​‘Though called Nuns’ Island after becoming home to the Poor Clare order in Galway, the original Gaelic name for this strip of land surrounded by the Corrib waters was Oileán Altanach, as indicated in Hardiman’s history of Galway and in today’s bilingual street signs. Oileán Altanach in translation ahs nothing to do with convent life but rather means ‘the island of flocking birds’.’

​Journey Westward: Joyce, Dubliners and the Literary Revival
​

​‘.. this area was still known as the Island of Altona, an anglicised variant on Oilean Ealtanach, the island of the flocks of birds. ... The southern part of Altenagh, in the Nuns Island, was mentioned in 1802; by 1807 the new town Goal was being ..’

Sean Spellissy – The History of Galway
​

“HOME

I lived at the edge of the town
Like a streetlamp whose light bulb
no one ever replaces.
Cobwebs held the walls together,
and sweat our clasped hands.
I hid my teddy bear
in holes in crudely built stone walls
saving him from dreams.


Day and night I made the threshold come alive
returning like a bee that
always returns to the previous flower.
It was a time of peace when I left home:


the bitten apple was not bruised,
on the letter a stamp with an old abandoned house.


From birth I’ve migrated to quiet places
and voids have clung beneath me
like snow that doesn’t know if it belongs
to the earth or to the air”


 Nikola Madzirov

 (Translated by Peggy Reid, Magdalena Horvat & Adam Reed)

Angry Old Man - 3

“A lovely day it was, the town
lying under a white canopy of cloud,
not a wind in all the air, but a
line of houses sheer and dim along
the river mingling with grey shadows;
and on the other bank there
were waste places difficult to account for,
ruins showing dimly through the soft
diffused light, like old castles, but Yeats said they were ruins of ancient mills, for
Galway had once been a prosperous town.

Maybe, my spirit answered,
but less beautiful than she is to-day.”

George Moore – Hail and Farewell

‘GALWAY

O the crossbones of Galway,
The hollow grey houses,
The rubbish and sewage,
The grass grown pier,
And the dredger grumbling
All night in the harbour:
The war came down on us here.
 

Salmon in the Corrib
Gently swaying
And the water combed out
Over the weir
And a hundred swans
Dreaming on the harbour.
The war came down on us here.
 

The night was gay
With the moon’s music
But Mars was angry
On the hills of Clare
And September dawned
Upon willows and ruins:
The war came down on us here.’
 

August – September 1939

Louis MacNeice
(1907 – 1963)

Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim

“the house i’ve left is dead to me

to my rhymin and my poetry

all i’ve got is the beat of the stagger

as i’m headin down the curra line”

Matty – John Mulhearn

“But there were her father’s eyes. Hurt in them.

Friends’ eyes? Astonishment. Mockery. Incomprehension.

And here were the simple eyes of Mico. What?

‘I hope you’ll be happy’, said Mico.

‘You’re the first to say that, Mico,’ she said.

They both looked at the water.

In the lead-up to the upcoming Marriage Referendun, the church appear to be getting some criticism for interfering in state affairs, I have thought upon the passage when Mico is told of Jo’s life decision. Each to their own but much better expressed in the book