Category Archives: Arts & Culture

Remembering Emmet at midsummer blogiversary

I hope regular readers and occasional visitors to this blog are enjoying their summer. This post concludes our eleventh year, which included a temporary relocation to Boston and return to Washington, D.C. Here, one of my regular walks takes me by the statue of Irish patriot Robert Emmet.

Since 1966–the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising–the statue has been located in the 2400 block of Massachusetts Avenue, known as “Embassy Row.” It’s a 5-minute walk from the Embassy of Ireland on Sheridan Circle, and a block from the historic Woodrow Wilson House. As a second-term U.S. president, Wilson attended the June 1917 unveiling of the statue by Kerry-born sculpture Jerome Connor. “Heckling suffragettes” briefly disrupted the ceremony as they unrolled a banner that asked: “Why laud patriotic struggles of the past and suppress struggles for freedom at your gates?”[1]”Two Arrested With A Banner at Emmet Statue Exercises”, The Washington Post, June 29, 1917. American women secured the right to vote three years later as it became clear that Wilson was no supporter of Irish independence.

I continue to pursue my research about how American journalists reported the Irish struggle, both in Ireland and in America. More posts ahead. Thanks for your continued support of the blog. MH

 

References

References
↑1 ”Two Arrested With A Banner at Emmet Statue Exercises”, The Washington Post, June 29, 1917.

Catching up with modern Ireland

Here’s another of my occasional posts with headlines and curated content about contemporary Ireland and Northern Ireland. Enjoy:

Ireland’s Central Statistics Office released the country’s latest census figures, a snapshot of the Republic from April 3, 2022. Highlights include:

  • The population exceeded 5 million (5,149,139) for the first time in 171 years. This is an 8 percent increase from 2016. All counties showed at least 5 percent growth.
  • The proportion of the population who identified Roman Catholic fell to 69 percent from 79 percent in 2016. The “No Religion” category increased to 736,210 people from 451,941.
  • Almost 80 percent of Irish households have a broadband internet connection, up from 71 percent in 2016 and 64 percent in 2011. Nearly a third of workers indicated they did their jobs from home for at least part of the week.

The CSO’s Summary Report is the first of nine 2022 census releases. More detailed reports on topics such as housing, homelessness, and religion will follow throughout the year.

CSO graphic.

Other stories:

  • The Irish nationalist Sinn Féin party, which supports reunification of Ireland, followed last year’s historic Northern Ireland Assembly victory by defeating their pro-Britain unionist rivals in May council elections by a wide margin. Sinn Féin for the first time is the largest party at the local and provincial levels. The Assembly remains in limbo, however, due to the Democratic Unionist Party’s refusal to participate in the power-sharing government.
  • Ireland’s unemployment rate dropped to 3.8 percent in May, a record that surpasses the “Celtic Tiger” period of two decades ago. Unemployment in the North fell to 2.4 percent, slightly below pre-pandemic levels and just 0.1 percentage point shy of the record low.
  • Almost all sectors of the Irish economy will fail to meet 2030 carbon reduction targets, The Irish Times reported; while warming weather and rising seas continue to demonstrate the impact of climate change. A proposal to slaughter 200,000 cows to reduce methane emissions generated blowback from the agricultural sector, as expected, and from outside actors ranging from PETA to Elon Musk.
  • The Republic’s Department of Rural and Community Development has launched a 10-year “Our Living Islands” initiative to repopulate nearly two dozen islands from Donegal to Cork.
  • The New York Times detailed Ireland’s vanishing fishing fleet, following a similar story from Euronews.com in January.
  • Former President Donald Trump, now under state and federal indictments, earned nearly $25 million from his golf property in Doonbeg, County Clare, during his four years in office, Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington has reported. The revenue was part of a $160 million haul from overseas businesses with interests in U.S. foreign policy. Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence each stayed at Doonbeg at taxpayers expense while in office.

The entrance of Trump’s Doonbeg golf course in County Clare during my July 2016 visit.

Back to D.C. — thanks New England archivists & librarians

The Burns Library holds BC’s Irish and Irish American collections.

I’m back in Washington, D.C., after 10 months in Boston for my wife’s Nieman Foundation fellowship at Harvard. It was a great experience for both of us. I visited several libraries and archives in the region to research my book on American journalists in revolutionary Ireland. In appreciation, I’ve listed the institutions and two individuals below, followed by more photos:

  • Boston College: Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., and John J. Burns libraries.
    • Thanks to Guy Beiner, Sullivan Chair of BC’s Irish Studies program, Connolly House.
  • Boston Public Library: “Irish Papers” collection and newspaper microfilm.
  • Cambridge Public Library and associated Minuteman Library Network.
  • Colby College (Waterville, Maine): James A. Healy Collection at Miller Library.
    • Thanks to Patricia Burdick, head of special collections and archives.
  • Harvard: Widener, Lamont, Houghton, and Divinity School libraries, and
    • Radcliffe Institute: Schlesinger Library.
  • Tufts University: Tisch Library.
  • University of Massachusetts at Boston: Joseph P. Healy Library.
  • Yale University (New Haven, Conn.): Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Plaque at the entrance of Harvard’s Widener Library describes the fate of its namesake.

