An afternoon stop for coffee with a High Nelly at Kilduff

On the way … at the High Nelly Coffee Shop and Bar at Kilduff, near Pallasgreen, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Two of us travelled through East Co Limerick at the weekend, looking for hidden churches, ruined castles, crumbling tower houses and old thatched pubs in the country lanes and at the crossroads.

At Kilduff, south of Pallasgreen, we stopped for coffee in a most unusual coffee shop: the High Nelly Centre Coffee Shop and Bar, on the main road from Limerick to Waterford.

High Nelly Bikes was set up as a family business many years ago to refurbish vintage bicycles from scrap condition, bringing them back to the splendour of the day they came out of a country hardware store, 60 to 100 years ago.

The ‘High Nelly’ bicycle was more than a popular of transport in Ireland until the late 1950s, but was also part of family life for many people, even in my childhood.

The Mannering family business began restoring, touching up and selling ‘High Nelly’ bikes in Cappamore. The business expanded, developing a reputation as electric bicycle specialists, and adding other specialist areas, including Flooding bikes such as Bromptons and Moultons.

A High Nelly at the High Nelly Coffee Shop and Bar in Kilduff (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

For the past three years, the coffee bar in an old pub in Kilduff has been developing and thriving. The pub was bought to house the family business in 2016, the function room converted into a workshop, but the bar continued to function.

Since then, the place has developed its own reputation for afternoon teas, all within the context of an intriguing bike museum, and live music on Saturday nights. The bar is stocked with a large range of non-alcoholic beers and wines, so that beer and bike provide a real, sociable alternative to drink and drive.

Later this month (23 to 25 August), the pub with a vintage bicycle museum is hosting the Pallasgreen Summer Music Festival, with an exciting weekend of live music at the High Nelly Coffee Bar. The performing artists include Denis Allen, writer of ‘Limerick you’re a Lady,’ John Spillane, two-time Meteor award winner, and Luke Bloom.

The High Nelly Centre Coffee Shop and Bar at Kilduff (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

West Limerick remembers Dáibhí Ó Bruadair, the last of the great Bardic poets

The sculpture in the centre of Broadford, Co Limerick, commemorating the last of the Bardic poets, Dáibhí Ó Bruadair (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Throughout Broadford and Dromcollogher in West Limerick, in sculptures, memorials and church windows, there is evident local pride in Dáibhí Ó Bruadair (1625-1698), one of the most significant poets in the Irish language in the 17th century.

His work comes at end of the old Irish cultural and political order and the decline in respect for the Gaelic bards and poets. His ode, D’Aithle Na bhFileadh (‘The High Poets are Gone’), written at the death of a fellow poet, is a lament that Ireland has become a far less educated place.

Despite the celebration of Ó Bruadair in this part of West Limerick, he was born in Barrymore, Co Cork. However, he spent much of his adult life in Limerick, receiving the patronage of great landowners, particularly the FitzGeralds of Springfield Castle, who provided him with a home.

This patronage was vital, as Ó Bruadair was the first 17th-century poet who tried to live purely from his poetry, like the professional mediaeval. However, his poem Is mairg nár chrean le maitheas saoghalta shows that this was not always successful: he often had to work as a farm labourer or maintained himself by translating genealogies, and he died in poverty.

Ó Bruadair was learned in Irish, Latin and English. His work is marked by a freshness that was rare in the 17th century and give interesting details about life in his time.

Ó Bruadair probably came to this part of West Limerick to study at the Bardic school run for generations by a branch of the O’Daly family in the townland of Tullaha – ‘Tullaha of the Schools.’ This bardic school continued until the death of Cúconnacht Ó Dálaigh in 1642, who may have been Ó Bruadair’s teacher and mentor.

His poems dealt with historical and political subjects, but his work also included religious poems, bitter satires on both Cromwellian planters and the Duke of Ormonde, and elegies on a number of his patrons, including the Bourkes of Cahirmoyle, the Fitzgeralds of Springfied and the Barrys of Co Cork.

Two of his most celebrated poems were written to celebrate the marriages of the sisters, Una and Eleanore Bourke of Cahermoyle. John Bourke, a wealthy merchant who rented Cahermoyle, was MP for Askeaton in the Parliament of James II. He died there in 1702 and is buried in the Bourke vault in Ardagh.

Citations from religious poems by Dáibhí Ó Bruadair on a window in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Dromcollogher, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

His religious poems were virulently anti-Protestant and anti-English, and include a poem on the Passion of Christ, as well as poems on the Remonstrants and the Titus Oates Plot (1678-82).

He wrote a series of poems, from a strongly nationalist and Catholic standpoint, commemorating the events of the reign of James II (1685-1691), and he defended the conduct of Sarsfield leading up to the Treaty of Limerick.

He was lighter and more humorous when he wrote about local matters, such his witty Guagan Gliog or his mock-heroic defence of the smiths of Co Limerick.

His principal patron, Sir John Fitzgerald of Springfield Castle, was brought to London on suspicion of being involved in the Titus Oates plot, and finally left Ireland for France in 1691.

In his closing days, Ó Bruadair’s patrons were John Bourke of Cahirmoyle, Co Limerick, and MacDonogh MacCarthy of Duhallow, Co Cork. He died in January 1698.

Dáibhí Ó Bruadair commemorated on a plaque at the entrance to Springfield Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)