Category Archives: History

McGuinness to attend state banquet in Britian

Former IRA commander and Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has accepted an invitation to attend a British state banquet hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle.

The Irish Times and other media outlets report that McGuinness will attend the 8 April banquet, which honors Irish President Michael D. Higgins. It is the first official visit by an Irish head of state since the modern political separation of the two islands began in 1922.

McGuinness and the Queen shake hands in Belfast, July 2012.

McGuinness and the Queen shake hands in Belfast, July 2012.

The Wall Street Journal said the visit “is designed to underscore Ireland’s evolving acceptance that, before independence in 1922, its people weren’t always unwilling participants in the U.K. and the global empire it led, and the shared history of the two nations is less deeply antagonistic than once claimed by Irish nation builders.”

The Journal‘s story continues:

The exchange of official visits is the latest in a series of steps that have taken place over the last three decades and have marked a gradual but steady mending of fences between the two nations, once bitterly divided over the fate of the six Irish counties that remain a part of the U.K. … The formal process of reconciliation has lagged behind deepening links between British and Irish people. A quarter of British people have some recent Irish forbears, while 50,000 directors of current British companies were born in Ireland.

Of the Northern Ireland republican, the BBC says:

As a youth, Martin McGuinness wore the uniform of an IRA volunteer – secretly, illegally and defiantly. Now, decades later, he will don a white tie and tails and publicly, cheerfully and – perhaps -still defiantly, attend the Queen’s banquet at Windsor Castle. We should not be too surprised. His journey has already seen him shake the hand of the Queen. Not to attend the first state visit of an Irish president would undermine all his promises, made as an Irish presidential candidate, that he would work for peace.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams noted that McGuinness’s attendance might be a bridge too far for some republicans. “I would appeal to them to view this positively in the context of republican and democratic objectives and the interests of unity and peace on this island,” he said.

Early 19th century agrarian violence and the Irish hedge schools

The Irish Story has a great post exploring links between one of the early 19th century agrarian secret societies and the Irish hedge school.

The period of the 1820s was a tumultuous time for the Irish nation as it struggled to search for an identity within the Union and, with difficulty, sought to adapt to change in an age of radical thought and religious fervour. The notion of the overarching power of the hedge schoolmaster on Irish Catholic agrarian society is one example, found in both contemporary works and recent scholarship, of an attempt to understand the complex political, religious and economic effects on the mentality of Irish society which culminated in the Rockite movement of 1821 to 1824.

Here are links to three contemporary works cited in the piece:

Researches in the South of Ireland, Thomas Crofton Croker, 1824.

Memoirs of Captain Rock: The Celebrated Irish Chieftain, with some Accounts of his Ancestors. Thomas Moore, 1824

‘The Hedge School,’ from Traits and Stories of Irish Peasantry, William Carleton, 1830

Irish hedge school. From The Irish Story.

Irish hedge school.                 From The Irish Story.

Last word on gays in St. Patrick’s parades

Irish Central founder Niall O’Dowd gets the last word on this year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade season, and whether gays can march under banners proclaiming their sexual orientation.

There are many good and decent people who cherish and honor the act of marching in the parade, O’Dowd writes. “It is extremely disheartening to see them tarred in any way with the fallout from the LGBT issue.”

He continues:

If you stand and watch the parade for even a short time that is what comes across, the sheer joy and exuberance and pride of those taking part. The issue of gays marching is lost on most of them, from a Catholic high school band from Texas, to Catholic university alums, to a business organization like the IBO.

The parade is their definitive statement of their identity, their time to celebrate their history and heritage.

Back in the 19th century when the Know Nothings were shooting and killing Catholics, marching in such parades was a dangerous business for fear of being identified and attacked. Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral came under direct attack by the Know Nothings in 1836 and was saved by AOH defenders.

The times have changed for sure, but some would hang a scarlet letter over all who take part in the parade today even though they have absolutely nothing to do with the machinations of the parade committee. Instead they are merely honoring their forefathers and the battles they won that allowed us to enjoy the status of the Irish in America today.

That’s is why the parade will endure, despite the poor leadership, because it is deep in the bones of our people.

NYT’s Egan blasts Paul Ryan’s “Irish Amnesia”

New York Times columnist Timothy Egan accuses Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, who loves touting his Irish heritage, of missing the historical, political and moral lessons of Ireland’s Great Hunger.

