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sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_crime-law"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/crime-law/courts" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Courts</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/property" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Property</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_property" aria-label="Show Property sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_property"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/residential" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Residential</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/commercial-property" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Commercial Property</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/interiors" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Interiors</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/food" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Food</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_food" aria-label="Show Food sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_food"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/drink" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Drink</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/recipes" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Recipes</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/restaurants" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Restaurants</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/health" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Health</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_health" aria-label="Show Health sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_health"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-family" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Family</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-fitness" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Fitness</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-wellness" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Wellness</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-fitness/get-running" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Get Running</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Life & Style</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_life-style" aria-label="Show Life & Style sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_life-style"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/fashion" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Fashion</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/tags/beauty/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Beauty</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/fine-art-antiques" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Fine Art & Antiques</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/gardening" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gardening</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">People</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/travel" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Travel</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/culture" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Culture</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_culture" aria-label="Show Culture sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_culture"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/art" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Art</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/books" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Books</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/film" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Film</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/music" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Music</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/stage" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Stage</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/tv-radio" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">TV & Radio</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/environment" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Environment</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_environment" aria-label="Show Environment sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_environment"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/environment/climate-crisis" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Climate Crisis</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/technology" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Technology</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_technology" aria-label="Show Technology sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_technology"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/big-tech" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Big Tech</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/consumer-tech" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Consumer Tech</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/data-security" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Data & Security</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/gaming" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gaming</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/science" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Science</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_science" aria-label="Show Science sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_science"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/science/space" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Space</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/media" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Media</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Abroad</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/obituaries" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Obituaries</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/transport" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Transport</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/motors" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Motors</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_motors" aria-label="Show Motors sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_motors"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/motors/car-reviews/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Car Reviews</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/listen/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Listen</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/podcasts" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Podcasts</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_podcasts" aria-label="Show Podcasts sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 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src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/S7N6CTZDZWNZ3UZUCVX7VLVT3U.jpg?focal=366%2C236&auth=bd9e500ebe601c1e0471b289c2809b01b35d7d750d342d3e3cd67beb3bc31ad3&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/S7N6CTZDZWNZ3UZUCVX7VLVT3U.jpg?focal=366%2C236&auth=bd9e500ebe601c1e0471b289c2809b01b35d7d750d342d3e3cd67beb3bc31ad3&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/S7N6CTZDZWNZ3UZUCVX7VLVT3U.jpg?focal=366%2C236&auth=bd9e500ebe601c1e0471b289c2809b01b35d7d750d342d3e3cd67beb3bc31ad3&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/21/poet-of-the-troubles-oliver-ohanlon-on-padraic-fiacc/">Poet of the Troubles – Oliver O’Hanlon on Padraic Fiacc </a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/20/hitlers-irish-volunteers-john-mulqueen-on-two-irish-pows-who-volunteered-for-the-waffen-ss/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Hitler’s Irish volunteers – John Mulqueen on two Irish POWs who volunteered for the Waffen-SS" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/7D6CK2HG3JFK5PCWFCW2I43QXY.jpg?focal=1027%2C690&auth=31dcd18b696ff0ae2c1de1b0de210357c0eb229b369d64ea23867b6941222b40&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/7D6CK2HG3JFK5PCWFCW2I43QXY.jpg?focal=1027%2C690&auth=31dcd18b696ff0ae2c1de1b0de210357c0eb229b369d64ea23867b6941222b40&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/7D6CK2HG3JFK5PCWFCW2I43QXY.jpg?focal=1027%2C690&auth=31dcd18b696ff0ae2c1de1b0de210357c0eb229b369d64ea23867b6941222b40&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/20/hitlers-irish-volunteers-john-mulqueen-on-two-irish-pows-who-volunteered-for-the-waffen-ss/">Hitler’s Irish volunteers – John Mulqueen on two Irish POWs who volunteered for the Waffen-SS</a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/19/sharpened-pens-alison-healy-on-the-cattier-side-of-writers/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Sharpened pens – Alison Healy on the cattier side of writers " class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/GGBKVSDQFNHOZJECNINMBM4YF4.jpg?focal=672%2C574&auth=b08c565a7d51acbae2c93d5edbeabb95bd0cd6f854447a245f47dde566716298&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/GGBKVSDQFNHOZJECNINMBM4YF4.jpg?focal=672%2C574&auth=b08c565a7d51acbae2c93d5edbeabb95bd0cd6f854447a245f47dde566716298&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/GGBKVSDQFNHOZJECNINMBM4YF4.jpg?focal=672%2C574&auth=b08c565a7d51acbae2c93d5edbeabb95bd0cd6f854447a245f47dde566716298&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/19/sharpened-pens-alison-healy-on-the-cattier-side-of-writers/">Sharpened pens – Alison Healy on the cattier side of writers </a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/18/i-remember-tim-fanning-on-the-power-of-cinema-to-unlock-the-secrets-of-memory-and-nostalgia/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="“I remember” – Tim Fanning on the power of cinema to unlock the secrets of memory and nostalgia" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/YQU2B46IEVNJJMOBZUXCMTNN3Q.jpg?focal=2281%2C1556&auth=35b0d6a06435ee55ecd4259702ebb8d92c6a5795ef0fb22454f77a63866c1297&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/YQU2B46IEVNJJMOBZUXCMTNN3Q.jpg?focal=2281%2C1556&auth=35b0d6a06435ee55ecd4259702ebb8d92c6a5795ef0fb22454f77a63866c1297&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/YQU2B46IEVNJJMOBZUXCMTNN3Q.jpg?focal=2281%2C1556&auth=35b0d6a06435ee55ecd4259702ebb8d92c6a5795ef0fb22454f77a63866c1297&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/18/i-remember-tim-fanning-on-the-power-of-cinema-to-unlock-the-secrets-of-memory-and-nostalgia/">“I remember” – Tim Fanning on the power of cinema to unlock the secrets of memory and nostalgia</a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/17/prince-of-the-church-brian-maye-on-cardinal-michael-logue/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Prince of the church – Brian Maye on Cardinal Michael Logue " class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/2ZG6N2P7EJCGZLKUOGMW5YAALA.jpg?focal=163%2C122&auth=968aef25016a4f7a7a319026ee5c81453b34c5c107247dedde170d5d7c0843b2&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/2ZG6N2P7EJCGZLKUOGMW5YAALA.jpg?focal=163%2C122&auth=968aef25016a4f7a7a319026ee5c81453b34c5c107247dedde170d5d7c0843b2&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/2ZG6N2P7EJCGZLKUOGMW5YAALA.jpg?focal=163%2C122&auth=968aef25016a4f7a7a319026ee5c81453b34c5c107247dedde170d5d7c0843b2&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/17/prince-of-the-church-brian-maye-on-cardinal-michael-logue/">Prince of the church – Brian Maye on Cardinal Michael Logue </a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/15/conflict-of-many-colours-frank-mcnally-on-a-finely-illustrated-atlas-of-the-civil-war/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Conflict of many colours – Frank McNally on a finely illustrated atlas of the Civil War" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ITANBPYNAVGCBFXJUHKIBNYB7I.jpg?focal=331%2C357&auth=f54e5124af920ee7c94de6a0330be6d9a0d08757b6ac6d0d63005cf0cbd657f9&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ITANBPYNAVGCBFXJUHKIBNYB7I.jpg?focal=331%2C357&auth=f54e5124af920ee7c94de6a0330be6d9a0d08757b6ac6d0d63005cf0cbd657f9&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ITANBPYNAVGCBFXJUHKIBNYB7I.jpg?focal=331%2C357&auth=f54e5124af920ee7c94de6a0330be6d9a0d08757b6ac6d0d63005cf0cbd657f9&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/15/conflict-of-many-colours-frank-mcnally-on-a-finely-illustrated-atlas-of-the-civil-war/">Conflict of many colours – Frank McNally on a finely illustrated atlas of the Civil War</a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/14/lunar-quest-frank-mcnally-on-moon-missions-misinformed-quiz-questions-and-mountweazels/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Lunar quest – Frank McNally on moon missions, misinformed quiz questions, and mountweazels" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ZCDYUOMF55FBPCDVXKNY2LNA5A.jpg?focal=1088%2C763&auth=3d8167dce45f18f66d4b438d64b37315fe9d578d24167c08af1d816ef5231cbc&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ZCDYUOMF55FBPCDVXKNY2LNA5A.jpg?focal=1088%2C763&auth=3d8167dce45f18f66d4b438d64b37315fe9d578d24167c08af1d816ef5231cbc&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/ZCDYUOMF55FBPCDVXKNY2LNA5A.jpg?focal=1088%2C763&auth=3d8167dce45f18f66d4b438d64b37315fe9d578d24167c08af1d816ef5231cbc&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/14/lunar-quest-frank-mcnally-on-moon-missions-misinformed-quiz-questions-and-mountweazels/">Lunar quest – Frank McNally on moon missions, misinformed quiz questions, and mountweazels</a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/13/the-dromcollogher-cinema-fire-disaster-frank-mcnally-on-a-fateful-day-in-1926/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="The Dromcollogher cinema fire disaster – Frank McNally on a fateful day in 1926" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/P7SJ2NAOS5AAJMWQLCZ72MFECQ.jpeg?smart=true&auth=c89dccd493677e4327b4ab98c3c6caf07c806ab08cf1320e80195f974b80434c&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/P7SJ2NAOS5AAJMWQLCZ72MFECQ.jpeg?smart=true&auth=c89dccd493677e4327b4ab98c3c6caf07c806ab08cf1320e80195f974b80434c&width=250&height=166 250w, 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src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/WTRJAT45NREYNOPCU3PXYONEX4.jpg?focal=461%2C215&auth=8cc7cdb75671b59351bfe99e36960a869db921bce8f50ee35a3dfef3dc1361bc&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/WTRJAT45NREYNOPCU3PXYONEX4.jpg?focal=461%2C215&auth=8cc7cdb75671b59351bfe99e36960a869db921bce8f50ee35a3dfef3dc1361bc&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/WTRJAT45NREYNOPCU3PXYONEX4.jpg?focal=461%2C215&auth=8cc7cdb75671b59351bfe99e36960a869db921bce8f50ee35a3dfef3dc1361bc&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/12/the-spirit-of-1965-kevin-rafter-on-irelands-first-television-election/">The spirit of 1965 – Kevin Rafter on Ireland’s first television election</a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/11/grief-and-remembrance-ronan-mcgreevy-on-dublins-armistice-day-in-1924/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Grief and remembrance – Ronan McGreevy on Dublin’s Armistice Day in 1924" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/WOZH7ZU7ONFWZO2GBL3FQY74SU.jpg?focal=392%2C323&auth=8e76dbbb539d636433c8f907036405cd8997a9ef11321ef8d97ef2a62cf392b2&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/WOZH7ZU7ONFWZO2GBL3FQY74SU.jpg?focal=392%2C323&auth=8e76dbbb539d636433c8f907036405cd8997a9ef11321ef8d97ef2a62cf392b2&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/WOZH7ZU7ONFWZO2GBL3FQY74SU.jpg?focal=392%2C323&auth=8e76dbbb539d636433c8f907036405cd8997a9ef11321ef8d97ef2a62cf392b2&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/11/grief-and-remembrance-ronan-mcgreevy-on-dublins-armistice-day-in-1924/">Grief and remembrance – Ronan McGreevy on Dublin’s Armistice Day in 1924</a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/10/the-night-mayor-oliver-ohanlon-on-jimmy-walker-new-yorks-colourful-political-kingpin/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="The Night Mayor – Oliver O’Hanlon on Jimmy Walker, New York’s colourful political kingpin" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/4O7JZ462ENEQZHVNJ55BDOVAAM.jpg?focal=419%2C212&auth=cfa4c1ee66ed8082cbd7bdacaff46f32acef5e7d4d9630d210d42567cdb5b674&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/4O7JZ462ENEQZHVNJ55BDOVAAM.jpg?focal=419%2C212&auth=cfa4c1ee66ed8082cbd7bdacaff46f32acef5e7d4d9630d210d42567cdb5b674&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/4O7JZ462ENEQZHVNJ55BDOVAAM.jpg?focal=419%2C212&auth=cfa4c1ee66ed8082cbd7bdacaff46f32acef5e7d4d9630d210d42567cdb5b674&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/10/the-night-mayor-oliver-ohanlon-on-jimmy-walker-new-yorks-colourful-political-kingpin/">The Night Mayor – Oliver O’Hanlon on Jimmy Walker, New York’s colourful political kingpin</a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/08/a-head-of-its-time-frank-mcnally-on-the-bicentenary-of-howth-road-and-more-about-wakes/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="A Head of its time – Frank McNally on the bicentenary of Howth Road and more about wakes" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/SOU76Z2XBVFBZAKDGS4EAPXALI.jpg?focal=538%2C368&auth=2b0cbee0241e018b3f436bb7846384399b883cb164c95d431155f8cd6fde0f71&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/SOU76Z2XBVFBZAKDGS4EAPXALI.jpg?focal=538%2C368&auth=2b0cbee0241e018b3f436bb7846384399b883cb164c95d431155f8cd6fde0f71&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/SOU76Z2XBVFBZAKDGS4EAPXALI.jpg?focal=538%2C368&auth=2b0cbee0241e018b3f436bb7846384399b883cb164c95d431155f8cd6fde0f71&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/08/a-head-of-its-time-frank-mcnally-on-the-bicentenary-of-howth-road-and-more-about-wakes/">A Head of its time – Frank McNally on the bicentenary of Howth Road and more about wakes</a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/07/alive-and-kicking-frank-mcnally-on-the-continued-survival-of-the-great-irish-wake/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Alive and kicking – Frank McNally on the continued survival of the great Irish wake" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/3K7WQJZC3JCPVPUP5GFQVJNN2U.jpg?focal=1717%2C886&auth=19b0611ea28a90649859ccabc53ef9d65b65c46771eaca4c2a4ad21e22285b1e&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/3K7WQJZC3JCPVPUP5GFQVJNN2U.jpg?focal=1717%2C886&auth=19b0611ea28a90649859ccabc53ef9d65b65c46771eaca4c2a4ad21e22285b1e&width=250&height=166 250w, 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b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/05/presidential-bearing-brian-maye-on-erskine-childers/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Presidential bearing – Brian Maye on Erskine Childers " class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/MZNZF5C2PRFVPMDMQWRDWDEATY.jpg?focal=701%2C224&auth=4d843e65b3d85d9248e54e84df7e38b29f23c8a4cd2f170650e58dd618415f86&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/MZNZF5C2PRFVPMDMQWRDWDEATY.jpg?focal=701%2C224&auth=4d843e65b3d85d9248e54e84df7e38b29f23c8a4cd2f170650e58dd618415f86&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/MZNZF5C2PRFVPMDMQWRDWDEATY.jpg?focal=701%2C224&auth=4d843e65b3d85d9248e54e84df7e38b29f23c8a4cd2f170650e58dd618415f86&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/05/presidential-bearing-brian-maye-on-erskine-childers/">Presidential bearing – Brian Maye on Erskine Childers </a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="b-results-list b-results-list--show-image"><figure class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/04/geography-and-destiny-ronan-mcgreevy-on-the-boundary-commission/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Geography and destiny – Ronan McGreevy on the Boundary Commission" class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/M24PHX3R6JE2BKQH3JQFTE7C7M.jpg?smart=true&auth=11e8022f5040ba4e6a9a2100517b5d7f35d76896e3e9c3646e016c341050c368&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/M24PHX3R6JE2BKQH3JQFTE7C7M.jpg?smart=true&auth=11e8022f5040ba4e6a9a2100517b5d7f35d76896e3e9c3646e016c341050c368&width=250&height=166 250w, 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class="c-media-item"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/03/magic-and-enchantment-padraigin-riggs-on-traveller-and-storyteller-tomas-o-cathasaigh/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Magic and enchantment – Pádraigín Riggs on Traveller and storyteller Tomás Ó Cathasaigh " class="c-image" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/GJDCPTFGAJE6ZFNP5PEU5SK7PA.jpg?focal=886%2C455&auth=7f6905fdd78813d72e24627f0da7be9c59b93987926a3fc64e712c22a71783af&width=500&height=333" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/GJDCPTFGAJE6ZFNP5PEU5SK7PA.jpg?focal=886%2C455&auth=7f6905fdd78813d72e24627f0da7be9c59b93987926a3fc64e712c22a71783af&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/GJDCPTFGAJE6ZFNP5PEU5SK7PA.jpg?focal=886%2C455&auth=7f6905fdd78813d72e24627f0da7be9c59b93987926a3fc64e712c22a71783af&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 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srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/3XHQP5ROSZFKJJ2FILI3Q3UCHA.jpg?focal=1519%2C972&auth=8929260e50cdc2654b033c63e5b846d8d1205e93ac4dce4275ed1de77ed76f77&width=250&height=166 250w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/3XHQP5ROSZFKJJ2FILI3Q3UCHA.jpg?focal=1519%2C972&auth=8929260e50cdc2654b033c63e5b846d8d1205e93ac4dce4275ed1de77ed76f77&width=500&height=333 500w" sizes="(min-width: 48rem) 500px, 250px" width="500" height="333"/></a></figure><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/31/push-notification-frank-mcnally-on-an-offensive-cycling-term-that-refuses-to-die/">Push notification — Frank McNally on an “offensive” cycling term that refuses to die</a></h3></div><hr class="c-divider"/><div class="c-stack b-results-list__seeMore" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><button aria-label="See more stories about this topic" class="c-button 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Yet, it holds great significance for local people and is an important landmark in the ancient oral tradition of Irish storytelling. For it was from here that writer Seumas MacManus would, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, regale young and old alike with traditional stories and folklore that he had popularised in the United States in the earlier part of his life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SVQQ3GNFFZHEJIRZFUKW5CCTRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093100},"content":"Born in Mountcharles in 1868 the son of a small farmer and local shopkeeper, MacManus was educated in nearby Enniskillen Co <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/fermanagh/\" target=\"_blank\">Fermanagh</a>. Like most young men his age he was drawn into the burgeoning nationalist movement, becoming the first Donegal secretary of the Gaelic League as well as a founder member of the local 1798 commemoration committee. MacManus was well acquainted with many the revolutionary figures of the time and was soon appointed a board member of Scoil Éanna in Rathfarnham by his friend <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/padraig-pearse/\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick Pearse</a>. Pearse often stayed with MacManus in Mountcharles on visits to Donegal.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M7F2ZQWCRFGJTO6XNQHNRJLGK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093101},"content":"However, it was to preserving local folklore that MacManus was to devote his life. He collected legends and folklore in local “rambling houses” and began contributing to the local newspaper, the now defunct Donegal Vindicator. He would go on to publish his first books, Shuilers from Heathy Hills (1893), The Leadin’ Road to Donegal (1895), ‘Twas in dhroll Donegal (1897), The Bend of the Road (1898), and The Humours of Donegal (1898). Despite his success in bringing Donegal folklore to a wider audience in his own country, it was in the United States that MacManus was to have his greatest impact and most lasting legacy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LVTTAHCDRZB23N4RW5VPSFGJVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093102},"content":"In 1898, MacManus was sent by the editor of Le Petit Journal in Paris to interview the leaders of Irish organisations in America. MacManus brought his collection of stories with him and went on to publish many of the folk tales he had collected in some of the leading US magazines of the time such as Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Monthly, the Century Magazine and the Catholic World. These stories resonated with Irish America and helped popularise Irish folk tales among the diaspora. From the late 1890s MacManus contributed frequently to American periodicals and published his works with American publishing houses to great success. Titles such as Through the Turf Smoke (1899), In Chimney Corners (1899), The Bewitched Fiddle (1900) and Donegal Fairy Stories (1900) were well received in the United States. But MacManus was soon drawn back to Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EF5JK5SDWZGI3KWBFCNVDEKUB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093103},"content":"MacManus attended the first meeting of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sinn-fein/\" target=\"_blank\">Sinn Féin</a> in 1905 and helped establish the GAA in Donegal later that year. He married twice, first to the writer Ethna Carberry (Anna Bella Johnston) and the two resided for a time at Revlin House at the bank walk in Donegal Town. After Ethna’s death he returned sporadically to the United States and met his second wife, Catalina Violante Páez, granddaughter of the first president of Venezuela, in New York. The couple married in 1911 and had two daughters. MacManus made an annual pilgrimage to Mountcharles, where he told nightly renditions of his stories at the village water pump.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2EML5FZZAVATPPRMGSAW4BL7UA","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093104},"content":"It was in New York, however, that his life came to a tragic end. At the age of 92 he fell from the seventh-floor window of the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing home on East 53rd street in Manhattan on October 21st, 1960. His remains were repatriated the following year and he was buried alongside his first wife Ethna in the village of Frosses, Co Donegal. MacManus’s writing popularised the Donegal oral storytelling tradition often by capturing the local sense of humour. The phrase “Many a man’s tongue broke his nose” from his work Heavy Hangs the Golden Grain (1950) is typical of the local wit. However, his greatest contribution was in preserving local folklore from Donegal for future generations. This was an accomplishment he summed up best himself in his work In Chimney Corners, Merry Tales of Irish Folk Lore, published in 1899.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VW7UEYWW25GSNIXAYPQD3JI2UE","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093105},"content":"“These tales were made not for reading, but for telling. They were made and told for the passing of long nights, for the shortening of weary journeys, for entertaining of traveller-guests, for brightening of cabin hearths. Be not content with reading them ... And grateful be to the shanachies who passed these tales to me, for you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MLTRRDO2DBB7HBRNBNNFOULIEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093106},"content":"A simple inscription on the water pump in Mountcharles reads “Seumus MacManus, Author and Seanchaí born near this spot 1868-1960.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Marc McMenamin"}]},"description":{"basic":"The life of Seumas MacManus, author and dramatist"},"display_date":"2024-12-10T19:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The last seanchaí – Marc McMenamin on the life of Seumas MacManus","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"HZDZZ7ANBFBRBPI6KU3G4IHKMM","auth":{"1":"3b59cada26868f43d7695af00636b9215ce522b01613b5be0cd62e59a1c6a72e"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/HZDZZ7ANBFBRBPI6KU3G4IHKMM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/10/the-last-seanchai-marc-mcmenamin-on-the-life-of-seumas-macmanus/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"2T2UQMJCYFCXRKKLJUTIDWJBOM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":331,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/8367081f-e59e-4e21-8b95-b522c1897fbe/versions/1733770432/media/0ec374e4ffcf0cb39a45992d4979dbf0_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/09/feargus-oconnor-irish-leader-of-one-of-the-worlds-first-major-working-class-movements/","content_elements":[{"_id":"YSFC4XGYU5A6PG2IVBNDVVMJGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127679},"content":"Chartism was one of the world’s first major working-class movements. It got its name from the People’s Charter which demanded radical political reforms and one its leaders was the Irishman Feargus (also spelt Fergus) O’Connor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2RUQXNDLBZAZLEB347EWDFQB3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127680},"content":"Born to a Protestant landed family in Cork in 1794, O’Connor trained as a lawyer and became an MP. He was a nephew of Arthur O’Connor, the United Irishman who travelled to France in 1796 to discuss plans for French assistance in a future rebellion against the political establishment in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UG2CKA2CUZCKREDLS6UCEIYGMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127681},"content":"Feargus O’Connor took part in Whiteboy agrarian protests in northwest Cork in the early 1830s. Elected MP for Co Cork in 1832, he was a supporter of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/daniel-o-connell\" target=\"_blank\">Daniel O’Connell</a> and the Repeal movement but the two men later fell out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4ZGSOGZ5CVGKVDDRRMHKINJNR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127682},"content":"Re-elected in 1835, he was subsequently disqualified as he failed to meet the property qualification for members. To qualify for office, MPs had to receive a certain amount of income from land each year. Despite this setback, he continued the struggle in other ways.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQTXZGDHQVHMRCRJLVGVFS62CM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127683},"content":"An imposing figure who stood at about 6ft tall and a gifted orator, he was given the nickname of “the rattler”. He toured Britain advocating for a range of political reforms and improved working conditions for those in the industrial cities and towns of England, Wales and Scotland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C7XJCZNR3ZBMRKPGJY6GV4ZS2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127684},"content":"The People’s Charter, published in 1838, was a manifesto drawn up by two self-educated radicals for the London Working Men’s Association (of which O’Connor was a member).","type":"text"},{"_id":"4EOEGQJQQ5CPFL5LNUVMTKQJRU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127685},"content":"It set out six demands (known as the Six Points) that they hoped would reform a corrupt political system where landowning elites made all the decisions and ordinary working-class citizens did not have a voice.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MP3ISPGBJ5BORPBYHFGQYIXZTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127686},"content":"The demands included universal male suffrage, voting to take place by secret ballot, parliamentary elections to be held every year (not every five years), constituencies to be of equal size, MPs to be paid, and for the property qualification to become an MP to be abolished.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HN5HW5FE7NE4LHOLSL7Y42T3L4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127687},"content":"One of the ways in which the movement’s ideals were spread was through a radical weekly newspaper that O’Connor founded. The first edition of the Northern Star was published in Leeds in November 1837.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PLCMRRUMRJA7ZMAYXYB5POMCBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127688},"content":"Mass outdoor meetings were held to inform the population of their aims. Pamphlets, songs and plays were written. Slogans such as “No taxation without representation” and “The Charter and no surrender”, were also used to convey their demands in a clear manner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V3EDJIN57ZE2VGIA7YVMBXLPYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127689},"content":"In Ireland the movement had its supporters and its detractors. A wool merchant named Patrick O’Higgins founded a Chartist association in Dublin in 1839 but the movement did not manage to win over large numbers of followers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZT5QZ73CFNGKTALIGLKX6T6D44","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127690},"content":"Perhaps the reason for this was the opposition of both the Catholic clergy and Daniel O’Connell, once O’Connor’s friend and now his firm enemy. O’Connell boasted that he kept Ireland free of what he termed the “pollution” of Chartism and that he led the war against “socialists – rank, arrogant and blasphemous infidels”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DOVTSKFH55HIBM37DGBPSLXAUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127691},"content":"Mass petitioning throughout Britain was used to make the voice of the working classes heard in the corridors of power. More than 1.25 million signatures were collected for the first national Chartist petition to make their charter law. Launched in Glasgow in 1838, it was submitted to the House of Commons in Westminster in June 1839. When parliament rejected it, unrest broke out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I5M3H5VL7FE3FCWB2RBX3ZP5YI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127692},"content":"A second petition in 1842 with more than 3 million signatures was rejected by 287 votes to 49, leading to unrest. Between 1839 and 1842, some 2,000 Chartists were arrested, tried and sent to prison.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J3B4QMEX2NEBLACGJONAISJANE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127693},"content":"O’Connor was elected MP for Nottingham in 1847. He was the first and only Chartist MP and one of the more radical voices in the movement. The third and final petition, submitted to Westminster in 1848 with more than 5 million signatures, was similarly rejected. Its rebuttal did not lead to protest, as had been feared.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PH546TPSQRGMVHR2SQVL3YSEMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127694},"content":"It seemed as if the movement had run out of steam and it splintered into different factions. Following the rejection of each of the petitions, O’Connor was one of those who believed that physical force was the only real option open to them to gain political rights.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7RXENU64WVBV5IQYC3CHQSHUSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127695},"content":"O’Connor’s health declined rapidly and, after displaying signs of serious mental illness, he was declared insane. Placed in an asylum in 1852, he died in 1855.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4F5EYKAWI5BWBFEQSVV7OHLJY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127696},"content":"Figures vary but it has been estimated that anywhere upwards of 50,000 people attended his funeral in London, showing that he was not forgotten despite being out of the public eye for a number of years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMUFWQRR7BD2PER6F6ZRYBHQ7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127697},"content":"In an oration given at his graveside in Kensal Green Cemetery, he was remembered as “one who had given his life to the cause of liberty and humanity, to the cause of the poor and the oppressed”. Chartism did not achieve its aims during O’Connor’s lifetime but it laid the groundwork for change in future years.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Oliver O'Hanlon"}]},"description":{"basic":"Chartism got its name from the People’s Charter, and aimed to give ordinary working-class citizens a voice in a reformed political system"},"display_date":"2024-12-09T19:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Feargus O’Connor: Irish leader of one of the world’s first major working-class movements","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"HL6LIAR3WBH7JJ7WPGZEAJYXNE","auth":{"1":"d8e295b2040fad2f46865e729ce6e2ca4d303385c1204a074c12577dedfe9c71"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/HL6LIAR3WBH7JJ7WPGZEAJYXNE.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/09/feargus-oconnor-irish-leader-of-one-of-the-worlds-first-major-working-class-movements/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"GOTG3DHEQRHFXFLR3JDGYLTYIU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":335,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/17b841aa-8a5d-483d-8466-d3129c77142f/versions/1733603772/media/2d8105044ec97dc7cbd8ffda685570ae_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/08/ol-man-river-john-mulqueen-on-singer-and-activist-paul-robeson/","content_elements":[{"_id":"SKLJ65WFVJA6FIIMHWXVVTQ55Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hostility to black people in Ireland would have dismayed Paul Robeson, the African-American star who thrilled concert-goers in the late 1930s with his “effortless” singing of black spirituals. During his visits to (non-fascist) Europe Robeson encountered less racism than in the US, where he had to be hustled into the elevator in hotels so that other guests would not see him. The bass singer, who made Ol’ Man River famous, so impressed Ireland’s music critics that they compared him to John McCormack, the great Irish tenor admired by James Joyce. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PCPB7R22RJCPZDK6KG2QX3RHZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"One reviewer wrote that Robeson was in “a class apart” in how he responded to the changing mood of his songs. “He simply stands there and pours out the melodies . . . Questions of range or pitch seem not to bother him at all; production, breathing, and phrasing all come to him as naturally as if he were speaking . . .”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MZFIDHX4PJBN3NKIZCR3HGSLPQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Robeson argued that the folk music of the world was very much alike, but Ireland probably possessed “the richest” tradition. He identified the influence of the Irish language in the spoken English he heard from Cork to Belfast – it had a “musical quality” – but he felt he could not sing Irish songs “properly” because he could not speak the native language. As a musician he had one great ambition – to explore the origin of African-American songs and “give it its place in the folk music of the world”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VKTGGJD5HJDETENBOFHGJRQIRI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The son of an enslaved man, Robeson reiterated in newspaper interviews that black people were little better than slaves in the southern states of the US. For African-Americans, he explained, the difference between New York and Alabama was the same as the difference for a Jew between Britain and Hitler’s Germany. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"D26QFTFLZZDBHDBUGC4QCB2ZUA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Robeson refused to sing in the South, because he would not be welcomed in his own right but despised because of his skin colour. He pointed out that “if someone were to bump into me in the street, and I lifted my hand, I would be knifed there and then and no questions asked”. A qualified lawyer, civil rights in the US remained his obsession. And, he admitted, “mere music” would never end segregation – “I feel almost in despair when I return to America”. But there was at least one positive political development in the southern states: black and white workers as members together in the same trade unions.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NN3AAZHZ2JAW7B5DA465NXSCJ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Robeson’s latest movie, Sanders of the River, opened in cinemas in February 1936, just after he finished his Irish tour. In the summer the singer visited the Soviet Union where, unlike the segregated South, he felt “free” walking on the street. His schedule on this trip included a discussion about another film, this time with the acclaimed director Sergei Eisenstein. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FU4UBTTD6VHWPFL2JR5263HPJU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Europe’s fascist dictators, however, remained unchecked. On the question of Mussolini’s conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) Robeson asked, sarcastically, was not the time past for “bringing civilisation” to the “backward” races with machine-guns? And, he might have added, “civilizing” Africans with poison gas. Believing, rightly, that they would get away with it, Hitler and Mussolini next targeted Spain by providing an overwhelming military advantage to its future dictator, Franco. Defending the Spanish Republic became the European cause célèbre, and Paul Robeson and Ernest Hemingway were among the many artists who supported it. Asked to offer a statement to “Writers Take Sides” – briefly, perhaps – Samuel Beckett memorably replied “¡UPTHEREPUBLIC”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"7VO2HZ4OFFAN3BQD3Z36QNOOAU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hemingway went to the front, Jason Gurney remembered, to boost the morale of the volunteers in the International Brigades. He “sat himself down behind the bullet-proof shield of a machine-gun,” Gurney wrote, “and loosed off a whole belt of ammunition in the general direction of the enemy. This provoked a mortar bombardment for which he did not stay.” Hemingway should have stuck to his day job as an observer of war-ravaged Spain – he later wrote the powerful novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Robeson, on the other hand, was a hit with the foreign soldiers, singing through the night in “Siberian conditions” during the Christmas of 1937. Fellow Americans, black and white, were playing their part in Spain’s anti-fascist struggle. They included Oliver Law, the African-American commander of the George Washington Battalion, who had been killed in action earlier that year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7EOVUZQ3RFKHLSGNQOLDZ6MWQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Robeson continued to pursue his political agenda when the US joined the war against Hitler and he became one of the most popular performers in America. After the second World War, however, like so many other anti-fascists, he fell from grace when the Soviet Union and the US became bitter rivals. Blacklisted, his passport was taken from him. But he did record some Irish songs – “the saddest in the world” – such as Thomas Moore’s She is Far From the Land, which John McCormack also released. In 1957 Robeson recorded Kevin Barry; in the words of the ballad, “just a lad of 18 summers” who gave his life, in 1920, “for the cause of liberty”. As a student in Belvedere College Barry identified racism as the worst prejudice. Robeson would have agreed. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"John Mulqueen"}]},"description":{"basic":"As a musician he had one great ambition – to explore the origin of African-American songs"},"display_date":"2024-12-08T19:31:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ol’ Man River – John Mulqueen on singer and activist Paul Robeson","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"UTX3OEQXJZCIDAULT5OWHDTNB4","auth":{"1":"3205fa1dc0bbbdc14a9b28d84b5830f09fea8eeea7d7e9efb93f73ee16e97529"},"focal_point":{"x":2129,"y":1889},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/UTX3OEQXJZCIDAULT5OWHDTNB4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/08/ol-man-river-john-mulqueen-on-singer-and-activist-paul-robeson/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"Z67R7O7AH5ERNL3T4EXEUNI3W4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":319,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/4235d237-80d0-4ed9-8d80-a3ab0bd8456e/versions/1733504477/media/2d6de770f43c907dafbb3aa47b4d0517_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/06/leap-in-the-dark-frank-mcnally-on-the-obscure-origins-of-an-irish-religious-insult/","content_elements":[{"_id":"GBNFNN4JFJCEFAWPQ26MEKPRXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374826},"content":"One of the obstacles you face in trying to find the origin and meaning of the word “jumper” – in its Irish religious sense, which we were discussing here earlier in the week – is the success of the indigenous knitwear industry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LYUEAS6XNJAITHHIW5VYV6J2SI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374827},"content":"Religious jumpers seem to have been largely associated with the far west of Ireland. But if you Google the terms “jumper” and “Connemara”, you will be deluged with advertisements for what Americans call Aran sweaters. Another problem is the word’s athletic meanings.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FTZQMSD5ORA6XJRP5OW7I6XHF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374828},"content":"Search for “Connemara” and “jumper” in The Irish Times archive, for example, and the results are mostly about horse shows.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2ZXQOS2625GHPLTE5S3ZX46H5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374829},"content":"My thanks to reader Padraigín Riggs, however, who suggests that the religious term bears no relation to the English jump. “To my knowledge, the term ‘jumper’ is from the Irish verb ‘d’iompaigh’, [meaning] ‘turned’,” she writes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FMWXDRWPIVG5LOXEWPG245T5VI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374830},"content":"Indeed, I now see that this theory was also advanced in a 2008 book review elsewhere in these pages by Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, professor of history at NUI Galway. The book was Soupers & Jumpers: the Protestant Missions in Connemara 1848 – 1937, by Miriam Moffitt, to which we’ll return shortly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RRGUZA3UFRDH5EXORGYZIFMHMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374831},"content":"“Jumper” in this sense does not appear in any dictionary I own, including Terry Dolan’s Hiberno-English or the Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms, although both of those have “souper”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZXAFKT7PTRFW5DWMQDVKYTUZPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374832},"content":"So I was almost convinced by a number of readers who insisted that “jumpers” referred specifically to Catholics who converted twice. Or as one correspondent put it, to people “who took the soup and everything going with it, and then jumped back to Holy Mother Church when conditions eased”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HN4FYODKY5C7RBLT66CIC7WCJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374833},"content":"But in Ernie O’Malley’s newly published Mayo folklore collection, which started me on this subject, the implied conversions were sometimes permanent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JRF3KKLGS5EJZKGDMGQCWTJOTE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374834},"content":"Among his stories, for example, is one called simply “The Jumper”, about a man who converts during the Famine but then has to leave his rural neighbourhood and move to Castlebar, where he marries a Protestant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5U7ZIISY3ZDPVCHD5NFAOEXBPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374835},"content":"His brother later visits him there and hears the man’s wife saying harsh things about the Catholic Church.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHM5FXCTXFF45ATIRSLHQCSEKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374836},"content":"But when he returns home and <i>his</i> wife asks whether he challenged the “hussy”, he replies that no, he said nothing because the woman was serving him a dinner much better than he was used to, so it didn’t seem right to complain.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6HN3GDRUR5BO3MF5EFCM7UBL6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374837},"content":"Returning to Moffitt’s book, her title follows a custom dating back to the post-Famine years in using the words “Soupers & Jumpers” together. Nor, from my quick scan of the text, does it seem to differentiate between them.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HLWKZVTSBBCOLNNGWKJ4G7EUVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374838},"content":"Typical mentions of the j-word include a court report of 1851: “The Galway Mercury claimed that justice was also administered in an uneven manner at Cong, when the court fined Pat King for calling Michael Lally a ‘Jumper’ . . . but dismissed Fr Martin Coyne’s assault case against [Lally and others].”","type":"text"},{"_id":"5LUAUKKLMRCUFAEIVQA7VGDYKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374839},"content":"The term also features in a directive from Archbishop John McHale of Tuam who, long before Captain Boycott gave his name to English, urged Catholics to:","type":"text"},{"_id":"5J7K5ZRH5RD2DC3JJ5BXUZ6BUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374840},"content":"“Separate themselves completely from intercourse with the Jumper...not to speak to them, not to lend or borrow from them; not to allow them into their homes nor upon their land ... [and] to sign themselves with the cross every time they met one in public or in private”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IZW54ZHLAZFMZOGFD4VMRYRTXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374841},"content":"Then there was Fr Patrick Lyons, parish priest of Spiddal, who in 1854 published a list of fifty-six “seceders from the Jumper camp”: ie people who had now returned to the Catholic Church.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TADHCLDTLVEEXFGT3W4Q3PT2CY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374842},"content":"The Protestant missions in Connemara provided not just food but also education, a big attraction at a time when the local Catholic church was opposed to national schools. But the great “Anti-Jumper Crusade of 1878-1884″ put an end to most of the proselytising.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S5RQEYWUCVEYNPHKDADWZ7LNHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374843},"content":"In one notorious incident of 1879, a Father William Rhatigan from Clifden visited the Omey Island school of one William MacNeice (grandfather of the poet Louis), to reclaim lost members of his flock.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XPPYDNRERFA3TJF2X4JYYCPB2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374844},"content":"The result was a violent confrontation in which, according to rival reports, McNeice was beaten “with a heavy stick” while Rhatigan was “almost murdered”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6HZBSU3URBBSXHPRGP5WPISIGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374845},"content":"But the missionaries and their converts came off worse, usually. According to Moffitt, the Anti-Jumper Crusade expedited a tendency already in train whereby the missions henceforth concentrated on urban areas.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2KBOZ5CINNHZRAVHDKUW7J6XDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374846},"content":"Anyway, after all that, the Diary is going to stick its neck out and suggest that “jumper” is merely a broader version of “souper”, equally pejorative but lacking the specific implication of conversion for food.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VQVLGFUVX5GIFA4WS7JGT3SZ2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374847},"content":"While we’re still on the subject, Padraigín Riggs also tells me of an Anglican church in Templemore, Co Tipperary, that because of its elevated site and association with local converts, became known as “Jumpers’ High”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TCNML7GLJNF4FPYAANQDYUC3QE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374848},"content":"This is not to be confused with the “Jumping Church of Kildemock”, near Ardee, to which my classmates and I were brought on a first-ever school tour many years ago.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TOBKUXSLGNF43L2JUHSYZEBATQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374849},"content":"There, it was the ancient building itself that is said to have jumped, in the fully English sense, so that a gable wall now stands a metre or so inside its original foundations. Local folklore says it did so to exclude the grave of an excommunicated person buried under the floor. The scientific explanation was a freak windstorm in February 1715.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Religious ‘jumpers’ seem to have been largely associated with the far west of Ireland"},"display_date":"2024-12-06T18:57:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Leap in the dark — Frank McNally on the obscure origins of an Irish religious insult ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"ZBNSL4JN5BGBRO7QMWV3IMG2U4","auth":{"1":"bf05363ecf06a3edcbcf7887ebbaff0a7e6f8604a7bf8785798c718fb5ec8c67"},"focal_point":{"x":2282,"y":2188},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ZBNSL4JN5BGBRO7QMWV3IMG2U4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/06/leap-in-the-dark-frank-mcnally-on-the-obscure-origins-of-an-irish-religious-insult/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"B7KIW6G7M5AM7FJB7EUP4N3JYY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":320,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/4007f85e-be7a-47b0-b42a-24994647f24a/versions/1733421891/media/93e3923543d6c28b7693a4f2ebcc950f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/05/prose-and-con-frank-mcnally-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-famous-local-newspaper/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7VXFG5F6D5CA7FQFKLXU45N54M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880628},"content":"My thanks to several readers who have pointed out that the “libelous” newspaper Con Houlihan edited in his early years – and that Myles na gCopaleen may have plagiarised on occasion – was called The Taxpayers’ News.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WGJLVAWIKFB7JEEDVZRKEQDVHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880629},"content":"It was a monthly publication based in his native Castle Island (I spell it with two words, as Con always did) in the late 1950s; not in Castlemartyr, where a decade earlier he had been expelled from secondary school, for offences also related to journalism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J3RSECTNXFBRRCK2FJEQQGYS54","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880630},"content":"Houlihan had no part in the libel that shut the paper down. That was the work of title’s proprietor, one Charlie Lenihan, a local Citizen Kane who was also a member of the county council.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TDJLQFCAGJBTPFC6CEE3DRQGSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880631},"content":"It began as slander, in fact, when at a meeting of the council’s housing committee in July 1957, Lenihan committed grievous verbal harm to a fellow member, Michael L O’Connell. The latter happened to be a local solicitor. Notwithstanding which, as the High Court later heard, Lenihan expressed the opinion that O’Connell was “lower than a tinker”, adding: “As a politician he is a crook, and in his profession he is a crook.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FIBGELWFJ5AYHMWKQTBCJ6VSPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880632},"content":"Lenihan withdrew this at a trial in which the High Court president lamented that if an apology had been made earlier, no case would have been necessary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZC75ALRK5JDJ3HGXRZ56CNDQ4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880633},"content":"Unfortunately, in the interim, the offending sentence had been repeated in the Taxpayers’ News, turning slander into libel.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SZBELMIOFNFYVEWSGRLBBVBVSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880634},"content":"Again, the editor was innocent. As Houlihan explained in a 2011 column for the Evening Herald, local printers had been (understandably) nervous about producing the paper. It was printed instead in Dublin, to which city Con caught the first train from Tralee every publication Monday with the copy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OTXTWEODJZED7P6U5AO4HLYCCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880635},"content":"On the fatal month in question, however, Lenihan had been the one to bring the paper to Dublin, adding the libelous amendments en route.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C4R36AAEBBAX7DUR4D4IXVR63Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880636},"content":"Even then, interestingly, the High Court president believed the plaintiff had suffered no “actual damage” because as he put it: “His clients were mainly country people, who would be shrewd enough to assess the value to be paid to utterances of this kind.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QGN5IJQOURBMNFKQBDFSKJUYXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880637},"content":"But perhaps some less sensible urbanites had read it as well because the solicitor was nevertheless deemed worthy of damages. The judge awarded £250 plus costs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EQPFT6MJ25CW7DRI4Z3GU7TDBM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880638},"content":"Houlihan meanwhile resigned as editor, over the interference with his copy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7BOVMCFHZBGGHBOJPYLEGKGATI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880639},"content":"As for the paper, he wrote in 2011, it “lingered on for a few more months and died quietly”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XA46K2WWGFCFZIAE6EU3DKXBLQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880640},"content":"Perhaps it did more than linger, because the court case was in May 1958 and almost a year after, back in Dublin, the Irishman’s Diarist was still able to give the paper a rave review. In a column of April 1959, he began: “Last weekend my Observer and Spectator were left alone, neglected and unread. There was no offence intended – it was simply that I got completely immersed in a joyful romp through two issues of a publication called The Taxpayers’ News.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"R62BEKYA4JG45MMYMZL54OSGMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880641},"content":"Then as now, of course, the Diary was synonymous with unimpeachable ethics in crediting sources. As Houlihan acknowledged in 2011: “Seamus Kelly, Quidnunc in The Irish Times, gave us the occasional mention and we were delighted.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GVA6SG5DTRA6ZJF6QJJJPPVBUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880642},"content":"But not all columnists were as generous, apparently. Houlihan again: “Occasionally, Myles [na gCopaleen] lifted pieces from me. That was flattering.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6OVDKARL3VEYNK4H23ABZVD54E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880643},"content":"It may have been as much the loss of a talented editor as the libel itself that closed the paper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4RFI3CKUABBWXP2ZNGIQFXIYTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880644},"content":"If not quite in the William Randolph Hearst bracket, Lenihan had deep pockets.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SFQUJRHOG5BIPA7LHNUZ7JCFC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880645},"content":"His father had made a fortune in Alaska, enough for the son to buy a farm and mansion at home, as well as a butcher’s shop and dairy business.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YQ7GAK2C5ZDSLDRBHYOUEWHZJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880646},"content":"He stood for the Dáil too and just missed out, according to Houlihan, because of a distaste for proportional representation: “He would have won that election handsomely if he didn’t despise number-two votes and told people who offered what to do with them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NT2HKWGVYZGN5NMSKNBHEJMIDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880647},"content":"In its brief existence, The Taxpayers’ News achieved the distinction of giving John B Keane his print debut. By contrast, it also published Chekhov, Maupassant, and DH Lawrence: “This had two merits: they were great stories and we hadn’t to pay for them because the authors were dead.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"34KMJDO5BRCGHH5T7TVEHUFSUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880648},"content":"Although his had been “Castle Island’s first and probably last publication”, Houlihan believed every town should have its own magazine or newspaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZQ2ODKWT7JDZDB5YFDMSUH33AM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880649},"content":"He claimed this was a universal ambition, even in the 21st century: “Every journalist that I know in Dublin would love to go home and start a newspaper in Castle Island or Caherciveen or Newcastle West, but the tide is running against them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"T7SSCJACYVFQHJVVN4INCA7RXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880650},"content":"The real-life Myles, Brian O’Nolan, had long cherished such a dream, according to his biographer, but never realised it. His friend and contemporary, Patrick Kavanagh, famously had. The Monaghan poet’s newspaper didn’t even need a town.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y6FMX3TSCNH4RERLEY63KVAB24","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880651},"content":"As its title suggested, Kavanagh’s Weekly was a vehicle for his and his (bankrolling) brother Peter’s opinions, which were many and fierce.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JT5UOKMEJVC6NMN4LLAQNEWDXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880652},"content":"The opening issue hit Dublin in April 1951 “like a blast from a sawn-off shotgun”. But it wasn’t sued for libel somehow, and Patrick would later claim it had sold well enough.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KUGC5UV5UZGZ7IQZEXFLABS2VE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880653},"content":"It ran for 13 issues and only closed, he implied, because of the disappointing quality of the readership.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"In its brief existence, The Taxpayers’ News achieved the distinction of giving John B Keane his print debut"},"display_date":"2024-12-05T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Prose and Con — Frank McNally on the rise and fall of a famous local newspaper","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"LRMPAGYLTRFORIPVDHXANFTE3Q","auth":{"1":"a2562aedcb8f30fd381cc237984baa1efa844845ddfffdeca80899c7645b802e"},"focal_point":{"x":295,"y":139},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/LRMPAGYLTRFORIPVDHXANFTE3Q.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/05/prose-and-con-frank-mcnally-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-famous-local-newspaper/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"7F627LOT2ZGHPCY7M77XWJC4QU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":329,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/0094ff41-876b-46e4-b1a6-914069472f10/versions/1733363139/media/9e74aad2277e644d070486ac3520dc68_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/04/souper-imposed-frank-mcnally-on-famine-insults-and-flann-obriens-debt-to-con-houlihan/","content_elements":[{"_id":"Z6XWIE36L5DETE3XHRX5DX5ZGU","additional_properties":{},"content":" In last Saturday’s Diary, quoting Ernie O’Malley, I used the word “jumper” in its uniquely Irish context (which refers to neither knitwear nor athletics).","type":"text"},{"_id":"CILBQMFTFBHTZNKQU4OIL7VB5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Now, long-term correspondent Martin Aherne writes to suggest the usage was incorrect and that the word O’Malley and I both meant was “souper”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S52OP7GZ6VFQTJVS3G3ABU4KYM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“There is a difference and a big difference between jumper and souper,” Martin says. “Maggie [the young girl mentioned in a story from O’Malley’s Mayo folklore collection] was not a jumper but a souper, converting to get fed.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MPH2KLKKRBH25CZXKCHNTWQFXI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Jumpers, he implies, were Catholics who responded to the Penal Laws by turning Protestant to inherit land. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"2RGIMYPTVRFP7CXVGF7RAW3YUM","additional_properties":{},"content":"On occasion, the email continues, such a convert could even get “his own family evicted and have the whole place for himself”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HGCNKY2VDFGRFFC6FDJ7FPH2OY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Well, certainly, the words do have a different quality, if only because souper implies passivity while “jumper” is more active.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KSQK6ADNVRDI7I5R3LWGSJCZCE","additional_properties":{},"content":"And “jumper” may well have had a separate existence prior to the Famine. But its other meanings make it hard to find in archives then. Whereas since the Famine, the terms have tended to be lumped together or used interchangeably.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DE3J4OQD4ZGN7PSKUJZJQXOIGQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Here, for example, is a remarkable passage from the Freeman’s Journal in 1855, one of the earliest to use the combination in print. It welcomes a mission to Connemara by the Sisters of Mercy, as if the nuns are religious paratroopers sent in to take out the evangelists and their kitchens:","type":"text"},{"_id":"CR3XPGW625CMPHZ3VZKI2UJFW4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“No wonder Soupers and Jumpers should grow deadly pale and seek succour from their old friends the bayonet and the ballot [sic? – bullet?] . . . hence all the police within forty miles of Clifden . . . called in to reassure the well-fed and well-paid stirabout brigade . . .”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UHZRATT65RAFHBAWI3XPCQCUOA","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"2DB3ZZ5EE5GBBGNQEZTOBZFS5M","additional_properties":{},"content":"A more recent incidence of the terms has sent me down a rabbit hole involving Myles na gCopaleen (aka Flann O’Brien), formerly of this parish, and another celebrated newspaper man, Con Houlihan, late of the Evening Press.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CZPWS6QYKNG5VNDPGK3YDUU6NE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The story begins with a milestone from the Irish Times in October 1950, headlined “Cruiskeen Lawn is 10 Years Old Today”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YZ22GARLR5G3DB4UKWBO7ZDNYQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Myles’s famous column, written at first in Irish before evolving through bilingualism into English, was indeed celebrating its tenth birthday then and did so with a round-up of the decade’s highlights.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6ZO6GLHNHBCPRACC7FCYONECUU","additional_properties":{},"content":"These included a diatribe from the Catholic Standard, a weekly newspaper, which had lampooned the Irish Times, its editor Bertie Smyllie, and Myles in verse, eg:","type":"text"},{"_id":"CFMH6KJK5JEW5OUTBO5SKAALBQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The Soupers and the Jumpers/Had done their loathy best,/With their Lutheran ersatz-bible,/Their Smyllie homes and the rest/E’er a native anti-Irish chick/Was Bred in their Bird’s Nest . . .”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y42IFV7AAVAH7JFHQBO5HBO7LI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The poem concluded: “Nor in these squalid, eerie days,/An ugsomer sight is seen/Than that forlorn of ‘Gaelic’/In the Garrison Magazine/Where the Grazier’s Gazette displays/Its Myles na n-Asaleen.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CUGRAFPP3VEV5LGV34CX7INHCY","additional_properties":{},"content":"No, the satire is not quite Swiftian. Even so, as well as introducing some of us to the word ugsomer (from the archaic ugsome, meaning “frightful”), it inspired another archive search, this time for “Myles na n-Asaleen”, to see if the nickname had been used elsewhere. And that’s where Con Houlihan came in.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M6DKWEH4UBDO3HWDW72PSZA3EE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cruiskeen Lawn aside, the solitary hit for “Myles na nAsaleen” was not from the Catholic Standard but from a 1973 book review in The Irish Press by the same Con, then newly arrived in Dublin journalism, though already in his late-40s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DW65AKH275ETLLIDUIYHHRORHE","additional_properties":{},"content":"It’s a well written piece, combining two books: Myles’s An Béal Bocht (The Poor Mouth), which had just been republished in English, and the biographical Óige an Dearthár (The Brother’s Childhood) by a sibling of the real-life Myles, Ciarán Ó Nualláin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UFFNGYYRZZAIBNMPUKJGTX4BCA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Houlihan loved the latter work, hated the former. Of The Poor Mouth, he complained:","type":"text"},{"_id":"XEFJ24OG45DZTOK3VGWVTS43SM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The extraordinary thing about this miserable book is its reputation. For over thirty years certain of the Green Guards have been confiding to their acquaintances who know no Irish the delights of this work as they would of a secret mistress. The translator talks about the nuances . . . lost in the English. He is talking nonsense. There are no nuances – only crude parodies . . . written when [the author’s] mind must have been on the blink.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OGAWMEEOO5HLRC3V5RGYQ3LMHA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Interesting as that opinion is, however, the Flannorak in me was more intrigued by a preamble to Houlihan’s review, in which he implies that he himself was an early influence on Myles. And that – gasp! – Cruiskeen Lawn may even have plagiarised him on occasion.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VPPJBSPEPRBLBE4VER26AJ7AVE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Referring to himself in first-person plural, Houlihan wrote: “Once upon a time we were involved in a monthly paper that roamed along the wilder shores of radicalism until a libel action ended its career.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7NELCZB3AVER5MQ4YZ2TZJ7KPM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The paper was published in a little town in the south-west, but Brian O’Nolan was among its readers. The evidence is simple: either consciously or otherwise some of our ideas began to appear in Brian’s column in The Irish Times. It was to us the ultimate tribute . . .”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JD6LWJSGE5C2BOSLAYCWFVG4G4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Searching around the crater caused by that gently dropped bombshell, I have since learned that as a scholarship student at Castlemartyr College, Co Cork in the 1940s, the Kerry-born Houlihan was expelled for publishing an unofficial school newspaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TQ6R453ZIJBTFPUWDUNCHC47NE","additional_properties":{},"content":"But that would have been nearer the southeast than the southwest. Unless Con was obfuscating. Either way, I’m wondering if radicals of a certain age might remember a libelous paper in Castlemartyr or Castleisland. And if so, could they send me copies?","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Under the influence"},"display_date":"2024-12-04T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Souper imposed - Frank McNally on Famine insults and Flann O’Brien’s debt to Con Houlihan","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"OY65BMI3WZNSVBQNGYNWDQ4S5Y","auth":{"1":"79ff88e44ebdc618b6b837c07ac01c15ea523c5a999d4313244d7ce19e827243"},"focal_point":{"x":1137,"y":481},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/OY65BMI3WZNSVBQNGYNWDQ4S5Y.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/04/souper-imposed-frank-mcnally-on-famine-insults-and-flann-obriens-debt-to-con-houlihan/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"HEZPEJD3T5ETFCDIBMWRXYSI2Y","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":315,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/7c612bd2-aa45-4999-901a-a221e713551a/versions/1733251948/media/0f2cba47f35e33d675bd5d5529d2198e_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/03/pint-of-order-frank-mcnally-on-getting-to-the-ballot-box/","content_elements":[{"_id":"BI2RFXYGK5E3FP44ILOJOPHGQE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In keeping with half of an old American tradition, I always like to vote early (if not often) on election day. During a more than usually chaotic Friday, however, I hadn’t managed to cast my ballot by tea-time. Then I took the chance of meeting friends for a post-work pint in The Flowing Tide. –","type":"text"},{"_id":"JCT4WZBNIREQFGLCKO24MPMQAE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Named for proximity to the Liffey, it’s a fine, storied old pub, dating from 1820. And whatever about the tide, the Guinness and conversation were soon flowing there, at risk to democracy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XCFWULCKJJDGDFA7CVJDBPUC6Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Luckily, I had set my phone alarm. So at 9.30pm, mid-pint – and mid-point too – I tore myself away. Jumping on a Dublin Bike, I pedaled furiously the three kilometres to another watery-sounding venue, Basin Street, to do my duty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FNEE4CS4QBFIPKBIIL72FBTLZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Basin Street is named for a long-defunct city reservoir nearby – there is no water there now.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KSG42MVP6ZDLRAYGIJVM45BBJM","additional_properties":{},"content":"What it does have plenty of is polling stations: two in neighbouring schools. Alas, the local opportunities to vote are not matched by enthusiasm.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B6UBXAJDTJAVTHLOFO6KODSGSQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"After emerging from the deep end of my ballot paper (I went down as far as 10th preference before losing my nerve and having to surface), I inquired about the turn-out. “35 per cent – maybe 40,” the woman said, gloomily. In the context of the classroom we were in, our neighbourhood was struggling for a pass.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7SIJ5RODC5FBRBTEMABB2FXS7Y","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"UYB3VA27T5HJDFANDVR77KQA2M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Perhaps it was the tidal theme, but as results emerged on Saturday, a Churchillian phrase – slightly amended – came to mind.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TD4SGDC2UBHCREGVEDNPJLVFTU","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The whole map of Europe has been changed,” I could hear him saying. “The position of countries has been violently altered. The mode and thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world. But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm . . .”","type":"text"},{"_id":"4YMORQBDPVDPVC6UO23PBY63ZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Yes, I suppose the outcome was boring. But I thought of the electoral mania else, and of Elon Musk’s pre-election prediction that Ireland too would vote for what he euphemistically calls “Freedom”. Then I decided that, on balance, boring is good.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YPFGCMAXBNBAFOIY7BU2ZKXEKA","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"BYCDYO2GUNEYFFIS2VNJBHZLTY","additional_properties":{},"content":"On a balmy Sunday, barely recognisable as December 1st, I went for a run around the city centre. And as I walked home afterwards, a stranger on a bike pulled up alongside.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GGWEPSKGFZDWXE6XZ3QQLMPTSE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Are you Irish?” he asked, with a note of challenge. “I am,” I said. Then he followed up in the same tone: “Are you <i>proud</i> to be Irish?” I knew where he was coming from now, so I got my back up in advance before declaring, with an edge: “I am, most of the time.” “I’m not proud to be from Dublin,” he said, changing the subject a bit. “Dublin’s a beautiful city,” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"ECOGXN5TQBGPZEOGMFFFNK5XMI","additional_properties":{},"content":"I assured him breezily (a slight exaggeration of our immediate surroundings, which were full of the detritus of Saturday night, but this was no time for nuance).","type":"text"},{"_id":"QUR2QSRSXBFQFNH3XGAOXKSGLI","additional_properties":{},"content":"“It used to be, but it’s gone to the dogs,” the man countered. I was tempted to quip that it was gone to the seagulls, maybe. But I knew it was immigrants he was really talking about. So I made a point instead about how a lot of criticisms of the city were from people who didn’t live in it, or had an agenda, or . . . ","type":"text"},{"_id":"SUYYMBN4RZAUBC77C337CFJOIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"But suddenly the man just cycled away. I wondered afterwards if he’d been trying to recruit me to something – a local branch of the Elon Musketeers, maybe. Whatever his intentions, at the first sign of resistance, he vanished.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BPEEOKUZXZH3LCP27DWH2TZSZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"2UMS2QIJ5ZFJDM5UVALA7A7JJE","additional_properties":{},"content":"After a weekend in which the poor Greens took the brunt of whatever anger voters had, climate change nevertheless haunted Monday night’s Horse Racing Ireland awards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3P3EZRFLPRBLZAT5HP476OL2DM","additional_properties":{},"content":"I don’t think it explains the phenomenon of James Ryan, one a pair of 19-year-old twins who were sitting at my table along with their proud parents.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ILP5IZE5IJHZRAQN77QJ6ABB4Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"It would have been impressive enough, ordinarily, that James is already 6 feet (1.83m) tall. That he’s also a jockey – and a flat jockey at that, who weighs in regularly at under 9 stone (57kg) – seems almost freakish.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZORJOV5N6REY5O634N7M7IMHBI","additional_properties":{},"content":"In any case, after 33 winners and a champion apprentice title this season, he was a dead cert for the night’s “Emerging Talent” award and won, pulling up.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EUONHUPENBA7ZA3BIWXOSBERR4","additional_properties":{},"content":"But back to climate change, which arose in conversation with Conor Maxwell, former jockey, now trainer, for whom the Ryans ride. In general, he told me, the mild conditions in which the jumps season has begun this year are a problem. Horses are still soft and the ground is hard. Owners and trainers don’t want to risk injury.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MJFGIH35OFBLVDKWFVZAVRJD6E","additional_properties":{},"content":"More specifically, he mentioned Thurles racecourse, which has lost three meetings already this autumn due to lack of rain. Good drainage used to be one of the track’s virtues. A bit like a fast horse, the relative aridity of Thurles was always “good thing”. But the downside is that the track never installed a watering system. And now increasingly, like Basin Street, it’s high and dry.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"At 9.30pm, mid-pint – and mid-point too – I tore myself away to vote"},"display_date":"2024-12-03T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Pint of order – Frank McNally on getting to the ballot box ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"NGI6EGYLNNF53E622WK6JFYMZE","auth":{"1":"8170faa09cee58d17639426cc97d32cc978ac39946f539260b42ee9fa3f7c2bf"},"focal_point":{"x":1618,"y":1142},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/NGI6EGYLNNF53E622WK6JFYMZE.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/03/pint-of-order-frank-mcnally-on-getting-to-the-ballot-box/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"WIHKRPMXBNBGRJMR5SOJPPQRAQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":321,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/42360884-6503-4385-9ca6-4a4395da5547/versions/1733163009/media/aff0e06b0c435722fddf627957164431_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/02/form-and-function-brian-maye-on-architect-and-novelist-james-franklin-fuller/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7SJ27WAKUBD5XE33F3M5UHFSMY","additional_properties":{},"content":"James Franklin Fuller, who died 100 years ago on December 8th, could well be described as a renaissance man. A distinguished architect, he was also a successful novelist and published on history, archaeology, antiquarianism and genealogy. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"MH5GM6HCQJDMJKST5BZIIUGZE4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was born near Derryquin, Co Kerry, in 1835 (date and month unknown) into a family of minor gentry; his father, Thomas, was a landowner, and his mother, Frances Bland, was of Derryquin Castle. Tutored by James Murphy, who later conducted the Crown case in the trial for the Phoenix Park murders, he then attended boarding school at Blackrock, Cork, where he befriended Thomas Newenham Deane, afterwards a well-known architect.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IXFR4D6WHFD4RAWIVGURD6QVI4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Moving to England in 1850, he worked as an actor for a time and was a mechanical-engineering apprentice for a year before studying architecture in London and Manchester. In London, he contributed literary work to journals such as Truth, Dark Blue and Once a Week, and joined volunteer regiments while working in Manchester, Sheffield and London. In 1860, he married Helen Prospére, a descendant of one of Napoleon’s generals, and returned to Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GI5ZEBUWLNHNDFL2HS7QX5JKFE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Appointed architect of the Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners (a government Church of Ireland agency), he oversaw the building and renovation of churches all over Ireland. When the Church of Ireland was disestablished (1869), he used the compensation he received to set up practice in Dublin on Brunswick (now Pearse) Street. An early commission was the restoration of Annaghmore House, near Collooney, Co Sligo, which was carried out “in an unusually restrained classical style”, according to the Historic Houses of Ireland website.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7JJQOCRDWFDF5GD2UBZXLMUO7I","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Church of Ireland Representative Church Body had replaced the IEC and he was fortunate to be appointed its architect and continued to work for it for 40 years. Commissions for new churches followed as well as for important restoration work on cathedrals but he also received commissions for secular buildings such as Dalkey town hall, the maternity hospital at the Coombe and several schools in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OGYTUCBC5VECNLOXS2M6JYCOFI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Linde Lunney and Andrew O’Brien, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, described him as “the leading architect of country houses of his day” and list Kylemore Castle (Galway), Ashford Castle (Mayo) and Tinakilly House (Wicklow) as among his restorations, as well as Farmleigh House in the Phoenix Park. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LWECXGOZBNGD3B4SIFK2LYGIH4","additional_properties":{},"content":"For his published fiction, Fuller used the pseudonym “Ignotus” and, occasionally, “An Old Boy”. In his three-volume novel, Culmshire Folk (1873), the Scotsman newspaper detected similarities to George Eliot’s work, which was quite a tribute. Lunney and O’Brien believed that “the strongest part of his writing was dialogue and character observation”. Other stories published by him were John Orlebar, Billy, or The Young Idea, Chronicles of Westerly and Doctor Quodlibet. An article in this newspaper by Gemma Tipton (<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/the-forgotten-legacy-of-james-franklin-fuller-1.2400042\" target=\"_blank\">October 22nd, 2015</a>) described his fiction as “melodramatic”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBIRLPP6Y5FZRMWXWK3CWJSZGU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He also published extensively in local history, antiquarianism and genealogy, in such periodicals as the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, the Kerry Archaeological Magazine and the Genealogist, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and of the Society of Antiquaries of London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TI4PEHGSERELJGBUXNRFX3WQD4","additional_properties":{},"content":"His memoir, entitled Omniana: The Autobiography of an Irish Octogenarian, published in 1916, “is a rambling but engaging recollection of a varied life”, according to Lunney and O’Brien. In it “he gives some space to outlining his ancestry to prove his pretensions to the aristocracy, tracing his family back to Charlemagne – which turned out to be true”, The Irish Times article referred to above tells us.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TPWXWGLO3BEEBJKJ6EGTVVLLG4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Curiously, there is little reference in Omniana to his architectural achievements but The Irish Times article just cited may have the explanation: “The things that mattered most to Fuller – pedigree, social connections, a ‘gentlemanly’ disdain for the necessity of working for a living (which perhaps accounts for his attitude to filing and the relative lack of any architectural musings or descriptions in his autobiography) – are ironically perhaps the most potent reasons why he is relatively forgotten today.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IJVJAUC6RFYFOLQGFF4JRSKMA","additional_properties":{},"content":"He died at his residence on Eglinton Road, Donnybrook and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery. His wife, son and daughter survived him; three other children predeceased him. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UVRNMEBO7ZHFVFEARI5KF2DGWI","additional_properties":{},"content":"His wife died eight months after him and on their gravestone in Mount Jerome is carved: “Their spirits departed in peace with the viaticum of a conscience void of enmity of offence.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4DIDWPYPUFGK3MT5Y74TFULI5Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"The actress Peggy Cummins was his great-granddaughter.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"He oversaw the building and renovation of churches all over Ireland"},"display_date":"2024-12-02T18:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Form and function – Brian Maye on architect and novelist James Franklin Fuller ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"DYA4M5WBZFGPJLQZP4J3JNC62M","auth":{"1":"7ac96abfc0625b9b4696978f19055818da8db34c3e5756bd5f4730750bfd8abc"},"focal_point":{"x":383,"y":230},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DYA4M5WBZFGPJLQZP4J3JNC62M.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/02/form-and-function-brian-maye-on-architect-and-novelist-james-franklin-fuller/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"6FMJUJ3GNJDD3KQ6A2PA3HQBEY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":326,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/aa6bf830-44b4-4404-a134-681372052b77/versions/1733007201/media/6d80d774e478db0a080d4af25cba4b59_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/01/belleek-prospect-brian-maye-on-pottery-entrepreneur-robert-williams-armstrong/","content_elements":[{"_id":"QFSBYTH2MRBGZAOL73LOLZFD7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186016},"content":"Although he co-founded what turned out to be one of Ireland’s most successful pottery manufacturers, when his business partner died, the latter’s son refused to recognise his partnership, leading to litigation that probably brought on his premature death. It was a sad ending to such a thriving and admirable enterprise. The pottery in question is Belleek Pottery and the person in question is architect and engineer Robert Williams Armstrong, who was born 200 years ago on December 1st (this date is not certain as one source gives January 1st, 1824).","type":"text"},{"_id":"IW34WMOZBNFMFNMPTQ4U2ORVDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186017},"content":"He was born near Granard, Co Longford, the son of Francis Armstrong, an architect and builder.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QANJ6CX2S5FUNK4OWKCM3X57Q4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186018},"content":"Little is known of his education but he may be the Robert Armstrong who entered the Dublin Society’s School of Drawing in Architecture in 1837, according to the Dictionary of Irish Architects’ website. In any event, he trained as an architect and civil engineer and exhibited designs for a parish church and a collegiate school at the Royal Hibernian Academy (1848-49) and various designs at the Royal Academy, London (1848-57), and received several architectural commissions in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGS7U35RE5GTXK43ZZT33JEX3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186019},"content":"According to Helen Andrews, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, he displayed an early aptitude for pottery and he established a practice with Minton & Co pottery in Stoke-on-Trent and the Royal Porcelain Works, Worcester. At Worcester, he learned about ceramics and was employed by the works’ director, WH Kerr, who was from Dublin and became his friend, adviser and agent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K6KKIH2OSJDD3DFTVNVN3IPYQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186020},"content":"“Appreciating the economic potential of the rich natural resources, including deposits of kaolin and feldspar, on the estate of John Caldwell Bloomfield at Belleek, Co Fermanagh, Armstrong formed a partnership with Dublin businessman David McBirney, and they founded what was subsequently Ireland’s most successful pottery at Belleek, trading under the name of D McBirney and Co,” Helen Andrews tells us. (McBirney also established the famous department store that was such a well-known Dublin landmark on Aston Quay until it closed 40 years ago.)","type":"text"},{"_id":"BCE4NYNWMNEDHBMTJTHOJ43BCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186021},"content":"Armstrong designed the factory in the form of an imposing country house and also specified the machinery to be installed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IA7R4QJL6FAQFB2FGGTDEIDVJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186022},"content":"It was built between 1859 and 1862 and entered regular production in 1863, producing high-quality but utilitarian earthenware, including domestic and sanitary ware, the mechanical mass-production process being patented by Armstrong.