Bates Hall, the main reading room at Boston Public Library.

Hallway leading to special collections and archives at Yale University.

Miller Library at Colby College in Maine.

Guest post: Jack Kavanagh on the ‘Spirit of the West’

Jack Kavanagh is the author of National Geographic’s ‘Complete National Parks of Europe’
and ‘Always Ireland: An Insiders Tour of the Emerald Isle.’ He lectures on National Geographic Expeditions’ ‘Tales and Treasures of the Emerald Isle’ tours. Read our February discussion. As the post-COVID 2023 travel season begins this month, I am delighted to publish his piece about Galway and the West of Ireland, which begins below the image. MH

Galway hooker.                                                                                                     Chaosheng Zhang photo via Fáilte Ireland

Galway is a city full of ghosts.

Nestled in a bay that gives scant shelter from North Atlantic winds and rain, Ireland’s westernmost city is also one of Europe’s liveliest places.

From spring onward, a string of festivals turn Galway into a dizzying celebration of life: A poetry Cúirt (Court) cherishes a rich heritage—Ireland’s current president is a Galwegian poet and a statue of another Galway bard beatifies the town’s center, Eyre Square; Galway’s Arts Festival dazzles with performers and street parades in July; princes, paupers, and punters mix easily at Galway Races every August; and at September’s Oyster Festival, the local delicacy is washed down with plentiful pints of Guinness, an Irish makeweight, perhaps, against aphrodisiac excess.

When I visited during the pandemic, though, the city was quiet and the living were largely out of sight. So I went walking through shadowed streets in the company of Galway’s ghosts with a man who knows them well, historian Willie Henry.

The first spirit we meet is Christopher Columbus. The Italian is recorded in the annals of St.
Nicolas’s Collegiate Church, passing through Galway in 1477, a few years before he set out on his way to America. Perhaps he offered up a prayer to Nicolas, patron saint of mariners. The church was founded in 1320, some say on the site of a Knights Templar convent, and funded by the Tribes of Galway (the city’s 14 merchant families). It has been Catholic and Protestant down the ages, reflecting Ireland’s conflicted history, yet its peaceful interior is a haven in this cosmopolitan port. On a Saturday, you might chance upon a choral practice, or hear the ghostly echoes of an ancient Avé—generations of Galwegians have peopled its choir.

Galway city buskers.                           Mark Holan photo

Willie leads me down to the Spanish Parade next to the sun-dappled waters of the River Corrib
gushing down from the salmon-leap weir upstream near Galway Cathedral. The cathedral sits next to The National University of Ireland, on the site of an old prison: Galway has long been a town of saints, scholars, and sinners. There are different suggestions at to how Galway was named, but the one that Willie likes best is the story of a girl who was drowned there some 3,000 years ago. Her name was Gaillimhe or Galvia and she was a princess of the Fir Bolg (a mythical race of Greek origin). Gaillimhe was the original Galway girl. Her father was Breasal and according to legend, the fabled island of Hy-Brasil, or Tir nÓg (the Land of Eternal Youth) is named after him.

We wander down to the Spanish Arch, a gate in the walls of the medieval city, and the Galway City Museum. The stories start to pour out of this Galwegian raconteur; Willie is as close to a seanchaí (Irish storyteller) as you’ll get.

We cross over the trout-brown freshwater of the River Corrib to Claddagh, an old fishing village along the briny quay. On Nimmo’s Pier, where Galway Bay oysters fuel the love-struck each September, Willie divulges the story of the Claddagh ring: after Richard Joyce was captured by Algerians and sold to a Moorish goldsmith in the 18th century, he returned to Claddagh with a new trade and a new ring design, the hand-held heart topped with a crown. The heart in exile could be worn facing outward to signify single status, or inward for those whose heart was “spoken for” back home. Exile, separation, and heartbreak are large parts of the story of western Ireland.

Which reminds me—I must call the poet.

We’re strolling past the King’s Head Pub, once the Mayor’s residence, but seized in 1649 by Colonel Peter Stubbers, the alleged executioner of King Charles I. Suddenly, the strains of an old song bring a wistful smile:

“I wish I was a fisherman, tumbling on the sea,
Far away from the dry land, and it’s bitter memory…”

I can hear the ghost of my 18-year-old self. Mike Scott’s “Fisherman’s Blues,” sung by a hungry-looking busker, takes me back to a time when I left Galway under a cloud. I’d come here to study law, but my heart wasn’t in it. Mike Scott, singer with the legendary Waterboys, on the other hand, found exactly what he was looking for in Connemara, the hilly boglands stretching west from the city. Ireland’s ancient traditional music kept the Scotsman entranced within a fairy ring—a Celtic rapture supposedly induced by a spirit-woven spell—for several years. Like me, Scott finally left for America. But his words and music still haunt these streets.

