Then the jobber proceeded to examine the heifers and shaking his head he offered £16 and Dad emphatically said no. Continue reading
Filed under place names …
Learning Irish at Oideas Gael – Gleann Cholmcille
I took a language course then and learnt a lot of Gaeilge. There were classes with eight levels available from beginners, to intermediate to fluent. There was 35 hours of contach (Teaching) available. Continue reading
What we are reading, watching, at the moment
‘The Journey to Galway’ is a suitable beginning for a collection of stories about betrayal, deception, disappointment, and secrets. Many of these secrets are made possible because of distance. Continue reading
Antarctica – Ciorcal Comhrá: a traveller’s tale
Creidimid this is the most southerly Pop-Up Gaeltacht and Ciorcal Comhrá in the world. Continue reading
Irish-Australian Women Writers: 1. Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796–1880)
Eliza was obviously interested in people who came from different cultures, and she tried to understand them by studying their languages. We see this in some of her first poems written in Ireland. For instance, she made a point of using Irish placename spellings, rather than anglicised ones, when describing the impressive natural features of south County Down, including the Mourne Mountains. Continue reading
‘Hear the echo from the barn barrel’: learning Irish in Newfoundland
Class took place on Monday night around the kitchen table, and it was always a relaxing cultural evening. Afterwards the chat continued often to near midnight. Indeed, there were times I felt transported to a farm house in the Donegal Gaeltacht of the 1960s and that I was not in Canada at all. Continue reading
Poetry/Filíocht Hugh Curran, Patrick O’Sullivan, Michael Patrick Moore, Kevin McClung
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
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
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.
Ireland’s Daughters: The Earl Grey Orphans Who Shaped Australia. How a Generation of Irish Girls Transformed Exile into Endurance and Survival into Legacy
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
Tinteán 