There Once was a City called Limerick

Céad Míle Fáilte, and you are very welcome to your Letter from Ireland for this week. With the bright sunshine and warmer days here in County Cork, one of the most notable feature is the dawn chorus of birds that starts at about 4:30 am each morning. Who needs an alarm clock when there is such a natural cacophony of sound outside the window, although a little early perhaps! 

I’m having a cup of Barry’s tea as I write, and I do hope you’ll join me with whatever you fancy as we settle into today’s letter.

Before I go on, just to say that I will be trying something different from this week onwards with the letter. Each week going forward, I’ll finish the letter with a question to you, and then I’ll aim to base some future letters on your answers. So, watch out at the end of this letter for our new format.

Earlier this week, Carina and I took ourselves up to Limerick for a few days out and about. The weather was kind to us, and we walked the city in a way you can really only do when the rain stays off. The Shannon was sparkling, and the old Georgian streets full of light. And King John’s Castle stood guard at its bend in the river, just as it has done for over eight hundred years.

So today’s letter is for Limerick. I had this lovely message a while back from a Green Room member that fits the subject perfectly:

“Mike, my great-grandfather left Limerick city in the 1880s for Liverpool. Would you believe, I’ve never been to Ireland, but Limerick is the place I keep coming back to in my mind. Funny enough, I also enjoy composing limericks! I would love to hear your thoughts on the city and if there is any connection between the city and the limerick rhyme?

Eileen, Liverpool.”

Thanks for that, Eileen. I find many of our readers carry a special place in Ireland with them, just as you do.

 

There Once Was A City Called Limerick

I cannot write about Limerick without addressing the title. Most of us know the limerick as a verse; you know the form: five lines, a particular rhythm, usually a punchline that lands somewhere between cheeky and outrageous. There once was a man from Nantucket… and so on.

The answer as to whether the verse form actually took its name from the city of Limerick is that it likely did, although we are not entirely sure how it came about. Some trace it to a parlour-game song, “Will You Come Up to Limerick?”, popular in the 19th century, where each guest at a gathering had to make up a verse, with the chorus bringing everyone back to Limerick. Others point further back, to the poets of the 18th century in County Limerick, who wrote in Irish using a metre that bears a strong resemblance to the form we know today. The word “limerick” for the verse itself only seems to appear towards the end of the 1800s.

So the link is real, but loose. Either way, it is a small piece of cultural shorthand that has carried the city’s name into every English-speaking household in the world. Now, that’s not a bad bit of branding, however accidental!

Walking the Banks of the Shannon

The first thing that strikes you about Limerick is the mighty Shannon, Ireland’s longest river. You can talk all you like about the city’s history, but the river is what made the place. Wide, slow-moving, tidal at this point, the Shannon has been the reason for Limerick’s existence from the beginning.

We walked from the city centre out along the riverbank following the Three Bridges Walk, with each bridge bringing us further back in time. There were rowers out on the water, the slap of the oars and the call of the cox carrying clearly in the still air. A couple of fishermen leaning on the wall and further on, the bend where the river curves around Thomondgate, the castle comes into view.

Your Limerick ancestors would have known this water well. The Shannon was always a working river: barges, hookers, fishing boats, the smell of the docks.

King John’s Castle

King John’s Castle is one of those places that looks exactly what you hope a castle should look like. Squat round-fronted towers, thick limestone walls, and a great gate facing the river. It was built in the early 1200s by the Normans, and a version has stood there ever since, surviving sieges, the Williamite Wars, centuries of neglect, restoration, and now a rather good visitor centre.

Standing on the ramparts, you can see how everything in Limerick radiates from this single spot. The Normans knew what they were doing when they choose to build here. Across the river sits the Treaty Stone on its plinth, marking the place where the Treaty of Limerick was signed in 1691. The treaty that ended one war, broke its own promises soon after, and sent a generation of Irish soldiers, the Wild Geese, into the armies of Europe.

The Georgian Streets

Walk a little south from the castle and you cross into a different part of the city altogether. This is Newtown Pery, the planned Georgian quarter laid out in the late 1700s by Edmund Sexton Pery and his architects. Wide straight streets, tall red-brick and limestone houses, fanlights over the doors, iron railings, the whole confident Georgian vocabulary.

It is easy to forget that Limerick was once one of the most fashionable cities in Ireland. The Georgian quarter was where the merchants and the professional classes lived, and you can still feel the assurance of that period in the proportions of the buildings. Some of the houses are immaculate, but others are now a bit faded, having spent much of the late 1800s and early 1900s serving as tenements. All of it is being slowly, carefully brought back to its former glory.

We had lunch on O’Connell Street, in a place where the windows looked straight down a perfect Georgian terrace. It was the sort of moment when you remember that an Irish city is never one thing. Instead, it has its layers, Gaelic, Norman, Georgian, Victorian, twentieth-century, present-day, all stacked on top of each other, and all still in use.

A City Worth Knowing

Limerick has had a complicated reputation over the years. Frank McCourt’s book Angela’s Ashes painted a memorable picture of a particular time and a particular kind of poverty, and that image probably stuck for longer than it should have. The Limerick we walked last week is a different city, and a city of a different generation. Confident, lively, aware of its problems, proud of its history, comfortable with itself.

If you have Limerick ancestry, this is a city well worth a visit. Walk the banks of the Shannon, stand on the castle walls. Wander the Georgian streets, find a window seat in a café and watch the city go about its business with a cup of tea in front of you. Your great-grandparents would, I suspect, be quite pleased to see how the old place is getting on.

Thanks again to Eileen for the prompt, It’s a reminder that a single place can stay with us, even from a distance.

As I mentioned at the top of the letter, before I leave you this week, I’d love to ask you something.

Which Irish town or city holds special meaning for you – through ancestry, a visit, or simply a place you’ve always been curious about?

To answer, simply leave a comment below – just a line or two is perfect. You may even see your choice featured in a future Letter from Ireland, many of the letters I write come from conversations like this one.

That’s it for this week.

Slán for now,

Mike.