There is no comparison, of course, between the de facto genocide that resulted from British policy, and conservative criticism of modern American poverty programs. But you can’t help noticing the deep historic irony that finds a Tea Party favorite and descendant of famine Irish using the same language that English Tories used to justify indifference to an epic tragedy.

Here’s the link to the full column.

Willie’s story featured in History Ireland

A short piece about my grandfather’s life and death has been published in the Personal History section of History Ireland. The section “aims to capture the individual histories of Irish people both in Ireland and around the world. It is hoped to build an extensive database reflecting Irish lives, giving them a chance to be heard, remembered and to add their voice to the historical record.”

My piece about Willie Diggin is titled “An Odd Coincidence.”

William Diggin

Willie Diggin, about 1920.

I’m grateful to Nick Maxwell of Wordwell Books for shepherding the piece. Disclosure: I subscribe to History Ireland, which offers excellent online, print and podcast presentations about — yes — Irish history.

This latest piece adds to the body of work I’ve published about my grandfather, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and a 12-day series on this blog titled “Willie’s Emigration Centennial.”

My genealogy and history research related to his life has culminated in a book, “His Last Trip: An Irish American Story,” which was published in December. I am happy to report the book has been accepted for the archives of the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum and the Heinz History Center. I am waiting to hear from additional libraries and archives.

Contact me via the blog if you are interested in obtaining a copy.

A look at 19th century Dublin transport

Historian Michael Barry has produced an excellent piece in The Irish Story about getting around 19th century Dublin by canal, horse drawn cart and eventually electric tram.

Up to the end of the eighteenth century, transport in Dublin was primitive. By the end of the 19th century, however, all that had changed. The city was criss-crossed with electric tramlines and railways took the well to do out do distant suburbs. In short the 1800s, often considered a period of decline for Dublin also saw much of the Irish capital’s infrastructure improve dramatically.

A good read.

Images of America series adds 20th Irish-themed title

Arcadia Publishing, the South Carolina-based press for the popular “Images of America” series and other local and regional history books, has released a new Irish-themed title: Irish Savannah.

Local author Sheila Counihan Winders has collected over 200 vintage photographs tracing the history of the Irish in the southeast Georgia river port. Not surprisingly, many of the images come from the archives of the Catholic Diocese of Savannah.

Irish Savannah (2)

“When people think about the Irish in America, they always think of the northern states,” Winders wrote. But the Irish have had a presence in Savannah since the city’s founding in the mid-1700s.

This is Arcadia’s 20th Irish-themed title. I wrote in April 2013 about the release of Irish Pittsburgh. The publisher has released similar image collections for such expected locations as Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, plus unusual spots including Arizona and Butte, Montana.

What’s next? “We don’t currently have another Irish-themed book in the works, but are always open to suggestions for titles and/or authors,” Natalie Miller, Arcadia’s southeast publishing editor, told me in an email.

One place noticeably missing from the “Images of America” Irish list: Washington, D.C. That sounds like a project worth tackling.

Visiting St. Patrick’s in the Federal City

It’s a month until St. Patrick’s Day, and the annual parade in New York City is already getting plenty of attention. I’ll circle back to that and other issues in the weeks ahead.

First, I wanted to begin the countdown by attending Mass at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., established about 1792, “the oldest parish in the Federal City.” You can read the church’s history here. This link details the church’s windows and statues, including St. Patrick, below.

The statue is a little different than most I’ve seen. The saint holds the obligatory shamrock and bishop’s crosier in his left hand. The more prominent sea shell held out in his right hand, according to the church, “represents the means by which St. Patrick baptized thousands of Irish.”

It’s a beautiful church, though not likely to surpass Old St. Patrick Church in Pittsburgh as my favorite Catholic shrine and place of prayer.

St. Pat's 2

St. PAT's 1

 

All Irish towns within five miles of rail in 1890?

