Even the promise of a bed to myself would not entice me from my hiding- place in the loft of McNamara’s house. Jim Mack, or Black Jim as he was known to his fellow fishermen, stood at the bottom of the ladder which led to the loft. ”Come down”, he said, ”they are gone”. I [...]

(Spoken in the Limerick dialect of the 1930s and 1940s) Me fahdur packed up and left us whin I was only eight years old, just whin I was gettin’ to know and really love him. For some reason or other, I don’t know what, a fella called Jeezez ‘called him away’. Jeezez was a fella [...]

I have read many little stories from the beautiful writers of Limerick, sure enough, some are maybe my school mates whom I have little recollection of now since 60 odd years have been like a slow drawn blotter on the blackboard of my life, erasing,erasing with that terrible screech every now and again as the [...]

Burton’s Billiard Saloon was for many a Limerick man a house of refuge in the ‘forties and early ‘fifties. Every morning of the week men stood in wait for ”Baw” Sullivan, the caretaker, to arrive. The long, mirrored, mosaic corridor, where men would have a final glance at their quiffs before going up to the [...]

A record of the Limerick – city and county men – who died in the Great War When I started to compile the record of Limerick Men who died in the Great War, I had fewer than ten names. This would turn out to be a gigantic task, but I felt it had to be [...]

Frank Thompson, one of Limericks oldest established Funeral Undertakers, was born at 43 Roches Street on the 30th. of November 1919. He had an unusual birth because he was born with a broken leg which resulted from a beating his mother received from the Black and Tans when they broke into his house looking for [...]

Growing up in Ahane in the late ’60′s and 70′s was quite similar to growing up in any rural community in Ireland. Many of the old ways were on the wane, as mechanisation was taking over. The pony and car were making way for the tractor, empty fields were being developed as industrialisation was coming [...]

Recent references to sectarianism in Limerick has aroused curiosity about what exactly happened here in 1935 – a date that deserves to go down in infamy in the history of Limerick. The really curious should consult Denis O’Shaughnessy’s Limerick: 100 stories of the century – if they are lucky enough to get their hands on [...]