Can goats swim?

It’s a ques­tion that many a per­son has asked me over the years, and thanks to Edwin McGreal in the Mayo News we finally have the answer. Goats can swim – no kidding

The ques­tion of goats swim­ming was some­thing a lot of onlook­ers were pon­der­ing at the N5 at Chancery near Bal­ly­vary last Thursday.

Writes Edwin: “Two goats – one billy, one nanny – were stranded in an adjoin­ing field by ris­ing flood waters that threat­ened to drown them.

The dra­matic scene in Bal­ly­vary last week as goats prove they can swim

The goats, believed to be wild, were spot­ted marooned in the flooded field on Mon­day. They were on dry land but sur­rounded by water, as the nearby river had burst its banks. As the weather got wet­ter, so did the goats, and by Thurs­day after­noon, the water had crept up as high as their backs and they were over 100 metres from dry land.
Passer-by Olivia Man­nion rang the Gar­daí, who in turn con­tacted Mayo County Council’s Vet­eri­nary Depart­ment, which referred the case to Civil Defence. There, Rose Doherty and Tom Walsh answered the unusual call.

How­ever, they could not launch their boat at the field in ques­tion, so Inland Water­ways came to the res­cue with a boat more fit for the pur­pose of res­cu­ing two goats.

Per­haps react­ing to so much super­vi­sion and inter­ven­tion from a nanny state, the two goats gruffly refused to get into the boat when it landed beside them.

They swam fur­ther into the depths of the flood, but the vig­i­lant boat crew man­aged to turn them in the direc­tion of dry land. With no lit­tle agility, the pair swam through the flood and even­tu­ally to safety.

The ques­tion now is ‘Could the goats not have swum to safety ear­lier and avoided the furore?’. Per­haps, but maybe they wanted to milk their moment in the pub­lic limelight.”

Car­low Com­mu­nity Games ban lifted – sort of

Great sea­sonal cheer for Car­low young­sters in the Car­low Nation­al­ist this week. The chil­dren of Bage­nal­stown can get back to train­ing for next year’s com­mu­nity games after a one-year ban on all sports was lifted last week.

A five year ban on all soc­cer teams has also been reduced to four years. The two bans were put in place by the national com­mit­tee after angry scenes fol­low­ing the under-12 soc­cer final in Athlone last August.

Sev­eral par­ents and sup­port­ers were blamed for the out­bursts, which resulted in heart­break for chil­dren around the area. Mem­bers of the under-12 soc­cer team, as well as all other soc­cer teams in the Bage­nal­stown com­mu­nity games area, were banned for a stag­ger­ing five years as a result of the behaviour.

A blan­ket ban on all sports and activ­i­ties in the area was met with com­plete shock and out­rage at the time.

Arts, crafts and all other sports were unfairly banned, accord­ing to par­ents, but a deci­sion by offi­cials to reduce the soc­cer ban to four years and rescind the blan­ket one-year ban com­pletely was wel­comed across the town last week.

The announce­ment was made to com­mit­tee mem­bers last Tues­day and the local com­mit­tee is already mak­ing progress with this year’s cam­paign writes Claire Min­nock in the Car­low Nationalist.

The Bage­nal­stown area AGM will now be held next Tues­day, 13 Decem­ber, in The Esto­ria at 8.30pm.

All are wel­come to attend. “It’s great now they can get back on track,” said a mem­ber of Car­low com­mu­nity games.

Com­er­agh Fairies are still angry!

John O’Connor tells us the fairies are angry again

Peo­ple who were dis­tressed and wor­ried when per­sons unknown van­dalised the famous Fairy Tree on the Com­er­agh Moun­tain Drive ear­lier this year are extremely con­cerned that the replace­ment tree has now also been damaged.

And they claim that their warn­ings of revenge by the ancient Sidhe (Fairies) have already come to pass as large areas of heather, ferns and grass­land in the vicin­ity of the dam­aged Fairy Tree have become bar­ren and all growth appears to have with­ered and died.

