The modes by which history-writing has been conducted through the ages have been manifold — from the barest chronicle, through the grand narrative down to the electronic database. But for many centuries one expressive form has assumed a place of surprising importance: the essay. Whether it has made its appearance in singular occasional form or … Read more
The Registry of Deeds, located in the King’s Inns building in the north-west quarter of Dublin city, is one of Ireland’s most remarkable archives, described by one commentator as ‘a most valuable storehouse of history’. The Registry is at once a still-functioning public office for registering property transactions and a repository of centuries-old records of … Read more
English literary depictions of crazed Irish head-hunters were not entirely contrived. The best propaganda always contains an element of truth. In parts of Ireland decapitation was more than an incidental by-product of blade-fighting. In Connacht, for instance, one of the chieftains of the Burkes was known as Ulick-na-gceann, ‘Ulick of the heads’ (fl. 1536), so … Read more
Late on a cold January night in 1602 an Ulster boy led four Gaelic soldiers silently through the dark to a cabin somewhere in the rolling borderlands between Tyrone, Derry and Donegal. Inside the cabin lay a servant and kinsman of Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, called Tirlough Magnylson [MacNeill’s son]. Curled up beside the … Read more
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