Articles
Articles based on Irish history and genealogy, written by researchers and journalists.
At seven minutes past four on the morning of 28 June 1922 Free State forces under pressure from Britain over the assassination on 22 June of Sir Henry Wilson, military advisor to the Unionist regime in the Six Counties, shelled the Four Courts which had been occupied by Republican troops since 13 April.
Townlands turn up in Irish research and nowhere else. It is an unusual term—as I type this article, every use of the word has a red underline. The spell check thinks two words have been run together by mistake. Set out on the trail of an Irish ancestor, however, and you will discover townlands.
"British Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized for doing "too little" in response to the Irish Potato Famine of the 19th century that killed one million people and brought about the emigration of millions more. But in fact, the English government was guilty of doing too much." Article by Mark Thornton for the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Stories of coffin-ships, famine emigration experiences, and "Black '47", the worst year of the famine.
1800s reaction to the Great Famine: quotes, art, experiences, and newspaper reaction, especially the Cork Examiner and Illustrated London News.
From Bishinik, The Official Publication of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, June 1995.
The people of Ireland in 1851 proved to be 1,622,739 less numerous than in 1841, a diminution commonly attributed to the famine consequent on the potato failure in 1845 and subsequent years.
A million people are said to have died of hunger in Ireland in the late 1840s, on the doorstep of the world's richest nation. Ideology helped the ruling class avoid grappling with the problem of mass starvation. Jim Donnelly describes how.
An island west of Great Britain, forming part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The earliest mention of Jews in Ireland appears toward the end of the eleventh century, although, curiously enough, quite a number of books have been written to identify the Irish with the Lost Ten Tribes.
The geography of ancient Ireland is rooted in myth and legend, and so the degree of certainty about anything geographical diminishes the further back in time it is. With that in mind, the following brief summary may be of some help.
The Society of United Irishmen, founded in 1791, embraced Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters in its aim to remove English control from Irish affairs. Their bloody rebellion of 1798, however, resulted in the 1801 Act of Union, which brought Ireland tighter still under British control. Professor Thomas Bartlett tells their story.
In 1797 the United Irishmen actively recruiting in Clare, even attempting to recruit from the ranks of army. 'Emigrants' from Dublin and Northern Ireland came to Clare on recruiting missions. A number of locals were also actively recruiting new members, including Martin Devitt, a carpenter from Lackamore; Michael Mulqueeny, a blacksmith from Torr; and Michael Murphy, a labourer from Tullygarvan, Lahinch.
In 1798 Ireland was shook by a mass rebellion for democratic rights and against British rule. 200 years later 1798 continues to loom over Irish politics. The bi-centenary, co-inciding with the 'Peace process', has attracted considerable discussion, with the formation of local history groups, the holding of conferences and a high level of interest in the TV documentaries and books published around the event.
Ireland has produced some of the world's most celebrated short story writers – and continues to do so. Why are the Irish so good at the form, and why do they love it so much, asks Anne Enright.
Irish artists did not paint their history because of a perception (so widely held that it was not always documented) that such work would not be acceptable to the establishment.
Written by John M. Synge, published by Maunsel & Company Ltd, Dublin and London 1912.
The city of Limerick was born with a silver spoon in its mouth. Perhaps the metaphor is a violent one. There is little resemblance between a spoon and a river; and it is the Shannon that gives Limerick its unique quality among Irish cities. Written by Lynn Doyle. Published by B.T. Batsford Ltd , 1935.
All is not clean-cut between North and South. There is a moderately soft lining to both coats of steel. Many well-to-do Protestants prefer to live in the South and some prosperous Catholics prefer the North. The intellectual and artistic, who do not care for politics, tend Southward. People who are interested less in their bank accounts than in sporting or intellectual surroundings forget the “love and loyalty†on which the North prides itself.
Written by Robert E. West, PEC Illinois State Director. Records are replete with references to early Irish Catholics in the West Indies. Gwynn in Analecta Hibernica, states: 'The earliest reference to the Irish is the establishment of an Irish settlement on the Amazon River in 1612."Smith, in Colonists in Bondage, reports: "a Proclamation of the year 1625 urged the banishing overseas of dangerous rogues (Irish Political Prisoners); kidnapping (of Irish) was common."
