Seventy-eight years ago on a quiet Tipperary roadway the first nationalist revolt against the British Empire this century was started by a small band of armed men from townlands and villages—Donohill, Solohead and Hollyford—in the vicinity of Tipperary Town. The Soloheadbeg ambush shook British rule in Ireland and sparked a controversy which can be heard … Read more
The Easter Rising—in which a twelve-hundred strong force took over the centre of Dublin, proclaimed the right of Irish citizens to the ownership of Ireland, fought, surrendered, and were either executed or jailed—is an event which has exercised the minds and pens of Irish historians for generations. Indeed, eighty-one years on, the interpretation of that … Read more
The issue of food exports during the Famine has fuelled an on-going debate in the historiography of the crisis. The traditional, popular view has considered the export of food to be a major contributory factor to excess mortality, symbolising a triumph of doctrine over humanitarian considerations. The opposing interpretation has argued that even if all … Read more
In Ireland today, as elsewhere, fosterage finds its place in society as a much altered carry-over from the past. Nowadays, it arises for a negative reason: the inability of biological parents to cope, for whatever reason. Fosterage in the past was the antithesis of this. It was a form of child-rearing chosen and upheld for … Read more
Patrick’s own writings, in the form of two documents, have survived the passage of time. One, the Confessio, is a defence against his critics. The other is an indignant letter to a man called Coroticus who had taken some of Patrick’s newly baptised followers into slavery. The problem with these writings, which amount to no … Read more