UPDATE: As mentioned below, I emailed Cathal Ó hÓisín so he could reply to this post. I got a response in less than 24 hours. He wrote:

I do accept that there were areas that may have been further than my assertion but the accusation that I had said that anything ‘was better under the British’ is at the core of my gripe with the IT (Irish Times) piece. It was also factually incorrect on a number of other issues, but thanks for your interest. GRMA (Go raibh maith agat, or Thank you) Cathal

ORIGINAL POST

A statement by Derry MLA Cathal Ó hÓisín at Sinn Féin‘s recent ardfheis caught my attention. He suggested that Ireland’s rail transport system had been better under the British, then added:

“…in 1890 no town or village in Ireland was more than five miles from a rail track. Many counties now, such as Tyrone, Fermanagh and Donegal have not heard or seen a train for over 60 years.”

In the spirit of PolitiFact.com, the U.S. politics fact-checking website edited by my wife, I decided to take a closer look at the two statements.

Surely the first statement couldn’t be true, I thought. The date is close to the 1888 opening of the Lartigue monorail in north Kerry. The unusual train linked the mainline railroad at the market town of Listowel to the seacoast village of Ballybunion.

The nearby village of Ballylongford, my maternal grandmother’s home, never got such a connection. It is seven miles from Listowel and almost nine miles from Ballybunion. Hardly within five miles of any “iron road.”

This map shows a robust Irish railways system in 1906. Yet many parts of the country were more than five miles from a rail line. I haven’t found any evidence of significant track loss in the 16 years from the 1890 date suggested by  Ó hÓisín.  (Click on the map for a larger version.)

Map_Rail_Ireland_Viceregal_Commission_1906

So what about the second part of the statement, that Tyrone, Fermanagh and Donegal lost train service more than 60 years ago? That’s 1954.

This linked list shows the opening and closing dates for dozens of Irish railway stations. Carrickmore in Tyrone closed 15 February 1965; Enniskillen in Fermanagh shuttered 1 October 1957; the first of January, 1960 was the end of the line for the station at Donegal.

(As for north Kerry, the Lartigue line closed 14 October 1924, and the last mainline train of the Great Southern Railway chugged away from the Listowel station on 6 November 1983.)

Ó hÓisín’s larger point was that “huge swathes of the west and particularly the northwest [of the island of Ireland] are devoid of any meaningful transport system on the road or any rail network,” which he further described as another “insidious form of partition.”

That could and should be argued at greater length by Irish politicians and their constituents. As for Ó hÓisín’s comments about no Irish town being more than five miles from rail in 1890, and the three northwest counties being without rail for more than 60 years, this fact-checker rates both statements as false.

(In the interest of fair comment I am emailing a copy of this published blog to  Ó hÓisín for any reply he cares to make. MH)

 

New book explores Kerry’s GAA history, 1884-1934

A new book about the first 50 years of Gaelic Athletic Association activity in County Kerry has come to my attention thanks to a review on the History Ireland website. “Forging a Kingdom: The GAA in Kerry 1884-1934” by Richard McElligott was published last fall by The Collins Press.

The book does a fine job of blending political, social and sporting events in Kerry in the context of the GAA’s role in the broader history of Ireland, according to the reviewer:

“No stone is left unturned in tracing the contours of this development, through the ups and downs of the Irish National League, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, agricultural productivity and the rural economy of Kerry, emigration, other sports, the Gaelic League, rail transport, the Irish Volunteers and the IRA, the wars of 1919–23, the internal structures of the GAA in the county and key administrative figures, as well as the role of Kerrymen in America and the evolution of the games themselves. Throughout the book, McElligott demonstrates clearly how interwoven was (and is) the GAA into the fabric of society. For this reason, “Forging the Kingdom” constitutes an invaluable text on the history of a county and the dynamics of rural nationalist Ireland, let alone on the sporting aspect.”

Forging_A_Kingdom

I don’t yet have my copy of the book. I used Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature to peek at some of what McElligott (@RichardMcELL) has written about my own area of interest, the Land War period of the late 19th century. He writes:

“By the mid-1880s, the press described the county as ‘the most criminally disturbed, the most evicted, the most rack-rent county in all of Ireland.’ Land agitation had gripped the county with such force that for most of the decade, Kerry was at the forefront of agrarian disturbance and subsequent government coercion to eliminate it.”

Here’s a NewsTalk podcast with McElligott.

The GAA (@officialgaa) has a history section on its official website. This link is to the Kerry GAA site, which also can be followed on Twitter @Kerry_Official.