Sligo Scenes

Ronan Mulligan, member of San Fransisco based rock band The Hooks talks about some of his favourite places in Sligo.

Ronan left Sligo in 2003 to bring The Hook’s brand of Rock N’ Roll to the States.  He has been home a couple of times since and says there are many things about Sligo “that resonate in my heart and soul”.  About his favourite places he says “I have a lot of favourite places for different reasons”

Followers of Sligo Rovers will be familiar with one of Ronan’s number one spots in Sligo, the legendary “Shed” in Rovers home ground, the Showgrounds.  The Shed was the place where arguably the most vocal of Rovers supporters congregated on match days.  A packed Shed could provide an intense atmosphere as can be attested by anyone that ever took their place on its terraced steps.  Although now demolished Ronan says “I used to love being a kid in there with my Dad meeting the old characters and the cheering and the view of Benbulben and the smell of soup in the cold air and the banter”.

When it was time to get away from it all there were other places to go.  Ronan says he had a small motorbike that he would take over “the back roads…down a small rubble overgrown road” from near where he lived to “the third beach behind Cregg House in Ballincar”.

From this quite place he would write poetry and songs.  He would not be the first person to find inspiration from settings like this in Sligo of course.  Some of the writings of W.B. Yeats are inextricably linked places around the county.  With the scenery on offer it is not hard to see why. As Ronan explained, from this particular location “you had a full on view of Benbulben and the beach”.

Some of Ronan’s other favourite places were the “Casual Corner” on Wine Street which is no longer there today.  The Casual Corner was a well known games arcade that was popular with secondary school students in the 1990’s.  It provided teenagers on their school lunch break an hour of entertainment on the coin op games of the day such as Streetfighter II and Mortal Kombat.  The Trades Club and the T N’C, both of which were places famous for their musical sessions over the years were also on Ronan’s list of places he loved to visit before leaving Sligo.

“Finally” Ronan says, “I loved our shed”.  This is the place “where we used to rehearse”. Every band needs its own space and this was a special place for the emerging musician, “not so much for the look of it but for the many happy rehearsals and parties we had there”.

He has never forgotten the support the band got in those early days “the fact that we had our friends come help us build it and donate whatever they could to make it happen, there was and is a sense of achievement which is golden”.

For more on Ronan’s band The Hooks, please visit www.thehooksmusic.com

Irish place names, like place names in other countries usually derive from a description of a feature in the landscape, a man made feature or a person.  However, when Irish place names were anglicised many lost their original meanings.

Even today some meanings are disputed and some places may have more than one translation, a good example of this is Knocknarea.  The first part of the name, “Knock” translates to “Cnoc” and is commonly used to describe a hill.  The second part has been interpreted to have seperate meanings and each gives the mountain a very different description.  Cnoc na Ré – Hill of the Moon, Cnoc na Riogha – Hill of the Kings and Cnoc na Riaghadh – Hill of the executions.

The following is a short list of place names in County Sligo with their Irish names and their meanings.

English Name                 Irish Name                                    Meaning

Ballymote                           Baile an Mhóta                                Town of the Moat

Benbulben                          Binn Ghulbain                                 Jaw Shaped Peak

Carrowkeel                         An Cheathrú Chaol                         The Narrow Quarter

Carrowmore                       An Cheathrú Mhór                          The Great Quarter

Drumcliff                            Droim Chliabh                                 Ridge of Baskets

Easky                                   Iascaigh                                             Place of Fish

Grange                                 An Ghráinseach                               The Granary

Inishmurray                       Inis Muirígh                                     Muirígh’s Island

Lough Gill                           Loch Gile                                          Bright Lake

Mullaghmore                      Mullach Mór                                    Great Summit

Riverstown                          Baile idir dhá Abhainn                   Town between two Rivers

Sligo                                      Sligeach                                            Shelly River

Tubbercurry                        Tobar an Choire                               Well of the Rock