Ireland’s military history archive, 1913-21

Irish Volunteers on parade in Tralee, County Kerry, on June 14, 1914.

More than 1,700 witness statements, plus photographs, audio recordings and other documents from Ireland’s revolutionary period are now available online through the Bureau of Military History.

Here’s a news story about the release. Here’s a link to the BMH home page.

I’ve just started reading the witness statements, focusing on people and events around Ballybunion, Ballylongford, Listowel and other north Kerry communities, which were IRA strongholds. Here’s an example from the statement of IRA man Thomas Carmody about the February 1921 reprisal of the Black and Tans after the republicans killed two of their members at Ballylongford.

The next morning the Tans turned out of the barrack and, a short time after, were joined by lorry loads of Tans from other towns in the area. They looted and raided almost every house in the village. They filled the lorries with groceries, whiskey, cigarettes and anything they could lay their hands on. They then went from one house to another setting fire to each. The women were terrified and many of them threw their children from the top windows into the street. In all, 14 houses were completely burned out, while several others were partly damaged.

Keep in mind the witness statements were made in the late 1940s and early 1950s, more than 20 years after the actual events. The collection also falls short on material from the country’s civil war period following the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922.

Ireland’s Olympic haul

Alright, we knew that the United States would have a big haul of Olympic medals in London. And congratulations to all of those athletes who won gold, silver and bronze.

But we were happy to see Ireland have its best Games since 1956, according to Reuters, taking home five medals, four in boxing and one in show jumping.

The big story was the gold won by women’s lightweight boxer Katie Taylor of Bray. Today she got a hero’s welcome home, with some 20,000 turning out in the County Wicklow town, The Irish Times reported.

Taylor has a humble and devout personality. “I had a whole nation of people praying for me,” she said. “I just felt the presence of God in that stadium.”

The story continues: “Not one for over-elaboration, she departed the stage a few minutes later. Taylor said she wanted some sleep and to visit her 80-year-old grandmother Kathleen Cranley, who she has not seen for weeks.”

Reuters noted, “The strong Olympic showing comes after a disappointing European Championship soccer tournament, in which the Irish team lost all three matches, and at a time when the country is struggling to recover from economic recession.”

Omagh remembered

The Omagh Community Youth Choir was playing a series of concerts in New Orleans this weekend.

The group includes Catholic and Protestant teens from the town rocked in 1998 by the deadliest day of violence during “The Troubles.” It was formed in “a defiant act of peacemaking,” NOLA.com reports here. “Glee” with a mission.

I visited Omagh and other parts of Northern Ireland in 2001, three years after the blast and just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in America. I was traveling on a journalism fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, which promotes better relations between Europe and America. Here’s the story I published in the Mobile Register, where I was working at the time.

It was heartening then to see how much progress had been made to reduce violence in the north of Ireland. Re-reading the piece today is a reminder of how much more progress has been made over the past 11 years.

I’m still shaking my head about Martin McGuinness and the Queen shaking hands. Count me among those who are glad they were able to do so.

 

The Gathering, 2013

The Emerald Isle is promoting a giant homecoming called The Gathering Ireland 2013.

The year-long event “is about the people of Ireland throwing open our arms and inviting anyone with a connection to our country to come and visit.”

In addition to feel-good reunions and genealogy, the promotion is designed to boost tourism and other economic development. The number of visitors to Ireland was flat during the first half of 2012, though increased slightly in the second quarter, The Irish Times reported.

The timing of next year’s “Gathering” has special resonance in my family. My grandmother emigrated in September 1912; my grandfather in May 2013. Both were from rural north Kerry.

More on their centennial voyage, and next year’s events, in future blogs.

Kerry’s Lartigue monorail

The unique Lartigue monorail, shown above, operated between the market town of Listowel and the seaside village of Ballybunion from 1888 to 1924. The odd railway drew attention to north Kerry and became the focus of newspaper stories inside and outside of Ireland.

“It seems strange, but it is not less true that a remote village on the coast at Kerry should have been selected for the first experiment in a railway system which promises a revolution in the construction of our iron roads,” the Irish Times wrote at the line’s opening on Feb. 29, 1888, a leap year day. “The Lartigue system is about as different from all preconceived notions of railways as it is possible to imagine.”

The Lartigue figures prominently in a manuscript I have produced about late 19th and early 20th century Kerry, and some of its residents who immigrated to Pittsburgh, Pa.

Gorse

Gorse, also called furze, in north County Kerry, Ireland. This photo taken near where the River Cashen empties into the Atlantic Ocean, just south of Ballybunion.

tumblr launch

This is my initial tumblr post.

I intend the blog to serve both personal and professional objectives, the latter aimed more at my goals of publishing research and writing about Irish and Irish-American history and contemporary issues.

The views on this blog are my own and are not associated with my work at the Tampa Bay Business Journal, where I cover commercial real estate and other issues.