The road from Waterford is peppered with towns which are
famous for one reason or another. Wexford and Cashel are where the cheeses come
from; Tipperary is where the sweetest girl I know comes from; and Limerick is
where the five-line poem comes from. Well, it may be.
It’s definitely where
Frank McCourt, author of “Angela’s Ashes” came from. I haven’t read the book or
seen the film, but Lameys House, where rooms in the McCourt family home have
been recreated by Onah Heaton, gives a strong sense of the incredible poverty
and hardship of 1930’s Limerick. The building used to be the school where young
McCourt studied until he was 13 - the walls are covered in maps where
Yugoslavia is still a country; a dunce’s table faces the corner of the room;
and a thin, springy can lies ominously on the teacher’s desk . As I leave Onah
gives me a fragment of the building as a souvenir and I muse that, apart from
the work, seeing gems like this is what
touring is all about.
And that respectable middle-aged ladies say “feck” and
awful lot in Limerick.
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