In August 1838 the English artist William Evans of Eton (1798-1877) visited Connemara, and recorded what he saw in a collection of 41 watercolours. Having been acquired by the National Gallery in 2008, the collection is currently on display for the first time in its entirety. When Evans made his journey, Connemara was in the … Read more
RTE Radio’s ‘Documentary on One’ slot recently broadcast ‘Sugar and the Blue-Eyed Slave’; Joe Kearney’s exploration of the strong Irish connection with the Carribbean island of Montserrat, famously devastated by a volcanic eruption in the 1990s. Joe Kearney first heard of the Irish link to the island from Philly Lynch, a Kilkenny philatelist, who showed … Read more
We have some very good stuff on the blog today, in the form of some tunes and tales of the supernatural. These are taken from The Otherworld, an anthology of music and folklore culled from the vast archives of the National Folklore Collection, housed in UCD. The NFC is one of the largest collections of … Read more
While on the subject of re-enactments, we might as well mention one with a particular relevance to our current special issue on the 1913 Lockout, in which Tony Canavan wrote a preliminary account of the Dublin Tenement Experience: Living the Lockout (you can read his review, taken from the current issue, elsewhere on the website). … Read more
2013 is the centenary of the 1913 Lockout (as should be obvious from our special issue!), but what many will consider to be the big one is on the horizon already. Every day at 2.30pm, between now and mid-September, Glasnevin Cemetery is hosting a re-enactment of Patrick Pearse’s famous (or infamous) oration at the grave … Read more