2008 marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Irish architect who designed the original White House. James Hoban was an Irishman, born in Kilkenny. George Washington chose the Irishman in 1792 when it came time to build the White House.
The Irish political and academic establishment are playing down any commemoration of the Irish famine which began 150 years ago. Pat Stack argues that this story of ruling class greed and bigotry is an important one to remember. Issue 189 of Socialist Review, published September 1995.
Written by Cormac Ó Gráda, University College Dublin. The proximate cause of the Great Irish Famine (1846-52) was the fungus phythophtera infestans (or potato blight), which reached Ireland in the fall of 1845. The fungus destroyed about one-third of that year's crop, and nearly all that of 1846. After a season's remission, it also ruined most of the 1848 harvest.
This paper examines the writings produced by a selection of travellers from England and the US during the Great Famine. The authors surveyed spent a period of time journeying throughout the country reporting their findings on the progress of the Famine. The accounts covered different areas and times, but together provide a thorough and detailed picture of conditions in Ireland in 1845-1850. The results are interesting because of physical descriptions and the insights offered into contemporary perceptions of the political and ideological arguments of the day.
"Given that tens of thousands of Irish people were shipped into slavery, isnt it strange that Ireland has no day remembering them? I dont know of a single monument to the victims of slavery in Ireland. Perhaps someone can let me know if they know of one. As far as I know, even the Republican Movement fails to commemorate the tens of thousands of innocents sold into slavery from Ireland. Many of the women and children into sex slavery."
Bruce Miller of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) provides a Grammar of Blazonry, a very useful article and guide to the peculiar and special lingo of heraldic blazons.
Article in PDF format and size of 3.32 MB.
A brief article to help genealogists search for their ancestors who served in the British Army. Particular focus is on the First World War and the Irish Regiments.
County Mayo has a rich archaeological heritage dating from prehistoric times to the present. (Achaeology is the interpretation of our past from the study of buildings and objects made by human beings. We are dependent on archaeology alone in any attempt to study the prehistoric period and thereafter to complement what is recorded in written sources).
There have been critics, such as some of the more dogmatic New Critics, who have stressed that the literary work must be treated as a thing complete in itself; that neither the cultural context nor the author's life can add anything to the meaning of the work. Some, such as the more recent Deconstructionists, have asserted that even the text itself has no inherent meaning; that all meaning is projected onto the work by the reader.
This Pamphlet, as a contemporary record of the Volunteers of Munster, is of such rarity that I have thought it worth transcribing for our Journal. It will be of interest, not merely to the general reader, but to the descendants of the various families whose names are associated with those who held command and officered the Volunteers, and to all Irishmen who are imbued with the true spirit of patriotism, and who rejoice in being descended from those who, to defend their homes from foreign invasion sprang to arms, and were equipped, armed and accoutred at their own personal charges.
From the dawn of history, long before man could read or write he used symbols and emblems to convey his ideas. In the days of the Roman Empire the Romans carried the eagle atop their standards as a symbol of strength. The Old Celtic clans used a system of colours to indicate social and political standing. The rank of the individual was displayed on his cloak by the number of colours he was permitted.
Irish poet Dennis O'Driscoll talks with Seamus Heaney to the Guardian.
Senior correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth interviews author Seamus Heaney about his new translation of the epic poem, Beowulf.
Frank McCourt's book Angela's Ashes is a fascinating read and drew me into the social history of the Limerick which existed just before my childhood. As our home is on the side of Limerick depicted in Frank's book I cycled and walked the roads and lanes of his memoirs and found it most interesting to talk to the people who grew up there during that time.
Edna O'Brien talks about her admiration for Joyce, the importance of myth, and how her new book, Wild Decembers - in which heartache is prefigured by a tractor - fits in with her own "inner gnaw".
