Anthony P. Quinn A credit union is a mutual society, owned and run by the members on a democratic co-operative basis to provide a savings and loan service. Co-operation, a basic human process, was expressed in the traditional Irish meitheal by which neighbours helped one another with the harvest. The origins of modern formal co-operation … Read more
Philomena Connolly On 11 July 1332, Sir William Bermingham was taken from Dublin Castle where he had been imprisoned, and was hanged by order of Anthony Lucy, the justiciar. The Dublin annalist was horrified at this deed: ‘Alas, alas,’ he lamented, ‘who can contain their tears when they remember his death?’ The shock of the … Read more
Charlie Doherty Most people if asked about St Patrick would mention one or more of the following: snakes, slavery, Armagh, Slemish, Saul, Downpatrick, Croaghpatrick and, of course, the shamrock. How many would mention the saint’s own writings—his Confession or his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus? We have only one fixed point for fifth-century Irish … Read more
‘A real Irish historian’ (3:1) Seán Duffy talks to James Lydon who last year retired as Lecky Professor of Modern History in Trinity College, Dublin. SD: Tell me about your family background and early years. JL: I was born in Galway. My mother was from an Irish-speaking family not far from the city. My father … Read more
Jane Ohlmeyer At the height of the ‘general crisis’ which gripped Europe during the middle decades of the seventeenth century, one preacher in 1643 informed the English House of Commons that ‘These are days of shaking and this shaking is universal: the Palatinate, Bohemia, Germania, Catalonia, Portugal, Ireland, England’. He could have added Scotland and … Read more