This is a time when the revival of Irish industries is in the air. We are to have an Industrial Exhibition next month, which won’t be open on Sunday because it is a day of rest, and the Secretary of the aforementioned Exhibition doesn’t believe in rest. Again, we have the suggestion that the manufacture of cement should take place in our midst. If, as I have heard, mud is the principal ingredient in cement, Limerick should prove a gold mine for those people of capital who would start cement works among us.
But the Munster News has gone one step further and made a pronounced display of its sympathy with the industrial movement by the statistics it gives in a recent issue regarding the usage of Irish-made straw hats worn in Limerick. An overworked staff was pressed into the service of the espionage of headgear, for I presume that is what is meant by the following paragraph from the leading article of a recent issue of the Munster News: “Yet out of about five hundred hats examined by members of our staff, assisted by friendly experts in Limerick and district during the past week, it was found that most of those worn were of British or foreign make.”
A member of the Corporation at a recent Committee meeting stated he had “brought Daniel O’Connell into that room five years ago.” Of course, the good man only indulged in a figure of speech, meaning that he had raised the question of the necessity of having the city monuments, O’Connell’s included, cleaned and painted. But the faux pas was too good to let pass, and a young and brilliant member of the Council, Mr J. G. O’Brien, rose with the solemnity of an undertaker to request the permission of the Mayor to ask a question. “Certainly,” said the Mayor. “I would like to ask Councillor —— whether Daniel O’Connell came quietly.” The laugh that followed could almost be heard by the bronze ears of the Liberator himself. It is said that the discomfited Councillor grew as cross as a tiger.
Dealing with the city monuments, it certainly is a reproach to the Corporation that more attention has not been paid to them. What was done to the O’Connell statue years ago by a troop of soldiers is now done by the birds of the air, and the figure, in the strong light of the sun, looks a sorry spectacle. Councillor O’Brien deserves much thanks for having an order made at last on the matter and for making the joke of the year at the same time.
A gentleman in a song is represented as describing his happy condition in having “got a goose for dinner, and coffee for our tea.” But this is nothing compared to the high-living of the inmates of Poplar Workhouse. A lady inmate liked brandy in her tea and used to get it. We read, as in a fairy tale: “The Master had no command over the inmates unless he gave them beer, and he had no command over the guardians unless he gave them beer.” The Master of Limerick Union can go one better than that; he gives the Guardians “socks” sometimes. Certainly, that English Workhouse well deserves to be called “Pop(u)lar.”
I have received many sympathetic and curious inquiries as to the identity of the friend whose absence on holidays formed the subject of some verses in this column last week. He is, I beg to assure my correspondents, genuine; he exists in the flesh—I won’t say anything about spirits! It is an even chance he will break out in his seagirt solitude—I mean, of course, break out into verse or something like that, and if he should, no doubt, the editor will give his effusion a place in these columns. In the meantime, I wish him my best regards and envy his ozone surroundings.
Limerick Echo – Tuesday 19 June 1906
