Early one morning on my way to Rabaul with my family we did not see even one woman. However, we overtook many men on foot and on bicycles, all moving in the same direction with their bodies naked from the waist up. Each wore a bright red lap-lap or long piece of cloth knotted at the hip to form a skirt. Continue reading
Cloisim gach coisméig is scuabadh ár gcosa le gach méanfach sa dorchadas..lI hear every squeak and sweep of our feet with every yawn in the dark. Continue reading
I usually held my father’s hand and would walk on the outside of the path as the hedges and bushes we passed seemed to develop a sinister aspect in the night shadows. Our footsteps resonated in the silence of the night. No memory of the cold temperatures of those nights remains with me. Only the joy of the special experience. Continue reading
Each visit to Ireland runs deeper than the last. Back in the 1980s, I met distant relatives before hitching around The Republic. When I felt the Atlantic’s chill, I retreated south towards the equator and finally home to The Great South Land. From August to early October 2022, I crisscrossed Ireland, listening to RTÉ and … Continue reading
. To this day, we have a saying in Irish ‘Bhí togha gacha bí agus rogha gacha dí le fail ann’, The finest of every food and the choice(st) of every drink was to be had there. This is believed to originally date from bards of one to two thousand years ago. As a chieftain or king, one’s reputation had to be maintained, or enhanced and these ‘songs of praise’, so to speak, were pivotal in this regard. Continue reading
they were usually ‘a reused glass spirit, wine or mineral bottle often containing a carved wooden cross, with a ladder leaning against it inside, sometimes (but not always) filled with water’. The water was usually holy water, or at least marketed as such. Continue reading
The other songs cut straight to the chase of the reality of war. Mrs McGrath and Johnny, I hardly knew you. They give a heartbreaking perspective on the horror and futility of war and although tinged with humour they give a firsthand account of the injuries and lifelong disabilities inflicted. Continue reading
. At a charity event, in the Wicklow mountains, Martin Byrne was faced with the task of feeding 1,500 people (no, that’s not a typo) with Colcannon. What did he do? Well, I’ll tell you. Continue reading
by Michael Patrick Moore ‘Come here to me, let me tell ya, don’t the living be busy today?’comings and goings on Graftonand on Merrion; where the craic is good,O’Donaghues is full. There are footsteps on quay, bridge and streettapping away like rain on tin,all servants of masters with somewhere to be or someone to meetand … Continue reading
There’s a border in Ireland now
that began – some would say –
when O’Neill and O’Donnell
of Tyrone and Tyrconnell,
took flight from where the
blue horizon is swallowed up
by the feral Atlantic in Donega Continue reading
Tinteán 