Willie and I share stories over a gut-burning Redbreast Irish whiskey in Garavans’ pub and we’re soon reminiscing about the joys of a music session by an open fire in any Galway pub. The quintessential west of Ireland aroma of burning turf; the mad swirl of a reel with guitars, fiddles, tin whistles, bodhráns (goat-skin drums) and uilleann (elbow) pipes all mixed into a mesmerizing musical gumbo; feet stomping as black pints of stout are passed along; then a hush is called, silence descends, and a plaintive female voice bleats a multi-versed tale of emigration and loss in the unaccompanied, sean-nós (old form) style. “The song would be singing her,” explains Willie, “as these songs would have been passed down many, many generations.” Then he adds, “Sure you’d hear the same song sung on the other side of the pond,” meaning in any bar in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia.

We’re soon sitting in Eyre Square, and Rory O’Shaughnessy has joined us. Rory is one of my
favorite Galwegians; we’ve travelled many a mile together. He and Willie evoke more ghosts.
“JFK spoke right over there,” says Willie. Rory starts into a great impersonation of the famous
speech, complete with the long, flat vowels of Boston (he has a mimic’s musical ear):

“If the day was clear, and you went down to the bay, and you looked west…you’d see Boston, Massachusetts. And you’d see there, working on the docks, Dohertys, Flahertys’, and Ryans, and cousins of yours who’ve made good.”

JFK memorial in Eyre Square.            Mark Holan photo

Chuckling, I excuse myself to call the poet, but the poet is busy.

We’re beside the statue of the Irish-language poet Pádraic Ó Conaire, and I want to hear Gaelic, not American, spoken today. The greatest speech ever given in Irish, the lads quickly conclude, was Joe Connolly’s in 1980. Joe was Galway team captain, accepting the All-Ireland trophy for hurling, the ancient Gaelic sport played with a small ball (sliotar) and an ash stick (camán).

By the modern-day voodoo of You Tube, Rory summons up the past and Joe’s mellifluous voice
is addressing the 70,000-strong crowd in Dublin in Gaelic. “There are people back in Galway
with wonder in their hearts, but also we must remember (Galway) people in England, in
America, and round the world and maybe they are crying at this moment…” His lovely
Connemara blás (accent) and the poetic power of the words are a reminder that Irish might be
up there with Italian in the language musicality stakes. “If you want to hear real Irish, head to
the Aran Islands,” Rory advises me. I will, but first I have a medieval castle to haunt.

A night in Ashford Castle, 33 kilometers north of Galway, is like a happy séance, a
suspension of time where you stray into another realm. Step inside this hotel, and oldworld elegance and timeless Irish hospitality envelop you. This 5-star hotel was once the
hunting retreat of the Guinness family.

Aerial view of Ashford Castle.                                                                                        Aervisions photo via Fáilte Ireland

Invading Normans built this battlement in 1228 and now another Gaul, Chef Philippe Farineau, is telling me why the Achill Island lamb is sooo tasty (they’re all mountain-climbing muscle and they come ready salted by the wild Atlantic winds). We debate the relative merits of Galway Bay oysters or the Dooncastle variety which are kept closed a little longer for extra succulence. When local food tastes this good, you can see why a French chef thrives in the west of Ireland. They say that the Normans became “more Irish than the Irish themselves” and Farineau is continuing the tradition.

Next morning, I head for the Aran Islands via the ferry from Ros a’ Mhíl. As we sail out, a beautiful Galway hooker (a traditional fishing boat) in deep red sails catches the wind and slips like quicksilver into the bay.

I really must call the poet today.

The choppy Atlantic waters churn up the Gaelic noun farraige (sea) from my exile-rusted
memory; like many a poetic Irish word, it resounds with its own meaning. Ffffffarrrrra—
gaaaaa… like the waves breaking on a rocky western shore.

Aran rises from the sea, three limestone ridges breaking the waves, outposts from an out-of-time Gaelic world. These islands were historically the last refuge of Irish nationalists and outlaws.

I’m standing, blasted by Atlantic winds, on the prehistoric hill fort of Dún Aonghasa when I finally get in touch with the poet. Here on Inis Mór (Big Island), a sacred place in pagan and monastic times, I shelter behind a prehistoric limestone wall, cupping a cell phone to my ear.

I ask Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland, what makes Galway and Connemara so special.

