Our ancestors moved in around 1792 and made their way from Dublin to Longford as each lock was built. Sionnach, our family name, and Sionna, his wife, were the first red foxes in the area and by 1817, when the canal was fully operational, they were in every square mile of it. I have my
It’s still dark. 4am. The Liffey flows gently by. Our van moves so smoothly it is along the empty road it almost seems silent as we pull into the car park of the Wrens Nest. Lifting the punt from the roof we make our way through the bushes to the water’s edge. The sky brightens
I count myself fortunate to live beside a river. But should I call it a river? It is still, cartographically speaking, anonymous just known locally as “The River”. Along its northbound route innumerable little streamlets have joined and barely two miles from where it made its ‘sudden sally’ from the earth a bridge is needed.
My first experience of Smerwick Harbour was as a pupil in the 1960s, a scoláire learning Irish during summer holidays with the Crescent school in Limerick, at the picturesque Gaeltacht village of Baile na nGall (Ballydavid) on the edge of the Dingle Peninsula in West Kerry. We spoke Irish, swam, played Gaelic football, cycled by
Owneycree River, situated in County Kerry, is a stream that runs through my home townland, ‘Leamyglissane’ within a 500 metre distance of my house. I wake in the morning to open the curtains to view the river and bridge from my own front bedroom window. This river possesses years of endless stories however until enquiring
On the 1 of December 1977 at 8am Uncle Paddy and I rowed out of Killeenaran pier heading for the Clarinbridge oyster bed a mile away. Our craft was a traditional Galway Bay flat which had seen better days. It had lain rotting since my father had retired from dredging oysters ten years previously. Thanks
My name is Paddy Cantwell and I have been living all of my 87 years here in Aughadonagh, Rahan next to the Blue Drain and the ‘Three Rivers’, where the Clodagh and the Silver Rivers meet. I would like to explain how the excess water from Aughadonagh and Tully got into the river before the
Today, Paddy Joe is a very happy man. He is going on his spring holidays. Every year, at the end of April, he sets up his fishing camp on the shores of Lough Corrib, one of the most magical places in the West of Ireland. It is a huge lake., home to more than five
Since my childhood I have spent my holidays in Dún Chaoin, Co. Kerry, staying in an early 70’s bungalow after my Grand Aunty May, who had built it in her dream location only a couple of years previously, sadly passed away. It is a small house but still manages to dwarf the ruins of the
Sitting on the water’s edge, skimming stones, she couldn’t help but feel a strange presence surrounding her. She watched the stones skip along the surface bouncing into the unknown. An air of melancholy surrounded her and echoed the mood she harboured within. Lucy often heard told of the story of Mary Hannigan, banished to these
The last item I saw a baby pike was below the high bridge at Charlemont St. Luas stop on the Dublin’s Grand Canal waterway just in front of the Hilton hotel, on the edge of Ranelagh. It must have been early summer 2016. Just a canal-lock up from where a pair of swans have had
Near to where I grew up in Blessington there was a dark pool of water that fascinated and terrified all of us children. In winter, the pool was from a sullen overflow that turned hypnotically in its dark bowl; on a windy summer’s day it was a dirty palm that rattled loose stones like knucklebones