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
The old man’s sighs emerged from a deep-felt sorrow as he dipped oars into poetry and myth,
his phrases like sails gliding between uncertain isles before shifting the rudder of his thoughts to old
familiar phrases: ‘sin a dóigh, that’s the way of it’. Continue reading
Because people had been crying out for a resolution of the land question for so long, and had no desire to wait any longer, this, along with war weariness, may have been a big factor in the massive support for acceptance of the treaty with Britain. Continue reading
The result of decades of land sub-division, as a result of the Act of 1704, and a rapidly increasing population, along with the suppression of the woollen and linen cottage industries which had once flourished, had resulted in the great majority of tenants, especially along the West coast, being left with tiny subsistence landholdings. Continue reading
I read Modern History and Political Science in Dublin University from 1936 to 1940, talking my degree in absentia in January 1940. The most memorable lectures which I attended were those given by Curtis; he was always interesting and amusing, never the dry historian. Continue reading
The very earliest communal gathering and feasting for which we have solid evidence are known as fulachta fia. These were the locations where an animal, probably a deer or boar, was cooked following a hunt. The sharing of food is a social act that creates and maintains bonds and obligations within a group or community, which seems to have been the entire function of these feasts. Continue reading
Willie Carlin was an ex-British soldier who worked for Sinn Fein Continue reading
An Australian composes music for Famine-era poems at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. Continue reading
A miscellany of Irish books…. Continue reading
This is in a special conservation area of enormous natural beauty and significance. Continue reading
Tinteán 