“Galway is a city that exists on the periphery, a place between realms,” says the poet-president. “Between the Gaelic and English languages. Between ancient Ireland and our future vision. The
culture of Connemara is born out of long traditions of immigration and emigration. This is a
place that seduces, a place where people can renew their spirit, where the creative artist in
particular can find new rhythms of complexity.”

In Dún Aonghasa, I too feel suspended between worlds—between America and ancient Ireland. Looking westward from the western edge of Europe. Happy in the spirited company of Ireland’s poetic ghosts, past and ever-present. —Jack Kavanagh

O’Brien’s Castle on Inisheer, one of three islands that make up the Aran Islands.                    Jeff Mauritzen photo

***

Journalists, historians, authors, researchers, and travelers to Ireland are welcome to offer guest contributions. Submissions are generally from 500 to 1,000 words, with an accompanying photo or graphic. Use the contact form on the Guest Posts page, where you can see previous contributors.

Catching up with modern Ireland

I was pleased and grateful to return to Ireland this month for the first time since before the COVID pandemic; my 11th visit since 2000. I’ve included two photos from the trip as I conclude Irish Heritage Month with one of my periodic posts of curated content. Enjoy:

Minard Castle, west of Inch Strand, on the south side of the Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry.

  • Niall Gibbons, chief executive of Tourism Ireland, is stepping down after 14 years in the role and a total of 21 years with the promotional organization. The job will be filled through an “open international competition,” said Christopher Brooke, chairman of Tourism Ireland.
  • A pilot program in the Republic is giving 2,000 artists $350 a week with no strings attached, allowing them to concentrate on creative pursuits. “Worrying about putting bread on the table really impacts artists’ creative juices,” Catherine Martin, Ireland’s culture minister, told the New York Times. “This is about giving them space to work.”
  • Ireland plans to hold a referendum in November to delete references to a woman’s place being in the home from its 86-year-old constitution, the government announced. The country has already removed bans on abortion and permit same-sex marriage. More coverage from the Irish Times.
  • As the Irish government lifted an eviction ban, historian Diarmaid Ferriter made the connection to what happened in Ireland during the 19th century.
  • Ireland’s rugby team defeated England 29-16 to win the Six Nations Grand Slam championship.

St. Patrick’s Day parade in Kilkenny town. Yes, it was a showery, but cleared later in the day.

Ruth Russell’s ‘Ireland’ at Harvard library

I’ve written several pieces about Ruth Russell, the Chicago Daily News correspondent who in 1919 covered the early months of the Irish War of Independence. Notably, she lived in the Dublin slums to report about poor women and children. On her return to America, Russell expanded her newspaper dispatches into the 1920 book What’s the matter with Ireland? As an advocate for Irish independence, she protested with other women outside the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., and testified before the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland.[1]See Beginnings; Correspondent; Activist; Witness; Afterward; and Ruth Russell remembered in stone … 57 years later

Harvard’s copy of the book.

Russell’s 103-year-old book is available online. Until recently, the only hard copy I’d seen was requested from storage at the Library of Congress in Washington. But I found What’s the matter with Ireland? while exploring the stacks at Harvard’s flagship Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library.

Harvard acquired the book on Oct. 7, 1920, according to the date stamp on the copyright page. Borrowers checked out the book 10 times during its first year in the library, as recorded by the due dates stamped on a schedule pasted to the inside back cover. These dates are shown below with select Irish-related news and other content from that day’s Boston Globe. The mix of local and international events offers a thumbnail sketch of events during the last year of the war as Harvard students or faculty read Russell’s book.

  • Nov. 20, 1920: John Derham, town commissioner of Balbriggan, and Francis Hackett, associate editor of The New Republic, testified at the American Committee on Conditions in Ireland hearings in Washington, D.C. Russell testified to the commission on Dec. 15, 1920. (See image of the Globe’s story below.)
  • Jan. 8, 1921: The censorship trial of Capuchin chaplain Fr. Dominic O’Connor, charged with making statements “likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty,” opened in Dublin. Convicted and sentenced to prison later that month, he was released on general amnesty upon ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in January 1922.
  • Jan. 21, 1921: Lord Mayor of Cork Donal O’Callaghan, a stowaway to America after the December 1920 British rampage in the city, said he would surrender to U.S. immigration authorities.
  • Feb. 9, 1921: British Prime Minister David Lloyd George said he offered Ireland a greater measure of home rule than Gladstone or Asquith. “But they won’t take it. … They must have an Irish Republic, an Irish Army, an Irish Navy. They won’t get it.”
  • Feb. 19, 1921: The Moore & McCormack cargo line advertised a Feb. 23 sailing from Boston to Belfast, Cork, and Dublin. The service, which began in September 1919 from Philadelphia, was citied by Sinn Féin as an example of Ireland’s commercial independence. The route was discontinued in 1925.[2]See An American reporters in 1920 Ireland: Industry.
  • March 16, 1921: Fr. John W. Meehan of Castlebar, County Mayo, continued to address local groups interested in Irish independence and conditions in the country. He arrived in Boston two months earlier.
  • April 4, 1921: A front-page Associated Press report said that “competent observers” believed prospects for peace in Ireland had brightened since St. Patrick’s Day.
  • May 11, 1921: More than 300 delegates representing 146 councils of the Massachusetts State Council of the Knights of Columbus adopted a resolution favoring immediate recognition of the Republic of Ireland. … “Pure linen” handkerchiefs imported from Belfast were on sale at 29 cents each at Chandler & Co. on Tremont Street.
  • Oct. 4, 1921: The Associated Press reported that “numerous newspapers writers and photographers” were permitted to observe an Irish Republican Army battalion in the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin. “Throughout Ireland drilling and inspections of this kind have been proceeding since the truce was signed (in July),” the story said.
  • Oct. 25, 1921: Éamon de Valera’s message to Pope Benedict XV regarding “formally proclaimed” independence of Ireland stirred “the first real crisis” in negotiations toward a peace agreement with Great Britain, the AP reported. The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed Dec. 6, 1921.