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5RYHLNUNJJEBNHGPJN624BOQMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186023},"content":"However, the intention was to produce porcelain and he played the leading role in bringing this about in his capacity as manager and art director.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4DGGLTIESRARNNHIEQXGXS3KJM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186024},"content":"New ceramic wares, glazes and designs unique to Belleek were developed under his supervision and he wrote “Memorandums of Various Matters Connected with Pottery Bodies and Glazes Collected or Invented by Robert W. Armstrong Commenced at Belleek, Enniskillen 1860″, which amounted to eight volumes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SYJZAN3RJJHMRA22DVRPBHCRTE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186025},"content":"Skilled potters from England were brought in from about 1863 onwards and the fine Belleek Parian porcelain emerged as “busts, statuettes, tableware and ornaments of great skill, artistry and varied designs were produced, including such notable pieces as ‘The Prisoner of Love’, ‘Dickens’ and ‘Erin Awakening from Her Slumbers’,” (Helen Andrews). Armstrong won some notable and important patronage, including that of Queen Victoria, and plaudits from influential art publications. Orders came from all over the world and national and international awards followed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RDR67X6HPZG2HJCN2OUFPGVK5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186026},"content":"The enterprise was thriving, with some 170 employed by 1882, but McBirney unfortunately died that year and his son Robert decided to sell the business.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AVWWWHLVBVEKVECAOZNEZEHFXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186027},"content":"As no written contract existed to show Armstrong’s partnership, Robert McBirney refused to recognise any claims on his part; this meant he faced financial ruin as he had invested all his money in the business. Therefore, he opposed the sale and a protracted legal battle followed, during which he died suddenly on January 27th, 1884, at 59. Helen Andrews tells us that Belleek Pottery was closed and then sold to a consortium of local businessmen later that year, “who paid a paltry sum for patents to Armstrong’s widow”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VFUJXSWNFZEBDFXVOVFBK3EXEQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186028},"content":"It was a poor reward for so much hard work and imaginative input involving such a wide range of skills.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F45JKJBFKVDVDAYM3KEL5XRGKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186029},"content":"Armstrong had married in 1848 Anna Langley Nairn, who was an artist. Dublin-born, into an artistic family, she became a reputed landscape artist who exhibited at the RHA, and she designed some of the early Belleek ornamental porcelain especially employing marine and botanical images. She combined her talents with William Wood Gallimore, who came from Stoke-on-Trent to work for Belleek in 1863, and they produced more than 500 designs together.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J6U5QG6TPRBOBBNSZAGFYXNCGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186030},"content":"The Armstrongs had at least four children and many members of the family later emigrated to Australia.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NRJD2IIKRNFIHL6QOYQ72VC76I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186031},"content":"His eight-volume “Memorandums” are in the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney; the National Museum of Ireland has photocopies of seven of the volumes, the eighth being too fragile to copy.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"Armstrong’s drive, vision and hard work were poorly rewarded"},"display_date":"2024-12-01T18:53:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Belleek prospect – Brian Maye on pottery entrepreneur Robert Williams Armstrong ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"S7NY7CMMOJADLGUNFSNFKRFTX4","auth":{"1":"aeb55a101cb9de1ed24d23f3a3d44bae99829db94173821d8fa515d30ed4a1ab"},"focal_point":{"x":240,"y":210},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/S7NY7CMMOJADLGUNFSNFKRFTX4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/01/belleek-prospect-brian-maye-on-pottery-entrepreneur-robert-williams-armstrong/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"O2MBAJNN2ZERXHYEVU575U6HMU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":300,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/766c7d1d-8674-41fc-9bc0-0ebd5385a39a/versions/1732908699/media/d93844291fc3f48a0fc5cc9631653903_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/29/for-the-birds-frank-mcnally-on-folklorist-and-freedom-fighter-ernie-omalley/","content_elements":[{"_id":"TCKTTLD4KJFTJAMRHMTJS6F5LQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013629},"content":"Among the stories in The Enchanted Bay: Tales and Legends from Ernie O’Malley’s Irish Folklore Collection – just published by Merrion Press – is one called “A Girl is Taken from the Bird’s Nest”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H3UAPLPHEZEDRFALKPO56LIO7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013630},"content":"The title suggests a fairy tale, perhaps along the lines of the Children of Lir. But on closer inspection, this is more a piece of oral history.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EKZPDLH6QNGGHETB7XU7ZEZ6RA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013631},"content":"The Bird’s Nest in question was an evangelical “colony” in Achill during the Famine years, where children were fed and educated in return for becoming Protestant (“jumpers” was the term for them in local vernacular).","type":"text"},{"_id":"CG72HMHJ3BFHBEJ7COGR3V5RXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013632},"content":"In this case, the impoverished parents of a girl named Maggie arranged for her to go to the colony after their deaths.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K54ZVD65C5AXFBLGUEXWYUB24A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013633},"content":"Then other, devoutly Catholic members of the family hatched to a plot to rescue her and, despite a posse of “other jumpers” despatched from the colony to bring her back, they made good her escape.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HKZUHKV4ZJAARFOIOEEREVE2X4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013634},"content":"Maggie was first brought to a convent in Westport and later, like many in these stories – which are set mainly in western Mayo – she emigrated. Or “went over to America”, as the locals phrased it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4KIUBNZY7REURHDEUGAT2FMZNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013635},"content":"O’Malley’s chief contribution to Irish literature will remain the two best-written accounts of the revolutionary period: On Another Man’s Wound (about the War of Independence) and The Singing Flame (about the Civil War).","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7MZMAJKYZAXRAI2JGU6AZ2WDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013636},"content":"But he was also a part-time collector of folk stories, starting while he travelled the country as an IRA organiser during that period and culminating with a more deliberate survey or the lore of Clew Bay and its surrounds in 1939-42. Hence this belated anthology, partly edited by his son Cormac.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YY3VSHVZGFFT3ET72RHOSMVANI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013637},"content":"Stories of jumpers aside, the collection is full of such classic Irish folk themes as féar gortach (“hungry grass”), which confers insatiable hunger on anyone who treads on it; ceo draíochta (“fairy mist”), a sudden, bewildering fog; and fóidín mearbhaill (“disorienting sod”), also likely to lead you astray.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QTXPULND2BEHVMRLRJVFF6GJ7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013638},"content":"In an afterward to the anthology by Patrick J O’Mahony, we’re told that a young IRA officer once stood on a fóidín mearhbhaill in the Wicklow Mountains. As explained to him afterwards by his mother and other local elders, he had disturbed the “Good People” (ie fairies). Happily, he was able to break the spell by sitting down.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KYG2SERRQ5CS7HMYSUMZYOVW6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013639},"content":"O’Malley’s slim if charming collection was part of a concerted effort in the early years of independence to preserve a tradition then in steady decline.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2PEN7BSJNZEBZGGZODOVJ23UAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013640},"content":"Hence the folklorist Thomas Johnson Westropp, an occasional visitor to the west in the early 1920s, wishing that those permanently resident there would preserve their traditions themselves: “but few indeed show interest in such a pursuit, and the old Ireland is passing away forever, more or less speedily.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z4TMHGD3LJCOFHGJ5HZJVQHKCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013641},"content":"O’Malley did his part to preserve it, for which he deserves credit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q26KFNJB6VFWLPQ7KM7FGKMLR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013642},"content":"Unfortunately, mention of old Ireland passing away forever also reminds me of one of his less glorious contributions to archival history, when on June 30th, 1922, he presided over the destruction of the Irish Public Records Office in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UYHLLZJ7EJHALFVITGJUIH6QIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013643},"content":"As Ireland descended into Civil War. Anti-Treaty forces in the Four Courts had stored their munitions in the Records Office, defying repeated Free State warnings – oral and written – that they were endangering a priceless archive.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5YDTM7V4BVFEVCVYVFYXQIQZZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013644},"content":"In effect, history was held hostage in the stand-off. And when the shells fell and mines detonated, the hostage paid the price. As Tom Garvin wrote elsewhere in these pages a while back:","type":"text"},{"_id":"WROFAYP5Z5CCDCRKYJJVEFJUF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013645},"content":"“At least 13 wired and booby-trapped mines were disarmed by Irish Army soldiers after the surrender, but one cleverly concealed ‘connected mine’ was accidentally triggered. The mine dutifully went off, maiming 20 soldiers and blowing the Strong Room of the Public Records Office and its precious national records to molecules.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"M7ZUFHW3FNEMTDMX7CHPZXF3F4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013646},"content":"O’Malley, by then in command of the Republicans within, would later express regret that they hadn’t taken out more of the “Staters”. He was less effusive about the destruction of the records.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PDY5KO5ECRHHHLHK5GU6QBPRBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013647},"content":"But the accompanying fires inspired the title of his Civil War memoir, The Singing Flame.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CZREC2PUEBCTDJCHLT5VZE6DVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013648},"content":"And speaking of birds’ nests, he resorted to avian imagery to better describe how the archive went up in smoke.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QGR2Q22ODNE6VP5XVU2ZKBPARY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013649},"content":"Against the dark backdrop, leaves of paper from the flames looked like “hovering white birds”, he wrote. Elsewhere, he describes them “gyrating in the upper air like seagulls”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UQ6SSMJGWNEW5DPLB2LTPFJ36I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013650},"content":"That was the sort of detail that made O’Malley such an evocative writer, setting him apart from other soldiers of the period who published more martial memoirs, including Tom Barry and Dan Breen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3AAL7UUM4ZD5ZGAHKK2B56U4IY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013651},"content":"Among his imagined seagulls, alas, were the census records from 1821 to 1851; church records dating from the 12th century; court records from the 13th century.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QND6JLG2MNGQXHNXRKG3FHM7B4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013652},"content":"There were also ancient wills, financial documents, military records, details of imprisonment and transportation, including hand-written appeals for clemency. All irreplaceable and all reduced to ashes by the bitterness into which the pro-and-anti-Treaty forces had fallen.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"An evocative writer"},"display_date":"2024-11-29T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"For the birds — Frank McNally on folklorist and freedom fighter Ernie O’Malley","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"AFXRRFUYL5EXHJQKS24QXZ6KXI","auth":{"1":"3f306b7f8a94de581d112481deb42bb40fe5210537cd1dc6d5a9e205ba143a6b"},"focal_point":{"x":182,"y":114},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/AFXRRFUYL5EXHJQKS24QXZ6KXI.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/29/for-the-birds-frank-mcnally-on-folklorist-and-freedom-fighter-ernie-omalley/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"T5EJZS3IKNAADCJVRFSF5RO6QE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":324,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/c38d83d1-1f8d-4293-9db1-f152a9b544ea/versions/1732818465/media/dbc2a5c00e48807ae0f6e4310b01165d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/28/swift-justice-frank-mcnally-on-the-height-of-the-drapiers-letters-controversy/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NZHENXXDLZBZVKQST6THMYASIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917438},"content":"Three hundred years ago this autumn, Ireland was convulsed by the controversy of Wood’s Halfpence and the campaign against it by one “M.B., Drapier”, a thinly disguised Jonathan Swift.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2ETRJEVFFZA6FD2MLTBPQNIL64","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917439},"content":"English Ironmonger William Wood had secured his lucrative contract for an Irish coinage in 1722, partly by bribing the King’s mistress.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5SEI2UDTWRAUVHMERCHVZ3BH5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917440},"content":"Rumours of the coins’ poor quality were not allayed by assurances of their purity from the Master of the Mint, Isaac Newton, since Wood had supplied the samples for testing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDBDCLDKFBFOFFTK5WSMMQTL3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917441},"content":"In March 1724, the first of a series of protest pamphlets appeared, headed “A Letter to the Shopkeepers, Tradesmen, Farmers, and Common People of Ireland”, ostensibly written by an obscure “Drapier” (ie draper).","type":"text"},{"_id":"NK6AEGPS5BEGVH64XZ6MMHZSHI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917442},"content":"Two other letters followed in August: “To Mr Harding the Printer” and “To the Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdom of Ireland”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5EO55PPOIRBX7FZSMMCUZI6LPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917443},"content":"By autumn, the country was “in a very fever of excitement”, as one historian put it: “Everywhere meetings were held for the purpose of expressing indignation against the imposition, and addresses from brewers, butchers, flying stationers, and townspeople generally, were sent in ...”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7EZS66W4YZGNRDUBEGBL32HPMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917444},"content":"Swift’s campaign was not confined to letters. He also fanned the flames with songs and poems, written for a popular audience. Typical of these was a drinking ballad that exploited the coin-maker’s surname for crude word plays, as attributed here to the stereotypical Irishman “Teague” (ie Tadhg or “Taig”):","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGOVKWE3TVE5ZFSSTF76P545AU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917445},"content":"“I hear among scholars there is a great Doubt/From what kind of tree this Wood is hewn out./Teague made a good pun by a Brogue in his Speech,/And said: By my Shoul he’s the Son of a Beech.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YBWLFGKG2NBRDHSEKNWBJHB4OA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917446},"content":"In October, the Drapier turned up the heat with his boldest pamphlet yet: “A Letter to the Whole People of Ireland.” This made clear it was not just the coinage that was at stake but national freedom: “[B]y the laws of GOD, of NATURE, of NATIONS, and of your own COUNTRY, you ARE and OUGHT to be as FREE a people as your brethren in England.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7HIVE7NW7FHG7HHS2L245X2QIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917447},"content":"That same month, Englishman John Carteret – who knew Swift from London – was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and approved a £300 reward for the discovery of the author of this “wicked and malicious pamphlet”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OCQY6QG2ARFVHE6BTNRBNLFAVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917448},"content":"According to a much-repeated story, told by Thomas Sheridan (grandfather of the playwright Richard Brinsley) and others, Swift’s butler was suspiciously late coming home the night the reward was posted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FHRJPCXJ2ZGJNPYNTDADTF6DUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917449},"content":"This caused the outraged Dean to lock the doors and sack him next morning until Sheridan successfully appealed for mercy. Although perpetuated by Swift himself, the story has been dismissed as “18th-century sensationalism”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BJKL6UXKYZGCPMS7ZJXQT7ZBMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917450},"content":"The truth, it seems, is that Swift had little fear of being identified. When the Drapier’s printer John Harding was arrested on November 7th, the Dean wrote in his own name to the Grand Jury that would try Harding, all but outing himself as the true author, and urging them to drop the charges. To the outrage of the Lord Chief Justice, William Whitshed, the jury did just that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MT3MKLU6XVBA3EXT5XWAJ2PUVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917451},"content":"Whitshed had already earned Swift’s enmity with the 1720 prosecution of another printer, Edward Waters, for the pamphlet “On the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WOXHK2474VEAXBBBD3SZDFVTJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917452},"content":"There, the anonymous Swift advised “utterly rejecting and renouncing everything wearable that comes from England” and – in a phrase that would be revived two centuries later, urged readers to “burn every Thing [English], except their People and their Coals.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CZ5FD6KJYFEQ5GTG5A7F7LDO6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917453},"content":"Whitshed secured a guilty verdict for Waters only after a jury had nine times tried to acquit. In the case of Harding, on November 21st, 1724, he sent the jury back a mere three times – unsuccessfully – but it was enough to attract the renewed focus of Swift’s satirical pen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3SUGNWBZHJFTPPZJOYTQZMWW5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917454},"content":"For that, no subject was considered too sensitive. Not even the fact that, 50 years earlier, Whitshed’s maternal grandfather had taken his own life, apparently in Christchurch Cathedral. Or that the grandfather’s son had married a woman presumed to be a widow whose husband had later reappeared alive, rendering children of the second marriage illegitimate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3RJQI2GU6ZBRLPHNDWWP7WWIQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917455},"content":"Both these details featured in “Verses Occasioned by Whitshed’s Motto on his Coach”. The motto was “Libertas et Natale Solum” (“Liberty and my Native Land”). In which vein, the poem begins: “Liberty & natale Solum: Fine words! I wonder where you stole ‘em.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OQCK5RQ3FZCZ3KXOMAOXVVZWPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917456},"content":"Later comes this: “In Church your Grandsire cut his Throat;/To do the job too long he tarry’d,/He should have had my hearty Vote,/To cut his throat before he marry’d.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VCSP73MAWFHDVFVAOQM6BLSV5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917457},"content":"Whitshed’s ambitions to be Lord Chancellor did not survive the notoriety. Nor did he himself, for long. He died in 1727, aged only 48, his end seemingly hastened by the stress.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FUGFCHQR3BCXRBOMOCQNS7CPIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917458},"content":"Drapier had meantime published another letter, to Lord Viscount Molesworth, in December 1724. This was the knock-out blow to an already to an already punch-drunk opponent. There would be one more in the series – although it had probably been written earlier, at the height of the campaign, to be published only when the row had subsided.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UVWTJ2ZI6BFQVOYVRP4Q4QDAVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917459},"content":"The last was headed: “An humble address to both Houses of Parliament”. But there was nothing humble about it. By Christmas 1724, the Drapier had effectively won. His triumph was complete the following September, when Wood’s patent was withdrawn.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Jonathan Swift also fanned the flames with songs and poems written for a popular audience"},"display_date":"2024-11-28T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Swift justice – Frank McNally on the height of the Drapier’s Letters controversy ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"HAPAJGY6GZF2VFGZMLHINWHZY4","auth":{"1":"8c0eb76628d1c9c9c8da31454bc7715d651bbe2b7cfd16c7188aba60a89f9d07"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/HAPAJGY6GZF2VFGZMLHINWHZY4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/28/swift-justice-frank-mcnally-on-the-height-of-the-drapiers-letters-controversy/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"6NG5FZYMVJEFZMIJXM463BXLBI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":327,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/9438e207-555b-45e9-b43f-143982f3e555/versions/1732735815/media/b1374465c04c847907d796fb2ed3d507_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/27/parallel-projection-frank-mcnally-on-watching-gladiator-ii-and-soundtrack-to-a-coup-detat-back-to-back/","content_elements":[{"_id":"RCNPJAXYDNGQ7K3RA422SA5KG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983106},"content":"On successive visits to the cinema recently, by weird coincidence, I saw two films on the theme of extreme violence, European imperialism, and the exploitation of Africa, in both of which young Irishmen played unlikely heroic roles.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y2SEZCBVQVDK3K5Y4X5CT5PXYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983107},"content":"The similarities between Gladiator II and Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat are otherwise slight, it must be said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4DS6HTKNMZCFHPZ6HOB5NPQZI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983108},"content":"I quite enjoyed the former, but only after switching my phone and critical faculties to silent for the duration. This stopped me Googling, mid-movie, whether the ancient Romans really had sharks swimming in the Colosseum (no), or whether gladiators could have ridden on the backs of charging rhinoceroses (maybe).","type":"text"},{"_id":"3P3XJXRO3RC75LWZE6XR2ZIZJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983109},"content":"Annoyingly, I somehow missed the scene where a Roman nobleman reads a newspaper in a café. Was he poring over the sports pages? Or the review section? (“The newspapers were right. Blood was general, all over the arena”)?","type":"text"},{"_id":"MOKL2D6BHRGZ3FC3BT7PNPOX2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983110},"content":"Either way, I can’t help approving of that anachronism. Any evidence of the continued relevance of print media is welcome, as far as I’m concerned, even when backdated to 1,400 years before newspapers were invented.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q73I47PN3NEUVJK7GUYR7G7NVA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983111},"content":"In other news, it was reassuring to see Paul Mescal fill the space vacated by Russell Crowe while still looking like a more-or-less average Irishman. All we need is sympathetic lighting, really.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BKQQ3UBEQJDYDLUUTO2UP4KOWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983112},"content":"As for Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, calling Conor Cruise O’Brien “young” in the context of the events portrayed might, I suppose, be an overstatement: he was 43 at the time. “Heroic” may be controversial too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6YJXVYGANVDG5FZBT5SEURKA3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983113},"content":"In a previous film about Irish involvement in the Congo crisis of 1960, The Siege of Jadotville (2016), O’Brien was portrayed as a self-preserving pantomime villain. But in this new Belgian documentary, the then UN head of mission in the Congo also gets sympathetic lighting, at least in comparison with those around him, and benefits accordingly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JMQQRNGELZHJLG7YOTKYAIV2XI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983114},"content":"The film foregrounds jazz music as both accompaniment and accomplice (touring musicians were used as propaganda, even sometimes decoys, by the US) in the dark deeds of the period. This makes for a lot of irony, in which the awfulness of what’s happening hides under saxophone riffs and drum solos.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5K3BBQQABFH25AQKDTDCQJ52UQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983115},"content":"It falls to O’Brien, recorded in subsequent interviews but also channelled by his son Patrick in readings from the memoir To Katanga and Back, to provide a moral narrative: filling in the details – ranging from incompetence to evil – about how western powers conspired to thwart Congolese independence and condemn the country’s first legitimate prime minister to death.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NFZK4TCLH5A5ZEDYRCPMXEGPLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983116},"content":"O’Brien’s is not the only Irish voice in the documentary, although the other one goes unbilled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VNW3LJWOJJAYREM5VOCC4TE6HY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983117},"content":"Beside the hapless Dag Hammarskjold at the stormy UN general assemblies, struggling to keep order amid the objections of a shoe-wielding Nikita Khrushchev and others, is a chairman with unmistakably Patrician-Irish tones. I had to look him up to be reminded this was Frederick Boland, our ambassador to the UN then, now perhaps best known as father of the poet Eavan.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6LBUSEVIHBCXVKGCMB4WYK3ZNM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983118},"content":"One other minor revelation of the film was how much the young Fidel Castro – in his broth-of-a-revolutionary-boy phase – reminded me of someone I knew. Then it hit me. He and Liam Neeson at a similar vintage could have been twins.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HPECRJKEEFH7BAEUB725EDNID4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983119},"content":"The violence of Gladiator, despite Hollywood’s best attempts at realism, is the kind designed for eating popcorn to. The violence in Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, despite being heavily edited or detailed only in narration, retains the capacity to shock.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TD74R3TP6BH63AWEG7NDBXXD6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983120},"content":"It is claimed at one point, for example, that photojournalists covering the Belgian war against pro-independence forces could “buy” a live execution for €500. This is accompanied by footage before and after the shooting of a Congolese rebel, which was used by the Italian director Gualtiero Jacopetti.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TLQH6DZQJRA3ZHA5K7O6YPQGLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983121},"content":"A pioneer of “shockumentary” film making, Jacopetti was later charged with murder back in Italy for allegedly staging such scenes but acquitted. Even so, the critic Roger Ebert, called his Africa Addio (“Goodbye Africa”) “brutal, dishonest, and racist”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MIX3ANNEB5A7RBIK2K3OI2VNXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983122},"content":"Then there is a voice-over in which a man described as a South African mercenary – although speaking with a strong Scottish accent – cheerfully defends his job of killing men, women, and children for money.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OWUL4WMK7JALLMU27SNSJ6LBYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983123},"content":"It was “the Belgians’ idea,” he says, but he doesn’t mind because his victims are “cannibals”, not “normal people”. There was no comparison, he implied, with “shooting Irishmen or Germans”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7HA6HNR7LFDQ3D2J272E4RNW5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983124},"content":"However “well done” it might be, the violence of Gladiator is anaesthetised by the passage of two millennia since the events depicted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2YORRN36JBD5TFPKFAVVHQDEOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983125},"content":"With the Congo, by contrast, we can’t even console ourselves that 60 years have elapsed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H4NRDN7OOJGBRFC75JJAQDCCWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983126},"content":"Back then, it was the country’s rich uranium deposits that made it a pawn in the Cold War.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YXF5GQR6FBHW5DGKVHCB7GOFJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983127},"content":"But wealth in other minerals, notably cobalt – as used in batteries – has made war, corruption, and “modern-day slavery” a near constant in the decades since.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZ42TXEKMZDHRH3QWRPIQ2YKQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983128},"content":"Towards the end of the two-and-a-half-hour documentary comes a disconcerting moment where the action seems to have cut to a commercial break, advertising iPhones. Then you realise that no, this is still part of the story. Cue a guilty moment when, soon afterwards, you turn your own phone back on.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Extreme violence and European imperialism"},"display_date":"2024-11-27T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Parallel projection – Frank McNally on watching Gladiator II and Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat back-to-back","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3OHHVMUHCFC6FNONBVPEI2J6MI","auth":{"1":"0c2689aa2deb5eb04d8f06378e59e7b8e3fa21a69b0876d664591e725594fca0"},"focal_point":{"x":129,"y":64},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3OHHVMUHCFC6FNONBVPEI2J6MI.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/27/parallel-projection-frank-mcnally-on-watching-gladiator-ii-and-soundtrack-to-a-coup-detat-back-to-back/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"TJY5TU4F5RGSHPXLOCCTR777ZY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":318,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/3eac0ca3-3006-45a2-9a48-20b8118aee0e/versions/1732646397/media/5b0e8f37ffd98c7cc7530ae5bc0cc686_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/26/when-hospitality-begins-at-home-frank-mcnally-on-having-a-great-welcome-for-yourself/","content_elements":[{"_id":"M5KFIAQZOFB6JMNMIIXMFWE2BM","additional_properties":{},"content":"In conversation with a friend the other day, mildly disparaging a mutual acquaintance, I reached for what I used to think was a very common Irish expression: “He has a great welcome for himself.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"T3QVBJEKEJG7LKKJALIKQVJQ6E","additional_properties":{},"content":"But not for the first time in my recent experience, this drew a puzzled response. My friend somehow hadn’t heard it before. So once more I had to explain that it referred to a person who was suffering from a superfluity of self-esteem, not all earned.","type":"text"},{"_id":"47KXBKUQR5AQ7C3KLB6HR5UMIM","additional_properties":{},"content":"I wondered again if the phrase – clearly descended from an older Irish one, or so I assumed – was on the way out. Then I looked it up. Now I’m not sure if it’s old at all and am wondering where and how it ever came in.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P2XN2RBCAVCFVD46MBNV4AEEBU","additional_properties":{},"content":"My first point of inquiry, as usual, was Terry Dolan’s Dictionary of Hiberno-English, which has no mention of it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PGDKFXPFENEDFGCVRT42OOZJYY","additional_properties":{},"content":"From there I consulted Patrick Dinneen’s famously inclusive Irish-English lexicon, much lampooned by Myles na gCopaleen for finding layers of meaning that had previously eluded even the greatest of gaeilgeoirí (eg Myles).","type":"text"},{"_id":"CEALQBJ4ANF7PMCVREI3AZ5EVY","additional_properties":{},"content":"And true to form, under the heading fáilte, Dinneen includes such exotica as fáilte gealgáire, “the winning pleasantness of a light-hearted laugh”. But as for somebody having a great welcome for him/herself, that dictionary has nothing to say either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKPSD32BHNB7PBVYX24HO3XTJU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Had Myles ever used the phrase, I now wondered? Apparently not. A search of the Irish Times archive suggests “a great welcome for himself” postdates Cruiskeen Lawn by decades, being first used by Deaglán de Bréadún in 1995.","type":"text"},{"_id":"67G37IENSVH7HFUFAYZ5SZAV6I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Subsequent appearances include my own A History of Ireland in 100 insults (2012), where it featured at no. 57 (just ahead of a phrase of broadly similar import, “he’s running around like a dog with two mickeys”, at 58).","type":"text"},{"_id":"XFMTC7DF6VETRGHA3QUDI4SW34","additional_properties":{},"content":"But even in a database of Ireland’s provincial newspapers, the great self-extended welcome seems relatively modern.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BSWCQVFWAJH57LCU2YCVE66WKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"The oldest example I can find is from the Donegal Democrat in November 1943, where the local news for Kinlough included the visit of a mysterious gypsy woman, returning to the area after what she claimed was many years of absence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MCFZ7NRZKNHCLG5FWMZR45ZJYM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Affecting surprise that nobody knew her, she “remembered the locality distinctly and had, apparently, a great welcome for herself back to it”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GWUWY6WC4RBRDDSQWUXGRDB2SM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Only after extensive researches about who was now who, however, did she get around to telling the locals’ fortunes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R6RCARONYFGQRKJBGNPTG5HDJQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"After that, there are sporadic occurrences of the phrase in the 1970s and 1980s, as for example when the Western Journal quotes somebody on a newly elected TD for Mayo, Pádraig Flynn: “‘I’ll give him this,’ chuckled John Callanan ‘he certainly has great welcome for himself.’”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q3KTANYKKZBODDSOP4HECSRSKM","additional_properties":{},"content":"The lack of an indefinite article there may be interesting. When I mentioned my quest to David Stifter, Professor of Old Irish at Maynooth, he wasn’t familiar with the expression either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RU3WQZZZPRFTPMRYUVBUCP2BHE","additional_properties":{},"content":"But he guessed its origins might be in the “ambiguity of Irish fáilte”, which originally meant “joy, happiness” before it came to mean “welcome”, now its main job.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MPOXQ267FVANPOKJO4SDI53TZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I suspect that this lies behind that Hiberno-English phrase, ie someone extrapolating from the Irish practice that a word seemingly meaning ‘welcome’ can occasionally be used for joy,” says David, who agrees that the lack of earlier examples in English seems odd.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ES7LEGO3HJC3LLMNFKRMXIKNKY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Getting back to Dinneen, he also includes all the usual denominations of the Irish fáilte: céad (a hundred), míle (a thousand), and of course céad míle (a hundred thousand), which remains the hospitality industry standard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I377KH4IQFFMREEBXLJILDBDKY","additional_properties":{},"content":"More interestingly, he claims that “fáilte is daichead”, which he translates/paraphrases as “forty-one welcomes”, is common too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZEX55RGDWBEFLINAHCKRX3T66I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Why 41? It seems a rather obscure number, devoid of any great mathematic or mystical qualities (unlike, say, 42, which according to Douglas Adams is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything).","type":"text"},{"_id":"UFPHUSZVSRCKJCJHA6V66XW6JI","additional_properties":{},"content":"But I suppose it’s one more than another industry standard: the number of shades of green, as recorded by Johnny Cash. Maybe we should bring the “Forty-one Welcomes” back, in place of a hundred thousand, as the slogan for a more sustainable tourism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFJMFTEARNATBDTTLVSNEV3GDU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another curiosity in Dinneen is “O’Kelly’s welcome”, which I had to look up. The man in question was William Buí Ó Ceallaigh, a 14th-century chieftain in Connacht, who had a great welcome for others if not himself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G4LKOQBJW5BA3OFRVONDMLFNHM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Specifically, on Christmas Day 1351, he invited poets, writers, and artists from all over Ireland to his home. Such was the generosity of his hospitality (and/or the influence of his guest list) it remained proverbial six centuries later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K4JDN24RQJFW7BJIL5HLP4JLO4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Mind you, that one doesn’t make it into Patrick Weston Joyce’s classic English as We Speak it in Ireland (1910). Nor does the self-extended welcome of our enquiries.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ISFWDGZL2JFYFOCWNN622BPB6U","additional_properties":{},"content":"And speaking of Joyces, neither Ulysses nor Finnegans Wake appears to include the latter phrase either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6XY66HLKYVHRTEUGPKJ4HXG7II","additional_properties":{},"content":"But I’m reminded in passing of the celebrated closing passage from Portrait of the Artist, where the author says this: “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"RZLE22O26NATVEZDRZXRNRUKNI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Now there was a man with a great welcome for himself.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"The great self-extended welcome seems relatively modern"},"display_date":"2024-11-26T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"When hospitality begins at home – Frank McNally on having a great welcome for yourself","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"EYQLUCOXX5A4JOETRPDDNJKLWM","auth":{"1":"d023d09ef286fd1fca4f5ef7289c7d4e9362442a8a7c00c160bc7450e3106c50"},"focal_point":{"x":526,"y":288},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/EYQLUCOXX5A4JOETRPDDNJKLWM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/26/when-hospitality-begins-at-home-frank-mcnally-on-having-a-great-welcome-for-yourself/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"MCURLB3OVZAEBOFB4N3OTBWDOA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":287,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/b7dd0599-c842-499f-af6f-6855c7f8e17c/versions/1732561788/media/41fdf10ff6d14624db6e068a4db20470_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/25/revving-up-the-shamrock-alison-healy-on-the-car-that-never-quite-got-motoring/","content_elements":[{"_id":"CGJ576AJZFHE5O7LPJ6PKPPMJM","additional_properties":{},"content":"It was Wilbur Curtis’s dream to see convoys of Shamrock cars cruising around the streets and highways of America. Instead, the Irish-made car is a collector’s item, and a cautionary tale if you are thinking of investing in something you have no knowledge of. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4AF5IGMAA5A73H73S7JPOIYCPU","additional_properties":{},"content":"It all started when the wealthy American businessman visited his wife’s family in Ireland around 1957. He was the inventor of the glass coffee pot and had made his fortune manufacturing coffee-making equipment. Shocked at the poverty in 1950s Ireland, he decided to do something about it. The plan involved inventing a new luxury convertible that would be manufactured in Ireland and exported to the US. It would be an Irish version of the Thunderbird but cost half the price. He envisaged exporting 10,000 cars a year, at $2,495 a pop.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SQ7ND5VYGNGHVB4UIBGPZPRZLU","additional_properties":{},"content":"The first Shamrock prototype was built 65 years ago in Guildford and shipped off to the US to generate interest, while he worked on opening his Irish production plant. The Irish connection was hyped up in an article in Mechanix Illustrated magazine, which has been reproduced by the Vintage News Daily website. Faith and begorrah, every Irish cliché you can think of was shoe-horned into the article. “It doesn’t run on poteen and there’s divil a leprechaun under the hood but the Shamrock is as Irish as Paddy’s pig – and a good deal faster,” the writer enthused.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OCRZOQJAKBD7XKZH2ARYYT7UKQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"The promotional images released by the company in April 1959 will also raise eyebrows, but for a different reason. They include several photographs of a woman sitting in the boot of the car, because of course the first question any car buyer asks is: does the boot comfortably fit a grown woman? This model looked very comfortable anyway as she prepared to close the boot lid on herself and her floral dress.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UXFO4Q6CCBBXNEDSZ44PUBPA3E","additional_properties":{},"content":"But the car had bigger problems than its questionable promotional photographs. It was designed by a Midget car racer, Alvin “Spike” Rhiando who appeared to have made some basic design errors. The body was fibreglass, which made it lighter, but the 1.5 litre engine was still too small for the 17-foot-long car, so it was not powerful enough for the Americans.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MJ36WV24ANDVNDQUAMTYVDNTMA","additional_properties":{},"content":"When it featured in a 2001 Top Gear programme, the presenter Andy Wilman said the tiny chassis meant it handled like “a mouse with an ironing board on its back”. And the shrouded rear wheels meant you couldn’t change the rear tyres without dropping the entire rear axle unit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WPW3XKE62BEYNKI3P7BKCUNCZE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Although he was said to have Irish heritage, poor Wilbur did not have the luck of the Irish as he tried to get his project up and running. He wanted to open the factory in Tralee but his vision was not enthusiastically embraced by the powers-that-be in Kerry so he shifted his attention further north and opened his factory in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, in 1960. But he couldn’t get any American distributors and he pulled the handbrake on the enterprise less than a year after the factory opened. Reports vary on how many cars were produced but vintage car enthusiast Paddy Byrne from Drogheda believes it was only nine.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WYOQDS3ZMVAKFGWKYVUFROTJRQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It was his Shamrock car that featured in that Top Gear programme. It now has 3,500 miles on the clock and is still tootling along. He has also started refurbishing another Shamrock. Even though the cars are as rare as hen’s teeth, he is adamant that neither one is for sale.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M37MHXQ2CBHGRODCBICURQKSVY","additional_properties":{},"content":"And while motoring enthusiasts might have disparaged the car design, he ignores the doomsayers. “You will get the critics but I don’t mind them because I have something that they haven’t got,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FK6A3S4DWFEK3PBEQQ5SSW6YHI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Wilbur Curtis may have discovered there was no pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow, but when he died in 1987, the obituaries put his invention of the fibre-glass car only second to his invention of the glass coffee pot when listing his achievements.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4A6JV4X7ORAKXH5ZWTZY4QQC3A","additional_properties":{},"content":"A few of his Shamrocks did make their way to the US. In 2002, the LA Times hitched a ride with one proud owner, Dick Midkiff, who had painted his car a dashing shade of green, in homage to his Cork relatives. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"AHEVBG5OPZHVROKP2GIR62HLEU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He told how his unusual car had caused more than one accident, with people driving over curbs when they saw it. “One woman ran into the back of the car in front of her and totalled her car while watching us,” he said with some satisfaction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZVWZG3GJTNAVFGHHGQG7TRR27M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Paddy Byrne estimates that it will take a few months to get his second Shamrock roadworthy. So if there is an increase in cars being rear-ended in Drogheda next year, we will know why. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wilbur Curtis did not have the luck of the Irish as he tried to get his project up and running"},"display_date":"2024-11-25T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Revving up the Shamrock – Alison Healy on the car that never quite got motoring ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SO73XIBWVRCD3JERJZB7U4G2HQ","auth":{"1":"900b895cd18bbf2e429697d2423f2cbfd459eadac300f2a4d529140eb14caa5b"},"focal_point":{"x":719,"y":271},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SO73XIBWVRCD3JERJZB7U4G2HQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/25/revving-up-the-shamrock-alison-healy-on-the-car-that-never-quite-got-motoring/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"XXMPIX6YG5CWTHD4NZLLCU67EE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":321,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9d2348ce-01c1-4473-83eb-98b08db979fa/versions/1732398366/media/c11a89c00f193eb2fa24b9b6f81a9fc0_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/24/innocence-and-mischief-desmond-oneill-on-the-humorist-and-social-commentator-erich-kastner/","content_elements":[{"_id":"M5UMI5F7QVGC3LTOVRE4UVDDQM","additional_properties":{},"content":"A literary anniversary almost entirely unnoticed in the English-speaking world this year was that of Erich Kästner (1899-1974), one of the most delightful and incisive of German humorists and social commentators. Best known outside Germany for Emil and the Detectives, first in a series of ground-breaking books for children, as well as Das Doppelte Lottchen, origin of serial movie versions of The Parent Trap, his wider output deserves to be more widely appreciated. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"L2SOFOXE55EW3MQMJ7VWMPZ6HI","additional_properties":{},"content":"His absurdist and irreverent sense of humour is an uneasy fit with the canon of his native literature. As he noted, humour was “rare in literature, and rarest of all in German literature. And in the histories of German literature, pride is taken in that very fact”. His comic sense would have fitted comfortably into a Flann O’Brien column. Writing at the time of the 200th anniversary of Goethe’s birth in 1949, he postulated that there would be a Goethe-Derby among German universities producing articles including “Goethe and the Control of Clothes Moths”; “Goethe’s Disapproval of Dogs on the Stage”; and “Goethe and the Fire Brigade”!","type":"text"},{"_id":"EUFHJZQGDRBI3LO6E3EIUH55V4","additional_properties":{},"content":"His delightful autobiography, When I Was a Little Boy, mentions that he had visited Dublin although there is little evidence of when this occurred. He played tennis in London in 1938 with that most English of Irishmen, Bernard Bracken, and he may have extended his visit to Dublin. Another possibility would be a visit in the postwar years in his role as president of PEN, the writers’ organisation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PES6WM5S6NATJAVDS3JW3DEVDU","additional_properties":{},"content":"The autobiography catches neatly his trademark apposition of wide-eyed innocence and mischievous spirit. In the foreword, he posits that all proper books should have a foreword. A book with a foreword he likened to house with a garden: a book without a foreword to the Dresden tenement where he was born. Prolific in output in many literary formats, including journalism, reviews, novels and poems, his finest work reflected the energy of the Weimar republic and the artistic movement Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFBSOOZOHJFX5F3GACGR3VYZJY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Realism is a notable and ground-breaking feature of the Emil books, embedded in the gritty milieu of Berlin. It notably portrays the struggle of working-class family life with Emil’s single working mother a reflection of Kästner’s own mother supporting her family as a hairdresser.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PEZ5SSOROFFYJKPKRG5C4GKCPY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The runaway success of the Emil books has somewhat drawn attention away from his other outputs. His novel Fabian (1931), much admired by Graham Greene, was daringly modern and explicit in terms of the free-living aspects of the Weimar period: unsurprisingly his books were burned by the National Socialist regime in 1933, and all banned except Emil and the Detectives. Kästner chose to stay in Germany rather than exile, a form of internal exile. He managed to write the script for a film version of the Adventures of Baron von Munchausen in 1943 under the pseudonym of Bert Citizen, arousing the ire of Goebbels when this was discovered and narrowly escaping execution by the SS at war’s end.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WI7V4NQQKJCE7AIZSH6KSQOGRU","additional_properties":{},"content":"His insights into the human condition are their most appealing and accessible in his collections of poetry. Paralleling the wit, satire, lyricism and common touch of earlier poets such as Heinrich Heine and Wilhelm Busch, he promoted the opportunity of poetry to act as sounding boards and instrumental supports in the challenges of everyday life. This comes to fruition in his Dr Erich Kästner’s Poetical Medicine Cabinet (1936), the title itself an echo of Heine’s description of the human insights of the Bible as the “Medicine Cabinet of Humanity”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DIVZ6QJAN5FCBPEACFNEOLNI6U","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the droll foreword Kästner describes the collection as a reference work devoted to the care of the average inner life. He lists the contents of the typical home medicine cabinet but questions their utility in the face of the desolate loneliness of furnished room or the cold, wet, foggy autumn evenings. What remedies should someone resort to when seized by angel of jealousy? What should someone gargle who is fed up with life? What use are lukewarm compresses to someone whose marriage is falling apart?","type":"text"},{"_id":"4JHEHNXCLZHPRP3D7UNRBKAL6Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Kästner proposes that other remedies are needed to alleviate loneliness, disappointment and other heartache, chief among which are humour, anger, indifference, irony, contemplation and exaggeration. The analogy of therapeutic efficacy is carried through in a framework for prescription of the poems to 36 human conditions and states, listed in alphabetical order from when ageing makes you sad (wenn das Alter traurig stimmt) to irritation with one’s contemporaries (Zeitgenossen).","type":"text"},{"_id":"OKAPILVSLNCJNCSYISU237QG6A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The poems are short, notable for brief sentences whose economy of measure contains surprises of consolation and calm embedded in the language of everyday life, reminiscent of the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer or Seamus Heaney. Sadly, few of his poems are translated into English and currently in print – fresh translations would be a fitting anniversary tribute for this versatile and gifted artist.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Desmond O'Neill"}]},"description":{"basic":"A gift for the absurd"},"display_date":"2024-11-24T18:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Innocence and mischief – Desmond O’Neill on the humorist and social commentator Erich Kästner","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"VINVI6J6K5DTBDENAIG6PNDIYU","auth":{"1":"a32575f05ef1b97b827ca47a55f9dc29bce2c3f05a79e3e50c1a9073a3304266"},"focal_point":{"x":264,"y":199},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VINVI6J6K5DTBDENAIG6PNDIYU.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/24/innocence-and-mischief-desmond-oneill-on-the-humorist-and-social-commentator-erich-kastner/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"IWEWVPP7RNFPZOGYSBJQU5HESA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":281,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/2830c62f-886a-4ed1-a9e1-5f91da74bf08/versions/1732296512/media/a5e2a69ddd32ab9558bc856adfa218b3_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/22/rhyme-and-reason-alison-healy-on-longfellows-wreck-of-the-hesperus/","content_elements":[{"_id":"E4SUMEHAINDTNHGV2WDMTLUDOM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Who among us has not felt like the wreck of the Hesperus at some point in our lives? As expressions go, it’s hard to beat. Looking like the wreck of the Hesperus is more than looking a bit shook, or bedraggled. It’s akin to looking like you have just been dragged through a bush backwards – except it’s marginally worse. Perhaps it’s closer to being dragged through a whin bush backwards, which was an accusation often levelled at us as children when we arrived home after some particularly boisterous play. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZUPE2D5JVDIRFNVVVSXF6QQTU","additional_properties":{},"content":"But how did the wreck of an obscure US boat gain such a foothold in our lexicon? And was the Hesperus even wrecked? If you have spent many dark nights of the soul contemplating these questions, then fear not, you have come to the right place.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIY3WRZAXZE73P42UHSWW6RCWU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Fans of the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow will know that The Wreck of Hesperus was one of his best-known poems, and a staple on the US school curriculum. Incidentally, at 5 foot 9 inches, Longfellow was not a particularly long fellow, but his writing definitely had longevity. Some of his phrases that we still use today include “ships that pass in the night” and “into every life, some rain must fall”. But I digress.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMD6BC7UCFBARIFSMS433TBJ3E","additional_properties":{},"content":"His poem tells the tale of a skipper who took his young daughter out to sea in a schooner called the Hesperus. The hubristic captain ignored the advice of an old sailor who warned that a hurricane was coming. When he realised the sailor was right, the skipper tied his daughter to the mast to keep her safe. However, the boat was wrecked when it hit the reef of Norman’s Woe. They all died, and when his daughter’s body was discovered, she was still tied to the mast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMCF4WYCZ5EK5CGA4RZWHMPDPU","additional_properties":{},"content":"The poet said he wrote the poem about the Hesperus after a hurricane lashed the coast of Massachusetts on December 15th, 1839. He read an article in a local paper detailing how 20 boats were sent crashing onto a reef and 17 bodies were washed ashore. Among the dead was a woman who had been tied to the windlass bitts (pair of posts). Writing in his diary two days after the storm, he used a bit of poetic licence and said 20 bodies had been found, and incorrectly noted that the Hesperus had been one of the boats.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2H3243KVPNCFBFBDVLUEQILKMU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In fact, the schooner, which had been moored in Boston harbour had survived unscathed, apart from losing her bowsprit, which sounds painful, but not fatal. After reading the news in the Morning Post, he declared to his diary: “I must write a ballad upon this” and then he did, in an annoyingly quick fashion. “It hardly cost me an effort. It did not come into my mind by lines, but by stanzas,” he later wrote.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGCQXV7NUZDDNJNEEOTPHWQ3LY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The poem appeared in print a few weeks later on January 10th, 1840. But it would be another 85 years before the truth behind the Hesperus emerged. In May 1925, the New York Times carried the scoop which revealed that the schooner was not wrecked at all, and showed how the poet had mixed up his boats. But you know the adage about a lie getting halfway across the world before the truth has put his boots on? The damage had been done and generations of American schoolchildren grew up believing that the Hesperus was wrecked.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZUCM65JGBB5JNMEOGJL26FYTI","additional_properties":{},"content":"And more than a century after the boat was not wrecked, we are still telling each other that we look like the wreck of the Hesperus. After depositing our emigrants State-side, the wind must have blown the expression back to our shores. But there is an Irish connection with another Hesperus – long before Longfellow dipped his quill in ink and told that story.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EKOSQ5VNDBFPVFQIPJLRM7Q2EU","additional_properties":{},"content":"The other Hesperus was a ship that sailed from Belfast to New York in July 1820, and we know about it thanks to the sterling work by the voluntary group, the Immigrant Ships Transcribers’ Guild (<a href=\"http://immigrantships.net\" target=\"_blank\">immigrantships.net</a>). These good people have been transcribing lists of passengers from immigrant ships and providing them free online since 1998 and are always looking for volunteers to help with the work. Their records show that the Hesperus carried 32 passengers across the Atlantic Ocean on that trip. All but two were Irish, and they ranged in age from one-year-old Eliza Simpson to 72-year-old farmer Hugh McDermoth, who might have been McDermott had his accent been understood.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NGFVBPM7ZJDRXGUMYJODEZJRNA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Happily, this Hesperus was not wrecked by a storm and the records show that they all arrived alive. Mind you, after several weeks at sea, they might have looked like the wreck of the Hesperus when they disembarked. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"How did the wreck of an obscure US boat gain such a foothold in our lexicon?"},"display_date":"2024-11-22T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Rhyme and reason — Alison Healy on Longfellow’s Wreck of the Hesperus","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"TDR6QRYP6RF57HT3VKASVPH3NM","auth":{"1":"d5f0a44ed0d25c4e09b22a22bc491c35ea88c8c6982cb59ae31339c700531361"},"focal_point":{"x":347,"y":356},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/TDR6QRYP6RF57HT3VKASVPH3NM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/22/rhyme-and-reason-alison-healy-on-longfellows-wreck-of-the-hesperus/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"QSI7SXNVHRGLJE4MKDEHMZJPCA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":305,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/1842a9bb-ad9a-40a9-abb6-87f7d4bd74e2/versions/1732216993/media/cedc602864fcc699163e6358cf75158b_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/21/poet-of-the-troubles-oliver-ohanlon-on-padraic-fiacc/","content_elements":[{"_id":"I4GZHRUTT5B7XBKDSEUDNEIO34","additional_properties":{},"content":"Padraic Fiacc was known as the “Poet of the Troubles” due to his humane writing about that dark period in history. His birth name was Patrick Joseph O’Connor and he hailed from Belfast. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"BNBWBISSCFGMNL722JXD4DEMVI","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was born 100 years ago in April 1924 on Elizabeth Street in the Lower Falls area of the city. His mother’s family were burnt out of their home in Lisburn during the pogroms of 1920 and he grew up on East Street in the Markets area of Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U43V776AVRBLFCNOWO5SDRGHLE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The family moved to New York in 1929 when he was around five years of age. Hell’s Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan was his new home initially. Growing up, he hung over the fire escapes on 98th Street and slept in the baseball pitches of Central Park to escape the intense summer heat.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQCD3GZB5ZARROTCPFN7FDYACI","additional_properties":{},"content":"He attended a high school where Latin and the humanities were taught. He relished the opportunities that the school gave him for intellectual stimulation and the chance to meet children from different backgrounds.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZO2BERDIJ5EMXMZTJWJXFRZZ6M","additional_properties":{},"content":"It had a mix of pupils from the area (the majority of which were black) as well as the children of those who were fleeing Nazi oppression in Europe. He filled his time with poetry, music and painting. He wrote plays in French and Latin and later described his school years as “exciting and scintillating”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QL4QRQU2ABEXBOJRN5ILYPZB4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"Fiacc spent a number of years in a Franciscan seminary in upstate New York and also had a stint in an Irish Capuchin monastery. He stayed partly to escape the military draft and partly to get an education but left around the age of 21 as he discovered that it was not the life he wanted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MRJNYZZY5FCOVOBQE5ZLTFVYNI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Years later, looking back on his time in New York, he seemed conflicted about it. On one hand, he enjoyed the cultural melting pot that it was and the opportunities it afforded him. He was particularly grateful about his school days and felt that his formative years were enriched by having African, Asian, Middle Eastern and European classmates.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7UNLHFWDQ5EBZNLS7WVFWJA57Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was also thankful for one of his teachers who transformed him from an “uncouth slum adolescent” into an “incurable aspiring poet”. Being able to see the actress Greta Garbo or the composer Sergei Rachmaninov alight from a taxi to browse in a downtown antique shop was also a positive. On the other hand, he did not miss the “furnace of a West Side summer”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P2TMGLNRXBFM5EP7SGHV5B77NE","additional_properties":{},"content":"He returned to live in Belfast in 1946 and worked in various jobs including as a hotel night porter, before going back to New York for around a decade. When he came back to Belfast again, he bought a house in the suburb of Glengormley with his American wife.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DNBKYMRPMBE5DMZ6BP2YK6ORPE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1957, he won the AE Memorial Award for Poetry for his collection Woe to the Boy. His nom de plume “Padraic Fiacc” was a nod to his mentor Padraic Colum, who he met in New York. Fiacc was chosen to represent the Irish word “fiach” (raven in English).","type":"text"},{"_id":"GW7BGYF5TVE6RN3ZFQ2BMTIEXU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He spoke of this time in Belfast as a hopeful period. That changed when the Troubles broke out and he would come to refer to the city as “Hellfast”. In 1974, he edited an anthology of contemporary poetry that dealt with the Troubles. Entitled The Wearing of the Black, it drew criticism from some who thought that it was too close to the bone.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XDAOHIZ3LBHCPN4SPIDTNNG2PU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nine-year-old Patrick Rooney was the first child killed in the Troubles in August 1969. Fiacc wrote Elegy for a “Fenian Get” for the boy who was killed by what he termed a “trigger-happy cow-boy cop”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TWQVVTSKZRBDNDCVH6NHTQEXQE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In a poem entitled, Victory on Ship Street, Fiacc used irony to highlight the killing of two young girls who died when a car bomb was detonated outside a Catholic-owned bar in the now-vanished dockland area of Sailortown.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IBJQEYU3HNDYLKWERMHJMXUVHQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"In October 1972, the bloodiest year of the Troubles, the lives of six-year-old Paula Stronge and four-year-old Clare Hughes were cut short. They had been trick-or-treating near their homes when the bomb went off. It was, according to Fiacc “another blow struck for our very own corner on Devil’s Island” and it resulted in “two wee girls in Halloween dress burnt to death as witches”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZL4RB2HWEZF7ROUTSIWGJ6Q24I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Along with the Troubles casting a shadow on life in Northern Ireland, Fiacc experienced his own dark years. He had mental health difficulties and his marriage broke down but he continued to write poetry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBPFU2JO2JA4ZA33T7JHWOINNE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Gerald Dawe claimed that Fiacc was “much overlooked by the critical and literary establishment” and he was a “perennial outsider”. However, recognition from his peers did come on occasion, such as his election to Aosdána in 1981, the year he won the Poetry Ireland Award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G7LZIPXTIVDELEQ6DONZ7TCWO4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He died at age 95 in January 2019. Dawe lauded him for being the only poet that would be so “forthright and committed in saying the uncomfortable thing”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Oliver O’Hanlon"}]},"description":{"basic":"When the Troubles broke out, he would come to refer to his native city as “Hellfast”"},"display_date":"2024-11-21T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Poet of the Troubles – Oliver O’Hanlon on Padraic Fiacc ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"S7N6CTZDZWNZ3UZUCVX7VLVT3U","auth":{"1":"bd9e500ebe601c1e0471b289c2809b01b35d7d750d342d3e3cd67beb3bc31ad3"},"focal_point":{"x":366,"y":236},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/S7N6CTZDZWNZ3UZUCVX7VLVT3U.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/21/poet-of-the-troubles-oliver-ohanlon-on-padraic-fiacc/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"G7SLYZQPYNHMRFHBFKDZB4KC4Y","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":352,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/7bb92011-4383-492e-8992-3533e1eecc78/versions/1732129458/media/b774a8cb4cb494278627a4ee216554d5_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/20/hitlers-irish-volunteers-john-mulqueen-on-two-irish-pows-who-volunteered-for-the-waffen-ss/","content_elements":[{"_id":"SFY4TRWIWZHYLLZ2GFFSR3KG2Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"In November 1944, a radio operative returned from a special assignment to find that the rest of his battalion had left to train for an operation behind enemy lines – they would be disguised as an “American tank unit” in the Germans’ planned Ardennes counter-offensive. The returning soldier, Frank Stringer, and fellow Irishman James Brady, both served in this Waffen-SS unit. Two months later they found themselves in action against the Red Army, and remained in Germany’s service to the bitter end in Berlin. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"56J4BNIBWJHA7G37F2PDCBXSR4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The unlikely involvement of Stringer and Brady in the military wing of the SS – they came from Leitrim and Roscommon respectively – began in Guernsey before the second World War broke out. The two teenagers, British soldiers in the Royal Irish Fusiliers, went on a drinking spree that ended violently. Brady later claimed that he could not remember much about the incident “because I was too drunk”. They were convicted of assaulting a policeman and imprisoned, and became POWs when the Germans occupied the Channel Islands in 1940.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RSTPFEKRVVBCXDFPMK7CJ5DFW4","additional_properties":{},"content":"During the war the Germans revived the idea of recruiting Irish POWs to serve in their armed forces. Prisoners belonging to “national minorities” were segregated: Ukrainians and Poles were separated, Flemings and Walloons, Bretons and French, and Irish and British. The Irish writer Francis Stuart, who chose to go to Berlin in 1939, interviewed Irishmen to assess their suitability. But he soon tired of this – he was disappointed not to find a more enthusiastic nationalistic response. Irish POWs were isolated in a special camp near Friesack, where they were bombarded with anti-British propaganda which focused on Britain seizing Ireland’s “treaty ports” during the U-boat campaign. By the spring of 1941, the Friesack camp held between 150 and 200 men, who were badly treated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DXBYYZKK2JA75M5GKTDPRPKSOY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Stuart later worked for the Germans’ foreign radio service, and eulogised Hitler in talks targeted at his audience at home – he was “a great leader” for what had become an “inspired nation”. The Soviets, however, halted the German rampage across Europe at Stalingrad. During the official mourning period for this military catastrophe, in February 1943, Stuart alluded to Nazi propaganda about the “heroes” of the Sixth Army by telling his listeners that this was an Easter Rising moment. “If I was a German,” he declared, “I should be filled with the deepest pride. I am glad to be living in a country that can produce such men.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MUDFDZI2DZBR5OR6CGUHUMSYMI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Irish POWs who succumbed to the propaganda onslaught and volunteered to train as “saboteurs” – 11 in total – never matched the “heroism” standard set by Stuart. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6S4CQAVQR5C6TCBEZ4S4UDJTTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In addition, discipline was not their strong point – most had run-ins with the authorities for various reasons and were held in custody. Some “disgraced themselves”, to quote a British intelligence official, with drunken offers to “fight all and sundry” in a Berlin café among the more minor offences. Overall, they lacked political convictions, and only two, Brady and Stringer, who did not make the grade as agents, joined the armed forces. None of them were dispatched to Britain or Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YYMGLRUQSJA63DQD5NRHT5SFVI","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of Stuart’s broadcasting colleagues, Jack O’Reilly, who also perused Irish history to reinforce his points, did eventually parachute into Ireland. In his radio talks he compared religious persecution in the Soviet Union with the Penal Laws era, and highlighted the brutality of the “Black and Tans” during the War of Independence. O’Reilly, however, was not impressed with the Germans’ propaganda operation and found its knowledge of the country to be “purely geographic”. He opted for an intelligence role.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TY76LLWMNVBBLIYQK3YSZWWLKE","additional_properties":{},"content":"But O’Reilly proved to be weak when it came to geography. In October 1943, the Luftwaffe flew him over the west Clare peninsula, and, extraordinarily, dropped him close to his home town of Kilkee, where he was well known, not least for his Berlin broadcasts. To make matters worse, he got lost. Asking some farmers for help, the word spread, and gardaí, who had heard a heavy aircraft flying overhead, were told about “a strange man carrying a heavy [wireless] case” on his way to Kilkee. O’Reilly reported to the Garda station for questioning, and eventually admitted that he had returned as a spy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLL6ETVHUBCPLH52ZY3HAMJQY4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Sligowoman Elizabeth Mulcahy, who met her German husband Helmut Clissmann before the war, became involved in his intelligence work the next year when she visited the propagandists broadcasting to Ireland. They had little useful information, she remembered, and geographical knowledge did not extend to having a map of the country. And they could not learn much from the censored Radio Éireann. She described the news they heard, reception permitting, in saying: “There was a fuel scarcity, black bread and the death of a parish priest in Ballina.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IN5JLXZSPJF75NTIPOEHFP465Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Mulcahy came home after the war, and secured a visa for her husband three years later. Stuart spent eight months in an internment camp, and he too, after some time, returned to Ireland. On the other hand, Frank Stringer and James Brady were court-martialled and received heavy prison sentences – the argument that they had been “abandoned to the enemy” fell on deaf ears. Ireland’s “accidental Nazis” did not get off lightly.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"John Mulqueen"}]},"description":{"basic":"Irish POWs were isolated in a special camp near Friesack, where they were bombarded with anti-British propaganda"},"display_date":"2024-11-20T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Hitler’s Irish volunteers – John Mulqueen on two Irish POWs who volunteered for the Waffen-SS","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"7D6CK2HG3JFK5PCWFCW2I43QXY","auth":{"1":"31dcd18b696ff0ae2c1de1b0de210357c0eb229b369d64ea23867b6941222b40"},"focal_point":{"x":1027,"y":690},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7D6CK2HG3JFK5PCWFCW2I43QXY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/20/hitlers-irish-volunteers-john-mulqueen-on-two-irish-pows-who-volunteered-for-the-waffen-ss/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"GZW2ZZQ3RNH2LBZCALLL4EQ4KU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":285,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/0d7d4e69-4170-417f-8d77-c50d9a9bb2a8/versions/1732039542/media/959955ad37ffa138b2dfd9d9eb1d4a49_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/19/sharpened-pens-alison-healy-on-the-cattier-side-of-writers/","content_elements":[{"_id":"462KQEUUXFEPZDG2TXSSSHJQLQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"How do you react when a friend has some success at work? Do you identify with the writer Gore Vidal who admitted that every time a friend succeeded, a little part of him died inside? Do you plaster on a smile when a friend gets good news and ignore the murderous jealous rage that furiously swirls around your gut? Perhaps you wonder why your friend is merrily swinging the world by the tail when you are fishing your cleanest dirty shirt from the laundry basket because you forgot to do the washing. After all, you gave him your Irish homework all through secondary school so how is he the successful one? ","type":"text"},{"_id":"APIRWFL2HNHO5PSYUSP2QJQT3U","additional_properties":{},"content":"Always a great man for the bon mot, Oscar Wilde once said that anybody could sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, “but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success”. It requires such a fine nature that most people do not know the word that describes taking pleasure in another’s happiness. It’s confelicity, in case you are wondering.","type":"text"},{"_id":"66L2JDXNOJG4XATJGTP44L3A5A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The professional contrarian Morrissey is an admirer of Oscar Wilde so perhaps that informs the singer’s approach to successful friends. After his old friend Simon Topping appeared on the cover of music newspaper NME, he dramatically proclaimed: “I died a thousand deaths of sorrow and lay down in the woods to die”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BFTAL6CZTVHZBGUSW6OWMVPOCI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Morrissey changed his mind about staging a sorrowful death in the woods and instead went on to release a song entitled We Hate it When our Friends Become Successful. Ironically, NME declared it to be the singer’s least successful single and said it sounded like “five men bashing around in the darkness in search of a tune”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BQYZK7STOFFW3EGV7C66YRE4EU","additional_properties":{},"content":"What is it about creative people that makes them so jealous of the success of others? Have you ever heard of a plumber announcing his plan to lay down in the woods to die because another plumber got the job of installing a bathroom in the house around the corner? I’ve never come across a farmer who threatened to shut down his milking parlour because a neighbour’s Holstein Friesian had triumphed in the Champion Dairy Cow of the Year competition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SHNDA5Q6JBGRNNLQKQFJWYXL5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"Writers in particular seem to relish eviscerating their fellow artists whenever they get a chance. Just look at Mark Twain who was always taking swipes at Jane Austen’s success. “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin bone,” he fantasised.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LAA2D5CQY5GJJKKR2B5MYREZ4I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Digging up dead writers who annoy you seems to have been a trend back then. George Bernard Shaw was so irritated by Shakespeare that he wrote “it would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VFESHAN5HJGPFHAHRKAY7YFDMU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Virginia Woolf was a contemporary of James Joyce so she had no need to dig up his grave but she did describe Ulysses as “an illiterate, underbred book”. She told a writer friend she had never read such tosh. “As for the first two chapters, we will let them pass, but the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth – merely the scratchings of pimples on the body of the boot-boy at Claridge’s,” she wrote. Who’s afraid of Virigina Woolf? Anyone on the receiving end of her withering book reviews.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UWOJ52HJSZC5FCOWNHGT6N2PD4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nor did DH Lawrence have much time for poor Joyce. Upon reading extracts of his most famous book, Lawrence wrote: “This Ulysses muck is more disgusting than Casanova” and said the ending was “the dirtiest, most indecent, obscene thing ever written”. And this from the man who scandalised everyone with Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Elsewhere, he dismissed Joyce’s writing as: “Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CBZOJPWGFZAFZELFFI3T5N5W7M","additional_properties":{},"content":"But back to Gore Vidal and his hatred of his friends’ success. He hated the success of his enemies too and cradled these jealous rivalries more tenderly than you’d nurse a newborn baby.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XP535GULJZEI5PDLS5LJZGRY5A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Truman Capote particularly seemed to rile him and Vidal once said he mistook the Breakfast at Tiffany’s author for a colourful ottoman. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OD6KPH52UZHKJJDMGZGGPLZERI","additional_properties":{},"content":"“When I sat down on it, it squealed. It was Truman,” he declared. Capote was nothing more than “a Republican housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices” he added, for good measure.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L3QZRWBZHNEV7HLGT5WJVHJOW4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Even Capote’s death wasn’t enough to end the rivalry, with Vidal describing it as a wise career move. If you think that such an impressive ability to hold a grudge suggests he had some Irish blood, then you would be correct. His mother’s ancestors were the Gores, an Anglo-Irish family who moved to the US from Donegal.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E66JZS5OBBEBJBRBNC56QBPZFU","additional_properties":{},"content":"That explains everything. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Writers seem to relish eviscerating their fellow artists whenever they get a chance"},"display_date":"2024-11-19T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Sharpened pens – Alison Healy on the cattier side of writers ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"GGBKVSDQFNHOZJECNINMBM4YF4","auth":{"1":"b08c565a7d51acbae2c93d5edbeabb95bd0cd6f854447a245f47dde566716298"},"focal_point":{"x":672,"y":574},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/GGBKVSDQFNHOZJECNINMBM4YF4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/19/sharpened-pens-alison-healy-on-the-cattier-side-of-writers/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"NVRKTLDHN5G3POXP4GXDEJ6O3M","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":292,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/6d75108f-d909-41e0-b458-cdc34e98ecbb/versions/1731948243/media/e791dfda0ae25e4dd63b1bc71840ffe9_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/18/i-remember-tim-fanning-on-the-power-of-cinema-to-unlock-the-secrets-of-memory-and-nostalgia/","content_elements":[{"_id":"56TM3S2AQVFCBPXCWJCDHA353I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Recently, I decided to rewatch the Italian movie Cinema Paradiso. For those who haven’t seen it, the film follows a young boy, Totò, growing up in a small Sicilian town in post-Second World War Italy through the prism of his friendship with the projectionist of the local cinema. A period when clerical censorship was the norm and even a chaste kiss ended up on the cutting room floor. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VD5WNUMZDJACJOYAPLBD2FUROU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Trading heavily on nostalgia, it is both a coming-of-age story and a love letter to the movies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OT4MLKO54RBUFH7ZKKOAAZ5CWA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Watching it again, I was reminded both of my own early experiences of going to the cinema and that of a well-polished anecdote in my family about my grandfather. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FQPELCCMMZEWPFTXCNPV7FZOQA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Like so many other residents of Dún Laoghaire in the 1950s, the latter enjoyed visiting the Pavilion on a Sunday afternoon after his lunch. Having placed himself at the front of the balcony, leaving his hat nestling precariously on the wall, he would proceed to fall asleep. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"E33E3LENUJDDNPC6UL2RKMXCWU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Upon waking, he would peer down to spot his hat lying on the floor of the stalls and begin bellowing at the poor unfortunates below to throw it back to him. Much to the mortification of his teenage sons, including my father, sitting a few rows behind him. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4SOTKPNQ5JBPPEHC2AB5CL4UMM","additional_properties":{},"content":"My own earliest memory of going to the cinema is of the queue stretching down O’Connell Street, waiting to get in to the Savoy to see E.T. In fact, I had already seen Popeye, starring the late Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall, but have no recollection of it. Thus my movie-going career began with pictures directed by Robert Altman and Steven Spielberg. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"P4M7Q7V7TFDRTGJH55YTCHQ2ZI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The standard wasn’t always so high. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"JATQXS454BFCVDZ6O7OMZO75IE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another early memory is going to see Octopussy in the old Green Cinema on St Stephen’s Green in 1983. Given the choice between Bond and the odd-sounding Raiders of the Lost Ark, which must have been rereleased, my seven-year-old self made a grave error. Detecting a whiff of catechising in the title of the first Indiana Jones movie, I plumped for 007. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"T77YDBZNXNCPFDIPRCIBLGVFVA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The surroundings, if not better than, were at least worthy of the stale cheese up on the big screen. The Green, which opened in 1935, was only four years away from being demolished and looked it – a bit like Roger Moore’s Bond career.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TEEZ7HRC7ZC63DPYQ7IXCQIZZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cinema-going in Dublin was a less luxurious affair in the 1980s but it did give one a stock of war stories. Many of the old movie palaces that had arisen in the early part of the century were in need of repair. I remember one poor soul of my acquaintance visiting a well-known suburban cinema, only to find he needed a tetanus shot having injured his posterior on a rusty spring that had come through the cover of his seat. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"RWANSIDRFFDH5LEMGRTPRKRHH4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The arrival of the original Light House Cinema on Middle Abbey Street was a welcome addition in 1988. Along with the Screen and the Irish Film Centre (later Irish Film Institute), which opened in 1992, the Light House offered movie buffs a selection of independent and foreign-language movies, an alternative to the Hollywood fare served up in the Savoy and the Adelphi. The only problem now was trying to get into the movies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OI2CJTODRZD2HJV4BMNDVQQBHM","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was still too young to get into 18 cert movies. As a young cinephile, I took this bureaucratic imposition personally. The anxiety about whether I would get in to see Goodfellas on the big screen remains vivid. I did. By the skin of my teeth. And then the first titles swooshed across the screen. We’re introduced to the main characters in the most violent fashion imaginable and Ray Liotta, looking like the Devil himself, utters the immortal line, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”. The orchestra swells. And Scorsese had me before Tony Bennett even began singing about moving from rags to riches. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"KDE7I44GXJFQ5JKLT2UXNOYZGQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"But it wasn’t just American gangster movies. There were the first iterations of the French Film Festival and, thanks to the VHS player at home and a top-notch local video shop, deep dives into Italian neo-realism and the New German Cinema. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"AOF7ASJGJBDLLITBZAJPUFCRPU","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of the famed auteurs I never quite took to then was Fellini – it is only in middle age that I have come to appreciate him. But it is perhaps he more than anyone who used the power of cinema to unlock the secrets of memory and nostalgia. The title of the best of his later pictures, Amarcord, is a phrase from the dialect spoken in his native Italian region of Romagna. It simply means, “I remember”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Tim Fanning"}]},"description":{"basic":"Cinema-going in Dublin was a less luxurious affair in the 1980s"},"display_date":"2024-11-18T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"“I remember” – Tim Fanning on the power of cinema to unlock the secrets of memory and nostalgia","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"YQU2B46IEVNJJMOBZUXCMTNN3Q","auth":{"1":"35b0d6a06435ee55ecd4259702ebb8d92c6a5795ef0fb22454f77a63866c1297"},"focal_point":{"x":2281,"y":1556},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YQU2B46IEVNJJMOBZUXCMTNN3Q.