ATHEA VINTAGE CLUB 2021

This Sunday Oct 17th Athea Vintage Club will hold its annual Road Run. This year we are including all Vintage Cars, Tractors & Bikes and also welcoming Modern Tractors as a new addition this year. Registration will begin at 11.30am and a hearty welcome to all is guaranteed.

This year we have included a Children’s Run so all kids with Bubble Cars, Go Karts, Scooters, Bikes & Trikes are welcome.

Assembly for this is 12pm at the Church and parents are asked to accompany the kids as they will parade down the street over the bridge. It’s all just a bit of fun, hopefully weather permitting.

The club is based in scenic West Limerick and each year holds this event to benefit local charities.

This year Abbeyfeale & District Search & Rescue are one of our chosen local charities along with Frontline Workers.

Covid has changed all our lives so much that we hope that all friends, supporters & participants will enjoy the day & have a smile on their face as beautiful vehicles of years past parade throughout the route. While we are sure many laughs will be had on the kids run down through the village.

We also have a raffle on the evening – tickets are available now from the committee or on the day. We sincerely want to thank our sponsors we truly appreciate your help to the club.

So polish those wheels, grab your keys and rev that engine!!!!! Join us in Athea this Sunday at 11.30am to see what treats Athea Vintage Club have to offer for all vehicle enthusiasts.

Find us on Facebook for more updates over the coming days – Athea Vintage Club.

For further information please see Facebook  Athea Vintage Club or phone Francie 0876666850/Ciara 0879348904

ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S CHURCH, ATHEA

Readers:                                                  Sat – Denise O’Riordan                       Sun – Mairead Donovan

Eucharistic Ministers:                      Sat – Margaret Enright                        Sun – Catherine Woulfe

Mass Intentions:  

Sat Oct 16th 7.30pm                                  Joan Boylan (1st Anniversary).

Sun Oct 17th 10.30am Michael Broderick. Joan Palmer Wilson.

The Sacristans Collection will take place next weekend Oct 15/16/17th

All masses and funeral masses are live streamed on the Church Services TV network via the following link https://churchservices.tv/athea

The Church is open daily for private prayer. If you wish to book an anniversary mass, a wedding or get a mass card signed please contact Siobhan on 087-2237858.

Your prayers as requested this week for John Paul Stack, Park, Athea and Con Cusack, Chicago and formally of Cratloe, Athea. May they Rest in Peace.

Baptismal Information Any parent who wishes to baptise their child must have the baptismal course completed – for further details please contact Theresa on 087 1513565. Next course date: Tues 12th October.

The Pastoral Outreach Team are running a number of programmes online during the Autumn- one of which is a Sacramental Preparation Programme for the parents of children receiving Confirmation this year. You can find out more information and register for the programme on the following links

www.limerickdiocese.org  And   https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Pastoral Outreach

The Way I See It

By Domhnall de Barra

As I write this the government is giving the final go ahead to this year’s budget. I can’t comment on what changes are included because it won’t be announced ’till this afternoon. Or at least that is the way it should be. There was a time when nobody outside the cabinet knew what was in the minister’s briefcase until he stood up to deliver his speech in the Dáil but those days are gone. For the past few years it has been the practice to leak information to the media, well in advance of the day, as a kite flying exercise to gauge public opinion. By hopping balls early they hope to avoid any serious consequences to unpalatable measures. So, even though the budget has not been announced  we are already aware of most of what it will hold with the emphasise on the rises in social welfare payments in particular. It looks like being a give-away budget by a government that doesn’t have the money to spend. It is nice to get a bit of extra money and I won’t say no to whatever raise I get in my pension but, due to the pandemic, we are in serious debt. Surely it is a time for steadying the ship until the waters get a bit smoother but, what do I know. I am not depending on the votes of the public anytime soon.