It’s unclear if any of the Harvard borrowers paid the 5 cents per day fine for returning the book after the stamped due date. Interest in Russell’s book waned after the treaty. The next three due dates were May 19, 1931; Sept. 18, 1946; and May 28, 1955. The book remained shelved for 41 years, then was checked out three more times in April and May 1996.

Subsequent activity–if any–was recorded on electronic library systems and cannot be retrieved, according to the librarian who checked out the book for me. I was curious whether there was activity at the centenary of the Irish revolution and 100th anniversary of the book’s publication.

The Boston Globe published this story about Russell’s Dec. 15, 1920, testimony before the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland. The paper did not review her book, ‘What’s the matter with Ireland?’, released earlier in the year. The book was added to Harvard’s library in October 1920.

The online Quercus Rare Books offers an original hardcover inscribed by Russell for $250. It says: “To the President of the Irish Republic Eamon de Valera, with best wishes from a citizen of the United States.” Below the inscription is the stamp from de Valera’s library. De Valera provided a Jan. 29, 1920, letter praising Russell’s work, which appears as front matter in the book. Quercus also offers an unsigned first edition in “very good plus” condition (below “Near Fine” and “Fine”) for $100.

The back pages of Russell’s book contained advertisements for three other contemporary Irish titles from publisher Devin-Adair: The Invincible Irish, by J.C. Walsh; Why God Loves The Irish, by Humphry J. Desmond; and The Irish Rebellion of 1916 And Its Martyrs–Erin’s Tragic Easter, a collection of essays by eight writers. While it’s great these titles are available online, nothing beats the feel and smell of on old book pulled from the library shelf.

References

‘Always Ireland’ is a lovely, modern guide to Erin

My wife wants to bring Always Ireland: An Insider’s Tour of the Emerald Isle, on our March trip to you-know-where, our first return since the COVID pandemic. “No way,” I say. “That book is too beautiful, and too heavy, to carry in our luggage.”

So we let author and County Wicklow native Justin “Jack” Kavanagh have the last word. He describes the new 336-page hardcover from National Geographic as an “inspirational travel book,” a next-generation guide for an age when nearly all of us carry smartphones that put all the practical details at our fingertips.

“This is more of a dreamer’s guide to Ireland,” Kavanagh told me during a Feb. 1 zoom from Philadelphia, where he divides his time with his native country. “This is the kind of book that sits on your coffee table for maybe six months before you want to go. You can just dip in and out of it.”

The book offers more than 200 half- to two-page vignettes of Ireland’s natural, cultural, and historical attractions. And the island’s dearest treasure—its people—are highlighted in a feature called “Irish Voices,” which introduces readers to historian Diarmaid Ferriter; harp maker Kevin Harrington; singer-songwriter Christy Moore; wild animal conservationist David O’Connor; and nomadic Irish Traveler Helen Riley, among many others.

The “Great Irish Drives” and “In the Know” sidebars offer more conventional suggestions on route planning and where to sleep and eat. “Irish Gardens” and “Taste of Ireland” highlight flora and food (and drink!), respectively.

The book is sectioned into the five “newly reimagined regions” of contemporary Irish tourism: the Ancient East; Munster & the South; the Wild Atlantic Way; Ulster & Northern Ireland; and Offshore Ireland. While it’s still grand to know your grandparents’ or great grandparents’ county and townland of origin, that’s not how modern visitors want to see Ireland, Kavanagh says.

And because Always Ireland is produced by National Geographic, the 300 photos are gorgeous and perfectly illustrate his smooth and informative prose. Kavanagh is an authoritative voice from an iconic source. He has worked as a writer and editor for National Geographic International Editions, overseeing earlier guide books about Ireland, Cuba, Japan, New York City, and other destinations. He says there is a growing recognition these conventional publications are being “fast-tracked to obsoletion” by technology.

