It’s rainy in Limerick, Ireland today, so I’ll stay indoors 😀. Somewhere close by that I used to like walking around was the Adare Manor estate. It isn’t as easy to walk around the estate nowadays unless you’re a guest at the hotel. They’ll be holding the Ryder cup at the golf course next year.
But even apart from the Manor, it’s a pretty little village with some ancient monasteries, a riverside walk, and a pretty park. I used to spend a lot of time there with my kids when I was younger. Today’s prompt inspires me to go back for a nice walk when the rain stops.
John Wesley preached outdoors in Adare in 1765, beside the east wall of the Franciscan friary, under an ash tree. And the general area of West Limerick has strong Methodist associations. It’s said that American Methodist has its roots in West Limerick. There’s a little article about that in RTE Archives. There’s a clip from an old show from 1966. My first time in Limerick was going through it on the way to a holiday in Kilkee, country Clare, as a three-year-old in 1965. And as an adult I travelled up from Cork and went to University here. And I’m still here, but I still like Cork best 😀.
Anyway, I like to finish with a few songs and hymns. Here are two songs by artists from Limerick and two Charles Wesley hymns. Richard Harris later played Dumbledore in Harry Potter. He recorded MacArthur park in 1968, and Donna Summer had a hit with the song about 10 years later. The Cranberries had some hits in the 1990s.
Hibernia Gospel 