G. Bernard Shaw (he hated the "George" and never used it, either personally or professionally) was born in 1856 in Dublin, in a lower-middle class family of Scottish-Protestant ancestry. His father was a failed corn-merchant, with a drinking problem and a squint (which Oscar Wilde's father, a leading Dublin surgeon, tried unsuccessfully to correct); his mother was a professional singer, the sole disciple of Vandeleur Lee, a voice teacher claiming to have a unique and original approach to singing.
One of the topics of interest to a number of our people is the Irish language in America. This is intimately related with the subject of indentured servitude and slavery in America. Gerry Kelly has contributed the following information, as a sample of the research he and others do on this subject.
Since we wrote last, we have had a more accurate and general invesigation in reference to the condition of this crop, in the gardens within a few miles round the city; and the intelligent and every way competent gentleman to whom the task has been entrusted, gives it as his opinion that there is no trace whatever of disease-- and that in no one instance has he been able to discover a symptom of the last years' blight. We have equally good accounts from Carrigaline, a great potato-growing country; also, from Whitechurch; from Fermoy, and a number of other localities.
Genealogy has long had an important position in Irish society: a large proportion of the surviving medieval Gaelic manuscripts consist of accounts of the pedigrees of the native elites. From one perspective, this is just the universally familiar legitimation by the powerful of their power. Another aspect of early Irish society may also have contributed, however. Under Brehon law, property was not vested in individuals or families, but in the derbhfhine, a large kin-group extending out to second cousins, descendants of a common great-grandfather. In other words, what you could own depended on who you were related to. Such a perspective on genealogy, with present kinship as its focus, is still a deeply embedded part of Irish culture. My own mother, who could recite from memory the family connections of what seemed like most of East Galway and North Roscommon, responded to my questions about her grandparents and great-grandparents with “What do you want to know about them for? Sure aren’t they all dead?†For all the changes in Ireland over the past twenty years, extended family connections can still be of great consequence.
RTÉ Libraries and Archives look back at the life of one of Ireland's best-loved poets, as told by the poet himself and those who knew him. Patrick Kavanagh was born in Mucker, Inniskeen, County Monaghan, 21 October 1904. Having attended the local national school, Kavanagh worked as an apprentice shoemaker to his father and then on the small family farm. His first collection of poetry was published while he was still working on the farm. In 1939, Kavanagh moved to Dublin, where he became a full-time writer, contributing articles and poems to a number of publications and writing as a film critic for the Catholic journal 'The Standard'.
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies Publications are available via the School of Celtic Studies. Irish Texts Society Publications are available via their website.
The Welsh and Irish Celts have been found to be the genetic blood-brothers of Basques, scientists have revealed. The gene patterns of the three races passed down through the male line are all "strikingly similar", researchers concluded.
Travellers fare poorly on every indicator used to measure disadvantage: unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, health status, infant mortality, life expectancy, illiteracy, education and training levels, access to decision making and political representation, gender equality, access to credit, accommodation and living conditions.
The first DNA analysis of the Travelling community has proven that it is a distinct ethnic minority who separated from the settled community between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago, experts have claimed.
Given that tens of thousands of Irish people were shipped into slavery, isnt it strange that Ireland has no day remembering them?
Records are replete with references to early Irish Catholics in the West Indies. Gwynn in Analecta Hibernica, states, "The earliest reference to the Irish is the establishment of an Irish settlement on the Amazon River in 1612."
It's a case of 'swords at dawn' in Co Louth in a row over whether Oliver Cromwell transported innocent Catholic men, women and children to the West Indies.
The initial plan was to offer freedom to indentured Irish slaves on the island of Barbados and elsewhere or to take more rebellious Irish slaves and transport them to Jamaica where they would be offered their freedom and 30 acres of land to work.
They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.
At the beginning of the 17th Century, in the reign of James I of England, England faced a problem: what to do with the Irish. They had been practicing genocide against the Irish since the reign of Elizabeth, but they couldn't kill them all. Some had been banished, and some had gone into voluntary exile, but there were still just too many of them.
Slavery in one form or another has existed in Ireland since the earliest times. Early Celtic society had five classes of people from King to slave. Nial of the Nine Hostages an early King of Ireland (379-405) regularly went on slave raiding trips during and after the Roman withdrawal from England, on one of these raids he is believed to have captured St Patrick from Wales or Cornwall.
