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Breda Joy with her new book, ‘The Wit & Wisdom of Kerry’.
A NEW book capturing the unique way of Kerry life through quotes, excerpts from plays, prose, poetry and much more has just been released and it’s a must have for Christmas.
Journalist and author, Breda Joy, is the woman behind the ‘The Wit & Wisdom Of Kerry’, which covers sport, politics, sex and marriage, Christmas, ‘the demon drink’, a whole chapter devoted to Jackie Healy Rae and much, much more.
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To give just a few examples of what’s collected in the book…
• “I’d have made a lovely priest – full of compassion and altar wine,” – Moss Keane from ‘Rucks, Mauls & Gaelic Football’
• “When Kerry absolutely thrashed Dublin in the 1978 All-Ireland Football Final, a good friend asked Con Houlihan how his partner, Harriet Duffin, a Dub, had taken the news of the defeat. ‘House private, no flowers,’ Con replied in a flash.” – from ‘Con Houlihan’s Ireland – The Lost Essays’.
• “I had some fierce escapes from dogs but I nearly bled to death after the cock drove his beak through my shoe and cut the vein. I bate the bejapers out of him.” – Jackie Healy Rae on an attack by a farmyard cock in the Black Valley – from Donal Hickey’s ‘The Mighty Healy Rae
“A handy farmer would make a tidy living in the amount of ground it took you to turn in,” former Kerry player Johnny Culloty to team-mate Moss Keane in an exhibition match.
• “He’ll never make a good footballer; he suffers from duck’s disease. His arse is too close to the ground.” – former Kerry team bagman, Gaffney Duggan.
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And there’s many, many more like this in a book which can be dipped in and out of time and time again.
There are contributions from the famous, the infamous and the ordinary Joe Soap which all adds up to a colourful portrait of Kerry.
The book will be launched this Sunday by Joanne O’Flynn of Listowel Writers Week at the Killarney Oaks Hotel from 2.30 to 5pm. All are welcome.
Killarney native Breda Joy will be familiar to many as an award-winning journalist, previously with The Kerryman, but with Kerry’s Eye for the past 15 years.
A former Provincial Journalist of the Year winner, she is also the author of ‘Hidden Kerry’.
‘The Wit & Wisdom Of Kerry’ by Breda Joy is in book shops now.
