Nick Maxwell The village of Lisaniska, in which I was born lies six miles east of Castlebar. Shaped roughly like a horse-shoe, it was created or rather re-created at the beginning of the 20th C by the Congested Districts Board on land purchased from Lord Lucan. Each of ten families, migrants from the Pontoon area, received a … Read more
Seán Duffy talked to Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Emeritus Professor of Medieval Irish History at University College Cork, shortly before his death on 25 October 2017. SD: Tell me about your family background and early years. DÓC: Well, I’m from Killorglin, Co. Kerry, from a farming background—a family that had a sideline in clerics and teachers and … Read more
The Reformation in Ireland. By Henry A. Jefferies Five hundred years after Luther unwittingly launched the Protestant Reformation, historians are still struggling to explain fully why his message resonated compellingly with some Christians but not with others. It failed to resonate to any significant degree among the Irish; contemporaries reckoned the number of Irish Protestants … Read more
Comparing Irish nationalism and Zionism. By Aidan Beatty In one of the most memorable scenes of Myles na gCopaleen’s classic 1941 satire An Béal Bocht, the erstwhile narrator, Bónapárt Ó Cúnasa, recounts the arrival of a group of festive Gaelic League day-trippers in his imaginary village of Corca Dorca. Ó Cúnasa describes an odd practice … Read more
Sir,—Those interested in southern-African Irish studies will have been pleased to read the article in the Artefacts section on the Anglo-Boer War (HI 25.5, Sept./Oct. 2017). As a postscript, I would add that the National Museum of Ireland also has an interesting collection of material relating to the nationalist response to the war. This includes … Read more