There are no blue plaques in our village,
no Heaney or Shackelton or Yeats to commemorate.
A notable event is the starter-motor going in Tom Barry’s car,
or a bellowing bullock, lodged in a bog drain,
or the milk lorry clipping one of the granite bridges
and five fellas coming out from the Council to inspect it.
The stone bulk of the mill is what you notice first.
At one time it was a tannery that reeked of rotting flesh.
In another life, a whiskey distillery and much more fragrant,
until Fr Matthew put an end to it.
In 1965, it was where Frank Lynch had his oats rolled,
but they didn’t put up a blue plaque for that.
Every winter, Greenland geese gather in the Shannon meadows.
Garrulous and self-congratulatory, they settle into the space
where drumming of snipe, grating of corncrake,
and lonesome trill of curlew once filled the summer air.
Corncrakes and curlews are ghosts now
but they don’t erect blue plaques for that.
There is no plaque to ‘The Jowler’,
murdered on a December night,
by a young man who ‘did not like the look of him’.
Given this young man’s predilection
for lighting fires in the middle of the road,
it is assumed that his judgement was questionable.
Judgements can be questioned, and worth is subjective.
What value do you put on the place
where you learned to walk, or were taught to fish,
where Noel Kelly lit a bonfire for you on your wedding day?
In this village, not noted for its noteworthiness,
every memory is its own Blue Plaque.
Find out more about Elizabeth on our Contributors’ Page.
(Photo: Dave Gunn/flickr.com/CC-BY SA 2.0)
- Blue Plaques by Elizabeth Ryan - July 21, 2022