Peter Edmund Lacy/Pyotr Petrovich Lasci (1678–1751) of Killeedy, Co. Limerick, was the son of Pierce Edmund de Lacy of Ballingarry and his wife Maria (née Courtney). He joined the regiment of his uncle, Colonel John Lacy, as an ensign in the Prince of Wales’ Regiment of Irish Foot at the beginning of the Jacobite/Williamite War … Read more
In his most shocking claim, David ‘Hibernicus’ Byrne relates how Rochfort was sitting in his hostess’s dressing gown one morning, having his hair powdered by a barber, when he was informed that a new prisoner had just been brought into the village. According to Byrne, ‘so blood thirsty was he that on hearing that a … Read more
by Joseph E.A. Connell Jr By the early twentieth century the Curragh army camp in County Kildare was Britain’s premier military base in Ireland. Ulster unionist opposition to the passage of Home Rule in 1912 was heightened by the support it received from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Not surprisingly, given its predominantly privileged background, … Read more
Dessie Doyle and Brian Drummond (Lilliput Press, €20) ISBN 9781843512738 The Erne catchment is the second largest on the island and as early as 1915 proposals had been aired to harness its waters cascading down more than 40 metres between Belleek and Ballyshannon. These waters were, of course, severely muddied by partition—by 1922, 730 of … Read more
Richard McElligott (Collins Press, €17.99) ISBN 9781848891777 By the time the GAA was two decades old, Kerry had won just a solitary All-Ireland title—and that was in hurling. It was later—owing in large part to the innovations of O’Sullivan, who would write The story of the GAA (1916), the first published history of the association—that … Read more