The traffic was stopped in every direction, waiting for us .. or for the donkey. Everybody came up with ideas or gave a hand. Would that donkey put a foot on the wooden bridge? No. It was like Delaney’s donkey in that song.
Month: August 2011
T’as Murphy and the donkey
One of the town’s great characters, T’as Murphy of Dromalane has agreed to share a few reminiscences on Journal with us. We are honoured.
Henry Joy : 3
Henry Joy McCracken was – like most of his family – a textiles manufacturer by profession. He ought to have succeeded, specialising in cotton, but his radical political outlook led to his neglect of his business, and Joy, Holmes & McCracken went to the wall.
Flu of 1918
In the Old Chapel graveyard there is a family plot belonging to the O’Hare family. It is close to the spot where my wife’s family is interred. When we would go to visit that grave…
Bunglas and Slieve League
We are almost never conscious that we are witnesses to the end of an era.
Henry Joy McCracken (2)
Henry Joy McCracken was, at least by modern standards, a very unlikely rebel. From a well-to-do family, the young Henry Joy branched out (his father was a ship owner and rope maker) into the most lucrative trade of the time, cotton manufacture.
1960 Barrack Street
1960 residents of Barrack Street (runs between Canal Street and Linenhall Square)
Michael Mallin remembered
Confusion, after the calling-off of ‘manoeuvres’ by the Irish Volunteers leader Eoin McNeill, and the subsequent lack of manpower on that Easter Monday caused great confusion and consternation in the implementation of Plunkett’s IRB insurrection plans of 1916.
Ann Boyle Communion
Isn’t it amazing how expressive – how illustrative – indeed how thoroughly familiar are the old black-and-white photos of our childhood? The central figure in this poignant tableau is Ann Boyle of Castle Street. Her proud father Louis Boyle – Newry taxi-driver when there were no more than a half-dozen of them altogether – shows off his girl in her beautiful First Holy Communion dress. Ann is now a retired schoolteacher (St Patrick’s, The Meadow) dramatis persona and leading light of the Newry Drama Festival Committee these decades past.