Harps have been associated with Ireland since ancient times, when harpers were the musicians maintained by chiefs and kings. In the 1500s the harp became the symbol of Ireland itself on the coins of Henry VIII, the first ‘king of Ireland’. After the collapse of the Gaelic order, harpers still found patronage among the aristocracy … Read more
Catalpa Performed and directed by Donal O’Kelly Music by Trevor Knight Axis Theatre, Ballymun, 18 September 2008 Running Beast Performed and directed by Donal O’Kelly Music by Michael Holohan National Concert Hall, Dublin, 11 May 2008 Donal O’Kelly’s highly individual approach to the theatre involves adramatic reworking of key themes and events in Irish history. … Read more
References to fishing grounds off Arklow can be found in Patrician legends and medieval documents. Over the centuries the activity and the area became synonymous, so that by the 1800s the ‘Arklow Fishery’ denoted both the practice and the place. The entry for Arklow in Lewis’s Topographical dictionary (1837) begins: ‘This place . . . … Read more
O’KELLY, James Joseph (1845–1916), Fenian, journalist and MP, was born near Westland Row, Dublin, eldest among five children of John O’Kelly, petty landlord, dray-maker and blacksmith, and his wife (née Lawlor). His three brothers were artists, including the distinguished painter Aloysius O’Kelly, for whom he acted occasionally as agent. James attended school in Dublin and … Read more
In a recent issue (HI 19.2, March/April 2011) Stephanie Rains wrote about the ‘native’ village exhibitions that Ireland both played host to and provided subject-matter for from the 1880s to the early 1900s. Those exhibitions were an enlarged form of a practice that has a long history: the commercial display of living people as exotic … Read more