THIS YEAR MARKS THE 800th ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF ONE OF ENGLAND’S MOST NOTORIOUS KINGS, AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ENGLISHMEN IN THE HISTORY OF IRELAND, KING JOHN. By Colin Veach and Tadhg O’Keeffe John has long split historical opinion. Some see him as an evil tyrant, through whose presence Hell itself is … Read more
By Damian Murphy The history of the Strokestown Park estate dates back to the sixteenth century and a castle destroyed in 1552 by Mac Diarmada. The present estate, however, began to take shape in the seventeenth century when land previously owned by the O’Conor Roe was acquired by the Mahon family. Captain Nicholas Mahon (d. … Read more
WHAT ARE SURELY AMONGST THE LONGEST CONTINUOUS TEXTS WRITTEN IN OLD IRISH ARE THE RELIGIOUS POEMS OF BLATHMAC, SON OF CÚ BRETTAN. BUT WERE HIS SOURCES ONLY LITERARY? By Peter Harbison The poems of Blathmac, son of Cú Brettan, were discovered in a seventeenth-century manuscript (NLI G.50) by Nessa Ní Shéaghdha in 1953, and largely … Read more
By Jason Burke In the preface of his 1922 book The history of the 36th(Ulster) Division, Cyril Falls made a noteworthy prediction: ‘A hundred years hence, men will be delving into our records of the late war. Soldiers will be studying the lessons of its battles. But yet a greater number of seekers will be … Read more
Sir,—I commence by quoting John Gibney (‘What about Island Magee? Another version of the 1641 Rebellion’, HI 21.1, Jan./Feb. 2013, pp 22–5): ‘Irish Catholics had their own views on what happened in 1641’. Can I assume that the reason Irish Catholics have their ‘own views’ about 1641 is because Irish Catholic educators who taught them … Read more