JOYCEAN PICS 2007
Limerick
Contents of This Page


  Limerick Railway/Bus Station
  Lord Edward Street
  Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street the Jewish quarter)
  
  
CONTENTS 2007
   1  Dublin IASIL 2007@University College Dublin
   2  Dublin and Joyce
   3  Dublin, Jew and Joyce: "Jublin"
   4  Dublin: miscellanea
   5  Dublin: miscellanea: "Asiatic"
   6  Limerick
   7  Ennis
   8  Adare, Co. Limerick
   9  Kilkenny
  10  Kinnegad, Co. Westmeath
  11  Galway

Limerick
Featuring the Former Jewish Quarter

24 July 2007


  
  Like most Irish coastal towns, the fourth biggest Irish city Limerick was originally a 9th-century Danish settlement.  In 1691, the Irish retreated to the walled city of Limerick after the Battle of Boyne.  They were besieged by William of Orange, who made three unsuccessful attempts to storm the city but then raised the siege and marched away.  A year later, another of William's armies overtook the city for tow months, and the Irish opened negotiations.  The resulting Treaty of Limerick was never ratified -- it guaranteed religious tolerance -- and 11,000 men of the Limerick garrison joined the French army rather than fight in a Protestant "Irish" army.  St. Mary's Cathedral on Bridge Street, once a 12th-century palace, features pilasters and a rounded Romanesque entrance that were part of the original structure.
  Nicholas Street, behind the cathedral, leads to Castle Street and the entrance to the newly restored King John's Castle, built by the Normans in the 13th century.  Its north side still bears traces of the 1691 bombardment.  If you climb the drum towers, you'll have the good view of the town and the Shannon.
  The old part of Limerick is in this area around the cathedral and the castle, dominated by mid-18th-century buildings with fine Georgian proportions. (Ed. Caroline V. Haberfeld, Fodor's Ireland 1995, New York: Fodor's Travel Publications, Inc., 1994).
  
  

  Father John Creagh began to attack the Jews in Limerick, January 1904, focusing on the Jews as usurers, and as a result the Jewish businesses were boycotted there for two years.  His attack was probably influenced by anti-Semitism during the Dreyfus Affair while he traveled to France.  The loss of livelihood forced some 75 percent of the Jewish residents in the Limerick Jewish community to leave, but the community reestablished itself during World War I after the hateful priest was finally forced out.
  On January 12, 1904, a boycott against the Jews of Limerick was incited by Father John Creagh, who in a sermon condemned the Jews as usurers and invoked the myth of ritual murder--the blood libel: "he [Arthur Griffith] knew there was a boycott" (U 18.0387).  The myth is alluded in Ulysses several times: U06.0770-72: Bloom thinks of the superstition that Jews kill Christian children in order to use their blood to make matzoth, the ritual unleavened bread eaten on Passover ; U17.0810-28: Stephen sings the ballad of Harry Hughes, in which a Jewish girl cuts off the head of a Christian boy.
  Arthur Griffith supported the Limerick "pogrom," publicizing his anti-Semitism in his articles on the Boer Wars, in which he aligned the Jews with the "Imperialist English" (the United Irishman, July 15, 1899).  Griffith also insisted that "the Three Evil Influences of the century were the Pirate, the Freemason and the Jew" (the United Irishman, September 23, 1899).  Griffith is employed in Ulysses essentially as a symbol of one branch of Irish nationalism.
  
  

 
  There are some references to Limerick in Joyce's works:
  
Critical Writings

  Nor is it any harder to understand why the Irish citizen is a reactionary and a Catholic, and why he mingles the names of Cromwell and Satan when he curses.  For him, the great Protector of civil rights is a savage beast who came to Ireland to propagate his faith by fire and sword.  He does not forget the sack of Drogheda and Waterford, nor the bands of men and women hunted down in the furthermost islands by the Puritan, who said that they would go 'into the ocean or into hell', nor the false oath that the English swore on the broken stone of Limerick.  How could he forget?  Can the back of a slave forget the rod?  The truth is that the English government increased the moral value of Catholicism when they banished it. ("35. Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages," 1907, CW 168)
  ...
   From the time of the Treaty of Limerick, or rather, from the time that it was broken by the English in bad faith, millions of Irishmen have left their native land.  These fugitives, as they were centuries ago, are called the wild geese.  They enlisted in all the foreign brigades of the powers of Europe -- France, Holland, and Spain, to be exact -- and won on many battlefields the laurel of victory for their adopted masters.  In America, they found another native land. In the ranks of the American rebels was heard the old Irish language, and Lord Mountjoy himself said in 1784, 'We have lost America through the Irish emigrants.'   Today, these Irish emigrants in the United States number sixteen million, a rich, powerful, and industrious settlement.  Maybe this does not prove that the Irish dream of a revival is not entirely an illusion ! ("35. Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages," 1907, CW 171)
  
