Election campaigns are usually opportunities for cynical self-promotion rather than self-reflection. But when standing for election to parliament in 1828, Daniel O’Connell chose to make an honest confession about his wild early life. After the nomination of candidates in Ennis on 30 June, he took the opportunity to discuss a time ‘when the blood was … Read more
There is a history of over 200 years of public health service in Ireland, and by the early nineteenth century county infirmaries, fever hospitals and public dispensaries had become the most important providers of health services. As can be imagined, the public health service, then as now, was highly political. The dispensaries in particular, and … 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