Area: Knocknagree
Started: January 1949
Finished: December 1949
Poles used: 1182
Line used (km): 98
Premises connected: 263
The figures above were sourced from our REO News magazine, to learn more about what these figures mean, visit our interactive map. The map above shows the area boundary and is from a digitised version of the original map used during the scheme.
The REO News from December 1954 reports on an encounter with the poet Ned Buckley of Knocknagree.
This digital scan from the REO News displays the following text:
"RURAL RHYMSTERS
There is a small windswept village called Knocknagree perched on a hilltop near the border between the counties of Cork and Kerry. It is the kind of a place you would pass through on your way to some other place, and never give it a second thought. I often did, until on one occasion I received a letter from an inhabitant of the village whose name was Ned Buckley. The letter was a complaint about the Fixed Charge on his premises. While he realised the excellence and convenience of the light he decided that, at the rate he was being charged, he could not afford to pay for it. But I did call and look into the matter, and found the charge could not be amended from shop rate to private house rate which he understood was lower? And, anyway, he hadn’t a shop in the proper sense of the word.
On the occasion of my next visit to the area, I called on Mr. Buckley and found him sitting at the open hearth outside his house smoking a clay pipe, quite at peace with himself and the world. I introduced myself and we got down to the necessary talk. He showed me his house and he explained that he wanted to open a counter in it, as he had done some trade already, and that in time he was going to open a shop, but he needed to have enough money to do so. “That’s the way,” I said, “The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley.”
“Ah!” said he with a twinkle in his eye, “That’s Bobbie Burns. Well, don’t mind appearances anyway, sure ‘The rank is but the guinea’s stamp. The man’s the gowd for a’ that’.”
I countered with another quotation, and he came back with yet another, and so we swapped quotations from Burns, Byron and Tennyson for some time.
Finally, he said to me, “Faith, you know your poetry well. Tell me now, did you ever get any poetry by Ned Buckley of Knocknagree?” I confessed to a sin of omission, whereupon he rounded on me.
“Well,” said he, “isn’t it a terrible thing to say, that a man like you that knows his Burns and his Byron and his Tennyson, can stand there in front of me and admit that he never heard of Ned Buckley of Knocknagree?” I had to endure a considered silence.
At last he said, “Well ‘twon’t be so any longer, because I’m going to present you with a volume of my poems.” Whereupon he took down a small paper‑covered book from a shelf in his room and said, “Give me your pen so that I can inscribe it for you.” I gave him my pen and he sat down and wrote “To my dear friend——” and stopped and looked up at me and said, “What’s that your name is, anyway?”
The whole episode was delightful!
I then asked him to recite some of his verses, so he stood up and declaimed in rousing fashion his forceful version of what was apparently a Homeric struggle between two well known teams. The epic was entitled “When Knocknagree played Scartaglin” and it went as follows:
“Our grand football team determined has been,
Since the day that they vanquished Rathmore,
Fierce were our foes but they dared not come in
They have often come back with laurels galore.
Caher contests they have often played,
And glories gained between Cullen and Nadd,
And Blameen’s hill they have knitted still,
But they’ll never forget what their ‘bosses’ they met,
For in Scartaglin field they were glad.
For speed, style and power to last the whole hour,
Each team of the power did display,
And ne’er was a match so delightful to watch,
As when Knocknagree played Scartaglin.”
This digital scan from the REO News displays the following text:
" ’Twas a battle of giants, ’twas Greek meeting Greek,
It was bull meeting bull in a tug:
It was grand Gaelic football at its highest peak.
When you’d want each opponent to hug.
’Twas a case of bull terrier meeting bulldog,
When neither knew how to give in:
It was worth thirty miles of a barefooted jog,
When Knocknagree played Scartaglin.
*For speed, style and power, etc.*
When the referee’s whistle, lengthy and loud,
Brought the so eager teams to his side,
The linesmen got busy to keep back the crowd,
Lest they our whitewashed lines should hide,
Soon the ball was thrown in, it was here, it was there.
And merry and loud was the din,
And Kerry and Cork had an alternate cheer,
When Knocknagree played Scartaglin.
*For speed, style and power, etc.*
The jazzer will spend all his time in the hall,
And fancy he has a great time,
He sneers at the fellows who follow the ball,
And thinks dirtying his breeches a crime.
He’ll tell you that football is “dangerous” play,
That one might get a kick on the shin,
But there were no jazzers competing that day,
When Knocknagree played Scartaglin.
*For speed, style and power, etc.*
Poor old Ned did not live long to enjoy our light—at the revised rate—not even long enough to write a poem in praise of the E.S.B. which he promised me.
He died shortly afterwards and a fellow Bard wrote his requiem:
“Soft lie the sod on your poet’s breast,
Swift wing your soul to Heaven’s rest.
Sing now you with angels blest,
Ned Buckley.”
And I say “Amen” to that!"