Peter CostelloOld Church Street: A Memoir of Limerick by Críostóir Ó Floinn (Original Writing, €15.00 + p&p / £5.23 Kindle edition)
The famous – or perhaps now notorious – opening passage of Angela’s Ashes about the horrors of an Irish Catholic childhood has framed the city of Limerick in the minds of many readers around the world as a miserable, rain-swept slum.
Críostóir Ó Floinn (without alluding to Frank McCourt) thinks otherwise, and in this enchanting book attempts to revivify his childhood memories of Limerick in the 1930s. This is a charming book, and one can only lament that once again an interesting book of insight and integrity has had to be published by its author, having been rejected by commercial publishers. It is a sorry tale one hears all too often these days.
But aside from his memories, the author aim is to record the folk life of the streets where he grew up. It is the aspect of the book that is of particular value, for urban folk culture is a subject largely neglected by the Irish folklore activists. They prefer the west of Ireland, preferably the Gaeltachts.
One gains the impression that the city for them is barren place. But this is not so.
Ó Floinn opens with a general chapter describing the area of Limerick in which he was reared. He then turns in the eight chapters that following to deal with aspects of folk culture which will be familiar to every student of traditional lore, these are proverbs, turns of speech, ideas about the weather, and pishrogues, followed by a discussion of rhymes, songs and games, and a chapter on festivals.
Here at least the customs of religion become a part of daily life, something real.
All in all as a record of urban folk life Old Church Street is far fuller and richer than Leslie Daiken’s Out She Goes! (1963), or Eilis Brady’s All In! All In! (1975), both of which dealt only with children games. For the folklore community this book has the making of a small classic.
Very different
Now Limerick as a city is very different from Dublin. Though the capital in the 20th Century was flooded with people from rural Ireland, it has its own distinct culture, well developed not only in folk life but in popular theatre and comedy. Indeed the folklore of what was then Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) was the subject of an article in Folklore as far back as 1894.
Limerick City, however, lies close to the surrounding counties of Limerick, Tipperary and Clare. So some of what Ó Floinn writes about has been imported from rural parts. But not all of it, for Limerick, as much as Dublin, is a city with a special character, which Limerick people are only too happy to tell you about.
A city which managed to make itself notorious for both its Soviets and its anti-Semitism Limerick is a city seething with beliefs and counter-beliefs. Some of them are warmly related in this book, which is filled with a sense of community far removed from Frank McCourt’s. In Limerick’s Year of Culture this is a book to read.