New approach

Always Italy, the first book of this new approach, was released in March 2020, just as the world shuttered and shuddered from COVID. These books lean slightly toward the first-time visitor, says Kavanagh, who also leads Nat Geo’s “Ireland: Tales and Traditions” tours.

Because he has split his life between America and Ireland, Kavanagh says he aims to provide readers and travelers with both insider and outsider perspectives, with “what is expected and what is unexpected.” He learned a few things himself in researching the book.

I couldn’t resist asking Jack two obvious questions: his favorite spot in Ireland, and what attraction does he most regret the island has lost over its many centuries of history?

                                     Jack Kavanagh

“Glendalough,” came his first answer. And why not? He grew up just a bicycle ride away from the sixth century monastery founded by St. Kevin. “To me it’s the center of the world,” he says. “It’s a spiritual home, a place of rest. There’s some ancient energy there.”

To the second question, the music devotee answered the centuries of Irish compositions that were lost or never came to be, because the patronage system of the Gaelic chieftains ended with Anglo-Irish rule. The penal laws meant Irish music went underground, so while we are left with various tunes by itinerant musicians such as the legendary blind harpist Turlough O’Carolan, we’ll never know what might have been if Ireland’s earls had not been put to flight. But while much of that pre-eighteenth century music is silenced forever, there’s still plenty of traditional Irish music to hear played in pubs and other venues, as celebrated in the book.

Unexpected magic

Whether you pack Always Ireland or not, (it’s also available as an e-book) the real key to visiting Kavanagh’s homeland is the willingness to leave behind hurried, regimented schedules and open your soul to the possibilities of interacting with the people and places on its lovely pages … and those that are not.

“Ireland is not an A to B to C to D kind of place,” he says. “The magic is when you go around the corner and find something unexpected; not where you are going to stay tonight and what you are going to eat. That’s what you get in Ireland that you don’t get in a lot of places in the world.”

That was true when visitors carried pocket guidebooks and folding maps; it remains so for those who carry smartphones.

***

A guest post by Kavanagh will publish here a little later. MH 

‘Banshees of Inisherin’ & the Irish Civil War

The Banshees of Inisherin, a dark comedy about the estrangement of two friends living on a sparsely-populated Irish island, has received three Golden Globe awards and now appears favored to win a few Oscars. Colin Farrell won in the best comedy actor category, and the Martin McDonagh-directed film was honored as best comedy/musical and best screenplay. (Update: The movie was blanked at the Academy Awards.)

The fictional story, set in 1923, contains several references to the real life Civil War on the nearby mainland. The war started soon after Ireland won a measure of independence through a treaty with the United Kingdom. Ireland became a “free state” similar to Canada, not the full “republic” fought for in the Irish war of independence, 1919-1921. Separate legislation created the political partition of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which remained part of the U.K. The treaty split Irish brothers-in-arms into the civil war, which lasted from June 1922 to May 1923.

As Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson wrote, the feud between the two movie friends Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and Pádraic (Farrell) “works on its own terms, but it’s also a startlingly violent fight between men who are basically brothers, a fight that has a logic to it and yet is heartbreaking precisely because of the depth of history between them. It’s the conflict in microcosm.”

I would add two points:

1) The screenplay does not suggest that one of the friends is a republican “irregular” opposed to the treaty and the other a Free Stater who supported the deal. Their feud is personal, not political.

2) Pádraic says he doesn’t know what the fighting is about on the mainland. Though presented as a “dull” and uneducated character, this could be the film’s biggest fiction. When explosions and gun fire can be heard across the water, the island’s inhabitants surely understood what the fighting was about. We see regular boat service bring mail, supplies, and a priest to celebrate mass and hear confessions. The islanders are not that isolated.

  • Quick aside: the real life film locations are Achill Island, County Mayo, and Inishmore, one of the three Aran Islands, County Galway.

At one point in the movie Pádraic looks at the calendar and realizes it is April 1. He wonders if Colm’s coldness is a cruel April Fools’ Day joke. It is not. Using the date as a marker, I found this description of the civil war in that day’s 1923 issue of The Boston Globe:

Tragedy is still monarch in Ireland, more firmly enthroned today than ever before in the country’s distressful history. The daily chronicle is a repetitive catalogue of outrage and destruction, of executions and killings, differing only from the world horrifying reign of the English ‘Black and Tans’ in the fact that the perpetrators are now exclusively Irish, and that Ireland’s present day Calvary is inflicted not by foreign invaders but by her own sons and daughters. It is a heart-breaking, tear-compelling experience for an American, particularly one of Irish ancestry … The staccato of machine guns, the ping of rifles, the phut of revolvers, detonations of land mines and bombs, the glare of incendiary fires, with their toll of life and property have become as routine as the succession of day by night. Twenty-four hours without a series of destructive incidents or outrages would be regarded almost as epochal.[1]”Former Boston Journalist Wonders If Gov Al Smith Couldn’t Help Ireland Find Happy Bridge To Peace”, The Boston Globe, April 1, 1923.

