Many of you will have heard of Freney the Highwayman, but Freney the river pirate? That's certainly a new one for me. Freney the Highwayman, Freney the Robber, James Freney the noblest highwayman in Ireland. These are just three of the titles I have encountered that...
Deena Bible The Green in the village of Cheekpoint, Co Waterford is, as its name suggests, a grassy area close to the quays and situated beside the rivers edge. If you stand in the middle of the Green you can see the boats tied up around the quays, people coming and...
Today is a historic and unprecedented first I believe. Due to the spreading pandemic of Corona Virus, the national Irish holiday of St Patricks Day is effectively cancelled. No parades, the pubs where people traditionally "wet the shamrock" are closed and people are...
Living beside a river, your neighbours often include those on the opposite bank. As rivers tend to be natural boundaries, these neighbours can be in different counties or indeed provinces and so it was between my grandmother in the Russianside Cheekpoint, Co...
There was once a village at Faithlegg. It stood on the left hand side of the road, past the church, heading for Waterford city. Locally it has always been said that the village was wiped out when the black death swept the country and such was the fear attached to the...
I was often chided for my romantic notions of the Cheekpoint name deriving from the fairy folk, the Sidhe. However in recent months strong, albeit circumstantial, evidence is coming to the surface that those of us with romantic notions may not be totally without...
I was reared on a story about the local weirs. As I heard it, one day the cot fishermen of Carrick and New Ross and areas in between descended en mass on Cheekpoint and proceeded to cut down the fishing weirs in the river. The cot men were bazzed out of it with stone...
Today sees the inauguration of a new president in America. It promises to be an "interesting" presidency with many fears as to the direction America is taking. One concern is the attitude to emigrants. So today I thought what better way to reflect on the event than my...
As a child, Halloween was a lot simpler. There again in the early 1970's with one TV channel (RTE 1), the ability of advertisers or foreign TV shows to influence our daily lives was much less than today. Although they are very different countries between then and...
Halloween is upon us again. In the past it was a very different occasion and I've written about the Halloween of my childhood before. Now it wouldn't be Halloween without a Ghost story and here's one my Father told1. "There was a family called Walsh who lived above...
I was raised on the story of Captain Udvardy's grave in Faithlegg, which is marked with a very distinctive palm tree My grandmother was a young girl at the time, and was a front-seat witness to the affair, and had played a cameo role in the tale. Despite all the...
One of the oldest grave stones in Faithlegg belongs to a family named Fortune. But the headstone creates a bit of a stir...it gives two dates of death for the lady...1745 & 1746 The headstone reads; Here lyeth ye body of ANSTAS FORTUNE alias QUINLAN...
There was many a story my father told me that I dismissed, in error, as fiction. I remember one concerning a ship called the Earl of Sandwich which sounded particularly far fetched. "Four of the crew" he said "turned to piracy and cut the throats of their fellow...
For me, if Christmas is about anything, it's about family and about family traditions. I think it's how a family keeps Christmas that effectively gives it meaning, creates memories and makes it a special time of year. Christmas was a much simpler affair around the...
As a young boy fishing in the river, the one thing I hated more than anything, was keeping up to the nets with an oar. Pity the boy that let his mind wander and the boat blow off the nets, or worse, onto the mud on the flood tide on the coolagh (cool ya) mud. I first...
In 1937, the Irish Folklore Commission visited Faithlegg National School, then situated on the Old Road. They asked pupils in the boys class to go home and interview their relatives or elderly neighbours and to write down the stories about the village or area...
I've spoken before about my maternal grandmothers feelings about emigration which put simply was a matter of great pain and loss. Last week got me to thinking about it more, as I met with cousin Ed and his family at a gathering in Crooke. Ed had travelled from...
We all have particular clocks that we need to respond to. For farmers I guess it’s the dawn, when its light enough to see what your doing and which stretches to the dusk. All in all a long day in the height of the summer, but is balanced by the dark of winter. For...
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