Ballads & Hurling Stories from Newport Co. Tipperary, Ireland 1982

Broadcaster Ciarán Mac Mathúna pays a return visit to Newport in Tipperary where he spent time as a schoolboy.
The radio and television broadcaster Ciarán Mac Mathúna visits Newport in County Tipperary about 10 miles east of his Limerick hometown. His father grew up close to Newport and Ciarán spent summer holidays with his cousins who lived in the village itself.
Newport was a place full of traditional music, country dancing and old songs. Ballads in the old style were written even in my time.
In Creagh’s bar old friends are reunited and the Mayor of Newport Jack Coffey sings ‘Dear Old Newport Town’. This ballad was written by Michael Bourke who lived on Main Street in Newport and died there in 1954. Ciarán Mac Mathúna knew him well, and recalls how he could write a song at the drop of a hat and composed a hurling ballad an hour or two after a famous match between Ahane and Newport.
Also present in Creagh’s is Michael Bourke’s associate Eddie O’Malley and the Mayor’s brother, the former Newport hurling great, Jimmy ‘Butler’ Coffey.
Jimmy Coffey reminisces about the early 1930s which he says were the great years of hurling in Newport although,
"It didn’t last too long."
Jimmy first played for Tipperary as a member of the minor hurling team in 1928 and he along with Jim Close, Mick Boland and Jack Coffey were lucky enough to win the All-Ireland Minor Championship in 1930.
Jimmy played as a right wing-forward for the Tipperary senior team in the mid-1930s but at that particular time Limerick had a great team.
‘My Own Place’ features prominent Irish personalities talking about a locality of special interest to them. Ciarán Mac Mathúna presented many programmes of Irish music on RTÉ Televison and Radio from the 1950s onwards. He presented ‘Mo Cheol Thú’, a selection of poetry, song and music, every Sunday on RTÉ Radio 1 from 1970 to November 2005.
‘My Own Place : Ciarán Mac Mathúna’s Limerick’ was broadcast on 13 April 1982.

[@lefemmerachael]

My dear grandmother and great aunt Kathyrn and Mary O'Grady were from Newport Tipperary. In the great adventure of their lives, as teen age girls came across the ocean to Ellis island NY about 1900. And thence to Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains! They left behind a brother, James, who would send us letters with shamrocks in them, which I still have! I remember them well and miss them very much!

[@TrueBlueEG8]

This channel is a feckin goldmine :)

[@choctaw6838]

:15 seconds my first car. Ford cortina mark 3 .. great video

[@MrJCIRELAND]

Subscribed, good site. More County Tipperary content if you have it please.

[@James_RC]

Up Tipp!

[@redkop510]

My Mother is from the Tipp!

[@sdrtcacgnrjrc]

Is that Ciarán Mac Mathúna narrating (and in the pub)?

[@James_RC]

Himself

[@sdrtcacgnrjrc]

@@James_RC I used love his voice. Did he used to have a show on the radio in the seventies? EDIT// wikipedia says "Mo Cheol Thú" on Sunday mornings. I didn't realise it kept going till 2005 -- I guess I started sleeping in on Sunday's from the eighties on :-)

[@James_RC]

@@sdrtcacgnrjrc 😆 👍

[@edwardcooper3948]

Didn't know Pablo Escobar liked irish music ?