Nick Maxwell Jenet Sarsfield was probably born in the late 1520s or early 1530s, the daughter of John Sarsfield of Sarfieldstown, Co. Meath. One of her brothers, William, later became an alderman of Dublin. Her first marriage was to Alderman Robert Schillingford, mayor of Dublin in 1534–5, with whom she had one daughter, Katherine, her only child … Read more
Arranged marriage alliances were a very important feature of life in the Pale in early modern Ireland. Rather than springing from emotional attachment, marriage among the gentry and nobility was normally viewed as a contract fostering mutually beneficial alliances between the families involved. A marriage had to be advantageous to both families and was normally … Read more
‘Itinerants first went on the road due to extreme poverty in Ireland. Unlike British or European gypsies the itinerants are the product not of an ancient, highly cultured race with its own folklore and culture but of the immiseration of a section of the ordinary, illiterate peasantry in Ireland . . . Itinerants went and … Read more
An end to foolishness ‘. . . there is an end to foolishness; the time for talk is ended’—not a cynical comment on the current (seemingly never-ending) negotiations to form a Northern Ireland executive but, as Kevin Haddick Flynn relates in this issue, the last words penned by Seán South 50 years ago before he … Read more
Sir, —While Daniel Mulhall’s article on golf’s early days in Ireland (HI14.5, Sept./Oct. 2006) is very interesting, I suspect that heunderestimates the extent of nationalist hostility to golf in theperiod. The relative scarcity of denunciations of golf in nationalistpublications may reflect the fact that its select and often olderclientele meant that it did not compete … Read more