It’s “Let’s burn shit” day
Preparations are well under way for the ancient tradition of disposing of unwanted household items and furnishings and setting fire to them.
The above shot is of a bonfire in the making in the green area near the People’s Park taken yesterday. Stacks of kindling like this are being built around the city for “bonfire night.”
If you wish to send images of your local bonfire you can do so to editors@limerickblogger.org
And before anyone asks, the blue van was just a piece of traffic which happened to be travelling on Careys Road at the instant the image was taken, and has no relation to the bonfire.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
They have been building that pile for a couple of days now! I don’t know why the council haven’t cleaned it up already. Could save the cost of a call out of the fire brigade.
Further up Hyde Road they have been having practice bonfires all week.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Househole. I love it.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
fixed
April 30th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
You just gave me a great idea. We must have a family bonfire to-night to ward off all those pisheogs! Re the photo - kinda hard to burn a wheelbarrow?
April 30th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
It was better the first time.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Squid, where does this tradition come from?
April 30th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Disgraceful. It’s done every year in the same patch and it takes what’s left of the year to regrow the grass over the blackened patch left. The little basterds doing it should be thrown in for good measure.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
awwwww so we cant burn the van?? :p (JK)
April 30th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
THe tradition of having ” loads of crap in the back yard ,so lets take to a green space and burn it day”?
I never heard of it myself until i moved here..
April 30th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Class headline
Reminded me of this:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30674
April 30th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Any one notice the piece of hedge sculpture in the background!!!!!!
April 30th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
i like burning things..we should have a ‘blog bonfire’ and gather round to tell stories…..i dont know how that would actually work or anything…im going back to bed.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I think the tradition comes from harvest time! the burning of the fields out with the winter in with the summer?back when we were happy pagans.Since when can you burn all kinds of rubbish? There will be some filthy kids after that.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
It should be done away with, there are more than enough carbon emissions happening on a daily basis, I remember when I was a kid and we used to see how many tyres we could gather so our bonfire would produce the black smoke and look huge. In hindsight I cringe at the amount of cfc’s, mercury, lead etc that we released into the athmosphere.
Today we are more than aware as to the damage caused by the releasing of these toxins in such an uncntrolled fashion, especially in larger residential areas where unwanted toxic fumes make their way into the houses of people who do not ask for it and suffer the consequences later.
I know i sound like a bitter old bastard screaming ban the bonfires but we are a little more knowledgeable than we were years ago and knowledge is power as they say. Especially when you look at the miniscule exposure that young babies and infants need have to these types of toxins for serious long term consequences. Not to mention the affects of heavy metals seeping into the ground.
Alright off my soapbox now, sorry for the rant
April 30th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
it used to be a great nite years ago
does anyone remember the huge one that used to be down in mungret street opposite christy sullivans shop and molenos pub bet i spelt that wrong
there was another one down in garryowen in the big green opposite the shrine
difference then was people behaved themselves and animals were never in any danger corse then im going back to the mid seventies when there was disipline in the home
April 30th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Yeah they were great when we were kids , we had huge bonfires in kellys field( back of Ballynanty) if someone got a jcb tire the black smoke would engulf the woodview house’s! boy were we ejits. The competition to have the biggest blackest one was fierce.
My mother would kill us! that night we would all need baths the whole house smelled of smoke. You would be a zombie the next day at school from the whole experience.
Yeah your right hazel for the most part people did behave.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Better the bonfires to celebrate May Eve (Oiche Bealtaine) than to be over the water where they have to run around maypoles with ribbons and do the bit of Morris dancing!