  
Stephen Hero

The new student was named Madden and came from the county of Limerick. (SH ?V, p.25)
  
  
Ulysses

08.0558.  What do they be thinking about? Women too. Incredible. Last year
08.0559.  travelling to Ennis had to pick up that farmer's daughter's bag and hand it
08.0560.  to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed money too. There's a little watch up
08.0561.  there on the roof of the bank to test those glasses by.
  
12.1239.  --Raimeis, says the citizen. There's no-one as blind as the fellow that won't
12.1240.  see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing twenty millions of
12.1241.  Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes?  And our potteries
12.1242.  and textiles, the finest in the whole world!  And our wool that was sold in
12.1243.  Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms
12.1244.  of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass
12.1245.  down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since
12.1246.  Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory
12.1247.  raised point from the Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the
12.1248.  whole wide world.  Where are the Greek merchants that came through the
  
12.1379.  --Ay, says John Wyse.  We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged us
12.1380.  against the Williamites and they betrayed us.  Remember Limerick and the
12.1381.  broken treatystone.  We gave our best blood to France and Spain, the wild
12.1382.  geese.  Fontenoy, eh?  And Sarsfield and O'Donnell, duke of Tetuan in
12.1383.  Spain, and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was fieldmarshal to Maria
12.1384.  Teresa.  But what did we ever get for it?
  
  
Finnegans Wake

067.16.  who, he guntinued, on last epening after delivering some car-
067.17.  casses mattonchepps and meatjutes on behalf of Messrs Otto
067.18.  Sands and Eastman, Limericked, Victuallers, went and, with his
067.19.  unmitigated astonissment, hickicked at the dun and dorass against
067.20.  all the runes and, when challenged about the pretended hick (it
  (*Limerick" is "A light humorous, nonsensical, or bawdy verse of five anapestic lines usually with the rhyme scheme aabba. [ After Limerick.] (AHD 3rd ed.) )
  
444.35.  wiffriends?  Hay, dot's a doll yarn!  Mark mean then!  I'll homeseek
444.36.  you, Luperca as sure as there's a palatine in Limerick and in
445.01.  striped conference here's how.  Nerbu de Bios!  If you twos goes
  
  

  
Extracted from Louis O. Mink's A "Finnegans Wake" Gazetteer
(Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1978), p.384

  
  
LIMERICK. Co, Munsten pnov, and city on both banks of the Shannon R.  The dams (183.23) of the Shannon Hydmo-Eleetric Scheme are upstream from L City.  L is famous for hams and for the "Broken Treaty" of 1691 by which the city surrendered to Wm III's forces commanded by Ginkel.  A Gem colony from the Palatinate (qv) was settled btwn L City and Newcastle West in 1709.  Baronies: Clanwilliam, Upm and Lwm Connello, Coomagh, Coshlea, Coshma, Glenquim, Kenry,  Kilmallock, Owneybeg, N Liberties, Puddlebnien, Shanid, Small County.
  
  067.18  Otto Sands and Eastman, Limericked, Victualers
  183.23  limerick damns
  410.21  from franking machines, limricked
  434.21  ribbons of lace, limenick's disgrace
  444.36  as sure as there's a palatine in Limerick
  595.12  limericks
  
  

IMAGE
IMAGE NO.
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Limerick Station
      
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Limerick Railway/Bus Station
  
  
   
Lord Edward St.
  
    Lord Edward Street, half a mile or so west of City Centre and Limerick Railway/Bus Station
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Street sign of Lord Edward Street
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Houses in Lord Edward Street
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Lord Edward Street
  
  
   
Wolfe Tone St.
  
   Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street) was the Jewish quarter of Limerick between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.  Most of the Jewish community lived in small houses on Colooney (now Wolfe Tone) Street, half a mile or so west of the city center (Cormac O Grada 2006; p. 191).
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Street sign of Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Street sign of Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)
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 (Tuesday 24 July) Wolfe Tone Street (former Colooney Street)




        


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