In 1864 a horse called ‘Biddy Early’ in a race at Scariff refused a jump, unseating its rider. This was typical of the type of story recorded by Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory when she visited Feakle some twenty years after Biddy’s death. Her book Visions and beliefs in the west of Ireland was published in … Read more
Bridget (Biddy) Early was born in 1798 in the townland of Lower Faha, Co. Clare, the only child of John Thomas Connors and Ellen Early, at a time of bloody revolution. Her family lived in poverty, with her mother making clothes spun from flax grown in the fields nearby. The threat of eviction was ever-present. … Read more
One of the most perversely inventive punishments was handed out to John Walker for the theft of a comrade’s coat. He was taken to the gallows and had a rope put around his neck, which was drawn so tightly that he had to stand on tiptoes. In that precarious posture he received twenty lashes in … Read more
The nobility of Tudor Ireland are important because the nobility were key agents of change in this revolutionary period. The movement among the English of Ireland for the political ‘reformation’ of their land during the reign of Henry VIII was essentially the product of hostility between the peerage and the gentry. Without it, the Kildare … Read more
In late April 1922, thirteen Protestants were murdered or disappeared over three horrific nights in West Cork. In The IRA and its enemies (1998) Peter Hart described this as a massacre motivated primarily by sectarian hatred. Others said that the killing had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with spying against the … Read more