They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.
"I am determined wherever I go ... to speak with grateful emotions of Mr [Daniel] O’Connell’s labours. [Cheers] I heard his denunciation of slavery. I heard my master curse him, and therefore I loved him." [Great cheers] - Frederick Douglass: Cork speech, 1845.
The Irish Famine Curriculum was approved in September 1996 by the New Jersey Commission for inclusion in the Holocaust and Genocide Curriculum at the secondary school level. That year the New York legislature also passed an amendment "with enthusiastic bipartisan support", for an appropriation bill supporting the development of a Great Irish Famine curriculum in that state.
From 'The Irish in America' by John Francis Maguire, 1868.
Researchers may have discovered a mass grave for nearly five dozen 19th century Irish immigrants who died of cholera weeks after coming to Pennsylvania to build a railroad.
Red hair, especially pale red hair, is often regarded as the characteristic feature of the people of Ireland.
It is generally acknowledged that the quality of Irish Gaelic folksong lyrics is unusually high.
If there is any story which appropriately conveys and encapsulates the irrepressible spirit and outstanding qualities of the Irish Diaspora it is the following tale of the fate of the Young Irelanders and their rebellion of 1848.
A group of men and women in white robes, armed with elaborately carved bronze swords and golden sickles, enter the forest at night and head for an oak tree entangled by mistletoe.
The United Irishmen, the 'Men of '98', have loomed large in the Irish-Australian imagination.
But if that country of Ireland whence you lately came, be so goodly and commodious a soyle as you report, I wounder that no course is taken for the tourning therof to good uses, and reducing that salvage nation to better goverment and civillity.
he Irish Catholics were now crushed and dispirited; they were quite helpless, for their best men had gone to France; and all hope of resistance was at an end.
Eoin O'Duffy emerged from the War of Independence with a well-deserved reputation that his Civil War opponent Ernie O'Malley described as "energetic and commanding".
Many of our Irish ancestors were tenant farmers who leased or rented their land directly from a landowner or indirectly from a "middleman." Only a small percentage of people in Ireland owned their land outright (this was called holding your land "in fee.").
Politico provides critique and analysis of Irish politics and current affairs, including archive content to 1968.
In 1798, inspired by the American and French revolutions, the Irish staged a major rebellion against British rule. Widespread hangings and floggings soon followed as the rebellion was brutally squashed.
Whilst Workhouses existed in Ireland in the 18th Century, they were few and far between.
In his authoritative study, Ancestors of American Presidents (2009 Edition), Gary Boyd Roberts has drawn together the work of a large number of individuals and groups, and the research of his co-workers in the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston is particularly in evidence.
The following is a very brief accounting of where the Scotch-Irish started from, traveled to, and settled in. According to “The Scotch-Irish: A Social History” by James G. Leyburn.
'They that have red cheeks will have pale cheeks for my sake, and for all that, they will think they are well paid.' - The Old Woman, in Cathleen-Ni-Houlihan.
In a plebiscite held on 1 July 1937 the people enacted a new Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, to replace the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State.
Established on 31 August 1803, the Legion Irlandaise was originally created in anticipation of an invasion of ireland.
One thousand men of the Irish Legion landed on Venezuela's Margarita Island in August 1819, after a 4,500-mile sea voyage from Dublin.
Nineteenth-century South Africa did not attract mass Irish migration, but Irish communities were to be found in Cape town, port Elizabeth, Kimberley, and Johannesburg, with smaller communities in Pretoria, Barberton, Durban and East London.
There were no Irish units in the Waffen-SS or Wehrmacht, although there were Irish volunteers.
"I know that I shall meet my fate, somewhere among the clouds above."
Oliver Cromwell's conquest of Ireland had initiated the most severe displacement of Catholics in Irish history, most to the relatively barren northwestern part of the country. "To hell or to Connaught" were the orders for the treatment of the Irish Papist.
The following is a copy of an address from the Irish prelates in acknowledgement of the contributions which have been raised in England for the relief of the distressed poor in Ireland.
