Christine Kinealy Let us explain to you Irish farmer, Irish landlord, Irish labourer, Irish tradesman, what became of your harvest, which is your only wealth. Early in the winter it was conveyed, by the thousand shiploads, to England, paying freight; it was stored in English stores, paying storage; it was passed from hand to … Read more
Bronagh Ní Chonaill 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 … Read more
Raymond Keogh A sturdy barricade of legend surrounds many a dark age and medieval saint, dimming almost to extinction, the real person behind the name. In some cases, even the name of a real person is questionable. St Patrick, the Irish apostle, who is credited with bringing the Christian faith to Ireland, is buried under … Read more
Paddy Duffy Before the Ordnance Survey undertook the mapping of the country from Malin to Mizzen in the 1830s, cartography, surveying and landscape map production in Ireland were essentially a private undertakings. There had been a seventeenth-century precedent for state involvement in mapping in the various plantation surveys, but after Sir William Petty’s Down Survey … Read more
As a writer of history textbooks, Elma Collins has had a profound, if unsung, influence on the generation of students who have passed through the Southern school system over the past thirty years. She currently teaches at the Institute of Education, Dublin and tutors at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. She is an active member of … Read more