-haired babies. Hurling royalty though Gaelic Football's red haired stepchild as they get beaten like one everytime.

Laois = harmless aul bunch of lads, hope to have the whole county by-passed at some stage by 2025 so they can get on with their own business. Hobbies: Living an honest life, collecting EU development grants, getting the piss taken out of them for being the queen’s county…ha-ha ye plantation bastards! Basically in hurling circles, they are renowned as the poor man's Offaly.

Leitrim = enigmatic reclusive weirdos. Hobbies: learning about traffic lights and roundabouts in school (night school for adults that is), Men have hairy palms and women pride themselves on their moustaches. Also known as Sligo's bitch.

Limerick = grand place, great sports people, city has bad reputation through no fault of its own. Hobbies: stabbing people, gang-land murders, drug hauls, graffiti spraying, joy-riding…. Has it's own TV show, Limerick CSI.

Longford = Gombeen men & Lumberjacks. Trees, trees & more trees. Hobbies: Legalising bestiality and wishing they were from Leitrim.

Louth = IRA supporters, smugglers and bandits. Hobbies: Tearing through Cooley at 125MPH trying to stop the boxes of cheap vodka from falling out the window. Often referred to as being anti-Semitic but they say they just prefer "McArdles".

Mayo = Depressing, defeatist, negative, misery-laden losers, emigrate as soon as the umbilical cord is cut. Hobbies: roaring about how great they are, whinging about why nobody likes them. Home of the term - "Culchie" (Kiltymagh) & site of Europe's most misplaced International Airport.

Meath = either Dublin wannabes or mad country bucks. Hobbies: Beating Dublin at GAA and hoping that one day somebody in Dublin will actually notice, driving massive john deere’s cos they’re big, green and yellow too. home of Irelands's answer to Essex man - Navan man. Meathmen learned to walked upright in the last century, they have come a long way since in fairness.

Offaly = Bog. We put the "y" in Offal. Hobbies = exploiting bogs and later making them into tourist attractions…hats off! Noted for having the biggest mental hospital in Ireland. An Offalyman is affectionately known to Leinster's hurling royals (i.e.) Kilkenny & Wexford people as a "Biffo" = "Big Ignorant Fucker From Offaly".

Roscommon = flat county, a silage pit is a mountain. Hobbies: Sheep-stealing, favourite tome is The "Sheep Kama Sutra", they don't have a horny sheep on their crest for nothing!

Sligo = either in their 20s and a surfer or in their 80s and a granny, no in-betweens. Hobbies: Surfing and knitting wet-suits for their grand children. Link road between Mayo & Donegal.

Tipperary = promiscuous girls, Tipp does not have two different Ridings for nothing! Hobbies: Getting a flat in Dublin and losing their accents and hoping their parents don't find out. Has a town that sounds like an ambulance siren - Nenagh!

Waterford = decent honest hard-workers generally good folks and if you believe that, hah! Hobbies: Calling a strike, blowing glass, calling a strike, eating blahs. The only good thing to come out of Waterford is the road to Wexford.

Westmeath = like most midlanders, generally boring. Hobbies, much like some people up north, winning one football title and then believing they know it all about football. Home of Ireland's "Las Vegas" - Mullingar, gave us such stars as Foster & Allen, Joe Dolan & Donie Cassidy's wig.

Wexford = Brown earth you’d wanna take home in your pockets. Hobbies = selling their “home-grown” organic fruit (bought at supermarket that morning) at the side of the road in summer and ripping-off gullible Dubliners out for a drive in the country. Also beating Kilkenny in hurling and going on the piss for the rest of the summer (with the team). Home to Ireland's own version of "deliverance" - Kilmore Quay.

Wicklow = either country snobs with range rovers or poor aul sheep farmers with peak caps and a small black and white sheep dog with dirt all over him. Hobbies: setting up illegal dumps in their back lawns and denying all knowledge of that 300,000 tons of asbestos, nappies and syringes -"Never saw it till now your honour". Wicklowmen are also known as Sheep hustlers as opposed to the rustlers below in Carlow. What do you call a Wicklowman with 3 sheep? - a pimp!

Monaghan was missing, but did anyone really notice? A sad state of affairs when it's best known son was a chronic masturbator who wrote about "the stony grey soil".

To come, the remaining six counties of our lovely Island..Stay tuned!

Finnish Cowboys & the Hook

The search has been on for the movie "Leningrad Cowboys go America", a simply brilliant movie from Finland. it had it all, Rockabilly, pointy shoes and quiffs to die for. The music incidentally is brilliant! I have located a dvd across the pond and it soon should be winging it's way over here fairly soon. Their concert with the Red Army Choir in St.Petersburg will also be joining the Library. Have a looksee here at "Kalinka" from that concert here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJIeBsvxh4k

The lads decide to tour America but one of the group dies on the way there so they tour America with the stiff in his coffin tied to the top of the car; I've located a clip here from the movie here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcovyF8j50g . The Cowboys hit Nashville. As they cross the states they try a variety of musical styles from Steppenwolf to Mariachi..it is just a great little movie and deserves a proper re-release and a new generation of fans discovering it.

