Heaney’s poetry is full of surprises. It would appear that he knew everything about the flail, but he seemed to refuse to give it a poetic voice. Continue reading
Filed under reminiscences …
Filíocht/Poetry/Gearrscéal/ Short Story: Hugh Curran, Colette Ní Ghallchóir, Colin Ryan, Tommy Fogarty.
At the cemetery, Canada geese nibbled grass as my nephew played ‘Danny Boy’ on his saxophone Continue reading
Involuntarily Irish-identified by the Nazis
Something strange happened : all prisoners with Irish names were packed off to a Prisoner of War camp called Friesack. Continue reading
Aonach an Daingin The Dingle Fair
Then the jobber proceeded to examine the heifers and shaking his head he offered £16 and Dad emphatically said no. Continue reading
Going to London 1960
While there a fella walked in and prepared for bed. However, he first removed the biggest knife I ever saw and laid it beneath the mattress. We started walking the streets looking in windows but not seeing. We were pretty low but pretended not, to shield one another. 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
It’s Here! Census of The Irish Free State 1926: Mór-Áireamh Shaorstáit Éireann
His wife is reported in 1926 as being a ‘Delph shop-keeper’ on her ‘own account.’ This matches my mother’s story of the family having a shop. 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
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
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