The decision by the government to send two representatives to the commemoration of the establishment of the Northern Ireland state is a slap in the face to President Higgins who had already declined the invitation and gave his reasons for doing so. The partition of Ireland is nothing for any nationalist to celebrate. It caused  a civil war and a lingering  campaign by those opposed to the treaty that eventually led to the troubles that took so many lives towards the end of the last century. It is easy to understand why the six counties was created as a separate entity because the unionists had a well prepared army ready to fight if the whole island got freedom and that is the last thing the British wanted to happen. Some people look on the anti-treaty campaigners and the IRA that carried on the fight as just thugs and terrorists but they had the same aspirations as our own Con Colbert who gave his life in the struggle for freedom in 1916. 100 years on it is hard to imagine how much the country was divided on the issue with families sometimes on different sides and brother trying to kill brother. Too many people gave their lives for the cause they espoused for us to forget about it now. I have no problem with the northern Unionists celebrating the foundation of the six counties and that is their right, but our government shouldn’t be involved. Would we expect the Queen or members of the British Parliament to attend the commemoration of the Easter Rising ?  Of course not, so why would we be expected to honour an event that brings back memories of a terrible time in our country.

On a different note completely (no pun intended), I was listening to a programme on Radio recently about Sean Ó Ríada and the influence he had on traditional Irish music. It was through him and the foundation of Ceoltóirí Cualainn that groups such as The Chieftans and Planxty came to be so prominent. The programme referred to the early collectors of music who wrote it down in staff notation, the only way they knew how but that this method did not capture the nuances and grace of the music. Sean found a way of doing that and, he, if you like, reclotheded the music in Irish garb. The early collectors did not have recording equipment and wrote the music as played by musicians in a particular area. At the time Irish was the spoken language and, as many of the collectors did not know the language  the musicians would give false names to tunes that would not be described as wholesome, as a joke. There was a lot of “cleaning up” to be done and that is why we come across so many tunes  with titles like “reel gan ainm” in the early collections. The naming of tunes is a bit haphazard anyway and , more often than not, the name has no particular meaning. Some are named after places like  “The Dublin Reel”, “The Tipperary Hornpipe” or  “The Donegal Reel” while others are called after famous musicians like “O’Brien’s Fancy”  or “Cronin’s Favourite.” Names are mostly meaningless and are just a means of identification like a number but there are some that are different.  Listening to “The Rolling Wave” one can easily imagine the movement of the tides and “The Cuckoo Hornpipe” has passages that mimic the cuckoo’s call. Some are humourous like “Upstairs in  a Tent” or “The Floating Crowbar” . Some of our local tunes fall into that category with dance tunes like “The Cats Ramble to the Child’s Saucepan” and “Behind a Bush in Parkanna”. There was a tune played in the Carrigkerry area entitled “Take Your Hand ou’re (out of) that”. I leave that to your imagination. Many tunes have titles that the composer never intended. I have been guilty of this myself as, when I was teaching, I sometimes had to make up  a title for a piece I was trying to teach a class if I couldn’t remember the proper one. Pupils then used that name and the original name could get lost. I have composed a good few tunes in my time and I have occasionally come across them being played under different names altogether. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I had one tune named after me on an album by Donal Murphy but “Domhnall de Barra’s Jig” was in fact a tune I had given him in class years before and of course I had forgotten the true title!  I am hopeless at remembering names of tunes but unless I am putting them on a recording it does not matter. Incidentally, Seán Ó Ríada did auditions in Irwin’s Bar in Athea in the late 1950’s. I was a young lad at the time and put my accordion on the carrier of the bike but unfortunately I did not strap it on properly and it fell off coming down by Leahy’s cross. When I opened it in Athea the springs were broken in the bass side and I was unable to play for Seán !   I’ll never know now what he would have thought of my playing. Maybe I am better off.

Lucky Numbers Draw

The Community Council “Lucky Numbers” draw has a jackpot of €13,000 this week. This jackpot is frozen at the moment because our licence will not allow it to go any higher. This is the Council’s only source of revenue and we need to get funds to upgrade the Community Council offices on Con Colbert Street.

To this end we are asking for support for our draw in any way possible. Who knows, you may even walk away with €13,000