Only a small number of these ‘Irishtowns’ officially exist today, all of them small towns or localities in rural settings. Continue reading
Filed under Features …
Irish Famine Women – a challenge or three
Was there a ‘gendered’ difference in the colonial experience of the first generation of Famine migrants? Did the women adapt more readily? Were women more willingly acculturated? Were they more independent in their choice of marriage partners? Was the regrouping of their family more likely to be ‘transitional’ than that of Irish men? These are questions about women’s role in their family emigration strategy that can, and still need to be addressed.
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Unanswered Questions About Dr Mannix
Although there has been continuing interest in Dr Mannix, especially since the celebrations for the centenary of his arrival in Australia, a number of puzzles about his career and personality remain. Continue reading
A Citizen of the Republic of Conscience: Seamus Heaney and Northern Ireland
For hard-line Republicans, Heaney has always been far too reluctant to take sides; for moderate nationalists, his efforts to locate the violence in the North within historically-based atrocities was seen as a compromise of his creative principles; whilst for many hard-line unionists, Heaney is, without qualification, a Catholic/nationalist and, thus, political writer, whose loyalties are already fixed to one side of the conflict. Continue reading
On first teaching Heaney
Another in Tinteán’s ongoing series of tributes to Seamus Heaney, arguing that Heaney’s rapid canonisation was due to his attractive subjects and themes, and to his poems’ suitability for contemporary criticism. Continue reading
Ballyshanassy: Melbourne’s lost suburb
In its heyday, however, Ballyshanassy rivalled its northern neighbor, Box Hill, in importance and could have become the seat of local government. Continue reading
Rev. James Harold (1744 -1831): The Saggart Deportee
Fr Harold’s informal priestly work attracted the suspicions of the authorities not least among them Captain William Bligh of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ fame Continue reading
Seamus Heaney – Translator
The threat of sudden and violent death from those operating outside the expectations of civilised life is a resonant one for so many other places in our world, not least in Ireland. Continue reading
‘He’s Roman and that’s the Roman Way’: David Marr on George Pell
Whether his apparently tin ear in dealing with victims and their families is personal inadequacy or an effect of his hierarchical remoteness from his flock is hard to say but maybe, as Marr reports, it is because ‘He’s Roman and that’s the Roman way’. Continue reading
The Regalia 1826: An eventful voyage
…we have to take a terrible bad set with us – they have set the ship on fire five times during this last fortnight. The Guard was obliged to shoot one of them. Continue reading
Tinteán 