Published in the Journal of the Galway Archaeological & Historical Society VOL XXV Nos. 3 & 4 1953-54. Contemporary or near contemporary published accounts of the Rebellion of 1798, those of Musgrave, Gordon, Plowden, Hay, Teeling and the rest, including Dr. Richard R. Madden, give scant reference to the belated rising in the western counties.
The Irish moved around, no matter how much any person would like to think that they didn't - and then, even though this may sound like a contradiction - they didn't move. They stayed as close to home as possible - generally.
The Chief Constables of the police force were required to write reports to their superiors on incidents in their localities. These reports are called 'Outrage Reports' and while not all are extant, some are and stored in the National Archives of Ireland.
Some coals of fire from the old house were often taken into the new one, but the croch (chimney-crane for hanging cooking vessels) was always left behind.
Various objects were hung in a house or kept there to ensure good luck. A caul-clay from Tory island off the coast of Donegal, or house-leek (Sempervivum) would save the house from being burned and from lightening, this was grown on the roofs of thatched houses, or in specially made niches or nooks in or about the roofs or porches of houses covered with other materials.
Certain materials were considered unlucky and should not be used in building a house. Some types of white stones are included in this category (cloch scáil in Co. Kerry; cloch éibhir in Co.'s Galway and Mayo).
There were lots of little 'rules' or pisheogs (sayings) related to the building of a house. A new house to replace an old one should never be built across the road from the old one.
We hear many stories in relation to the traditions or superstitions which the old folk practised or believed in. Most of these have to do with the house and the 'luck' of the house.
The ruins of Ballintober Castle are amongst the most magnificent in Connaught, and are memorable as the last strong- hold of the O'Conors.
If he did not sit on the hob, the seanachai always got a chair nearest the fire, that's if the cat was not in the way.
This is an extract from Sir William Wildes Superstitions of Ireland. For those who don't know Sir William Wilde was the father of Oscar Wilde - Oscar Wilde achieved his own notoriety as an author, poet, playwrite and character of some eccentricity.
Above all the islands in the lakes of Killarney give me Innisfallen, "sweet Innisfallen" as Tom Moore, the poet, described it. It is indeed a fairy island, although Ihave no fairy story to tell you about it; and if Ihad, these are such unbelieving times that people only smile at my fairy stories, and doubt them.
In olden days there lived in a magnificent castle near the centre of Ireland a rich chieftain named Ruairi with his wipe Manissa and their three sons, Sean, Aindreas and Brian.
The ruins of Ballintober Castle are amongst the most magnificent in Connaught, and are memorable as the last strong- hold of the O'Conors. The castle, which stands on an elevated ridge by the road-side, above the little village of Ballintober.
The famous Volunteer force collapsed somewhat abruptly and ignominiously in 1793; and a militia force was the only safeguard of peace in the country which was seething with sedition and evidently heading for rebellion.
Conception could be prevented if an enemy tied a knot in a handkerchief at the time of marriage; no child would be born to that couple until the knot was loosed.
Fiddown, as the word is usually pronounced, means "The Wood of the Moat or Fortress." The moat from which the name is derived is still to be seen to the north-west of the site where an old monastery stood.
Superstition is generally regarded as the offspring of the religious instinct in man misled by ignorance. Few other human weakness' have been so unsparingly and so unanimously denounced, and yet, it survives: the savage carries his charm, and the modern motorist or the regiment .on the battlefield has its mascot.
On Saturday, August the 7th, 1852, we landed at Kingstown Harbour, and about 11pm, found ourselves on Irish ground for the first time.
Extracts from the Private memorandum Book of Captain George Gafney, of Kilkenny, an Officer in the Army of James II. By the Rev. James Graves. Published in the Proceedings and Transactions of the Kilkenny and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society. Vol. III, 1854-55. pp. 161- 172.
The following exerpt is very descriptive, it contains names, and more importantly - it tells about life. It shows us how one travelled from the USA to Cork, then to Liverpool in England and then on to Belfast in Northern Ireland.
The Irish National Anthem, Amhrán na bhFiann (The Soldier's Song) has been the subject of much comment in recent years. I am reliably informed by the 'educated' types who listen to the Irish national airways.
