The Gypsies Saved Jesus
REDBREAST has been a settled traveler for years. But he was born on the side of the road above in Mayo a lifetime and two-thirds ago... more...
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(Irish Voice) 16 December 2004
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A Good Skin Goes Home
Joe was on national radio today. I stopped the car when I heard him so I could listen to it all.
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(Irish Voice) 16 December 2004
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He’s On His Way Home
“Is that yourself?” asked Mollie at reception. “Who else would it be, Mollie, but myself? I’m not one of them Portuguese widows who find another fella inside five minutes. Is he coming?”
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(Irish Voice) 8 December 2004
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The Dead of November
November is no better and no worse than usual. If anything maybe there is a shade less rain and that’s good.
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(Irish Voice) 2 December 2004
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The One and Only Doyle
When the raiding party of Gardai (police) reached the end of the road leading to a Connemara lough all those years ago they jumped out of their cars and ran down through the whins and gorse and heather towards the loughshore.
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(Irish Voice) 25 November 2004
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Driving Towards Disaster
NOTHING happened after that for maybe two minutes on the old wag-o-the-wall clock at the back of the bar beside all the expensive Scottish single malts that hardly anybody asked for, except at Christmas and after christenings.
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(Irish Voice) 18 November 2004
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Time Changes Everything
THERE was this brilliantly zany Galway academic I used meet in the best of the Galway pubs when I was living there. His name was Doctor Sean O’Donnell and I’m sure he is hale and hearty still, though I’ve not seen him for some years now.
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(Irish Voice) 11 November 2004
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Stuffing the Animals
ALONG the tinted quiet country roads around here, I have never before seen such an arrogant strut to the colorful cock pheasantry of the fall of 2004.
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(Irish Voice) 4 November 2004
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God Save You All
I HAVE a mighty respect and admiration for America and the American people. Most Irishmen and women that I know feel the same way.
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(Irish Voice) 28 October 2004
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My Secret English Admiration
THIS Clare pub serves food as well as drink. I was in there a few hours ago. All I wanted was a pint and a chat to kill a half-hour while Annett was shopping.
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(Irish Voice) 21 October 2004
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He Makes Peace at the End
YOUNG Jackie Duddy was laughing as he ran beside him down the Bogside streets all those years ago. There was a wild excitement about it all that time, a kind of craziness and madness that was a second away from ending.
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(Irish Voice) 13 October 2004
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And Here’s What He Said . . .
I still call it the County Home, he said. Even though it has a different name now, he said.
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(Irish Voice) 5 October 2004
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Help! We’re Being Invaded!
Ye knew already that we have bred a tiger over here, our very own, and we are very proud of him. We have been singing his praises all over the world for about a decade now. They even know in Outer Mongolia about our Celtic Tiger.
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(Irish Voice) 30 September 2004
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Male Bonding at Lisdoonvarna
THEY came into Lisdoonvarna about seven o’clock on the Sunday evening, the three of them. They had watched the hurling final in Ballyvaughan on their way down from Mayo, relishing every stroke of it.
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(Irish Voice) 22 September 2004
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Dutch Treat Amidst Tragedy
THE Dutch have a saying that trouble comes at you like a devil out of a matchbox.
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(Irish Voice) 17 September 2004
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Smoking Ring Words of Wisdom
THERE’S always a stranger or two around at this time of year in the kind of pubs I drink in. It’s the tail end of the holiday season and the most of them are clearly overseas tourists. Every now and again, though, there’ll be one of our own.
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(Irish Voice) 1 September 2004
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The Greatest Mom in the World
I MET him in Mulligans famous old pub in Poolbeg Street in Dublin. He’s from the west but living now in the States.
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(Irish Voice) 1 September 2004
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Go Fermanagh Go!
ON this misted August evening in Co. Clare the situation in this island nation includes some amazing realities.
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(Irish Voice) 26 August 2004
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Good to be in Tip-Top Shape!
IT’S the silly season and I’m doing the morning show on
Clare FM, and I’m in great form entirely because Fermanagh defeated
Armagh to get into the All Ireland football semi-final for the first
time ever. And against Mayo too!
