The ‘island of dreams’ notion hardly applies to the small islands off the north and west coasts of Ireland. These have always been what Americans would call ‘hardscrabble’ places. Island life was especially hard in the past. The unusual survival of census documents from 1821 for the Aran Islands demonstrates this clearly. They show a … Read more
The Young Irelanders’ rhetoric of rebellion was not matched by their actions and it is easy to dismiss their efforts as ‘Widow McCormack’s cabbage patch’. If Smith O’Brien’s failure to attract significant support had been the only attempt during that year, the sword may have been consigned to history. The efforts of John O’Mahony are … Read more
Near St Abbe’s Head, south of the Firth of Forth, a heavily armed French privateer Calonne flying French colours had just captured the merchant brig Nancy from Aberdeen bound for Newcastle. The Calonne, also known as the La Cologne, was a 400 ton ex-French naval frigate, two-decked and armed with thirty-six cannon with a crew … Read more
It had seriously occurred to me, on readingStevan Ellis’s ‘“More irish than the Irish themselves’?: the“Anglo-Irish” in Tudor Ireland’ (HI Spring 1999), which seems to arguefor a total separation of the ‘Gaelic’ and ‘English’ elements inmedieval Irish history, that this view, expressed with heavy Swiftiansarcasm, represents a deliberate parody. How else could Dr Ellis regardthe … Read more
A brief entry in the Annals of Ulster, dated June 1513, records the death of the Archbishop of Armagh, Octavian del Palagio. The obit precedes by only a few entries that of a more famous individual: Gerald fitz Thomas FitzGerald, the Great Earl of Kildare, who died from gunshot wounds received in battle in September … Read more