Judge holds all the aces in three-card trick case

A three-card trick­ster found that a dis­trict court judge had all the aces up his sleeve when he appeared before him at Kil­lar­ney Dis­trict Court last week.

The father-of-two with an address at Gar­ry­owen, Lim­er­ick, found that his luck had run out when he appeared before Judge James O’Connor charged with a breach of the Gam­ing and Lot­ter­ies Act.

Dur­ing a horse fair in Rath­more in Sep­tem­ber of last year the atten­tion of the gar­daí was drawn to a crowd of around 30 peo­ple gath­ered around the man, who was flick­ing cards around the top of a card­board box at West End and offer­ing peo­ple the chance to dou­ble their money. Inspec­tor Fearghal Patwell said the man, when appre­hended, had €80 in his hand and had twice pre­vi­ously been given the ben­e­fit of the Pro­ba­tion Act for sim­i­lar offences, in Kil­dare in 2006 and in Bal­li­nasloe in 1999.

Pádraig O’Connell told the judge that the man, a grand­fa­ther with hear­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, was the real loser. He said he was per­form­ing “some form of enter­tain­ment” and “didn’t win, but lose”.

“Peo­ple go to him think­ing they are more cun­ning, and more wily than him. I’m sure that your good self is aware of the Latin say­ing, ‘caveat emp­tor’. He is the real loser in all of this. He was caught, arrested and lost his €80,” the solic­i­tor said.

Judge O’Connor refuted Mr O’Connell’s claim that the man was the loser and said if he did lose all the time, he was “a very fool­ish man”.

“It may be a game of chance for the punter, but it is a game of skill for him. He allows the punter to win every so often,” the judge remarked.

Judge O’Connor con­victed him, adding a €100 fine and a warn­ing that if he was ever caught com­mit­ting a sim­i­lar offence in Kerry again, he would jail him.

The holy well that’ll never run dry

Paddy Walsh has a great piece in the Done­gal Demo­c­rat this week about dry holy water fonts, and how a local man has invented a holy water font that will never run dry!

It was while vis­it­ing houses in the local­ity and find­ing the tra­di­tional holy water fonts dry in many cases that Con­nie Gal­lagher came up with an ini­tia­tive that has already resulted in inter­est and sales in this county and beyond.

After under­tak­ing some research on the sub­ject, the Der­ry­beg man started work on a dis­penser fit­ted with a unique metal tip that’s attached to a con­tainer which doesn’t require refill­ing for months.

“I would be going into a lot of houses and when you’re leav­ing you get into the habit of bless­ing your­self but half of the holy water fonts would be empty. And peo­ple would be say­ing ‘I filled that yes­ter­day or the day before and it’s already gone dry’.

“That’s when I began think­ing there must be some way of over­com­ing this problem.”

And at the end of June, the Sleeghan based father of two com­menced devel­op­ment of the holy water dis­penser that won’t run dry any­time soon. Not a dry font in the house, it might be said.

“It’s sim­ple but not that sim­ple to get it right. The brains of it are in the dis­penser cap,” Con­nie points out.

The dis­penser — its patent pend­ing at present — comes com­plete with a sup­port struc­ture that can be hung on any wall and includes a spe­cial design. “There’s a choice of fif­teen dif­fer­ent designs includ­ing saints such as St. Bernadette and St. Anthony, the Sacred Heart and Our Lady.” There’s also a choice of three dif­fer­ent colours — mahogany, pine and white/cream.

Only the very tip of the actual dis­penser is vis­i­ble when it is attached to a wall sur­face. “It lasts for months before it has to be refilled,” he insists.

Con­nie has care­fully hand crafted each one of the dis­pensers he has already pro­duced — and demand has already exceeded expec­ta­tion. He has brought his ini­tia­tive to the far reaches of the county and it’s also on sale in Derry. “Even­tu­ally I hope to hit the whole coun­try with it.”