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/18/i-remember-tim-fanning-on-the-power-of-cinema-to-unlock-the-secrets-of-memory-and-nostalgia/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"6H5ZJDBLWVHGFB4IDTST6XWQOY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":312,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/05106614-48a7-4a09-bea3-62d28900746f/versions/1731852377/media/655289055022c72d4b01b1da25bea3b4_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/17/prince-of-the-church-brian-maye-on-cardinal-michael-logue/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ZHN672YLZVAODPMTS47DBNS6KU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Michael Logue was the first archbishop of Armagh to be made a cardinal. Born five years before the Great Famine, his long life spanned the land war, the Home Rule campaign, the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence, partition and the Civil War. He died 100 years ago on November 19th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2TEESGCUIJFOLJCO7J4W7FOUJQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was born on October 1st, 1840, in Kilmacrennan, Co Donegal, the second of six children of Michael Logue, an innkeeper, and Catherine Durnan. After private tutoring and attendance at a private school in Buncrana, he entered St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, where he was ordained deacon in 1864. He was ordained in Paris in December 1866, having been appointed professor of dogmatic theology at the Irish college there. Failing to get the theology chair at Maynooth in 1874, he returned to Donegal as a curate in Raphoe diocese. His chief concern became the effects of emigration on the county and he became involved in ways to combat it, including promoting afforestation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VXT7WNCXEFFBRE67JVWMZHM5QM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Made dean of Maynooth in 1876, he taught Irish there for a time before succeeding to one of the vacant theology chairs. Becoming bishop of Raphoe in 1879, he immediately undertook fundraising in America to mitigate the famine conditions in Donegal, as well as promoting temperance. He supported the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in their Home Rule campaign and land struggle but although he sympathised with tenants’ demands, he cautioned against violence being used.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RB5KPJ7BERGE5JVELGRQTWP6EQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Appointed archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland in late 1887, he declared a duty of care for his flock’s temporal as well as their spiritual needs. “Although dexterous and shrewd, Logue was by no means the most intelligent or administratively competent of bishops,” according to Diarmaid Ferriter, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, and he described him as slow and indecisive at times, with a tendency to state the obvious.","type":"text"},{"_id":"77ZGX4DUVRFDTEJQLLMSPYTVJE","additional_properties":{},"content":"He condemned Charles Stewart Parnell, and any priests who continued to support him, following the O’Shea divorce case and was lukewarm about the IPP’s alliance with the British Liberal Party. One of his major concerns was Catholic control over schools and he felt that the educational provisions of the 1893 Home Rule Bill were inadequate in this regard. His appointment as cardinal in 1893, in preference to archbishop of Dublin William Walsh, the most obvious candidate for the position, Ferriter ascribed to likely British pressure on the Vatican due to Walsh’s more ardent nationalism. A native Irish speaker himself, Logue supported the Gaelic League and the promotion of the Irish language and culture.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DIPYYWDSSRANZHTOWD5XFPSQ64","additional_properties":{},"content":"He often visited Scotland to look after the welfare of Ulster emigrants there and, indeed, travelled widely. The completion of Armagh cathedral in 1904, for which he raised some £50,000, was one of his principal projects as cardinal. He was sympathetic to the British monarchy and empire and received Queen Victoria in 1900 and Edward VII in 1903 at Maynooth. Critical of the anti-Catholic language of some involved in the growing trade-union movement, he was also wary of John Redmond at times. Logue supported Britain and France in the first World War but didn’t encourage recruitment and opposed extending conscription to Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VE3N3ADDBRCRVATDTWBK5MO2CE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Strongly opposed to the prospect of partition, he declared it would be “infinitely better to remain as we are for 50 years to come than to accept these proposals”. Although he denounced the British reaction to the 1916 Rising, he also condemned republican violence and considered Sinn Féin members and republicans as pursuers of dreams. In the 1918 general election, he preferred IPP to Sinn Féin candidates but mediated an agreement between the two sides so that seats wouldn’t be lost to unionists.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NKI2DFG2AFFDFGB7FQPMCLKILI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The War of Independence caused him much unease and he condemned the violence from both sides but the killings on “Bloody Sunday” in November 1920 provoked more forthright criticism from him of the British. He strongly supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, believing it offered everything necessary for Ireland’s future prosperity but he was deeply disappointed that it hadn’t achieved the end of partition. The growing anti-Catholic violence in Northern Ireland greatly perturbed him, as did the discrimination against Catholics inherent in the new laws there, and he was himself often the victim of B Special harassment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JR632VFWRZB5BCQZ2HHUQHFVVE","additional_properties":{},"content":"A humble man who led a simple life, with no secretary and few servants, he was a keen sailor and skilled yachtsman and also very much enjoyed birdwatching, especially earlier in his life. He died of heart failure in Ara Coeli, the official residence of the archbishop of Armagh, and was buried in the grounds of St Patrick’s Cathedral. A portrait of him by John Lavery is in the Ulster Museum in Belfast.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"His life spanned the land war, the Home Rule campaign, the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence, partition and the Civil War"},"display_date":"2024-11-17T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Prince of the church – Brian Maye on Cardinal Michael Logue ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"2ZG6N2P7EJCGZLKUOGMW5YAALA","auth":{"1":"968aef25016a4f7a7a319026ee5c81453b34c5c107247dedde170d5d7c0843b2"},"focal_point":{"x":163,"y":122},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/2ZG6N2P7EJCGZLKUOGMW5YAALA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/17/prince-of-the-church-brian-maye-on-cardinal-michael-logue/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"VSUENTTDMNDZPOYU4GNS5N2R4A","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":325,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/79516eaa-0f1a-4807-a8d6-7bbb3a4811a1/versions/1731698952/media/db8a8897c4915f356db6eb38322a25d4_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/15/conflict-of-many-colours-frank-mcnally-on-a-finely-illustrated-atlas-of-the-civil-war/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7VUBVV4S2NHRFE7Y4MIUIU4VEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039747},"content":"Among the revelations of the Atlas of the Irish Civil War, the latest in a sumptuously illustrated series from Cork University Press, is the extent to which the conflict was concentrated in Kerry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R5U5RKNOLBAWTBNTOFZXRLNPFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039748},"content":"In the league of proportional fatalities by county, at least, the “Kingdom” easily outranked its near neighbours in Munster, although they were also much troubled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MAY77UD35VHPXETQMVWDBKFW3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039749},"content":"With 185 deaths, as the authors put it: “Kerry is revealed as by far the most violent county in Ireland under this rubric, followed some way behind by Tipperary and Limerick.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"I2SV43QBNVBZNLJIXJTEFAG5O4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039750},"content":"Cork, surprisingly, ranked lower than the Munster average, its 215 fatalities diluted by a larger population.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NJ742E3XNJEL5J5BJE2HJEREVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039751},"content":"On a colour-coded map, one of the book’s many visually striking illustrations, Kerry’s grim ratio of more than 10 deaths per 10,000 people is represented by a shade that looks like dried blood.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OEZDQ2H7TJABDK26453LL4CDLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039752},"content":"Limerick and Tipperary, meanwhile, are a vivid red. Other surprises of the map are that, joining them with that colour, are Sligo, Louth, and Kildare.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q4O27UKMORH6NH7X4COZTVGXDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039753},"content":"But the Atlas goes far beyond mere fatality lists. Its encyclopedic reach also includes, for example, a four-county west Munster survey of civilian compensation claims arising from the war, involving everything from arson to the theft of turf.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BPNG7ABRNRHSJGG25JYOILFZHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039754},"content":"Somewhere in between those on the scale of atrocity, the punitive “cattle drive” seems to have been a Clare specialty, and the Burren in particular.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5CZ3OMXIYNBXVAYPGKOKLYHLZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039755},"content":"Sure enough, this merits a second map, zoning in on that county, the gloss for which notes a continuation through the Civil War years of 19th-century-style agrarian violence. One historian is quoted saying: “The reverberations of the ‘Land War’ were unusually persistent in Clare.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LQMVAZALHZEKLP34OQIV6CVEIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039756},"content":"Then there is the survey of broken bridges, a metaphor for civil war but also a measure of the practical difficulties of Irish rural life after a troubled decade.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XVHMQVX5TFH3XAKELMVL3VYYZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039757},"content":"At the end of 1924, in North Cork alone, there were 200 bridges awaiting repair or reconstruction, with vast inconvenience for the locals.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SHL24R2LZVGCHDQ67ME66ZXXKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039758},"content":"By way of (relatively) light relief, the Atlas includes a chapter on “Civil War songs”, prominent among which is a balled called “The Night Darrell Figgis Lost his Whiskers”","type":"text"},{"_id":"C7TNISPGSRBDFJQRQFPUFGE7KE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039759},"content":"Writer, intellectual, and activist, Figgis was a famously dapper man, crucial to whose image was a well-kept red beard and moustache. That too is the subject of illustration, via a 1916 caricature depicting him, in prison uniform but with beard intact, at Reading Gaol.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QNHTH5PTZNAHBAHUMICQFN7VEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039760},"content":"But one night before the 1922 general election, three anti-Treaty IRA men including Bob Briscoe (father of a more recent Fianna Fáil TD, Ben) broke into Figgis’s house and gave him an enforced shave.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XFEWURC2LNCOVK74P5IURPGDPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039761},"content":"The attackers later called it “a bit of fun” at the expense of a man whose writings had stung republicans, although Briscoe also claimed the victim “squealed” so much, “he would have been happier had we just cut his throat”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VJ46U3NLX5DYNHHFS367SFEV4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039762},"content":"Maybe that wasn’t an exaggeration. The lyrics of the comic ballad share a page with details of Figgis’s subsequent life, which are far from light relief:","type":"text"},{"_id":"X6VEXZGKFVF7RNZUTLX7ZPF2LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039763},"content":"“He was embroiled in corruption allegations in 1924, the year his estranged wife Millie, who had reportedly not recovered from the trauma of the attack, died by suicide. Figgis had been in a public relationship with a young dance teacher, Rita North, who died of septicemia following a botched abortion in London in 1925. [He took his own life] two days later.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"3NH4A6M6EVFDBPJXAEPFU27IPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039764},"content":"As befits a production of such visual quality, the Atlas devotes space to one of the gorgeous designs from Art O’Murnaghan’s extraordinary Leabhar na hAiséirighe/Book of the Resurrection.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V5E2DFKBTZF37CEFYS6XRXNY6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039765},"content":"Begun in 1924, that was an illuminated manuscript, in the style of the Book of Kells, commemorating the independence struggle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"42Y3GXIFOFENPHT27WHX6EECBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039766},"content":"It was a project extraordinarily consuming of time and energy. But O’Murnaghan worked at it on and off until 1954, eventually producing 27 pages on vellum, including the one featured, commemorating the Treaty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HN4BZSZCUVGMVMZWHMFFYOM5N4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039767},"content":"Another attempt at artistic reconciliation, also included, was Sean Keating’s propagandist masterpiece of 1929, Night’s Candles are Burnt Out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6X3BWPWP6ZFRVBONM2VPHDDYZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039768},"content":"Set against a background of the Ardnacrusha hydroelectric scheme, it depicts a new Ireland (represented by the artist and his young family) looking towards the future and trying to escape a past represented by drunks, gombeen men, priests, and even a hanged skeleton, which must symbolise old Ireland itself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4WZ65JA6J5AW7E37LDX2WRYDJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039769},"content":"But the complications of a fledgling independence are perhaps more realistically delineated in the small print of Terry’s Dooley’s chapter on the 1923 Land Act.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6MYPBLNR7ZBLHKWVKWWINTS77A","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039770},"content":"This includes a map of Dooley’s Monaghan, illustrating the “quiet revolution” whereby, between 1880 and 1922, some 80 per cent of Irish land was transferred from landlord to tenant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3NPZKPZFXFAV5AGZABCRJKVGCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039771},"content":"Such dramatic change created winners and losers, so that the early Free State was “seething with frustration, local jealousies, bitterness and anger”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4AGRCOV67JGWZL6TNQICQQZUVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039772},"content":"And as Caitríona Crowe adds in a footnote, there were other problems in the making too:","type":"text"},{"_id":"PVFB4LQ26BHSTNCCVEDZRCTHLQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039773},"content":"“The Land Acts created a rural society of conservative Catholic smallholders with a new-found interest in respectability and sexual probity, both of which bore down most heavily on women, and were ultimately connected to the establishment and maintenance of mother and baby homes.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"On a colour-coded map, Kerry’s grim ratio of deaths is represented by a shade that looks like dried blood"},"display_date":"2024-11-15T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Conflict of many colours – Frank McNally on a finely illustrated atlas of the Civil War","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"ITANBPYNAVGCBFXJUHKIBNYB7I","auth":{"1":"f54e5124af920ee7c94de6a0330be6d9a0d08757b6ac6d0d63005cf0cbd657f9"},"focal_point":{"x":331,"y":357},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ITANBPYNAVGCBFXJUHKIBNYB7I.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/15/conflict-of-many-colours-frank-mcnally-on-a-finely-illustrated-atlas-of-the-civil-war/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"TPJ7LLADJFAZZLN2MOJ2RJRKBA","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/14/lunar-quest-frank-mcnally-on-moon-missions-misinformed-quiz-questions-and-mountweazels/","content_elements":[{"_id":"4FATRQXM4NCUDA4SL6JC67RWQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057599},"content":"At a table quiz in Dublin the other night, questions included this: “Who was the first woman on the moon?” Cue mild consternation as most teams re-examined their certainty that no female anywhere had yet achieved such a distinction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRQYWR4LCRDHLJLR7MVBJ26THY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057600},"content":"Was it a trick question, we wondered? Had it happened in a film? Could one of the actual male astronauts of half a century ago have undergone gender reassignment since and self-identified retrospectively as a woman trapped in a man’s spacesuit?","type":"text"},{"_id":"PTS4UUKD5VHRDET4KIHMFSMVNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057601},"content":"Or was it possible that the question setters were just deluded? And if so, should we second-guess their misinformation and answer accordingly?","type":"text"},{"_id":"43O627I5GBA5JFSHXNBCJBBBMM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057602},"content":"This does happen in quizzes. I did one in a GAA club once, for example, where it became clear after a round or two that the quizmaster was working off an old set of questions, some of them outdated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FARMBG5LO5A3ROVQKO3SJSBCIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057603},"content":"That was circa 2007 and to one of his questions – how many member states are there in the EU? – the correct answer was 27.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AOU5WCQB6RCENGIQHMBAXYS3F4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057604},"content":"But being anoraks, we had worked out that in the quizmaster’s world, it was still 2006 at the latest and Romania and Bulgaria hadn’t acceded yet. So we put down “25″, which was the right wrong answer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NSWKCV2SLVBDLENSYFYOQZWLHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057605},"content":"The winners’ prize for that quiz, by the way, was a set of actual anoraks. I wore mine with pride for years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GTGYFHKNVRDXBEBLIVVUTZYIAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057606},"content":"At this latest quiz, we were tempted to put down “Valentina Tereshkova”, who was the first woman in space, although a long way from the moon. Instead, in the end we said “nobody”. And there followed even greater consternation when the correct answer was said to be “Christina Koch”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QHNDMUQPKZGQ3AFK4RMF7QVOCE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057607},"content":"***","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5P4JNJLPFCKLLPPRKPKTVDEOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057608},"content":"But lo! It had indeed been a trick question. Or more precisely, it had been a “Mountweazel”, a subject itself worthy of quiz-question status.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IECZAUPETVC2TMQM27NXAEIV4U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057609},"content":"The name derives from Lillian Virginia Mountweazel (1942-1973), an American photographer who specialised in picture essays about New York city buses, the cemeteries of Paris, and rural American mailboxes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R3OZ2PIRKBFZVGD4PBWVOTW5MY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057610},"content":"Tragically, she died in an explosion when on assignment for the ominously named Combustibles magazine, aged only 31. But on a more cheerful note, she had never existed, except as a fake entry planted in the New Columbia Encyclopedia, to expose plagiarists who might lift the material wholesale.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C3C6U7TIRNBMHC4CG3ZLVBDXU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057611},"content":"Our quiz-mistress, a woman named Fiona, had warned earlier that there would be a Mountweazel planted among her questions to expose surreptitious research. Now the trap was sprung.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZPH254DWVC7DGMKTZE4JLEAFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057612},"content":"Several of the 40-odd teams had answered Christina Koch correctly, perhaps after consulting ChatGPT and getting a truncated version of the truth, which is that Koch will be part of a Nasa lunar mission (though not a moon landing) in 2025. They were all disqualified.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XNIDTGSXG5AHZK5N4SRLTNFZXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057613},"content":"Great was the righteousness in other parts of the room. For those of us who had tried to keep our anoraks clean during the long, dark era when smartphones were doing to our sport what EPO had done to professional cycling, this was a biblical smiting. Among the sinners, meanwhile, there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7IO2BIQGRJFHJENOMOQZOFJL7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057614},"content":"***","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLDMHIU7DFDCFAPSWTHDZ7WEDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057615},"content":"By a strange lunar coincidence, I received an email from graphic artist Bernie Sexton recently asking if I might mention a publication she and others have prepared, aimed at the Christmas gift market. This wouldn’t normally be diary material, except that it <i>is</i> a diary/journal, for women.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GOI2EIAO7NAJ3A3FLOTKIWMOWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057616},"content":"And it’s called – of all things – Moon Mná, combining as it does lunar phases for every day of 2025, accompanied by inspiring stories, craft projects, and self-care rituals on a related theme. Now in its ninth edition, the journal is priced at €20, from <a href=\"http://moonmna.store/\" target=\"_blank\">moonmna.store</a>. I’m told it might make a charming present for the women in your life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IIQJFDBU6NE6FG44GIJPHZCBGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057617},"content":"***","type":"text"},{"_id":"OR554ZX6LVFQDLPGEMC4Z7ZOOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057618},"content":"Getting back to the quiz, my team was looking very good for a while. After a slow start we had climbed to second place by the interval. Then we went outside for fresh air, to regather our thoughts – and our command of useless information – for the second half.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J7RM2MVV6RBG7KPA6D7AWRBEKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057619},"content":"There was an almost full moon – “waxing gibbous” is the technical term, I think – shining, And I knew that by this weekend it would be what native Americans call the “Beaver” Moon. Gazing at it, I also remembered in passing that the name of a former neighbour of my parents was up there somewhere.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A5SMSV36TRCVBDDMID4J4OITOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057620},"content":"Known locally as Benny Callan, he emigrated to the US in 1928 and became a space engineer, working on the Apollo 11 mission and so gaining the right to have his name inscribed alongside others on a plaque left behind on the Sea of Tranquility.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KN6WR6PO2RGRJHIKFP4Y3MLKP4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057621},"content":"I knew a nephew of his, Mickey Birdy, well. But I never heard the story until it featured some years ago in the RTÉ radio documentary entitled, with only slight overstatement: “The man in the moon’s from Carrickmacross.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXDA5JD225CY5OPHQKMI4OZRCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057622},"content":"Alas, none of this helped during the second half of the quiz. If anything, the interval air seemed to have a deleterious effect on our brains. Or maybe it was the lunar waxing that caused a tragic loss of focus. Whatever the cause, like a 20th-century space rocket, we crashed and burned on re-entry.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Revenge of the anoraks"},"display_date":"2024-11-14T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Lunar quest – Frank McNally on moon missions, misinformed quiz questions, and mountweazels","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"ZCDYUOMF55FBPCDVXKNY2LNA5A","auth":{"1":"3d8167dce45f18f66d4b438d64b37315fe9d578d24167c08af1d816ef5231cbc"},"focal_point":{"x":1088,"y":763},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ZCDYUOMF55FBPCDVXKNY2LNA5A.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/14/lunar-quest-frank-mcnally-on-moon-missions-misinformed-quiz-questions-and-mountweazels/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"XCC4IPSJWZFXRP4CGE2EZGDTSM","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/13/the-dromcollogher-cinema-fire-disaster-frank-mcnally-on-a-fateful-day-in-1926/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NE5FAE2KTFFTBEDARTJ43ICR6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497500},"content":"Dromcollogher in Co Limerick is one of many places in Ireland that Percy French could be said to have been put on the map. That great, much-travelled troubadour was so charmed by a stay there once that he immortalised the village in an eponymous ballad.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F3O3JUI4BNHX3DC4XII7MQSTSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497501},"content":"Mind you, it was a mixed compliment, taking the form of a proud native’s obsession with dragging his home-place into every possible conversation, to the detriment of everywhere else.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LG5DWGZLYBAT5DWJ24REIJROKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497502},"content":"A typical verse begins: “I was over in London quite lately,/I gave King Edward a call;/Says the butler, ‘He’s out, he isn’t about/An’ I don’t see his hat in the hall;/But if you would like to look round, sir,/I think you will have to say,/Apartments like these are not what one sees/In your country every day.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQVHFAMRDJAGJLU7SNXZRBMEQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497503},"content":"As with previous verses, of course, that only tees up the narrator for another chorus: “Sez I, Have yez been to Drumcolliher?” And this time it’s the turn of Buckingham Palace to suffer by comparison with the alleged architectural magnificence of his local hardware shop.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EERX6ZC7IFHU7IL5Q6WTFPJ3TA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497504},"content":"In putting the village on the map, Percy French did not go so far as to include directions. This may be just as well, given his infamous advice that to get to Ballyjamesdsuff, a returning Paddy Reilly and others should “turn to the left at the bridge of Finea”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FNWBYQL755FHPNQIKQHACVJSOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497505},"content":"As pointed out here before, if you turned left at the Bridge of Finnea, in either direction, you’d end up in one of the two lakes that flank it. And as for the nearest turn-offs before or after the bridge, well, when trying to get to Ballyjamesduff, I wouldn’t start from there if I were you.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SHC6LS4G4ZCVLKPNBOF5YNK5FI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497506},"content":"In any case, visiting Dromcollogher for the first time earlier this week, I had to resort to GPS. And that was not a good idea either. It worked okay as far as Newcastle West, where I turned left and where conventional maps insist it should have been a straight drive the rest of the way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KCVS3M6ZGJFOXBGNO5UCUTAJME","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497507},"content":"Instead, misled by the satellite woman, I took another four or five turns, in the process receiving an extensive tour of the (admittedly lovely) west Limerick countryside.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZWPYTMSKUNGMTLJGYIUOVLFS3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497508},"content":"The last suggested turn was so obviously a private lane that I ignored the GPS until the imperious voice ordered: “Return to the route!” So I did. And sure enough, it led me into a farmyard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DW4GU3C6YNFZ3AMWRIDOMCQCLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497509},"content":"I have had similar experiences since when searching for Dromcollogher in newspaper archives. The problem there is the multiple spelling variants (including Percy’s). Not even the “Drom” is simple. A rival school that argues for “Drum” as the prefix.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EF2KXVUUZJGE5IPODD5QA3WEFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497510},"content":"But after that binary choice, there are a multiplicity of suffixes ranging from “Collogher” to “Coliher”. In an archive as tyrannically pedantic as The Irish Times’s, which refuses to guess what you’re searching for if you don’t have the exact spelling, you can find yourself wondering if the place exists at all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHLDXOQSZNEZVB5IFBG7NAAMGU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497511},"content":"Anyway, I did get there eventually: in both real-life and database. And as I now know, Dromcollogher was on maps long before French’s song.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UXM5IIYJN5EQNDV6OQEMIUSCJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497512},"content":"Of medieval origin, it was mentioned in the Book of Leinster (1160). Among several claims to fame since, it became a forerunner, via the local creamery 1889, of Horace Plunkett’s co-operative movement: one of the great success stories of pre-and-post-independence Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3ZHUQ2HVAVALRM23M356PS3N5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497513},"content":"Then, alas, there was the Dromcollogher cinema fire: the Free State’s first major disaster which earned the town a more sombre fame.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L6KDVONPRBDQXFEW3GVJ4OFFGY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497514},"content":"It dominates the local Catholic Church, St Bartholomew’s, thanks to a mass grave with a Celtic cross which includes the names of the 48 victims, and to depictions on the modern, glass side walls of the now 200-year-old church.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2O3RQREYSRH3BOZHEYEFHSNLJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497515},"content":"The ill-fated film screening of Sunday, September 5th, 1926, arose from some local entrepreneurship by a man named William “Babe” Ford.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6EYWYTGEVZEXFJKGPOBS2PHTRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497516},"content":"He knew the projectionist in a Cork cinema, which closed on Sundays.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XDFMSH6LAFEFFB6JA7RU7AWMIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497517},"content":"So he “borrowed” the nitrate reels, leaving their tin cans behind – like the shape of a body in a bed – to disguise their temporary absence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NBFVLRLG2RBDNJNDE7QLOGHBCE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497518},"content":"This was one contributor to the catastrophe. Another was a candle, knocked over onto the highly-flammable nitrate tape. But the venue, an upstairs barn, with only one entrance via a ladder, was a disaster waiting to happen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WXZ2O7D3R5DENLRCS2KF5UZ5PY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497519},"content":"Some 150 people had paid up to ninepence each to see a short film, False Alarm, followed by the main feature, The Decoy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X4LBLWRUYZCBPDFMLKDDR435RU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497520},"content":"In the panic to escape, local ex-IRA men remembered that the bars of a window had been sawn through to facilitate their own getaways if the venue were ever raided.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WNRUCUUTEFEX5POJFHSJOWZL5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497521},"content":"The bars were now bent to let people out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G5SWRY6KL5HHRJN5FKWYYSTPPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497522},"content":"Then someone got stuck in the gap and cut that route off too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K2X5EROLG5FUPCAMS7THKQCJWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497523},"content":"The eventual death toll would be equalled 55 years later in Dublin’s Stardust tragedy. But in the Dromcollogher of 1926, it represented one tenth of the village’s population. Many of the victims were children.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KJJYYMAHGJBGDGSDEEXN2MWSGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497524},"content":"A relief fund was still making payments until 1958. In the meantime, locals also raised money to buy the long-derelict site of the fire.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7K3SCOHCZAFNJ5SWLIRKXEBPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497525},"content":"And in 1953, this was turned into one of one of modern Dromcollogher’s more original and charming architectural features: the flat-roofed, circular Memorial Library.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"The death toll of 48 represented a tenth of the village’s population"},"display_date":"2024-11-14T10:18:44.718Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Dromcollogher cinema fire disaster – Frank McNally on a fateful day in 1926","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"P7SJ2NAOS5AAJMWQLCZ72MFECQ","auth":{"1":"c89dccd493677e4327b4ab98c3c6caf07c806ab08cf1320e80195f974b80434c"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/P7SJ2NAOS5AAJMWQLCZ72MFECQ.jpeg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/13/the-dromcollogher-cinema-fire-disaster-frank-mcnally-on-a-fateful-day-in-1926/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"XSE66FCTZZH4ZC55NRYX7TKNQE","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/12/the-spirit-of-1965-kevin-rafter-on-irelands-first-television-election/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7673CTO7PVGVNDCRGJ5WQBCZUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884483},"content":"During the 1965 general election campaign, a group of 41 members of the Foreign Press Association of London arrived in Ireland as guests of the government.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TYA62EGZRRD47INHT42YFLJJTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884484},"content":"They included newspaper reporters from Russia, Italy, Holland and Germany; and they enjoyed, what was generously described as a “fatiguing eight-day tour” experiencing Ireland’s first ever television election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TJ7LT6UGGNEQVBJ32WNO3UPMAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884485},"content":"Their schedule had a decidedly social element. There was a medieval banquet at Bunratty Castle, a visit to Inishbofin island and an evening of Irish culture in Dublin in the presence of poets, Austin Clarke and Padraic Colum. The schedule did include several after-Sunday Mass election meetings.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BEH4LFJCP5COVCJP3QVUM364LY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884486},"content":"The electioneering, however, left the foreign correspondents underwhelmed. “The fire has gone out of your elections,” Werner Krug of the Munich Mercur observed, in contrasting the campaign with one he had previously experienced in 1957.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BQ6BX7TK35AKLLIYMJHYIOECWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884487},"content":"The new domestic television service, Telefís Éireann, was just over three years on-air when taoiseach Seán Lemass called a general election for April 1965. More recently billed as the great economic moderniser, Lemass was hostile to the idea of public broadcasting. He favoured private sector ownership and no public money. He had only reluctantly supported a State-run service funded by a licence fee and advertising revenue.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5J4NAF5PERCRLPBV4J7QKKXXWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884488},"content":"Like many politicians in Leinster House, Lemass was also uncomfortable with the ramifications of the independence granted to the new broadcast station. He had little time for the niceties of editorial independence, and he saw the television service as another instrument to further his government’s agenda. He remained sensitive to reporting that he perceived to be less than positive in its assessment of the economy and Ireland’s international image.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASBZWGHIKVHYPFN3HGVTS5HUK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884489},"content":"Lemass was insistent that the national broadcaster avoid all election coverage.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6RDRKLYZFVF47PHIDAPCYYUP54","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884490},"content":"He issued an explicit written instruction to the minister with responsibility for the broadcast services to make his view clear to Telefís Éireann.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GTR32D3ZGBC3TGGTUDGRGWRBUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884491},"content":"Over time the new television station succeeded in delivering a professional political service but ambitions for more expansive coverage were not realised in time for the 1965 campaign.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NX2VIBIOERHIRE3IH477AQXTVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884492},"content":"The leaders of the three main parties – James Dillon of Fine Gael, Labour’s Brendan Corish and Lemass – undertook nationwide tours; Dillon’s campaign reportedly involved a 17-day 2,500 mile tour, and 25 meetings, that concluded with a final rally at the GPO in Dublin. Part of the event was filmed for the BBC’s Panorama programme. Twenty-four hours later, Lemass concluded the Fianna Fáil campaign with a similar rally at the same location.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QHHSVEUOO5CTHNZI5TSCAQZNJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884493},"content":"The BBC cameras were not the only ones following the party leaders. As Dillon opined on farming to a gathering of some 200 people in Tipperary, his speech as recorded by a NBC crew. “Dillon speech filmed for American TV” was the headline over one newspaper story which apparently struggled to find a news-line in Fine Gael’s agriculture proposals. The following evening the American broadcasters were in Carlow to record Lemass’s election meeting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTCYSUUD5JAKZFGPE2Y3IOCY6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884494},"content":"The political correspondent of this newspaper sought to talk-up the contest. On the eve of polling day, he proclaimed that the campaign had “penetrated in every village and town – and almost every house . . .” This seemed to be a minority assessment. Having followed the leaders to various election rallies, the producers of BBC’s Panorama resorted to filming two university professors discussing the campaign in a pub in Dublin city centre. As a television spectacle, the encounter was described as “stage managed”, which somewhat appropriately was in keeping with the low-key tenor of the 1965 contest.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VIM3JS3TMVDETG2QEYSFG345XI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884495},"content":"Neither the Fine Gael slogan “Time for a Change” nor the Fianna Fáil’s “Let Lemass Lead On” captured the public imagination. Labour had ruled out entering coalition with Fine Gael.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XTVHQUHWVFBGJGCBGKEXCB4WBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884496},"content":"As such, voters were left with a limited choice – to give Lemass an overall majority or see him rule as head of a minority government.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BUTYBS4CBJHDHOELIPTXYY772E","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884497},"content":"The new domestic television service left few fingerprints on the 1965 campaign despite the fact that two in every five homes had a TV set by that time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2X5FTFY2IVG77N46BCYDRVPLOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884498},"content":"Station executives at Telefís Éireann were, however, more ambitious in delivering the first ever television election results programme.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XIKXR5IFR5DHTPI3BPBA7GES3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884499},"content":"In what was a significant investment for the new broadcaster, reporters were located at count centres in Monaghan, Wexford, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Bolton Street in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HKYTFMMYD5ESNNLPZY4B76VU6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884500},"content":"On the day of the count, the normal television schedule was replaced by a special programme which came on air at 5pm.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZ5LY5OYLFGSLODYGPUDOEYXKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884501},"content":"Radio stole a march, however, by starting its coverage at 2pm. Both services remained broadcasting until midnight, but – unlike what will be experienced in 2024 – there were no “special” or “additional” analysis programmes on the following day. Ongoing election developments were simply covered in regular news bulletins.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Kevin Rafter"}]},"description":{"basic":"Seán Lemass regarded Telefís Éireann with suspicion"},"display_date":"2024-11-12T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The spirit of 1965 – Kevin Rafter on Ireland’s first television election","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WTRJAT45NREYNOPCU3PXYONEX4","auth":{"1":"8cc7cdb75671b59351bfe99e36960a869db921bce8f50ee35a3dfef3dc1361bc"},"focal_point":{"x":461,"y":215},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WTRJAT45NREYNOPCU3PXYONEX4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/12/the-spirit-of-1965-kevin-rafter-on-irelands-first-television-election/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"X2RSE2QWQZDHZMEND3IHBS37GM","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/11/grief-and-remembrance-ronan-mcgreevy-on-dublins-armistice-day-in-1924/","content_elements":[{"_id":"IMPLNI26S5EVNEI2DUEEFRN7MI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The gathering in central Dublin on Armistice Day 1924 was the largest since the crowds that attended Home Rule rallies in the city 12 years previously.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LY4NOF7TS5DPPGCVJPYAUGBJ3Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ireland and the world had changed in ways nobody thought possible in 1912. The first World War had been as unexpected as it was brutal. Home Rule was never implemented and was replaced by something which few envisaged at the time – an independent Irish state, albeit one achieved at the price of partition with six counties in the North.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGWX7MILSZATZJCPGCKOISDVNM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Armistice Day was already a contested event in Ireland. There had been running battles between loyalists and republicans on the streets of Dublin in previous years, but, on this day, less than two years after the establishment of the Irish Free State, there was harmony.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZXLXSC5A6FCP3OHCYCTBNLSV2I","additional_properties":{},"content":"The crowds that descended on the centre of Dublin for Armistice Day 1924 took everyone by surprise, not least the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) which had no traffic contingency plan in place.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XVEMRSQQ3FCULGMG2CW2VO2FOQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It anticipated a small crowd that would form up around 11am, observe a two-minute silence and then disperse from whence it had come. Nobody anticipated this. A crowd estimated at 50,000 turned up on a normal working day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z5A4NBZA5JACPLXUQVWKFTSLAE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The object that had prompted this national outpouring of grief and remembrance was a large Celtic cross, 13 feet six inches high made of solid granite and weighing three tonnes. It was enclosed by a metal railing measuring 15 feet square. At its base was an inscription in Irish and English. “Do chum glóire Dé agus Onóra na hÉireann” (To the Glory of God and Honour of Ireland). In commemoration of the victories of Guillemont and Ginchy Sept 3rd and 9th 1916 and in memory of those who fell therein and of all the Irishmen who gave their lives in the Great War RIP”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJ6LUUIHIBCWLCLGWI7BILCMWA","additional_properties":{},"content":"At 11am the bell at Trinity College Dublin sounded and the whole crowd fell silent save for the quiet sobbing of a number of women and children and a siren from the docks calling on the men to down tools for the two-minute silence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4NDJNJJOFBGWTADEGRDFRF4624","additional_properties":{},"content":"Then Maj Gen William Hickie, the man who first instigated the idea of a series of memorial Celtic crosses to remember the Irish who died, stepped forward. He slipped the cord and the black draping covering the monument fell to earth. He placed a wreath on the head of the cross where the inscription was carved into the granite “16th (Irish) Division”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6OGIHJQU3VHJTCAMPMRLNZD5EA","additional_properties":{},"content":"A wreath was laid by Senator Col Maurice Moore, formerly of the Connaught Rangers, on behalf of the Government. It read, “O Rialtas Saorstát Éireann i gcuimhne na nÉireannach uile a fuair bás son choga mór (From the Government of Saorstat Eireann in memory of all the Irishmen who died in the Great War)”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6NEBLDIVVGDLPHDSDTT6VZG4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The cross had been paid for by public subscription following a public appeal by Hickie, the officer who commanded the 16th (Irish) Division during the war, and Maj Gen Bryan Mahon, both senators in the Irish Free State.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C267KUSQCJGMFAWSBYMATOCT3A","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Every nation whose sons took part in the war has erected on the scene of their victories and sacrifices some monument to commemorate their share in the great effort and testify to its remembrance,” the men wrote, successfully appealing for funds.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ONU7JUAT7JBETNQRBWFO5H32ZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Irish Times commented favourably on the Armistice Day 1924 events in Dublin. “The brave have now been honoured in their native land. Loyalty to the Empire is seen to be consistent with perfect loyalty to the Free State. The Government’s tolerant and moderate policy is largely responsible for the better conditions of things.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6D4K6TY545CKXGN2OTQBIPGGYQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"There would be three identical crosses in total – the first for Guillemont, the second remembered the 16th (Irish) Division’s liberation of the Flanders villages of Wytschaete in 1917 (along with the 36th (Ulster) Division, and a third was erected in the mountains of Macedonia to remember the 10th (Irish) Division and their involvement in the Salonika campaign on the Eastern Front.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KKZ3RYGBGRCVDNZMAVMROCP6A4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Guillemont Cross was finally erected in France on August 23rd, 1926. The guest of honour was Field Marshal Joseph Joffre, the acclaimed saviour of France and the victor of the most important battle of the war, the Battle of the Marne in September 1914. Ireland and France, he said, were “sisters in sorrow”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q4XXETANDRDUPEFWIW4GKQTGCI","additional_properties":{},"content":"More than 1,200 Irishmen were killed in the liberation of the villages of Guillemont and Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme in September 1916. The most famous fatality of all was Tom Kettle, who died at Ginchy on September 9th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LY5F7ZQKHZC7NOI3NZVT25LM4Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"Two Victoria Crosses were awarded to Irishmen at Guillemont.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6RUJE5SHJNDOXMROB6DGYANF24","additional_properties":{},"content":"One went to Lieut John Holland of the 7th Leinsters, the son of a vet from Model Farm, Athy, Co Kildare. He showed extraordinary dash in leading his men on a bombing party which cleared German trenches and captured some 50 prisoners.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SCASZWFVQRFVRODOXYZXS7YQT4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The other was awarded to Private Thomas Hughes from Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, of the Connaught Rangers. He was initially injured, but had his wound dressed and returned to battle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JRTMWVK3SVFALBE6WQXLMPGZ5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"He singlehandedly disabled a German machine-gun post and was badly wounded in the assault. Hughes returned to Ireland and spent his latter years in poverty, eventually dying at the age of 56 in an old workhouse.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3QTKLIAAOJHIZCDTHDSIHUHV6U","additional_properties":{},"content":"His family were forced to sell his medals, which were acquired by the National Army Museum in London. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PJLM25NSVFFXTNHQRBIRVMVLWE","additional_properties":{},"content":"It has lent the Victoria Cross to the newly opened Monaghan County Museum, where it is now on display.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Ronan McGreevy"}},"name":"Ronan McGreevy"}]},"description":{"basic":"The crowds that descended on the city took everyone by surprise, not least the Dublin Metropolitan Police"},"display_date":"2024-11-11T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Grief and remembrance – Ronan McGreevy on Dublin’s Armistice Day in 1924","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WOZH7ZU7ONFWZO2GBL3FQY74SU","auth":{"1":"8e76dbbb539d636433c8f907036405cd8997a9ef11321ef8d97ef2a62cf392b2"},"focal_point":{"x":392,"y":323},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WOZH7ZU7ONFWZO2GBL3FQY74SU.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/11/grief-and-remembrance-ronan-mcgreevy-on-dublins-armistice-day-in-1924/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"254T5QZNC5FWBM6VRNRPFZJLAI","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/10/the-night-mayor-oliver-ohanlon-on-jimmy-walker-new-yorks-colourful-political-kingpin/","content_elements":[{"_id":"UHVZY2M545HGVHOPJJFNEGBRZ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"New York’s mayor James “Jimmy” Walker resigned in September 1932. The story of this colourful Irish-American civic leader has since been told in book and film form, as well as on the stage. The mayor was facing corruption charges when he resigned. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4Q465EPSKFBD3F6GT2DDI3P2MU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Walker’s father, William, came from Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, and emigrated to the US in 1870. He became a carpenter and entered local New York politics in 1887. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"RS2S4WPQVBHEDEZSS53LG22QJ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"His son Jimmy was born in 1881 and followed his father into local politics, becoming linked with the infamous Tammany Hall organisation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZHOHIO3G7ZB3HODNJCCXW4B6P4","additional_properties":{},"content":"During his political career, Jimmy Walker amassed several nicknames that were inspired by some of his most well-known traits. “Beau James” is how he was referred to due to his impeccably dapper appearance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QTDOYPWRZ5FZNEC742366JPAIM","additional_properties":{},"content":"As he was never on time for meetings or functions (including his own inauguration), he earned the nickname of “The Late Mayor”. When he partied into the night in the city that never sleeps and missed mornings in City Hall, he was awarded the sobriquet of “The Night Mayor”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L5KRMPFJIRAKDM2Y3FUJXOJDIU","additional_properties":{},"content":"His start in politics came when he entered the New York State Assembly in 1910. He trained as a lawyer and entered the New York Senate in 1915. While there, he introduced a bill to legalise boxing in the State. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"MLOQISQVK5DSTFWXNSV5EKSL5U","additional_properties":{},"content":"He remained in the Senate until 1926 when he won the mayoral election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WA3Q5LPENBCXLCBXMF2RZT5I4M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Prohibition was still in place in the 1920s and he was known to frequent speakeasies near to where he lived in Greenwich Village. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FC72BJX6HNGHFIW3XTHRC4GWYQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was also an avid theatre-goer and liked to attend Broadway theatres.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QR7O3STR45FKHLCYABJNQB3VKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"During his two terms in office, he promoted a raft of popular legislation to appeal to the masses. He lifted the ban on ball games on Sundays and created the Department of Sanitation. He also made improvements in the playgrounds and park systems, instigated the unification of the city’s public hospitals and pushed for an expansion of the subway system.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IYNW2S66JBHHDDFBXY6UIAZVFU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the early years of his first term, he visited Ireland for a weekend and enjoyed a packed agenda.","type":"text"},{"_id":"67IXNQVVPNH3HK5LXPQWS756NA","additional_properties":{},"content":" In August 1927, thousands turned out along the harbour front in Dun Laoghaire to welcome him when he arrived on the mail boat from Holyhead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FDHPQ2XOORBYHLIWNBEGR6GDBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Come Back to Erin was played by a band on the pier as he was welcomed onboard by a deputation from the Dublin City Commissioners. As he stepped on to Irish soil, the band played Amhrán na bhFiann and the Star Spangled Banner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KJ2VMF37VRG2ZBVDM3EVLV7WN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was received by the American Minister (Ambassador) at his official residence in the Phoenix Park and later attended a ball in the Gresham Hotel. The following day, he visited WT Cosgrave at Government Buildings and paid a courtesy visit to the Governor General in the Phoenix Park.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BHM4XZSUWJA3RG6SMCWUMLTMXI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Outside of Dublin, Walker was invited to John McCormack’s home, Moore Abbey, in Monasterevin. He also made a number of stops in Kilkenny – to receive the freedom of the city and to see his father’s birthplace. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"TSC76DYYINCHHKA3QTNA4AB7TQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"His car was led into Castlecomer by a band and he made a speech to an assembled crowd of locals.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SJDIS5SHORFJ7I3RZLKH2CRWJA","additional_properties":{},"content":"After visiting Ireland, he made his way to other European countries and always wanting to look his sartorial best, it was reported in the press that he travelled with a collection of over 40 suits.","type":"text"},{"_id":"POQ3PILF4NFJ3EVVNURDB7OKXA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The trip was not without incident. One American newspaper claimed that Walker “caused a sensation” in Rome, as he visited the Pope before meeting Mussolini and his government officials. Walker stated that he called to see the Pope because “I am a Catholic” and that he had to fulfil his religious duty before anything else.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YWOHEWFO3BETNGGHQEQMJFP4HY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Walker was re-elected in 1929 but rumours of corruption started to circulate. A committee was established in 1931 to look into corruption in New York City as the state governor, Franklin D Roosevelt, wanted to get to the bottom of the rumours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T27TUOMOTZD5JMQQUIS6OUKT5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Walker was unable to account for certain deposits in his bank account and amid charges of “graft”, he was forced to resign from office in September 1932, the first New York mayor in history to do so. Walker went on a three-year tour of Europe with his showgirl-mistress, spending much of the time in England.","type":"text"},{"_id":"44EK4C2MKBF7NFGYLANWMMGQ64","additional_properties":{},"content":"He paid another visit to Ireland in the summer of 1935. It was a much more relaxed affair this time. He and his now wife drove from Cork to Castlecomer and passed through Clonmel, Co Tipperary, on the way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NIE4DSW3D5G6LKUGN3K4MBLW3M","additional_properties":{},"content":"When he died at age 65 in 1946, Time magazine remembered him as a “dapper, silk-hatted symbol of the Fabulous Twenties”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GH7DWZQTIZCYNBP6MHZKEU6FPE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Reproached for having filled city offices with “sluggish Tammany favorites”, Time magazine argued that “jazz-happy New York” loved his flamboyant style.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H5CRWMJVLREFLKMW3VMGC4UKHQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Walker’s life inspired books and two Hollywood movies. The Night Mayor was released in 1932, and Beau James, staring Bob Hope and Vera Mills, was released in 1957.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Oliver O'Hanlon"}]},"description":{"basic":"He promoted a raft of popular legislation to appeal to the masses"},"display_date":"2024-11-10T18:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Night Mayor – Oliver O’Hanlon on Jimmy Walker, New York’s colourful political kingpin","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"4O7JZ462ENEQZHVNJ55BDOVAAM","auth":{"1":"cfa4c1ee66ed8082cbd7bdacaff46f32acef5e7d4d9630d210d42567cdb5b674"},"focal_point":{"x":419,"y":212},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/4O7JZ462ENEQZHVNJ55BDOVAAM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/10/the-night-mayor-oliver-ohanlon-on-jimmy-walker-new-yorks-colourful-political-kingpin/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"ZK6PYFXULZECFE6OU2MF6CFUFA","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/08/a-head-of-its-time-frank-mcnally-on-the-bicentenary-of-howth-road-and-more-about-wakes/","content_elements":[{"_id":"KHUYJ3IWFJFNHNUBQDBASTQXIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329748},"content":"Readers will be familiar with the traditional advice, in response to any request for directions in Ireland: “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6Z7NQXKI35E7XKGEYHYSCRVXVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329749},"content":"But until recently, whenever taking the Howth Road out of Dublin, I always thought I was on safe ground starting at Fairview and turning left just after Marino Crescent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FKP65KL4BVFLRJOSYFOZMRXN4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329750},"content":"Now I know better. It turns out that Howth Road is celebrating its bicentenary this year. And thanks to a pamphlet on the history of its constriction, I now belatedly realise that the road starts in London – a subject to which we’ll return later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMJM4K7W4FA2HDB45QV6NDKSQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329751},"content":"I was reminded of all this by an email on a different subject from a long-time correspondent, Donal Kennedy, who I happen to know is <i>from</i> Howth but has been exiled in London for decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VWM3GN2FYFAFBFREKYRNUMT7V4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329752},"content":"He was responding to yesterday’s column, on the subject of a wake I attended in Cavan earlier this week and on wakes in general. And he has astonished me by writing this:","type":"text"},{"_id":"H22FJAS6WVHZXG2QSS37MK2UOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329753},"content":"“A suburban Dubliner, I’ve never been at a wake. Nor was my mother, a city girl, born in 1901. Nor my father, born in Kilkenny City in 1899. So your column was a revelation.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJRKRNSCCBGQXIYDHNXDZEIQVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329754},"content":"The revelation was mutual, clearly. My first reaction on reading Donal’s admission was: “Is that possible?” My second reaction was to ask a question that occurs with increasing frequency as I get older: “Am I weird?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EFM3LMI4O5AVFFLDKZUNJL7GZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329755},"content":"Wakes have always been such a natural part of life where I grew up – the South Ulster border region – that I find it hard to believe they could be beyond the experience of others from this island, even Dubliners.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TT6VN4EFDNCI3MW4VQMX2RKWGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329756},"content":"Although that said, a certain female acquaintance of mine from Tipperary, with whom I discussed the subject briefly on Thursday, said something similar.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RGNUASWJF5AFZN5OROO3GUTKFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329757},"content":"Noting the increased use of funeral homes where she comes from, she didn’t suggest we were weird, exactly. I think her exact phrase was: “Ye’re more traditional up there.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6EXLFJO5SZBQNB3X75VVBMRIIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329758},"content":"Anyway, leaving wakes aside for now, Donal’s email also digressed to the subject of the way his parents pronounced placenames, closer to the Irish original.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WUAVDNZ2BZAWDCDQT6S3LFI3UI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329759},"content":"Hence his mother’s tendency to call a certain north Dublin suburb “Rahany”, as everyone did “before elocution teachers misled their pupils”. Hence too his father’s memory, from years living in Cork, that the supposedly unlearned there always referred to a certain town north of the city as “Malla”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q5BNPNA3PVEJVK2OR5J4VHIQKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329760},"content":"Of his own home place, Donal reminds me that in the mouths of elders, it used to have two syllables: “Howeth”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N7LQAC66V5AKTPLDTEKQPJ6C7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329761},"content":"This was a nod to its Viking origins as Hoved, meaning “Head”. Which means of course that “Howth Head” is a tautology. But then maybe, as Horslips used to argue in the dancehalls of my youth, two heads are better than one.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2L33IUMDO5FDDCX3JYPY6KBVFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329762},"content":"On Howth Road’s bicentenary, it was another reader, Leo George Devitt, who sent me the potted history.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SHYDFWZZRVGEHNIH2G3MBFRXK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329763},"content":"The road’s construction in 1823/24, by Scottish engineer Thomas Telford, arose from a combination of the need to improve access to London for Irish parliamentarians and of Howth’s temporary promotion as the terminus of the steam packet from Holyhead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H4ZOARGACRHQDJ64DBIKL52D3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329764},"content":"The frequent journeys made by Irish parliamentarians produced “constant irritation and complaint respecting the road through North Wales and the condition of the road from Howth to Dublin”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IRZNZPQ5VNBGDLC7EHPSBJTK6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329765},"content":"Consequently, and 1819 Act of Parliament provided for construction of a bridge over the Menai Strait and a new road of 21 miles across the island of Anglesea.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H4S66LSIKBDQHKCGLHUHQFQGA4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329766},"content":"On the Irish side of the sea, meanwhile, Telford’s contract was extended to be known as the “London – Holyhead – Dublin Road”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGCTB5QTFZCOZAKUJA7L2PILBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329767},"content":"The choice of Howth as packet terminus was greeted with horror in some circles.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FZRU4HRIAJEM5OJDGFFRCS22JI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329768},"content":"One pamphleteer, no doubt a southsider, warned:","type":"text"},{"_id":"JRASQN2P3ZFLDGH2TGYFPO246U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329769},"content":"“Let any man of common sense travel the road from Dublin to Howth. Let Him there see what security he can find for his person or property in a dark night. He should have a troop of horse to guard him against land robbers; and at high water . . . he ought to have a gunboat sailing along the strand inside the North Bull to prevent sea pirates attacking him . . . \"","type":"text"},{"_id":"6ADVIHPZENHBLI2HOEB5S7QBV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329770},"content":"Despite such misgivings, in August 1818, Howth did become the mail station for Dublin. The passage from Holyhead was an average of 15 hours, five hours shorter than the journey from Holyhead to the Pigeon House.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DIA5BHKW5VEYZM75HUUKQTPAZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329771},"content":"By 1822, steam-boats had cut the trip to under six hours. The boats had become larger, however, and when a number of hulls were damaged by Howth Harbour’s rocky bed, the station was abandoned in 1834.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EBL7QINEVZD5PC2CNN5TKGE3FI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329772},"content":"“After the steam packet was transferred to Kingstown,” the pamphlet concludes, “Howth relapsed back into a pleasant fishing village, having gained a new harbour and a superhighway to Dublin.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YMFFRGLOYFA2ROFYOID6W2D6CI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329773},"content":"Another thing the village has achieved since then, perhaps ironically in light of Donal Kennedy’s email, is a worldwide fame for its association with the Irish wake.","type":"text"},{"_id":"INATHGO7GJARPDC55UZOLQSCF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329774},"content":"Well, Finnegans Wake, anyway. James Joyce’s novel of the subconscious evokes among things other a dead giant laid out across north Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MDECNU42P5GAPDIVL6ZAPW7OXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329775},"content":"His feet are in Chapelizod; another part of his body (possibly affected by rigor mortis) doubles as the Wellington Monument; and his head is at – where else? – Howth.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"I now belatedly realise that the road starts in London"},"display_date":"2024-11-08T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"A Head of its time – Frank McNally on the bicentenary of Howth Road and more about wakes","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SOU76Z2XBVFBZAKDGS4EAPXALI","auth":{"1":"2b0cbee0241e018b3f436bb7846384399b883cb164c95d431155f8cd6fde0f71"},"focal_point":{"x":538,"y":368},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SOU76Z2XBVFBZAKDGS4EAPXALI.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/08/a-head-of-its-time-frank-mcnally-on-the-bicentenary-of-howth-road-and-more-about-wakes/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"2MWNXYLBRBEQNHD22YX2JBTBAA","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/07/alive-and-kicking-frank-mcnally-on-the-continued-survival-of-the-great-irish-wake/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ANRXACCC3JG2NJXMEQ4SIYMBXI","additional_properties":{},"content":"At his mother’s wake in Cavan the other night, I got talking to a friend about the unwritten rules of this great Irish institution, as gently policed by local elders. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"A4WUSED4GZCQZDGCSYVLCFPQIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"At one point, for example, my friend had brought a plate of sandwiches into the room where the departed lay. This is not the done thing. While he had one himself, the sandwiches were quietly removed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LUZBPPK4MFAHNN5SAJA62OS3C4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Someone else brought a baby into the room, and that too was deemed contrary to custom. Older children were welcome to come and go, if they wanted. Not so infants in arm.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L5V3HRWNANBFTBYTWEXGKM7UDU","additional_properties":{},"content":"I remembered my own first wake experience when I was about five, creeping into the room where my grandmother was laid out and, after a peek around the door, fleeing back downstairs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CPBDVXNWSZCCTGR7MYA3RTVZBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"But then there was my daughter, who when her maternal grandmother died and it was decided to bury her with a favourite pair of pearl earrings, volunteered to be the one to put them on the body and did so with calm assurance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FSWI3NH7JJEKJMBKH64D4ICO5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"At the Cavan wake, as is general custom, they had covered up all mirrors and the TV screen. They hadn’t stopped any clocks, however, something that used to be common practice and maybe still is in places.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6PHJQDLVUJEAFFK5LWIJZ4SUNM","additional_properties":{},"content":"There were of course mountains of food, meanwhile, brought by friends and neighbours. The women of Ireland (especially) seem to have a deep, primal urge to feed people at funerals.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P6W3MJDWCNGTRMAR43YRV3PQOA","additional_properties":{},"content":"In any case, an Irish wake has more food than a Polish wedding. Leftovers in Cavan were donated to the local homelessness service, I’m told, and a great teapot and Pyrex dish amnesty is now under way, as owners and utensils are gradually reunited.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FH65S6SFSNAVXFWTWTKVQDRARA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The wake house was on a narrow, rural side road. And one of things that impressed <i>me</i> was the traffic management, as a team of men in hi-vis jackets, wielding torches, directed us precisely where to park.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JNLVR7NGJZGRLF7OT4WCWQ7BUE","additional_properties":{},"content":"It didn’t look like a Garda operation, so I suspected the involvement of that other, martially-drilled body, the GAA. My friend wasn’t sure who it was. The operation had just fallen into place somehow.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDMVJ2KCLNB27HJZP75JZLG3RQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another thing that impressed him, he told me since, is the post-wake tradition whereby, as the cortege proceeded to church next day, shops along the route closed and shopkeepers stood outside to pay respects.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NEEVUVJKOVFDXKYABD7ITQEEZU","additional_properties":{},"content":"I remembered that at my mother’s funeral too. Even on the Protestant side of our Main Street, shopkeepers stood in vigil. It was very moving.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XHSMABK4GJBB5IK72OSX2W6QBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"But back to the Irish wake, the keynote of which – at least when the deceased has lived long and well, as was the case in Cavan – is celebration. There is a brief suspension of jollity for the saying of the rosary, usually.","type":"text"},{"_id":"57RVMAVIYVAQBGI7OO7FZOZGVA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Then, no sooner have we lamented the awfulness of the human condition, Catholic-style – “To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears” – than everyone goes back to talking, laughing, and eating.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q73JRAATUNERHNOBU2KZ7DYUXU","additional_properties":{},"content":"It’s almost a century now since my fellow Monaghan man Patrick Kavanagh lamented the supposed demise of the traditional wake. And yes, some things he recalled have indeed died out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4T3R5RULGFFGHDTAGUYMW6AMQU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In a chapter of The Green Fool entitled “Death and Funerals”, he described the old wake <i>before</i> the wake, when not just family but neighbours too would gather for the demise of the faithful departing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RHVANUA3HVFF3BKPHSGADF5BFE","additional_properties":{},"content":"At least one would be an amateur pathologist. But unlike college-educated pathologists, who only record the time of death after it happens, the skilled amateur had to record it an advance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OBRDS2IL2RAZ3AIHAPYXA6QJO4","additional_properties":{},"content":"For “Red Pat”, Kavanagh’s local expert, a glimpse at the sickbed might be enough to declare: “He’ll not pass one o’clock.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTMOA7QL3ZGVNHV4FP5H3R3P5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Less drastic predictions could be bad news. When an elderly patient revived once and Red Pat suggested he could live another week, according to Kavanagh, there was quiet despair:","type":"text"},{"_id":"DP77AJQUS5DT5LIUPETED6MX4M","additional_properties":{},"content":"“We didn’t want the man to live another week. It was a slack period in the neighbourhood and a wake and funeral would be a break in the monotony.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"3A4D5IYO5FCWFNKHEETMS7GIN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Once death did occur, the moment was always witnessed. That was part of the reason for stopping clocks – to show the vigil keepers had done their job.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XI5MNYGD5RDLTL24LEIUJYXJBQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Thereafter, the prospect of “an old man or woman going on a cruise to eternity with baggage complete and passports in order” was cause for unbridled celebration.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D6W64GBJD5BDTDSPS4AUWBQCBI","additional_properties":{},"content":"This could be infamously raucous. A friend in Enfield tells me of a local case of Finnegan’s (or indeed Finnegans) Wake once, wherein a corpse was removed from the bed and its place taken by a prankster with drink on board, to scare mourners.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5AO2TIGSCBHVJOIPH6OSSU52YM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Which is just the sort of thing that led to the phasing out of the old alcohol-and-snuff wakes, in favour of the tea-and-sandwich variety.","type":"text"},{"_id":"37W45UT6NRGVPHK7SN2DF6AULY","additional_properties":{},"content":"But Kavanagh was premature when he suggested that “continental Catholicism” had ended the celebrations: “So the wake passed out and we all began to wear long faces.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YBPYGPLWAFE2RBQ6HSCB7WSDYE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In his native south Ulster at least, the wearing of long faces at wakes continues to be optional. The celebratory aspect is still intact. And even in our more secular age, this part of death remains strangely life-affirming.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"There were of course mountains of food brought by friends and neighbours"},"display_date":"2024-11-07T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Alive and kicking – Frank McNally on the continued survival of the great Irish wake","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3K7WQJZC3JCPVPUP5GFQVJNN2U","auth":{"1":"19b0611ea28a90649859ccabc53ef9d65b65c46771eaca4c2a4ad21e22285b1e"},"focal_point":{"x":1717,"y":886},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3K7WQJZC3JCPVPUP5GFQVJNN2U.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/07/alive-and-kicking-frank-mcnally-on-the-continued-survival-of-the-great-irish-wake/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"35LLH5MQ7FH3TAPDT44RZXZZX4","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/06/ogham-thoughts-frank-mcnally-on-a-new-artwork-an-old-alphabet-and-the-longest-word-in-irish/","content_elements":[{"_id":"3WKT4UTTHZHA7ASYUGXUXBD2F4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The longest word in modern Irish, I’m told – or at least the longest you might meet in the wild, as opposed to one created in laboratory conditions – is grianghrafadóireachta, an adjective meaning “of photography”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"CU3VSSDQPFDORAMWIOEITTTESA","additional_properties":{},"content":"But at a lecture in the Royal Irish Academy on Tuesday night, some of us were introduced for the first time to an older term that outstretched that one be several characters: anrocomraircnicsiumairne.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C32ORFD25JE4BOHLN7D4MG5FPA","additional_properties":{},"content":"It’s mentioned in an ancient treatise on grammar, Auraicept na n-Éces (“Instruction of the poets”), thought to date from the eighth century but the only known copy of which is in the Book of Ballymote from circa 1391.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NZY2JWVZI5FUVADN7DC63HBZMA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The word may never have featured in conversation since, except among scholars. And yet, meaning as it does “all the mistakes we have committed”, it would still be useful today as a one-word prophylactic against hubris.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NBOPWHEYIZDSTGNJPJHOY5IQRU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Perhaps it’s about to make a comeback, because as of Tuesday it is the title of a new artwork, now in possession of the RIA, by Belfast-born Thomas Keyes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YPQ5X3YJCJGTVPNZ3RGYSVKWVE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Commissioned by the people behind a joint Glasgow-Maynooth research project on the old ogham alphabet, the painting develops a theme from the Book of Ballymote, in which the biblical Tower of Babel is used as a warning to writers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RSLDWBVQEVGHHJFFEAY6PVANCE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In Keyes’s version, the tower is rising again in a dystopian Dublin, whose citizens are represented by a range of anthropomorphic ogham letters.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H2DMMKUK6ZCTLGFN4HP35CVIJE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Featured characters include the legendary authors of the Auraicept. As a former graffiti artist, Keyes also somehow managed to pack in a modern history of that genre, referencing many practitioners from Belfast and Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6UM36WA7BRFGLO3XW46Y6SL24A","additional_properties":{},"content":"And speaking of grianghrafadoireachta, one of the modern mistakes his piece warns against is excessive absorption in smartphones, as citizens record themselves and scroll the internet obsessively.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GGNS7XD3PBCKLKURV4DZXUYBN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"A potential obstacle to the revival of anrocomraircnicsiumairne for everyday use is that it’s not easy to say. Even David Stifter, professor of Old and Middle Irish at Maynooth, palpably struggles with it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RKJQUUKILJCZDD3L3FV2TFK47M","additional_properties":{},"content":"As Tuesday’s master of ceremonies, he had to say it several times. And linguistic thoroughbred though he is, he approached it like a nervous showjumper negotiating a triple-jump at the RDS in slippery conditions In fairness, while he rattled a few bars, he didn’t knock any off.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JI3GAIOFY5GYTITIL7J65XSCAU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Mistakes were a running theme of the RIA event. Clearly the scribes of medieval Ireland, unlike Frank Sinatra, never found their regrets too few to mention, even if they sometimes had to disguise them in ogham.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZFV7CAWB25A4PH4BQZKXSJBBHQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hence a piece of marginalia by a ninth-century monk. He was working on a copy of Priscian’s Latin grammar but added the Irish word latheirt, meaning “excessive drunkenness” or “hangover” at the top of a page, in ogham.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E7H6IRJH5RHERP3DUR6BTJPEZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"As Deborah Hayden, head of Maynooth’s Department of Early Irish, joked, this may have been an apology for any shortcomings in his work transcribing the text. His copy, containing 3,500 glosses (and the coded confession) in Old Irish is now preserved at a Library in St Gall, Switzerland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FFECJ24YIZE5NC7V6B5IVAGJRQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hayden also explained the significance of the Tower of Babel in the Irish language’s origin legend. According to Auraicept na nÉces, it arose from the vacuum that followed the tower-building debacle, when scholar Fénius Farsaid was commissioned to produce a new language from the remains of all previous ones.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UWAMR3IX3RFGVBSPYJLVXCMXWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"This not only implied that Irish was superior to its predecessors, it also neatly absolved it from any blame for the tower-building project’s multilingual mix-up.","type":"text"},{"_id":"52X4YAO4IJBPTJ3PHWEDLOXORA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The language’s supposed superiority extended to ogham, which the Auraicept included alongside the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets. It was claimed that ogham was the best and most exact of the quartet, because it was “invented last”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VAXE3VIVEVFXJL4MCTAJU7VS74","additional_properties":{},"content":"Alas, the writing system is not widely used today, although it retains a certain cachet among designers. Hayden’s slide show included the sign for a “hot yoga” studio in Boston, whose name Analaigh (Irish for “Breathe”) is also rendered in ogham.","type":"text"},{"_id":"37LLNBH5FVEN5HUYJPF5NWUKQI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another example, nearer ogham – sorry, home – is a solicitors’ office in Cork, McCarthy Teahan on Father Matthew Quay. Red and black blocks of colour on the logo are divided by a white ogham stave. On closer inspection, apparently, the characters translate as “Bob Rote This”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"73AZVJXOR5DJ5PVJ2HWFDHYMZI","additional_properties":{},"content":"But the one of Hayden’s slides that struck a chord – for me personally – featured part an old poem in the RIA manuscript collection, written in ogham, called An Clampar.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2JCNEGFIE5D3LMRZSJOPL2FOZE","additional_properties":{},"content":"This clampar was not to be confused with clampers of the kind you encounter in dystopian Dublin, although the Irish word means “clash, quarrel, discord, etc,” so there may be an overlap.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6BR7DMHPWRAP7DCK4PTVB5H4YY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Anyway, it reminded me that the night before, I parked a rental car on a city street and paid in an advance for an hour’s parking next day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"25SLINCHFVGOVLNODJZTIB7B7Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"But in the Department of Early Tuesday, I was slightly late getting up – possibly due to some lingering lathairt from the weekend – so that by the time I remembered the car, the paid parking and traditional 15 minutes’ grace had both elapsed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"634VBQSVTND33J5AV6QLUASOFY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Rounding the corner urgently, I found my rental all alone in the bay, apart from a “parking services” van alongside, ready to strike. As I drove away smugly, under the clampers’ noses, that too felt like poetry.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"The scribes of medieval Ireland, unlike Sinatra, never found their regrets too few to mention"},"display_date":"2024-11-06T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ogham thoughts – Frank McNally on a new artwork, an old alphabet, and the longest word in Irish","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"Y6OEPZXDQNEPJDKIKXHSGDCS64","auth":{"1":"0762bd362036bca664117d1236f4bd6041f724d409a951f302196cd74c14a2a7"},"focal_point":{"x":979,"y":820},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/Y6OEPZXDQNEPJDKIKXHSGDCS64.jpeg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/06/ogham-thoughts-frank-mcnally-on-a-new-artwork-an-old-alphabet-and-the-longest-word-in-irish/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"NCTZKS7JYVCKTEY75VFNGZUXDY","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/05/presidential-bearing-brian-maye-on-erskine-childers/","content_elements":[{"_id":"IRM5FML2NFGWZMFND2AYEBOZFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140649},"content":"Although he has the dubious distinctions of being the shortest-term president of Ireland and the first and only one to die in office, Erskine Hamilton Childers had an unbroken 35-year Dáil career, during nearly 30 of which he was a minister.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CEKNWQZS2VBI5NVILCN6YW4VTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140650},"content":"He died 50 years ago on November 17th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4O3LDP3RCBGYTFMO22S2ZPM7FU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140651},"content":"He was born on December 11th, 1905, at Embankment Gardens, Chelsea, London, the elder of two sons of Robert Erskine Childers, a civil servant at the time, and Mary Osgood, who was from Boston.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZSRLAMLKVG2NPIRVIZ4SPSO3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140652},"content":"Reared and educated in England, he spent summer holidays as a child with the Bartons of Glendalough House, Annamoe, Co Wicklow, who were his father’s maternal cousins.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5KWV7BZTNRCTLJJ4CRQQZOCZUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140653},"content":"At the age of 16, he was allowed to visit his father briefly in prison before his execution (in November 1922) during the Irish Civil War.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7OCMCI3G5BCVCAIK3WIVUENUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140654},"content":"Following his graduation from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1928, with a degree in history and politics, he worked in Paris as a travel agent before moving to Ireland where he was successively advertising manager for de Valera’s Irish Press, secretary of the National Agricultural and Industrial Development Association and secretary of the Federation of Irish Manufacturers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JI2Q4AK5GZDMPAOUVRTSUXCBAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140655},"content":"Inheriting his parents’ strong republicanism, he joined Fianna Fáil and contested his first general election in 1938, where he took one of two seats for the party in Athlone-Longford, surprisingly replacing one of the sitting Fianna Fáil TDs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XXEK4BBZIRDVZG2SOFVGXUOAXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140656},"content":"Not a great vote-getter and usually scraping in on a later count, yet he never failed to get elected. He represented Athlone-Longford till 1948, then Longford-Westmeath till 1961 before moving to Monaghan. The latter was a risky move as it was a three-seater; Fianna Fáil hoped he’d attract some of the sizable Protestant vote in the constituency. He won the seat and continued to hold it until retirement in 1973, when he contested the presidency.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VN6RWQEVJNHGLMK65GHU5ZWBNI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140657},"content":"Economics and industrial development were his main contributions to Dáil debates and from 1944 to 1948 he served as a parliamentary secretary (now junior minister), mainly in local government, where he organised the county engineering service, formulated the Public Libraries Act and introduced a number of road-safety measures. When Fianna Fáil returned to power in 1951, he was made minister for posts and telegraphs; at 45, he was the youngest member of cabinet.