Ireland and Apartheid South Africa Apartheid South Africa was in the news in relation to a tour of South Africa by a representative team of British, French and Irish players. The Irish government officially opposed the involvement of the latter, though the IRFU had given its approval. The team, however, was coached by Irish rugby … Read more
I’m looking at my beaten-up copy of The Liberties of Dublin when Eddie Kelly’s photo from the book launchparty drops out. It’s stamped ‘Irish Times, June 16th, 1973’. We’re sitting on the steps of Marsh’s Library, with curator Muriel McCarthy beaming just off camera. It’s another Ireland and I’m young and foolish in the long skirt … Read more
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
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
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