On Sunday the 19th of June 1631, two boats were taken from Dungarvan, in Co. Waterford, each about 12 tons burden and went to the old head of Kinsale, Co. Cork
During my visit to Dublin, last autumn, I was greatly grieved to learn that many of the curious inscribed and carved stones of Clonmacnoise, Glendalough, and other localities, of which descriptions and figures (more or less perfect) had been published, have, within the last few years, been entirely destroyed, without any further record being preserved of them whereby doubts which might arise respecting the correctness of the descriptions or figures might be solved.
The following is an extract from Professor Brendan Kennelly's introduction to a book of which he was an editor. The Book is 'Ireland's Women. Writings Past and Present', dedicated to President Mary Robinson.
And has Ireland no monuments of her history to guard, has she no tables of stone, no pictures, no temples, no weapons? Are there no Brehon chairs on her hills to tell more clearly than Vallancey, or Davis, how justice was administered here?
Law was important in public and private life in ancient Ireland and the native legal system was in existence before the ninth century.
The founders of the Nation newspaper were three young men - two of whom were Catholics and one a Protestant, but all free from the 'slightest taint of bigotry and anxious to unite all creeds and classes for the country's welfare.'
Stranded whales were, of course, very important in medieval times. In July, 1295, for example, there is on record the pleadings of a case in County Kerry in which Robert de Clohulle was charged with having appropriated a whale to his own use "in prejudice of the Crown" (Cal. Just. Rolls Ire., 1295-1303, pp 29, 54-5).
By the kindness of the Earl of Antrim I have been permitted to examine an old "Court Leet" Book for the Manor of Glenarm, and I have been much struck by the evidence therein of the great numbers of Foxes that formerly existed in Co. Antrim. Thinking that the information might be of interest to readers of the Irish Naturalist, I have been at some pains to decipher the faded-and often nearly illegible-writing, and now give a summary of the results.
We rejoice to state that in the recollection of the oldest inhabitant, there has not been a more plentiful supply of herrings taken in our bay than on Monday night last; and on every evening up to Thursday.
Clonmel acquired much importance during the civil wars of the seventeenth century. It was one of the first places seized by Colonel Richard Butler of Kilcash, and the Lords of the Pale, when they resolved to take up arms and make common cause with the northern insurgents.
Clonmel, it has been said, may be considered in its corporate capacity as of the prescriptive class of borough endowed with civic rights anterior to written authority.
The grant does not appear in the Patent Rolls of James I, but must have been of equal date with the other County Armagh proportions. Known as the Manor of Kannagolagh it is set out with its lands in Ulster Inquisitions see Armagh, 3 Car. I
One of the least-known stories of the Irish who immigrated to America in the 1840s is that of the Irish battalion that fought on the Mexican side in the U.S. - Mexico War of 1846-1848. They came to Mexico and died, some gloriously in combat, others ignominiously on the gallows. United under a green banner, they participated in all the major battles of the war and were cited for bravery by General López de Santa Anna, the Mexican commander in chief and president.
The city of Quang-tcheu [Dublin] … is much celebrated amongst the Quang-tongese for its size and magnificence, and is supposed to contain 400,000 souls, but this cannot be; for, in that case, 200,000 of them must, of necessity, be hurdled [sic] together in extreme filth and misery, which, in such a polished and charitable age and nation, it is absurd to suppose. JOHN WILSON CROKER, “An Intercepted Letter from J. T., Esq., Writer at Canton, to his Friend in Dublin, Ireland (1804) (a satire on Dublin society, published anonymously)
How do we deal with finding out that there are four townlands of the same name? How do we find out exactly which townland our family came from? How do we work out which records are of importance to us, actually refer to our family and not another family of the same surname? They are really the questions that have to be asked and dealt with.
Tens of thousands of women across the island of Ireland threw themselves enthusiastically into the war effort, yet very little has been written about them.
The death toll among Irish men and women in the war wasn't confined to soldiers serving on the front line. Some 230 doctors were among the casualties, with many buried abroad where they perished.
Mary Morris’s absorbing diary is a tonic to so many outsized histories of the second World War by those who had not been there.