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IKGS4F6TKJDW5OMFJAKU6Y5JB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140658},"content":"Greatly interested in public broadcasting, he introduced innovations, established Comhairle Radio Éireann to advise him on policy and appointed the first director of broadcasting from outside the Civil Service. As minister of lands, forestry and fisheries (1957-59), he reorganised Bord Iascaigh Mhara and extended afforestation, among other initiatives. New taoiseach Seán Lemass appointed him minister for transport and power (1959-69). On Childers’s advice, Thekla Beere was appointed the first woman secretary of an Irish government department. As part of the reorganisation of CIÉ, he closed uneconomic rail lines, which proved unpopular, and purchased and modernised the British and Irish Steam Packet Company, making it the first Irish-owned passenger-transport company on the Irish Sea. He also established Bord Fáilte (1962), which set up regional tourism bodies, and he promoted many tourism innovations, including summer schools and An Óige, the youth-hostelling organisation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QCPPSKPTFNHWJHTREFMSAWYSQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140659},"content":"He’d supported Jack Lynch over George Colley in the leadership contest to succeed Lemass and was made tánaiste and minister for health in 1969. The 1970 Health Act set up regional health boards to take over health management from local authorities (but he conceded local councillors majority representation on the boards), a Comhairle na nOspidéal to oversee consultant appointments, and a health levy was imposed on middle- and higher-income earners.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLKAORSU5NBUNAIZLIA5FBYJ64","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140660},"content":"When the situation in Northern Ireland erupted, he took a conciliatory approach, strongly opposed the use of violence and was deeply hostile to Neil Blaney and Charles Haughey during the so-called “arms crisis”. Although his stance caused some unease in Monaghan Fianna Fáil circles, he topped the poll for the first time in his career at the 1973 general election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XVKV23RLTZGJ3DWRQYBQDQEU5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140661},"content":"Pauric Dempsey and Lawrence White, who wrote the entry on Childers in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, said that his ministerial career was known for efficiency and capable administration rather than leadership; they referred to his “insatiable appetite” for statistics and his endless streams of memoranda, not only to his civil servants but also to government colleagues (the latter were more amused than annoyed by this, they remarked). Shy, aloof, innately courteous, he was “earnest to the point of eccentricity, had a reputation for parsimony and committed some legendary gaffes,” they also observed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EQ522MZWQJAM3CIQZ55CZAGMXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140662},"content":"It’s been suggested that outgoing president Eamon de Valera leaned on Jack Lynch to nominate Childers as the party’s presidential candidate in 1973. He proved a surprising winner but his relationship with the sitting Fine Gael-Labour coalition was uneasy at times. His sudden death from a heart attack at the age of 68, after 16 months in office, caused widespread shock and his state funeral drew a huge attendance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CJE3DZFSQJCJXKASZRSVETQY3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140663},"content":"He married at the age of 19 Ruth Ellen Dow, who was six years his senior. They had three sons and two daughters.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RBOCN5MHXZAS5GJMLPY7ZRBRLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140664},"content":"She died in 1950 and two years later, he married Margaret Mary (“Rita”) Dudley, a Catholic. They had one daughter.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"The first and only president of Ireland to die in office"},"display_date":"2024-11-05T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Presidential bearing – Brian Maye on Erskine Childers ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"MZNZF5C2PRFVPMDMQWRDWDEATY","auth":{"1":"4d843e65b3d85d9248e54e84df7e38b29f23c8a4cd2f170650e58dd618415f86"},"focal_point":{"x":701,"y":224},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/MZNZF5C2PRFVPMDMQWRDWDEATY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/05/presidential-bearing-brian-maye-on-erskine-childers/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"GYNKJ6P635BLPIGUSAOHY4WFGM","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/04/geography-and-destiny-ronan-mcgreevy-on-the-boundary-commission/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AYXCEK5PEZC3LILCOEYCEZDT3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372120},"content":"The Anglo-Irish Treaty would most likely not have been signed by the Irish delegates but for the inclusion of the Boundary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XYCTBEC6N5HIZHGQOUINY2UU2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372121},"content":"Article 12 of the Treaty stated that the commission would “determine in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions, the boundaries between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland”. This woolly phrasing – what does “compatible with economic and geographic conditions” even mean? – was nevertheless seized upon by the Irish delegation as a way of negating the impact of partition which was already a reality.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AAEWHX5QHBE2VLJ2H4IHWCOEPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372122},"content":"Northern Ireland had been established by the time the Treaty talks began and the British government made it clear its existence was not up for discussion.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D4HN7SYAVJANFKO32T6YQRA5KI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372123},"content":"However, nationalist Ireland expected the commission would cede the majority nationalist counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone to the Free State, along with Derry city and south Armagh, therefore making the fledging northern state “sink into insignificance”, as Michael Collins put it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YXH3267IWVGYHJLOUDM5E6C6DY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372124},"content":"So great was the expectation that Article 12 barely featured in the Treaty debates.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SUG6GDX3DNHZTGC7XEI5MBRZRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372125},"content":"Most nationalists believed the Treaty was an interim arrangement as far as the Border was concerned and they expected the commission to deliver for nationalist Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZQXMTYJESZEZFEQZAYNU7JU6Z4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372126},"content":"Those heady expectations had already been tempered when the first meeting of the three-member commission took place at 5 and 6 Clement’s Lane in London on Friday, November 7th, 1924.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZPS7EO3TDNAH3K4BHOI3B2M7WE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372127},"content":"The commission’s deliberations had been delayed by the Civil War which only ended in May 1923 and by political turmoil in the UK which had seen the fall of a minority Labour government with its replacement by a Tory government led by Stanley Baldwin, which had just taken office.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZKEL5CWDX5ERHNL3GPPR3DZBSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372128},"content":"Most of those who signed the Treaty were either dead, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith among them, or out of office, like David Lloyd George or Winston Churchill.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQIHC53ERBA3ZKPE3IW4WMJFYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372129},"content":"Nevertheless, an editorial in the Offaly Independent opined it had “every hope that in a few months we will see these two counties, as a result of the findings of the commission, reckoned to be part of the Free State”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QJOTSNXXCRFGFEM7MDFPEGNRZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372130},"content":"The commission consisted of the chairman Justice Richard Feetham, Dr Eoin MacNeill on behalf of the Free State, and Joseph R (JR) Fisher, a journalist and barrister, who was appointed by the British government to represent the interests of Northern Ireland. Sir James Craig’s Northern administration refused to send a representative or to make a submission to the commission.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ATNST5MABVF6NHENWDDL77VG2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372131},"content":"From the beginning the chairman determined to take a minimalist approach to the commission and not the expansionist approach that nationalist Ireland had hoped when the Treaty was signed. Any settlement would retain Northern Ireland as a viable entity, he insisted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZ25C52RTFEDPCRIWMDXXRA5Z4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372132},"content":"Majority Catholic areas including Derry city would not be “compatible with economic conditions”, as Derry was essential to the survival of the North and majority nationalist parts of south Down were ruled out because they provided the water for Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3NXJ54RKVRBXVKUZVE45Q2MNH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372133},"content":"Neither would Feetham countenance the possibilities of plebiscites, which were common in Europe at the time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D2EC7Q7XSRFNRJI4QHS3MDJ26I","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372134},"content":"The Free State government made an early submission to Feetham.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QAPUIXPGVJF2BCOOL2ZKB36X6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372135},"content":"As far as it was concerned, the Free State had jurisdiction over the North unless the inhabitants of certain areas opted out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TB7ERYXGHZBO3BNUCUTA6YQKH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372136},"content":"Any area in Northern Ireland where the majority of the inhabitants wished to be part of the Free State should be allowed to do so and the government saw its role as “trustees” of the nationalist population in the North.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGRTA7RBS5GQTI6FM6MLPNAIMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372137},"content":"MacNeill could hardly have had a clearer mandate, but he would prove to be a disastrous appointment. He was chosen because he was a northerner and held a cabinet rank as the minister for education. He was unable to devote his time exclusively to the critical task of determining the borders of his own state.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DRQ5D5RM55ETFMPTIEK3EEA5KE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372138},"content":"He was lacking in guile and impassively allowed Feetham to dominate proceedings. Irish nationalism needed a street fighter with a degree of cunning to fight the case. MacNeill was none of these things. He was other-worldly, with a scholarly cast of mind.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QIBQ5G3C35G7HK2K3HXQZYU6YY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372139},"content":"The faith placed in him by the president of the Executive Council, William T Cosgrave, was woefully misplaced.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DTEIYTIDBRHRPPIMPHRJ5TP5SY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372140},"content":"MacNeill allowed Feetham to draw up the terms of reference and the scope of the commission without insisting, as he was supposed to do, that the Free State expected the widespread transfer of Catholic-majority areas along the Border to it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLHGAJ65IZFMXKRTHTPYPP57AI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372141},"content":"He made no comment when leaks appeared in the unionist press which could only have come from Fisher.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6XST76G5KVGNTDU6PL342WSALI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372142},"content":"After a few weeks of deliberations, the commission moved to Ireland in December to hear from communities along the Border. Only one of the three jurisdictions involved in the commission, the Irish Free State, behaved in good faith. The other two were bent on preserving the status quo.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JQIBV7MZONBZDCGM3NPGG3V7EE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372143},"content":"The commission’s deliberations were leaked a year later in December 1925. It envisaged only piecemeal transfers to the Free State and, to the shock of many, and even suggested the transfer a sliver of land in east Donegal to Northern Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GHPXAXLAH5AADDHGM2IT3KTMDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372144},"content":"MacNeill had taken his oath of confidentiality and kept it to the letter. As a consequence, WT Cosgrave’s government was shocked by the findings. MacNeill resigned and issued a mea culpa. He was not the right man for the job, he admitted, but it was far too late for northern nationalists.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Ronan McGreevy"}},"name":"Ronan McGreevy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Northern nationalists felt abandoned by process"},"display_date":"2024-11-04T18:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Geography and destiny – Ronan McGreevy on the Boundary Commission","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"M24PHX3R6JE2BKQH3JQFTE7C7M","auth":{"1":"11e8022f5040ba4e6a9a2100517b5d7f35d76896e3e9c3646e016c341050c368"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/M24PHX3R6JE2BKQH3JQFTE7C7M.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/04/geography-and-destiny-ronan-mcgreevy-on-the-boundary-commission/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"NNZTLTUY3BAGZIUW7FPVYMNRU4","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/01/imposter-boy-frank-mcnally-on-another-appearance-of-the-flann-obrien-who-wasnt/","content_elements":[{"_id":"OHAXJQ2AK5DHHPKU52ZPWF6VQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503318},"content":"I see that a portrait of Flann O’Brien has taken its deserved place on the walls of the Devonshire Arms, the much-talked about (and partly Irish-owned) London pub celebrated for the quality of its Guinness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W6RWN5AWQZACTC5SSPBQMQRAXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503319},"content":"It’s an excellent picture by a fine artist, Belfast-born Dameon Priestly. There is one small drawback, however. The man featured in it is not Flann.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A23E7HSMDZDHTFYBBRTLBBUDZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503320},"content":"This confusion arises – again – because the painting was inspired by a well-known photograph of Brian O’Nolan, which has been much reproduced – even on some of his own books – although he doesn’t feature in it either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7Z3CAU543ZGNNG3PLG7JO7MC4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503321},"content":"The photo was taken circa 1945 in Dublin’s Palace Bar, a place O’Nolan (aka Flann, Myles na gCopaleen, and many other pseudonyms) did indeed frequent then.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X7ENNQQRYVHQRC6DK6JQA75ANI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503322},"content":"He may well have been on the premises at the time. He is not, however, in the picture. The man who is was the poet Robert Farren (1909-1984), aka Roibeárd Ó Faracháin, as revealed by his son Ronan Farren in a letter to this paper in 2017. That letter was inspired by the photograph’s then most recent act of imposture, in this very newspaper – O’Nolan’s employer for 26 years – to accompany the review of a book about him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GGUK6KYOIFBSLCCEMG3KCYMS54","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503323},"content":"And however unfortunate, as I wrote at the time, it was not without aptness that the shape-shifting writer had been so supplanted: “He of all people would have understood the existentially-threatening condition implied in a common Hiberno-English phrase: ‘He’s not himself lately’. O’Nolan spent his career pretending to be other people. And sometimes even the other people (eg Myles, often written by [his friend Niall] Montgomery, were not who they were supposed to be either.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SLK66R7APFHU7PV7DGFAVJXQOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503324},"content":"But seven years on, clearly, the image refuses to die. And its continued popularity suggests that, for many people, Farren presents a more convincing version of O’Nolan than O’Nolan could ever manage himself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WEZR3LKUWNGYTI6UAMXGCBZSMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503325},"content":"That’s to say, he looked the part of a comic writer, at least in that picture: stroking his chin as a playful thought crosses his mind, betrayed only by smiling, bespectacled eyes. You can almost see Farren thinking up an ingenious pun, like the one in which Myles invented a temperature scale based on “Farren Height”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CMSMR6JINJH27E5YXJC62BYFNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503326},"content":"Whereas O’Nolan himself was something of a disappointment in this respect. His biographer Anthony Cronin remembered him as a “phantom” in the Palace Bar, always on the edge of the company forming “an invisible outer circle of his own”. Brendan Behan, who knew him later, said: “You had to look twice to see if he was there at all.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"N43V3VYVCJDCFFE2WHLU6FZJRU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503327},"content":"I’m reminded of another O’Nolan-themed artwork, by David O’Kane, submitted some years ago for a competition in the writer’s native Strabane. It would have comprised the sculpture of an empty hat and overcoat, back-lit and projected onto a wall, throwing a Myles-shaped shadow onto lines from a 1944 column : “My presence here is a ‘phenomenon’ so completely outside of and beyond the planes of existence which human thought is able to hypothesize into the structure of the universe that – considered in ‘relation’ to that presence – the whole monstrous procession of life can only be understood as a sort of epiphenomenal magic lantern show, too dim, too dull, too intolerably indistinct to amuse even the most backward, the most barbarous, of infants.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKIYAIUJWFA35EFXZJGWK5PVSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503328},"content":"Getting back to Devonshire Arms and its core business for a moment, I gather that Irish co-owner Oisin Rogers was in part inspired by the popular social media site “Shit London Guinness”, which has spent years posting pictures of the badly poured pints for which that city is infamous.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DL3LDUOMSVEUVLV5ERVLCMQ4YQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503329},"content":"Determined to buck this reputation, Rogers and co “built the pub around the Guinness installation”, at great expense, with best-practice technology, including gas-dispensing ratios.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGKQHUOGUFCY3DYKS6QU2HJ7DA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503330},"content":"As one review explained: “While most pubs in the UK spit Guinness out at a ratio of 70:30 nitrogen to carbon dioxide, The Devonshire does 82.18, which gives it the creamy head that’s closer to what you typically find in Ireland.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FU4JVCFLGREV5JE3W4CHVVUIQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503331},"content":"The chemistry of reproducing Flann O’Brien in art is not perhaps as complex as that of serving Guinness, but there are some superficial similarities. The overcoat-hat ratio, in particular – about 80:20, typically – seems crucial.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFWIKKNTFJFBZNNO37NQYH53WA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503332},"content":"Those two items of clothing may be the only things O’Nolan had in common with Farren. Unlike the latter, for example, the former did not wear glasses. But as in the proposed sculpture, the hat and coat were enough to suggest the rest of him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2ZZNZHTKJZFBRNS5AGWYCK5Y7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503333},"content":"Anyway, while we’re at it, this may a good place to mention that proposals are now invited for the 8th International Flann O’Brien Conference, which takes place next June.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AYQ4ZVPFJ5G7XJ5YNV7KNQXQH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503334},"content":"Since its foundation in 2011, the biennial event has visited Vienna, Rome, Prague, Salzburg, Dublin, Boston, and Cluj (in Transylvania). Next year’s instalment will bring it all back home to the twin, river-divided towns of O’Nolan’s childhood – the Budapest of northwest Ireland, if you like – Strabane and Lifford.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BBHEAKSB5JDLDGVJA6ESNBAOYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503335},"content":"Abstracts for papers should be submitted by December 1st (<a href=\"http://parishreview.openlibhums.org/news/759/\" target=\"_blank\">parishreview.openlibhums.org/news/759/</a>). Among the suggested themes is “Flann and ideas of absence”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"A case of mistaken identity in the Devonshire Arms"},"display_date":"2024-11-04T14:47:00.59Z","headlines":{"basic":"Imposter Boy – Frank McNally on another appearance of the Flann O’Brien who wasn’t","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"MBUD26RAQZDC5GJYQVFEXCS5BI","auth":{"1":"215bcdfb47deb939f6582b124dbdb08c8efabf0cb2bcb130e2de9cc80cff6dec"},"focal_point":{"x":513,"y":657},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/MBUD26RAQZDC5GJYQVFEXCS5BI.jpeg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/01/imposter-boy-frank-mcnally-on-another-appearance-of-the-flann-obrien-who-wasnt/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"GFJTZXYXVRBMDJTNXK53CV4XSY","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/03/magic-and-enchantment-padraigin-riggs-on-traveller-and-storyteller-tomas-o-cathasaigh/","content_elements":[{"_id":"5IMGLBTV3VBHXIZN2JZTMZYO5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1936, the Irish Folklore Society published a collection of stories entitled Ocht Sgéalta ó Choillte Mághach. This small book consisted of eight stories, recounted orally by Tomás Ó Cathasaigh from Kiltimagh, Co Mayo, and edited by An Craoibhín Aoibhinn (Douglas Hyde), who collected them from the storyteller. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"3YL5QPUMLRC5JLJOKRF736RFPA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Three years later, the Irish Texts Society published a much expanded collection of stories by Ó Cathasaigh, this time, with an English translation and, again, edited by Hyde. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"O3OBIRSQ5RAQVLPBCWTNZQVOFE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Only one of the previously published stories is contained in the Irish Texts Society volume – described by the editor as \" . . . sui generis and unlike anything else I have ever met.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6EVAIFVOZFGBBLAQDC23PNXZAM","additional_properties":{},"content":"To date, little is known of the life of Ó Cathasaigh. Hyde describes him as being 80 years old in 1936, the year before he died, but the entry in <a href=\"http://Ainm.ie\" target=\"_blank\">Ainm.ie</a> gives 1861 as the most likely date of his birth, based on the evidence of the 1901 census, which would make him 75. According to the same source, Tomás was married to Bridget and they had five children. Both parents could speak Irish and English but could not read; the children spoke only English. Hyde claims that Tomás could write English “fairly”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UJJWNZM2HJAG7MDJFEGRJVGVNU","additional_properties":{},"content":"What is unusual about this storyteller, whose repertoire was in the Irish language, is that he came from the Travelling community.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2HN76WZUA5FUJEKVW24YJKINDQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hyde’s main source of information about Ó Cathasaigh was a letter, written after Tomás’s death, by Annie Doyle, then a student at the Convent of St Louis, Kiltimagh. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"2S2WT3ZL3BFXXNA3FCIJXZCJUE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In an extract from the letter (translated by Hyde) she says: “A tinker was Thummaus, and his clan before him, but his mother settled in this town. When Thummaus was a young man he married a girl out of the town and he followed the tinker’s trade making tin ware, and he was also a buyer of mules and such. He succeeded well in money matters, and he bought a house. Then he was for a time a bailiff on the river near the town, to put a stop to the fishing of the salmon, but the people used not to have confidence in him.” (That is, they did not trust him.) She continues: “He was a very cute and clever man, and he used to have the full of the house every night listening to his stories.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"HOZI7Y6PJBGYDFZRR3OQMU4WTI","additional_properties":{},"content":"But he was thought to have been involved with the Fenians and to have revealed some secret information about them. (If he was born as late as 1861, that would seem unlikely.) ","type":"text"},{"_id":"BOYNSYBEWRBIJHZZP5UFCNPAGM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Whatever the reason, Annie Doyle claims that he was banished from the town and the local people thought he was dead until the book Ocht Sgéalta ó Choillte Mághach appeared. He was reputed always to emerge triumphant from the various incidents that proliferated about him, hence the expression, in Mayo: “You are as cute as O’Casey, the tinker.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VGFYSAC3XZHI3DT5E3E4EBFLEA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Tomás told Hyde that he got his stories from his grandfather, Seán Buidhe Ó Raghallaigh, who was born near Castlebar and was said to have spent 40 years with Colonel Martin (“Humanity Dick”) at Ballinahinch. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"M76VCZJ7XRHIZEJXRZO4ICJHVE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hyde tells us that Seán Buidhe, who was nearly five score years when he died, “came to Coillte Mághach or Kiltimagh, and settled down about three miles from the town. He used to be telling his stories beside the fire at night, in his own house, and Thummaus used to be there, and he a young boy, listening to him, and he ‘picked them up himself’.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKON73FQAZHV5LFHIV3YTUYXBE","additional_properties":{},"content":"When Hyde made his acquaintance, around 1935, Tomás was living in Co Sligo, having spent some time in America. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"NNNDZ7ELO5DFJGMV5G5OF4NSKA","additional_properties":{},"content":"When his wife died, he had nobody to speak to in Irish as that language was not spoken in Sligo at the time and, consequently, he was increasingly influenced by English. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OLALU7NUVFF4HH6ICMKEL2ACJI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hyde notes that he spoke the Irish of Mayo “almost the same language that I had myself when I was young in the County Roscommon” but, he describes it as “a little broken and corrupted . . . tending to simplicity”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HPQ47WCBANDPBMM3G2DMTCXWGQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"While some of the stories in the collection contain elements of magic and enchantment, with clear traces of antiquity, many are about natural events. Hyde comments on Tomás’s ability to embellish his material, so that incredible events in which he, himself, was purportedly involved appear perfectly credible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q3352ZUZFVCPBCVZNVCLBCUU4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The volume published by The Irish Texts Society in 1939, Sgéalta ó Thomás Ó Cathasaigh (Mayo Stories told by Thomas Casey), will be the subject of that Society’s Annual Seminar on November 9th at University College, Cork, where topics discussed will include Ó Cathasaigh’s life and language, the genesis of his stories in a national and international context and his repertoire between the settled and Travelling communities. Details of this event are available at <a href=\"http://irishtextssociety.org\" target=\"_blank\">irishtextssociety.org</a> “Twenty-Fifth annual ITS seminar”. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Pádraigín Riggs"}]},"description":{"basic":"The stories contain clear traces of antiquity, and many focus on natural events"},"display_date":"2024-11-03T18:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Magic and enchantment – Pádraigín Riggs on Traveller and storyteller Tomás Ó Cathasaigh ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"GJDCPTFGAJE6ZFNP5PEU5SK7PA","auth":{"1":"7f6905fdd78813d72e24627f0da7be9c59b93987926a3fc64e712c22a71783af"},"focal_point":{"x":886,"y":455},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/GJDCPTFGAJE6ZFNP5PEU5SK7PA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/03/magic-and-enchantment-padraigin-riggs-on-traveller-and-storyteller-tomas-o-cathasaigh/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"NRZZ46XB2RBL7KI7NX5V6PMEHI","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/31/push-notification-frank-mcnally-on-an-offensive-cycling-term-that-refuses-to-die/","content_elements":[{"_id":"YSMVAOUTERDSRHFZ3QYKX3LI4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143249},"content":"Long-time reader George Harding has taken me to that always stressful place – task – over a question of vocabulary. It’s about a bicycle, to paraphrase a certain comic novelist. And sure enough, he has called Flann O’Brien as a witness for the prosecution.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C6H4ISVVX5CHPERT2P5V5QZ3I4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143250},"content":"George writes: “I was very surprised to hear you use the phrase ‘push-bikes’ in [a recent] article (<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/11/pavement-pinball-frank-mcnally-on-the-perils-of-rush-hour-running/\" target=\"_blank\">Diary, October 12th</a>). That terminology went out with the flood. I remember chastising [a reporter on RTÉ's] Nationwide when he used it in relation to Kelly and Roche back in the mid-eighties.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UPYP7O2S3RAK5FDESXYWS2APKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143251},"content":"“’Mountain’ bikes arrived at the beginning of the eighties and most of them were equipped with 18 gears, therefore there would be no reason to ‘push’ a bike – you cycled it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NG54QRF45RBDFFLJXNLEG5CZOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143252},"content":"“The term faded as far back as the late sixties, when I could picture a messenger boy pushing his low-gravity bike full of messages up Patrick’s Hill. I reckon my father sold the last one of those monsters in approximately 1964.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRX6CD5NNJGTHB5YSD4LXIPCIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143253},"content":"His email concludes: “I doubt if the great Flann ever used the term, and can you imagine if he had titled the funniest book ever written by an Irishman ‘The Third Guard’?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MCCMDJEGDZGKFI33Z7WW7TBRWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143254},"content":"Well, now, first let me deal with that last question, side issue as it may be. For if the implication is that “Guard” is an old-fashioned word, superseded by the modern “Policeman”, I feel bound to protest the reverse.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TMDOQGHEJRDWHKOXKH3LT3FNOY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143255},"content":"As far as I can judge, The Third Policemen is set (vaguely) in a pre-independence Ireland: hence the references to “policemen” rather than the new-fangled “guards” of Flann’s time, and to “parliament” instead of the “Dáil”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V44KLLRARZDLPBILHE7VSVIJDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143256},"content":"But as to the substantive point, it’s true that, when my attention was drawn to it, “push-bike” did seem an oddly archaic phrase for me to be using in 2024.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5DCN5RCGCVAOXBIYBKGC64T5BU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143257},"content":"Then I remembered why I (and many others) do still use it: to distinguish the fully human-powered bicycle from the ever-multiplying e-bikes, which require little or no effort. It hardly seems fair that both forms of activity are described as “cycling”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HED4VQQUKJCU5OL6K52TH6B6MQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143258},"content":"Also, from a personal viewpoint, the bikes I mostly use these days are the Dublin rental variety, which weigh more than some small cars. On any kind of hill, those are always a bit of a schlep (another word we were discussing here recently).","type":"text"},{"_id":"RVXDDE5KMNFSHGVOB6EMGJCBIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143259},"content":"And I do literally push them on occasion, for example when carrying a Christmas tree. On the plus side, you can – with careful balancing – transport a seven-foot tree along the spine of a Dublin bike. But you can’t usually fit yourself in the saddle at the same time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RDMJUUND7BFWNCVVPO2SCR3IKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143260},"content":"All this said, it was only thanks to George’s email that I finally realised there is, for some cyclists, a principled objection to the term “push-bikes”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JE7GIRF2TRHVZLXICCWY4LQXDU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143261},"content":"They consider it, in the words of one cycling blogger “offensive, old-fashioned, and obnoxious” (the first and last of those adjectives mean the same thing, but I suppose they serve the same role as stabilisers on a back wheel).","type":"text"},{"_id":"BS4TVJF665DH5HZSWPBK77WEAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143262},"content":"That was a response to the UK Department of Transport’s continued use of the phrase. But “push-bike” was first coined more than a century ago. And even then, it was considered a put-down.","type":"text"},{"_id":"72L4VKBHD5DM5GYC4L5INJT2PA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143263},"content":"An American writer, Joseph Pennell, may have been the first to use it, in 1903, and did so disparagingly. He cycled widely for a time and wrote about it. Then he became a motorbike enthusiast. Thereafter, he regarded the “push bike” with scorn.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBPG7OX4WFDWTASOATZNGQQJXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143264},"content":"A decade later, in 1914, the London Times noted the phrase’s increased popularity as evidence that the bicycle was on the way out, rendered obsolete by motorised transport:","type":"text"},{"_id":"OTHVSSIF4VBENAPV6B52GAN4PY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143265},"content":"“It is a year or two now since what used to be known merely as a bicycle came to be called distinctively and contemptuously a ‘push-bike,’ just as a carriage is now a ‘horse-drawn carriage’,” the paper commented. “There is a knell in each epithet.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZMESPQRJ55EHTKF2OGH4XYA6NE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143266},"content":"That obituary was premature, as it turned out. It might have astonished the Times writer that not only would bicycles be more popular than ever 110 years later, but that the term “push-bike” would still be used, with no intended contempt.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GK7DMIKK7VESVLXREO5PJKBTHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143267},"content":"Anyway, to get to back to George’s complaint, yes, naturally, I checked the archives to see if Flann (or his Irish Times persona Myles na gCopaleen) had ever used the phrase.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ODXZ2EDPSNF75E3UZKHEYFFBDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143268},"content":"And I thought I had found an example, from 1942. But that turned out to be a former IT editor, Bertie Smyllie, lamenting an effect of the war: the shortage of rubber.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VBX4NHW7FJBIRFMKY2TFJNQVKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143269},"content":"“Do not think that I feel aggrieved because we have been told that there will be no more tyres for private motorists,” Smyllie wrote. “If I can scrounge a couple of second-hands for my dilapidated push-bike, I shall not grumble; for I kissed goodbye to private motoring on the day when Poland was invaded.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NVGSDKJCU5DIPPWOYRCQS7CLYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143270},"content":"Then, in a reverse of the London Times before an earlier war – and pausing for a Mylesian pun – he predicted a car-free future:","type":"text"},{"_id":"HQG3GX2T3BAZHF5EXEWH74HKMM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143271},"content":"“But there will be thousands of worthy citizens of Éire who will feel the wrench badly (as Myles na gCopaleen would put it, ‘Hold that one, Joe, it’s slippery!’); and I am afraid that millions of tons of petrol will flow down the various oleoferous regions . . . before private motorists . . . will be able to take their cars out again.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"There is, for some cyclists, a principled objection to the term “push-bikes”"},"display_date":"2024-10-31T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Push notification — Frank McNally on an “offensive” cycling term that refuses to die","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3XHQP5ROSZFKJJ2FILI3Q3UCHA","auth":{"1":"8929260e50cdc2654b033c63e5b846d8d1205e93ac4dce4275ed1de77ed76f77"},"focal_point":{"x":1519,"y":972},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3XHQP5ROSZFKJJ2FILI3Q3UCHA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/31/push-notification-frank-mcnally-on-an-offensive-cycling-term-that-refuses-to-die/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"O5XSC2BP65FQ5INNGF23B7ST6Q","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/30/pork-scratchings-frank-mcnally-on-racist-piggy-banks-the-decline-of-thrift-and-the-joy-of-building-playgrounds/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NGGFHECTIZGC7PEV5RFDBDZQWI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Among the collection of 19th-century antiques in a house I visited a while back was a magnificently racist piggy bank from 1882. Made in Connecticut, it was officially the “Shamrock Bank”. But its inspiration was another, unlovelier Hibernian stereotype. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LYA7RYXNLNHYFDNRKCYILKHF2Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Irishman depicted in it had an outsized head on a leprechaunish body, and tucked into his pocket was a jug of whiskey. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"XSTVP5K4OREMFCSVP7KCDHECOM","additional_properties":{},"content":"The central feature, however, was a pig, wedged between Paddy’s thighs with its snout in the air, so positioned you could rest a coin on it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JVISZWLKDJCWRNPIVETKM3S32Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Then you pulled a lever, and with an overhead flick of its left trotter, the pig deposited the coin via Paddy’s mouth, which opened to receive it, communion like, on a pink tongue. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"SD2VLHBH3JDDTNZKOVHB4WKPPM","additional_properties":{},"content":"As he swallowed the money, Paddy rolled his eyes in delight.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ICBUESSPD5AGTOWLH3462LMNIQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"This was one of several mechanical banks made by the J & E Stevens Company, based in a town named – wait for it – “Cromwell”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T6WPRTUD4RC5XHC6VO3KCLEIMA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Other models included the “Reclining Chinaman” and one from 1883 in which a native American chief offered a pipe of peace to a newly arrived immigrant from Europe, Christopher Columbus.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CJKZU5VQX5AINOPI3JYXWCPFDQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Paddy’s piggybank was popular with New York saloon keepers, apparently, but not – we presume – in Irish bars. Either way, it is now a collector’s item. One I saw on eBay had an asking price of $2,450.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SUQ3RHMCUJAMFB66YU2SLYXYR4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Commercial value aside, the antique may also serve a social role these days: a useful reminder that for many in Donald Trump’s New York, not so long ago, Irish immigrants were as much despised as Puerto Ricans and others are by some people now.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LSTASWG54NHWHGJQHWNLWTBMXE","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"2Z24YGVNEBD7DLVKFKAKDAHOHY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The piggy bank is doubly apt this week because October 31st is World Savings Day, aka World Thrift Day, an event still marked in many countries, although no longer – it seems – here. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UIXJWONZVFBLNI2DG3TCHY2VFQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"In fact, the latest instalment is the centenary of the original, the First International Thrift Congress, held in Milan on this date in 1924.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3732O5VEZBEDTAKNFXCWJHAL7M","additional_properties":{},"content":"The new Irish Free State was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea that saving money was the surest path to prosperity. Not surprisingly, early champions of Thrift Day included Belfast-born minister for finance, Ernest Blythe, now best remembered as the man who took a shilling off the pension in 1924.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZAE4USIJBVCHJA7ARWZ3ISEXIM","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1931, addressing the Irish Thrift Congress, Blythe invoked the parable of the “Wise Virgins” who stocked up on lamp oil for emergencies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F7WOX765RNDLFISIRJTUOUFYMM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Alas, Ireland’s wise virgins were already a threatened species by then. A motion to the congress warned of “serious, if not fatal, results to the national thrift movement . . . from the stimulus to gambling given to all classes of our people by the recently organised [hospital] sweeps.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"S4BUIBYPKVEGRG5LWS3YITUWVQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Sure enough, the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes went on to be vastly popular not just here, but in Britain and America too, using big horse races as the basis for a lottery in which the prizes could be enormous.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BUYSXKAA6FCHBMLJFTH7FQPO5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"This may help explain why the national thrift movement appears to have withered away in the 1930s. There is no mention of it in The Irish Times after 1936. No doubt a few wise virgins held out longer elsewhere, but the most recent newspaper reference I can find is from the Strabane Chronicle in 1961.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6GXRFOBZ6RDN3IBHMKYZT4B4H4","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"VX55QU44Q5FB3DTNGPP2RHMDV4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Perhaps the sweepstakes’ success in the US was Paddy’s revenge for pig-related offences past (although the biggest beneficiary of the scheme, notoriously, was not a Paddy but a Joe – McGrath, the politician who founded it).","type":"text"},{"_id":"IVKM35CHPBBXBHIJEJCQGJX7EU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Then again, one measure of its cultural fame was a 1939 Columbia Pictures cartoon called “Lucky Pigs”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GCJ5WOWFLVGCDMYQXBUFUXS6HQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"This depicted a down-and-out porcine family whose fortunes are changed when the feckless father (“Peter Pig”, although I suspect there were debates in studio about which P-name to give him) wins the “Irish Sweepstakes”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MJW42CC5MRHXVGPHMIRQ372ITY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The family wallows in vulgar wealth for a time, until 98 per cent tax rates and other misfortunes reduce them to penury again. Finally, only their son’s full piggy bank survives. Then – plot spoiler alert – a horse turns up at the door and claims that as his share of the winnings.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R3DO2RRHLFC7PB2IVXSDXP4VRQ","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"MEPAYQCIUND6FCRKBGMZKTUGV4","additional_properties":{},"content":"In a much greater movie from 1952, Ikiru, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa portrays a frustrated, terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat who finds meaning and happiness at the end of his life by championing the cause of a children’s playground.","type":"text"},{"_id":"53EYVOUECVEBPDO2S2QKV3PO3E","additional_properties":{},"content":"I was reminded of this by the organisers of a Dublin table quiz next month (Wednesday, November 13th), who point out that participants will have a unique opportunity to share the joy experienced by the film’s Kanji Watanabe, but without the inconvenience of dying.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRJH2ILYTJEAHFGUDUGUFW64XA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The event aims to raise funds for a “special autism playground” at the Red Door School, Monkstown. And it’s no mere table quiz: it’s a “gala quiz night”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"523TWSYA2BAHTLJR5FQOICUD4I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Which means that if the promise of adding joy and meaning to your life is not enough, there will also be spectacular prizes and auction items, not least an original painting by artist Tom Byrne and a dinner party cooked in your own home by a two-star Michelin chef, Damien Grey from Liath restaurant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KHEWBRUFBNBQPAUSPNN5VE7IIY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Quiz master will be a certain Paul Howard (possibly assisted by Ross O’Carroll-Kelly) of this parish. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"5ZTC6YUPIBGMLKU2MWBYGPS7RQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"All the other details are on the event website, <a href=\"http://reddoorschoolquiz.com\" target=\"_blank\">reddoorschoolquiz.com</a>.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"As he swallowed the money, Paddy rolled his eyes in delight"},"display_date":"2024-10-30T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Pork scratchings – Frank McNally on racist piggy banks, the decline of thrift, and the joy of building playgrounds","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"HDFCS33FVNGU5I3UXKYQM7YUA4","auth":{"1":"d3340b12c2d2a7417ddfcb2d63f0015c68f2c296e2ece1c22bf55129e5723b8d"},"focal_point":{"x":610,"y":662},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/HDFCS33FVNGU5I3UXKYQM7YUA4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/30/pork-scratchings-frank-mcnally-on-racist-piggy-banks-the-decline-of-thrift-and-the-joy-of-building-playgrounds/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"T4UBQNMKWJB7LHDLKCSO7GR4JA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":312,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9ec8c0ad-fe41-470a-96ed-281af74afdf4/versions/1730228285/media/f40241dc9fa7338c6574793d61549650_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/30/dare-devil-parliamentarian-tim-fanning-on-the-ogorman-mahon/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AMHJZYQNBBA3ZBARNSCDE6NKT4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The lengthy political career of Charles James Patrick Mahon was intertwined with both Daniel O’Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell. In fact, he may be said to have played a crucial role in both of the careers of the two titans of 19th-century Irish nationalism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JXQDQCE4BZGAVCHOB5N7YC2YWQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the 1820s, Mahon became a member of the Catholic Association and encouraged Daniel O’Connell to stand for election in Clare. In the late 1870s, he ran for parliament as a supporter of Parnell, being returned for Clare with a certain William O’Shea. It was Mahon who introduced Parnell to O’Shea, and, thus, indirectly, O’Shea’s estranged wife, Kitty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DXIILXBMTBGTVKPGGRJLNHIV6E","additional_properties":{},"content":"Mahon’s parliamentary career began in 1830, when he himself was elected for Clare, but came to an abrupt halt a year later when it was discovered that he had corruptly bought the seat. He and O’Connell fell out when the latter opposed Mahon’s candidacy. It was not until 1847 that Mahon returned to the British parliament, this time for the constituency of Ennis. This second period in parliament coincided with the worst years of the Great Famine. His final stint in the Commons, representing Clare (1879-1885) and Carlow (1887-1891), took place during the great parliamentary agitation for Home Rule.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CYYPLXYNL5F7TJLTUW3XVDZ67Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"While his political career was significant if unspectacular, Mahon himself was one of the most colourful characters to roam the corridors of Westminster. He styled himself “the O’Gorman Mahon”, claiming ancestry to a dynasty of Gaelic chieftains, leading to Thackeray caricaturing him as the portentous “the Mulligan” in his novel Mrs Perkins’s Ball.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XCUBP2J4U5HQRI7LRGDJ2KZBHA","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The greatest offence that can be offered to him, is to call him Mr. Mulligan,” wrote the esteemed novelist in a passage that somewhat betrays the British Establishment’s attitude towards the Irish in that era. ‘”Would you deprive me, Sir,” says he, “of the title which was bawren be me princelee ancestors in a hundred thousands battles? In our green valleys and fawrests, in the American Savannaghs, in the Sierras of Speen, and the Flats of Flandthers, the Saxon has quailed before me war-cry of MULLIGAN ABOO!”’","type":"text"},{"_id":"FDKSGJ3BF5H2XMSQ5I4ILIDK4E","additional_properties":{},"content":"More recently, one historian of the British Houses of Parliament has described Mahon as “a grotesque figure even by the exotic standards of some of the Irish Members in this period” and “a figure of pure self-invention”. Another biographer, Frederick William Whyte, wrote that he was “one of the last of the old race of dare-devil Irish gentlemen”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDBUAGWQNFAWLHJ277P7TKR64Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"As was common of that breed – and the English perception of it – Mahon was quick to pick up his duelling pistols. Accounts vary, but it seems Mahon fought more than a dozen duels, although some biographers put the total closer to 20. Whyte even claimed that a couple of notches on one of Mahon’s duelling pistols seemed significant. In his defence, Mahon claimed never to have done anything deliberately to provoke a challenge.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6FYFDZN7UNFTDL6O7A5CCERHJY","additional_properties":{},"content":"He did, however, evince a compulsion for adventure. Shortly after being called to the Irish bar – he never practised – he set off for Europe. In France, he met Talleyrand and spent time at the court of Louis Philippe. In Russia, he served in the army and allegedly went hunting bears with the Tzarevitch. His travels took him to Turkey, China, India, Arabia and South America. In Chile, he was said to have commanded a fleet, in Uruguay a brigade. In Brazil, he claimed to have been consecrated an archbishop.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JQJJJQXHAFFVFGIHXPBJQBYP7U","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1860, he found himself in Lima, investigating a murder. During the voyage to Peru, aboard the Vixen, Mahon had become friendly with the ship’s commander, Capt Lionel Lambert. Shortly after arriving in Lima, Capt Lambert had ventured out of his lodgings to bathe in a river when he was set upon by thieves and killed. Mahon took up the case of the deceased, pressurising the Peruvian government to find the murderers and even raising the issue with Lord Palmerston, the British prime minister.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMVIJLJPL5HZ5E52TEFAKOMU5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"After Lima, Mahon spent time in the United States, where he claimed to have fought on the Union side in the civil war, and in Berlin, during which period he tried to convince Bismarck to give him a concession to open a joint-stock bank. By the beginning of the 1870s, he was back in Ireland, participating in Isaac Butt’s Home Rule movement.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VFK5H7PXSBBH7D37SNY6AOEBVU","additional_properties":{},"content":"During Mahon’s last years in parliament, he became an enthusiastic adopter of obstructionism before publicly repudiating Parnell during the split in the Irish Party. He died on June 21st, 1891, and was buried in the O’Connell Circle in Glasnevin Cemetery. Three and a half months later, his one-time leader, Parnell, was also dead.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Tim Fanning"}]},"description":{"basic":"One of the most colourful characters to roam the corridors of Westminster"},"display_date":"2024-10-30T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Dare-devil parliamentarian – Tim Fanning on the O’Gorman Mahon","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"TUJ7PISG55FX3A3R3X3VBY35NU","auth":{"1":"5cb56ff6bacf5611cdca576ba0aa30763d3603b8aec35169c4eb6b990f189aa6"},"focal_point":{"x":335,"y":181},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/TUJ7PISG55FX3A3R3X3VBY35NU.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/30/dare-devil-parliamentarian-tim-fanning-on-the-ogorman-mahon/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"F6UH4QAS4NC7RNZQI4UF6Y5XTI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":296,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/0aaf6d31-a420-40b3-adba-3dd45974f5f4/versions/1730200153/media/be19b63eeaed251beb97d4134442a958_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/28/live-from-the-gpo-brendan-balfe-on-making-waves-at-radio-eireann/","content_elements":[{"_id":"B3XOYQBNOJDU7DRFDY4JEQELZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"The sign read “Radio Éireann”. It was over the first door in Henry Street, a side entrance to the GPO.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MTH25M7NEBFSZG7FT223ZZFS5U","additional_properties":{},"content":"On Monday, February 10th, 1964, I walked in for the first time and took the lift to the third floor. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"BVU4DJ55WBC7HJZDPMIJ3YFTAI","additional_properties":{},"content":"I was there for a voice test, along with a sample programme I had devised. The audition was successful and led to a six-week engagement to present a music series called Then and Now, starting on Sunday, July 5th, at 11pm. The programmes contrasted early and recent records by the same singers. The signature tune was This Could Be the Start of Something Big. I was 18 years old.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NMOK3HMNVFCOZFFIIDH4Q64PJM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Radio Éireann was originally 2RN, which opened on January 1st, 1926, over a small post office in Little Denmark Street, currently the site of the Ilac Centre. In October 1928, it moved to the GPO, rebuilt after the damage of the 1916 Rising. At first, it comprised one general studio and a small speech studio on the fourth floor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PMPUHNQGKZG5FMEAOWYUOCT4T4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Over the years, it developed with extra staff and facilities, and in 1937, it became Radio Éireann, still part of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. Offices lined a long corridor, 100 metres at least, running along the third floor parallel with Henry Street. It was lined with white tiles and frosted glass, prompting the conductor Sir John Barbirolli, in studio for an interview with Eamonn Andrews, to dub it “the longest row of lavatories in the world”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W34ZPNAEYJA2BKBMCINYMLTLAA","additional_properties":{},"content":"For many years, it broadcast only in the evenings, but in the late Fifties, it had increased its broadcasting hours in the morning and lunchtime, mainly by the introduction of sponsored programmes. In the Sixties, management had noticed that popular music was popular and Ireland’s Top Ten began, complementing other favourites like Hospitals Requests, Question Time, Take the Floor, and the sponsored serial The Kennedys of Castleross.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOXF4APN3FAC5L67CTYYUXXLIU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Meanwhile, I was working in insurance but had heard that Radio Éireann also engaged relief continuity announcers. I got in touch with Denis Meehan, the head of the announcing section, to ask for an audition. Following another test, I was offered a place on the next six-week training course starting on June 14th, 1965. It was given by Denis Meehan, his assistant, Brigid Kilfeather, and the former bank clerk who was now chief announcer, Terry Wogan. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"COM2HZQ2ONHMTLZHP5WMPJUS2E","additional_properties":{},"content":"Denis always reminded us to respect the listener, stressing that they may lack some information, but they are not stupid.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A4E3US3JYBCX3LH2V4FIFWJYKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Six weeks later, I was offered the job and on my first morning as a continuity announcer, Terry was in the studio to mind me, as he said. This entailed pouring a jug of water over my head, as I made my very first live announcement, opening the station. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PSHUVZTZ6ZHCNIE6G7AUEGM3UE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Later in the week, despite my protestations, he accompanied me to the studio of Farmers Forum to read the Cattle Market Report. Two seconds before the mic went live he said, “and remember it’s fat bullocks, not fat bollocks. Off you go.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"4LNNOMGYEJDULPBLM7IGPLVYPQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"At first a casual, I was later made a staff announcer and joined the band of delightful colleagues in the announcing section: Mike Murphy, Lorna Madigan, John Skehan, Maurice O’Doherty, Valerie McGovern, Una Sheehy, and, later, Pat Kenny. I was also mixing with Gay Byrne, Larry Gogan, Joe Linnane, and numerous actors, musicians, poets and writers. It was almost like an Arts Club, with intellectual weight and an artistic philosophy. In broadcasting, I always remember the lines of Henry David Thoreau, “To affect the quality of the day- that is the highest of arts.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LEXD2RULD5CBBJ3KLMJ4CFFDJ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"My memories of the GPO are all happy, if some are rather bizarre; like a 12-hour continuity duty in 1968 covering the funeral of Robert Kennedy; at the time, a record. I also recall the evening that the compere of Céilí House was unable to perform (or speak), so I had to race down the long corridor, down in the lift and up to the O’Connell Hall (opposite the Gresham Hotel) to present the programme.","type":"text"},{"_id":"372GHRM5ENHWFI6BFA5VEVKO6I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Una Sheehy also told me of an embarrassing moment. One Sunday, she handed over to Michael O’Hehir for a commentary from Croke Park. She turned her monitor to low, but after a while, she discerned a distinct silence from Michael. She apologised for the technical trouble and played a record. What she didn’t know was that the public address in the stadium had asked for a minute’s silence to mark the death of President Kennedy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PXSNILVLHFHKJMZ7IG42RUUI7E","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1973, the first months of the Gay Byrne Hour were still in Henry Street, but the move to the Montrose Radio Centre had begun. On Monday, November 8th, 1976, Mike Murphy and I joined colleagues gathered outside the continuity studio as Ray Lynott made the final announcement – and the GPO fell silent. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brendan Balfe"}]},"description":{"basic":"Terry Wogan was in the studio to mind me, as he said. This entailed pouring a jug of water over my head as I made my first live announcement"},"display_date":"2024-10-29T16:50:41.507Z","headlines":{"basic":"Live from the GPO – Brendan Balfe on making waves at Radio Éireann ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"VH2MOJP4CZEGJKDR7XZJFP3MG4","auth":{"1":"8b54c2c2a2354386ce31675cda691ad27559cbcd7c2e3c5e2b4a6f9ab5821d6a"},"focal_point":{"x":217,"y":283},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VH2MOJP4CZEGJKDR7XZJFP3MG4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/28/live-from-the-gpo-brendan-balfe-on-making-waves-at-radio-eireann/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"CFCIEAWALJBVLB4CIYT3ZDUGUM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":362,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/c995499a-3ff2-4cb7-b907-6c55ee5447be/versions/1730043939/media/9e1901c37a1ea7b5749aa2671a69100a_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/27/sean-macbride-despite-the-nobel-prize-winners-warning-the-possibility-of-facing-the-indescribable-is-greater-than-ever/","content_elements":[{"_id":"Q37TVBKX6JAZXNQC4EEOB3GF2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784219},"content":"Japanese disarmament campaigners won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize “for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”. These survivors of the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Nobel committee said, had described “the indescribable”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7XE32QVLMJGSTHQSIA2K5VY3QE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730042928415},"content":"Delivering the peace prize lecture in Oslo 50 years ago, Nobel laureate Seán MacBride warned that the world’s superpowers had chosen the “dangerous” option of increasing their nuclear capability. He called on them to begin a process of general disarmament. MacBride, the UN commissioner for Namibia, then occupied by apartheid South Africa, shared the 1974 peace prize with a former Japanese prime minister, Eisaku Sato, who also opposed the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BSE3G2RJHJFDNN6ZUPIIGBQT7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784221},"content":"MacBride was a relatively unusual Nobel Prize winner in that the Soviet Union awarded him the Lenin Peace Prize in 1977. Previous winners included Pablo Picasso and Fidel Castro. MacBride regarded the honour as “an indication of the interest which the Soviet Union has in putting an end to the arms race”. Nato’s “warmongering generals”, he argued, ridiculed this objective.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I5TVRIYZSZA6BKEG5F3FAHSKN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729867492095},"content":"The “fantastic sums” being poured into researching new missiles should instead be diverted into projects that would benefit mankind such as technology to develop solar, tidal and wind energy. On this occasion MacBride’s award was greeted with less enthusiasm, being seen as a dubious prize for an international human rights activist.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IPR7TNWCXFHCZNMCDZPT3AI2II","additional_properties":{"_id":1730042928418},"content":"The Lenin committee, however, lauded him as “the outstanding statesman” of Ireland, whose career should be seen as “a brilliant example of selfless service to noble ideals of peace and progress”. The Russians here had conveniently forgotten about MacBride’s “anti-communist” tenure as minister for external affairs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3ZGNKKWQM5EAVJZU73VSOJH6GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784222},"content":"In 1947, blocking Ireland’s bid to join the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-nations\" target=\"_blank\">UN</a>, a Soviet spokesman stated that de Valera’s Ireland and Salazar’s Portugal could not be regarded as “peace-loving” because they had – by upholding neutrality – “supported fascism” during the recent World War. He also contended that they maintained “particularly friendly relationships with Franco’s Spain, the last offshoot of fascism in Europe”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PCGTWFQDLFBC3H5RSOEKUJUMQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730042928420},"content":"The same year, having made his name as a lawyer defending former comrades in the IRA, the new “republican” party led by MacBride, Clann na Poblachta, threatened Fianna Fáil’s dominance by winning two byelections. It then won 10 seats in the “put them out” election of 1948.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YVCZXBW36BFHVLKWU73HMVKDNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784223},"content":"With Fine Gael’s John A Costello as taoiseach, MacBride became minister for external affairs in a five-party government whose first act was to send a telegram to the pope desiring “to repose at the feet of your Holiness the assurance of our filial loyalty and devotion to your August Person”. In doing this the Cabinet overruled the objection of the secretary of the taoiseach’s department that such wording was inappropriate for a sovereign government. MacBride then got involved in the Italian general election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WINNO74FD5DXXH27O72F6P7ZJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730042928422},"content":"Amid fears that a communist/socialist alliance would win – the Irish ambassador to the Vatican feared this contest amounted to “a fight for western civilisation” – the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, made a radio appeal for money to combat the left in Italy. Other bishops followed suit and more than £60,000, a considerable sum, helped to fund the Christian Democrats.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7UP5DZDRPJCSVOAVQDW5L4KC5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729867492098},"content":"MacBride facilitated the transfer of this collection through diplomatic channels, which may have proved more useful than the prayers of schoolchildren in Dublin. Neither the Vatican, nor McQuaid, were pleased when Ireland – a Catholic state in their eyes – did not join Nato. MacBride rejected the Americans’ invitation to become a member of the alliance in 1949, not because he was unenthusiastic about US efforts to contain Soviet expansionism but because Nato membership necessitated recognition of partition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2AVNEZYNHVA2PPE44U73JB3GXA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784224},"content":"MacBride’s political career in Ireland never recovered from the “mother and child” debacle in 1951 when the government meekly agreed with the Catholic bishops’ opposition to Noël Browne’s healthcare reform. Browne, who believed that his Cabinet colleagues had submitted to Rome, resigned. He was re-elected as an Independent in the general election two months later, whereas MacBride, who topped the poll three years earlier, scraped in on the last count. Clann na Poblachta returned just two TDs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3PLERXRKEZEHVOURHYSXWOWFVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784225},"content":"Having resumed his legal practice, MacBride lost his Dáil seat in 1957. Over the course of the next decade he became a familiar figure on the international scene, playing an important role in Amnesty International and becoming secretary general of the International Commission of Jurists, based in Geneva. When he took on his responsibility for Namibia in 1973, he became an assistant secretary general of the UN.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I4IK5KH2FZHZHE47S3AH7MV7CA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784226},"content":"In 1989, one year after MacBride’s death, as the two superpowers engaged meaningfully to cool tensions, the “delighted” taoiseach, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/charles-haughey\" target=\"_blank\">Charlie Haughey</a>, welcomed the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to Ireland. Then the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War came to an end, and with it the geopolitical certainties of that period.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L56UVH4S2NHAJCJ4X2U3EBAVYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730042928427},"content":"We now live in a more uncertain world, where threats have been made to use nuclear missiles. As the Nobel committee pointed out this year, the “taboo” against their use has come “under pressure” in ongoing warfare – in Ukraine, for example. The possibility of facing “the indescribable” is greater than ever.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"John Mulqueen"}]},"description":{"basic":"‘Taboo’ against the use of nuclear weapons has come ‘under pressure’ in ongoing warfare once again"},"display_date":"2024-10-27T19:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Seán MacBride: Despite the Nobel prize winner’s warning, the possibility of facing ‘the indescribable’ is greater than ever","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"CYAPGAS3UNFRLTZKAUNHGWNYXA","auth":{"1":"348319afd939e975aa3e1ea7d71c3110edcee8799291b6d2b86b51b39bfa3a54"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/CYAPGAS3UNFRLTZKAUNHGWNYXA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/27/sean-macbride-despite-the-nobel-prize-winners-warning-the-possibility-of-facing-the-indescribable-is-greater-than-ever/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"BV4LWVUKJFFWRGWFG4NQQNA6NQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":312,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/d59a6d75-d731-4907-8cfd-673497010bff/versions/1729869978/media/2c75c00afca2bcdde272d218538513be_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/25/anyone-for-tennyson-frank-mcnally-on-the-lesser-known-charge-of-the-heavy-brigade-170-years-ago-this-weekend/","content_elements":[{"_id":"6EOX7N53SNCVBFZ6XYJFEEDH3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222423},"content":"Thanks alone to one corner of the Crimean peninsula, October 25th, 1854 was what journalists called a busy news day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V3AGBKC7OZG4JFRV45BIEBBYQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222424},"content":"Its main headline grabber was the spectacularly disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade, immortalised in poetry by Tennyson and in irony by an incredulous French general who commented: “C’est magnifique mais ce n’est pas la guerre.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GYABL4O35JCTPNCDZE4R5EI6BU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222425},"content":"Elsewhere at the Battle of Balaclava, the “Thin Red Line” (a phrase coined by Dubliner William Russell, war reporter with the London Times) became proverbial after a fearless Scottish stand against Russian cavalry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VQ3YDRKECRH5PAYQXCBK4EAG2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222426},"content":"Relegated to the inside pages of history, meanwhile, was the Charge of the Heavy Brigade.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EKVCNQYTOZCZXFXJOIRHHT2F2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222427},"content":"Unlike the celebrated catastrophe later the same morning, that was a success, although whether it was a charge at all is debatable. The Heavies had to attack uphill, from a standing start, so it may have been more of a drag.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3FFMKTRW75FZDE7E427IJCKZ74","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222428},"content":"Their victory would have been even greater had the watching Light Brigade joined in to rout the retreating Russians. Instead, and in contrast with the recklessness for which they would soon be famous (and in many cases dead), they were held back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZFVBFRAPVRHJLPIFW7QDZI2UJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222429},"content":"Tennyson wrote about the Heavy Brigade’s charge too. But whereas he eulogised the Lights’ disaster in the immediate aftermath, his celebration of the Heavies came 28 years later, in 1882, by which time his fame had outrun his talent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A3Z2D3YRSFEQXOKMK34HSLN7DQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222430},"content":"He was paid five guineas a line for “The Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava”. Alas, like many big-budget sequels, it was not a critical success. The Irish Times review first quibbled with its portrait of General James Scarlet’s dashing attack:","type":"text"},{"_id":"EWL3SXHC3BBG5KJGMUOXDO7HMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222431},"content":"“Mr Tennyson’s notion of praising the leader for galloping far ahead away from his men, and acting like an Englishman in a simply insane and unprofessional proceeding, must be attributed to his ignorance of military precepts; nor is the allusion to ‘an Englishman’ in this case very flattering to national military characteristics.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YHEGPZQPIVDILEBZTIBNIPUKNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222432},"content":"From there, the paper’s critic launched his own all-out assault:","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y67WOM2USNG7BHA4LBJLFHBU3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222433},"content":"“As for likening the charge to cannon shots, bursting thunderbolts(!), hurricanes, and so forth, and the firmness of the men to rocks in stormy seas, we certainly cannot envy the reader who find pleasure in these old and stale comparisons, which have long been the property of all writers, but are now scarcely expected to be put into use outside the literature of street ballads.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XTC2MXAW5FHWRAX2WAV6RU26R4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222434},"content":"While Tennyson played up the heroic Englishman angle, the Charge of the Heavy Brigade was heavily Irish too. The Fourth Dragoon Guards attacked the Russians with the old Gaelic war-cry “Faugh-a-Ballagh” (“Clear the way”). And among the many veterans of the engagement was a horse called Dickie Bird, whose skeleton is now displayed at Collins Barracks in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H2KM5EK4TBGCJIEVXM4UC22ACQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222435},"content":"Overall, about one-third of the British army in the Crimean War was Irish. And although English, all the main leaders at Balaclava – incompetent and otherwise – had strong connections with Ireland too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6SHKBVYP5GGBMGJLD7FRBBFDU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222436},"content":"These included Generals Raglan and Cardigan, both blamed for the Light Brigade debacle. Then there was Louis Nolan, who may have tried to stop the charge but then died in it. Finally, there was Lord Lucan (an ancestor of the famously disappeared one), who owned vast estates in Mayo while despising the natives.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P7GO5F2ZGJC4HPHMICTZJMTHOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222437},"content":"Historian Cecil Woodham-Smith wrote of him: “It is doubtful if he considered the Irish as human beings at all. During the famine, when he was called the Exterminator, he regarded his tenants as vermin to be cleared off the land.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"2NKUC6IPMZGKVOKR5ZNQ7HOMVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222438},"content":"This seems only to have recommended him for military service. Another historian has claimed: “It was Lucan’s conduct in Ireland, his ruthlessness, which decided the government to select him for a command in the Crimea.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QU3IZH7YF5HMHDLID7EHXZIIWQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222439},"content":"The Tallaght-born Russell is widely considered the first modern war correspondent. It was his account of the Light Brigade’s 25 minutes of infamy that set the tone for history: “At 11.10[am] our Light Brigade rushed to the front. They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun ... At the distance of 1,200 yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from 30 iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame, through which hissed the deadly balls.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4OHZ5LRR7RDSZF4OJ3GX7JAUYI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222441},"content":"“Their flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain … At 11.35 not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front of these bloody Muscovite guns.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"K4DN3FM3ZZGTZC42IY2DMJB4WY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222442},"content":"That was not published until three weeks later, in mid-November. But its effect on Tennyson was electrifying. There are those who think his poem about the Light Brigade is also a terrible piece of work. And he himself may have had doubts because manuscripts suggest he crossed out half the lines at one point or other.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HNSNROGHMJGRPJF44XQH7UCSOY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222443},"content":"Whatever its artistic merits, however, the finished work seems to have achieved what a Flann O’Brien character, commenting on a different poem, called “permanence”. A hundred and seventy years on, it is still most quoted. Most of us can remember at least these lines: “Theirs not to reason why,/Theirs but to do and die./Into the valley of Death/Rode the six hundred.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Unlike the celebrated catastrophe later the same morning, that was a success, although whether it was a charge at all is debatable"},"display_date":"2024-10-25T18:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Anyone for Tennyson? Frank McNally on the lesser-known Charge of the Heavy Brigade, 170 years ago this weekend","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"XC7VTWDJBCD7YD2E3N7X2IHC4I","auth":{"1":"f3ab70d83b62516853d8662e5a3297fb6815bfadbeb5e3e9edba7e464c9d2c1d"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/XC7VTWDJBCD7YD2E3N7X2IHC4I.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/25/anyone-for-tennyson-frank-mcnally-on-the-lesser-known-charge-of-the-heavy-brigade-170-years-ago-this-weekend/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"6OKIPNZ6LVHJ5ONM26AMJ5OJ5M","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":304,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/293dc91c-d1f2-4ae9-80c9-796428a5e14f/versions/1729786281/media/8afe9629cbdb63cf2297636a7d320414_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/24/skeleton-service-frank-mcnally-on-why-horses-heads-and-the-occasional-saint-used-to-be-buried-under-buildings/","content_elements":[{"_id":"FT33CCP3HBBXHE3CQ7NMLP3N7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101442},"content":"In any building, foundations are all important, whatever the cost. So it was that, on the island of Iona in 548AD, when St Colmcille discovered structural problems with a new church, he also diagnosed what was needed to fix them: the insertion of a human being underneath the walls.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZFKH43VZVGI3N4ZNQBU243TYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101443},"content":"Step forward St Oran (aka Odran), one of the 12 monks who had followed Colmcille from Ireland, and who would now prove himself the man in the gap. He volunteered to be buried alive, as any good early Christian monk would. The church was thereby stabilised.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q3FVW75LNJGP5N5YPKJNWWM7ZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101444},"content":"But some days passed and, missing his friend’s company, Colmcille dug him up again. Oran emerged none the worse from his period underground – except, alas, that it had turned him into a raving heretic.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6E4X7P5PTJEK3C2UZM2UXZI26Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101445},"content":"Climbing out of the grave, he declared conventional belief in the afterworld a delusion. “There is no Hell as you suppose, nor Heaven that people talk about,” he said. A horrified Colmcille hastily reburied him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3KQTFZSQK5GINKOZZPYHQLQCAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101446},"content":"The story of Oran – whose feast day falls this coming Sunday – is a local variant of what seems to be an ancient and international folk tradition, the “foundation sacrifice”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BZFYIY6GA5E6FCDNAHT6MQH7C4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101447},"content":"It turns up in Arthurian legend too, when the warlord Vortigern is advised to secure fortress by burying a fatherless child underneath.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CQHY5LL6NNFWDA274CARE6DVXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101448},"content":"Less drastically, it may also be behind a once-common practice in these islands: placing horses’ heads under the floorboards of certain buildings – although that seems to have served a secondary, more frivolous purpose: enhancing the acoustics of dance halls and music venues.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AMLOGHWIUJAR3JBYKD2J57JL2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101449},"content":"The horse-head phenomenon featured in a book published by Queen’s University Belfast some years ago: From Corrib to Cultra, a series of essays on Irish folk life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQQ4SQGZRVGLLA7WYB3EAS3GXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101450},"content":"One writer in it quoted the Scandinavian custom that skulls were buried under threshing floors to increase the echoes of industry and, in effect, show off to the neighbours. But behind this and the musical motivations, it was argued, lurked a deeper and older belief: that some sort of sacrifice was required in a building to keep evil at bay.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XC3XTKB67ZCOJPSUARYUL2N534","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101452},"content":"Whatever the reason, when a house in Wales was being rebuilt in 1870, on a site that had once been a dance hall, 40 horses’ skulls were uncovered in the foundations.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SJIBCXUCBFCEPB4CBO264O5J4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101453},"content":"And the Queen’s book also quoted the case of a woman underneath whose house five horse skulls were found. She professed not to believe in superstition, but nevertheless left them where they were, just to be on the safe side.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J7KUFNSNUNGODP6RZSQHPDMDHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101454},"content":"Evidence of equine sacrifice has turned up under much farther-flung and more ancient buildings too, however.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M2YHM4OA5ZDR3LO7BDMK3TIBIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101455},"content":"In a 1934 travelogue on the Holy Land, for example, the English writer HV Morton described a visit to the great Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie, then excavating a site in Gaza: “We went out on the hill and looked at the ruins of three palaces, built one on top of the other,” wrote Morton. “The first was built in 3100BC, the second in 2500BC, and the third – with a horse’s skeleton marking a foundation sacrifice – in 2200BC.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"I7O2SFLEZZHETELD2ZJIWKLDK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101457},"content":"And yet the horse was not the most interesting thing Petrie had found there. In his very next sentence, Morton mentions another of the archaeologist’s recent discoveries that had caused a sensation in Ireland and elsewhere: “What astonished me even more than a bathroom built in 3100BC, and perfectly preserved mud doorways through which Abraham might have walked, were Celtic earrings of Irish gold exactly like the prehistoric […] ornaments in the Dublin museum.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZKD65E27UJFSFDBJRS6FADUH4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101459},"content":"Petrie’s apparent find, and his explanation, made headlines around the world. “Irish earrings in Gaza laid to Phoenicians” declared the New York Times in June 1932.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KAEOOKUCSBF7FO5MZPAVIS3L2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101460},"content":"The Irish Times, meanwhile, quoted the archaeologist saying: “Long before the days of Moses, Ireland was the greatest source of gold in Europe.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIZCSG22UJCLLIRPNMOUWACRYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101461},"content":"Of a supposed ancient trade between this island and the Middle East, the paper rhapsodised: “Irish gold enriched the thrones of Pharaohs, may have shone in [the Trojan] Helen’s hair and may have adorned the pillars of Solomon’s Temple.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"L6ZP72N24NDOJCCCJCFY6JDVY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101462},"content":"Alas, Prof Petrie’s conclusions about the earrings he had found were built on shakier foundations than those ancient palaces.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EAUPJEHBS5E6HILRRK3ETDNQFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101463},"content":"Later scientific research would suggest that their lookalikes in Dublin were of African origin (and from later than first thought), as presumably were the ones in Gaza.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2TMWIXWNORBU7AR4JZOAK7DMHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101464},"content":"When Sir Flinders died in 1942, in Jerusalem, his body was interred in the local Protestant cemetery. Most of his body anyway. In recognition of the scientific interest in it, he had bequeathed his head to the Royal College of Surgeons in London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LMQVVKXOGNH3JGSTOSCW5UBUUA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101465},"content":"It’s not true, as popular belief once had it, that Petrie’s widow brought the head back to England in a hatbox. But after a delay caused by the war, it travelled back somehow. For years thereafter, in a no doubt accidental variant of the foundation sacrifice, it was stored in a jar in the college basement.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"The foundation sacrifice"},"display_date":"2024-10-24T18:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Skeleton service - Frank McNally on why horses’ heads (and the occasional saint) used to be buried under buildings","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"63WHVZDS4FAM3D4QDYA4TRMPRQ","auth":{"1":"f28b97d34fcd0a8e2db0c5c4d97fd34165a33efadfe82c993828d6fb21b455bc"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/63WHVZDS4FAM3D4QDYA4TRMPRQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/24/skeleton-service-frank-mcnally-on-why-horses-heads-and-the-occasional-saint-used-to-be-buried-under-buildings/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"GURIUT6HZBD6LPUFPZ5MKLP7N4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":336,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/6540cf6a-98ad-4991-873b-701348203a21/versions/1729705512/media/506c9bbfcbb2e916875cd0078b5e187d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/23/red-letter-day-frank-mcnally-on-the-zinoviev-letter-an-october-surprise-of-1924/","content_elements":[{"_id":"O224XFCRIJE7DBIOXDW4NLUF3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291550},"content":"The “October Surprise” is an infamous feature of US presidential elections: an accident or ambush so late in the campaign that the candidate on the receiving end has no time to recover. But 100 years ago this week, there was a classic British version of the phenomenon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GOJV5WFE4ZCQBMQ2RPJ7TJ4YIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291551},"content":"The 1924 general election, in which the first-ever Labour government sought a second term, was scheduled for October 29th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AQJTSM3ZVRDRPL4RMNOR2HSSUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291552},"content":"It was the third election in two years and the incumbents, only 10 months in office and already a minority, might well have lost anyway.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XUV2UGYD6BCFNCVBTGW6BZG72A","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291553},"content":"Then, four days before polling, the Daily Mail newspaper published the “Zinoviev Letter”, and Labour’s fate was sealed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YVP5G6TGRBEHRMOKVDC2I62YLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291554},"content":"Ostensibly signed by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Communist International (Comintern), it purported to be a directive to the British Communist Party urging seditious activities that, combined with Labour’s policy of normalising British-Soviet relations, would incite the working class to revolution.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BYKNS344XVF6DKIIK2SBPYMUZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291555},"content":"Like Richard Pigot’s notorious creation of 40 years earlier, published by the London Times to undermine Parnell, this too was a forgery (or so most scholars believe).","type":"text"},{"_id":"TVOIQECUERE75F6LGL53TG7B6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291556},"content":"But despite immediate denials by Zinoviev, it passed for truth – trumpeted by the other right-wing newspapers – long enough to help sweep the Conservatives back into power.