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(Irish Voice) 19 August 2004
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Evolution of the Yank Tourist
"...I have been feeling for the past couple of years, since the Celtic Tiger came, that the wheel has spun the whole way around..." Cormac looks at the differences between the homecoming of a Yank in the past and how things have changed in the last few years.
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(Irish Voice) 12 August 2004
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A Great Green Sports Day!
M in Croke Park. It’s Saturday afternoon, July 17, bright and clear in Dublin, the sun shining, Hill 16 empty because of ongoing construction work on this magnificently developing headquarters of the GAA.
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(Irish Voice) 28 July 2004
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The Sounds and Sports of Summer
THE summer season takes one last leisurely sun-drenched step to its summit, and I’m at the closing session of the Willie Clancy Summer School in Miltownmalbay, wandering the streets wearing the leather bushman’s hat Ciara brought me home from
Australia.
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(Irish Voice) 21 July 2004
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Holy Mary, the Tiger Is Back!
THE Celtic Tiger is back! It is official! Our leader Bertie Ahern tells us its official.And Bertie is an honorable man.
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(Irish Voice) 16 July 2004
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The Best of Buda and Pest
GREETINGS from either Buda or Pest! I am not sure which. In fact I am not too sure of anything right at the minute.
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(Irish Voice) 8 July 2004
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We’re Under Siege Over Bush
I HAVE to go down to Shannon Garda (police) station tomorrow. Why? I have to go down with my ID to collect a car pass which will enable me to travel to and from work or anywhere else for the duration of President Bush’s visit to Ireland.
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(Irish Voice) 23 June 2004
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The Pleasures of Perfection
I AM writing this outside in the garden. Three perfect new red roses, in a woodbined zephyr, are nodding scented satisfaction to every word that I write.
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(Irish Voice) 23 June 2004
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The Humanity of Elections
I LOVE elections. I always have.
I love them, though, in a certain way. I’m interested gently in the issues and the policies and the cut and thrust of it all, and I have my views like any Irishman or woman.
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(Irish Voice) 16 June 2004
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Remembering the Soldiers
A SUMMER afternoon and a Somers afternoon over in the Derglands of East Clare. May was bone dry and beautiful but the earth was moaning for rain yesterday, the scalded sallies whimpering in the sun.
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(Irish Voice) 9 June 2004
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Like Father, Like Son
A MAYTIME to die for in the west. A Maytime, golden and blooming, to make you happy and lonesome at the same time.
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(Irish Voice) 26 May 2004
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(No) Welcome, Mr. President
IT now appears certain that President George W. Bush will be staying in Clare when he arrives in Ireland next month.;
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(Irish Voice) 26 May 2004
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Ireland’s Deep, Dark Side
THE dark side of the bright Celtic coinage I so often spin is that Brendan O’Donnell, by any other name, dark and damaged and dangerously mad, is out there still waiting to explode.
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(Irish Voice) 20 May 2004
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Cures from Mays of Yesterday
I’M with you in apple blossom time. The luxuriant pink flowers seem to explode overnight on the old wise arms of my senior apple tree, visible now through the cottage window.
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(Irish Voice) 13 May 2004
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All In a Day’s Work
LET me tell ye about my day, over now at four in the morning. Annett on the night shift in St. Joseph’s Hospital in Ennis, myself back from The Honk pub down the road, the laptop on the table in the living room of the cottage in front of a record player muttering the genius of Stefan Grapelli and Django Reihhardt and the rest of the Hot Club of Paris Quintet from years back now.
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(Irish Voice) 6 May 2004
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The Standing Stone Joke
WHERE else would it happen?. And the clan gathered in Ballyconnell because a TV company was making a documentary about Cathal, my musician brother, and wanted his brothers there to garnish the very edge of the platter of what the man is, and it was great craic entirely.
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(Irish Voice) 29 April 2004
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A Little of This and That
IT’S not in my nature to stay too angry too long. A couple of weeks ago I was fuming about the dreadful no smoking ban in Irish pubs. And I stick to that and to all I said then.
