My whistle calls the drops,
till they tumble down in torrents,
pounding on the rocks and on the craggy shore.
Then the flood runs swirling brown through every creek and channel,
as though it cannot wait to fill them to the brim, Continue reading
Filed under Irish Studies …
What we are reading, listening to, at the moment
He first met her by chance as she was emerging from a taxi, ‘…a vision in black velvet and volumised hair’, recognising O’Hagan as ‘that Scottish boy’ and his response in kind, ‘And you’re that country girl.’ Continue reading
What’s on April/May and beyond
Irish in Australia: Irish-themed Movies, Tours, and Festivals Continue reading
Spotlight in Irish Film Production: NO18 Films: Made in Dublin
he video ‘was created to capture Brian’s deep knowledge of the craft, specifically the specialised stretching and table cutting techniques that modern machines simply cannot replicate…and serves as a visual record of a vanishing skill and an important piece of the cultural fabric of Dublin’. Continue reading
Filíocht dátheangach/Bilingual poetry: Colin Ryan, Julie Breathnach-Banwait, Dymphna Lonergan, David Harris.
She brought ashore a language / and a pocketful of scraps: / a seagull nested in her mind / and she found shelter in a doorless house / that would let her neither in nor out / though she escaped in a dream / and saw before her a tribe / who reminded her of the dead Continue reading
What’s on March/April and beyond
Irish in Australia: Irish-themed Movies, Tours, and Festivals Continue reading
Ó Theallach go hArdán: Sean Nós singing from Hearth to Stage
‘I started singing the sean-nós style about 15 years though didn’t participate in competitions ’til 2022. The sean-nós style is in our family going back generations and my Dad won the biggest competition at the Oireachtas, the Corn Uí Riada, in 2006. Continue reading
Ireland’s Daughters: The Earl Grey Orphans Who Shaped Australia.
Maria left Ireland aged fourteen. According to the Irish Famine Memorial’s orphan database, she left Portumna as a Roman Catholic orphan of James and Margaret Maher (both deceased), sailing on the Thomas Arbuthnot to Sydney in 1850. Continue reading
Rugby’s Six Nations 2026
Ireland’s Coach Andy Farrell is facing spot fires on no fewer than five fronts. Continue reading
In the Footsteps of Mary: a traveller’s tale of ancestry
Mary and many of her fellow passengers – convicts – on board the Earl Grey, having left Dublin five months earlier in December 1849, and disembarking on a grey May day on the other side of the world in 1850.