Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Mills, Monks and Travellers

3 things I enjoy about Mullingar, County Westmeath

1. The name and its pronunciation on the train speakers as you enter the station from either Dublin/ Sligo.

If you're on the line, keep an ear out for it. The name 'An Muileann gCearr' means the left handed mill and refers to the early medieval monastic town, which has now become the most populous town in the Irish midlands.


2. The statues of the two pilgrims located on Austin Friars Street (formerly Bridge Street).

The statue is made of pewter, produced in the local business in Mullingar. The pilgrims are located at the site of the early medieval Augustinian Friary. Archaeological excavations revealed the remains of friars on the site some of whom were buried with the scallop shells that they brought back to Ireland, as emblems of St. James,  from Spain when doing the pilgrimage to the region of Santiago de Compostela.

                                          The Pilgrims statue

3. The homeplace of one of our boxing champions, John Joe Nevin

The London Olympics lifted the Irish spirits with a fantastic performance from the Irish squad of boxers. One of those sports people, was John Joe Nevin, a native of Mullingar and an ambassador for the Travelling community in Ireland.

Take time in Mullingar, enjoy some of the nice coffee shops, look around the town. Just for good measure listen to a nice song while your roving, I suggest the song, 'A pair of brown eyes', written and sung by Shane McGowan of the Pogues. (Click link to u tube for song: Pair of brown eyes ).

If you ever go roving through Mullingar, drop us a line to let us know what three things you liked about the town ?

Monday, April 22, 2013

Name that tune !

After a week of horrific acts, frightening industrial accidents and international sabre rattling, there was a short clip on the news that brought music to the ears.

In essence, a musicologists dream. The only symphony composed in Ireland, written almost two hundred years ago, had portions missing presumed destroyed or lost. Click link for symphony news clip

The beautiful symphony ... was written by .... hmmhmmm ... a Frenchman, but of course we'll claim him as our own. Recently to the joy of the music world, a musicologist discovered the missing sheets of music in the National Libraries Uncatalogued collection. It must have sat there for many years. The joy of finding such a cultural artefact must have been immense, a real claim to fame.

The main Irish news carried the story and informed the viewers that soon the first recital of the complete symphony would be talking place. It was fantastic to see such a good news story, which was culturally educational and showed the value of our cultural institutions which has such gems still to be uncovered.

Lets just hope the Irish government sees the value in adequately funding such institutions.

In that same week, unfortunately another piece of information made the main Irish News, the theft of four rhinoceros heads from National Museum storage facility (which by the way is the size of two football pitches). The thieves, faced the daunting task of tying up the massive security presence at the relatively new national storage facility.... a hmm hmm... one security guard. Then used the excellently concise and detailed cataloguing system to quickly locate the rhinoceros heads and exit stage left. Click link for rhino news clip

Lets hope the lovely music discovered in the library does not get catalogued on such a good system as the one used by the National Museum.

Dare I guess what music the security guard was listening to in the National Museum at the time.... mission impossible !