The ’sculpture’ is actually ivy on the wall (and widows and bit of the roof) of the house.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I’ve heard of the Bealtaine as being more of a Scots thing, we didn’t do it in Kerry. There again our paganism is more manifest at other times of the year.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Don’t just blame the kids, though they are indisciplined little fucks. Blame also the people who pull up with trailers of waste because they’re too stingy to dispose of it properly.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
it comes from “Oiche Bealtaine” May Eve as Róisín says, welcoming the summer. Bealtaine, the last piece of this word (tinne) translates to english as fire, hence the bonfires that have been lit on this day every year for 3000 years or more and will be lit for a few more. me thinks. We used to have very big ones at the back of the clinic in Balla. we would go to the dump weeks in advance and get tyres for it.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
john.
i share your views about the health hazards these bonfires create, but i cant see how they could enforce a ban. especially that the cops dont enforce a lot of laws already their.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Seamus Heaney read a new poem (below) he’d written for the occasion on the day at the Aras on 1 May 2004 when the ten countries were added to the EU. Surely the poem and Squid’s unbeatable title for this blog make it a May Day to remember!
Beacons at Bealtaine
Phoenix Park, May Day, 2004
Uisce: water. And fionn: the water’s clear.
But dip and find this Gaelic water Greek:
A phoenix flames upon fionn uisce here.
Strangers were barbaroi to the Greek ear.
Now let the heirs of all who could not speak
The language, whose ba-babbling was unclear,
Come with their gift of tongues past each frontier
And find the answering voices that they seek
As fionn and uisce answer phoenix here.
The May Day hills were burning, far and near,
When our land’s first footers beached boats in the creek
In uisce, fionn, strange words that soon grew clear;
So on a day when newcomers appear
Let it be a homecoming and let us speak
The unstrange word, as it behoves us here,
Move lips, move minds and make new meanings flare
Like ancient beacons signalling, peak to peak,
From middle sea to north sea, shining clear
As phoenix flame upon fionn uisce here.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:16 am
King John: 3000 years of burning tyres? That’s quite a tradition.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:02 am
I remember the dump trips! if a jcb tire was got you would stick some one in it and roll them in the road. How we are all alive I dont know.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:15 am
You think that one is bad. There’s one over by Childers Road and it is huge! Seriously while I appreciate that this is associated with tradition, I am concerned about the fire hazards. They had the same one in the same spot on Childers Road last year and it was a really strong fire with a lot of young kids around it - really close actually with minimal adult supervision (one adult standing 30-40 feet away). All it takes is to throw something highly flammable on the pile and there could be trouble.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:17 am
I remember going out to the fields at the back of tata’s in southill cutting down trees and then having to gaurd them from the other courts who would try to rob your trees
May 1st, 2008 at 9:48 am
cece - that is called Darwinism.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:28 am
Cece,i remember as a nipper and you’d always have one snakey fella who’d throw a spray can into the fire and not tell anybody……very dangerous indeed
May 1st, 2008 at 11:39 am
I remember back in the 80’s, the fire would start early and soon as all the younger kids were gone home and most of the adults, the teenagers would start throwing aerosol cans into fire. I even witnessed one or two beer barrels being put in, you did not stand close to the fire when that was done.
May 1st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
haha bonfire night is a great tradition and why people would want to do away with it is beyound me after all it has been around for 3000 years why stop now. this is a unique tradition we have and should keep it
we used to have a huge one in the boro field and would be collecting for weeks in advance great laugh
May 1st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
pj, did we have dumps 3000 years ago to raid for tyres?
May 1st, 2008 at 4:58 pm
@Pj
Probably because it’s not such a great idea anymore. There is nothing unique about it. There are bonfire nights in may countries, you only have to look to England for Guy Fawkes night which is also known as bonfire night.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:26 pm
bonfire night is great except for the devils deciples who think its ok to throw apoor innocent animal into afire
hope they die roaring people who do things like that thats why i dread bonfire night these days
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:53 am
pj: What’s unique about it is that people don’t just burn wood. They get away with burning tyres, stolen wheelie bins, mattresses and furniture, releasing huge clouds of toxic fumes into the air over Limerick. It’s unique, because it wouldn’t be tolerated in any other civilised country.