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CEUTIAZQMFHQXBNDTHV5WT4LTE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291557},"content":"How decisive it really was is still debated. The Labour vote more than held up and the Tories gained mainly at the expense of the old Liberal party, whose demise was collateral damage from the affair.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AAHOREURSRC5VASEA4HLH2IAZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291558},"content":"One school of opinion argues that, by giving Labour an egregious excuse for a defeat that might have happened anyway, the scandal’s greatest legacy was to prevent them learning the right lessons and undertaking necessary reforms.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YD2N5VYMD5ECZC24TV7DLSVSXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291559},"content":"In any case, the Tories won a landslide under Stanley Baldwin, prime minster for the next five years. Another winner was Winston Churchill who, having campaigned as an independent, returned to the Conservatives as chancellor of the exchequer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZRL7GJSDFFWZGLPEFH5FX7YVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291560},"content":"There was a small Irish subplot too, because despite becoming an eponym, Zinoviev was not the only name on the letter. Another supposed signatory was Arthur McManus (1889 –1927), a Belfast-born Scottish trade unionist who had become Comintern’s colonial secretary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QKNKGOBZINDL5JXTZ5SIHHHQXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291561},"content":"McManus was later imprisoned for incitement to mutiny. He re-emerged to attend the inaugural meeting of the League against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression in 1927, before dying later that year aged only 38.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V5Q457RXS5FFDKIMCIMLT6HAZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291562},"content":"His ashes are among those in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2OOE2YILIFGGDKARNBE653HHB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291563},"content":"There was also an Irish-sounding subplot in the scandal, thanks to Sidney Reilly, aka “Reilly Ace of Spies”: the real-life espionage agent who became a model for James Bond.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B5UIC6ZB2BHSFAADZKA2LMWB7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291564},"content":"There was nothing Irish about Reilly, really. Born under the surname Rosenblum, probably in Odessa, he borrowed his fake ID from one of his several wives, widow Margaret Thomas, who had been a Reilly before marriage.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T4VG4375RBD27PADXVMURQGCPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291565},"content":"Under the new guise, he posed variously as an Irish clergyman or the son of an Irish sea merchant, and claimed to have been born in Clonmel. Explaining his choice of pseudonym once, he said: “In Europe, only the British hate the Irish, but everyone hates the Jews.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"25ZY7AKJZRBJ5BJYFUDFJOXWZ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291566},"content":"Complicating the story further is that one of Reilly’s many affairs was with Ethel Voynich (1864–1960), a woman who does not sound at all Irish but – by birth at least – was.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NJL3RF5V2NF5JKB73YXU5CK2VE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291567},"content":"Born in Cork as Ethel Boole – daughter of the great English mathematician George Boole, then a professor in the forerunner of UCC – Voynich may be the most successful Irish-born writer that nobody in Ireland has ever heard of.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHKEE3OIUBDFPLQYJI7HEJL2JA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291568},"content":"Her 1897 novel The Gadfly became a favourite of the Bolsheviks and required reading in the USSR, where it sold millions. Which is ironic, because it was partly inspired by Reilly, her lover at the time, whom the Russians would eventually consider it necessary to execute","type":"text"},{"_id":"JYBUNKCQSJDK3LDT2SH6GYEMUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291569},"content":"Reilly was not involved in forging the Zinoviev letter, but he was certainly implicated in smuggling it into Britain.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FCD2WYD3NBBERNKHS4ABJTHYQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291570},"content":"He was a great admirer of Churchill, one of the main beneficiaries. Indeed, Churchill found it necessary to put distance between them afterwards, while also arguing that, even if the letter was a forgery, it expressed only what was already known communist policy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QTLY724FYRCRTDTU4ZEMXFEJQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291571},"content":"Reilly did not long outlive his involvement. A year later, he was lured back to Russia to liaise with presumed anti-Bolshevik activists. It was a trap. Arrested and interrogated, he was shot dead in a forest outside Moscow in November 1925.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C6NAQMKMJRGLTBMUGCVZZAKDAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291572},"content":"Whatever its true influence, the scandal that broke on October 25th, 1924, soon became a metaphor for all disastrous surprises in print.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B7WAGKB6JZH5TCHASJOBF4HSDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291573},"content":"Decades later, in 1952, its spectre haunted even a Dublin libel trial taken by the poet Patrick Kavanagh. A sub-plot there was the mutual enmity that existed by then between Kavanagh and Brendan Behan, a subject on which the former was drawn out expertly by defence counsel John A Costello.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y5AKG7SDWJEW3MLUHQTS3NHI2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291574},"content":"Then, after Kavanagh had repeatedly and vehemently denied that the writers had ever been friends, Costello produced Behan’s copy of Kavanagh’s novel Tarry Flynn, inscribed by the author: “For Brendan, poet and painter, on the day he decorated my flat, Sunday 12th, 1950.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MDL4RMEAP5AFTO4TZ3MJL5I4FE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291575},"content":"There was no recovering from that. As Anthony Cronin wrote years later, Costello had wielded “his secret weapon, his Zinoviev letter”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"How decisive the letter really was is still debated"},"display_date":"2024-10-23T17:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Red Letter Day — Frank McNally on the Zinoviev Letter, an ‘October Surprise’ of 1924","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3OIWZUK4INASROJUKT6CEANMZY","auth":{"1":"373797b0a51f2ab00872cb3b299f7d90f6a81003cedde121a5457f570b53b7e8"},"focal_point":{"x":201,"y":156},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3OIWZUK4INASROJUKT6CEANMZY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/23/red-letter-day-frank-mcnally-on-the-zinoviev-letter-an-october-surprise-of-1924/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"PWLKGBJG45GZTID6MWCLNFPIVA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":306,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/d13c24f4-5df4-435b-b06b-3f76180c120f/versions/1729617381/media/11c0c0a234d0297322c18436f81484ca_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/22/schmuck-spreader-frank-mcnally-on-the-unholy-resonance-of-an-old-christian-hymn/","content_elements":[{"_id":"VH73N4XWRBFMFETLUFWSDDUYME","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541650},"content":"Among this week’s minor musical milestones, I see, is the 300th anniversary of a premiere involving Johann Sebastian Bach’s setting of the old Lutheran hymn: Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4WXM4VD5AVETZIG4G2ZEXXVRKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541651},"content":"I only noticed this, to be honest, because it sounds very rude in English. But in German, of course, it’s not.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G3R6634DGZFK3BLBAZ6QPSFESM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541652},"content":"On the contrary, the hymn’s lyrics compare the unity between Jesus and a Christian receiving communion with that of a bridegroom and his bride. The title translates as nothing more offensive than “Adorn thyself, my soul, with gladness.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"HED24GD75FDNHGMMPRGFG7QXIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541653},"content":"So where in this, I wondered, is the basis of the popular Yiddish term of abuse, schmuck? You know – the word that means variously “idiot”, “detestable fellow”, or “penis”? Well, apparently, etymologists don’t know either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7KBZY7Q3YFEFTEKEEUUSXGR6LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541654},"content":"Expert opinion is divided as to whether the slang term comes from the Polish schmok (meaning “serpent” or “tail”), or the German schmucke, meaning “jewel” or “ornamentation” as in the hymn, but used sarcastically.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VCXMKPLXCJFU7OA72I2GJZWRKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541655},"content":"However derived, schmuck was once considered so offensive that people had to invent a politer alternative. Hence Schmo(e), which performs a similar role in American English as the Hiberno-English Feck does for a certain Anglo-Saxon swear word.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QSP5KONB2ZHJ3ORF6M7I77PQOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541656},"content":"Like Hiberno-English, clearly, Yiddish is a language rich in insult. I recall somebody somewhere once suggesting that, in common with the supposed Eskimo vocabulary for snow, Yiddish must have at least 50 different words for “loser”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5IMWU7JJ2ZHLXOT7PUS5ORYEEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541657},"content":"From the same corner of the dictionary as schmuck, for example, comes schlep, schlub, schlemiel, and schlimazel.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2MVNMWTFKVH2TCHDDDCW3A7QUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541658},"content":"To Irish ears, a schlep sounds like something you might get off a Kerry corner-back if you weren’t careful. In fact, it’s primarily a verb meaning to “pull” or “drag” (also popular tactics in Gaelic football).","type":"text"},{"_id":"RNRUC36SW5AKTIXOBN3APFYOJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541659},"content":"And it was in that harmless sense the word was first introduced into English, by James Joyce no less, when in Ulysses he has Stephen Dedalus waxing poetical about a gypsy woman picking cockles on Sandymount Strand:","type":"text"},{"_id":"EMCNXUJ7DVFEFKJ4BXXSOK3GUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541660},"content":"“Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LFD43UNP5VBZBLKDPUKVRCYO5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541661},"content":"But yes, sure enough, there is also a related Yiddish noun describing underachievement: schlep being short for schlepper, on “an inept and stupid person”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2XOUJTQ2NVGPNJIRTABI4B2ES4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541662},"content":"In schlimazel, we also have the origins of schemozzle, a word that has gone strangely native in Ireland, thanks to the GAA.","type":"text"},{"_id":"65CMDK4WCFEY3FOFUXP5Z2Z6UI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541663},"content":"How this happened is very mysterious.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MMIEFF7ISFCOHPGNOR5VDU5RUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541664},"content":"Based only on the fact that its popularity here seems to date from the early 1950s, and that the late Micheál O’Hehir is especially associated with it, I used to have a theory that it had been smuggled home in O’Hehir’s luggage after the 1947 All-Ireland Football Final in New York.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3CQJTKH6YBFBLNKPNJQTH2O3DA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541665},"content":"But Myles na gCopaleen of this newspaper was an early adopter in print (albeit he usually spelled it without a “c”) and he was no GAA fan. Besides which, I have also found it in a 1929 Evening Herald article about a court case from London’s Old Bailey, where it had been used in evidence to some puzzlement.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CAHXAOFUTZDWNGOQFOGRJDON6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541666},"content":"Asked to comment, a professor of Hebrew declared it “Jewish slang [from the] East End, where no many familiar slang words originate.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6UQVBLK6SZGSXGEFUUZRAJZPQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541667},"content":"He went on to explain that it was a corrupted portmanteau of the German schlim (meaning “slim”) and the Hebrew mazzal (“planet”). As combined in astrology, those added up to bad luck, or to “any situation in which unlucky fellows are involved”. Losers yet again.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4FE7WRASTRHQHK44LHEXUTLIDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541668},"content":"Early Irish references include another court case, from Waterford in 1954. That involved a three-way collision outside the city’s hospital, involving a motorbike, a car, an ambulance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GKJANYSIDJEWVEI6RHLMZTOZDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541669},"content":"Some flavour of the Munster Express’s report is conveyed it its subheadings, which include “Looked left and right”, “‘Terrific’ Application of Brakes”, and “[Drunk!] Is it codding me you are?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SHTPN7ZNABCB7CTLU2WRQ45RTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541670},"content":"The drivers involved all appeared to have been schlimazels in the ill-starred original sense of the term, and the incident was certainly a schemozzle in the later one.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EW3VJIFA4NCMLHKMGHBSHSMZGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541671},"content":"But soon after that, the word began to appear in GAA coverage too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3TASHUFB5ZFV7AA53J6GYUZHC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541672},"content":"After Cork’s shock defeat to Clare in a 1955 Munster Championship, for example, a match report suggested the losers had been fatally handicapped by the absence of a star defender, who was considered man of the match in absentia.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTKXNLXU3JGQNB4F32LDKZN22E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541673},"content":"“One man, had he been playing, could have won the game... He was Jerry O’Riordan, whose sound defensive play would have been invaluable in the various schemozzles around the Cork goal.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7MMMVIUFLZGL5GG2AAI3HPANRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541674},"content":"Perhaps O’Riordan had a talent for administering schleps, in the Kerry or Yiddish sense, or both.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AHI4AQJUTRGXRF6WZM3MW73DRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541675},"content":"In any case, circa 1955, the other sch-word was clearly in the process of putting down roots here. By the end of the decade, to borrow from a different James Joyce story, schemozzles were general, all over Ireland.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Schmuck was once considered so offensive that people had to invent a politer alternative"},"display_date":"2024-10-22T17:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Schmuck spreader – Frank McNally on the unholy resonance of an old Christian hymn","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"UDHBVN2KLJEUHFYO2RXBKGKJTY","auth":{"1":"7c4ceefb653b4fdfd2cd1b6ebafbd06afa19d072e2eb6e77c7f0829bbd6e0aae"},"focal_point":{"x":419,"y":460},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/UDHBVN2KLJEUHFYO2RXBKGKJTY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/22/schmuck-spreader-frank-mcnally-on-the-unholy-resonance-of-an-old-christian-hymn/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"7ZNYEZOHTJDJROSAPTAPE4L2K4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":349,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/a9b3371d-ab83-45bf-8799-0a9786d2b004/versions/1729534199/media/7a8eac296433aeb10676c143729c389f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/21/war-and-remembrance-ronan-mcgreevy-on-the-battle-of-le-pilly/","content_elements":[{"_id":"C7UNHPF4FVHL5M4KCOXLZC2Z5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365901},"content":"In April 1918 the German army came perilously close to a breakthrough which could have made an Allied victory impossible in the first World War.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JHEHUIWBENBB3HFUJU3IX4FODQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365902},"content":"Also know as the fourth Battle of Ypres and to the Germans as Operation Georgette, it was the last attempt by the Germans to break through the Allied lines in Belgium and northern France and seize the Channel ports.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J5SXAJ7IZJGNLHGF7QGJPKTS6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365903},"content":"German successes were such in the early days that the British commander-in-chief Sir Douglas Haig issued a famous edict, “With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VEGKABKC7FDAVB5MYXVRSCKKCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365904},"content":"The Germans advanced 15 kilometres in just two days and took thousands of Allied prisoners. Among them was Pte William Rusling of the Northumberland Fusiliers from Sheffield.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WMK2T4XBPRCNLLPT54FSQRHZHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365905},"content":"Tragically, he was mortally wounded by friendly fire behind German lines where prisoners-of-war were being processed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OPY6Y4MUZBFSXF2GKSWOJEAT2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365906},"content":"He was taken to Le Pilly farm outside France, where there was a German casualty clearing station. His wounds from an exploding shell were so severe that nothing could be done for him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIM7F6VLOFERFIURNJEV5J65KM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365907},"content":"He was comforted in his last moments by a German soldier, Emil Mannheimer, from Hamburg. He noted Rusling’s address from a letter he kept on him. In July 1919, Mannheimer wrote to Rusling’s widow, offering his condolences. Her husband in his last moments, he recalled, stared at a photograph of her and their children that he had in his breast pocket.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GDDO25SLYZA7DFL4YN7ZHIFM2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365908},"content":"He then asked Mannheimer to read to him the Gospel of St John’s account of the death of Jesus.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LZVXDDCVBVEZZKK7ZONUY5GKMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365909},"content":"“Never in my life have I felt myself so near to my God as in that hour where I, a German and a Jew, helped to ease the last hour of the dying Englishman with the solace of his faith!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NUSVU5RDQJDF7KW7EQUI7WKHXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365910},"content":"The German soldiers dug a grave for Rusling opposite Le Pilly farm and buried him there. He told Rusling’s widow that her husband was buried beside men from the German Infantry Regiment 56 and beside them there was a mass-grave for Englishmen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5CC6ZAYATNCEPAETZGMGYTJSQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365911},"content":"The men most likely to be buried in that mass grave are not Englishmen, but the Irishmen of the 2nd Royal Irish Regiment who were killed at the Battle of Le Pilly on October 19th and 20th, 1914.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GHUY47TGTBGFXGLPLVZNKX2ROU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365912},"content":"The battle took part in the early stages of the war before trenches became the norm and the first World War was still a war of movement. It was a calamity for the 2nd Royal Irish Regiment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6FWSZ5R75NBMHCU6IYEMW3W72Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365913},"content":"They were isolated, surrounded, massacred or taken prisoner. On October 19th, the strength of the battalion was 20 officers and 881 men. Two days later, it was one surviving officer, a transport officer and 135 men. The regimental diary is chilling in its succinctness. “Unfortunately, little evidence is obtainable of what occurred on this day.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DC5Y4RAO7RH7VN4RL5O3LIC6V4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365914},"content":"Some 165 men were killed. The battle claimed the lives of 29 men from Waterford, 27 each from Tipperary and Wexford, 13 from Kilkenny and seven from Cork.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RBO4AAFSJJAYFBN3EBRRPO5ILI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365915},"content":"Of those who died, the bodies of 152 men are missing and they are remembered on the Le Touret memorial nearby. Tragically, more than 500,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in the first World War have no known grave, but this battle was unusual.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IICB5MQUARD3RBKE6VNT55NXYI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365916},"content":"It was small scale by the standards of the war and, aside from this early battle, it was behind the German lines for the duration of the war. Therefore, it ought not to be difficult to find these bodies, but where are they?","type":"text"},{"_id":"4AB4IJN24BHIVFMMOBFZSBUIA4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365917},"content":"Since the Battle of Le Pilly was rediscovered in 2013 by Waterford-based historian Michael Desmond, the conviction has grown among many experts that the site opposite Le Pilly farm is where these Irishmen are buried. The Mannheimer letter only strengthens that belief given that the German regiment who faced them was the 56th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CEE5DHGKMBHTRBSKO4EPTY7EQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365918},"content":"First World War historians and battlefield guides Iain McHenry and Jonathan Porter have searched burial records and have accounted for a possible 71 men who are buried as unknown soldiers in surrounding military cemeteries which still leaves 80 bodies unaccounted for. A lidar (light detection and ranging) study, which measures underground cavities, has detected a distinct rectangle-shaped perturbation consistent with a mass grave and a magnetometry study found evidence of metal buckles and buttons.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TJRCSKJ5VVCBTKPS56LCQYAUNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365919},"content":"Locals in Herlies erected a beautiful memorial to the 2nd Royal (Irish) Regiment in 2018 and host a commemoration service every October. They have diligently honoured these men for the last decade.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y3GQ3HOQLZCCLK3O2NR3GEWGZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365920},"content":"In nearby Fromelles, the remains of 250 men, of whom 205 were Australian, were found in a mass grave. They died in July 1916 in a futile attack which surpassed in bloodshed anything the Australians experienced in Gallipoli.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EHMZPXZDRRH43M7EZBJBM52J3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365921},"content":"Excavating the men became a political imperative given the first World War’s seminal place in the Australian national story. Those who could be identified were buried in marked graves.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QPZUCUBHA5HGDJKV4MTXGRRPXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365922},"content":"The men who died at Le Pilly were Irishmen fighting with the British army in France against a German enemy which occupied this part of France for four years. The exhumation of these Irishmen and their erstwhile German foes would be a powerful reminder of western Europe’s bloody past and how far we have come in the last century.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AUKAGBWEABGTDDIQPLP2IYKNCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365923},"content":"What happened to Mannheimer? The man who wrote the letter to Rusling’s widow fled the country that he had served during the war and died in 1948 in Palestine.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Ronan McGreevy"}},"name":"Ronan McGreevy"}]},"description":{"basic":"A dark time for the 2nd Royal Irish Regiment"},"display_date":"2024-10-21T19:05:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"War and remembrance – Ronan McGreevy on the Battle of Le Pilly","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"CWYXIDDJ4BA2REGGMA5A2ZDS4A","auth":{"1":"fb2b05f5b1065a52c2ea0f7a99d4b4a30f4f1c10b9514b7ed31c2e004c352ab1"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/CWYXIDDJ4BA2REGGMA5A2ZDS4A.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/21/war-and-remembrance-ronan-mcgreevy-on-the-battle-of-le-pilly/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"XJRAPH2GNNEBRMHSTVQEGCGI44","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":305,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/618ca018-7c62-45ba-a1bc-f824e44b4b6b/versions/1729422229/media/c476d309c1547015d4b6b6053d9a5606_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/20/bridges-to-the-past-brian-maye-on-architect-john-benson/","content_elements":[{"_id":"OYXV77IZSRFQPBM4C27CTHGVAM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Although he came from the little village of Collooney, Co Sligo, he made an impressive and lasting impact on the cityscape of Cork. His name was John Benson and he died 150 years ago on October 17th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3MCD2DCERZGOLDM7NJ3JLR3744","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was born in modest circumstances in 1812 (date and month unknown), the only son of a father of the same name. Little is known of his schooling or upbringing except that the Coopers of Markree Castle, near Collooney, must have taken him under their wing because the astronomer Joshua Cooper, of that family, sent him, at the age of 19 or 20, to be trained at the Royal Dublin Society’s School of Architectural Drawing, where he is recorded as gaining premiums in March and December 1832.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JN6M57KOCVDUHNMRD5S6RDRMVY","additional_properties":{},"content":"He received some commissions in his native Sligo, including restoration work on Markree Castle, a number of churches, especially the Catholic Church of the Assumption (done in the Gothic-revival style), Collooney (1843-78), and Victoria (now Hyde) Bridge in Sligo town.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZCGB3YMTBE2LAW5W5SMNZTYLY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Following a period with the Board of Works, he passed the qualifying examination for the office of county surveyor in 1846 and was appointed county surveyor for the West Riding of Cork that year but was almost immediately transferred to the East Riding, which position he held until 1855. He and the new surveyor for the West Riding, William Augustus Treacy, faced the formidable job of overseeing the Famine-relief works in the county, during which they superintended the construction of several hundred miles of road.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4F6LKCPEDVGQPOS7FGDX66UHH4","additional_properties":{},"content":"In May 1848, Benson was given the additional appointment of consulting engineer to the Cork Harbour Board, and in January 1851, he was also made engineer to the city; the two positions were amalgamated in November 1854 and he was elected to the new post of city engineer, which he held until resigning because of poor health in April 1873.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NPZETTEHYJC3ZOF3AVUL22KK2I","additional_properties":{},"content":"The bridges for the construction of which he was responsible included St Patrick’s Bridge and North Gate Bridge, both beautifully designed, and Benson Bridge, which bears his name.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WCVG6IGYBFEXDBHXDJG76JIIC4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Waterworks, quays and piers were also designed by him, such as the deep-water Victoria Quay, which “with improved dredging of the river, enabled the largest ships to dock, doubling Cork harbour revenues,” according to Helen Andrews, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z4W2BKAUWNGQBHZWRLHJIY5WJQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Railway construction in the Cork area also saw him deeply involved in various capacities, including engineer of the Cork and Macroom Railway, the Rathkeale and Newcastle Railway and the Cork and Limerick Railway; chief engineer and architect to the Cork and Passage Junction Railway, and director of the Cork and Kinsale Railway. Helen Andrews tells us that he designed the Penrose Marsh terminus for the Great Southern and Western Railway, “with its impressive Doric colonnade”, finished in 1860 but later sadly demolished.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UGRZSXHTURG75DQYWSM7D463OE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Frank Keohane, in his book Cork: City and County (2020), referred to Benson’s many buildings and praised their sophistication; they were individualistic while reflecting the styles fashionable at the time. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"ARGNZ3MCKZBVTHSYIQN6J6GOPI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Italian Lombardic style was popular with him and Keohane commended how he combined the contrasting Cork red sandstone with white sandstone. The best example of this was the new Cork Waterworks, which is now the Lifetime Lab visitor centre. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"L2V2VG3EGRCULO3DN6P7BDFKWE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Other fine structures of his that have found new uses are the double-arched entrance to the demolished Cornmarket, now in Bishop Lucey Park, and the Butter Exchange and Firkin Crane (also used in the butter trade), which are now technology and enterprise, and dance centres respectively. Keohane also singled out for special praise Benson’s Princes Street entrance to the famous English Market and the impressively imposing St Vincent’s Church on Sunday’s Well Road (now no longer a church and owned by UCC).","type":"text"},{"_id":"FWX2ZWRGGNGDXF7MIGWO7ZEZ4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"Benson won the competition for designing the premises for the Dublin Exhibition of 1853, supervising the building of it himself on Leinster Lawn, on the south side of Leinster House. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YXKT6M43JBFGRLHYAO5DV5HEQA","additional_properties":{},"content":"On the exhibition’s opening day, he was knighted by the Lord Lieutenant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5TQTZB4CIFF5FFSYBLAHJNTBUE","additional_properties":{},"content":"He published many articles in the Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland, was a member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (admitted in 1856) and of the Institute of Civil Engineers (admitted in 1861), held office in the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, and was a master and provincial grand architect in the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RCXQB552NJEEXOBO6UVUHRMKDI","additional_properties":{},"content":"He married Mary Clementine Pyne in 1849. They had no children. They went to England for health reasons in 1873 and were living at Alexander Square, Brompton, London, where he died. “Benson had a pleasant disposition and was highly respected,” according to Helen Andrews.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"An impressive and lasting impact on the cityscape of Cork"},"display_date":"2024-10-20T17:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Bridges to the past – Brian Maye on architect John Benson ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"BRITCGKW5VA23M2OWM5YLJXQOA","auth":{"1":"5e1bb8587cc22072e29102298ec32b59cf3e1c53e010e766c814a6714aa87523"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/BRITCGKW5VA23M2OWM5YLJXQOA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/20/bridges-to-the-past-brian-maye-on-architect-john-benson/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"HYM3H7VMZBDWXAU3HPDBBEJUAA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":321,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/85e26f7f-c571-4035-bc0f-04b12a334b17/versions/1729273748/media/9e85f2118608785c3ff6ddb944c0b0f9_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/18/old-haunt-frank-mcnally-on-the-sinister-past-of-a-dublin-street-garden/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ZCSUMOEKGNGVXOOT2HUGIVSFIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743448},"content":"In the Clonliffe House pub, Ballybough, for a history talk one night recently, I crossed the road to visit one of Dublin’s more fascinating gardens.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GDCWSK7Q7BDJDH23AVNOFS3UYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743449},"content":"“Garden” might be an overstatement – it’s just a landscaped street corner really, with flowers, shrubbery, and a pair of benches. But it’s remarkable that this is now a pleasant place to linger, day or night. Because in former times, it was somewhere to avoid or hurry through.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WUOEOJ2WJFG6PFOACKPHBE3RIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743450},"content":"In his book The Neighbourhoods of Dublin (1913), Weston St John Joyce recalled a time when people “would have gone a considerable round rather than pass that unhallowed spot after nightfall”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QNAWMKW5GFFXJDWVKV6MJCXGEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743451},"content":"And as recently as 1990, when Ballybough featured in a Dáil debate, TD John Stafford spoke of a tradition whereby “spirits” were believed to haunt another green space nearby: “the park beside Luke Kelly Bridge”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QCP4C3VAJFAJ3EBL3X4VTWEIXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743452},"content":"A Dublin City Council sign at the landscaped corner explains the area’s reputation:","type":"text"},{"_id":"KXKZ6USDZJB4ZMLCHKRRIPCHXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743453},"content":"“By tradition, this site at the junction of Ballybough and Clonliffe Roads is an old Felo de Se burial ground. Felo de Se or the crime of murdering one’s self was an ancient Common Law practiced in England and current in Ireland from the sixteenth century up to the law’s reformation in 1823.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JSSDHM7FQZHB7CW6QAB3E7235Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743454},"content":"“A person found guilty . . . was sentenced to be buried at midnight at a crossroads and a stake run through their heart to prevent them returning to disturb the living.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"V5VURJN5MVGBNNKNTSPKC4JL7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743455},"content":"Long shunned by superstitious locals, the place seems to have had a conversely magnetic pull on writers, especially those of Gothic bent. The sign continues:","type":"text"},{"_id":"5KNHUAO6CRBEHB7QI4O7LBU6ME","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743456},"content":"“In literature it has inspired the poets James Clarence Mangan, Thomas Caulfield Irwin], and Thomas McDonagh among others. It is widely accepted that the Clontarf-born writer, Bram Stoker, visited the site as a child and drew inspiration for his ground-breaking novel Dracula.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UADRK37PFBA7TJ3WL3GPJW6FPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743457},"content":"But that was then. Now, it seems, the sinister associations have subsided sufficiently for the site to be a charming public amenity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P4UOO6VMXRABHLLAEIUPG56T2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743458},"content":"It was close to midnight when I visited. And I can honestly report that the only spirit I was conscious of was the one I had consumed in the pub earlier as part of a whiskey-tasting event: a practical companion to the talk by Sean Deegan on the history of Jones’s Road Distillery.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RP6G74XVXJAD3CU5CH5SDP5QIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743459},"content":"While there too, and still on the subject of corners, I was also given a tour of the pub’s exhibition of Ballybough history.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TR7OG6FDZFEUPJJO55MGXZPOHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743460},"content":"As revealed by curator Laura Williams, this included a “Frank McNally Corner”, which turned out to be a pair of framed Irishman’s Diaries about the area. So there it is. If I hadn’t previously achieved that status elsewhere, I am at last officially a corner boy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IAKB6CMRYZFJTNTCPMGBISUI5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743461},"content":"***","type":"text"},{"_id":"PRJ6R7ALLJEHHPO4SLXXYYFQYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743462},"content":"The aforementioned Mangan (1803-1849) was a vampirologist before Stoker (1847-1912) ever saw the dark of night. The former’s poems include one called “Enigma – a Vampire”. And although he was born and died in the southside Liberties, Mangan had enough of an association with northside Ballybough for it to feature undercover in one of his more elaborate pseudonyms.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DIPXC3MY65FEXN23Q6Q6EHJ7NQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743463},"content":"His connection with the area was via a pub that in the early 1800s hosted a literary circle. This was enough for him to sign himself occasionally as “Peter Puff Secundus, of Mud Island, near the bog”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EM2ABHLHLFHP7LYWFKZYNVDGTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743464},"content":"A once-infamous part of northeast Dublin, Mud Island was said to be inhabited by “smugglers, thieves, highway robbers, and desperadoes of all description”. The desperadoes even elected a “king” from their ranks. As for the city’s official authorities, they were reluctant to set foot there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NORDDM6XJVHGZGF6HABJYTTWYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743465},"content":"Mud Island has long since vanished but may live on in the modern suburb’s name. Ballybough is usually said to derive from “Baile Bocht”, or the “poor town”. But as suggested to me by Dublin City Councillor and former city mayor Nial Ring, also in Clonliffe House that night, it was more likely a soft town: Baile Bog.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DHYQNK23YBEK7LFUSFGSSBPSLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743466},"content":"Getting back to the area’s writers, the most famous of them is the excuse the forthcoming Féile Bram Stoker, which runs from October 25th to the 28th, promising “four days and nights of deadly adventures”. And not just deadly adventures, according to the programme, but revelatory ones too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EWZ73AVYGNCFBKMBIRA2XNYAR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743467},"content":"Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital is better known for delivering tiny bundles of joy. Next Saturday (October 26th) in the Pillar Room, however, it promises a large, literary revelation: “An extraordinary Bram Stoker Discovery (Worldwide Exclusive)”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q5AKZQ2FLBCPJHJ5ZGGYLWC2QU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743468},"content":"The obstetrician will be Brian Cleary, “a lifelong Stoker enthusiast”, who has made “a discovery of major literary and historical significance”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QBFQ7I4CXVGBZDD7ILSOX5ZMNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743469},"content":"Miriam O’Callaghan will be the midwife, given the task of interviewing Cleary about a revelation described variously on the festival website as “heartwarming”, “fascinating”, and “incredible” and as having left those in the know about it “stunned and thrilled”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WSEVIW7ZG5AP3I6TLRNVKVLBZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743470},"content":"As if all that wasn’t enough, the event organisers also promise a “very, very special unveiling”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FVVJHTPLIBHNBKA3FGEVG43RRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743471},"content":"I am somehow reminded of another word here, meaning “to be very excited or happy”. It’s an informal term, used mainly in the US and Australia. But I think we can safely apply it to this case too and declare that all involved in the impending literary exposé are well and truly stoked.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"A part of Ballybough that was once shunned by superstitious locals"},"display_date":"2024-10-18T17:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Old Haunt - Frank McNally on the sinister past of a Dublin street garden","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"N7FQTKVXGNGHLODNZNCIFUHQA4","auth":{"1":"2d4ed3be45cc886dfe02ea168e53f7ad17ed5a3df50c1afbe75e83692da98efb"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/N7FQTKVXGNGHLODNZNCIFUHQA4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/18/old-haunt-frank-mcnally-on-the-sinister-past-of-a-dublin-street-garden/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"D5YTSHTBHZE6VBMFZQCVHA3YFY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":263,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/871c74e4-0cc2-4573-af59-53fa290723cb/versions/1729181786/media/df4e47294b2b18708c21e24ab47c72aa_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/17/head-over-heels-alison-healy-on-cupids-arrow/","content_elements":[{"_id":"2NR5JJO7WZFL3AT6YJCG6NCZ7A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Irish mammies are known for dropping pearls of wisdom everywhere they go, and Kate Bush’s late mother Hannah was no different. When Hannah Daly emigrated from the family farm in Waterford to work as a nurse in England, she brought her wise insights with her. Kate Bush once heard her mother saying: “Every old sock meets an old shoe” and the phrase delighted her. It eventually made its way into her Moments of Pleasure song, complete with a reference to her mother.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GDRYP6TCG5DK3DSEONRS6RWYRI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The singer later told BBC Radio 2 that her mother thought it was hilarious when she played the song for her. “She couldn’t stop laughing, she just thought it was so funny that I’d put it into this song,” she recalled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HY2RONEY75GQBLUKC2N2BCLIHY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The genre-defying artist also used her mother in another song – evoking a scene that has often put the heart crossways in me. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"RGFK3BVETJEPZLANOGZF64SD3U","additional_properties":{},"content":"It’s that moment when you awake with a jolt in the middle of the night and there is a small child standing silently by your bedside staring at you.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QK7UKWONJFFBXIK757ZF7XNLBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"When she had a nightmare, the young Kate Bush would go into her parents’ bedroom and stand in silence in the dark, waiting for her mother to sense her presence and wake up. Imagine awakening to see a small Kate Bush standing in her nightdress in the dark, hair probably askew and clutching a teddy? After Hannah got over the fright, she would lift the bedclothes and say: “Come here with me now”. And so she asked her mother to voice those very words on the song And Dream of Sheep.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DY3KXV5ALRA2DD33ANEDVR4YCE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Kate Bush’s Irish mammy sounds like a rock of sense. Of course, she was right about there being someone for everyone. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4B3RMSVXQRGSFG6CBHNHWA3PZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"There is indeed a sock for every shoe but sometimes socks have trouble finding shoes, and vice versa. And sometimes the socks have travelled a distance before they find their shoe, or should that be solemate?","type":"text"},{"_id":"WY2GEBGF7FGOZJLGWWAVKUFQAY","additional_properties":{},"content":"That was the case for one couple who met in the strangest of circumstances. It was during that tricky time a few years ago when people all over the world were queuing for the Covid-19 vaccine. Among them were Linda and John, two strangers who lived at the Lakes at Stillwater senior living campus in Minnesota.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IF6FVLKWSNG7XPMEN75OTPB3RU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Linda was obediently standing on her blue social distancing spot when she felt what she called “a shift in the universe”. She hadn’t had the vaccination yet so that couldn’t be blamed as a side effect. When she turned around, John was coming towards her to stand on the next blue spot.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BGWRSXAA65HYBD25AITGWUJKEA","additional_properties":{},"content":"It seems that all the social distancing signs in the world were not enough to keep the senior citizens apart. After the vaccination, they went into a hall to sit for 15 minutes in case of a reaction. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6W66G7VPIJELJMUQOCPN7IHE5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"They found that there was, in fact, an immediate, and very strong reaction, and again, it was nothing to do with the vaccine. They had both contracted a chronic case of lovesickness. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y6E5IQ62DRCRXNJ6M3QK5F5YCY","additional_properties":{},"content":"They got married the following year in the hall where it all happened, and the blue dot Linda was standing on was framed for posterity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LMFTYQBVKZALVCGMUQOX5XSH3U","additional_properties":{},"content":"It would be nice to have a dramatic “How We Met” story, instead of telling people you met at a disco when slow sets were all the rage and you got free chicken and chips because of a quirk in the night-club licence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GPREQVX6WZA7XDO3QMOKVRW4MM","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of the best “How We Met” stories unfolded under our noses this summer when the Villa Vie Odyssey cruise ship was grounded in Belfast for four months. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHSOE4KPCJB5DKONUGYZADCMP4","additional_properties":{},"content":"This is a residential cruise ship so some of the passengers will spend 15 years floating around the world. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"S3TEKCZ3ZNBLRFBNZ7VU6NVQCQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"A few of them headed home while waiting for the ship to set sail but Canadian Gian Perroni and American Angie Harsanyi were among the passengers who opted to spend their days wandering around Belfast. They fell into step as they walked between the ship and the city and while their ship was going nowhere, it was full steam ahead for their love affair. The couple are engaged to be married in April.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LATEXE3XHFF6FMTQMAPP3QEPHY","additional_properties":{},"content":"No doubt they visited the Titanic Museum during their perambulations and remembered the Titanic movie and the love story of Rose and Jack. Let’s hope the happy couple did not dwell on the fact that the ship sunk and the movie ended with the Kate Winslet character hogging a floating piece of debris while Leonardo DiCaprio’s character clung to it before succumbing to the icy water.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MNXDR57DQFAGNCNFQUMWAKSO5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"Rose’s sock may have found Jack’s shoe but when the going got tough, she kicked it off and found another shoe on dry land. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"While the ship was going nowhere, it was full steam ahead for a love affair"},"display_date":"2024-10-17T17:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Head over heels – Alison Healy on cupid’s arrow ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"TU57XGDFWO5CYIC6J45OMJBGBY","auth":{"1":"1bf46f39bdc064096c6c31840026ab46a1cd93e7c1d5d44d265b8b8b3a9897e9"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/TU57XGDFWO5CYIC6J45OMJBGBY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/17/head-over-heels-alison-healy-on-cupids-arrow/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"C6BURRRPH5FP3DHM2UECASSWMQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":330,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/fbcf05d7-4873-4792-a720-f7e42e2a8e33/versions/1729099221/media/f908bd336decbec1d5e8b12139325501_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/17/going-undercover-frank-mcnally-on-an-exhibition-about-the-irish-of-the-french-resistance/","content_elements":[{"_id":"BA2HQJH7T5EP3MZNXXPCBZNH7A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The mysterious spirit of the French résistance is alive and well at a Dublin venue currently hosting an exhibition on Irish involvement in that cause.","type":"text"},{"_id":"63OEN2LYKBBXZHME4ULV7EUQKA","additional_properties":{},"content":"I missed the official launch last weekend but on Monday dropped by to see the show, noting from my invitation that the venue was the “Ireland Institute” at No 27 Pearse Street in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M6VW5FXRLRDGNIUI3AJSQXHSC4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Surprised I had no recollection of ever seeing this important-sounding place, I nevertheless made my way to No 27 and was somewhat puzzled there to find no sign identifying it as an Institute, Ireland or otherwise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CHKJJ2WLBBB2BPFAUSC5KO7W5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Instead, there was an old shop sign reading “Pearse & Sons, ecclesiastical and architectural sculptures”. And yes, that was those Pearses, as confirmed by a double stone plaque on the wall commemorating the revolutionary brothers Patrick and Willie in the house where they grew up.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HFL55GTYSJCDXGJH63DIIOAJB4","additional_properties":{},"content":"To underline the point, a plaque beside the (forbiddingly closed) Georgian doorway read “Ionad an Phiarsaigh – the Pearse Centre”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QCU2ASVEFFADPAQ5FM7BGGRNCM","additional_properties":{},"content":"For a moment, I wondered if there were upper and lower Pearse Streets, with two No 27s. But intelligence gathered from my iPhone, via Agent Google Maps, confirmed that this was indeed the Ireland Institute, albeit apparently in disguise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WNVHEY6OZVD6VJKLVBHKH6DA5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Luckily, a courier had called to the door just ahead of me, seeking a place that turned out to be elsewhere. When he left, I asked the young woman who had answered him if there was something called the Ireland Institute inside.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OCVFSYZQSFGTLFTPSQSKURI2IY","additional_properties":{},"content":"There was, she thought, although she seemed a little unsure until I mentioned the exhibition – it felt like a codeword – at which point she confirmed this was the right place. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PUGRLHJZZNCTDODWTYNDS4UCZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Once safely inside, I reflected that only in Ireland could you find an officially designated institute (for arts and culture) hiding under the cover of a nest of revolutionaries.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WGDSQB6RFFB3LEM3DZBFXVJJU","additional_properties":{},"content":"But somehow, this makes it a fitting venue for an exhibition called Irish In Resistance: a multidisciplinary show in which painters, poets, and film-makers respond to the stories of a dozen Irish people – 10 of them women – who worked undercover in occupied France and Belgium during the second World War.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T4SIILI7AJCGBAZ4RQHY67GSWI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Everyone knows about Samuel Beckett’s involvement in that struggle, with undercover agents including “Jimmy the Greek”, which won him a Croix de Guerre and a Médaille de la Résistance. And sure enough, he features again here too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BFMWGAUMBNAHLFYSAP32OJFFSY","additional_properties":{},"content":"But the exhibition includes other, less celebrated heroes of the time, such as Maureen Patricia “Paddy” O’Sullivan (1918-1994), who grew up in Dublin and later Belgium, joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in England during the war, and parachuted into France a few months before D-Day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HNAEFREJC5FEHD7B775IQD3YFQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It was a rough landing. She might have died had the impact not been softened by a backpack stuffed with two million French francs. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YQCR7D6GYBAQPESDDFSYW67PYM","additional_properties":{},"content":"As it was, she suffered concussion only, and survived to become a wireless operator for a resistance group in the area around Limoges. She too lived to win a Croix de Guerre and, back in England, an MBE.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5GFQ6YTT6BD7DOWWLWWAY24ZNU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Others were less lucky: Catherine Crean (1879-1945) for one. Born in Dublin’s Moore Street, Crean later moved to Belgium to work and was in her 60s by the time the second World War started. A live-in governess in Brussels, she then became involved in a local resistance network helping Allied soldiers and citizens to escape Nazi-occupied areas. Arrested in 1942, she was probably interrogated and tortured – details are scarce – before being deported to Ravensbruck concentration camp. She died there, of dysentery, in April 1945.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHKFNJZM2RAS3DOVJXQA4QGOSE","additional_properties":{},"content":"A Belgian friend fellow inmate recalled that on their last meeting, a dying Catherine asked her to “comb her beautiful red hair which lay scattered around her pale face”. Herself weakened by hunger, the friend could barely hold the comb.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R5QS7HGUVZGSTJN5NRXXQJ7TEM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Happier stories include the extraordinary Margaret Kelly (1910-2004), born in Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital to a poor mother who couldn’t keep her. She was placed with a foster family from nearby O’Connell Street, where she was living when the Easter Rising broke out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLDIEPDKLZEATNCKQEK6TQDVMM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nicknamed “Bluebell” (for her bright eyes) by a Dublin doctor, she later emigrated to Liverpool and took dance classes there to strengthen her skinny legs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YFC7QUBGGRCTXPYZRH6BUD5PV4","additional_properties":{},"content":"This led eventually to a professional career, with her own troupe of dancers, the “Bluebell Girls”. Their revue became the Riverdance of its time: three different groups performing simultaneously in Paris, Las Vegas, and on tour.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DBQ7WQHUNBGIXBBK7XAQEQHXTU","additional_properties":{},"content":"But marriage to a Jewish-Romanian pianist pitched Kelly into the resistance too. Both were interned for a period. Later, suspected (rightly) of hiding her husband, Kelly was held for questioning by the Gestapo, but survived. Francois Truffaut’s The Last Metro (1980) was part inspired by the story.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FON34RE3TZHKTFFARLAB4UH7KI","additional_properties":{},"content":"She lived to be 94 and her gravestone in Montmartre now depicts the several French military medals she won. It also includes the name given to her by a Dublin GP, nine decades earlier: “Miss Bluebell”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZGUS6PWDIRATBGSYQAD7PMN6TQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Irish in Resistance exhibition is curated by artist Mary Moynihan and includes contributions from Hina Khan, Féilim James, and Amna Walayat.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AVEFOMLGPFHGTNZD3VMLVS24XQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It runs daily (including Sundays) until the end of October at the Ireland Institute, aka the Pearse Centre. If the door is closed when you get there, knock three times and tell them “Frank the Irishman” sent you.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"A fitting venue"},"display_date":"2024-10-16T17:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Going Undercover – Frank McNally on an exhibition about the Irish of the French Résistance","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"UHFI2IZFVVF2VBAMYOQPKYY3MM","auth":{"1":"93a50fa096957bd20c31ac4c44e75f4755192ce2a86ac69813b0406c26d5f174"},"focal_point":{"x":115,"y":168},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/UHFI2IZFVVF2VBAMYOQPKYY3MM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/17/going-undercover-frank-mcnally-on-an-exhibition-about-the-irish-of-the-french-resistance/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"RGEA7JZTA5DCRGH3O4DFBTKCKI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":308,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/2b886a21-8e2c-49c3-a47e-a3428ecdc6b9/versions/1729009695/media/0a532a719e3d4d76a8c35f0bae51d914_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/15/apostrophe-catastrophe-frank-mcnally-on-a-vexed-punctuation-mark/","content_elements":[{"_id":"GTTU6BHLO5C2XP6W4APKYXFSAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408760},"content":"There was a minor emergency somewhere in The Irish Times recently, I gather, after a rogue apostrophe gained entrance to the office and inserted itself in the name of a well-known charity, which was thereby rendered “Barnardo’s” (sic) in our print edition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OBXUBNXL7JHL3JPKOEUEEOKRPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408761},"content":"Pedantic readers may argue there is nothing roguish about that. But au contraire. Barnardos Ireland chooses to style itself thus, without the punctuation mark, to distinguish itself from Barnardo’s in the UK.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PWHER53YQ5AHVCV4NKOM7LZJLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408762},"content":"This was subsequently pointed out to the innocent reporter, who had in fact used the company’s style correctly before the unauthorised apostrophe somehow infiltrated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TWPGPGYJZRAKHMIM7ED4GBCPQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408763},"content":"Investigations are continuing, of course. In the meantime, the controversy reminded me that I pass the Dublin birthplace of Dr Thomas Barnardo (1845-1905) almost every day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R7TNCSMKANAHFP2DEC6A4D4PUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408764},"content":"It’s on Dame Street – or used to be anyway. The location of the long-gone house is now marked by a plaque on the ground at the corner of a small square also now named after him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z2F4DMMVQNGEPLBEGWIFRF6V4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408765},"content":"So I stopped by there yesterday to check if the tourist information sign alongside it had an apostrophe. And well, it does and doesn’t.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VXPIY5XP3RHAFKQ2KKLF2MIO3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408766},"content":"The sign declares the place to be “Barnardo Square”. But in small print at the top is the attribution “Courtesy of Barnardo’s”, while in the text below it notes that “Barnardo’s no longer runs children’s homes . . .” All very confusing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7YPMLQSGHNFG3MXUXGBI4PV33A","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408767},"content":"While there, I was intrigued to notice for the first time that the side-door of the adjoining building – City Hall – has an inscription in gold letters over it insisting that this is in fact “Dublin’s City Hall”, complete with possessive apostrophe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"23BFXP3T65HZ7NB5YY4ESLNSGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408768},"content":"This seems superfluous. After all, it’s unlikely anyone would mistake the venue for, say, Belfast’s City Hall. Or that agents for the People’s Republic of Cork would ever try to claim it as their own. Having said which, I also remembered that only a few metres from where I stood, Dame Street suddenly turns into “Cork Hill”. I suppose you can’t be too careful with those people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V5JIK7OBZRHF5KXG55L5CIG52U","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408769},"content":"Another thing I noticed in Barnardo Square, by the way, is the big banner currently draping the Dublin Tourist information Centre to advertise Féile Bram Stoker later in the month.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X2LPFNYCERBTJOWUKEESAV4QKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408770},"content":"“Four days and nights of deadly adventures,” it promises. Which must be worrying if you’re an overseas visitor, unfamiliar with the non-fatal nature of deadliness in these parts. On a side issue, when we speak of fun involving vampires, surely the phrase should be “undeadly”?","type":"text"},{"_id":"RETLGLFLL5FW3MH2GJTBBUKI2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408771},"content":"Getting back to punctuation, just down from Barnardo Square, in the diminutive Palace Street, is one of Dublin’s most famous ghost signs, for “The Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society”, founded in 1790 and still going, but now located elsewhere.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YHII6SOAIND4BKVQ5YVLLBA4EQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408772},"content":"That too could have had a possessive apostrophe, before or after the “s” in “Roomkeepers”. But it doesn’t, presumably because the word is used as a noun-adjective. And the lack of possessiveness may be doubly apt, given the charity’s original mission.","type":"text"},{"_id":"746PFCTY7VGN3COHDMM67ZGQVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408773},"content":"I used to think “sick and indigent roomkeepers” were hoteliers or guesthouse owners who had fallen on bad times. On the contrary, they were tenants of rooms, unable to keep paying the rent or even to feed themselves.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RHCBYUB6SVCOTBKKLFHH7BR63Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408774},"content":"Hence the description of the society in one early 19th-century history book as having been founded: “by a few individuals in the middle ranks of life who], inhabiting a part of the town where the population was poor and crowded, had daily opportunities of knowing that many poor creatures who were unable to dig and ashamed to beg expired of want and were often found dead in the sequestrated garrets and cellars to which they had silently returned.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EBNKDR4TQBHSVH4PHSVIRZGXTA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408775},"content":"Next door to the ghost sign is one of Dublin’s most picturesque restaurants, also devoid of possessive apostrophes because, like everything else about the café, its name is French: Chez Max.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ATBAOF2FPNHTNN5PYQXWRP7BPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408776},"content":"That would be “Max’s Place” in English. But so far, the French have avoided a plague that has been afflicting German in recent years: the importation of redundant apostrophes from English.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5BWN4DFZSVCR7M2ABOFBB5SDLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408777},"content":"German traditionally does not use apostrophes to indicate the genitive case or possession. Usage is changing, however. Where, for example, “Rosis Bar” and “Katis Kiosk” were once (and remain) correct, imitation of English has led increasingly to he likes of “Rosi’s Bar” and “Kati’s Kiosk” on signs instead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UH7LJUYOIBEULLAXB5LFKM6SSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408778},"content":"This is decried as the “Deppenapostroph” (“idiot apostrophe”) by grammar enthusiasts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H76C5CK3YBGTJKDL6YA3JSQ4H4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408779},"content":"But so widespread has it become that the official gatekeepers of Standard High German recently conceded defeat on the usage and declared it permissible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"443BIGX34FHR5LCAM47BTGVBLI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408780},"content":"Hardliners continue to be outraged. A columnist for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung lamented acceptance of the apostrophe as part of a “victory march” by English.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K7RXCJKDPNHWNNQCN4QRCRK2NU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408781},"content":"Back in Dublin, meanwhile, Barnardos is marching in the opposite direction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WAIM6UMZFFEPEWA4VJIKCLRCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408782},"content":"Grammarians may accept this reluctantly while hoping that the charity’s laid-off apostrophe never finds work in a nearby restaurant and changes the name to “Chez Max’s”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Squares and hardliners"},"display_date":"2024-10-15T17:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Apostrophe catastrophe – Frank McNally on a vexed punctuation mark","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"6UNHARBOW5B4LGEBGVOEMJLBGA","auth":{"1":"bb05bf7d4eed6ce7fde94031c7f4775e9fe9248390840aabf02d39e2e2f3e32a"},"focal_point":{"x":647,"y":1007},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/6UNHARBOW5B4LGEBGVOEMJLBGA.jpeg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/15/apostrophe-catastrophe-frank-mcnally-on-a-vexed-punctuation-mark/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"TSBLBXHSU5HP5AXVTCSOE6NLQA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":315,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/4a140bc3-24b0-4dd7-8bda-176948608072/versions/1728912813/media/2ad24f7d40b4b5a8088360ad808b5c13_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/14/philadelphia-bound-brian-maye-on-scientist-and-politician-james-logan/","content_elements":[{"_id":"TX4OVFFVUZERVDSUAAFGV4UPTA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Regarded as the leading intellectual of his time and deeply involved in the development of Pennsylvania, Lurgan-born James Logan rose to great prominence in colonial America. He was born 350 years ago on October 20th. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"BKEOYTV24BC6RJ56BWCHLDF5LE","additional_properties":{},"content":"His father, Patrick, a schoolmaster, had been a clergyman in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland before becoming a Quaker, and his mother was Isabel Hume; they had married in Midlothian in Scotland and moved to Ireland to avoid persecution.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FASWRWH4DFF6TJR2WD3Q5UPQAI","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was educated originally by his father but was largely self-taught and was an avid reader all his life. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"DDANRWDZQ5HJRA3JMUGOXA4SFA","additional_properties":{},"content":"His Dublin linen apprenticeship was interrupted when his family fled back to Scotland due to the Williamite Wars, before moving to Bristol in 1694, where he was put in charge of Friar Meeting House Quaker school after his father returned to Ireland. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GAUEG6V2DBAMFHUFGLSBLYDZTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"It seems he returned to the linen trade a few years later and in 1699 sailed on board the Canterbury with William Penn for America to what became known as the colony of Pennsylvania.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6MSGEBMMBG5VKIWKINRNPGYWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"In America, he became involved in the fur trade, “using methods that were certainly unscrupulous and bordered on the illegal: he sold rum to Native Americans and left many fur traders in debt,” according to Patrick Geoghegan, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. He would also have been a slave owner. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"27MULD64PVBWFHQUVXRHTLI4G4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was Penn’s secretary and so was closely associated with the development of Pennsylvania, acting as secretary of the province and clerk of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania. Appointed to a number of senior offices, he was mayor of Philadelphia (1722-23) and during his tenure he allowed Irish Catholic immigrants to celebrate with others the city’s first public Mass. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LFCHLPXB2NF45PAETH6ZGJYI5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Other offices included chief justice in the supreme court of Pennsylvania (1731-39), and acting governor of Pennsylvania (1736-37), during which he opposed Quaker pacifism and resistance to war tax, and he was a founding trustee of the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania).","type":"text"},{"_id":"L4XT4OKBJRCRRNRWZVGSSNMVQY","additional_properties":{},"content":"His investments in land, and trade with native Americans, led to his becoming very wealthy. Despite his practices, he was always on good terms with Native Americans, according to Patrick Geoghegan. However, although William Penn and his immediate successors had a policy of friendship towards the Lenape Native American tribe, Logan and other landowners, including Penn’s three indebted sons, implemented a policy of land acquisition before eventually concluding an official treaty with the Lenape. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5PXXHWWTZEPXHKRUTT7ENTOX4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was less than fair to them and used the powerful Iroquois Confederacy to override Lenape rights. The result was a massive expansion of the colony and the scattering of the Lenape.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I2J4UAFC2NDSZFCNO2QG5SMFNE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Interested in learning and the sciences from an early age (he and his younger brother William, who remained in Bristol and became a physician, regularly corresponded on scientific subjects), he came to be recognised for his knowledge of mathematics, natural history and astronomy. He published regularly on the subjects of optics and botany and his work on plant pollination led to a breakthrough in the hybridising of plants as his recognition of how maize reproduced proved revolutionary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MYMYOHYZ3JDMTMB6QEHNOE2ZMI","additional_properties":{},"content":"“His most important scientific contribution, however, was not his own research but his role as advisor to others,” according to Patrick Geoghegan. One who benefitted from his tuition (in Latin) was the American botanist John Bartram, whom he put in touch with the pioneering Swedish biologist and physician Linnaeus. Another to whom he became a mentor was Benjamin Franklin, who published some of Logan’s Latin translations, and Franklin’s circle considered him the best judge of books around.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ODTXTKSNCJA7THM6MLXSOH5PKI","additional_properties":{},"content":"A bibliophile who once confessed that “books are my disease”, he amassed a vast library, which he decided to bequeath to the public, his son James effecting this after his father’s death. The more than 2,000-volume library was first housed at the Bibliotheca Loganiana (or Logan Library) in a building on Sixth Street, Philadelphia, designed and built by Logan himself, and is now at the Library Company of Philadelphia. It is “recognised as the finest collection assembled in pre-independence America”, according to Patrick Geoghegan.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QU3ST6LHXNBMHF3KTQRVDXIV5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"He married Sarah Read, daughter of merchant Charles Read, in December 1714, and they had five children. He died at Halloween 1751 in Germantown, Philadelphia. The Logan neighbourhood and the landmark Logan Circle in that city are named in his honour.","type":"text"},{"_id":"67VHHUPX2JA7JCXRJCRVICAW3M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Patrick Geoghegan described him as aristocratic in bearing and in outlook. Alfred Webb’s Compendium of Irish Biography (1878) referred to him as “tall and well proportioned, with a graceful yet grave demeanour. He had a good complexion and was quite florid, even in old age; nor did his hair, which was brown, turn grey in the decline of life, nor his eyes require spectacles.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"In 1699, he sailed with William Penn to America to what became known as Pennsylvania"},"display_date":"2024-10-14T17:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Philadelphia bound – Brian Maye on scientist and politician James Logan ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"RP5Z37GW2ZGJDA7ZLN5YR6N6FE","auth":{"1":"1fe54fbc2789915b1d235a20d38593f591c0c9309ff655d83cbe6ab27f04ad2e"},"focal_point":{"x":385,"y":318},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/RP5Z37GW2ZGJDA7ZLN5YR6N6FE.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/14/philadelphia-bound-brian-maye-on-scientist-and-politician-james-logan/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}}],"count":3848,"_id":"62bd1e178e784b525b57db83f3190040f77e1bfbc4cc70d22ac037295adc8bb6"},"expires":1733943234555,"lastModified":1733942934177},"{\"feedOffset\":0,\"feedSize\":50,\"includeSections\":\"/opinion/an-irish-diary\"}":{"data":{"content_elements":[{"_id":"IFZUXWV62REUXPHSTC6RJFDAHA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":307,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/218b8c31-e8d0-49fe-8acf-c7ea2d9b61ef/versions/1733847141/media/4a1740b18ff67bf2b3cea56b870f5878_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/10/the-last-seanchai-marc-mcmenamin-on-the-life-of-seumas-macmanus/","content_elements":[{"_id":"TVBZ65NMH5HCPNC5AVPVB2YCDU","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093097},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"KV2HTVRKQFBXDAGYIJ5LERWUFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093098},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"K6IJRILWJ5HZXFLIAXJMHTC2PI","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093099},"content":"In Mountcharles, Co <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/donegal/\" target=\"_blank\">Donegal</a>, there is a fairly inconspicuous old-fashioned water pump. Yet, it holds great significance for local people and is an important landmark in the ancient oral tradition of Irish storytelling. For it was from here that writer Seumas MacManus would, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, regale young and old alike with traditional stories and folklore that he had popularised in the United States in the earlier part of his life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SVQQ3GNFFZHEJIRZFUKW5CCTRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093100},"content":"Born in Mountcharles in 1868 the son of a small farmer and local shopkeeper, MacManus was educated in nearby Enniskillen Co <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/fermanagh/\" target=\"_blank\">Fermanagh</a>. Like most young men his age he was drawn into the burgeoning nationalist movement, becoming the first Donegal secretary of the Gaelic League as well as a founder member of the local 1798 commemoration committee. MacManus was well acquainted with many the revolutionary figures of the time and was soon appointed a board member of Scoil Éanna in Rathfarnham by his friend <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/padraig-pearse/\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick Pearse</a>. Pearse often stayed with MacManus in Mountcharles on visits to Donegal.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M7F2ZQWCRFGJTO6XNQHNRJLGK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093101},"content":"However, it was to preserving local folklore that MacManus was to devote his life. He collected legends and folklore in local “rambling houses” and began contributing to the local newspaper, the now defunct Donegal Vindicator. He would go on to publish his first books, Shuilers from Heathy Hills (1893), The Leadin’ Road to Donegal (1895), ‘Twas in dhroll Donegal (1897), The Bend of the Road (1898), and The Humours of Donegal (1898). Despite his success in bringing Donegal folklore to a wider audience in his own country, it was in the United States that MacManus was to have his greatest impact and most lasting legacy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LVTTAHCDRZB23N4RW5VPSFGJVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093102},"content":"In 1898, MacManus was sent by the editor of Le Petit Journal in Paris to interview the leaders of Irish organisations in America. MacManus brought his collection of stories with him and went on to publish many of the folk tales he had collected in some of the leading US magazines of the time such as Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Monthly, the Century Magazine and the Catholic World. These stories resonated with Irish America and helped popularise Irish folk tales among the diaspora. From the late 1890s MacManus contributed frequently to American periodicals and published his works with American publishing houses to great success. Titles such as Through the Turf Smoke (1899), In Chimney Corners (1899), The Bewitched Fiddle (1900) and Donegal Fairy Stories (1900) were well received in the United States. But MacManus was soon drawn back to Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EF5JK5SDWZGI3KWBFCNVDEKUB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093103},"content":"MacManus attended the first meeting of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sinn-fein/\" target=\"_blank\">Sinn Féin</a> in 1905 and helped establish the GAA in Donegal later that year. He married twice, first to the writer Ethna Carberry (Anna Bella Johnston) and the two resided for a time at Revlin House at the bank walk in Donegal Town. After Ethna’s death he returned sporadically to the United States and met his second wife, Catalina Violante Páez, granddaughter of the first president of Venezuela, in New York. The couple married in 1911 and had two daughters. MacManus made an annual pilgrimage to Mountcharles, where he told nightly renditions of his stories at the village water pump.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2EML5FZZAVATPPRMGSAW4BL7UA","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093104},"content":"It was in New York, however, that his life came to a tragic end. At the age of 92 he fell from the seventh-floor window of the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing home on East 53rd street in Manhattan on October 21st, 1960. His remains were repatriated the following year and he was buried alongside his first wife Ethna in the village of Frosses, Co Donegal. MacManus’s writing popularised the Donegal oral storytelling tradition often by capturing the local sense of humour. The phrase “Many a man’s tongue broke his nose” from his work Heavy Hangs the Golden Grain (1950) is typical of the local wit. However, his greatest contribution was in preserving local folklore from Donegal for future generations. This was an accomplishment he summed up best himself in his work In Chimney Corners, Merry Tales of Irish Folk Lore, published in 1899.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VW7UEYWW25GSNIXAYPQD3JI2UE","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093105},"content":"“These tales were made not for reading, but for telling. They were made and told for the passing of long nights, for the shortening of weary journeys, for entertaining of traveller-guests, for brightening of cabin hearths. Be not content with reading them ... And grateful be to the shanachies who passed these tales to me, for you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MLTRRDO2DBB7HBRNBNNFOULIEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1727976093106},"content":"A simple inscription on the water pump in Mountcharles reads “Seumus MacManus, Author and Seanchaí born near this spot 1868-1960.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Marc McMenamin"}]},"description":{"basic":"The life of Seumas MacManus, author and dramatist"},"display_date":"2024-12-10T19:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The last seanchaí – Marc McMenamin on the life of Seumas MacManus","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"HZDZZ7ANBFBRBPI6KU3G4IHKMM","auth":{"1":"3b59cada26868f43d7695af00636b9215ce522b01613b5be0cd62e59a1c6a72e"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/HZDZZ7ANBFBRBPI6KU3G4IHKMM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/10/the-last-seanchai-marc-mcmenamin-on-the-life-of-seumas-macmanus/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"2T2UQMJCYFCXRKKLJUTIDWJBOM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":331,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/8367081f-e59e-4e21-8b95-b522c1897fbe/versions/1733770432/media/0ec374e4ffcf0cb39a45992d4979dbf0_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/09/feargus-oconnor-irish-leader-of-one-of-the-worlds-first-major-working-class-movements/","content_elements":[{"_id":"YSFC4XGYU5A6PG2IVBNDVVMJGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127679},"content":"Chartism was one of the world’s first major working-class movements. It got its name from the People’s Charter which demanded radical political reforms and one its leaders was the Irishman Feargus (also spelt Fergus) O’Connor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2RUQXNDLBZAZLEB347EWDFQB3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127680},"content":"Born to a Protestant landed family in Cork in 1794, O’Connor trained as a lawyer and became an MP. He was a nephew of Arthur O’Connor, the United Irishman who travelled to France in 1796 to discuss plans for French assistance in a future rebellion against the political establishment in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UG2CKA2CUZCKREDLS6UCEIYGMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127681},"content":"Feargus O’Connor took part in Whiteboy agrarian protests in northwest Cork in the early 1830s. Elected MP for Co Cork in 1832, he was a supporter of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/daniel-o-connell\" target=\"_blank\">Daniel O’Connell</a> and the Repeal movement but the two men later fell out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4ZGSOGZ5CVGKVDDRRMHKINJNR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127682},"content":"Re-elected in 1835, he was subsequently disqualified as he failed to meet the property qualification for members. To qualify for office, MPs had to receive a certain amount of income from land each year. Despite this setback, he continued the struggle in other ways.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQTXZGDHQVHMRCRJLVGVFS62CM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127683},"content":"An imposing figure who stood at about 6ft tall and a gifted orator, he was given the nickname of “the rattler”. He toured Britain advocating for a range of political reforms and improved working conditions for those in the industrial cities and towns of England, Wales and Scotland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C7XJCZNR3ZBMRKPGJY6GV4ZS2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127684},"content":"The People’s Charter, published in 1838, was a manifesto drawn up by two self-educated radicals for the London Working Men’s Association (of which O’Connor was a member).","type":"text"},{"_id":"4EOEGQJQQ5CPFL5LNUVMTKQJRU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127685},"content":"It set out six demands (known as the Six Points) that they hoped would reform a corrupt political system where landowning elites made all the decisions and ordinary working-class citizens did not have a voice.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MP3ISPGBJ5BORPBYHFGQYIXZTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127686},"content":"The demands included universal male suffrage, voting to take place by secret ballot, parliamentary elections to be held every year (not every five years), constituencies to be of equal size, MPs to be paid, and for the property qualification to become an MP to be abolished.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HN5HW5FE7NE4LHOLSL7Y42T3L4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127687},"content":"One of the ways in which the movement’s ideals were spread was through a radical weekly newspaper that O’Connor founded. The first edition of the Northern Star was published in Leeds in November 1837.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PLCMRRUMRJA7ZMAYXYB5POMCBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127688},"content":"Mass outdoor meetings were held to inform the population of their aims. Pamphlets, songs and plays were written. Slogans such as “No taxation without representation” and “The Charter and no surrender”, were also used to convey their demands in a clear manner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V3EDJIN57ZE2VGIA7YVMBXLPYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127689},"content":"In Ireland the movement had its supporters and its detractors. A wool merchant named Patrick O’Higgins founded a Chartist association in Dublin in 1839 but the movement did not manage to win over large numbers of followers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZT5QZ73CFNGKTALIGLKX6T6D44","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127690},"content":"Perhaps the reason for this was the opposition of both the Catholic clergy and Daniel O’Connell, once O’Connor’s friend and now his firm enemy. O’Connell boasted that he kept Ireland free of what he termed the “pollution” of Chartism and that he led the war against “socialists – rank, arrogant and blasphemous infidels”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DOVTSKFH55HIBM37DGBPSLXAUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127691},"content":"Mass petitioning throughout Britain was used to make the voice of the working classes heard in the corridors of power. More than 1.25 million signatures were collected for the first national Chartist petition to make their charter law. Launched in Glasgow in 1838, it was submitted to the House of Commons in Westminster in June 1839. When parliament rejected it, unrest broke out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I5M3H5VL7FE3FCWB2RBX3ZP5YI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127692},"content":"A second petition in 1842 with more than 3 million signatures was rejected by 287 votes to 49, leading to unrest. Between 1839 and 1842, some 2,000 Chartists were arrested, tried and sent to prison.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J3B4QMEX2NEBLACGJONAISJANE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127693},"content":"O’Connor was elected MP for Nottingham in 1847. He was the first and only Chartist MP and one of the more radical voices in the movement. The third and final petition, submitted to Westminster in 1848 with more than 5 million signatures, was similarly rejected. Its rebuttal did not lead to protest, as had been feared.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PH546TPSQRGMVHR2SQVL3YSEMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127694},"content":"It seemed as if the movement had run out of steam and it splintered into different factions. Following the rejection of each of the petitions, O’Connor was one of those who believed that physical force was the only real option open to them to gain political rights.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7RXENU64WVBV5IQYC3CHQSHUSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127695},"content":"O’Connor’s health declined rapidly and, after displaying signs of serious mental illness, he was declared insane. Placed in an asylum in 1852, he died in 1855.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4F5EYKAWI5BWBFEQSVV7OHLJY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127696},"content":"Figures vary but it has been estimated that anywhere upwards of 50,000 people attended his funeral in London, showing that he was not forgotten despite being out of the public eye for a number of years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMUFWQRR7BD2PER6F6ZRYBHQ7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732728127697},"content":"In an oration given at his graveside in Kensal Green Cemetery, he was remembered as “one who had given his life to the cause of liberty and humanity, to the cause of the poor and the oppressed”. Chartism did not achieve its aims during O’Connor’s lifetime but it laid the groundwork for change in future years.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Oliver O'Hanlon"}]},"description":{"basic":"Chartism got its name from the People’s Charter, and aimed to give ordinary working-class citizens a voice in a reformed political system"},"display_date":"2024-12-09T19:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Feargus O’Connor: Irish leader of one of the world’s first major working-class movements","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"HL6LIAR3WBH7JJ7WPGZEAJYXNE","auth":{"1":"d8e295b2040fad2f46865e729ce6e2ca4d303385c1204a074c12577dedfe9c71"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/HL6LIAR3WBH7JJ7WPGZEAJYXNE.