The movie was so big in Wexford's Hook peninsula that even the trees got in on the act. Actually I just had to include this picture in this blog. I took it in '98 one winter's day on the Hook Drive just up the road from Templetown. "The wind can get hairy down here during the winter", my cousin Billy Walsh told me when I was visiting him at the Hook lighthouse. Looking at the tree above, you knew he was telling the truth.

Billy was one of the keepers at the Hook till the Commissioner of Irish Lights automated all the stations. Billy is a great fellah who gave me many opportunities to explore the tower and marvel at it's engineering. Nowadays I understand it is open to the public. If you're in the vicinity, pay it a visit.

St. Mullins, Graigue & the Barrow Valley.

About 40 minutes from Wexford Town is the Barrow valley and it's hidden jewels, such as Graiguenamanagh & St. Mullins, two idyllic spots set in two counties. A favourite drive of mine on a summer's evening.

St. Mullins is a little village just up the Barrow River from New Ross. A cousin of my dad - Trudy Morrell, lived on the Kilkenny or "the Graigue side" high up on the inclines of Brandon Hill looking down upon this scene which you have to concur is a most agreeable sight. Trudy had to move eventually into nearby New Ross, a case of the practical over the romantic as she did not have a car & had to rely on a bus to get to shopping etc.

Driving from Trudy's home, you arrive in the village of Graiguenamanagh or the Graigue as it's known to the locals, a gorgeous riverside village known for it's abbey and it's cut glass _"Duiske glass". Once you cross the bridge, you're in County Carlow, another picture postcard hamlet that looks pretty driving through but probably is a place that you can't wait to scat from if you're a young local. Here you can hire a boat or a barge and navigate the river up to the canal system or down to Waterford estuary, heading into the Atlantic.

Heading up from Graigue, you drive along a beautiful winding road which has some amazing vistas, very much hidden Ireland. We're in the foothills of the Blackstairs Mountains, rolling up to the wexford border. That is the beauty about The south east of Ireland, a region I consider to be the most beautiful in the country. Having Wexford as it's core stretching across to Waterford's eastern shores, west to the Barrow valley featured here and north to the garden of Ireland - Wicklow.

St. Mullins though takes the biscuit! There is a wonderful serenity to the place that you have to simply experience to believe. It has an impressive ecclesiastical history. The locality takes its name from St. Moling, a 7th century cleric, prince, poet, artist and artisan who built a monastery here with the help of "Gobban Saor", the legendary Irish builder.

In the 8th century manuscript, known as “The Book of Mulling”, there is a plan of the monastery, the earliest known plan of an Irish monastery which shows four crosses inside and eight crosses outside the circular monastic wall. It is said that St. Moling dug a mile-long watercourse with his own hands to power his mill – a task that took seven years! He became Bishop of Ferns, died in 697 and is buried at St. Mullin’s.

The St. Moling watercourse is still there, but the original monastery was plundered by the Vikings in 951 and was again burned in 1138. An abbey was built on the site later, in the Middle Ages.

A 9th century High Cross, depicting the Crucifixion and the Celtic spiral pattern, stands outside the remains of the abbey and there are also some domestic medieval buildings, including one that has an unusual diamond-shaped window. St. Moling's Mill and Well are a short distance away. Another notable monument in the packed little churchyard is a penal altar, used in the days when the anti-Catholic penal laws were in force.

A Norman motte, once topped by a wooden castle, stands outside the churchyard, and when Mass was being said at the altar some of the congregation would climb the motte to act as lookouts. Being a Catholic in penal times in Ireland was an offence punishable by death, depending on what mood the travelling magistrate was in. You could not own a horse, own property and as a result vote. No rights basically whatsoever.

The MacMurrough Kavanaghs, former Kings of Leinster, together with other Celtic Kings, are buried in the neighbourhood of the monastery. A famous "healing priest"Fr. Daniel Kavanagh, is also buried here. People still claim that to cure toothache you should take a pinch of earth from outside the churchyard and exchange it for a pinch of clay from F. Kavanagh's grave. Then say a brief prayer, pop the clay into your mouth and walk down the hill to wash it out with water from St. Molings Well.

The site includes a medieval church ruin, the base of a round tower and the former Church of Ireland church, built in 1811. Protestants and Catholics lie side by side in the churchyard, and a story is told in the village of the days when, because there were only a handful of Protestants in the neighbourhood, the local Church of Ireland Bishop was thinking of closing down the church. The distraught vicar had a word with the Catholic priest, who had a word with his flock, and on the day of the Bishop’s visit Catholic families filled the Protestant church, joining in the responses and lustily singing Protestant hymns. The Bishop went home delighted and the church remained open. I understand they used this story in "The Quiet Man" although it's said that this story is a common one in the South though not in the North - I wonder why.

That's about it for this reminisce of a Barrow Valley drive, Hope you liked the photos.