The Der­ry­beg man was pre­vi­ously involved in the man­u­fac­tur­ing of patio slabs but the eco­nomic down­turn largely put paid to that in recent years.

But his unique dis­penser is set to pave the way for a future of holy water fonts that will never run dry.

Post­men push­ing their luck at Christmas

Rural post­men of the coun­try should take note of some Christ­mas mem­o­ries recalled in the Dun­gar­van Leader this week!

Among many tales by Mike Hack­ett is a great yarn about a post­man in the area back in the 1930’s who used to be the most pop­u­lar man at Christ­mas because many of the locals who could not read or write depended on him to read out Christ­mas cards or let­ters from exiled sons and daugh­ters in Eng­land and Amer­ica. Well, he used to invent the last line of every Christ­mas let­ter as “don’t for­get to stand to the poor post­man for Christ­mas”, i.e. give him a few bob.

In the 1950’s the same man got two helpers to help him deliver parcels to homes in the sub­urbs and coun­try­side. He would stay in the van whilst the oth­ers ran up and down the dri­ves deliv­er­ing the goods. One woman was so excited with a par­cel that she stood the postman’s appren­tice a fiver – a huge stand at the time. But he decided to push his luck a bit further:

“Thank you maam, but there are three of us and what is five divided by three?” He was being the cute fool – fish­ing for another pound.

“Oh I’m sorry,” said the woman. “One moment please…” She soon appeared with three sin­gle pound notes! “Now my dear man, happy Christ­mas to the three of you” said she tak­ing back the fiver.

Mas­sive vote to keep Achill-Henge

Hav­ing been the first paper to break the story of Achill-henge, the Mayo News is sur­rently doing the best it can to ensure the con­tro­ver­sial Stonehenge-esque struc­ture built on Achill Island is not be taken down. This week the paper calls it a piece of pub­lic art that could be a tourism live-saver for Achill Island, and indeed the whole of Mayo.

The paper is cur­rently con­duct­ing an online poll at www.mayonews.ie and as we went to air this Tues­day morn­ing there is a mas­sive Yes vote in favour of keep­ing the struc­ture. Like every­thing in Ire­land though, it has to be debated in a County Coun­cil cham­ber before it becomes real news, and local Cllr Michael McLaugh­lin has been singing the praises of the structure.

Michael McLaugh­lin, a mem­ber of West­port Town Coun­cil, believes Achill-henge is a work of genius. “It would be a ter­ri­ble deci­sion to take it down,” he told The Mayo News. “It is not vis­i­ble from the road and isn’t really in anyone’s way. Peo­ple will travel from all over to see it and I think it could be one of the major tourist attrac­tions in the west of Ireland.

“If left it will still be stand­ing strong in 5,000 years and will con­tinue to pose ques­tions and gen­er­ate debate, that’s what good art does. It is pub­lic art in my opin­ion. There’s some­times a fine line between genius and mad­ness, but I cer­tainly think this is genius.

I was down in Achill a lot (recently), and a lot of the locals are say­ing that you can’t buy the type of pub­lic­ity that this project has gen­er­ated. It will put money in everyone’s pock­ets on the island,” added Cllr McLaughlin.

Mayo County Coun­cil­lor Michael Kil­coyne wel­comed that move but issued a caveat: “I’m glad to see that the coun­cil have woken up to unau­tho­rised devel­op­ments and I look for­ward to them apply­ing sim­i­lar enforce­ment pro­ce­dures against other unau­tho­rised sites in the county, but I fear they won’t. I have been crit­i­cal about the lack of enforce­ment, which has been selec­tive, depend­ing on who you are.”

The struc­ture is the brain­child of devel­oper and Achill native Joe McNa­mara, known as The Anglo Avenger after a series of protests against Anglo Irish Bank. He led con­struc­tion on the unique devel­op­ment over the last week­end of Novem­ber, with work com­menc­ing on a Fri­day morn­ing and con­clud­ing in dark­ness on Sun­day evening. It was built with­out any plan­ning per­mis­sion. McNa­mara landed in jail because of it.