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/09/feargus-oconnor-irish-leader-of-one-of-the-worlds-first-major-working-class-movements/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"GOTG3DHEQRHFXFLR3JDGYLTYIU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":335,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/17b841aa-8a5d-483d-8466-d3129c77142f/versions/1733603772/media/2d8105044ec97dc7cbd8ffda685570ae_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/08/ol-man-river-john-mulqueen-on-singer-and-activist-paul-robeson/","content_elements":[{"_id":"SKLJ65WFVJA6FIIMHWXVVTQ55Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hostility to black people in Ireland would have dismayed Paul Robeson, the African-American star who thrilled concert-goers in the late 1930s with his “effortless” singing of black spirituals. During his visits to (non-fascist) Europe Robeson encountered less racism than in the US, where he had to be hustled into the elevator in hotels so that other guests would not see him. The bass singer, who made Ol’ Man River famous, so impressed Ireland’s music critics that they compared him to John McCormack, the great Irish tenor admired by James Joyce. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PCPB7R22RJCPZDK6KG2QX3RHZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"One reviewer wrote that Robeson was in “a class apart” in how he responded to the changing mood of his songs. “He simply stands there and pours out the melodies . . . Questions of range or pitch seem not to bother him at all; production, breathing, and phrasing all come to him as naturally as if he were speaking . . .”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MZFIDHX4PJBN3NKIZCR3HGSLPQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Robeson argued that the folk music of the world was very much alike, but Ireland probably possessed “the richest” tradition. He identified the influence of the Irish language in the spoken English he heard from Cork to Belfast – it had a “musical quality” – but he felt he could not sing Irish songs “properly” because he could not speak the native language. As a musician he had one great ambition – to explore the origin of African-American songs and “give it its place in the folk music of the world”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VKTGGJD5HJDETENBOFHGJRQIRI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The son of an enslaved man, Robeson reiterated in newspaper interviews that black people were little better than slaves in the southern states of the US. For African-Americans, he explained, the difference between New York and Alabama was the same as the difference for a Jew between Britain and Hitler’s Germany. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"D26QFTFLZZDBHDBUGC4QCB2ZUA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Robeson refused to sing in the South, because he would not be welcomed in his own right but despised because of his skin colour. He pointed out that “if someone were to bump into me in the street, and I lifted my hand, I would be knifed there and then and no questions asked”. A qualified lawyer, civil rights in the US remained his obsession. And, he admitted, “mere music” would never end segregation – “I feel almost in despair when I return to America”. But there was at least one positive political development in the southern states: black and white workers as members together in the same trade unions.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NN3AAZHZ2JAW7B5DA465NXSCJ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Robeson’s latest movie, Sanders of the River, opened in cinemas in February 1936, just after he finished his Irish tour. In the summer the singer visited the Soviet Union where, unlike the segregated South, he felt “free” walking on the street. His schedule on this trip included a discussion about another film, this time with the acclaimed director Sergei Eisenstein. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FU4UBTTD6VHWPFL2JR5263HPJU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Europe’s fascist dictators, however, remained unchecked. On the question of Mussolini’s conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) Robeson asked, sarcastically, was not the time past for “bringing civilisation” to the “backward” races with machine-guns? And, he might have added, “civilizing” Africans with poison gas. Believing, rightly, that they would get away with it, Hitler and Mussolini next targeted Spain by providing an overwhelming military advantage to its future dictator, Franco. Defending the Spanish Republic became the European cause célèbre, and Paul Robeson and Ernest Hemingway were among the many artists who supported it. Asked to offer a statement to “Writers Take Sides” – briefly, perhaps – Samuel Beckett memorably replied “¡UPTHEREPUBLIC”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"7VO2HZ4OFFAN3BQD3Z36QNOOAU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hemingway went to the front, Jason Gurney remembered, to boost the morale of the volunteers in the International Brigades. He “sat himself down behind the bullet-proof shield of a machine-gun,” Gurney wrote, “and loosed off a whole belt of ammunition in the general direction of the enemy. This provoked a mortar bombardment for which he did not stay.” Hemingway should have stuck to his day job as an observer of war-ravaged Spain – he later wrote the powerful novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Robeson, on the other hand, was a hit with the foreign soldiers, singing through the night in “Siberian conditions” during the Christmas of 1937. Fellow Americans, black and white, were playing their part in Spain’s anti-fascist struggle. They included Oliver Law, the African-American commander of the George Washington Battalion, who had been killed in action earlier that year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7EOVUZQ3RFKHLSGNQOLDZ6MWQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Robeson continued to pursue his political agenda when the US joined the war against Hitler and he became one of the most popular performers in America. After the second World War, however, like so many other anti-fascists, he fell from grace when the Soviet Union and the US became bitter rivals. Blacklisted, his passport was taken from him. But he did record some Irish songs – “the saddest in the world” – such as Thomas Moore’s She is Far From the Land, which John McCormack also released. In 1957 Robeson recorded Kevin Barry; in the words of the ballad, “just a lad of 18 summers” who gave his life, in 1920, “for the cause of liberty”. As a student in Belvedere College Barry identified racism as the worst prejudice. Robeson would have agreed. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"John Mulqueen"}]},"description":{"basic":"As a musician he had one great ambition – to explore the origin of African-American songs"},"display_date":"2024-12-08T19:31:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ol’ Man River – John Mulqueen on singer and activist Paul Robeson","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"UTX3OEQXJZCIDAULT5OWHDTNB4","auth":{"1":"3205fa1dc0bbbdc14a9b28d84b5830f09fea8eeea7d7e9efb93f73ee16e97529"},"focal_point":{"x":2129,"y":1889},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/UTX3OEQXJZCIDAULT5OWHDTNB4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/08/ol-man-river-john-mulqueen-on-singer-and-activist-paul-robeson/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"Z67R7O7AH5ERNL3T4EXEUNI3W4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":319,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/4235d237-80d0-4ed9-8d80-a3ab0bd8456e/versions/1733504477/media/2d6de770f43c907dafbb3aa47b4d0517_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/06/leap-in-the-dark-frank-mcnally-on-the-obscure-origins-of-an-irish-religious-insult/","content_elements":[{"_id":"GBNFNN4JFJCEFAWPQ26MEKPRXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374826},"content":"One of the obstacles you face in trying to find the origin and meaning of the word “jumper” – in its Irish religious sense, which we were discussing here earlier in the week – is the success of the indigenous knitwear industry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LYUEAS6XNJAITHHIW5VYV6J2SI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374827},"content":"Religious jumpers seem to have been largely associated with the far west of Ireland. But if you Google the terms “jumper” and “Connemara”, you will be deluged with advertisements for what Americans call Aran sweaters. Another problem is the word’s athletic meanings.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FTZQMSD5ORA6XJRP5OW7I6XHF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374828},"content":"Search for “Connemara” and “jumper” in The Irish Times archive, for example, and the results are mostly about horse shows.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2ZXQOS2625GHPLTE5S3ZX46H5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374829},"content":"My thanks to reader Padraigín Riggs, however, who suggests that the religious term bears no relation to the English jump. “To my knowledge, the term ‘jumper’ is from the Irish verb ‘d’iompaigh’, [meaning] ‘turned’,” she writes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FMWXDRWPIVG5LOXEWPG245T5VI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374830},"content":"Indeed, I now see that this theory was also advanced in a 2008 book review elsewhere in these pages by Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, professor of history at NUI Galway. The book was Soupers & Jumpers: the Protestant Missions in Connemara 1848 – 1937, by Miriam Moffitt, to which we’ll return shortly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RRGUZA3UFRDH5EXORGYZIFMHMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374831},"content":"“Jumper” in this sense does not appear in any dictionary I own, including Terry Dolan’s Hiberno-English or the Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms, although both of those have “souper”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZXAFKT7PTRFW5DWMQDVKYTUZPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374832},"content":"So I was almost convinced by a number of readers who insisted that “jumpers” referred specifically to Catholics who converted twice. Or as one correspondent put it, to people “who took the soup and everything going with it, and then jumped back to Holy Mother Church when conditions eased”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HN4FYODKY5C7RBLT66CIC7WCJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374833},"content":"But in Ernie O’Malley’s newly published Mayo folklore collection, which started me on this subject, the implied conversions were sometimes permanent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JRF3KKLGS5EJZKGDMGQCWTJOTE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374834},"content":"Among his stories, for example, is one called simply “The Jumper”, about a man who converts during the Famine but then has to leave his rural neighbourhood and move to Castlebar, where he marries a Protestant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5U7ZIISY3ZDPVCHD5NFAOEXBPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374835},"content":"His brother later visits him there and hears the man’s wife saying harsh things about the Catholic Church.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHM5FXCTXFF45ATIRSLHQCSEKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374836},"content":"But when he returns home and <i>his</i> wife asks whether he challenged the “hussy”, he replies that no, he said nothing because the woman was serving him a dinner much better than he was used to, so it didn’t seem right to complain.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6HN3GDRUR5BO3MF5EFCM7UBL6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374837},"content":"Returning to Moffitt’s book, her title follows a custom dating back to the post-Famine years in using the words “Soupers & Jumpers” together. Nor, from my quick scan of the text, does it seem to differentiate between them.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HLWKZVTSBBCOLNNGWKJ4G7EUVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374838},"content":"Typical mentions of the j-word include a court report of 1851: “The Galway Mercury claimed that justice was also administered in an uneven manner at Cong, when the court fined Pat King for calling Michael Lally a ‘Jumper’ . . . but dismissed Fr Martin Coyne’s assault case against [Lally and others].”","type":"text"},{"_id":"5LUAUKKLMRCUFAEIVQA7VGDYKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374839},"content":"The term also features in a directive from Archbishop John McHale of Tuam who, long before Captain Boycott gave his name to English, urged Catholics to:","type":"text"},{"_id":"5J7K5ZRH5RD2DC3JJ5BXUZ6BUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374840},"content":"“Separate themselves completely from intercourse with the Jumper...not to speak to them, not to lend or borrow from them; not to allow them into their homes nor upon their land ... [and] to sign themselves with the cross every time they met one in public or in private”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IZW54ZHLAZFMZOGFD4VMRYRTXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374841},"content":"Then there was Fr Patrick Lyons, parish priest of Spiddal, who in 1854 published a list of fifty-six “seceders from the Jumper camp”: ie people who had now returned to the Catholic Church.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TADHCLDTLVEEXFGT3W4Q3PT2CY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374842},"content":"The Protestant missions in Connemara provided not just food but also education, a big attraction at a time when the local Catholic church was opposed to national schools. But the great “Anti-Jumper Crusade of 1878-1884″ put an end to most of the proselytising.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S5RQEYWUCVEYNPHKDADWZ7LNHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374843},"content":"In one notorious incident of 1879, a Father William Rhatigan from Clifden visited the Omey Island school of one William MacNeice (grandfather of the poet Louis), to reclaim lost members of his flock.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XPPYDNRERFA3TJF2X4JYYCPB2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374844},"content":"The result was a violent confrontation in which, according to rival reports, McNeice was beaten “with a heavy stick” while Rhatigan was “almost murdered”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6HZBSU3URBBSXHPRGP5WPISIGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374845},"content":"But the missionaries and their converts came off worse, usually. According to Moffitt, the Anti-Jumper Crusade expedited a tendency already in train whereby the missions henceforth concentrated on urban areas.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2KBOZ5CINNHZRAVHDKUW7J6XDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374846},"content":"Anyway, after all that, the Diary is going to stick its neck out and suggest that “jumper” is merely a broader version of “souper”, equally pejorative but lacking the specific implication of conversion for food.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VQVLGFUVX5GIFA4WS7JGT3SZ2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374847},"content":"While we’re still on the subject, Padraigín Riggs also tells me of an Anglican church in Templemore, Co Tipperary, that because of its elevated site and association with local converts, became known as “Jumpers’ High”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TCNML7GLJNF4FPYAANQDYUC3QE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374848},"content":"This is not to be confused with the “Jumping Church of Kildemock”, near Ardee, to which my classmates and I were brought on a first-ever school tour many years ago.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TOBKUXSLGNF43L2JUHSYZEBATQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733503374849},"content":"There, it was the ancient building itself that is said to have jumped, in the fully English sense, so that a gable wall now stands a metre or so inside its original foundations. Local folklore says it did so to exclude the grave of an excommunicated person buried under the floor. The scientific explanation was a freak windstorm in February 1715.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Religious ‘jumpers’ seem to have been largely associated with the far west of Ireland"},"display_date":"2024-12-06T18:57:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Leap in the dark — Frank McNally on the obscure origins of an Irish religious insult ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"ZBNSL4JN5BGBRO7QMWV3IMG2U4","auth":{"1":"bf05363ecf06a3edcbcf7887ebbaff0a7e6f8604a7bf8785798c718fb5ec8c67"},"focal_point":{"x":2282,"y":2188},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ZBNSL4JN5BGBRO7QMWV3IMG2U4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/06/leap-in-the-dark-frank-mcnally-on-the-obscure-origins-of-an-irish-religious-insult/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"B7KIW6G7M5AM7FJB7EUP4N3JYY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":320,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/4007f85e-be7a-47b0-b42a-24994647f24a/versions/1733421891/media/93e3923543d6c28b7693a4f2ebcc950f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/05/prose-and-con-frank-mcnally-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-famous-local-newspaper/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7VXFG5F6D5CA7FQFKLXU45N54M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880628},"content":"My thanks to several readers who have pointed out that the “libelous” newspaper Con Houlihan edited in his early years – and that Myles na gCopaleen may have plagiarised on occasion – was called The Taxpayers’ News.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WGJLVAWIKFB7JEEDVZRKEQDVHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880629},"content":"It was a monthly publication based in his native Castle Island (I spell it with two words, as Con always did) in the late 1950s; not in Castlemartyr, where a decade earlier he had been expelled from secondary school, for offences also related to journalism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J3RSECTNXFBRRCK2FJEQQGYS54","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880630},"content":"Houlihan had no part in the libel that shut the paper down. That was the work of title’s proprietor, one Charlie Lenihan, a local Citizen Kane who was also a member of the county council.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TDJLQFCAGJBTPFC6CEE3DRQGSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880631},"content":"It began as slander, in fact, when at a meeting of the council’s housing committee in July 1957, Lenihan committed grievous verbal harm to a fellow member, Michael L O’Connell. The latter happened to be a local solicitor. Notwithstanding which, as the High Court later heard, Lenihan expressed the opinion that O’Connell was “lower than a tinker”, adding: “As a politician he is a crook, and in his profession he is a crook.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FIBGELWFJ5AYHMWKQTBCJ6VSPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880632},"content":"Lenihan withdrew this at a trial in which the High Court president lamented that if an apology had been made earlier, no case would have been necessary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZC75ALRK5JDJ3HGXRZ56CNDQ4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880633},"content":"Unfortunately, in the interim, the offending sentence had been repeated in the Taxpayers’ News, turning slander into libel.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SZBELMIOFNFYVEWSGRLBBVBVSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880634},"content":"Again, the editor was innocent. As Houlihan explained in a 2011 column for the Evening Herald, local printers had been (understandably) nervous about producing the paper. It was printed instead in Dublin, to which city Con caught the first train from Tralee every publication Monday with the copy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OTXTWEODJZED7P6U5AO4HLYCCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880635},"content":"On the fatal month in question, however, Lenihan had been the one to bring the paper to Dublin, adding the libelous amendments en route.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C4R36AAEBBAX7DUR4D4IXVR63Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880636},"content":"Even then, interestingly, the High Court president believed the plaintiff had suffered no “actual damage” because as he put it: “His clients were mainly country people, who would be shrewd enough to assess the value to be paid to utterances of this kind.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QGN5IJQOURBMNFKQBDFSKJUYXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880637},"content":"But perhaps some less sensible urbanites had read it as well because the solicitor was nevertheless deemed worthy of damages. The judge awarded £250 plus costs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EQPFT6MJ25CW7DRI4Z3GU7TDBM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880638},"content":"Houlihan meanwhile resigned as editor, over the interference with his copy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7BOVMCFHZBGGHBOJPYLEGKGATI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880639},"content":"As for the paper, he wrote in 2011, it “lingered on for a few more months and died quietly”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XA46K2WWGFCFZIAE6EU3DKXBLQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880640},"content":"Perhaps it did more than linger, because the court case was in May 1958 and almost a year after, back in Dublin, the Irishman’s Diarist was still able to give the paper a rave review. In a column of April 1959, he began: “Last weekend my Observer and Spectator were left alone, neglected and unread. There was no offence intended – it was simply that I got completely immersed in a joyful romp through two issues of a publication called The Taxpayers’ News.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"R62BEKYA4JG45MMYMZL54OSGMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880641},"content":"Then as now, of course, the Diary was synonymous with unimpeachable ethics in crediting sources. As Houlihan acknowledged in 2011: “Seamus Kelly, Quidnunc in The Irish Times, gave us the occasional mention and we were delighted.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GVA6SG5DTRA6ZJF6QJJJPPVBUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880642},"content":"But not all columnists were as generous, apparently. Houlihan again: “Occasionally, Myles [na gCopaleen] lifted pieces from me. That was flattering.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6OVDKARL3VEYNK4H23ABZVD54E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880643},"content":"It may have been as much the loss of a talented editor as the libel itself that closed the paper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4RFI3CKUABBWXP2ZNGIQFXIYTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880644},"content":"If not quite in the William Randolph Hearst bracket, Lenihan had deep pockets.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SFQUJRHOG5BIPA7LHNUZ7JCFC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880645},"content":"His father had made a fortune in Alaska, enough for the son to buy a farm and mansion at home, as well as a butcher’s shop and dairy business.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YQ7GAK2C5ZDSLDRBHYOUEWHZJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880646},"content":"He stood for the Dáil too and just missed out, according to Houlihan, because of a distaste for proportional representation: “He would have won that election handsomely if he didn’t despise number-two votes and told people who offered what to do with them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NT2HKWGVYZGN5NMSKNBHEJMIDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880647},"content":"In its brief existence, The Taxpayers’ News achieved the distinction of giving John B Keane his print debut. By contrast, it also published Chekhov, Maupassant, and DH Lawrence: “This had two merits: they were great stories and we hadn’t to pay for them because the authors were dead.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"34KMJDO5BRCGHH5T7TVEHUFSUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880648},"content":"Although his had been “Castle Island’s first and probably last publication”, Houlihan believed every town should have its own magazine or newspaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZQ2ODKWT7JDZDB5YFDMSUH33AM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880649},"content":"He claimed this was a universal ambition, even in the 21st century: “Every journalist that I know in Dublin would love to go home and start a newspaper in Castle Island or Caherciveen or Newcastle West, but the tide is running against them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"T7SSCJACYVFQHJVVN4INCA7RXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880650},"content":"The real-life Myles, Brian O’Nolan, had long cherished such a dream, according to his biographer, but never realised it. His friend and contemporary, Patrick Kavanagh, famously had. The Monaghan poet’s newspaper didn’t even need a town.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y6FMX3TSCNH4RERLEY63KVAB24","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880651},"content":"As its title suggested, Kavanagh’s Weekly was a vehicle for his and his (bankrolling) brother Peter’s opinions, which were many and fierce.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JT5UOKMEJVC6NMN4LLAQNEWDXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880652},"content":"The opening issue hit Dublin in April 1951 “like a blast from a sawn-off shotgun”. But it wasn’t sued for libel somehow, and Patrick would later claim it had sold well enough.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KUGC5UV5UZGZ7IQZEXFLABS2VE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733432880653},"content":"It ran for 13 issues and only closed, he implied, because of the disappointing quality of the readership.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"In its brief existence, The Taxpayers’ News achieved the distinction of giving John B Keane his print debut"},"display_date":"2024-12-05T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Prose and Con — Frank McNally on the rise and fall of a famous local newspaper","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"LRMPAGYLTRFORIPVDHXANFTE3Q","auth":{"1":"a2562aedcb8f30fd381cc237984baa1efa844845ddfffdeca80899c7645b802e"},"focal_point":{"x":295,"y":139},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/LRMPAGYLTRFORIPVDHXANFTE3Q.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/05/prose-and-con-frank-mcnally-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-famous-local-newspaper/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"7F627LOT2ZGHPCY7M77XWJC4QU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":329,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/0094ff41-876b-46e4-b1a6-914069472f10/versions/1733363139/media/9e74aad2277e644d070486ac3520dc68_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/04/souper-imposed-frank-mcnally-on-famine-insults-and-flann-obriens-debt-to-con-houlihan/","content_elements":[{"_id":"Z6XWIE36L5DETE3XHRX5DX5ZGU","additional_properties":{},"content":" In last Saturday’s Diary, quoting Ernie O’Malley, I used the word “jumper” in its uniquely Irish context (which refers to neither knitwear nor athletics).","type":"text"},{"_id":"CILBQMFTFBHTZNKQU4OIL7VB5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Now, long-term correspondent Martin Aherne writes to suggest the usage was incorrect and that the word O’Malley and I both meant was “souper”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S52OP7GZ6VFQTJVS3G3ABU4KYM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“There is a difference and a big difference between jumper and souper,” Martin says. “Maggie [the young girl mentioned in a story from O’Malley’s Mayo folklore collection] was not a jumper but a souper, converting to get fed.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MPH2KLKKRBH25CZXKCHNTWQFXI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Jumpers, he implies, were Catholics who responded to the Penal Laws by turning Protestant to inherit land. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"2RGIMYPTVRFP7CXVGF7RAW3YUM","additional_properties":{},"content":"On occasion, the email continues, such a convert could even get “his own family evicted and have the whole place for himself”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HGCNKY2VDFGRFFC6FDJ7FPH2OY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Well, certainly, the words do have a different quality, if only because souper implies passivity while “jumper” is more active.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KSQK6ADNVRDI7I5R3LWGSJCZCE","additional_properties":{},"content":"And “jumper” may well have had a separate existence prior to the Famine. But its other meanings make it hard to find in archives then. Whereas since the Famine, the terms have tended to be lumped together or used interchangeably.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DE3J4OQD4ZGN7PSKUJZJQXOIGQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Here, for example, is a remarkable passage from the Freeman’s Journal in 1855, one of the earliest to use the combination in print. It welcomes a mission to Connemara by the Sisters of Mercy, as if the nuns are religious paratroopers sent in to take out the evangelists and their kitchens:","type":"text"},{"_id":"CR3XPGW625CMPHZ3VZKI2UJFW4","additional_properties":{},"content":"“No wonder Soupers and Jumpers should grow deadly pale and seek succour from their old friends the bayonet and the ballot [sic? – bullet?] . . . hence all the police within forty miles of Clifden . . . called in to reassure the well-fed and well-paid stirabout brigade . . .”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UHZRATT65RAFHBAWI3XPCQCUOA","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"2DB3ZZ5EE5GBBGNQEZTOBZFS5M","additional_properties":{},"content":"A more recent incidence of the terms has sent me down a rabbit hole involving Myles na gCopaleen (aka Flann O’Brien), formerly of this parish, and another celebrated newspaper man, Con Houlihan, late of the Evening Press.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CZPWS6QYKNG5VNDPGK3YDUU6NE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The story begins with a milestone from the Irish Times in October 1950, headlined “Cruiskeen Lawn is 10 Years Old Today”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YZ22GARLR5G3DB4UKWBO7ZDNYQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Myles’s famous column, written at first in Irish before evolving through bilingualism into English, was indeed celebrating its tenth birthday then and did so with a round-up of the decade’s highlights.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6ZO6GLHNHBCPRACC7FCYONECUU","additional_properties":{},"content":"These included a diatribe from the Catholic Standard, a weekly newspaper, which had lampooned the Irish Times, its editor Bertie Smyllie, and Myles in verse, eg:","type":"text"},{"_id":"CFMH6KJK5JEW5OUTBO5SKAALBQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The Soupers and the Jumpers/Had done their loathy best,/With their Lutheran ersatz-bible,/Their Smyllie homes and the rest/E’er a native anti-Irish chick/Was Bred in their Bird’s Nest . . .”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y42IFV7AAVAH7JFHQBO5HBO7LI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The poem concluded: “Nor in these squalid, eerie days,/An ugsomer sight is seen/Than that forlorn of ‘Gaelic’/In the Garrison Magazine/Where the Grazier’s Gazette displays/Its Myles na n-Asaleen.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CUGRAFPP3VEV5LGV34CX7INHCY","additional_properties":{},"content":"No, the satire is not quite Swiftian. Even so, as well as introducing some of us to the word ugsomer (from the archaic ugsome, meaning “frightful”), it inspired another archive search, this time for “Myles na n-Asaleen”, to see if the nickname had been used elsewhere. And that’s where Con Houlihan came in.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M6DKWEH4UBDO3HWDW72PSZA3EE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cruiskeen Lawn aside, the solitary hit for “Myles na nAsaleen” was not from the Catholic Standard but from a 1973 book review in The Irish Press by the same Con, then newly arrived in Dublin journalism, though already in his late-40s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DW65AKH275ETLLIDUIYHHRORHE","additional_properties":{},"content":"It’s a well written piece, combining two books: Myles’s An Béal Bocht (The Poor Mouth), which had just been republished in English, and the biographical Óige an Dearthár (The Brother’s Childhood) by a sibling of the real-life Myles, Ciarán Ó Nualláin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UFFNGYYRZZAIBNMPUKJGTX4BCA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Houlihan loved the latter work, hated the former. Of The Poor Mouth, he complained:","type":"text"},{"_id":"XEFJ24OG45DZTOK3VGWVTS43SM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The extraordinary thing about this miserable book is its reputation. For over thirty years certain of the Green Guards have been confiding to their acquaintances who know no Irish the delights of this work as they would of a secret mistress. The translator talks about the nuances . . . lost in the English. He is talking nonsense. There are no nuances – only crude parodies . . . written when [the author’s] mind must have been on the blink.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OGAWMEEOO5HLRC3V5RGYQ3LMHA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Interesting as that opinion is, however, the Flannorak in me was more intrigued by a preamble to Houlihan’s review, in which he implies that he himself was an early influence on Myles. And that – gasp! – Cruiskeen Lawn may even have plagiarised him on occasion.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VPPJBSPEPRBLBE4VER26AJ7AVE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Referring to himself in first-person plural, Houlihan wrote: “Once upon a time we were involved in a monthly paper that roamed along the wilder shores of radicalism until a libel action ended its career.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7NELCZB3AVER5MQ4YZ2TZJ7KPM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The paper was published in a little town in the south-west, but Brian O’Nolan was among its readers. The evidence is simple: either consciously or otherwise some of our ideas began to appear in Brian’s column in The Irish Times. It was to us the ultimate tribute . . .”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JD6LWJSGE5C2BOSLAYCWFVG4G4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Searching around the crater caused by that gently dropped bombshell, I have since learned that as a scholarship student at Castlemartyr College, Co Cork in the 1940s, the Kerry-born Houlihan was expelled for publishing an unofficial school newspaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TQ6R453ZIJBTFPUWDUNCHC47NE","additional_properties":{},"content":"But that would have been nearer the southeast than the southwest. Unless Con was obfuscating. Either way, I’m wondering if radicals of a certain age might remember a libelous paper in Castlemartyr or Castleisland. And if so, could they send me copies?","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Under the influence"},"display_date":"2024-12-04T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Souper imposed - Frank McNally on Famine insults and Flann O’Brien’s debt to Con Houlihan","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"OY65BMI3WZNSVBQNGYNWDQ4S5Y","auth":{"1":"79ff88e44ebdc618b6b837c07ac01c15ea523c5a999d4313244d7ce19e827243"},"focal_point":{"x":1137,"y":481},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/OY65BMI3WZNSVBQNGYNWDQ4S5Y.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/04/souper-imposed-frank-mcnally-on-famine-insults-and-flann-obriens-debt-to-con-houlihan/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"HEZPEJD3T5ETFCDIBMWRXYSI2Y","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":315,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/7c612bd2-aa45-4999-901a-a221e713551a/versions/1733251948/media/0f2cba47f35e33d675bd5d5529d2198e_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/03/pint-of-order-frank-mcnally-on-getting-to-the-ballot-box/","content_elements":[{"_id":"BI2RFXYGK5E3FP44ILOJOPHGQE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In keeping with half of an old American tradition, I always like to vote early (if not often) on election day. During a more than usually chaotic Friday, however, I hadn’t managed to cast my ballot by tea-time. Then I took the chance of meeting friends for a post-work pint in The Flowing Tide. –","type":"text"},{"_id":"JCT4WZBNIREQFGLCKO24MPMQAE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Named for proximity to the Liffey, it’s a fine, storied old pub, dating from 1820. And whatever about the tide, the Guinness and conversation were soon flowing there, at risk to democracy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XCFWULCKJJDGDFA7CVJDBPUC6Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Luckily, I had set my phone alarm. So at 9.30pm, mid-pint – and mid-point too – I tore myself away. Jumping on a Dublin Bike, I pedaled furiously the three kilometres to another watery-sounding venue, Basin Street, to do my duty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FNEE4CS4QBFIPKBIIL72FBTLZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Basin Street is named for a long-defunct city reservoir nearby – there is no water there now.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KSG42MVP6ZDLRAYGIJVM45BBJM","additional_properties":{},"content":"What it does have plenty of is polling stations: two in neighbouring schools. Alas, the local opportunities to vote are not matched by enthusiasm.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B6UBXAJDTJAVTHLOFO6KODSGSQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"After emerging from the deep end of my ballot paper (I went down as far as 10th preference before losing my nerve and having to surface), I inquired about the turn-out. “35 per cent – maybe 40,” the woman said, gloomily. In the context of the classroom we were in, our neighbourhood was struggling for a pass.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7SIJ5RODC5FBRBTEMABB2FXS7Y","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"UYB3VA27T5HJDFANDVR77KQA2M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Perhaps it was the tidal theme, but as results emerged on Saturday, a Churchillian phrase – slightly amended – came to mind.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TD4SGDC2UBHCREGVEDNPJLVFTU","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The whole map of Europe has been changed,” I could hear him saying. “The position of countries has been violently altered. The mode and thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world. But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm . . .”","type":"text"},{"_id":"4YMORQBDPVDPVC6UO23PBY63ZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Yes, I suppose the outcome was boring. But I thought of the electoral mania else, and of Elon Musk’s pre-election prediction that Ireland too would vote for what he euphemistically calls “Freedom”. Then I decided that, on balance, boring is good.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YPFGCMAXBNBAFOIY7BU2ZKXEKA","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"BYCDYO2GUNEYFFIS2VNJBHZLTY","additional_properties":{},"content":"On a balmy Sunday, barely recognisable as December 1st, I went for a run around the city centre. And as I walked home afterwards, a stranger on a bike pulled up alongside.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GGWEPSKGFZDWXE6XZ3QQLMPTSE","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Are you Irish?” he asked, with a note of challenge. “I am,” I said. Then he followed up in the same tone: “Are you <i>proud</i> to be Irish?” I knew where he was coming from now, so I got my back up in advance before declaring, with an edge: “I am, most of the time.” “I’m not proud to be from Dublin,” he said, changing the subject a bit. “Dublin’s a beautiful city,” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"ECOGXN5TQBGPZEOGMFFFNK5XMI","additional_properties":{},"content":"I assured him breezily (a slight exaggeration of our immediate surroundings, which were full of the detritus of Saturday night, but this was no time for nuance).","type":"text"},{"_id":"QUR2QSRSXBFQFNH3XGAOXKSGLI","additional_properties":{},"content":"“It used to be, but it’s gone to the dogs,” the man countered. I was tempted to quip that it was gone to the seagulls, maybe. But I knew it was immigrants he was really talking about. So I made a point instead about how a lot of criticisms of the city were from people who didn’t live in it, or had an agenda, or . . . ","type":"text"},{"_id":"SUYYMBN4RZAUBC77C337CFJOIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"But suddenly the man just cycled away. I wondered afterwards if he’d been trying to recruit me to something – a local branch of the Elon Musketeers, maybe. Whatever his intentions, at the first sign of resistance, he vanished.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BPEEOKUZXZH3LCP27DWH2TZSZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"2UMS2QIJ5ZFJDM5UVALA7A7JJE","additional_properties":{},"content":"After a weekend in which the poor Greens took the brunt of whatever anger voters had, climate change nevertheless haunted Monday night’s Horse Racing Ireland awards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3P3EZRFLPRBLZAT5HP476OL2DM","additional_properties":{},"content":"I don’t think it explains the phenomenon of James Ryan, one a pair of 19-year-old twins who were sitting at my table along with their proud parents.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ILP5IZE5IJHZRAQN77QJ6ABB4Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"It would have been impressive enough, ordinarily, that James is already 6 feet (1.83m) tall. That he’s also a jockey – and a flat jockey at that, who weighs in regularly at under 9 stone (57kg) – seems almost freakish.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZORJOV5N6REY5O634N7M7IMHBI","additional_properties":{},"content":"In any case, after 33 winners and a champion apprentice title this season, he was a dead cert for the night’s “Emerging Talent” award and won, pulling up.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EUONHUPENBA7ZA3BIWXOSBERR4","additional_properties":{},"content":"But back to climate change, which arose in conversation with Conor Maxwell, former jockey, now trainer, for whom the Ryans ride. In general, he told me, the mild conditions in which the jumps season has begun this year are a problem. Horses are still soft and the ground is hard. Owners and trainers don’t want to risk injury.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MJFGIH35OFBLVDKWFVZAVRJD6E","additional_properties":{},"content":"More specifically, he mentioned Thurles racecourse, which has lost three meetings already this autumn due to lack of rain. Good drainage used to be one of the track’s virtues. A bit like a fast horse, the relative aridity of Thurles was always “good thing”. But the downside is that the track never installed a watering system. And now increasingly, like Basin Street, it’s high and dry.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"At 9.30pm, mid-pint – and mid-point too – I tore myself away to vote"},"display_date":"2024-12-03T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Pint of order – Frank McNally on getting to the ballot box ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"NGI6EGYLNNF53E622WK6JFYMZE","auth":{"1":"8170faa09cee58d17639426cc97d32cc978ac39946f539260b42ee9fa3f7c2bf"},"focal_point":{"x":1618,"y":1142},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/NGI6EGYLNNF53E622WK6JFYMZE.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/03/pint-of-order-frank-mcnally-on-getting-to-the-ballot-box/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"WIHKRPMXBNBGRJMR5SOJPPQRAQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":321,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/42360884-6503-4385-9ca6-4a4395da5547/versions/1733163009/media/aff0e06b0c435722fddf627957164431_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/02/form-and-function-brian-maye-on-architect-and-novelist-james-franklin-fuller/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7SJ27WAKUBD5XE33F3M5UHFSMY","additional_properties":{},"content":"James Franklin Fuller, who died 100 years ago on December 8th, could well be described as a renaissance man. A distinguished architect, he was also a successful novelist and published on history, archaeology, antiquarianism and genealogy. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"MH5GM6HCQJDMJKST5BZIIUGZE4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was born near Derryquin, Co Kerry, in 1835 (date and month unknown) into a family of minor gentry; his father, Thomas, was a landowner, and his mother, Frances Bland, was of Derryquin Castle. Tutored by James Murphy, who later conducted the Crown case in the trial for the Phoenix Park murders, he then attended boarding school at Blackrock, Cork, where he befriended Thomas Newenham Deane, afterwards a well-known architect.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IXFR4D6WHFD4RAWIVGURD6QVI4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Moving to England in 1850, he worked as an actor for a time and was a mechanical-engineering apprentice for a year before studying architecture in London and Manchester. In London, he contributed literary work to journals such as Truth, Dark Blue and Once a Week, and joined volunteer regiments while working in Manchester, Sheffield and London. In 1860, he married Helen Prospére, a descendant of one of Napoleon’s generals, and returned to Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GI5ZEBUWLNHNDFL2HS7QX5JKFE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Appointed architect of the Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners (a government Church of Ireland agency), he oversaw the building and renovation of churches all over Ireland. When the Church of Ireland was disestablished (1869), he used the compensation he received to set up practice in Dublin on Brunswick (now Pearse) Street. An early commission was the restoration of Annaghmore House, near Collooney, Co Sligo, which was carried out “in an unusually restrained classical style”, according to the Historic Houses of Ireland website.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7JJQOCRDWFDF5GD2UBZXLMUO7I","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Church of Ireland Representative Church Body had replaced the IEC and he was fortunate to be appointed its architect and continued to work for it for 40 years. Commissions for new churches followed as well as for important restoration work on cathedrals but he also received commissions for secular buildings such as Dalkey town hall, the maternity hospital at the Coombe and several schools in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OGYTUCBC5VECNLOXS2M6JYCOFI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Linde Lunney and Andrew O’Brien, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, described him as “the leading architect of country houses of his day” and list Kylemore Castle (Galway), Ashford Castle (Mayo) and Tinakilly House (Wicklow) as among his restorations, as well as Farmleigh House in the Phoenix Park. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LWECXGOZBNGD3B4SIFK2LYGIH4","additional_properties":{},"content":"For his published fiction, Fuller used the pseudonym “Ignotus” and, occasionally, “An Old Boy”. In his three-volume novel, Culmshire Folk (1873), the Scotsman newspaper detected similarities to George Eliot’s work, which was quite a tribute. Lunney and O’Brien believed that “the strongest part of his writing was dialogue and character observation”. Other stories published by him were John Orlebar, Billy, or The Young Idea, Chronicles of Westerly and Doctor Quodlibet. An article in this newspaper by Gemma Tipton (<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/the-forgotten-legacy-of-james-franklin-fuller-1.2400042\" target=\"_blank\">October 22nd, 2015</a>) described his fiction as “melodramatic”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBIRLPP6Y5FZRMWXWK3CWJSZGU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He also published extensively in local history, antiquarianism and genealogy, in such periodicals as the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, the Kerry Archaeological Magazine and the Genealogist, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and of the Society of Antiquaries of London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TI4PEHGSERELJGBUXNRFX3WQD4","additional_properties":{},"content":"His memoir, entitled Omniana: The Autobiography of an Irish Octogenarian, published in 1916, “is a rambling but engaging recollection of a varied life”, according to Lunney and O’Brien. In it “he gives some space to outlining his ancestry to prove his pretensions to the aristocracy, tracing his family back to Charlemagne – which turned out to be true”, The Irish Times article referred to above tells us.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TPWXWGLO3BEEBJKJ6EGTVVLLG4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Curiously, there is little reference in Omniana to his architectural achievements but The Irish Times article just cited may have the explanation: “The things that mattered most to Fuller – pedigree, social connections, a ‘gentlemanly’ disdain for the necessity of working for a living (which perhaps accounts for his attitude to filing and the relative lack of any architectural musings or descriptions in his autobiography) – are ironically perhaps the most potent reasons why he is relatively forgotten today.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IJVJAUC6RFYFOLQGFF4JRSKMA","additional_properties":{},"content":"He died at his residence on Eglinton Road, Donnybrook and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery. His wife, son and daughter survived him; three other children predeceased him. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UVRNMEBO7ZHFVFEARI5KF2DGWI","additional_properties":{},"content":"His wife died eight months after him and on their gravestone in Mount Jerome is carved: “Their spirits departed in peace with the viaticum of a conscience void of enmity of offence.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4DIDWPYPUFGK3MT5Y74TFULI5Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"The actress Peggy Cummins was his great-granddaughter.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"He oversaw the building and renovation of churches all over Ireland"},"display_date":"2024-12-02T18:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Form and function – Brian Maye on architect and novelist James Franklin Fuller ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"DYA4M5WBZFGPJLQZP4J3JNC62M","auth":{"1":"7ac96abfc0625b9b4696978f19055818da8db34c3e5756bd5f4730750bfd8abc"},"focal_point":{"x":383,"y":230},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DYA4M5WBZFGPJLQZP4J3JNC62M.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/02/form-and-function-brian-maye-on-architect-and-novelist-james-franklin-fuller/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"6FMJUJ3GNJDD3KQ6A2PA3HQBEY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":326,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/aa6bf830-44b4-4404-a134-681372052b77/versions/1733007201/media/6d80d774e478db0a080d4af25cba4b59_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/01/belleek-prospect-brian-maye-on-pottery-entrepreneur-robert-williams-armstrong/","content_elements":[{"_id":"QFSBYTH2MRBGZAOL73LOLZFD7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186016},"content":"Although he co-founded what turned out to be one of Ireland’s most successful pottery manufacturers, when his business partner died, the latter’s son refused to recognise his partnership, leading to litigation that probably brought on his premature death. It was a sad ending to such a thriving and admirable enterprise. The pottery in question is Belleek Pottery and the person in question is architect and engineer Robert Williams Armstrong, who was born 200 years ago on December 1st (this date is not certain as one source gives January 1st, 1824).","type":"text"},{"_id":"IW34WMOZBNFMFNMPTQ4U2ORVDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186017},"content":"He was born near Granard, Co Longford, the son of Francis Armstrong, an architect and builder.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QANJ6CX2S5FUNK4OWKCM3X57Q4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186018},"content":"Little is known of his education but he may be the Robert Armstrong who entered the Dublin Society’s School of Drawing in Architecture in 1837, according to the Dictionary of Irish Architects’ website. In any event, he trained as an architect and civil engineer and exhibited designs for a parish church and a collegiate school at the Royal Hibernian Academy (1848-49) and various designs at the Royal Academy, London (1848-57), and received several architectural commissions in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGS7U35RE5GTXK43ZZT33JEX3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186019},"content":"According to Helen Andrews, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, he displayed an early aptitude for pottery and he established a practice with Minton & Co pottery in Stoke-on-Trent and the Royal Porcelain Works, Worcester. At Worcester, he learned about ceramics and was employed by the works’ director, WH Kerr, who was from Dublin and became his friend, adviser and agent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K6KKIH2OSJDD3DFTVNVN3IPYQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186020},"content":"“Appreciating the economic potential of the rich natural resources, including deposits of kaolin and feldspar, on the estate of John Caldwell Bloomfield at Belleek, Co Fermanagh, Armstrong formed a partnership with Dublin businessman David McBirney, and they founded what was subsequently Ireland’s most successful pottery at Belleek, trading under the name of D McBirney and Co,” Helen Andrews tells us. (McBirney also established the famous department store that was such a well-known Dublin landmark on Aston Quay until it closed 40 years ago.)","type":"text"},{"_id":"BCE4NYNWMNEDHBMTJTHOJ43BCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186021},"content":"Armstrong designed the factory in the form of an imposing country house and also specified the machinery to be installed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IA7R4QJL6FAQFB2FGGTDEIDVJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186022},"content":"It was built between 1859 and 1862 and entered regular production in 1863, producing high-quality but utilitarian earthenware, including domestic and sanitary ware, the mechanical mass-production process being patented by Armstrong.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5RYHLNUNJJEBNHGPJN624BOQMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186023},"content":"However, the intention was to produce porcelain and he played the leading role in bringing this about in his capacity as manager and art director.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4DGGLTIESRARNNHIEQXGXS3KJM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186024},"content":"New ceramic wares, glazes and designs unique to Belleek were developed under his supervision and he wrote “Memorandums of Various Matters Connected with Pottery Bodies and Glazes Collected or Invented by Robert W. Armstrong Commenced at Belleek, Enniskillen 1860″, which amounted to eight volumes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SYJZAN3RJJHMRA22DVRPBHCRTE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186025},"content":"Skilled potters from England were brought in from about 1863 onwards and the fine Belleek Parian porcelain emerged as “busts, statuettes, tableware and ornaments of great skill, artistry and varied designs were produced, including such notable pieces as ‘The Prisoner of Love’, ‘Dickens’ and ‘Erin Awakening from Her Slumbers’,” (Helen Andrews). Armstrong won some notable and important patronage, including that of Queen Victoria, and plaudits from influential art publications. Orders came from all over the world and national and international awards followed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RDR67X6HPZG2HJCN2OUFPGVK5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186026},"content":"The enterprise was thriving, with some 170 employed by 1882, but McBirney unfortunately died that year and his son Robert decided to sell the business.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AVWWWHLVBVEKVECAOZNEZEHFXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186027},"content":"As no written contract existed to show Armstrong’s partnership, Robert McBirney refused to recognise any claims on his part; this meant he faced financial ruin as he had invested all his money in the business. Therefore, he opposed the sale and a protracted legal battle followed, during which he died suddenly on January 27th, 1884, at 59. Helen Andrews tells us that Belleek Pottery was closed and then sold to a consortium of local businessmen later that year, “who paid a paltry sum for patents to Armstrong’s widow”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VFUJXSWNFZEBDFXVOVFBK3EXEQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186028},"content":"It was a poor reward for so much hard work and imaginative input involving such a wide range of skills.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F45JKJBFKVDVDAYM3KEL5XRGKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186029},"content":"Armstrong had married in 1848 Anna Langley Nairn, who was an artist. Dublin-born, into an artistic family, she became a reputed landscape artist who exhibited at the RHA, and she designed some of the early Belleek ornamental porcelain especially employing marine and botanical images. She combined her talents with William Wood Gallimore, who came from Stoke-on-Trent to work for Belleek in 1863, and they produced more than 500 designs together.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J6U5QG6TPRBOBBNSZAGFYXNCGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186030},"content":"The Armstrongs had at least four children and many members of the family later emigrated to Australia.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NRJD2IIKRNFIHL6QOYQ72VC76I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733007186031},"content":"His eight-volume “Memorandums” are in the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney; the National Museum of Ireland has photocopies of seven of the volumes, the eighth being too fragile to copy.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"Armstrong’s drive, vision and hard work were poorly rewarded"},"display_date":"2024-12-01T18:53:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Belleek prospect – Brian Maye on pottery entrepreneur Robert Williams Armstrong ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"S7NY7CMMOJADLGUNFSNFKRFTX4","auth":{"1":"aeb55a101cb9de1ed24d23f3a3d44bae99829db94173821d8fa515d30ed4a1ab"},"focal_point":{"x":240,"y":210},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/S7NY7CMMOJADLGUNFSNFKRFTX4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/12/01/belleek-prospect-brian-maye-on-pottery-entrepreneur-robert-williams-armstrong/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"O2MBAJNN2ZERXHYEVU575U6HMU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":300,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/766c7d1d-8674-41fc-9bc0-0ebd5385a39a/versions/1732908699/media/d93844291fc3f48a0fc5cc9631653903_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/29/for-the-birds-frank-mcnally-on-folklorist-and-freedom-fighter-ernie-omalley/","content_elements":[{"_id":"TCKTTLD4KJFTJAMRHMTJS6F5LQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013629},"content":"Among the stories in The Enchanted Bay: Tales and Legends from Ernie O’Malley’s Irish Folklore Collection – just published by Merrion Press – is one called “A Girl is Taken from the Bird’s Nest”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H3UAPLPHEZEDRFALKPO56LIO7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013630},"content":"The title suggests a fairy tale, perhaps along the lines of the Children of Lir. But on closer inspection, this is more a piece of oral history.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EKZPDLH6QNGGHETB7XU7ZEZ6RA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013631},"content":"The Bird’s Nest in question was an evangelical “colony” in Achill during the Famine years, where children were fed and educated in return for becoming Protestant (“jumpers” was the term for them in local vernacular).","type":"text"},{"_id":"CG72HMHJ3BFHBEJ7COGR3V5RXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013632},"content":"In this case, the impoverished parents of a girl named Maggie arranged for her to go to the colony after their deaths.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K54ZVD65C5AXFBLGUEXWYUB24A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013633},"content":"Then other, devoutly Catholic members of the family hatched to a plot to rescue her and, despite a posse of “other jumpers” despatched from the colony to bring her back, they made good her escape.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HKZUHKV4ZJAARFOIOEEREVE2X4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013634},"content":"Maggie was first brought to a convent in Westport and later, like many in these stories – which are set mainly in western Mayo – she emigrated. Or “went over to America”, as the locals phrased it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4KIUBNZY7REURHDEUGAT2FMZNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013635},"content":"O’Malley’s chief contribution to Irish literature will remain the two best-written accounts of the revolutionary period: On Another Man’s Wound (about the War of Independence) and The Singing Flame (about the Civil War).","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7MZMAJKYZAXRAI2JGU6AZ2WDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013636},"content":"But he was also a part-time collector of folk stories, starting while he travelled the country as an IRA organiser during that period and culminating with a more deliberate survey or the lore of Clew Bay and its surrounds in 1939-42. Hence this belated anthology, partly edited by his son Cormac.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YY3VSHVZGFFT3ET72RHOSMVANI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013637},"content":"Stories of jumpers aside, the collection is full of such classic Irish folk themes as féar gortach (“hungry grass”), which confers insatiable hunger on anyone who treads on it; ceo draíochta (“fairy mist”), a sudden, bewildering fog; and fóidín mearbhaill (“disorienting sod”), also likely to lead you astray.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QTXPULND2BEHVMRLRJVFF6GJ7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013638},"content":"In an afterward to the anthology by Patrick J O’Mahony, we’re told that a young IRA officer once stood on a fóidín mearhbhaill in the Wicklow Mountains. As explained to him afterwards by his mother and other local elders, he had disturbed the “Good People” (ie fairies). Happily, he was able to break the spell by sitting down.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KYG2SERRQ5CS7HMYSUMZYOVW6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013639},"content":"O’Malley’s slim if charming collection was part of a concerted effort in the early years of independence to preserve a tradition then in steady decline.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2PEN7BSJNZEBZGGZODOVJ23UAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013640},"content":"Hence the folklorist Thomas Johnson Westropp, an occasional visitor to the west in the early 1920s, wishing that those permanently resident there would preserve their traditions themselves: “but few indeed show interest in such a pursuit, and the old Ireland is passing away forever, more or less speedily.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z4TMHGD3LJCOFHGJ5HZJVQHKCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013641},"content":"O’Malley did his part to preserve it, for which he deserves credit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q26KFNJB6VFWLPQ7KM7FGKMLR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013642},"content":"Unfortunately, mention of old Ireland passing away forever also reminds me of one of his less glorious contributions to archival history, when on June 30th, 1922, he presided over the destruction of the Irish Public Records Office in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UYHLLZJ7EJHALFVITGJUIH6QIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013643},"content":"As Ireland descended into Civil War. Anti-Treaty forces in the Four Courts had stored their munitions in the Records Office, defying repeated Free State warnings – oral and written – that they were endangering a priceless archive.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5YDTM7V4BVFEVCVYVFYXQIQZZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013644},"content":"In effect, history was held hostage in the stand-off. And when the shells fell and mines detonated, the hostage paid the price. As Tom Garvin wrote elsewhere in these pages a while back:","type":"text"},{"_id":"WROFAYP5Z5CCDCRKYJJVEFJUF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013645},"content":"“At least 13 wired and booby-trapped mines were disarmed by Irish Army soldiers after the surrender, but one cleverly concealed ‘connected mine’ was accidentally triggered. The mine dutifully went off, maiming 20 soldiers and blowing the Strong Room of the Public Records Office and its precious national records to molecules.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"M7ZUFHW3FNEMTDMX7CHPZXF3F4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013646},"content":"O’Malley, by then in command of the Republicans within, would later express regret that they hadn’t taken out more of the “Staters”. He was less effusive about the destruction of the records.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PDY5KO5ECRHHHLHK5GU6QBPRBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013647},"content":"But the accompanying fires inspired the title of his Civil War memoir, The Singing Flame.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CZREC2PUEBCTDJCHLT5VZE6DVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013648},"content":"And speaking of birds’ nests, he resorted to avian imagery to better describe how the archive went up in smoke.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QGR2Q22ODNE6VP5XVU2ZKBPARY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013649},"content":"Against the dark backdrop, leaves of paper from the flames looked like “hovering white birds”, he wrote. Elsewhere, he describes them “gyrating in the upper air like seagulls”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UQ6SSMJGWNEW5DPLB2LTPFJ36I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013650},"content":"That was the sort of detail that made O’Malley such an evocative writer, setting him apart from other soldiers of the period who published more martial memoirs, including Tom Barry and Dan Breen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3AAL7UUM4ZD5ZGAHKK2B56U4IY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013651},"content":"Among his imagined seagulls, alas, were the census records from 1821 to 1851; church records dating from the 12th century; court records from the 13th century.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QND6JLG2MNGQXHNXRKG3FHM7B4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732903013652},"content":"There were also ancient wills, financial documents, military records, details of imprisonment and transportation, including hand-written appeals for clemency. All irreplaceable and all reduced to ashes by the bitterness into which the pro-and-anti-Treaty forces had fallen.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"An evocative writer"},"display_date":"2024-11-29T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"For the birds — Frank McNally on folklorist and freedom fighter Ernie O’Malley","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"AFXRRFUYL5EXHJQKS24QXZ6KXI","auth":{"1":"3f306b7f8a94de581d112481deb42bb40fe5210537cd1dc6d5a9e205ba143a6b"},"focal_point":{"x":182,"y":114},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/AFXRRFUYL5EXHJQKS24QXZ6KXI.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/29/for-the-birds-frank-mcnally-on-folklorist-and-freedom-fighter-ernie-omalley/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"T5EJZS3IKNAADCJVRFSF5RO6QE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":324,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/c38d83d1-1f8d-4293-9db1-f152a9b544ea/versions/1732818465/media/dbc2a5c00e48807ae0f6e4310b01165d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/28/swift-justice-frank-mcnally-on-the-height-of-the-drapiers-letters-controversy/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NZHENXXDLZBZVKQST6THMYASIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917438},"content":"Three hundred years ago this autumn, Ireland was convulsed by the controversy of Wood’s Halfpence and the campaign against it by one “M.B., Drapier”, a thinly disguised Jonathan Swift.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2ETRJEVFFZA6FD2MLTBPQNIL64","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917439},"content":"English Ironmonger William Wood had secured his lucrative contract for an Irish coinage in 1722, partly by bribing the King’s mistress.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5SEI2UDTWRAUVHMERCHVZ3BH5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917440},"content":"Rumours of the coins’ poor quality were not allayed by assurances of their purity from the Master of the Mint, Isaac Newton, since Wood had supplied the samples for testing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDBDCLDKFBFOFFTK5WSMMQTL3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917441},"content":"In March 1724, the first of a series of protest pamphlets appeared, headed “A Letter to the Shopkeepers, Tradesmen, Farmers, and Common People of Ireland”, ostensibly written by an obscure “Drapier” (ie draper).","type":"text"},{"_id":"NK6AEGPS5BEGVH64XZ6MMHZSHI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917442},"content":"Two other letters followed in August: “To Mr Harding the Printer” and “To the Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdom of Ireland”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5EO55PPOIRBX7FZSMMCUZI6LPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917443},"content":"By autumn, the country was “in a very fever of excitement”, as one historian put it: “Everywhere meetings were held for the purpose of expressing indignation against the imposition, and addresses from brewers, butchers, flying stationers, and townspeople generally, were sent in ...”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7EZS66W4YZGNRDUBEGBL32HPMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917444},"content":"Swift’s campaign was not confined to letters. He also fanned the flames with songs and poems, written for a popular audience. Typical of these was a drinking ballad that exploited the coin-maker’s surname for crude word plays, as attributed here to the stereotypical Irishman “Teague” (ie Tadhg or “Taig”):","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGOVKWE3TVE5ZFSSTF76P545AU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917445},"content":"“I hear among scholars there is a great Doubt/From what kind of tree this Wood is hewn out./Teague made a good pun by a Brogue in his Speech,/And said: By my Shoul he’s the Son of a Beech.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YBWLFGKG2NBRDHSEKNWBJHB4OA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917446},"content":"In October, the Drapier turned up the heat with his boldest pamphlet yet: “A Letter to the Whole People of Ireland.” This made clear it was not just the coinage that was at stake but national freedom: “[B]y the laws of GOD, of NATURE, of NATIONS, and of your own COUNTRY, you ARE and OUGHT to be as FREE a people as your brethren in England.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7HIVE7NW7FHG7HHS2L245X2QIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917447},"content":"That same month, Englishman John Carteret – who knew Swift from London – was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and approved a £300 reward for the discovery of the author of this “wicked and malicious pamphlet”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OCQY6QG2ARFVHE6BTNRBNLFAVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917448},"content":"According to a much-repeated story, told by Thomas Sheridan (grandfather of the playwright Richard Brinsley) and others, Swift’s butler was suspiciously late coming home the night the reward was posted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FHRJPCXJ2ZGJNPYNTDADTF6DUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917449},"content":"This caused the outraged Dean to lock the doors and sack him next morning until Sheridan successfully appealed for mercy. Although perpetuated by Swift himself, the story has been dismissed as “18th-century sensationalism”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BJKL6UXKYZGCPMS7ZJXQT7ZBMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917450},"content":"The truth, it seems, is that Swift had little fear of being identified. When the Drapier’s printer John Harding was arrested on November 7th, the Dean wrote in his own name to the Grand Jury that would try Harding, all but outing himself as the true author, and urging them to drop the charges. To the outrage of the Lord Chief Justice, William Whitshed, the jury did just that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MT3MKLU6XVBA3EXT5XWAJ2PUVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917451},"content":"Whitshed had already earned Swift’s enmity with the 1720 prosecution of another printer, Edward Waters, for the pamphlet “On the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WOXHK2474VEAXBBBD3SZDFVTJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917452},"content":"There, the anonymous Swift advised “utterly rejecting and renouncing everything wearable that comes from England” and – in a phrase that would be revived two centuries later, urged readers to “burn every Thing [English], except their People and their Coals.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CZ5FD6KJYFEQ5GTG5A7F7LDO6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917453},"content":"Whitshed secured a guilty verdict for Waters only after a jury had nine times tried to acquit. In the case of Harding, on November 21st, 1724, he sent the jury back a mere three times – unsuccessfully – but it was enough to attract the renewed focus of Swift’s satirical pen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3SUGNWBZHJFTPPZJOYTQZMWW5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917454},"content":"For that, no subject was considered too sensitive. Not even the fact that, 50 years earlier, Whitshed’s maternal grandfather had taken his own life, apparently in Christchurch Cathedral. Or that the grandfather’s son had married a woman presumed to be a widow whose husband had later reappeared alive, rendering children of the second marriage illegitimate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3RJQI2GU6ZBRLPHNDWWP7WWIQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917455},"content":"Both these details featured in “Verses Occasioned by Whitshed’s Motto on his Coach”. The motto was “Libertas et Natale Solum” (“Liberty and my Native Land”). In which vein, the poem begins: “Liberty & natale Solum: Fine words! I wonder where you stole ‘em.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OQCK5RQ3FZCZ3KXOMAOXVVZWPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917456},"content":"Later comes this: “In Church your Grandsire cut his Throat;/To do the job too long he tarry’d,/He should have had my hearty Vote,/To cut his throat before he marry’d.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VCSP73MAWFHDVFVAOQM6BLSV5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917457},"content":"Whitshed’s ambitions to be Lord Chancellor did not survive the notoriety. Nor did he himself, for long. He died in 1727, aged only 48, his end seemingly hastened by the stress.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FUGFCHQR3BCXRBOMOCQNS7CPIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917458},"content":"Drapier had meantime published another letter, to Lord Viscount Molesworth, in December 1724. This was the knock-out blow to an already to an already punch-drunk opponent. There would be one more in the series – although it had probably been written earlier, at the height of the campaign, to be published only when the row had subsided.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UVWTJ2ZI6BFQVOYVRP4Q4QDAVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732824917459},"content":"The last was headed: “An humble address to both Houses of Parliament”. But there was nothing humble about it. By Christmas 1724, the Drapier had effectively won. His triumph was complete the following September, when Wood’s patent was withdrawn.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Jonathan Swift also fanned the flames with songs and poems written for a popular audience"},"display_date":"2024-11-28T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Swift justice – Frank McNally on the height of the Drapier’s Letters controversy ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"HAPAJGY6GZF2VFGZMLHINWHZY4","auth":{"1":"8c0eb76628d1c9c9c8da31454bc7715d651bbe2b7cfd16c7188aba60a89f9d07"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/HAPAJGY6GZF2VFGZMLHINWHZY4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/28/swift-justice-frank-mcnally-on-the-height-of-the-drapiers-letters-controversy/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"6NG5FZYMVJEFZMIJXM463BXLBI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":327,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/9438e207-555b-45e9-b43f-143982f3e555/versions/1732735815/media/b1374465c04c847907d796fb2ed3d507_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/27/parallel-projection-frank-mcnally-on-watching-gladiator-ii-and-soundtrack-to-a-coup-detat-back-to-back/","content_elements":[{"_id":"RCNPJAXYDNGQ7K3RA422SA5KG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983106},"content":"On successive visits to the cinema recently, by weird coincidence, I saw two films on the theme of extreme violence, European imperialism, and the exploitation of Africa, in both of which young Irishmen played unlikely heroic roles.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y2SEZCBVQVDK3K5Y4X5CT5PXYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983107},"content":"The similarities between Gladiator II and Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat are otherwise slight, it must be said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4DS6HTKNMZCFHPZ6HOB5NPQZI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983108},"content":"I quite enjoyed the former, but only after switching my phone and critical faculties to silent for the duration. This stopped me Googling, mid-movie, whether the ancient Romans really had sharks swimming in the Colosseum (no), or whether gladiators could have ridden on the backs of charging rhinoceroses (maybe).","type":"text"},{"_id":"3P3XJXRO3RC75LWZE6XR2ZIZJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983109},"content":"Annoyingly, I somehow missed the scene where a Roman nobleman reads a newspaper in a café. Was he poring over the sports pages? Or the review section? (“The newspapers were right. Blood was general, all over the arena”)?","type":"text"},{"_id":"MOKL2D6BHRGZ3FC3BT7PNPOX2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983110},"content":"Either way, I can’t help approving of that anachronism. Any evidence of the continued relevance of print media is welcome, as far as I’m concerned, even when backdated to 1,400 years before newspapers were invented.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q73I47PN3NEUVJK7GUYR7G7NVA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983111},"content":"In other news, it was reassuring to see Paul Mescal fill the space vacated by Russell Crowe while still looking like a more-or-less average Irishman. All we need is sympathetic lighting, really.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BKQQ3UBEQJDYDLUUTO2UP4KOWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983112},"content":"As for Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, calling Conor Cruise O’Brien “young” in the context of the events portrayed might, I suppose, be an overstatement: he was 43 at the time. “Heroic” may be controversial too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6YJXVYGANVDG5FZBT5SEURKA3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983113},"content":"In a previous film about Irish involvement in the Congo crisis of 1960, The Siege of Jadotville (2016), O’Brien was portrayed as a self-preserving pantomime villain. But in this new Belgian documentary, the then UN head of mission in the Congo also gets sympathetic lighting, at least in comparison with those around him, and benefits accordingly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JMQQRNGELZHJLG7YOTKYAIV2XI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983114},"content":"The film foregrounds jazz music as both accompaniment and accomplice (touring musicians were used as propaganda, even sometimes decoys, by the US) in the dark deeds of the period. This makes for a lot of irony, in which the awfulness of what’s happening hides under saxophone riffs and drum solos.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5K3BBQQABFH25AQKDTDCQJ52UQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983115},"content":"It falls to O’Brien, recorded in subsequent interviews but also channelled by his son Patrick in readings from the memoir To Katanga and Back, to provide a moral narrative: filling in the details – ranging from incompetence to evil – about how western powers conspired to thwart Congolese independence and condemn the country’s first legitimate prime minister to death.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NFZK4TCLH5A5ZEDYRCPMXEGPLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983116},"content":"O’Brien’s is not the only Irish voice in the documentary, although the other one goes unbilled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VNW3LJWOJJAYREM5VOCC4TE6HY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983117},"content":"Beside the hapless Dag Hammarskjold at the stormy UN general assemblies, struggling to keep order amid the objections of a shoe-wielding Nikita Khrushchev and others, is a chairman with unmistakably Patrician-Irish tones. I had to look him up to be reminded this was Frederick Boland, our ambassador to the UN then, now perhaps best known as father of the poet Eavan.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6LBUSEVIHBCXVKGCMB4WYK3ZNM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983118},"content":"One other minor revelation of the film was how much the young Fidel Castro – in his broth-of-a-revolutionary-boy phase – reminded me of someone I knew. Then it hit me. He and Liam Neeson at a similar vintage could have been twins.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HPECRJKEEFH7BAEUB725EDNID4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983119},"content":"The violence of Gladiator, despite Hollywood’s best attempts at realism, is the kind designed for eating popcorn to. The violence in Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, despite being heavily edited or detailed only in narration, retains the capacity to shock.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TD74R3TP6BH63AWEG7NDBXXD6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983120},"content":"It is claimed at one point, for example, that photojournalists covering the Belgian war against pro-independence forces could “buy” a live execution for €500. This is accompanied by footage before and after the shooting of a Congolese rebel, which was used by the Italian director Gualtiero Jacopetti.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TLQH6DZQJRA3ZHA5K7O6YPQGLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983121},"content":"A pioneer of “shockumentary” film making, Jacopetti was later charged with murder back in Italy for allegedly staging such scenes but acquitted. Even so, the critic Roger Ebert, called his Africa Addio (“Goodbye Africa”) “brutal, dishonest, and racist”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MIX3ANNEB5A7RBIK2K3OI2VNXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983122},"content":"Then there is a voice-over in which a man described as a South African mercenary – although speaking with a strong Scottish accent – cheerfully defends his job of killing men, women, and children for money.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OWUL4WMK7JALLMU27SNSJ6LBYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983123},"content":"It was “the Belgians’ idea,” he says, but he doesn’t mind because his victims are “cannibals”, not “normal people”. There was no comparison, he implied, with “shooting Irishmen or Germans”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7HA6HNR7LFDQ3D2J272E4RNW5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983124},"content":"However “well done” it might be, the violence of Gladiator is anaesthetised by the passage of two millennia since the events depicted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2YORRN36JBD5TFPKFAVVHQDEOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983125},"content":"With the Congo, by contrast, we can’t even console ourselves that 60 years have elapsed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H4NRDN7OOJGBRFC75JJAQDCCWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983126},"content":"Back then, it was the country’s rich uranium deposits that made it a pawn in the Cold War.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YXF5GQR6FBHW5DGKVHCB7GOFJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983127},"content":"But wealth in other minerals, notably cobalt – as used in batteries – has made war, corruption, and “modern-day slavery” a near constant in the decades since.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZ42TXEKMZDHRH3QWRPIQ2YKQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732733983128},"content":"Towards the end of the two-and-a-half-hour documentary comes a disconcerting moment where the action seems to have cut to a commercial break, advertising iPhones. Then you realise that no, this is still part of the story. Cue a guilty moment when, soon afterwards, you turn your own phone back on.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Extreme violence and European imperialism"},"display_date":"2024-11-27T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Parallel projection – Frank McNally on watching Gladiator II and Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat back-to-back","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3OHHVMUHCFC6FNONBVPEI2J6MI","auth":{"1":"0c2689aa2deb5eb04d8f06378e59e7b8e3fa21a69b0876d664591e725594fca0"},"focal_point":{"x":129,"y":64},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3OHHVMUHCFC6FNONBVPEI2J6MI.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/27/parallel-projection-frank-mcnally-on-watching-gladiator-ii-and-soundtrack-to-a-coup-detat-back-to-back/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"TJY5TU4F5RGSHPXLOCCTR777ZY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":318,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/3eac0ca3-3006-45a2-9a48-20b8118aee0e/versions/1732646397/media/5b0e8f37ffd98c7cc7530ae5bc0cc686_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/26/when-hospitality-begins-at-home-frank-mcnally-on-having-a-great-welcome-for-yourself/","content_elements":[{"_id":"M5KFIAQZOFB6JMNMIIXMFWE2BM","additional_properties":{},"content":"In conversation with a friend the other day, mildly disparaging a mutual acquaintance, I reached for what I used to think was a very common Irish expression: “He has a great welcome for himself.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"T3QVBJEKEJG7LKKJALIKQVJQ6E","additional_properties":{},"content":"But not for the first time in my recent experience, this drew a puzzled response. My friend somehow hadn’t heard it before. So once more I had to explain that it referred to a person who was suffering from a superfluity of self-esteem, not all earned.","type":"text"},{"_id":"47KXBKUQR5AQ7C3KLB6HR5UMIM","additional_properties":{},"content":"I wondered again if the phrase – clearly descended from an older Irish one, or so I assumed – was on the way out. Then I looked it up. Now I’m not sure if it’s old at all and am wondering where and how it ever came in.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P2XN2RBCAVCFVD46MBNV4AEEBU","additional_properties":{},"content":"My first point of inquiry, as usual, was Terry Dolan’s Dictionary of Hiberno-English, which has no mention of it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PGDKFXPFENEDFGCVRT42OOZJYY","additional_properties":{},"content":"From there I consulted Patrick Dinneen’s famously inclusive Irish-English lexicon, much lampooned by Myles na gCopaleen for finding layers of meaning that had previously eluded even the greatest of gaeilgeoirí (eg Myles).","type":"text"},{"_id":"CEALQBJ4ANF7PMCVREI3AZ5EVY","additional_properties":{},"content":"And true to form, under the heading fáilte, Dinneen includes such exotica as fáilte gealgáire, “the winning pleasantness of a light-hearted laugh”. But as for somebody having a great welcome for him/herself, that dictionary has nothing to say either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKPSD32BHNB7PBVYX24HO3XTJU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Had Myles ever used the phrase, I now wondered? Apparently not. A search of the Irish Times archive suggests “a great welcome for himself” postdates Cruiskeen Lawn by decades, being first used by Deaglán de Bréadún in 1995.","type":"text"},{"_id":"67G37IENSVH7HFUFAYZ5SZAV6I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Subsequent appearances include my own A History of Ireland in 100 insults (2012), where it featured at no. 57 (just ahead of a phrase of broadly similar import, “he’s running around like a dog with two mickeys”, at 58).","type":"text"},{"_id":"XFMTC7DF6VETRGHA3QUDI4SW34","additional_properties":{},"content":"But even in a database of Ireland’s provincial newspapers, the great self-extended welcome seems relatively modern.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BSWCQVFWAJH57LCU2YCVE66WKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"The oldest example I can find is from the Donegal Democrat in November 1943, where the local news for Kinlough included the visit of a mysterious gypsy woman, returning to the area after what she claimed was many years of absence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MCFZ7NRZKNHCLG5FWMZR45ZJYM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Affecting surprise that nobody knew her, she “remembered the locality distinctly and had, apparently, a great welcome for herself back to it”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GWUWY6WC4RBRDDSQWUXGRDB2SM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Only after extensive researches about who was now who, however, did she get around to telling the locals’ fortunes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R6RCARONYFGQRKJBGNPTG5HDJQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"After that, there are sporadic occurrences of the phrase in the 1970s and 1980s, as for example when the Western Journal quotes somebody on a newly elected TD for Mayo, Pádraig Flynn: “‘I’ll give him this,’ chuckled John Callanan ‘he certainly has great welcome for himself.’”