She used a blue biro pen and had numbered the pages on small, plain, lined notepaper…I was pleased to see, sometimes, the smudged ring of a teacup or saucer imprinted on the page. I ould see her in the kichen getting a cup of tea as she wrote to me on a Sunday night. 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
However, that story of liberation and democracy continues. Peter at the stockade and Speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, was not the closing chapter. 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
Most of the stories date from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and many deal with miserable school experiences. You won’t be surprised to read of Bob Geldof tormenting the priests at Blackrock College by asking inconvenient religious questions, or Edna O’Brien recounting how she sinned by the hour Continue reading
It was the case, however, that the only crime of those arrested may have been to support the aims of the Land League but, in the eyes of the authorities, this amounted to conspiracy. Continue reading
They were recorded buying condoms in a Belfast chemist shop. These fearless women gave hope and courage to ordinary women who were only coming into awareness about how their reproductive rights had become the property of male dominated establishments, not just in Ireland. Continue reading
Edna was a fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed. 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
What struck me particularly about these stories was the spirit and fight of women in the face of discrimination and adversity. Continue reading
Tinteán 