Lislea Dr
Recreation
Newpoint Cleans Up!
Newry Journal is delighted to commend Newpoint Players on their great victory last night in the Amateur Dr
Human Chain: Seamus Heaney
I have to confess a deep-felt preference for rhyming over blank verse (and remain much-amused by Hewitt’s sonnet on the subject) and regret that Seamus Heaney – in his latest anthology Human Chain – continues to forsake the former in favour of the latter.
Newry Film Club: 4 June
Newry Arts Centre Film Club (NACFC) has been formed in 2007 by a group of volunteer film enthusiasts to bring a range of films not usually shown by commercial cinemas to the residents of Newry and the surrounding area.
Murder in Cathedral, in Cathedral!
Just getting ready to go to tonight’s performance at the Newry Amateur Dr
2012 Newry Drama Festival Opens
The Diamond Jubilee Newry Drama Festival kicks off tonight at 8 pm in Newry Town Hall with a witty farce, Stella by Starlight, performed by Bart Players from Belfast. Bart are perennial favourites in Newry.
All the action takes place in a single night in the home of contemporary Irish couple, Dermot, a down-sized corporation employee and his wife Stella, a former bank teller. They have a teenage daughter Tara. They have recently left the big city for a new life in the remote countryside.
There is some light entertainment afterwards in the Arts Centre – which we must miss, as our presence is required at the birthday party of a recent contributer, Peter McGrath Jnr.
What it’s like to be in demand!
Go. Enjoy. It should be a good night!
Newry Chamber Young Musicians..
Wednesday evening the 15 September in the Arts Centre at 8.00pm sees the return of the ever-popular Young Musicians Concert hosted by Joanne Quigley.
Bessbrook: 100 years ago
On one wall inside the Chinese Restaurant in
Kilnasaggart Stone
As you know, the Kilnasaggart Stone is the oldest inscribed Christian Standing Stone in Ireland. That of course is less than half the story.
We have no direct evidence of its antiquity for stone is not subject to radio-carbon dating or any of the other scientific methods recently developed. Some scholars ascribe to ancient Celtic Ogham script the diagonal slashes to be found at the back and near the base of the stone.
The legend inscribed on its front (in Latin, or a mix of Gaelic and Latin) ‘this place Ternoc son of Ciaran the Little, assigned to the keeping of the Apostle Peter’ sets the inscription itself to the second decade of the eighth century of the Christian calendar. There is a distinct air of exorcism about the over-adornment of the stone with crosses and a similarity of the stone to the Long Stone nearby at Ballard and many others in the vicinity and indeed still to be found scattered in remote districts all over Ireland (Ta to John Macan, Oz, for his Guestbook elucidation!). Many of these, including Kilnasaggart, have a distinct phallic appearance and were probably pagan or druidic fertility symbols. This makes it some millennia in situ.