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q3KTANYKKZBODDSOP4HECSRSKM","additional_properties":{},"content":"The lack of an indefinite article there may be interesting. When I mentioned my quest to David Stifter, Professor of Old Irish at Maynooth, he wasn’t familiar with the expression either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RU3WQZZZPRFTPMRYUVBUCP2BHE","additional_properties":{},"content":"But he guessed its origins might be in the “ambiguity of Irish fáilte”, which originally meant “joy, happiness” before it came to mean “welcome”, now its main job.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MPOXQ267FVANPOKJO4SDI53TZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"“I suspect that this lies behind that Hiberno-English phrase, ie someone extrapolating from the Irish practice that a word seemingly meaning ‘welcome’ can occasionally be used for joy,” says David, who agrees that the lack of earlier examples in English seems odd.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ES7LEGO3HJC3LLMNFKRMXIKNKY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Getting back to Dinneen, he also includes all the usual denominations of the Irish fáilte: céad (a hundred), míle (a thousand), and of course céad míle (a hundred thousand), which remains the hospitality industry standard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I377KH4IQFFMREEBXLJILDBDKY","additional_properties":{},"content":"More interestingly, he claims that “fáilte is daichead”, which he translates/paraphrases as “forty-one welcomes”, is common too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZEX55RGDWBEFLINAHCKRX3T66I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Why 41? It seems a rather obscure number, devoid of any great mathematic or mystical qualities (unlike, say, 42, which according to Douglas Adams is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything).","type":"text"},{"_id":"UFPHUSZVSRCKJCJHA6V66XW6JI","additional_properties":{},"content":"But I suppose it’s one more than another industry standard: the number of shades of green, as recorded by Johnny Cash. Maybe we should bring the “Forty-one Welcomes” back, in place of a hundred thousand, as the slogan for a more sustainable tourism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFJMFTEARNATBDTTLVSNEV3GDU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another curiosity in Dinneen is “O’Kelly’s welcome”, which I had to look up. The man in question was William Buí Ó Ceallaigh, a 14th-century chieftain in Connacht, who had a great welcome for others if not himself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G4LKOQBJW5BA3OFRVONDMLFNHM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Specifically, on Christmas Day 1351, he invited poets, writers, and artists from all over Ireland to his home. Such was the generosity of his hospitality (and/or the influence of his guest list) it remained proverbial six centuries later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K4JDN24RQJFW7BJIL5HLP4JLO4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Mind you, that one doesn’t make it into Patrick Weston Joyce’s classic English as We Speak it in Ireland (1910). Nor does the self-extended welcome of our enquiries.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ISFWDGZL2JFYFOCWNN622BPB6U","additional_properties":{},"content":"And speaking of Joyces, neither Ulysses nor Finnegans Wake appears to include the latter phrase either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6XY66HLKYVHRTEUGPKJ4HXG7II","additional_properties":{},"content":"But I’m reminded in passing of the celebrated closing passage from Portrait of the Artist, where the author says this: “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"RZLE22O26NATVEZDRZXRNRUKNI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Now there was a man with a great welcome for himself.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"The great self-extended welcome seems relatively modern"},"display_date":"2024-11-26T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"When hospitality begins at home – Frank McNally on having a great welcome for yourself","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"EYQLUCOXX5A4JOETRPDDNJKLWM","auth":{"1":"d023d09ef286fd1fca4f5ef7289c7d4e9362442a8a7c00c160bc7450e3106c50"},"focal_point":{"x":526,"y":288},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/EYQLUCOXX5A4JOETRPDDNJKLWM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/26/when-hospitality-begins-at-home-frank-mcnally-on-having-a-great-welcome-for-yourself/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"MCURLB3OVZAEBOFB4N3OTBWDOA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":287,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/b7dd0599-c842-499f-af6f-6855c7f8e17c/versions/1732561788/media/41fdf10ff6d14624db6e068a4db20470_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/25/revving-up-the-shamrock-alison-healy-on-the-car-that-never-quite-got-motoring/","content_elements":[{"_id":"CGJ576AJZFHE5O7LPJ6PKPPMJM","additional_properties":{},"content":"It was Wilbur Curtis’s dream to see convoys of Shamrock cars cruising around the streets and highways of America. Instead, the Irish-made car is a collector’s item, and a cautionary tale if you are thinking of investing in something you have no knowledge of. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4AF5IGMAA5A73H73S7JPOIYCPU","additional_properties":{},"content":"It all started when the wealthy American businessman visited his wife’s family in Ireland around 1957. He was the inventor of the glass coffee pot and had made his fortune manufacturing coffee-making equipment. Shocked at the poverty in 1950s Ireland, he decided to do something about it. The plan involved inventing a new luxury convertible that would be manufactured in Ireland and exported to the US. It would be an Irish version of the Thunderbird but cost half the price. He envisaged exporting 10,000 cars a year, at $2,495 a pop.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SQ7ND5VYGNGHVB4UIBGPZPRZLU","additional_properties":{},"content":"The first Shamrock prototype was built 65 years ago in Guildford and shipped off to the US to generate interest, while he worked on opening his Irish production plant. The Irish connection was hyped up in an article in Mechanix Illustrated magazine, which has been reproduced by the Vintage News Daily website. Faith and begorrah, every Irish cliché you can think of was shoe-horned into the article. “It doesn’t run on poteen and there’s divil a leprechaun under the hood but the Shamrock is as Irish as Paddy’s pig – and a good deal faster,” the writer enthused.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OCRZOQJAKBD7XKZH2ARYYT7UKQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"The promotional images released by the company in April 1959 will also raise eyebrows, but for a different reason. They include several photographs of a woman sitting in the boot of the car, because of course the first question any car buyer asks is: does the boot comfortably fit a grown woman? This model looked very comfortable anyway as she prepared to close the boot lid on herself and her floral dress.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UXFO4Q6CCBBXNEDSZ44PUBPA3E","additional_properties":{},"content":"But the car had bigger problems than its questionable promotional photographs. It was designed by a Midget car racer, Alvin “Spike” Rhiando who appeared to have made some basic design errors. The body was fibreglass, which made it lighter, but the 1.5 litre engine was still too small for the 17-foot-long car, so it was not powerful enough for the Americans.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MJ36WV24ANDVNDQUAMTYVDNTMA","additional_properties":{},"content":"When it featured in a 2001 Top Gear programme, the presenter Andy Wilman said the tiny chassis meant it handled like “a mouse with an ironing board on its back”. And the shrouded rear wheels meant you couldn’t change the rear tyres without dropping the entire rear axle unit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WPW3XKE62BEYNKI3P7BKCUNCZE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Although he was said to have Irish heritage, poor Wilbur did not have the luck of the Irish as he tried to get his project up and running. He wanted to open the factory in Tralee but his vision was not enthusiastically embraced by the powers-that-be in Kerry so he shifted his attention further north and opened his factory in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, in 1960. But he couldn’t get any American distributors and he pulled the handbrake on the enterprise less than a year after the factory opened. Reports vary on how many cars were produced but vintage car enthusiast Paddy Byrne from Drogheda believes it was only nine.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WYOQDS3ZMVAKFGWKYVUFROTJRQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It was his Shamrock car that featured in that Top Gear programme. It now has 3,500 miles on the clock and is still tootling along. He has also started refurbishing another Shamrock. Even though the cars are as rare as hen’s teeth, he is adamant that neither one is for sale.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M37MHXQ2CBHGRODCBICURQKSVY","additional_properties":{},"content":"And while motoring enthusiasts might have disparaged the car design, he ignores the doomsayers. “You will get the critics but I don’t mind them because I have something that they haven’t got,” he says.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FK6A3S4DWFEK3PBEQQ5SSW6YHI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Wilbur Curtis may have discovered there was no pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow, but when he died in 1987, the obituaries put his invention of the fibre-glass car only second to his invention of the glass coffee pot when listing his achievements.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4A6JV4X7ORAKXH5ZWTZY4QQC3A","additional_properties":{},"content":"A few of his Shamrocks did make their way to the US. In 2002, the LA Times hitched a ride with one proud owner, Dick Midkiff, who had painted his car a dashing shade of green, in homage to his Cork relatives. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"AHEVBG5OPZHVROKP2GIR62HLEU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He told how his unusual car had caused more than one accident, with people driving over curbs when they saw it. “One woman ran into the back of the car in front of her and totalled her car while watching us,” he said with some satisfaction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZVWZG3GJTNAVFGHHGQG7TRR27M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Paddy Byrne estimates that it will take a few months to get his second Shamrock roadworthy. So if there is an increase in cars being rear-ended in Drogheda next year, we will know why. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Wilbur Curtis did not have the luck of the Irish as he tried to get his project up and running"},"display_date":"2024-11-25T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Revving up the Shamrock – Alison Healy on the car that never quite got motoring ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SO73XIBWVRCD3JERJZB7U4G2HQ","auth":{"1":"900b895cd18bbf2e429697d2423f2cbfd459eadac300f2a4d529140eb14caa5b"},"focal_point":{"x":719,"y":271},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SO73XIBWVRCD3JERJZB7U4G2HQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/25/revving-up-the-shamrock-alison-healy-on-the-car-that-never-quite-got-motoring/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"XXMPIX6YG5CWTHD4NZLLCU67EE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":321,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9d2348ce-01c1-4473-83eb-98b08db979fa/versions/1732398366/media/c11a89c00f193eb2fa24b9b6f81a9fc0_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/24/innocence-and-mischief-desmond-oneill-on-the-humorist-and-social-commentator-erich-kastner/","content_elements":[{"_id":"M5UMI5F7QVGC3LTOVRE4UVDDQM","additional_properties":{},"content":"A literary anniversary almost entirely unnoticed in the English-speaking world this year was that of Erich Kästner (1899-1974), one of the most delightful and incisive of German humorists and social commentators. Best known outside Germany for Emil and the Detectives, first in a series of ground-breaking books for children, as well as Das Doppelte Lottchen, origin of serial movie versions of The Parent Trap, his wider output deserves to be more widely appreciated. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"L2SOFOXE55EW3MQMJ7VWMPZ6HI","additional_properties":{},"content":"His absurdist and irreverent sense of humour is an uneasy fit with the canon of his native literature. As he noted, humour was “rare in literature, and rarest of all in German literature. And in the histories of German literature, pride is taken in that very fact”. His comic sense would have fitted comfortably into a Flann O’Brien column. Writing at the time of the 200th anniversary of Goethe’s birth in 1949, he postulated that there would be a Goethe-Derby among German universities producing articles including “Goethe and the Control of Clothes Moths”; “Goethe’s Disapproval of Dogs on the Stage”; and “Goethe and the Fire Brigade”!","type":"text"},{"_id":"EUFHJZQGDRBI3LO6E3EIUH55V4","additional_properties":{},"content":"His delightful autobiography, When I Was a Little Boy, mentions that he had visited Dublin although there is little evidence of when this occurred. He played tennis in London in 1938 with that most English of Irishmen, Bernard Bracken, and he may have extended his visit to Dublin. Another possibility would be a visit in the postwar years in his role as president of PEN, the writers’ organisation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PES6WM5S6NATJAVDS3JW3DEVDU","additional_properties":{},"content":"The autobiography catches neatly his trademark apposition of wide-eyed innocence and mischievous spirit. In the foreword, he posits that all proper books should have a foreword. A book with a foreword he likened to house with a garden: a book without a foreword to the Dresden tenement where he was born. Prolific in output in many literary formats, including journalism, reviews, novels and poems, his finest work reflected the energy of the Weimar republic and the artistic movement Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFBSOOZOHJFX5F3GACGR3VYZJY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Realism is a notable and ground-breaking feature of the Emil books, embedded in the gritty milieu of Berlin. It notably portrays the struggle of working-class family life with Emil’s single working mother a reflection of Kästner’s own mother supporting her family as a hairdresser.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PEZ5SSOROFFYJKPKRG5C4GKCPY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The runaway success of the Emil books has somewhat drawn attention away from his other outputs. His novel Fabian (1931), much admired by Graham Greene, was daringly modern and explicit in terms of the free-living aspects of the Weimar period: unsurprisingly his books were burned by the National Socialist regime in 1933, and all banned except Emil and the Detectives. Kästner chose to stay in Germany rather than exile, a form of internal exile. He managed to write the script for a film version of the Adventures of Baron von Munchausen in 1943 under the pseudonym of Bert Citizen, arousing the ire of Goebbels when this was discovered and narrowly escaping execution by the SS at war’s end.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WI7V4NQQKJCE7AIZSH6KSQOGRU","additional_properties":{},"content":"His insights into the human condition are their most appealing and accessible in his collections of poetry. Paralleling the wit, satire, lyricism and common touch of earlier poets such as Heinrich Heine and Wilhelm Busch, he promoted the opportunity of poetry to act as sounding boards and instrumental supports in the challenges of everyday life. This comes to fruition in his Dr Erich Kästner’s Poetical Medicine Cabinet (1936), the title itself an echo of Heine’s description of the human insights of the Bible as the “Medicine Cabinet of Humanity”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DIVZ6QJAN5FCBPEACFNEOLNI6U","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the droll foreword Kästner describes the collection as a reference work devoted to the care of the average inner life. He lists the contents of the typical home medicine cabinet but questions their utility in the face of the desolate loneliness of furnished room or the cold, wet, foggy autumn evenings. What remedies should someone resort to when seized by angel of jealousy? What should someone gargle who is fed up with life? What use are lukewarm compresses to someone whose marriage is falling apart?","type":"text"},{"_id":"4JHEHNXCLZHPRP3D7UNRBKAL6Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Kästner proposes that other remedies are needed to alleviate loneliness, disappointment and other heartache, chief among which are humour, anger, indifference, irony, contemplation and exaggeration. The analogy of therapeutic efficacy is carried through in a framework for prescription of the poems to 36 human conditions and states, listed in alphabetical order from when ageing makes you sad (wenn das Alter traurig stimmt) to irritation with one’s contemporaries (Zeitgenossen).","type":"text"},{"_id":"OKAPILVSLNCJNCSYISU237QG6A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The poems are short, notable for brief sentences whose economy of measure contains surprises of consolation and calm embedded in the language of everyday life, reminiscent of the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer or Seamus Heaney. Sadly, few of his poems are translated into English and currently in print – fresh translations would be a fitting anniversary tribute for this versatile and gifted artist.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Desmond O'Neill"}]},"description":{"basic":"A gift for the absurd"},"display_date":"2024-11-24T18:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Innocence and mischief – Desmond O’Neill on the humorist and social commentator Erich Kästner","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"VINVI6J6K5DTBDENAIG6PNDIYU","auth":{"1":"a32575f05ef1b97b827ca47a55f9dc29bce2c3f05a79e3e50c1a9073a3304266"},"focal_point":{"x":264,"y":199},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VINVI6J6K5DTBDENAIG6PNDIYU.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/24/innocence-and-mischief-desmond-oneill-on-the-humorist-and-social-commentator-erich-kastner/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"IWEWVPP7RNFPZOGYSBJQU5HESA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":281,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/2830c62f-886a-4ed1-a9e1-5f91da74bf08/versions/1732296512/media/a5e2a69ddd32ab9558bc856adfa218b3_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/22/rhyme-and-reason-alison-healy-on-longfellows-wreck-of-the-hesperus/","content_elements":[{"_id":"E4SUMEHAINDTNHGV2WDMTLUDOM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Who among us has not felt like the wreck of the Hesperus at some point in our lives? As expressions go, it’s hard to beat. Looking like the wreck of the Hesperus is more than looking a bit shook, or bedraggled. It’s akin to looking like you have just been dragged through a bush backwards – except it’s marginally worse. Perhaps it’s closer to being dragged through a whin bush backwards, which was an accusation often levelled at us as children when we arrived home after some particularly boisterous play. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZUPE2D5JVDIRFNVVVSXF6QQTU","additional_properties":{},"content":"But how did the wreck of an obscure US boat gain such a foothold in our lexicon? And was the Hesperus even wrecked? If you have spent many dark nights of the soul contemplating these questions, then fear not, you have come to the right place.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIY3WRZAXZE73P42UHSWW6RCWU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Fans of the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow will know that The Wreck of Hesperus was one of his best-known poems, and a staple on the US school curriculum. Incidentally, at 5 foot 9 inches, Longfellow was not a particularly long fellow, but his writing definitely had longevity. Some of his phrases that we still use today include “ships that pass in the night” and “into every life, some rain must fall”. But I digress.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMD6BC7UCFBARIFSMS433TBJ3E","additional_properties":{},"content":"His poem tells the tale of a skipper who took his young daughter out to sea in a schooner called the Hesperus. The hubristic captain ignored the advice of an old sailor who warned that a hurricane was coming. When he realised the sailor was right, the skipper tied his daughter to the mast to keep her safe. However, the boat was wrecked when it hit the reef of Norman’s Woe. They all died, and when his daughter’s body was discovered, she was still tied to the mast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMCF4WYCZ5EK5CGA4RZWHMPDPU","additional_properties":{},"content":"The poet said he wrote the poem about the Hesperus after a hurricane lashed the coast of Massachusetts on December 15th, 1839. He read an article in a local paper detailing how 20 boats were sent crashing onto a reef and 17 bodies were washed ashore. Among the dead was a woman who had been tied to the windlass bitts (pair of posts). Writing in his diary two days after the storm, he used a bit of poetic licence and said 20 bodies had been found, and incorrectly noted that the Hesperus had been one of the boats.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2H3243KVPNCFBFBDVLUEQILKMU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In fact, the schooner, which had been moored in Boston harbour had survived unscathed, apart from losing her bowsprit, which sounds painful, but not fatal. After reading the news in the Morning Post, he declared to his diary: “I must write a ballad upon this” and then he did, in an annoyingly quick fashion. “It hardly cost me an effort. It did not come into my mind by lines, but by stanzas,” he later wrote.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGCQXV7NUZDDNJNEEOTPHWQ3LY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The poem appeared in print a few weeks later on January 10th, 1840. But it would be another 85 years before the truth behind the Hesperus emerged. In May 1925, the New York Times carried the scoop which revealed that the schooner was not wrecked at all, and showed how the poet had mixed up his boats. But you know the adage about a lie getting halfway across the world before the truth has put his boots on? The damage had been done and generations of American schoolchildren grew up believing that the Hesperus was wrecked.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZUCM65JGBB5JNMEOGJL26FYTI","additional_properties":{},"content":"And more than a century after the boat was not wrecked, we are still telling each other that we look like the wreck of the Hesperus. After depositing our emigrants State-side, the wind must have blown the expression back to our shores. But there is an Irish connection with another Hesperus – long before Longfellow dipped his quill in ink and told that story.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EKOSQ5VNDBFPVFQIPJLRM7Q2EU","additional_properties":{},"content":"The other Hesperus was a ship that sailed from Belfast to New York in July 1820, and we know about it thanks to the sterling work by the voluntary group, the Immigrant Ships Transcribers’ Guild (<a href=\"http://immigrantships.net\" target=\"_blank\">immigrantships.net</a>). These good people have been transcribing lists of passengers from immigrant ships and providing them free online since 1998 and are always looking for volunteers to help with the work. Their records show that the Hesperus carried 32 passengers across the Atlantic Ocean on that trip. All but two were Irish, and they ranged in age from one-year-old Eliza Simpson to 72-year-old farmer Hugh McDermoth, who might have been McDermott had his accent been understood.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NGFVBPM7ZJDRXGUMYJODEZJRNA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Happily, this Hesperus was not wrecked by a storm and the records show that they all arrived alive. Mind you, after several weeks at sea, they might have looked like the wreck of the Hesperus when they disembarked. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"How did the wreck of an obscure US boat gain such a foothold in our lexicon?"},"display_date":"2024-11-22T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Rhyme and reason — Alison Healy on Longfellow’s Wreck of the Hesperus","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"TDR6QRYP6RF57HT3VKASVPH3NM","auth":{"1":"d5f0a44ed0d25c4e09b22a22bc491c35ea88c8c6982cb59ae31339c700531361"},"focal_point":{"x":347,"y":356},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/TDR6QRYP6RF57HT3VKASVPH3NM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/22/rhyme-and-reason-alison-healy-on-longfellows-wreck-of-the-hesperus/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"QSI7SXNVHRGLJE4MKDEHMZJPCA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":305,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/1842a9bb-ad9a-40a9-abb6-87f7d4bd74e2/versions/1732216993/media/cedc602864fcc699163e6358cf75158b_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/21/poet-of-the-troubles-oliver-ohanlon-on-padraic-fiacc/","content_elements":[{"_id":"I4GZHRUTT5B7XBKDSEUDNEIO34","additional_properties":{},"content":"Padraic Fiacc was known as the “Poet of the Troubles” due to his humane writing about that dark period in history. His birth name was Patrick Joseph O’Connor and he hailed from Belfast. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"BNBWBISSCFGMNL722JXD4DEMVI","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was born 100 years ago in April 1924 on Elizabeth Street in the Lower Falls area of the city. His mother’s family were burnt out of their home in Lisburn during the pogroms of 1920 and he grew up on East Street in the Markets area of Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U43V776AVRBLFCNOWO5SDRGHLE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The family moved to New York in 1929 when he was around five years of age. Hell’s Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan was his new home initially. Growing up, he hung over the fire escapes on 98th Street and slept in the baseball pitches of Central Park to escape the intense summer heat.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQCD3GZB5ZARROTCPFN7FDYACI","additional_properties":{},"content":"He attended a high school where Latin and the humanities were taught. He relished the opportunities that the school gave him for intellectual stimulation and the chance to meet children from different backgrounds.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZO2BERDIJ5EMXMZTJWJXFRZZ6M","additional_properties":{},"content":"It had a mix of pupils from the area (the majority of which were black) as well as the children of those who were fleeing Nazi oppression in Europe. He filled his time with poetry, music and painting. He wrote plays in French and Latin and later described his school years as “exciting and scintillating”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QL4QRQU2ABEXBOJRN5ILYPZB4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"Fiacc spent a number of years in a Franciscan seminary in upstate New York and also had a stint in an Irish Capuchin monastery. He stayed partly to escape the military draft and partly to get an education but left around the age of 21 as he discovered that it was not the life he wanted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MRJNYZZY5FCOVOBQE5ZLTFVYNI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Years later, looking back on his time in New York, he seemed conflicted about it. On one hand, he enjoyed the cultural melting pot that it was and the opportunities it afforded him. He was particularly grateful about his school days and felt that his formative years were enriched by having African, Asian, Middle Eastern and European classmates.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7UNLHFWDQ5EBZNLS7WVFWJA57Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was also thankful for one of his teachers who transformed him from an “uncouth slum adolescent” into an “incurable aspiring poet”. Being able to see the actress Greta Garbo or the composer Sergei Rachmaninov alight from a taxi to browse in a downtown antique shop was also a positive. On the other hand, he did not miss the “furnace of a West Side summer”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P2TMGLNRXBFM5EP7SGHV5B77NE","additional_properties":{},"content":"He returned to live in Belfast in 1946 and worked in various jobs including as a hotel night porter, before going back to New York for around a decade. When he came back to Belfast again, he bought a house in the suburb of Glengormley with his American wife.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DNBKYMRPMBE5DMZ6BP2YK6ORPE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1957, he won the AE Memorial Award for Poetry for his collection Woe to the Boy. His nom de plume “Padraic Fiacc” was a nod to his mentor Padraic Colum, who he met in New York. Fiacc was chosen to represent the Irish word “fiach” (raven in English).","type":"text"},{"_id":"GW7BGYF5TVE6RN3ZFQ2BMTIEXU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He spoke of this time in Belfast as a hopeful period. That changed when the Troubles broke out and he would come to refer to the city as “Hellfast”. In 1974, he edited an anthology of contemporary poetry that dealt with the Troubles. Entitled The Wearing of the Black, it drew criticism from some who thought that it was too close to the bone.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XDAOHIZ3LBHCPN4SPIDTNNG2PU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nine-year-old Patrick Rooney was the first child killed in the Troubles in August 1969. Fiacc wrote Elegy for a “Fenian Get” for the boy who was killed by what he termed a “trigger-happy cow-boy cop”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TWQVVTSKZRBDNDCVH6NHTQEXQE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In a poem entitled, Victory on Ship Street, Fiacc used irony to highlight the killing of two young girls who died when a car bomb was detonated outside a Catholic-owned bar in the now-vanished dockland area of Sailortown.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IBJQEYU3HNDYLKWERMHJMXUVHQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"In October 1972, the bloodiest year of the Troubles, the lives of six-year-old Paula Stronge and four-year-old Clare Hughes were cut short. They had been trick-or-treating near their homes when the bomb went off. It was, according to Fiacc “another blow struck for our very own corner on Devil’s Island” and it resulted in “two wee girls in Halloween dress burnt to death as witches”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZL4RB2HWEZF7ROUTSIWGJ6Q24I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Along with the Troubles casting a shadow on life in Northern Ireland, Fiacc experienced his own dark years. He had mental health difficulties and his marriage broke down but he continued to write poetry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBPFU2JO2JA4ZA33T7JHWOINNE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Gerald Dawe claimed that Fiacc was “much overlooked by the critical and literary establishment” and he was a “perennial outsider”. However, recognition from his peers did come on occasion, such as his election to Aosdána in 1981, the year he won the Poetry Ireland Award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G7LZIPXTIVDELEQ6DONZ7TCWO4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He died at age 95 in January 2019. Dawe lauded him for being the only poet that would be so “forthright and committed in saying the uncomfortable thing”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Oliver O’Hanlon"}]},"description":{"basic":"When the Troubles broke out, he would come to refer to his native city as “Hellfast”"},"display_date":"2024-11-21T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Poet of the Troubles – Oliver O’Hanlon on Padraic Fiacc ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"S7N6CTZDZWNZ3UZUCVX7VLVT3U","auth":{"1":"bd9e500ebe601c1e0471b289c2809b01b35d7d750d342d3e3cd67beb3bc31ad3"},"focal_point":{"x":366,"y":236},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/S7N6CTZDZWNZ3UZUCVX7VLVT3U.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/21/poet-of-the-troubles-oliver-ohanlon-on-padraic-fiacc/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"G7SLYZQPYNHMRFHBFKDZB4KC4Y","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":352,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/7bb92011-4383-492e-8992-3533e1eecc78/versions/1732129458/media/b774a8cb4cb494278627a4ee216554d5_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/20/hitlers-irish-volunteers-john-mulqueen-on-two-irish-pows-who-volunteered-for-the-waffen-ss/","content_elements":[{"_id":"SFY4TRWIWZHYLLZ2GFFSR3KG2Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"In November 1944, a radio operative returned from a special assignment to find that the rest of his battalion had left to train for an operation behind enemy lines – they would be disguised as an “American tank unit” in the Germans’ planned Ardennes counter-offensive. The returning soldier, Frank Stringer, and fellow Irishman James Brady, both served in this Waffen-SS unit. Two months later they found themselves in action against the Red Army, and remained in Germany’s service to the bitter end in Berlin. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"56J4BNIBWJHA7G37F2PDCBXSR4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The unlikely involvement of Stringer and Brady in the military wing of the SS – they came from Leitrim and Roscommon respectively – began in Guernsey before the second World War broke out. The two teenagers, British soldiers in the Royal Irish Fusiliers, went on a drinking spree that ended violently. Brady later claimed that he could not remember much about the incident “because I was too drunk”. They were convicted of assaulting a policeman and imprisoned, and became POWs when the Germans occupied the Channel Islands in 1940.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RSTPFEKRVVBCXDFPMK7CJ5DFW4","additional_properties":{},"content":"During the war the Germans revived the idea of recruiting Irish POWs to serve in their armed forces. Prisoners belonging to “national minorities” were segregated: Ukrainians and Poles were separated, Flemings and Walloons, Bretons and French, and Irish and British. The Irish writer Francis Stuart, who chose to go to Berlin in 1939, interviewed Irishmen to assess their suitability. But he soon tired of this – he was disappointed not to find a more enthusiastic nationalistic response. Irish POWs were isolated in a special camp near Friesack, where they were bombarded with anti-British propaganda which focused on Britain seizing Ireland’s “treaty ports” during the U-boat campaign. By the spring of 1941, the Friesack camp held between 150 and 200 men, who were badly treated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DXBYYZKK2JA75M5GKTDPRPKSOY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Stuart later worked for the Germans’ foreign radio service, and eulogised Hitler in talks targeted at his audience at home – he was “a great leader” for what had become an “inspired nation”. The Soviets, however, halted the German rampage across Europe at Stalingrad. During the official mourning period for this military catastrophe, in February 1943, Stuart alluded to Nazi propaganda about the “heroes” of the Sixth Army by telling his listeners that this was an Easter Rising moment. “If I was a German,” he declared, “I should be filled with the deepest pride. I am glad to be living in a country that can produce such men.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MUDFDZI2DZBR5OR6CGUHUMSYMI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Irish POWs who succumbed to the propaganda onslaught and volunteered to train as “saboteurs” – 11 in total – never matched the “heroism” standard set by Stuart. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6S4CQAVQR5C6TCBEZ4S4UDJTTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In addition, discipline was not their strong point – most had run-ins with the authorities for various reasons and were held in custody. Some “disgraced themselves”, to quote a British intelligence official, with drunken offers to “fight all and sundry” in a Berlin café among the more minor offences. Overall, they lacked political convictions, and only two, Brady and Stringer, who did not make the grade as agents, joined the armed forces. None of them were dispatched to Britain or Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YYMGLRUQSJA63DQD5NRHT5SFVI","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of Stuart’s broadcasting colleagues, Jack O’Reilly, who also perused Irish history to reinforce his points, did eventually parachute into Ireland. In his radio talks he compared religious persecution in the Soviet Union with the Penal Laws era, and highlighted the brutality of the “Black and Tans” during the War of Independence. O’Reilly, however, was not impressed with the Germans’ propaganda operation and found its knowledge of the country to be “purely geographic”. He opted for an intelligence role.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TY76LLWMNVBBLIYQK3YSZWWLKE","additional_properties":{},"content":"But O’Reilly proved to be weak when it came to geography. In October 1943, the Luftwaffe flew him over the west Clare peninsula, and, extraordinarily, dropped him close to his home town of Kilkee, where he was well known, not least for his Berlin broadcasts. To make matters worse, he got lost. Asking some farmers for help, the word spread, and gardaí, who had heard a heavy aircraft flying overhead, were told about “a strange man carrying a heavy [wireless] case” on his way to Kilkee. O’Reilly reported to the Garda station for questioning, and eventually admitted that he had returned as a spy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLL6ETVHUBCPLH52ZY3HAMJQY4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Sligowoman Elizabeth Mulcahy, who met her German husband Helmut Clissmann before the war, became involved in his intelligence work the next year when she visited the propagandists broadcasting to Ireland. They had little useful information, she remembered, and geographical knowledge did not extend to having a map of the country. And they could not learn much from the censored Radio Éireann. She described the news they heard, reception permitting, in saying: “There was a fuel scarcity, black bread and the death of a parish priest in Ballina.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IN5JLXZSPJF75NTIPOEHFP465Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Mulcahy came home after the war, and secured a visa for her husband three years later. Stuart spent eight months in an internment camp, and he too, after some time, returned to Ireland. On the other hand, Frank Stringer and James Brady were court-martialled and received heavy prison sentences – the argument that they had been “abandoned to the enemy” fell on deaf ears. Ireland’s “accidental Nazis” did not get off lightly.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"John Mulqueen"}]},"description":{"basic":"Irish POWs were isolated in a special camp near Friesack, where they were bombarded with anti-British propaganda"},"display_date":"2024-11-20T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Hitler’s Irish volunteers – John Mulqueen on two Irish POWs who volunteered for the Waffen-SS","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"7D6CK2HG3JFK5PCWFCW2I43QXY","auth":{"1":"31dcd18b696ff0ae2c1de1b0de210357c0eb229b369d64ea23867b6941222b40"},"focal_point":{"x":1027,"y":690},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7D6CK2HG3JFK5PCWFCW2I43QXY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/20/hitlers-irish-volunteers-john-mulqueen-on-two-irish-pows-who-volunteered-for-the-waffen-ss/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"GZW2ZZQ3RNH2LBZCALLL4EQ4KU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":285,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/0d7d4e69-4170-417f-8d77-c50d9a9bb2a8/versions/1732039542/media/959955ad37ffa138b2dfd9d9eb1d4a49_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/19/sharpened-pens-alison-healy-on-the-cattier-side-of-writers/","content_elements":[{"_id":"462KQEUUXFEPZDG2TXSSSHJQLQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"How do you react when a friend has some success at work? Do you identify with the writer Gore Vidal who admitted that every time a friend succeeded, a little part of him died inside? Do you plaster on a smile when a friend gets good news and ignore the murderous jealous rage that furiously swirls around your gut? Perhaps you wonder why your friend is merrily swinging the world by the tail when you are fishing your cleanest dirty shirt from the laundry basket because you forgot to do the washing. After all, you gave him your Irish homework all through secondary school so how is he the successful one? ","type":"text"},{"_id":"APIRWFL2HNHO5PSYUSP2QJQT3U","additional_properties":{},"content":"Always a great man for the bon mot, Oscar Wilde once said that anybody could sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, “but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success”. It requires such a fine nature that most people do not know the word that describes taking pleasure in another’s happiness. It’s confelicity, in case you are wondering.","type":"text"},{"_id":"66L2JDXNOJG4XATJGTP44L3A5A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The professional contrarian Morrissey is an admirer of Oscar Wilde so perhaps that informs the singer’s approach to successful friends. After his old friend Simon Topping appeared on the cover of music newspaper NME, he dramatically proclaimed: “I died a thousand deaths of sorrow and lay down in the woods to die”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BFTAL6CZTVHZBGUSW6OWMVPOCI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Morrissey changed his mind about staging a sorrowful death in the woods and instead went on to release a song entitled We Hate it When our Friends Become Successful. Ironically, NME declared it to be the singer’s least successful single and said it sounded like “five men bashing around in the darkness in search of a tune”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BQYZK7STOFFW3EGV7C66YRE4EU","additional_properties":{},"content":"What is it about creative people that makes them so jealous of the success of others? Have you ever heard of a plumber announcing his plan to lay down in the woods to die because another plumber got the job of installing a bathroom in the house around the corner? I’ve never come across a farmer who threatened to shut down his milking parlour because a neighbour’s Holstein Friesian had triumphed in the Champion Dairy Cow of the Year competition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SHNDA5Q6JBGRNNLQKQFJWYXL5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"Writers in particular seem to relish eviscerating their fellow artists whenever they get a chance. Just look at Mark Twain who was always taking swipes at Jane Austen’s success. “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin bone,” he fantasised.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LAA2D5CQY5GJJKKR2B5MYREZ4I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Digging up dead writers who annoy you seems to have been a trend back then. George Bernard Shaw was so irritated by Shakespeare that he wrote “it would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VFESHAN5HJGPFHAHRKAY7YFDMU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Virginia Woolf was a contemporary of James Joyce so she had no need to dig up his grave but she did describe Ulysses as “an illiterate, underbred book”. She told a writer friend she had never read such tosh. “As for the first two chapters, we will let them pass, but the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth – merely the scratchings of pimples on the body of the boot-boy at Claridge’s,” she wrote. Who’s afraid of Virigina Woolf? Anyone on the receiving end of her withering book reviews.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UWOJ52HJSZC5FCOWNHGT6N2PD4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nor did DH Lawrence have much time for poor Joyce. Upon reading extracts of his most famous book, Lawrence wrote: “This Ulysses muck is more disgusting than Casanova” and said the ending was “the dirtiest, most indecent, obscene thing ever written”. And this from the man who scandalised everyone with Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Elsewhere, he dismissed Joyce’s writing as: “Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CBZOJPWGFZAFZELFFI3T5N5W7M","additional_properties":{},"content":"But back to Gore Vidal and his hatred of his friends’ success. He hated the success of his enemies too and cradled these jealous rivalries more tenderly than you’d nurse a newborn baby.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XP535GULJZEI5PDLS5LJZGRY5A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Truman Capote particularly seemed to rile him and Vidal once said he mistook the Breakfast at Tiffany’s author for a colourful ottoman. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OD6KPH52UZHKJJDMGZGGPLZERI","additional_properties":{},"content":"“When I sat down on it, it squealed. It was Truman,” he declared. Capote was nothing more than “a Republican housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices” he added, for good measure.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L3QZRWBZHNEV7HLGT5WJVHJOW4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Even Capote’s death wasn’t enough to end the rivalry, with Vidal describing it as a wise career move. If you think that such an impressive ability to hold a grudge suggests he had some Irish blood, then you would be correct. His mother’s ancestors were the Gores, an Anglo-Irish family who moved to the US from Donegal.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E66JZS5OBBEBJBRBNC56QBPZFU","additional_properties":{},"content":"That explains everything. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Writers seem to relish eviscerating their fellow artists whenever they get a chance"},"display_date":"2024-11-19T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Sharpened pens – Alison Healy on the cattier side of writers ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"GGBKVSDQFNHOZJECNINMBM4YF4","auth":{"1":"b08c565a7d51acbae2c93d5edbeabb95bd0cd6f854447a245f47dde566716298"},"focal_point":{"x":672,"y":574},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/GGBKVSDQFNHOZJECNINMBM4YF4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/19/sharpened-pens-alison-healy-on-the-cattier-side-of-writers/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"NVRKTLDHN5G3POXP4GXDEJ6O3M","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":292,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/6d75108f-d909-41e0-b458-cdc34e98ecbb/versions/1731948243/media/e791dfda0ae25e4dd63b1bc71840ffe9_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/18/i-remember-tim-fanning-on-the-power-of-cinema-to-unlock-the-secrets-of-memory-and-nostalgia/","content_elements":[{"_id":"56TM3S2AQVFCBPXCWJCDHA353I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Recently, I decided to rewatch the Italian movie Cinema Paradiso. For those who haven’t seen it, the film follows a young boy, Totò, growing up in a small Sicilian town in post-Second World War Italy through the prism of his friendship with the projectionist of the local cinema. A period when clerical censorship was the norm and even a chaste kiss ended up on the cutting room floor. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VD5WNUMZDJACJOYAPLBD2FUROU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Trading heavily on nostalgia, it is both a coming-of-age story and a love letter to the movies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OT4MLKO54RBUFH7ZKKOAAZ5CWA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Watching it again, I was reminded both of my own early experiences of going to the cinema and that of a well-polished anecdote in my family about my grandfather. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FQPELCCMMZEWPFTXCNPV7FZOQA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Like so many other residents of Dún Laoghaire in the 1950s, the latter enjoyed visiting the Pavilion on a Sunday afternoon after his lunch. Having placed himself at the front of the balcony, leaving his hat nestling precariously on the wall, he would proceed to fall asleep. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"E33E3LENUJDDNPC6UL2RKMXCWU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Upon waking, he would peer down to spot his hat lying on the floor of the stalls and begin bellowing at the poor unfortunates below to throw it back to him. Much to the mortification of his teenage sons, including my father, sitting a few rows behind him. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4SOTKPNQ5JBPPEHC2AB5CL4UMM","additional_properties":{},"content":"My own earliest memory of going to the cinema is of the queue stretching down O’Connell Street, waiting to get in to the Savoy to see E.T. In fact, I had already seen Popeye, starring the late Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall, but have no recollection of it. Thus my movie-going career began with pictures directed by Robert Altman and Steven Spielberg. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"P4M7Q7V7TFDRTGJH55YTCHQ2ZI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The standard wasn’t always so high. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"JATQXS454BFCVDZ6O7OMZO75IE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another early memory is going to see Octopussy in the old Green Cinema on St Stephen’s Green in 1983. Given the choice between Bond and the odd-sounding Raiders of the Lost Ark, which must have been rereleased, my seven-year-old self made a grave error. Detecting a whiff of catechising in the title of the first Indiana Jones movie, I plumped for 007. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"T77YDBZNXNCPFDIPRCIBLGVFVA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The surroundings, if not better than, were at least worthy of the stale cheese up on the big screen. The Green, which opened in 1935, was only four years away from being demolished and looked it – a bit like Roger Moore’s Bond career.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TEEZ7HRC7ZC63DPYQ7IXCQIZZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cinema-going in Dublin was a less luxurious affair in the 1980s but it did give one a stock of war stories. Many of the old movie palaces that had arisen in the early part of the century were in need of repair. I remember one poor soul of my acquaintance visiting a well-known suburban cinema, only to find he needed a tetanus shot having injured his posterior on a rusty spring that had come through the cover of his seat. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"RWANSIDRFFDH5LEMGRTPRKRHH4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The arrival of the original Light House Cinema on Middle Abbey Street was a welcome addition in 1988. Along with the Screen and the Irish Film Centre (later Irish Film Institute), which opened in 1992, the Light House offered movie buffs a selection of independent and foreign-language movies, an alternative to the Hollywood fare served up in the Savoy and the Adelphi. The only problem now was trying to get into the movies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OI2CJTODRZD2HJV4BMNDVQQBHM","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was still too young to get into 18 cert movies. As a young cinephile, I took this bureaucratic imposition personally. The anxiety about whether I would get in to see Goodfellas on the big screen remains vivid. I did. By the skin of my teeth. And then the first titles swooshed across the screen. We’re introduced to the main characters in the most violent fashion imaginable and Ray Liotta, looking like the Devil himself, utters the immortal line, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”. The orchestra swells. And Scorsese had me before Tony Bennett even began singing about moving from rags to riches. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"KDE7I44GXJFQ5JKLT2UXNOYZGQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"But it wasn’t just American gangster movies. There were the first iterations of the French Film Festival and, thanks to the VHS player at home and a top-notch local video shop, deep dives into Italian neo-realism and the New German Cinema. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"AOF7ASJGJBDLLITBZAJPUFCRPU","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of the famed auteurs I never quite took to then was Fellini – it is only in middle age that I have come to appreciate him. But it is perhaps he more than anyone who used the power of cinema to unlock the secrets of memory and nostalgia. The title of the best of his later pictures, Amarcord, is a phrase from the dialect spoken in his native Italian region of Romagna. It simply means, “I remember”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Tim Fanning"}]},"description":{"basic":"Cinema-going in Dublin was a less luxurious affair in the 1980s"},"display_date":"2024-11-18T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"“I remember” – Tim Fanning on the power of cinema to unlock the secrets of memory and nostalgia","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"YQU2B46IEVNJJMOBZUXCMTNN3Q","auth":{"1":"35b0d6a06435ee55ecd4259702ebb8d92c6a5795ef0fb22454f77a63866c1297"},"focal_point":{"x":2281,"y":1556},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YQU2B46IEVNJJMOBZUXCMTNN3Q.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/18/i-remember-tim-fanning-on-the-power-of-cinema-to-unlock-the-secrets-of-memory-and-nostalgia/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"6H5ZJDBLWVHGFB4IDTST6XWQOY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":312,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/05106614-48a7-4a09-bea3-62d28900746f/versions/1731852377/media/655289055022c72d4b01b1da25bea3b4_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/17/prince-of-the-church-brian-maye-on-cardinal-michael-logue/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ZHN672YLZVAODPMTS47DBNS6KU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Michael Logue was the first archbishop of Armagh to be made a cardinal. Born five years before the Great Famine, his long life spanned the land war, the Home Rule campaign, the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence, partition and the Civil War. He died 100 years ago on November 19th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2TEESGCUIJFOLJCO7J4W7FOUJQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was born on October 1st, 1840, in Kilmacrennan, Co Donegal, the second of six children of Michael Logue, an innkeeper, and Catherine Durnan. After private tutoring and attendance at a private school in Buncrana, he entered St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, where he was ordained deacon in 1864. He was ordained in Paris in December 1866, having been appointed professor of dogmatic theology at the Irish college there. Failing to get the theology chair at Maynooth in 1874, he returned to Donegal as a curate in Raphoe diocese. His chief concern became the effects of emigration on the county and he became involved in ways to combat it, including promoting afforestation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VXT7WNCXEFFBRE67JVWMZHM5QM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Made dean of Maynooth in 1876, he taught Irish there for a time before succeeding to one of the vacant theology chairs. Becoming bishop of Raphoe in 1879, he immediately undertook fundraising in America to mitigate the famine conditions in Donegal, as well as promoting temperance. He supported the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in their Home Rule campaign and land struggle but although he sympathised with tenants’ demands, he cautioned against violence being used.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RB5KPJ7BERGE5JVELGRQTWP6EQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Appointed archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland in late 1887, he declared a duty of care for his flock’s temporal as well as their spiritual needs. “Although dexterous and shrewd, Logue was by no means the most intelligent or administratively competent of bishops,” according to Diarmaid Ferriter, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, and he described him as slow and indecisive at times, with a tendency to state the obvious.","type":"text"},{"_id":"77ZGX4DUVRFDTEJQLLMSPYTVJE","additional_properties":{},"content":"He condemned Charles Stewart Parnell, and any priests who continued to support him, following the O’Shea divorce case and was lukewarm about the IPP’s alliance with the British Liberal Party. One of his major concerns was Catholic control over schools and he felt that the educational provisions of the 1893 Home Rule Bill were inadequate in this regard. His appointment as cardinal in 1893, in preference to archbishop of Dublin William Walsh, the most obvious candidate for the position, Ferriter ascribed to likely British pressure on the Vatican due to Walsh’s more ardent nationalism. A native Irish speaker himself, Logue supported the Gaelic League and the promotion of the Irish language and culture.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DIPYYWDSSRANZHTOWD5XFPSQ64","additional_properties":{},"content":"He often visited Scotland to look after the welfare of Ulster emigrants there and, indeed, travelled widely. The completion of Armagh cathedral in 1904, for which he raised some £50,000, was one of his principal projects as cardinal. He was sympathetic to the British monarchy and empire and received Queen Victoria in 1900 and Edward VII in 1903 at Maynooth. Critical of the anti-Catholic language of some involved in the growing trade-union movement, he was also wary of John Redmond at times. Logue supported Britain and France in the first World War but didn’t encourage recruitment and opposed extending conscription to Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VE3N3ADDBRCRVATDTWBK5MO2CE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Strongly opposed to the prospect of partition, he declared it would be “infinitely better to remain as we are for 50 years to come than to accept these proposals”. Although he denounced the British reaction to the 1916 Rising, he also condemned republican violence and considered Sinn Féin members and republicans as pursuers of dreams. In the 1918 general election, he preferred IPP to Sinn Féin candidates but mediated an agreement between the two sides so that seats wouldn’t be lost to unionists.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NKI2DFG2AFFDFGB7FQPMCLKILI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The War of Independence caused him much unease and he condemned the violence from both sides but the killings on “Bloody Sunday” in November 1920 provoked more forthright criticism from him of the British. He strongly supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, believing it offered everything necessary for Ireland’s future prosperity but he was deeply disappointed that it hadn’t achieved the end of partition. The growing anti-Catholic violence in Northern Ireland greatly perturbed him, as did the discrimination against Catholics inherent in the new laws there, and he was himself often the victim of B Special harassment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JR632VFWRZB5BCQZ2HHUQHFVVE","additional_properties":{},"content":"A humble man who led a simple life, with no secretary and few servants, he was a keen sailor and skilled yachtsman and also very much enjoyed birdwatching, especially earlier in his life. He died of heart failure in Ara Coeli, the official residence of the archbishop of Armagh, and was buried in the grounds of St Patrick’s Cathedral. A portrait of him by John Lavery is in the Ulster Museum in Belfast.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"His life spanned the land war, the Home Rule campaign, the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence, partition and the Civil War"},"display_date":"2024-11-17T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Prince of the church – Brian Maye on Cardinal Michael Logue ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"2ZG6N2P7EJCGZLKUOGMW5YAALA","auth":{"1":"968aef25016a4f7a7a319026ee5c81453b34c5c107247dedde170d5d7c0843b2"},"focal_point":{"x":163,"y":122},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/2ZG6N2P7EJCGZLKUOGMW5YAALA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/17/prince-of-the-church-brian-maye-on-cardinal-michael-logue/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"VSUENTTDMNDZPOYU4GNS5N2R4A","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":325,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/79516eaa-0f1a-4807-a8d6-7bbb3a4811a1/versions/1731698952/media/db8a8897c4915f356db6eb38322a25d4_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/15/conflict-of-many-colours-frank-mcnally-on-a-finely-illustrated-atlas-of-the-civil-war/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7VUBVV4S2NHRFE7Y4MIUIU4VEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039747},"content":"Among the revelations of the Atlas of the Irish Civil War, the latest in a sumptuously illustrated series from Cork University Press, is the extent to which the conflict was concentrated in Kerry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R5U5RKNOLBAWTBNTOFZXRLNPFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039748},"content":"In the league of proportional fatalities by county, at least, the “Kingdom” easily outranked its near neighbours in Munster, although they were also much troubled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MAY77UD35VHPXETQMVWDBKFW3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039749},"content":"With 185 deaths, as the authors put it: “Kerry is revealed as by far the most violent county in Ireland under this rubric, followed some way behind by Tipperary and Limerick.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"I2SV43QBNVBZNLJIXJTEFAG5O4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039750},"content":"Cork, surprisingly, ranked lower than the Munster average, its 215 fatalities diluted by a larger population.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NJ742E3XNJEL5J5BJE2HJEREVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039751},"content":"On a colour-coded map, one of the book’s many visually striking illustrations, Kerry’s grim ratio of more than 10 deaths per 10,000 people is represented by a shade that looks like dried blood.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OEZDQ2H7TJABDK26453LL4CDLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039752},"content":"Limerick and Tipperary, meanwhile, are a vivid red. Other surprises of the map are that, joining them with that colour, are Sligo, Louth, and Kildare.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q4O27UKMORH6NH7X4COZTVGXDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039753},"content":"But the Atlas goes far beyond mere fatality lists. Its encyclopedic reach also includes, for example, a four-county west Munster survey of civilian compensation claims arising from the war, involving everything from arson to the theft of turf.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BPNG7ABRNRHSJGG25JYOILFZHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039754},"content":"Somewhere in between those on the scale of atrocity, the punitive “cattle drive” seems to have been a Clare specialty, and the Burren in particular.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5CZ3OMXIYNBXVAYPGKOKLYHLZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039755},"content":"Sure enough, this merits a second map, zoning in on that county, the gloss for which notes a continuation through the Civil War years of 19th-century-style agrarian violence. One historian is quoted saying: “The reverberations of the ‘Land War’ were unusually persistent in Clare.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LQMVAZALHZEKLP34OQIV6CVEIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039756},"content":"Then there is the survey of broken bridges, a metaphor for civil war but also a measure of the practical difficulties of Irish rural life after a troubled decade.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XVHMQVX5TFH3XAKELMVL3VYYZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039757},"content":"At the end of 1924, in North Cork alone, there were 200 bridges awaiting repair or reconstruction, with vast inconvenience for the locals.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SHL24R2LZVGCHDQ67ME66ZXXKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039758},"content":"By way of (relatively) light relief, the Atlas includes a chapter on “Civil War songs”, prominent among which is a balled called “The Night Darrell Figgis Lost his Whiskers”","type":"text"},{"_id":"C7TNISPGSRBDFJQRQFPUFGE7KE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039759},"content":"Writer, intellectual, and activist, Figgis was a famously dapper man, crucial to whose image was a well-kept red beard and moustache. That too is the subject of illustration, via a 1916 caricature depicting him, in prison uniform but with beard intact, at Reading Gaol.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QNHTH5PTZNAHBAHUMICQFN7VEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039760},"content":"But one night before the 1922 general election, three anti-Treaty IRA men including Bob Briscoe (father of a more recent Fianna Fáil TD, Ben) broke into Figgis’s house and gave him an enforced shave.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XFEWURC2LNCOVK74P5IURPGDPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039761},"content":"The attackers later called it “a bit of fun” at the expense of a man whose writings had stung republicans, although Briscoe also claimed the victim “squealed” so much, “he would have been happier had we just cut his throat”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VJ46U3NLX5DYNHHFS367SFEV4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039762},"content":"Maybe that wasn’t an exaggeration. The lyrics of the comic ballad share a page with details of Figgis’s subsequent life, which are far from light relief:","type":"text"},{"_id":"X6VEXZGKFVF7RNZUTLX7ZPF2LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039763},"content":"“He was embroiled in corruption allegations in 1924, the year his estranged wife Millie, who had reportedly not recovered from the trauma of the attack, died by suicide. Figgis had been in a public relationship with a young dance teacher, Rita North, who died of septicemia following a botched abortion in London in 1925. [He took his own life] two days later.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"3NH4A6M6EVFDBPJXAEPFU27IPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039764},"content":"As befits a production of such visual quality, the Atlas devotes space to one of the gorgeous designs from Art O’Murnaghan’s extraordinary Leabhar na hAiséirighe/Book of the Resurrection.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V5E2DFKBTZF37CEFYS6XRXNY6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039765},"content":"Begun in 1924, that was an illuminated manuscript, in the style of the Book of Kells, commemorating the independence struggle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"42Y3GXIFOFENPHT27WHX6EECBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039766},"content":"It was a project extraordinarily consuming of time and energy. But O’Murnaghan worked at it on and off until 1954, eventually producing 27 pages on vellum, including the one featured, commemorating the Treaty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HN4BZSZCUVGMVMZWHMFFYOM5N4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039767},"content":"Another attempt at artistic reconciliation, also included, was Sean Keating’s propagandist masterpiece of 1929, Night’s Candles are Burnt Out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6X3BWPWP6ZFRVBONM2VPHDDYZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039768},"content":"Set against a background of the Ardnacrusha hydroelectric scheme, it depicts a new Ireland (represented by the artist and his young family) looking towards the future and trying to escape a past represented by drunks, gombeen men, priests, and even a hanged skeleton, which must symbolise old Ireland itself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4WZ65JA6J5AW7E37LDX2WRYDJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039769},"content":"But the complications of a fledgling independence are perhaps more realistically delineated in the small print of Terry’s Dooley’s chapter on the 1923 Land Act.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6MYPBLNR7ZBLHKWVKWWINTS77A","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039770},"content":"This includes a map of Dooley’s Monaghan, illustrating the “quiet revolution” whereby, between 1880 and 1922, some 80 per cent of Irish land was transferred from landlord to tenant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3NPZKPZFXFAV5AGZABCRJKVGCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039771},"content":"Such dramatic change created winners and losers, so that the early Free State was “seething with frustration, local jealousies, bitterness and anger”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4AGRCOV67JGWZL6TNQICQQZUVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039772},"content":"And as Caitríona Crowe adds in a footnote, there were other problems in the making too:","type":"text"},{"_id":"PVFB4LQ26BHSTNCCVEDZRCTHLQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731690039773},"content":"“The Land Acts created a rural society of conservative Catholic smallholders with a new-found interest in respectability and sexual probity, both of which bore down most heavily on women, and were ultimately connected to the establishment and maintenance of mother and baby homes.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"On a colour-coded map, Kerry’s grim ratio of deaths is represented by a shade that looks like dried blood"},"display_date":"2024-11-15T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Conflict of many colours – Frank McNally on a finely illustrated atlas of the Civil War","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"ITANBPYNAVGCBFXJUHKIBNYB7I","auth":{"1":"f54e5124af920ee7c94de6a0330be6d9a0d08757b6ac6d0d63005cf0cbd657f9"},"focal_point":{"x":331,"y":357},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ITANBPYNAVGCBFXJUHKIBNYB7I.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/15/conflict-of-many-colours-frank-mcnally-on-a-finely-illustrated-atlas-of-the-civil-war/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"TPJ7LLADJFAZZLN2MOJ2RJRKBA","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/14/lunar-quest-frank-mcnally-on-moon-missions-misinformed-quiz-questions-and-mountweazels/","content_elements":[{"_id":"4FATRQXM4NCUDA4SL6JC67RWQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057599},"content":"At a table quiz in Dublin the other night, questions included this: “Who was the first woman on the moon?” Cue mild consternation as most teams re-examined their certainty that no female anywhere had yet achieved such a distinction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRQYWR4LCRDHLJLR7MVBJ26THY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057600},"content":"Was it a trick question, we wondered? Had it happened in a film? Could one of the actual male astronauts of half a century ago have undergone gender reassignment since and self-identified retrospectively as a woman trapped in a man’s spacesuit?","type":"text"},{"_id":"PTS4UUKD5VHRDET4KIHMFSMVNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057601},"content":"Or was it possible that the question setters were just deluded? And if so, should we second-guess their misinformation and answer accordingly?","type":"text"},{"_id":"43O627I5GBA5JFSHXNBCJBBBMM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057602},"content":"This does happen in quizzes. I did one in a GAA club once, for example, where it became clear after a round or two that the quizmaster was working off an old set of questions, some of them outdated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FARMBG5LO5A3ROVQKO3SJSBCIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057603},"content":"That was circa 2007 and to one of his questions – how many member states are there in the EU? – the correct answer was 27.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AOU5WCQB6RCENGIQHMBAXYS3F4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057604},"content":"But being anoraks, we had worked out that in the quizmaster’s world, it was still 2006 at the latest and Romania and Bulgaria hadn’t acceded yet. So we put down “25″, which was the right wrong answer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NSWKCV2SLVBDLENSYFYOQZWLHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057605},"content":"The winners’ prize for that quiz, by the way, was a set of actual anoraks. I wore mine with pride for years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GTGYFHKNVRDXBEBLIVVUTZYIAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057606},"content":"At this latest quiz, we were tempted to put down “Valentina Tereshkova”, who was the first woman in space, although a long way from the moon. Instead, in the end we said “nobody”. And there followed even greater consternation when the correct answer was said to be “Christina Koch”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QHNDMUQPKZGQ3AFK4RMF7QVOCE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057607},"content":"***","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5P4JNJLPFCKLLPPRKPKTVDEOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057608},"content":"But lo! It had indeed been a trick question. Or more precisely, it had been a “Mountweazel”, a subject itself worthy of quiz-question status.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IECZAUPETVC2TMQM27NXAEIV4U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057609},"content":"The name derives from Lillian Virginia Mountweazel (1942-1973), an American photographer who specialised in picture essays about New York city buses, the cemeteries of Paris, and rural American mailboxes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R3OZ2PIRKBFZVGD4PBWVOTW5MY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057610},"content":"Tragically, she died in an explosion when on assignment for the ominously named Combustibles magazine, aged only 31. But on a more cheerful note, she had never existed, except as a fake entry planted in the New Columbia Encyclopedia, to expose plagiarists who might lift the material wholesale.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C3C6U7TIRNBMHC4CG3ZLVBDXU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057611},"content":"Our quiz-mistress, a woman named Fiona, had warned earlier that there would be a Mountweazel planted among her questions to expose surreptitious research. Now the trap was sprung.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZPH254DWVC7DGMKTZE4JLEAFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057612},"content":"Several of the 40-odd teams had answered Christina Koch correctly, perhaps after consulting ChatGPT and getting a truncated version of the truth, which is that Koch will be part of a Nasa lunar mission (though not a moon landing) in 2025. They were all disqualified.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XNIDTGSXG5AHZK5N4SRLTNFZXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057613},"content":"Great was the righteousness in other parts of the room. For those of us who had tried to keep our anoraks clean during the long, dark era when smartphones were doing to our sport what EPO had done to professional cycling, this was a biblical smiting. Among the sinners, meanwhile, there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7IO2BIQGRJFHJENOMOQZOFJL7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057614},"content":"***","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLDMHIU7DFDCFAPSWTHDZ7WEDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057615},"content":"By a strange lunar coincidence, I received an email from graphic artist Bernie Sexton recently asking if I might mention a publication she and others have prepared, aimed at the Christmas gift market. This wouldn’t normally be diary material, except that it <i>is</i> a diary/journal, for women.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GOI2EIAO7NAJ3A3FLOTKIWMOWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057616},"content":"And it’s called – of all things – Moon Mná, combining as it does lunar phases for every day of 2025, accompanied by inspiring stories, craft projects, and self-care rituals on a related theme. Now in its ninth edition, the journal is priced at €20, from <a href=\"http://moonmna.store/\" target=\"_blank\">moonmna.store</a>. I’m told it might make a charming present for the women in your life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IIQJFDBU6NE6FG44GIJPHZCBGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057617},"content":"***","type":"text"},{"_id":"OR554ZX6LVFQDLPGEMC4Z7ZOOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057618},"content":"Getting back to the quiz, my team was looking very good for a while. After a slow start we had climbed to second place by the interval. Then we went outside for fresh air, to regather our thoughts – and our command of useless information – for the second half.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J7RM2MVV6RBG7KPA6D7AWRBEKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057619},"content":"There was an almost full moon – “waxing gibbous” is the technical term, I think – shining, And I knew that by this weekend it would be what native Americans call the “Beaver” Moon. Gazing at it, I also remembered in passing that the name of a former neighbour of my parents was up there somewhere.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A5SMSV36TRCVBDDMID4J4OITOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057620},"content":"Known locally as Benny Callan, he emigrated to the US in 1928 and became a space engineer, working on the Apollo 11 mission and so gaining the right to have his name inscribed alongside others on a plaque left behind on the Sea of Tranquility.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KN6WR6PO2RGRJHIKFP4Y3MLKP4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057621},"content":"I knew a nephew of his, Mickey Birdy, well. But I never heard the story until it featured some years ago in the RTÉ radio documentary entitled, with only slight overstatement: “The man in the moon’s from Carrickmacross.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXDA5JD225CY5OPHQKMI4OZRCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731605057622},"content":"Alas, none of this helped during the second half of the quiz. If anything, the interval air seemed to have a deleterious effect on our brains. Or maybe it was the lunar waxing that caused a tragic loss of focus. Whatever the cause, like a 20th-century space rocket, we crashed and burned on re-entry.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Revenge of the anoraks"},"display_date":"2024-11-14T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Lunar quest – Frank McNally on moon missions, misinformed quiz questions, and mountweazels","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"ZCDYUOMF55FBPCDVXKNY2LNA5A","auth":{"1":"3d8167dce45f18f66d4b438d64b37315fe9d578d24167c08af1d816ef5231cbc"},"focal_point":{"x":1088,"y":763},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ZCDYUOMF55FBPCDVXKNY2LNA5A.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/14/lunar-quest-frank-mcnally-on-moon-missions-misinformed-quiz-questions-and-mountweazels/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"XCC4IPSJWZFXRP4CGE2EZGDTSM","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/13/the-dromcollogher-cinema-fire-disaster-frank-mcnally-on-a-fateful-day-in-1926/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NE5FAE2KTFFTBEDARTJ43ICR6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497500},"content":"Dromcollogher in Co Limerick is one of many places in Ireland that Percy French could be said to have been put on the map. That great, much-travelled troubadour was so charmed by a stay there once that he immortalised the village in an eponymous ballad.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F3O3JUI4BNHX3DC4XII7MQSTSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497501},"content":"Mind you, it was a mixed compliment, taking the form of a proud native’s obsession with dragging his home-place into every possible conversation, to the detriment of everywhere else.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LG5DWGZLYBAT5DWJ24REIJROKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497502},"content":"A typical verse begins: “I was over in London quite lately,/I gave King Edward a call;/Says the butler, ‘He’s out, he isn’t about/An’ I don’t see his hat in the hall;/But if you would like to look round, sir,/I think you will have to say,/Apartments like these are not what one sees/In your country every day.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQVHFAMRDJAGJLU7SNXZRBMEQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497503},"content":"As with previous verses, of course, that only tees up the narrator for another chorus: “Sez I, Have yez been to Drumcolliher?” And this time it’s the turn of Buckingham Palace to suffer by comparison with the alleged architectural magnificence of his local hardware shop.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EERX6ZC7IFHU7IL5Q6WTFPJ3TA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497504},"content":"In putting the village on the map, Percy French did not go so far as to include directions. This may be just as well, given his infamous advice that to get to Ballyjamesdsuff, a returning Paddy Reilly and others should “turn to the left at the bridge of Finea”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FNWBYQL755FHPNQIKQHACVJSOU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497505},"content":"As pointed out here before, if you turned left at the Bridge of Finnea, in either direction, you’d end up in one of the two lakes that flank it. And as for the nearest turn-offs before or after the bridge, well, when trying to get to Ballyjamesduff, I wouldn’t start from there if I were you.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SHC6LS4G4ZCVLKPNBOF5YNK5FI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497506},"content":"In any case, visiting Dromcollogher for the first time earlier this week, I had to resort to GPS. And that was not a good idea either. It worked okay as far as Newcastle West, where I turned left and where conventional maps insist it should have been a straight drive the rest of the way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KCVS3M6ZGJFOXBGNO5UCUTAJME","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497507},"content":"Instead, misled by the satellite woman, I took another four or five turns, in the process receiving an extensive tour of the (admittedly lovely) west Limerick countryside.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZWPYTMSKUNGMTLJGYIUOVLFS3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497508},"content":"The last suggested turn was so obviously a private lane that I ignored the GPS until the imperious voice ordered: “Return to the route!” So I did. And sure enough, it led me into a farmyard.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DW4GU3C6YNFZ3AMWRIDOMCQCLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497509},"content":"I have had similar experiences since when searching for Dromcollogher in newspaper archives. The problem there is the multiple spelling variants (including Percy’s). Not even the “Drom” is simple. A rival school that argues for “Drum” as the prefix.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EF2KXVUUZJGE5IPODD5QA3WEFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497510},"content":"But after that binary choice, there are a multiplicity of suffixes ranging from “Collogher” to “Coliher”. In an archive as tyrannically pedantic as The Irish Times’s, which refuses to guess what you’re searching for if you don’t have the exact spelling, you can find yourself wondering if the place exists at all.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHLDXOQSZNEZVB5IFBG7NAAMGU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497511},"content":"Anyway, I did get there eventually: in both real-life and database. And as I now know, Dromcollogher was on maps long before French’s song.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UXM5IIYJN5EQNDV6OQEMIUSCJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497512},"content":"Of medieval origin, it was mentioned in the Book of Leinster (1160). Among several claims to fame since, it became a forerunner, via the local creamery 1889, of Horace Plunkett’s co-operative movement: one of the great success stories of pre-and-post-independence Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3ZHUQ2HVAVALRM23M356PS3N5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497513},"content":"Then, alas, there was the Dromcollogher cinema fire: the Free State’s first major disaster which earned the town a more sombre fame.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L6KDVONPRBDQXFEW3GVJ4OFFGY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497514},"content":"It dominates the local Catholic Church, St Bartholomew’s, thanks to a mass grave with a Celtic cross which includes the names of the 48 victims, and to depictions on the modern, glass side walls of the now 200-year-old church.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2O3RQREYSRH3BOZHEYEFHSNLJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497515},"content":"The ill-fated film screening of Sunday, September 5th, 1926, arose from some local entrepreneurship by a man named William “Babe” Ford.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6EYWYTGEVZEXFJKGPOBS2PHTRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497516},"content":"He knew the projectionist in a Cork cinema, which closed on Sundays.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XDFMSH6LAFEFFB6JA7RU7AWMIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497517},"content":"So he “borrowed” the nitrate reels, leaving their tin cans behind – like the shape of a body in a bed – to disguise their temporary absence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NBFVLRLG2RBDNJNDE7QLOGHBCE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497518},"content":"This was one contributor to the catastrophe. Another was a candle, knocked over onto the highly-flammable nitrate tape. But the venue, an upstairs barn, with only one entrance via a ladder, was a disaster waiting to happen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WXZ2O7D3R5DENLRCS2KF5UZ5PY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497519},"content":"Some 150 people had paid up to ninepence each to see a short film, False Alarm, followed by the main feature, The Decoy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X4LBLWRUYZCBPDFMLKDDR435RU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497520},"content":"In the panic to escape, local ex-IRA men remembered that the bars of a window had been sawn through to facilitate their own getaways if the venue were ever raided.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WNRUCUUTEFEX5POJFHSJOWZL5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497521},"content":"The bars were now bent to let people out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G5SWRY6KL5HHRJN5FKWYYSTPPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497522},"content":"Then someone got stuck in the gap and cut that route off too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K2X5EROLG5FUPCAMS7THKQCJWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497523},"content":"The eventual death toll would be equalled 55 years later in Dublin’s Stardust tragedy. But in the Dromcollogher of 1926, it represented one tenth of the village’s population. Many of the victims were children.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KJJYYMAHGJBGDGSDEEXN2MWSGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497524},"content":"A relief fund was still making payments until 1958. In the meantime, locals also raised money to buy the long-derelict site of the fire.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7K3SCOHCZAFNJ5SWLIRKXEBPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731525497525},"content":"And in 1953, this was turned into one of one of modern Dromcollogher’s more original and charming architectural features: the flat-roofed, circular Memorial Library.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"The death toll of 48 represented a tenth of the village’s population"},"display_date":"2024-11-14T10:18:44.718Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Dromcollogher cinema fire disaster – Frank McNally on a fateful day in 1926","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"P7SJ2NAOS5AAJMWQLCZ72MFECQ","auth":{"1":"c89dccd493677e4327b4ab98c3c6caf07c806ab08cf1320e80195f974b80434c"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/P7SJ2NAOS5AAJMWQLCZ72MFECQ.jpeg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/13/the-dromcollogher-cinema-fire-disaster-frank-mcnally-on-a-fateful-day-in-1926/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"XSE66FCTZZH4ZC55NRYX7TKNQE","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/12/the-spirit-of-1965-kevin-rafter-on-irelands-first-television-election/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7673CTO7PVGVNDCRGJ5WQBCZUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884483},"content":"During the 1965 general election campaign, a group of 41 members of the Foreign Press Association of London arrived in Ireland as guests of the government.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TYA62EGZRRD47INHT42YFLJJTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884484},"content":"They included newspaper reporters from Russia, Italy, Holland and Germany; and they enjoyed, what was generously described as a “fatiguing eight-day tour” experiencing Ireland’s first ever television election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TJ7LT6UGGNEQVBJ32WNO3UPMAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884485},"content":"Their schedule had a decidedly social element. There was a medieval banquet at Bunratty Castle, a visit to Inishbofin island and an evening of Irish culture in Dublin in the presence of poets, Austin Clarke and Padraic Colum. The schedule did include several after-Sunday Mass election meetings.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BEH4LFJCP5COVCJP3QVUM364LY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884486},"content":"The electioneering, however, left the foreign correspondents underwhelmed. “The fire has gone out of your elections,” Werner Krug of the Munich Mercur observed, in contrasting the campaign with one he had previously experienced in 1957.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BQ6BX7TK35AKLLIYMJHYIOECWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884487},"content":"The new domestic television service, Telefís Éireann, was just over three years on-air when taoiseach Seán Lemass called a general election for April 1965. More recently billed as the great economic moderniser, Lemass was hostile to the idea of public broadcasting. He favoured private sector ownership and no public money. He had only reluctantly supported a State-run service funded by a licence fee and advertising revenue.