While many Irish place names in Australia remain unchanged, especially those of populated areas and permanent geographical features, the names of homesteads are more likely to change. A homestead in Australia is usually a house and pastoral property. Some placename websites separate the homestead from the land, and some call a homestead a ‘station’. Continue reading
Who can forget the smell of the Ulster fry of bacon, eggs and fadges completely soaked in gravy? Continue reading
We heard you read local poets
McNiece, Larkin, Rodgers. Told us of
Hewitt’s ox and goat metaphor
for Northern Ireland. Continue reading
Still, figures from the 1891 public records suggest that the Irish-speaking population had dropped to less than 4% – a major language transformation in less than a century. Continue reading
Brian Corr: 800 Years of Sadness: … how the Irish overcame despair, disadvantage, helplessness, and sorrow. [Tasmania], 2024.Kindle Edition: Available on Amazon.com.auISBN: 9798334955943RRP: $9.95 For an Australian with an interest in Irish culture and music and a passing knowledge of Irish history, Irish-born, Tasmanian resident, Brian Corr’s self-published, Ireland: 800 Years of Sadness, is a compelling and punchy … Continue reading
by Michael Boyle It must be nostalgia, but when our extended Irish family gets together local trivia breaks out and there is a cacophony of sound. We all talk at the same time just like we did when we had much more hair and when we were cutting turf in the moss under a hot … Continue reading
He tells us that Patrick was a powerful, diligent, and determined man. After reading the Lives of Brigid, you could espouse this forceful but patient woman with the same attributes and above all piety and humility. Continue reading
My father’s father’s father
survived the potato blight of ’47.
lived all his life
on the Crow’s Nest farm
where he heard an eerie
caw, caw, cawing
late in the night. Continue reading
Lexicographers and linguists have indeed puzzled over the American English term ‘So Long’ and some have advanced a possible origin in Irish slán. Continue reading
My grandmother and father would sometimes make derogatory references about Uncle Jack’s conduct and deportment on certain occasions, whether he was alone or not, at what hour he arrived, or was the last to leave, or even if he showed up at all, information that was meticulously dissected. Continue reading
Tinteán 