Colin Farrell, left, and Brendan Gleeson.                                                                                            Searchlight Pictures  

References

References
↑1 ”Former Boston Journalist Wonders If Gov Al Smith Couldn’t Help Ireland Find Happy Bridge To Peace”, The Boston Globe, April 1, 1923.

Best of the Blog, 2022

Welcome to my tenth annual Best of the Blog, a roundup of the year’s work. July marked our milestone tenth anniversary, with more than 900 total posts since 2012. I appreciate the support of regular readers, especially email subscribers. (Join at right.) Thanks also to the archivists and librarians who assisted my research during the year, whether in person or remote. I visited collections at Princeton University, Harvard University, Boston College, and Boston Public Library for the first time, and returned to archives at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., and the Dioceses of Pittsburgh. … Special thanks to Professor Guy Beiner, director of the Irish Studies Program at BC, for his warm welcome this fall.

I added two dozen posts to my American Reporting of Irish Independence series, which totals more than 140 entries since December 2018, including several from guest contributors. This year I began circling back to earlier years of the Irish revolution. Highlights included:

FREELANCE STORIES & PRESENTATIONS:

I was pleased to publish stories with several new platforms (*) this year and delighted to give a virtual presentation to the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh:

‘Luminous In Its Presentation’:
The Pittsburgh Catholic and Revolutionary Ireland, 1912-1923
*Gathered Fragments: Annual journal of the Catholic Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania (Publishes late December 2022/early January 2023)

The Long Road to ‘Redress’ in Ireland
History News Network, (George Washington University), Oct. 30, 2022

My Pilgrimages to St. Patrick’s Churches
*Arlington Catholic Herald & syndicated by *Catholic News Service, March 11, 2022

The Irish Revolution in Pittsburgh
*Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Feb. 17, 2022, presentation linked from headline

Watch the presentation from the linked ‘Irish Revolution in Pittsburgh’ headline above, or from here.

At 50th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” Peace Feels Less Certain
History News Network, (George Washington University), Jan. 30, 2022

Cheers and Jeers for Ireland: Éamon De Valera’s Alabama Experience
*Alabama Heritage Magazine, Winter 2022

GUEST POSTS:

Thanks to this year’s four guest contributors, detailed below. Journalists, historians, authors, researchers, and travelers to Ireland are welcome to offer submissions. Use the contact form on the Guest Posts landing page to make a suggestion.

Journalists recall coverage challenges during Northern Ireland Troubles: Daniel Carey is a PhD student at Dublin City University. His thesis examines the working lives of former journalists and editors in Ireland.

Pro-Treaty delegation in Pittsburgh, May 1922: Dr. Anne Good Forrestal, a former lecturer in Sociology at Trinity College Dublin, is the granddaughter of Seán and Delia MacCaoilte. In spring 1922, he was part of the pro-Treaty delegation that visited America, including a stop in Pittsburgh. This story is based on one of his letters from the city.

Detailing the Crosbies of North Kerry: Michael Christopher Keane is a retired University College Cork lecturer and author of three books about the Crosbies, leading and often controversial landlord families in County Kerry for over 300 years.

Periodicals & Journalism in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Felix M. Larkin and Mark O’Brien have edited two volumes of essays that focus on periodicals as a vehicle for news and commentary, rather than literary miscellany.

BEST OF THE REST: 

These stories were the most popular outside the “American reporting” and “Guest posts” series:

YEARS PAST:

Highlights of earlier work found here:

YEAR AHEAD:

I plan to spend the first half of 2023 in Cambridge, Mass., as my wife completes her Nieman fellowship at Harvard. I will continue to participate in BC’s Irish Studies Program. I also hope to finish my book on how American reporters covered the Irish revolutionary period as the “decade of centenaries” concludes in May with the 100th anniversary of the end of the Irish Civil War. God willing, I hope to travel to Ireland for the first time since shortly before the pandemic.

