Clonenagh, the monastery up the road
Saint Fintan and the school
The parish belongs to the old monastic country around Clonenagh, where Saint Fintan is said to have founded a monastery in the sixth century, a few kilometres north toward Mountrath. The village primary school, Scoil Fionntáin Naofa - Holy Saint Fintan's - carries his name. The current school building went up in 1948 and was still teaching around seventy children in recent years, which for a village this size is the institution that keeps it alive. The local Catholic chapel, historically the Clash chapel, was one of five plain chapels in the old Clonenagh parish, the others at Mountrath, Ballyfin, Raheen and Clondacasey.
Born on the banks of the Nore, died 1849
John Keegan, the famine poet
The ballad-writer John Keegan (1816-1849) came from this corner of Laois, born in a small farmhouse on the banks of the Nore in what was then Queen's County, in the country around Shanahoe and Abbeyleix. He wrote in English and drew on local folklore - his best-known piece is a version of An Brocach Rua, The Red Beggar of Abbeyleix. He worked as a hedge-school teacher, suffered badly through the worst years of the Great Famine, and died in poor circumstances in 1849 with a collected edition of his poems unpublished. He is one of the few names from the 1840s peasantry whose own words survive.
A junior hurling village
Colt-Shanahoe and the GAA
The GAA is the social spine of a place this size. The current Shanahoe club was founded in 1980 in the parish of Raheen, with its pitch about two kilometres from the village, and won the Laois Junior Hurling Championship in 1999. Since 2020 it has amalgamated with neighbouring St Fintan's, Colt to form Colt-Shanahoe, the way small rural clubs across the midlands have been pooling players to keep teams on the field. A summer evening, the floodlights or the long light, the sound of a sliotar off a hurley - that is the version of Shanahoe with people in it.