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(Irish Voice) 22 April 2004
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An Unfortunate Tango
MARITA Vaughan took Stephen’s big right hand between both of hers as they sat in front of the briquette fire in the middle of April two years ago. Her small long hands were white.
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(Irish Voice) 16 April 2004
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A Wonderful Way With Words
THERE is still a great richness in the plain man’s language as she is spoken in the Hidden Ireland.
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(Irish Voice) 2 April 2004
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I’m Smokin’ Mad!
(POPULAR brands of cigarettes in Ireland down the years include Major, Silk Cut Blue and Purple, Carrolls No. 1, Benson and Hedges Pure Gold, Players, Gallaghers, Sweet Afton, Woodbines, Marlboro, Passing Clouds, Churchmans, Perfectos, Gold Flake, Gold Bond, Rothmans, Camels, More . . .)
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(Irish Voice) 2 April 2004
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Have the Terrorists Won?
IT’S a somber week in Europe. The second the reports came in of the carnage in Madrid on March 11 I thought there was some significance in the date.
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(Irish Voice) 19 March 2004
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Our Clan in Scotland
WHAT a pity we lost the custom of wearing the kilt, the sporran, the clan cloak proudly over the shoulder, the dirk in the top of the sock! What a crying shame we lost it.
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(Irish Voice) 11 March 2004
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Election Chads On the Way!
AT least ye had hanging chads to fight over down in Florida in your last presidential election. I remember being over there at the time and being awed by the Chadmania which swept your great nation during those remarkable days when every vote was being examined in detail.
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(Irish Voice) 4 March 2004
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Desperately Seeking a Woman
IF you are 20 years or so older than your young and beautiful wife, then take my advice and never venture into the rural areas of Cork or Kerry in the early weeks of spring. My own hazardous experience last weekend underpins this good counse
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(Irish Voice) 26 Feb 2004
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True Story, Happy Ending
TRUTH is richer, rawer, rarer, far far stranger than fiction. Listen to this now;
There’s this lovely housewife and mother called May De Loughrey living in Pound Street in Kilrush away back in the hungry 1940s.
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(Irish Voice) 19 Feb 2004
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Gaybo Won’t Go Away
THEY call him Gaybo, and even if you have never been to Ireland I’m quite certain that you know all about Gay Byrne, the Irish broadcaster who hosted the world’s longest running TV chatshow on our national network RTE for a hundred thousand years until he retired about 10 years ago and got a raft of gifts, live on air of course, which included a Harley motorcycle from a tearful U2.
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(Irish Voice) 12 Feb 2004
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The Great Edna Returns
SHE’S had some expensive dental work in recent years. When she was speaking with me in Plassey House at Limerick University last weekend she was sitting in sunlight.
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(Irish Voice) 6 Feb 2004
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Life’s Strange Dimensions
BIG Pat O’Byrne has an extremely rare blood group. I’m no expert on blood, but I know that in Ireland the most of us are O for ordinary, with either a positive or a negative after that.
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(Irish Voice) 29 Jan 2004
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An Elephant of a Sin
AN old woman from the other end of the parish came out of the confessional box and held the door open for the next penitent. That was Tubridy.
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(Irish Voice) 22 Jan 2004
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From a Brute to a Dear
I HEAR my first yarn of another year in the village of Quin. You could not hear a good yarn in a better spot.
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(Irish Voice) 15 Jan 2004
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A Mother’s Love Never Dies
(A friend lost her mother to illness on Christmas Day. This is especially for her, but also for anyone whose mother died recently....)
BECAUSE the only real alchemy is that mothers never die. It is true of all mothers, yours, mine, his, hers.
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(Irish Voice) 8 Jan 2004
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A Strange and Wonderful Mystery
“STRANGE things happen you in your life. Me, strange things surely happened to me in mine, I’ll tell you that for sure and certain.
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(Irish Voice) 18 Dec 2003
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A Holiday Dutch Treat
I CYCLE with great dignity and decorum into the village of Zeddam. I’m wearing a nice thick sheepskin coat and good ski gloves.
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(Irish Voice) 11 Dec 2003
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