Best wishes to all,
Mark

Assessments of Ireland, November 1922

The Nov. 24, 1922, firing squad execution of Anglo-Irish Treaty opponent Erskine Childers became one of the most high-profile events of Ireland’s civil war, then in its fifth month. Another six months of internecine conflict lay ahead. But as the 26-county Irish Free State and partitioned, six-county Northern Ireland governments formalized in December, the Irish began to consider life beyond the revolutionary period that had started a decade earlier. The reflections below–two from native Irish writers–appeared in U.S. newspapers in November 1922:

Seumas MacManus

The Donegal-born MacManus published ‘Story if the Irish Race’ in October 1921, then returned home in summer 1922 for the first time in eight years. He wrote:

MacManus

“One of the very first sights that interested me as well as one of the most pleasant–and also one of the most important for Ireland’s future–was the marvelous flock of children that seemed to spring from the ground wheresoever I went over the face of the country. … I was delighted to see the bands of little ones that dotted the roads–to see them and to hear them–for Irish children do not believe in locking their sweet joy within their tiny bosoms.”

“Of the many vital educational changes the greatest and most valuable is that which establishes and entrenches the Irish language in its place in practically every school in the country. … Though the Gaelic movement made great advances during the last twenty years, its progress within the next three years will be marvelous. There will be very few people of the younger generation who will not be Irish speakers and Irish readers. … The re-establishing of this rich and beautiful language again, giving a new orientation to the Irish mind, will be a spiritual blessing of profound significance.”

“The curse of landlordism, which had for ages blighted the nation’s life, is now almost entirely uprooted. The great majority of the small holders of the country now own their land without dispute. And this undisputed possession of the land that was theirs and their forefathers through centuries, has given them a stimulus  that transforms them. People are energetic who had been lethargic, are ambitious who had been crushed, and prosperous who had been poverty stricken. They now dress well who formerly could not afford a new coat once in five years, and they eat well, and they pleasure themselves and know the joy of living to which they had once been strangers.”[1]”Stork’s Busiest Days In The Emerald Isle”, New York Times, Nov.19 1922.

Irish culture goes on

“Americans undoubtedly gather the impression that Dublin is a city of murder and arson and that all of the old Irish culture has been subsumed in the clatter of and smoke of war. But this is not so. Irish culture goes on. A little circle of Irish intellectuals meet three nights a week to discuss literature, Irish history and Irish economics, and follows the trends and progress of the world. Often these meetings are held while the rat-tat-tat of machine guns continues in the streets. … A bit of American tinge is given to these sessions by occasional visits from American correspondents, some of whom are studying the intellectual side of Ireland. The war may go on, but Irish culture doesn’t die.”[2]Daniel O’Connell of the Hearst-owned International News Service, Nov. 24, 1922.

Padraic Colum

The Longford-born Colum published some of his earliest poetry in Arthur Griffith’s ‘United Irishman’ and was active in the Gaelic League and Abbey Theater before the revolutionary period. He emigrated to America in 1914, but traveled home frequently, including 1922. These excerpts are from two pieces:

Colum

“The salient thing about Ireland is that the country holds together. … No one feels this orphaned government is in real peril–the anti-governmental forces are felt as an inconvenience, an expense and an irritant, but they are not now felt as a danger. Mind you, there is no enthusiasm for the government or the Free State that is about to come into existence. … There was enthusiasm for the treaty last December but all zest has since been knocked out of the people. The Irish remember they are not clear of the British Empire.”

“It seems odd to speak of settlement and reconstruction in a country whose main activity is civil war; it seems odd to talk of reconstruction in a city where the children on the street play with toy revolvers and keep up games of taking prisoners and doing Red Cross services. It seems odd to talk of settlement and reconstruction in such a country and such a city. Nevertheless, the mood of the people makes it palpable that the epoch of revolution is past and that the only thing that will stir them again is reconstruction and the proper ordering of their affairs.”[3]”Ireland’s Epoch of Revolution is Ended, Says Padraic Colum; Now Comes Here Reconstruction” The Boston Globe, Nov. 12, 1922.

“Ireland is learning in many directions. She is learning to organize and operate an army; she is learning how to rebuild a police force and magistracy; she is learning what the elements of a constitution are; she is learning about parliamentary procedure; she is even learning what the price of civil disturbance may be. Above all, she is learning to do without England–that England was a symbol of injustice, rapine and atrocity. She has seen now what fearful blows Irishmen can deal at Irishmen and what injustices and evil-dealing can take place in an Ireland that is without a Dublin Castle. Ireland, in fact, is loosing her England ‘complex’ and soon she will be able to get about her business without any particular reference to her great and much distracted neighbor–a consummation devoutly to be wished for!”[4]”Literally ‘The Boys’ Rule Ireland”, New York Tribune, Nov. 19, 1922.

References

References
↑1 ”Stork’s Busiest Days In The Emerald Isle”, New York Times, Nov.19 1922.
↑2 Daniel O’Connell of the Hearst-owned International News Service, Nov. 24, 1922.
↑3 ”Ireland’s Epoch of Revolution is Ended, Says Padraic Colum; Now Comes Here Reconstruction” The Boston Globe, Nov. 12, 1922.
↑4 ”Literally ‘The Boys’ Rule Ireland”, New York Tribune, Nov. 19, 1922.