BY DONAL FALLON
NO FLUNKEYISM HERE!
In 1900 Queen Victoria arrived in Dublin to considerable fanfare, as the Second Boer War rumbled on. Donal P. McCracken, a leading authority on Ireland and the conflict, notes that ‘signs of disloyalty were dwarfed by the great ceremony and large crowds surrounding the queen’, as the authorities moved against all planned demonstrations. Still, a defiant note was struck by some Dublin schoolchildren, who refused to attend a picnic in honour of the royal visit in the Phoenix Park. In their celebration, a ‘Patriotic Children’s Treat’ was organised at Clonturk Park, Drumcondra. Children marched to the event from the traditional rallying point of Beresford Place, behind banners that read ‘Patriotic Children’s Treat—NO FLUNKEYISM HERE’. Maud Gonne was the central figure in organising the day, which has now been commemorated with a new plaque at the park.
CUALA PRESS CELEBRATED
Spearheaded by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, the Cuala Press was a leading contributor to the Irish Arts and Crafts movement, producing beautifully illustrated work by some of the leading Irish artists of the day. While many of these works depicted a beautiful and idyllic rural Ireland, others show bustling city sights like Dublin’s Nelson’s Pillar. Beatrice Elvery, Harry Kernoff, Jack B. Yeats, Hilda Roberts and others contributed to the instantly recognisable Cuala output. A new exhibition exploring Cuala, entitled The Yeats Sisters & Irish Design: Making, Identities & Legacies, is now running in the Old Library of Trinity College, Dublin. In partnership with the Department of Foreign Affairs, some of this Cuala work will be taken on tour to a series of exhibitions across Europe and beyond.
MONAGHAN COUNTY MUSEUM RETURNS
Excellent news from Monaghan with the reopening of its beloved Monaghan County Museum following a major refurbishment and a year-long closure. A new exhibition, Bordering Realities—Monaghan People and Stories, explores life on the border. Within the exhibition we find ‘The Story of the Ulster Scots’, while a short film by award-winning Luke Leslie offers a visual journey along the border region. Expect a forthcoming Museum Eye feature. On its website, the museum also hosts a series of online exhibitions as part of its commitment to bring the story of Monaghan and its people to as wide an audience as possible. See www.monaghan.ie/museum/exhibitions/.
TOLKA 100
It has been a good year for Shelbourne Football Club on the pitch, with Damien Duff at the helm and victory in competitive European football. This year marks the centenary of Tolka Park stadium, home to the ‘Auld Reds’, a ground that was recently saved by the efforts of Shelbourne supporters and the League of Ireland community more broadly. On X.com (formerly Twitter), @savetolkapark has been posting 100 days of history of the ground, with posts covering everything from the day Arkle appeared on the pitch to its role in the development of the women’s game. This year Shelbourne secured a 250-year lease on the site.
A NEW MEANING TO ‘FOLLOWING WOLFE TONE’
On the subject of the website formerly known as Twitter, a wonderful new project is daily posting excerpts from the diary of Theobald Wolfe Tone corresponding with the present date. On 23 July we were treated to an entry from that same date in 1792: ‘Read a very long prancing letter from [Richard] Burke, filled with nonsense about the French Revolution, on which he is as mad as his father’. The page will certainly appeal to readers who enjoyed the recent History Ireland special supplement on Tone, part of the ‘Wolfe Tone 225’ project. See www.x.com/OTDWolfeTone.
VIRTUAL RECORD TREASURY OF IRELAND
Ernie O’Malley would recall watching the destruction of Irish archives at the Four Courts in 1922 as a ‘thick black cloud floated up about the buildings and drifted away slowly. Fluttering up and down against the black mass were leaves of white paper; they looked like hovering white birds.’ Amongst the ‘hovering white birds’ were census returns and Petty Sessions archives. Now 25,000 new historical records have been released by the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, as part of ‘a collaboration between historians, computer scientists, archives, and libraries across the island of Ireland and around the world working to recreate, through digital technologies, our national archive, which was destroyed by fire in the opening battle of the Irish Civil War’. This important open-access resource will prove invaluable to researchers across the country and is available at www.virtualtreasury.ie.