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5J4NAF5PERCRLPBV4J7QKKXXWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884488},"content":"Like many politicians in Leinster House, Lemass was also uncomfortable with the ramifications of the independence granted to the new broadcast station. He had little time for the niceties of editorial independence, and he saw the television service as another instrument to further his government’s agenda. He remained sensitive to reporting that he perceived to be less than positive in its assessment of the economy and Ireland’s international image.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASBZWGHIKVHYPFN3HGVTS5HUK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884489},"content":"Lemass was insistent that the national broadcaster avoid all election coverage.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6RDRKLYZFVF47PHIDAPCYYUP54","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884490},"content":"He issued an explicit written instruction to the minister with responsibility for the broadcast services to make his view clear to Telefís Éireann.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GTR32D3ZGBC3TGGTUDGRGWRBUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884491},"content":"Over time the new television station succeeded in delivering a professional political service but ambitions for more expansive coverage were not realised in time for the 1965 campaign.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NX2VIBIOERHIRE3IH477AQXTVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884492},"content":"The leaders of the three main parties – James Dillon of Fine Gael, Labour’s Brendan Corish and Lemass – undertook nationwide tours; Dillon’s campaign reportedly involved a 17-day 2,500 mile tour, and 25 meetings, that concluded with a final rally at the GPO in Dublin. Part of the event was filmed for the BBC’s Panorama programme. Twenty-four hours later, Lemass concluded the Fianna Fáil campaign with a similar rally at the same location.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QHHSVEUOO5CTHNZI5TSCAQZNJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884493},"content":"The BBC cameras were not the only ones following the party leaders. As Dillon opined on farming to a gathering of some 200 people in Tipperary, his speech as recorded by a NBC crew. “Dillon speech filmed for American TV” was the headline over one newspaper story which apparently struggled to find a news-line in Fine Gael’s agriculture proposals. The following evening the American broadcasters were in Carlow to record Lemass’s election meeting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTCYSUUD5JAKZFGPE2Y3IOCY6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884494},"content":"The political correspondent of this newspaper sought to talk-up the contest. On the eve of polling day, he proclaimed that the campaign had “penetrated in every village and town – and almost every house . . .” This seemed to be a minority assessment. Having followed the leaders to various election rallies, the producers of BBC’s Panorama resorted to filming two university professors discussing the campaign in a pub in Dublin city centre. As a television spectacle, the encounter was described as “stage managed”, which somewhat appropriately was in keeping with the low-key tenor of the 1965 contest.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VIM3JS3TMVDETG2QEYSFG345XI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884495},"content":"Neither the Fine Gael slogan “Time for a Change” nor the Fianna Fáil’s “Let Lemass Lead On” captured the public imagination. Labour had ruled out entering coalition with Fine Gael.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XTVHQUHWVFBGJGCBGKEXCB4WBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884496},"content":"As such, voters were left with a limited choice – to give Lemass an overall majority or see him rule as head of a minority government.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BUTYBS4CBJHDHOELIPTXYY772E","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884497},"content":"The new domestic television service left few fingerprints on the 1965 campaign despite the fact that two in every five homes had a TV set by that time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2X5FTFY2IVG77N46BCYDRVPLOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884498},"content":"Station executives at Telefís Éireann were, however, more ambitious in delivering the first ever television election results programme.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XIKXR5IFR5DHTPI3BPBA7GES3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884499},"content":"In what was a significant investment for the new broadcaster, reporters were located at count centres in Monaghan, Wexford, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Bolton Street in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HKYTFMMYD5ESNNLPZY4B76VU6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884500},"content":"On the day of the count, the normal television schedule was replaced by a special programme which came on air at 5pm.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZ5LY5OYLFGSLODYGPUDOEYXKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435884501},"content":"Radio stole a march, however, by starting its coverage at 2pm. Both services remained broadcasting until midnight, but – unlike what will be experienced in 2024 – there were no “special” or “additional” analysis programmes on the following day. Ongoing election developments were simply covered in regular news bulletins.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Kevin Rafter"}]},"description":{"basic":"Seán Lemass regarded Telefís Éireann with suspicion"},"display_date":"2024-11-12T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The spirit of 1965 – Kevin Rafter on Ireland’s first television election","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WTRJAT45NREYNOPCU3PXYONEX4","auth":{"1":"8cc7cdb75671b59351bfe99e36960a869db921bce8f50ee35a3dfef3dc1361bc"},"focal_point":{"x":461,"y":215},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WTRJAT45NREYNOPCU3PXYONEX4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/12/the-spirit-of-1965-kevin-rafter-on-irelands-first-television-election/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"X2RSE2QWQZDHZMEND3IHBS37GM","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/11/grief-and-remembrance-ronan-mcgreevy-on-dublins-armistice-day-in-1924/","content_elements":[{"_id":"IMPLNI26S5EVNEI2DUEEFRN7MI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The gathering in central Dublin on Armistice Day 1924 was the largest since the crowds that attended Home Rule rallies in the city 12 years previously.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LY4NOF7TS5DPPGCVJPYAUGBJ3Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ireland and the world had changed in ways nobody thought possible in 1912. The first World War had been as unexpected as it was brutal. Home Rule was never implemented and was replaced by something which few envisaged at the time – an independent Irish state, albeit one achieved at the price of partition with six counties in the North.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGWX7MILSZATZJCPGCKOISDVNM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Armistice Day was already a contested event in Ireland. There had been running battles between loyalists and republicans on the streets of Dublin in previous years, but, on this day, less than two years after the establishment of the Irish Free State, there was harmony.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZXLXSC5A6FCP3OHCYCTBNLSV2I","additional_properties":{},"content":"The crowds that descended on the centre of Dublin for Armistice Day 1924 took everyone by surprise, not least the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) which had no traffic contingency plan in place.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XVEMRSQQ3FCULGMG2CW2VO2FOQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It anticipated a small crowd that would form up around 11am, observe a two-minute silence and then disperse from whence it had come. Nobody anticipated this. A crowd estimated at 50,000 turned up on a normal working day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z5A4NBZA5JACPLXUQVWKFTSLAE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The object that had prompted this national outpouring of grief and remembrance was a large Celtic cross, 13 feet six inches high made of solid granite and weighing three tonnes. It was enclosed by a metal railing measuring 15 feet square. At its base was an inscription in Irish and English. “Do chum glóire Dé agus Onóra na hÉireann” (To the Glory of God and Honour of Ireland). In commemoration of the victories of Guillemont and Ginchy Sept 3rd and 9th 1916 and in memory of those who fell therein and of all the Irishmen who gave their lives in the Great War RIP”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJ6LUUIHIBCWLCLGWI7BILCMWA","additional_properties":{},"content":"At 11am the bell at Trinity College Dublin sounded and the whole crowd fell silent save for the quiet sobbing of a number of women and children and a siren from the docks calling on the men to down tools for the two-minute silence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4NDJNJJOFBGWTADEGRDFRF4624","additional_properties":{},"content":"Then Maj Gen William Hickie, the man who first instigated the idea of a series of memorial Celtic crosses to remember the Irish who died, stepped forward. He slipped the cord and the black draping covering the monument fell to earth. He placed a wreath on the head of the cross where the inscription was carved into the granite “16th (Irish) Division”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6OGIHJQU3VHJTCAMPMRLNZD5EA","additional_properties":{},"content":"A wreath was laid by Senator Col Maurice Moore, formerly of the Connaught Rangers, on behalf of the Government. It read, “O Rialtas Saorstát Éireann i gcuimhne na nÉireannach uile a fuair bás son choga mór (From the Government of Saorstat Eireann in memory of all the Irishmen who died in the Great War)”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6NEBLDIVVGDLPHDSDTT6VZG4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The cross had been paid for by public subscription following a public appeal by Hickie, the officer who commanded the 16th (Irish) Division during the war, and Maj Gen Bryan Mahon, both senators in the Irish Free State.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C267KUSQCJGMFAWSBYMATOCT3A","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Every nation whose sons took part in the war has erected on the scene of their victories and sacrifices some monument to commemorate their share in the great effort and testify to its remembrance,” the men wrote, successfully appealing for funds.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ONU7JUAT7JBETNQRBWFO5H32ZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Irish Times commented favourably on the Armistice Day 1924 events in Dublin. “The brave have now been honoured in their native land. Loyalty to the Empire is seen to be consistent with perfect loyalty to the Free State. The Government’s tolerant and moderate policy is largely responsible for the better conditions of things.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6D4K6TY545CKXGN2OTQBIPGGYQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"There would be three identical crosses in total – the first for Guillemont, the second remembered the 16th (Irish) Division’s liberation of the Flanders villages of Wytschaete in 1917 (along with the 36th (Ulster) Division, and a third was erected in the mountains of Macedonia to remember the 10th (Irish) Division and their involvement in the Salonika campaign on the Eastern Front.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KKZ3RYGBGRCVDNZMAVMROCP6A4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Guillemont Cross was finally erected in France on August 23rd, 1926. The guest of honour was Field Marshal Joseph Joffre, the acclaimed saviour of France and the victor of the most important battle of the war, the Battle of the Marne in September 1914. Ireland and France, he said, were “sisters in sorrow”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q4XXETANDRDUPEFWIW4GKQTGCI","additional_properties":{},"content":"More than 1,200 Irishmen were killed in the liberation of the villages of Guillemont and Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme in September 1916. The most famous fatality of all was Tom Kettle, who died at Ginchy on September 9th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LY5F7ZQKHZC7NOI3NZVT25LM4Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"Two Victoria Crosses were awarded to Irishmen at Guillemont.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6RUJE5SHJNDOXMROB6DGYANF24","additional_properties":{},"content":"One went to Lieut John Holland of the 7th Leinsters, the son of a vet from Model Farm, Athy, Co Kildare. He showed extraordinary dash in leading his men on a bombing party which cleared German trenches and captured some 50 prisoners.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SCASZWFVQRFVRODOXYZXS7YQT4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The other was awarded to Private Thomas Hughes from Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, of the Connaught Rangers. He was initially injured, but had his wound dressed and returned to battle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JRTMWVK3SVFALBE6WQXLMPGZ5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"He singlehandedly disabled a German machine-gun post and was badly wounded in the assault. Hughes returned to Ireland and spent his latter years in poverty, eventually dying at the age of 56 in an old workhouse.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3QTKLIAAOJHIZCDTHDSIHUHV6U","additional_properties":{},"content":"His family were forced to sell his medals, which were acquired by the National Army Museum in London. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PJLM25NSVFFXTNHQRBIRVMVLWE","additional_properties":{},"content":"It has lent the Victoria Cross to the newly opened Monaghan County Museum, where it is now on display.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Ronan McGreevy"}},"name":"Ronan McGreevy"}]},"description":{"basic":"The crowds that descended on the city took everyone by surprise, not least the Dublin Metropolitan Police"},"display_date":"2024-11-11T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Grief and remembrance – Ronan McGreevy on Dublin’s Armistice Day in 1924","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WOZH7ZU7ONFWZO2GBL3FQY74SU","auth":{"1":"8e76dbbb539d636433c8f907036405cd8997a9ef11321ef8d97ef2a62cf392b2"},"focal_point":{"x":392,"y":323},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WOZH7ZU7ONFWZO2GBL3FQY74SU.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/11/grief-and-remembrance-ronan-mcgreevy-on-dublins-armistice-day-in-1924/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"254T5QZNC5FWBM6VRNRPFZJLAI","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/10/the-night-mayor-oliver-ohanlon-on-jimmy-walker-new-yorks-colourful-political-kingpin/","content_elements":[{"_id":"UHVZY2M545HGVHOPJJFNEGBRZ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"New York’s mayor James “Jimmy” Walker resigned in September 1932. The story of this colourful Irish-American civic leader has since been told in book and film form, as well as on the stage. The mayor was facing corruption charges when he resigned. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4Q465EPSKFBD3F6GT2DDI3P2MU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Walker’s father, William, came from Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, and emigrated to the US in 1870. He became a carpenter and entered local New York politics in 1887. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"RS2S4WPQVBHEDEZSS53LG22QJ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"His son Jimmy was born in 1881 and followed his father into local politics, becoming linked with the infamous Tammany Hall organisation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZHOHIO3G7ZB3HODNJCCXW4B6P4","additional_properties":{},"content":"During his political career, Jimmy Walker amassed several nicknames that were inspired by some of his most well-known traits. “Beau James” is how he was referred to due to his impeccably dapper appearance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QTDOYPWRZ5FZNEC742366JPAIM","additional_properties":{},"content":"As he was never on time for meetings or functions (including his own inauguration), he earned the nickname of “The Late Mayor”. When he partied into the night in the city that never sleeps and missed mornings in City Hall, he was awarded the sobriquet of “The Night Mayor”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L5KRMPFJIRAKDM2Y3FUJXOJDIU","additional_properties":{},"content":"His start in politics came when he entered the New York State Assembly in 1910. He trained as a lawyer and entered the New York Senate in 1915. While there, he introduced a bill to legalise boxing in the State. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"MLOQISQVK5DSTFWXNSV5EKSL5U","additional_properties":{},"content":"He remained in the Senate until 1926 when he won the mayoral election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WA3Q5LPENBCXLCBXMF2RZT5I4M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Prohibition was still in place in the 1920s and he was known to frequent speakeasies near to where he lived in Greenwich Village. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FC72BJX6HNGHFIW3XTHRC4GWYQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was also an avid theatre-goer and liked to attend Broadway theatres.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QR7O3STR45FKHLCYABJNQB3VKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"During his two terms in office, he promoted a raft of popular legislation to appeal to the masses. He lifted the ban on ball games on Sundays and created the Department of Sanitation. He also made improvements in the playgrounds and park systems, instigated the unification of the city’s public hospitals and pushed for an expansion of the subway system.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IYNW2S66JBHHDDFBXY6UIAZVFU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the early years of his first term, he visited Ireland for a weekend and enjoyed a packed agenda.","type":"text"},{"_id":"67IXNQVVPNH3HK5LXPQWS756NA","additional_properties":{},"content":" In August 1927, thousands turned out along the harbour front in Dun Laoghaire to welcome him when he arrived on the mail boat from Holyhead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FDHPQ2XOORBYHLIWNBEGR6GDBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Come Back to Erin was played by a band on the pier as he was welcomed onboard by a deputation from the Dublin City Commissioners. As he stepped on to Irish soil, the band played Amhrán na bhFiann and the Star Spangled Banner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KJ2VMF37VRG2ZBVDM3EVLV7WN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was received by the American Minister (Ambassador) at his official residence in the Phoenix Park and later attended a ball in the Gresham Hotel. The following day, he visited WT Cosgrave at Government Buildings and paid a courtesy visit to the Governor General in the Phoenix Park.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BHM4XZSUWJA3RG6SMCWUMLTMXI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Outside of Dublin, Walker was invited to John McCormack’s home, Moore Abbey, in Monasterevin. He also made a number of stops in Kilkenny – to receive the freedom of the city and to see his father’s birthplace. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"TSC76DYYINCHHKA3QTNA4AB7TQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"His car was led into Castlecomer by a band and he made a speech to an assembled crowd of locals.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SJDIS5SHORFJ7I3RZLKH2CRWJA","additional_properties":{},"content":"After visiting Ireland, he made his way to other European countries and always wanting to look his sartorial best, it was reported in the press that he travelled with a collection of over 40 suits.","type":"text"},{"_id":"POQ3PILF4NFJ3EVVNURDB7OKXA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The trip was not without incident. One American newspaper claimed that Walker “caused a sensation” in Rome, as he visited the Pope before meeting Mussolini and his government officials. Walker stated that he called to see the Pope because “I am a Catholic” and that he had to fulfil his religious duty before anything else.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YWOHEWFO3BETNGGHQEQMJFP4HY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Walker was re-elected in 1929 but rumours of corruption started to circulate. A committee was established in 1931 to look into corruption in New York City as the state governor, Franklin D Roosevelt, wanted to get to the bottom of the rumours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T27TUOMOTZD5JMQQUIS6OUKT5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Walker was unable to account for certain deposits in his bank account and amid charges of “graft”, he was forced to resign from office in September 1932, the first New York mayor in history to do so. Walker went on a three-year tour of Europe with his showgirl-mistress, spending much of the time in England.","type":"text"},{"_id":"44EK4C2MKBF7NFGYLANWMMGQ64","additional_properties":{},"content":"He paid another visit to Ireland in the summer of 1935. It was a much more relaxed affair this time. He and his now wife drove from Cork to Castlecomer and passed through Clonmel, Co Tipperary, on the way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NIE4DSW3D5G6LKUGN3K4MBLW3M","additional_properties":{},"content":"When he died at age 65 in 1946, Time magazine remembered him as a “dapper, silk-hatted symbol of the Fabulous Twenties”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GH7DWZQTIZCYNBP6MHZKEU6FPE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Reproached for having filled city offices with “sluggish Tammany favorites”, Time magazine argued that “jazz-happy New York” loved his flamboyant style.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H5CRWMJVLREFLKMW3VMGC4UKHQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Walker’s life inspired books and two Hollywood movies. The Night Mayor was released in 1932, and Beau James, staring Bob Hope and Vera Mills, was released in 1957.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Oliver O'Hanlon"}]},"description":{"basic":"He promoted a raft of popular legislation to appeal to the masses"},"display_date":"2024-11-10T18:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Night Mayor – Oliver O’Hanlon on Jimmy Walker, New York’s colourful political kingpin","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"4O7JZ462ENEQZHVNJ55BDOVAAM","auth":{"1":"cfa4c1ee66ed8082cbd7bdacaff46f32acef5e7d4d9630d210d42567cdb5b674"},"focal_point":{"x":419,"y":212},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/4O7JZ462ENEQZHVNJ55BDOVAAM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/10/the-night-mayor-oliver-ohanlon-on-jimmy-walker-new-yorks-colourful-political-kingpin/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"ZK6PYFXULZECFE6OU2MF6CFUFA","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/08/a-head-of-its-time-frank-mcnally-on-the-bicentenary-of-howth-road-and-more-about-wakes/","content_elements":[{"_id":"KHUYJ3IWFJFNHNUBQDBASTQXIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329748},"content":"Readers will be familiar with the traditional advice, in response to any request for directions in Ireland: “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6Z7NQXKI35E7XKGEYHYSCRVXVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329749},"content":"But until recently, whenever taking the Howth Road out of Dublin, I always thought I was on safe ground starting at Fairview and turning left just after Marino Crescent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FKP65KL4BVFLRJOSYFOZMRXN4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329750},"content":"Now I know better. It turns out that Howth Road is celebrating its bicentenary this year. And thanks to a pamphlet on the history of its constriction, I now belatedly realise that the road starts in London – a subject to which we’ll return later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMJM4K7W4FA2HDB45QV6NDKSQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329751},"content":"I was reminded of all this by an email on a different subject from a long-time correspondent, Donal Kennedy, who I happen to know is <i>from</i> Howth but has been exiled in London for decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VWM3GN2FYFAFBFREKYRNUMT7V4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329752},"content":"He was responding to yesterday’s column, on the subject of a wake I attended in Cavan earlier this week and on wakes in general. And he has astonished me by writing this:","type":"text"},{"_id":"H22FJAS6WVHZXG2QSS37MK2UOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329753},"content":"“A suburban Dubliner, I’ve never been at a wake. Nor was my mother, a city girl, born in 1901. Nor my father, born in Kilkenny City in 1899. So your column was a revelation.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJRKRNSCCBGQXIYDHNXDZEIQVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329754},"content":"The revelation was mutual, clearly. My first reaction on reading Donal’s admission was: “Is that possible?” My second reaction was to ask a question that occurs with increasing frequency as I get older: “Am I weird?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EFM3LMI4O5AVFFLDKZUNJL7GZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329755},"content":"Wakes have always been such a natural part of life where I grew up – the South Ulster border region – that I find it hard to believe they could be beyond the experience of others from this island, even Dubliners.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TT6VN4EFDNCI3MW4VQMX2RKWGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329756},"content":"Although that said, a certain female acquaintance of mine from Tipperary, with whom I discussed the subject briefly on Thursday, said something similar.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RGNUASWJF5AFZN5OROO3GUTKFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329757},"content":"Noting the increased use of funeral homes where she comes from, she didn’t suggest we were weird, exactly. I think her exact phrase was: “Ye’re more traditional up there.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6EXLFJO5SZBQNB3X75VVBMRIIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329758},"content":"Anyway, leaving wakes aside for now, Donal’s email also digressed to the subject of the way his parents pronounced placenames, closer to the Irish original.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WUAVDNZ2BZAWDCDQT6S3LFI3UI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329759},"content":"Hence his mother’s tendency to call a certain north Dublin suburb “Rahany”, as everyone did “before elocution teachers misled their pupils”. Hence too his father’s memory, from years living in Cork, that the supposedly unlearned there always referred to a certain town north of the city as “Malla”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q5BNPNA3PVEJVK2OR5J4VHIQKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329760},"content":"Of his own home place, Donal reminds me that in the mouths of elders, it used to have two syllables: “Howeth”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N7LQAC66V5AKTPLDTEKQPJ6C7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329761},"content":"This was a nod to its Viking origins as Hoved, meaning “Head”. Which means of course that “Howth Head” is a tautology. But then maybe, as Horslips used to argue in the dancehalls of my youth, two heads are better than one.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2L33IUMDO5FDDCX3JYPY6KBVFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329762},"content":"On Howth Road’s bicentenary, it was another reader, Leo George Devitt, who sent me the potted history.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SHYDFWZZRVGEHNIH2G3MBFRXK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329763},"content":"The road’s construction in 1823/24, by Scottish engineer Thomas Telford, arose from a combination of the need to improve access to London for Irish parliamentarians and of Howth’s temporary promotion as the terminus of the steam packet from Holyhead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H4ZOARGACRHQDJ64DBIKL52D3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329764},"content":"The frequent journeys made by Irish parliamentarians produced “constant irritation and complaint respecting the road through North Wales and the condition of the road from Howth to Dublin”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IRZNZPQ5VNBGDLC7EHPSBJTK6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329765},"content":"Consequently, and 1819 Act of Parliament provided for construction of a bridge over the Menai Strait and a new road of 21 miles across the island of Anglesea.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H4S66LSIKBDQHKCGLHUHQFQGA4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329766},"content":"On the Irish side of the sea, meanwhile, Telford’s contract was extended to be known as the “London – Holyhead – Dublin Road”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGCTB5QTFZCOZAKUJA7L2PILBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329767},"content":"The choice of Howth as packet terminus was greeted with horror in some circles.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FZRU4HRIAJEM5OJDGFFRCS22JI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329768},"content":"One pamphleteer, no doubt a southsider, warned:","type":"text"},{"_id":"JRASQN2P3ZFLDGH2TGYFPO246U","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329769},"content":"“Let any man of common sense travel the road from Dublin to Howth. Let Him there see what security he can find for his person or property in a dark night. He should have a troop of horse to guard him against land robbers; and at high water . . . he ought to have a gunboat sailing along the strand inside the North Bull to prevent sea pirates attacking him . . . \"","type":"text"},{"_id":"6ADVIHPZENHBLI2HOEB5S7QBV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329770},"content":"Despite such misgivings, in August 1818, Howth did become the mail station for Dublin. The passage from Holyhead was an average of 15 hours, five hours shorter than the journey from Holyhead to the Pigeon House.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DIA5BHKW5VEYZM75HUUKQTPAZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329771},"content":"By 1822, steam-boats had cut the trip to under six hours. The boats had become larger, however, and when a number of hulls were damaged by Howth Harbour’s rocky bed, the station was abandoned in 1834.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EBL7QINEVZD5PC2CNN5TKGE3FI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329772},"content":"“After the steam packet was transferred to Kingstown,” the pamphlet concludes, “Howth relapsed back into a pleasant fishing village, having gained a new harbour and a superhighway to Dublin.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YMFFRGLOYFA2ROFYOID6W2D6CI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329773},"content":"Another thing the village has achieved since then, perhaps ironically in light of Donal Kennedy’s email, is a worldwide fame for its association with the Irish wake.","type":"text"},{"_id":"INATHGO7GJARPDC55UZOLQSCF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329774},"content":"Well, Finnegans Wake, anyway. James Joyce’s novel of the subconscious evokes among things other a dead giant laid out across north Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MDECNU42P5GAPDIVL6ZAPW7OXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731088329775},"content":"His feet are in Chapelizod; another part of his body (possibly affected by rigor mortis) doubles as the Wellington Monument; and his head is at – where else? – Howth.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"I now belatedly realise that the road starts in London"},"display_date":"2024-11-08T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"A Head of its time – Frank McNally on the bicentenary of Howth Road and more about wakes","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SOU76Z2XBVFBZAKDGS4EAPXALI","auth":{"1":"2b0cbee0241e018b3f436bb7846384399b883cb164c95d431155f8cd6fde0f71"},"focal_point":{"x":538,"y":368},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SOU76Z2XBVFBZAKDGS4EAPXALI.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/08/a-head-of-its-time-frank-mcnally-on-the-bicentenary-of-howth-road-and-more-about-wakes/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"2MWNXYLBRBEQNHD22YX2JBTBAA","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/07/alive-and-kicking-frank-mcnally-on-the-continued-survival-of-the-great-irish-wake/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ANRXACCC3JG2NJXMEQ4SIYMBXI","additional_properties":{},"content":"At his mother’s wake in Cavan the other night, I got talking to a friend about the unwritten rules of this great Irish institution, as gently policed by local elders. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"A4WUSED4GZCQZDGCSYVLCFPQIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"At one point, for example, my friend had brought a plate of sandwiches into the room where the departed lay. This is not the done thing. While he had one himself, the sandwiches were quietly removed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LUZBPPK4MFAHNN5SAJA62OS3C4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Someone else brought a baby into the room, and that too was deemed contrary to custom. Older children were welcome to come and go, if they wanted. Not so infants in arm.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L5V3HRWNANBFTBYTWEXGKM7UDU","additional_properties":{},"content":"I remembered my own first wake experience when I was about five, creeping into the room where my grandmother was laid out and, after a peek around the door, fleeing back downstairs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CPBDVXNWSZCCTGR7MYA3RTVZBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"But then there was my daughter, who when her maternal grandmother died and it was decided to bury her with a favourite pair of pearl earrings, volunteered to be the one to put them on the body and did so with calm assurance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FSWI3NH7JJEKJMBKH64D4ICO5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"At the Cavan wake, as is general custom, they had covered up all mirrors and the TV screen. They hadn’t stopped any clocks, however, something that used to be common practice and maybe still is in places.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6PHJQDLVUJEAFFK5LWIJZ4SUNM","additional_properties":{},"content":"There were of course mountains of food, meanwhile, brought by friends and neighbours. The women of Ireland (especially) seem to have a deep, primal urge to feed people at funerals.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P6W3MJDWCNGTRMAR43YRV3PQOA","additional_properties":{},"content":"In any case, an Irish wake has more food than a Polish wedding. Leftovers in Cavan were donated to the local homelessness service, I’m told, and a great teapot and Pyrex dish amnesty is now under way, as owners and utensils are gradually reunited.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FH65S6SFSNAVXFWTWTKVQDRARA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The wake house was on a narrow, rural side road. And one of things that impressed <i>me</i> was the traffic management, as a team of men in hi-vis jackets, wielding torches, directed us precisely where to park.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JNLVR7NGJZGRLF7OT4WCWQ7BUE","additional_properties":{},"content":"It didn’t look like a Garda operation, so I suspected the involvement of that other, martially-drilled body, the GAA. My friend wasn’t sure who it was. The operation had just fallen into place somehow.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDMVJ2KCLNB27HJZP75JZLG3RQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another thing that impressed him, he told me since, is the post-wake tradition whereby, as the cortege proceeded to church next day, shops along the route closed and shopkeepers stood outside to pay respects.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NEEVUVJKOVFDXKYABD7ITQEEZU","additional_properties":{},"content":"I remembered that at my mother’s funeral too. Even on the Protestant side of our Main Street, shopkeepers stood in vigil. It was very moving.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XHSMABK4GJBB5IK72OSX2W6QBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"But back to the Irish wake, the keynote of which – at least when the deceased has lived long and well, as was the case in Cavan – is celebration. There is a brief suspension of jollity for the saying of the rosary, usually.","type":"text"},{"_id":"57RVMAVIYVAQBGI7OO7FZOZGVA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Then, no sooner have we lamented the awfulness of the human condition, Catholic-style – “To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears” – than everyone goes back to talking, laughing, and eating.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q73JRAATUNERHNOBU2KZ7DYUXU","additional_properties":{},"content":"It’s almost a century now since my fellow Monaghan man Patrick Kavanagh lamented the supposed demise of the traditional wake. And yes, some things he recalled have indeed died out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4T3R5RULGFFGHDTAGUYMW6AMQU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In a chapter of The Green Fool entitled “Death and Funerals”, he described the old wake <i>before</i> the wake, when not just family but neighbours too would gather for the demise of the faithful departing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RHVANUA3HVFF3BKPHSGADF5BFE","additional_properties":{},"content":"At least one would be an amateur pathologist. But unlike college-educated pathologists, who only record the time of death after it happens, the skilled amateur had to record it an advance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OBRDS2IL2RAZ3AIHAPYXA6QJO4","additional_properties":{},"content":"For “Red Pat”, Kavanagh’s local expert, a glimpse at the sickbed might be enough to declare: “He’ll not pass one o’clock.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTMOA7QL3ZGVNHV4FP5H3R3P5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Less drastic predictions could be bad news. When an elderly patient revived once and Red Pat suggested he could live another week, according to Kavanagh, there was quiet despair:","type":"text"},{"_id":"DP77AJQUS5DT5LIUPETED6MX4M","additional_properties":{},"content":"“We didn’t want the man to live another week. It was a slack period in the neighbourhood and a wake and funeral would be a break in the monotony.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"3A4D5IYO5FCWFNKHEETMS7GIN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Once death did occur, the moment was always witnessed. That was part of the reason for stopping clocks – to show the vigil keepers had done their job.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XI5MNYGD5RDLTL24LEIUJYXJBQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Thereafter, the prospect of “an old man or woman going on a cruise to eternity with baggage complete and passports in order” was cause for unbridled celebration.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D6W64GBJD5BDTDSPS4AUWBQCBI","additional_properties":{},"content":"This could be infamously raucous. A friend in Enfield tells me of a local case of Finnegan’s (or indeed Finnegans) Wake once, wherein a corpse was removed from the bed and its place taken by a prankster with drink on board, to scare mourners.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5AO2TIGSCBHVJOIPH6OSSU52YM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Which is just the sort of thing that led to the phasing out of the old alcohol-and-snuff wakes, in favour of the tea-and-sandwich variety.","type":"text"},{"_id":"37W45UT6NRGVPHK7SN2DF6AULY","additional_properties":{},"content":"But Kavanagh was premature when he suggested that “continental Catholicism” had ended the celebrations: “So the wake passed out and we all began to wear long faces.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YBPYGPLWAFE2RBQ6HSCB7WSDYE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In his native south Ulster at least, the wearing of long faces at wakes continues to be optional. The celebratory aspect is still intact. And even in our more secular age, this part of death remains strangely life-affirming.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"There were of course mountains of food brought by friends and neighbours"},"display_date":"2024-11-07T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Alive and kicking – Frank McNally on the continued survival of the great Irish wake","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3K7WQJZC3JCPVPUP5GFQVJNN2U","auth":{"1":"19b0611ea28a90649859ccabc53ef9d65b65c46771eaca4c2a4ad21e22285b1e"},"focal_point":{"x":1717,"y":886},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3K7WQJZC3JCPVPUP5GFQVJNN2U.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/07/alive-and-kicking-frank-mcnally-on-the-continued-survival-of-the-great-irish-wake/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"35LLH5MQ7FH3TAPDT44RZXZZX4","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/06/ogham-thoughts-frank-mcnally-on-a-new-artwork-an-old-alphabet-and-the-longest-word-in-irish/","content_elements":[{"_id":"3WKT4UTTHZHA7ASYUGXUXBD2F4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The longest word in modern Irish, I’m told – or at least the longest you might meet in the wild, as opposed to one created in laboratory conditions – is grianghrafadóireachta, an adjective meaning “of photography”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"CU3VSSDQPFDORAMWIOEITTTESA","additional_properties":{},"content":"But at a lecture in the Royal Irish Academy on Tuesday night, some of us were introduced for the first time to an older term that outstretched that one be several characters: anrocomraircnicsiumairne.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C32ORFD25JE4BOHLN7D4MG5FPA","additional_properties":{},"content":"It’s mentioned in an ancient treatise on grammar, Auraicept na n-Éces (“Instruction of the poets”), thought to date from the eighth century but the only known copy of which is in the Book of Ballymote from circa 1391.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NZY2JWVZI5FUVADN7DC63HBZMA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The word may never have featured in conversation since, except among scholars. And yet, meaning as it does “all the mistakes we have committed”, it would still be useful today as a one-word prophylactic against hubris.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NBOPWHEYIZDSTGNJPJHOY5IQRU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Perhaps it’s about to make a comeback, because as of Tuesday it is the title of a new artwork, now in possession of the RIA, by Belfast-born Thomas Keyes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YPQ5X3YJCJGTVPNZ3RGYSVKWVE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Commissioned by the people behind a joint Glasgow-Maynooth research project on the old ogham alphabet, the painting develops a theme from the Book of Ballymote, in which the biblical Tower of Babel is used as a warning to writers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RSLDWBVQEVGHHJFFEAY6PVANCE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In Keyes’s version, the tower is rising again in a dystopian Dublin, whose citizens are represented by a range of anthropomorphic ogham letters.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H2DMMKUK6ZCTLGFN4HP35CVIJE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Featured characters include the legendary authors of the Auraicept. As a former graffiti artist, Keyes also somehow managed to pack in a modern history of that genre, referencing many practitioners from Belfast and Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6UM36WA7BRFGLO3XW46Y6SL24A","additional_properties":{},"content":"And speaking of grianghrafadoireachta, one of the modern mistakes his piece warns against is excessive absorption in smartphones, as citizens record themselves and scroll the internet obsessively.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GGNS7XD3PBCKLKURV4DZXUYBN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"A potential obstacle to the revival of anrocomraircnicsiumairne for everyday use is that it’s not easy to say. Even David Stifter, professor of Old and Middle Irish at Maynooth, palpably struggles with it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RKJQUUKILJCZDD3L3FV2TFK47M","additional_properties":{},"content":"As Tuesday’s master of ceremonies, he had to say it several times. And linguistic thoroughbred though he is, he approached it like a nervous showjumper negotiating a triple-jump at the RDS in slippery conditions In fairness, while he rattled a few bars, he didn’t knock any off.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JI3GAIOFY5GYTITIL7J65XSCAU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Mistakes were a running theme of the RIA event. Clearly the scribes of medieval Ireland, unlike Frank Sinatra, never found their regrets too few to mention, even if they sometimes had to disguise them in ogham.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZFV7CAWB25A4PH4BQZKXSJBBHQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hence a piece of marginalia by a ninth-century monk. He was working on a copy of Priscian’s Latin grammar but added the Irish word latheirt, meaning “excessive drunkenness” or “hangover” at the top of a page, in ogham.","type":"text"},{"_id":"E7H6IRJH5RHERP3DUR6BTJPEZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"As Deborah Hayden, head of Maynooth’s Department of Early Irish, joked, this may have been an apology for any shortcomings in his work transcribing the text. His copy, containing 3,500 glosses (and the coded confession) in Old Irish is now preserved at a Library in St Gall, Switzerland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FFECJ24YIZE5NC7V6B5IVAGJRQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hayden also explained the significance of the Tower of Babel in the Irish language’s origin legend. According to Auraicept na nÉces, it arose from the vacuum that followed the tower-building debacle, when scholar Fénius Farsaid was commissioned to produce a new language from the remains of all previous ones.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UWAMR3IX3RFGVBSPYJLVXCMXWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"This not only implied that Irish was superior to its predecessors, it also neatly absolved it from any blame for the tower-building project’s multilingual mix-up.","type":"text"},{"_id":"52X4YAO4IJBPTJ3PHWEDLOXORA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The language’s supposed superiority extended to ogham, which the Auraicept included alongside the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets. It was claimed that ogham was the best and most exact of the quartet, because it was “invented last”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VAXE3VIVEVFXJL4MCTAJU7VS74","additional_properties":{},"content":"Alas, the writing system is not widely used today, although it retains a certain cachet among designers. Hayden’s slide show included the sign for a “hot yoga” studio in Boston, whose name Analaigh (Irish for “Breathe”) is also rendered in ogham.","type":"text"},{"_id":"37LLNBH5FVEN5HUYJPF5NWUKQI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another example, nearer ogham – sorry, home – is a solicitors’ office in Cork, McCarthy Teahan on Father Matthew Quay. Red and black blocks of colour on the logo are divided by a white ogham stave. On closer inspection, apparently, the characters translate as “Bob Rote This”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"73AZVJXOR5DJ5PVJ2HWFDHYMZI","additional_properties":{},"content":"But the one of Hayden’s slides that struck a chord – for me personally – featured part an old poem in the RIA manuscript collection, written in ogham, called An Clampar.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2JCNEGFIE5D3LMRZSJOPL2FOZE","additional_properties":{},"content":"This clampar was not to be confused with clampers of the kind you encounter in dystopian Dublin, although the Irish word means “clash, quarrel, discord, etc,” so there may be an overlap.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6BR7DMHPWRAP7DCK4PTVB5H4YY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Anyway, it reminded me that the night before, I parked a rental car on a city street and paid in an advance for an hour’s parking next day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"25SLINCHFVGOVLNODJZTIB7B7Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"But in the Department of Early Tuesday, I was slightly late getting up – possibly due to some lingering lathairt from the weekend – so that by the time I remembered the car, the paid parking and traditional 15 minutes’ grace had both elapsed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"634VBQSVTND33J5AV6QLUASOFY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Rounding the corner urgently, I found my rental all alone in the bay, apart from a “parking services” van alongside, ready to strike. As I drove away smugly, under the clampers’ noses, that too felt like poetry.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"The scribes of medieval Ireland, unlike Sinatra, never found their regrets too few to mention"},"display_date":"2024-11-06T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ogham thoughts – Frank McNally on a new artwork, an old alphabet, and the longest word in Irish","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"Y6OEPZXDQNEPJDKIKXHSGDCS64","auth":{"1":"0762bd362036bca664117d1236f4bd6041f724d409a951f302196cd74c14a2a7"},"focal_point":{"x":979,"y":820},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/Y6OEPZXDQNEPJDKIKXHSGDCS64.jpeg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/06/ogham-thoughts-frank-mcnally-on-a-new-artwork-an-old-alphabet-and-the-longest-word-in-irish/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"NCTZKS7JYVCKTEY75VFNGZUXDY","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/05/presidential-bearing-brian-maye-on-erskine-childers/","content_elements":[{"_id":"IRM5FML2NFGWZMFND2AYEBOZFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140649},"content":"Although he has the dubious distinctions of being the shortest-term president of Ireland and the first and only one to die in office, Erskine Hamilton Childers had an unbroken 35-year Dáil career, during nearly 30 of which he was a minister.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CEKNWQZS2VBI5NVILCN6YW4VTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140650},"content":"He died 50 years ago on November 17th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4O3LDP3RCBGYTFMO22S2ZPM7FU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140651},"content":"He was born on December 11th, 1905, at Embankment Gardens, Chelsea, London, the elder of two sons of Robert Erskine Childers, a civil servant at the time, and Mary Osgood, who was from Boston.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZSRLAMLKVG2NPIRVIZ4SPSO3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140652},"content":"Reared and educated in England, he spent summer holidays as a child with the Bartons of Glendalough House, Annamoe, Co Wicklow, who were his father’s maternal cousins.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5KWV7BZTNRCTLJJ4CRQQZOCZUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140653},"content":"At the age of 16, he was allowed to visit his father briefly in prison before his execution (in November 1922) during the Irish Civil War.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L7OCMCI3G5BCVCAIK3WIVUENUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140654},"content":"Following his graduation from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1928, with a degree in history and politics, he worked in Paris as a travel agent before moving to Ireland where he was successively advertising manager for de Valera’s Irish Press, secretary of the National Agricultural and Industrial Development Association and secretary of the Federation of Irish Manufacturers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JI2Q4AK5GZDMPAOUVRTSUXCBAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140655},"content":"Inheriting his parents’ strong republicanism, he joined Fianna Fáil and contested his first general election in 1938, where he took one of two seats for the party in Athlone-Longford, surprisingly replacing one of the sitting Fianna Fáil TDs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XXEK4BBZIRDVZG2SOFVGXUOAXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140656},"content":"Not a great vote-getter and usually scraping in on a later count, yet he never failed to get elected. He represented Athlone-Longford till 1948, then Longford-Westmeath till 1961 before moving to Monaghan. The latter was a risky move as it was a three-seater; Fianna Fáil hoped he’d attract some of the sizable Protestant vote in the constituency. He won the seat and continued to hold it until retirement in 1973, when he contested the presidency.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VN6RWQEVJNHGLMK65GHU5ZWBNI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140657},"content":"Economics and industrial development were his main contributions to Dáil debates and from 1944 to 1948 he served as a parliamentary secretary (now junior minister), mainly in local government, where he organised the county engineering service, formulated the Public Libraries Act and introduced a number of road-safety measures. When Fianna Fáil returned to power in 1951, he was made minister for posts and telegraphs; at 45, he was the youngest member of cabinet.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IKGS4F6TKJDW5OMFJAKU6Y5JB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140658},"content":"Greatly interested in public broadcasting, he introduced innovations, established Comhairle Radio Éireann to advise him on policy and appointed the first director of broadcasting from outside the Civil Service. As minister of lands, forestry and fisheries (1957-59), he reorganised Bord Iascaigh Mhara and extended afforestation, among other initiatives. New taoiseach Seán Lemass appointed him minister for transport and power (1959-69). On Childers’s advice, Thekla Beere was appointed the first woman secretary of an Irish government department. As part of the reorganisation of CIÉ, he closed uneconomic rail lines, which proved unpopular, and purchased and modernised the British and Irish Steam Packet Company, making it the first Irish-owned passenger-transport company on the Irish Sea. He also established Bord Fáilte (1962), which set up regional tourism bodies, and he promoted many tourism innovations, including summer schools and An Óige, the youth-hostelling organisation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QCPPSKPTFNHWJHTREFMSAWYSQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140659},"content":"He’d supported Jack Lynch over George Colley in the leadership contest to succeed Lemass and was made tánaiste and minister for health in 1969. The 1970 Health Act set up regional health boards to take over health management from local authorities (but he conceded local councillors majority representation on the boards), a Comhairle na nOspidéal to oversee consultant appointments, and a health levy was imposed on middle- and higher-income earners.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DLKAORSU5NBUNAIZLIA5FBYJ64","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140660},"content":"When the situation in Northern Ireland erupted, he took a conciliatory approach, strongly opposed the use of violence and was deeply hostile to Neil Blaney and Charles Haughey during the so-called “arms crisis”. Although his stance caused some unease in Monaghan Fianna Fáil circles, he topped the poll for the first time in his career at the 1973 general election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XVKV23RLTZGJ3DWRQYBQDQEU5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140661},"content":"Pauric Dempsey and Lawrence White, who wrote the entry on Childers in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, said that his ministerial career was known for efficiency and capable administration rather than leadership; they referred to his “insatiable appetite” for statistics and his endless streams of memoranda, not only to his civil servants but also to government colleagues (the latter were more amused than annoyed by this, they remarked). Shy, aloof, innately courteous, he was “earnest to the point of eccentricity, had a reputation for parsimony and committed some legendary gaffes,” they also observed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EQ522MZWQJAM3CIQZ55CZAGMXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140662},"content":"It’s been suggested that outgoing president Eamon de Valera leaned on Jack Lynch to nominate Childers as the party’s presidential candidate in 1973. He proved a surprising winner but his relationship with the sitting Fine Gael-Labour coalition was uneasy at times. His sudden death from a heart attack at the age of 68, after 16 months in office, caused widespread shock and his state funeral drew a huge attendance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CJE3DZFSQJCJXKASZRSVETQY3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140663},"content":"He married at the age of 19 Ruth Ellen Dow, who was six years his senior. They had three sons and two daughters.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RBOCN5MHXZAS5GJMLPY7ZRBRLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730907140664},"content":"She died in 1950 and two years later, he married Margaret Mary (“Rita”) Dudley, a Catholic. They had one daughter.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"The first and only president of Ireland to die in office"},"display_date":"2024-11-05T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Presidential bearing – Brian Maye on Erskine Childers ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"MZNZF5C2PRFVPMDMQWRDWDEATY","auth":{"1":"4d843e65b3d85d9248e54e84df7e38b29f23c8a4cd2f170650e58dd618415f86"},"focal_point":{"x":701,"y":224},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/MZNZF5C2PRFVPMDMQWRDWDEATY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/05/presidential-bearing-brian-maye-on-erskine-childers/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"GYNKJ6P635BLPIGUSAOHY4WFGM","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/04/geography-and-destiny-ronan-mcgreevy-on-the-boundary-commission/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AYXCEK5PEZC3LILCOEYCEZDT3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372120},"content":"The Anglo-Irish Treaty would most likely not have been signed by the Irish delegates but for the inclusion of the Boundary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XYCTBEC6N5HIZHGQOUINY2UU2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372121},"content":"Article 12 of the Treaty stated that the commission would “determine in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions, the boundaries between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland”. This woolly phrasing – what does “compatible with economic and geographic conditions” even mean? – was nevertheless seized upon by the Irish delegation as a way of negating the impact of partition which was already a reality.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AAEWHX5QHBE2VLJ2H4IHWCOEPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372122},"content":"Northern Ireland had been established by the time the Treaty talks began and the British government made it clear its existence was not up for discussion.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D4HN7SYAVJANFKO32T6YQRA5KI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372123},"content":"However, nationalist Ireland expected the commission would cede the majority nationalist counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone to the Free State, along with Derry city and south Armagh, therefore making the fledging northern state “sink into insignificance”, as Michael Collins put it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YXH3267IWVGYHJLOUDM5E6C6DY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372124},"content":"So great was the expectation that Article 12 barely featured in the Treaty debates.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SUG6GDX3DNHZTGC7XEI5MBRZRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372125},"content":"Most nationalists believed the Treaty was an interim arrangement as far as the Border was concerned and they expected the commission to deliver for nationalist Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZQXMTYJESZEZFEQZAYNU7JU6Z4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372126},"content":"Those heady expectations had already been tempered when the first meeting of the three-member commission took place at 5 and 6 Clement’s Lane in London on Friday, November 7th, 1924.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZPS7EO3TDNAH3K4BHOI3B2M7WE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372127},"content":"The commission’s deliberations had been delayed by the Civil War which only ended in May 1923 and by political turmoil in the UK which had seen the fall of a minority Labour government with its replacement by a Tory government led by Stanley Baldwin, which had just taken office.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZKEL5CWDX5ERHNL3GPPR3DZBSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372128},"content":"Most of those who signed the Treaty were either dead, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith among them, or out of office, like David Lloyd George or Winston Churchill.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQIHC53ERBA3ZKPE3IW4WMJFYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372129},"content":"Nevertheless, an editorial in the Offaly Independent opined it had “every hope that in a few months we will see these two counties, as a result of the findings of the commission, reckoned to be part of the Free State”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QJOTSNXXCRFGFEM7MDFPEGNRZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372130},"content":"The commission consisted of the chairman Justice Richard Feetham, Dr Eoin MacNeill on behalf of the Free State, and Joseph R (JR) Fisher, a journalist and barrister, who was appointed by the British government to represent the interests of Northern Ireland. Sir James Craig’s Northern administration refused to send a representative or to make a submission to the commission.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ATNST5MABVF6NHENWDDL77VG2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372131},"content":"From the beginning the chairman determined to take a minimalist approach to the commission and not the expansionist approach that nationalist Ireland had hoped when the Treaty was signed. Any settlement would retain Northern Ireland as a viable entity, he insisted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZ25C52RTFEDPCRIWMDXXRA5Z4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372132},"content":"Majority Catholic areas including Derry city would not be “compatible with economic conditions”, as Derry was essential to the survival of the North and majority nationalist parts of south Down were ruled out because they provided the water for Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3NXJ54RKVRBXVKUZVE45Q2MNH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372133},"content":"Neither would Feetham countenance the possibilities of plebiscites, which were common in Europe at the time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D2EC7Q7XSRFNRJI4QHS3MDJ26I","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372134},"content":"The Free State government made an early submission to Feetham.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QAPUIXPGVJF2BCOOL2ZKB36X6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372135},"content":"As far as it was concerned, the Free State had jurisdiction over the North unless the inhabitants of certain areas opted out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TB7ERYXGHZBO3BNUCUTA6YQKH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372136},"content":"Any area in Northern Ireland where the majority of the inhabitants wished to be part of the Free State should be allowed to do so and the government saw its role as “trustees” of the nationalist population in the North.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGRTA7RBS5GQTI6FM6MLPNAIMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372137},"content":"MacNeill could hardly have had a clearer mandate, but he would prove to be a disastrous appointment. He was chosen because he was a northerner and held a cabinet rank as the minister for education. He was unable to devote his time exclusively to the critical task of determining the borders of his own state.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DRQ5D5RM55ETFMPTIEK3EEA5KE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372138},"content":"He was lacking in guile and impassively allowed Feetham to dominate proceedings. Irish nationalism needed a street fighter with a degree of cunning to fight the case. MacNeill was none of these things. He was other-worldly, with a scholarly cast of mind.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QIBQ5G3C35G7HK2K3HXQZYU6YY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372139},"content":"The faith placed in him by the president of the Executive Council, William T Cosgrave, was woefully misplaced.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DTEIYTIDBRHRPPIMPHRJ5TP5SY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372140},"content":"MacNeill allowed Feetham to draw up the terms of reference and the scope of the commission without insisting, as he was supposed to do, that the Free State expected the widespread transfer of Catholic-majority areas along the Border to it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLHGAJ65IZFMXKRTHTPYPP57AI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372141},"content":"He made no comment when leaks appeared in the unionist press which could only have come from Fisher.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6XST76G5KVGNTDU6PL342WSALI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372142},"content":"After a few weeks of deliberations, the commission moved to Ireland in December to hear from communities along the Border. Only one of the three jurisdictions involved in the commission, the Irish Free State, behaved in good faith. The other two were bent on preserving the status quo.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JQIBV7MZONBZDCGM3NPGG3V7EE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372143},"content":"The commission’s deliberations were leaked a year later in December 1925. It envisaged only piecemeal transfers to the Free State and, to the shock of many, and even suggested the transfer a sliver of land in east Donegal to Northern Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GHPXAXLAH5AADDHGM2IT3KTMDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730740372144},"content":"MacNeill had taken his oath of confidentiality and kept it to the letter. As a consequence, WT Cosgrave’s government was shocked by the findings. MacNeill resigned and issued a mea culpa. He was not the right man for the job, he admitted, but it was far too late for northern nationalists.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Ronan McGreevy"}},"name":"Ronan McGreevy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Northern nationalists felt abandoned by process"},"display_date":"2024-11-04T18:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Geography and destiny – Ronan McGreevy on the Boundary Commission","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"M24PHX3R6JE2BKQH3JQFTE7C7M","auth":{"1":"11e8022f5040ba4e6a9a2100517b5d7f35d76896e3e9c3646e016c341050c368"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/M24PHX3R6JE2BKQH3JQFTE7C7M.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/04/geography-and-destiny-ronan-mcgreevy-on-the-boundary-commission/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"NNZTLTUY3BAGZIUW7FPVYMNRU4","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/01/imposter-boy-frank-mcnally-on-another-appearance-of-the-flann-obrien-who-wasnt/","content_elements":[{"_id":"OHAXJQ2AK5DHHPKU52ZPWF6VQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503318},"content":"I see that a portrait of Flann O’Brien has taken its deserved place on the walls of the Devonshire Arms, the much-talked about (and partly Irish-owned) London pub celebrated for the quality of its Guinness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W6RWN5AWQZACTC5SSPBQMQRAXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503319},"content":"It’s an excellent picture by a fine artist, Belfast-born Dameon Priestly. There is one small drawback, however. The man featured in it is not Flann.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A23E7HSMDZDHTFYBBRTLBBUDZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503320},"content":"This confusion arises – again – because the painting was inspired by a well-known photograph of Brian O’Nolan, which has been much reproduced – even on some of his own books – although he doesn’t feature in it either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7Z3CAU543ZGNNG3PLG7JO7MC4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503321},"content":"The photo was taken circa 1945 in Dublin’s Palace Bar, a place O’Nolan (aka Flann, Myles na gCopaleen, and many other pseudonyms) did indeed frequent then.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X7ENNQQRYVHQRC6DK6JQA75ANI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503322},"content":"He may well have been on the premises at the time. He is not, however, in the picture. The man who is was the poet Robert Farren (1909-1984), aka Roibeárd Ó Faracháin, as revealed by his son Ronan Farren in a letter to this paper in 2017. That letter was inspired by the photograph’s then most recent act of imposture, in this very newspaper – O’Nolan’s employer for 26 years – to accompany the review of a book about him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GGUK6KYOIFBSLCCEMG3KCYMS54","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503323},"content":"And however unfortunate, as I wrote at the time, it was not without aptness that the shape-shifting writer had been so supplanted: “He of all people would have understood the existentially-threatening condition implied in a common Hiberno-English phrase: ‘He’s not himself lately’. O’Nolan spent his career pretending to be other people. And sometimes even the other people (eg Myles, often written by [his friend Niall] Montgomery, were not who they were supposed to be either.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SLK66R7APFHU7PV7DGFAVJXQOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503324},"content":"But seven years on, clearly, the image refuses to die. And its continued popularity suggests that, for many people, Farren presents a more convincing version of O’Nolan than O’Nolan could ever manage himself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WEZR3LKUWNGYTI6UAMXGCBZSMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503325},"content":"That’s to say, he looked the part of a comic writer, at least in that picture: stroking his chin as a playful thought crosses his mind, betrayed only by smiling, bespectacled eyes. You can almost see Farren thinking up an ingenious pun, like the one in which Myles invented a temperature scale based on “Farren Height”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CMSMR6JINJH27E5YXJC62BYFNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503326},"content":"Whereas O’Nolan himself was something of a disappointment in this respect. His biographer Anthony Cronin remembered him as a “phantom” in the Palace Bar, always on the edge of the company forming “an invisible outer circle of his own”. Brendan Behan, who knew him later, said: “You had to look twice to see if he was there at all.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"N43V3VYVCJDCFFE2WHLU6FZJRU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503327},"content":"I’m reminded of another O’Nolan-themed artwork, by David O’Kane, submitted some years ago for a competition in the writer’s native Strabane. It would have comprised the sculpture of an empty hat and overcoat, back-lit and projected onto a wall, throwing a Myles-shaped shadow onto lines from a 1944 column : “My presence here is a ‘phenomenon’ so completely outside of and beyond the planes of existence which human thought is able to hypothesize into the structure of the universe that – considered in ‘relation’ to that presence – the whole monstrous procession of life can only be understood as a sort of epiphenomenal magic lantern show, too dim, too dull, too intolerably indistinct to amuse even the most backward, the most barbarous, of infants.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKIYAIUJWFA35EFXZJGWK5PVSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503328},"content":"Getting back to Devonshire Arms and its core business for a moment, I gather that Irish co-owner Oisin Rogers was in part inspired by the popular social media site “Shit London Guinness”, which has spent years posting pictures of the badly poured pints for which that city is infamous.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DL3LDUOMSVEUVLV5ERVLCMQ4YQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503329},"content":"Determined to buck this reputation, Rogers and co “built the pub around the Guinness installation”, at great expense, with best-practice technology, including gas-dispensing ratios.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGKQHUOGUFCY3DYKS6QU2HJ7DA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503330},"content":"As one review explained: “While most pubs in the UK spit Guinness out at a ratio of 70:30 nitrogen to carbon dioxide, The Devonshire does 82.18, which gives it the creamy head that’s closer to what you typically find in Ireland.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FU4JVCFLGREV5JE3W4CHVVUIQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503331},"content":"The chemistry of reproducing Flann O’Brien in art is not perhaps as complex as that of serving Guinness, but there are some superficial similarities. The overcoat-hat ratio, in particular – about 80:20, typically – seems crucial.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFWIKKNTFJFBZNNO37NQYH53WA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503332},"content":"Those two items of clothing may be the only things O’Nolan had in common with Farren. Unlike the latter, for example, the former did not wear glasses. But as in the proposed sculpture, the hat and coat were enough to suggest the rest of him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2ZZNZHTKJZFBRNS5AGWYCK5Y7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503333},"content":"Anyway, while we’re at it, this may a good place to mention that proposals are now invited for the 8th International Flann O’Brien Conference, which takes place next June.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AYQ4ZVPFJ5G7XJ5YNV7KNQXQH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503334},"content":"Since its foundation in 2011, the biennial event has visited Vienna, Rome, Prague, Salzburg, Dublin, Boston, and Cluj (in Transylvania). Next year’s instalment will bring it all back home to the twin, river-divided towns of O’Nolan’s childhood – the Budapest of northwest Ireland, if you like – Strabane and Lifford.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BBHEAKSB5JDLDGVJA6ESNBAOYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730480503335},"content":"Abstracts for papers should be submitted by December 1st (<a href=\"http://parishreview.openlibhums.org/news/759/\" target=\"_blank\">parishreview.openlibhums.org/news/759/</a>). Among the suggested themes is “Flann and ideas of absence”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"A case of mistaken identity in the Devonshire Arms"},"display_date":"2024-11-04T14:47:00.59Z","headlines":{"basic":"Imposter Boy – Frank McNally on another appearance of the Flann O’Brien who wasn’t","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"MBUD26RAQZDC5GJYQVFEXCS5BI","auth":{"1":"215bcdfb47deb939f6582b124dbdb08c8efabf0cb2bcb130e2de9cc80cff6dec"},"focal_point":{"x":513,"y":657},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/MBUD26RAQZDC5GJYQVFEXCS5BI.jpeg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/01/imposter-boy-frank-mcnally-on-another-appearance-of-the-flann-obrien-who-wasnt/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"GFJTZXYXVRBMDJTNXK53CV4XSY","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/03/magic-and-enchantment-padraigin-riggs-on-traveller-and-storyteller-tomas-o-cathasaigh/","content_elements":[{"_id":"5IMGLBTV3VBHXIZN2JZTMZYO5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1936, the Irish Folklore Society published a collection of stories entitled Ocht Sgéalta ó Choillte Mághach. This small book consisted of eight stories, recounted orally by Tomás Ó Cathasaigh from Kiltimagh, Co Mayo, and edited by An Craoibhín Aoibhinn (Douglas Hyde), who collected them from the storyteller. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"3YL5QPUMLRC5JLJOKRF736RFPA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Three years later, the Irish Texts Society published a much expanded collection of stories by Ó Cathasaigh, this time, with an English translation and, again, edited by Hyde. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"O3OBIRSQ5RAQVLPBCWTNZQVOFE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Only one of the previously published stories is contained in the Irish Texts Society volume – described by the editor as \" . . . sui generis and unlike anything else I have ever met.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6EVAIFVOZFGBBLAQDC23PNXZAM","additional_properties":{},"content":"To date, little is known of the life of Ó Cathasaigh. Hyde describes him as being 80 years old in 1936, the year before he died, but the entry in <a href=\"http://Ainm.ie\" target=\"_blank\">Ainm.ie</a> gives 1861 as the most likely date of his birth, based on the evidence of the 1901 census, which would make him 75. According to the same source, Tomás was married to Bridget and they had five children. Both parents could speak Irish and English but could not read; the children spoke only English. Hyde claims that Tomás could write English “fairly”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UJJWNZM2HJAG7MDJFEGRJVGVNU","additional_properties":{},"content":"What is unusual about this storyteller, whose repertoire was in the Irish language, is that he came from the Travelling community.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2HN76WZUA5FUJEKVW24YJKINDQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hyde’s main source of information about Ó Cathasaigh was a letter, written after Tomás’s death, by Annie Doyle, then a student at the Convent of St Louis, Kiltimagh. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"2S2WT3ZL3BFXXNA3FCIJXZCJUE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In an extract from the letter (translated by Hyde) she says: “A tinker was Thummaus, and his clan before him, but his mother settled in this town. When Thummaus was a young man he married a girl out of the town and he followed the tinker’s trade making tin ware, and he was also a buyer of mules and such. He succeeded well in money matters, and he bought a house. Then he was for a time a bailiff on the river near the town, to put a stop to the fishing of the salmon, but the people used not to have confidence in him.” (That is, they did not trust him.) She continues: “He was a very cute and clever man, and he used to have the full of the house every night listening to his stories.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"HOZI7Y6PJBGYDFZRR3OQMU4WTI","additional_properties":{},"content":"But he was thought to have been involved with the Fenians and to have revealed some secret information about them. (If he was born as late as 1861, that would seem unlikely.) ","type":"text"},{"_id":"BOYNSYBEWRBIJHZZP5UFCNPAGM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Whatever the reason, Annie Doyle claims that he was banished from the town and the local people thought he was dead until the book Ocht Sgéalta ó Choillte Mághach appeared. He was reputed always to emerge triumphant from the various incidents that proliferated about him, hence the expression, in Mayo: “You are as cute as O’Casey, the tinker.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VGFYSAC3XZHI3DT5E3E4EBFLEA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Tomás told Hyde that he got his stories from his grandfather, Seán Buidhe Ó Raghallaigh, who was born near Castlebar and was said to have spent 40 years with Colonel Martin (“Humanity Dick”) at Ballinahinch. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"M76VCZJ7XRHIZEJXRZO4ICJHVE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hyde tells us that Seán Buidhe, who was nearly five score years when he died, “came to Coillte Mághach or Kiltimagh, and settled down about three miles from the town. He used to be telling his stories beside the fire at night, in his own house, and Thummaus used to be there, and he a young boy, listening to him, and he ‘picked them up himself’.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKON73FQAZHV5LFHIV3YTUYXBE","additional_properties":{},"content":"When Hyde made his acquaintance, around 1935, Tomás was living in Co Sligo, having spent some time in America. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"NNNDZ7ELO5DFJGMV5G5OF4NSKA","additional_properties":{},"content":"When his wife died, he had nobody to speak to in Irish as that language was not spoken in Sligo at the time and, consequently, he was increasingly influenced by English. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OLALU7NUVFF4HH6ICMKEL2ACJI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hyde notes that he spoke the Irish of Mayo “almost the same language that I had myself when I was young in the County Roscommon” but, he describes it as “a little broken and corrupted . . . tending to simplicity”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HPQ47WCBANDPBMM3G2DMTCXWGQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"While some of the stories in the collection contain elements of magic and enchantment, with clear traces of antiquity, many are about natural events. Hyde comments on Tomás’s ability to embellish his material, so that incredible events in which he, himself, was purportedly involved appear perfectly credible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q3352ZUZFVCPBCVZNVCLBCUU4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The volume published by The Irish Texts Society in 1939, Sgéalta ó Thomás Ó Cathasaigh (Mayo Stories told by Thomas Casey), will be the subject of that Society’s Annual Seminar on November 9th at University College, Cork, where topics discussed will include Ó Cathasaigh’s life and language, the genesis of his stories in a national and international context and his repertoire between the settled and Travelling communities. Details of this event are available at <a href=\"http://irishtextssociety.org\" target=\"_blank\">irishtextssociety.org</a> “Twenty-Fifth annual ITS seminar”. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Pádraigín Riggs"}]},"description":{"basic":"The stories contain clear traces of antiquity, and many focus on natural events"},"display_date":"2024-11-03T18:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Magic and enchantment – Pádraigín Riggs on Traveller and storyteller Tomás Ó Cathasaigh ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"GJDCPTFGAJE6ZFNP5PEU5SK7PA","auth":{"1":"7f6905fdd78813d72e24627f0da7be9c59b93987926a3fc64e712c22a71783af"},"focal_point":{"x":886,"y":455},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/GJDCPTFGAJE6ZFNP5PEU5SK7PA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/11/03/magic-and-enchantment-padraigin-riggs-on-traveller-and-storyteller-tomas-o-cathasaigh/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"NRZZ46XB2RBL7KI7NX5V6PMEHI","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/31/push-notification-frank-mcnally-on-an-offensive-cycling-term-that-refuses-to-die/","content_elements":[{"_id":"YSMVAOUTERDSRHFZ3QYKX3LI4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143249},"content":"Long-time reader George Harding has taken me to that always stressful place – task – over a question of vocabulary. It’s about a bicycle, to paraphrase a certain comic novelist. And sure enough, he has called Flann O’Brien as a witness for the prosecution.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C6H4ISVVX5CHPERT2P5V5QZ3I4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143250},"content":"George writes: “I was very surprised to hear you use the phrase ‘push-bikes’ in [a recent] article (<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/11/pavement-pinball-frank-mcnally-on-the-perils-of-rush-hour-running/\" target=\"_blank\">Diary, October 12th</a>). That terminology went out with the flood. I remember chastising [a reporter on RTÉ's] Nationwide when he used it in relation to Kelly and Roche back in the mid-eighties.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UPYP7O2S3RAK5FDESXYWS2APKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143251},"content":"“’Mountain’ bikes arrived at the beginning of the eighties and most of them were equipped with 18 gears, therefore there would be no reason to ‘push’ a bike – you cycled it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NG54QRF45RBDFFLJXNLEG5CZOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143252},"content":"“The term faded as far back as the late sixties, when I could picture a messenger boy pushing his low-gravity bike full of messages up Patrick’s Hill. I reckon my father sold the last one of those monsters in approximately 1964.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRX6CD5NNJGTHB5YSD4LXIPCIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143253},"content":"His email concludes: “I doubt if the great Flann ever used the term, and can you imagine if he had titled the funniest book ever written by an Irishman ‘The Third Guard’?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MCCMDJEGDZGKFI33Z7WW7TBRWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143254},"content":"Well, now, first let me deal with that last question, side issue as it may be. For if the implication is that “Guard” is an old-fashioned word, superseded by the modern “Policeman”, I feel bound to protest the reverse.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TMDOQGHEJRDWHKOXKH3LT3FNOY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143255},"content":"As far as I can judge, The Third Policemen is set (vaguely) in a pre-independence Ireland: hence the references to “policemen” rather than the new-fangled “guards” of Flann’s time, and to “parliament” instead of the “Dáil”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V44KLLRARZDLPBILHE7VSVIJDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143256},"content":"But as to the substantive point, it’s true that, when my attention was drawn to it, “push-bike” did seem an oddly archaic phrase for me to be using in 2024.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5DCN5RCGCVAOXBIYBKGC64T5BU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143257},"content":"Then I remembered why I (and many others) do still use it: to distinguish the fully human-powered bicycle from the ever-multiplying e-bikes, which require little or no effort. It hardly seems fair that both forms of activity are described as “cycling”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HED4VQQUKJCU5OL6K52TH6B6MQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143258},"content":"Also, from a personal viewpoint, the bikes I mostly use these days are the Dublin rental variety, which weigh more than some small cars. On any kind of hill, those are always a bit of a schlep (another word we were discussing here recently).","type":"text"},{"_id":"RVXDDE5KMNFSHGVOB6EMGJCBIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143259},"content":"And I do literally push them on occasion, for example when carrying a Christmas tree. On the plus side, you can – with careful balancing – transport a seven-foot tree along the spine of a Dublin bike. But you can’t usually fit yourself in the saddle at the same time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RDMJUUND7BFWNCVVPO2SCR3IKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143260},"content":"All this said, it was only thanks to George’s email that I finally realised there is, for some cyclists, a principled objection to the term “push-bikes”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JE7GIRF2TRHVZLXICCWY4LQXDU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143261},"content":"They consider it, in the words of one cycling blogger “offensive, old-fashioned, and obnoxious” (the first and last of those adjectives mean the same thing, but I suppose they serve the same role as stabilisers on a back wheel).","type":"text"},{"_id":"BS4TVJF665DH5HZSWPBK77WEAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143262},"content":"That was a response to the UK Department of Transport’s continued use of the phrase. But “push-bike” was first coined more than a century ago. And even then, it was considered a put-down.","type":"text"},{"_id":"72L4VKBHD5DM5GYC4L5INJT2PA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143263},"content":"An American writer, Joseph Pennell, may have been the first to use it, in 1903, and did so disparagingly. He cycled widely for a time and wrote about it. Then he became a motorbike enthusiast. Thereafter, he regarded the “push bike” with scorn.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBPG7OX4WFDWTASOATZNGQQJXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143264},"content":"A decade later, in 1914, the London Times noted the phrase’s increased popularity as evidence that the bicycle was on the way out, rendered obsolete by motorised transport:","type":"text"},{"_id":"OTHVSSIF4VBENAPV6B52GAN4PY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143265},"content":"“It is a year or two now since what used to be known merely as a bicycle came to be called distinctively and contemptuously a ‘push-bike,’ just as a carriage is now a ‘horse-drawn carriage’,” the paper commented. “There is a knell in each epithet.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZMESPQRJ55EHTKF2OGH4XYA6NE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143266},"content":"That obituary was premature, as it turned out. It might have astonished the Times writer that not only would bicycles be more popular than ever 110 years later, but that the term “push-bike” would still be used, with no intended contempt.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GK7DMIKK7VESVLXREO5PJKBTHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143267},"content":"Anyway, to get to back to George’s complaint, yes, naturally, I checked the archives to see if Flann (or his Irish Times persona Myles na gCopaleen) had ever used the phrase.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ODXZ2EDPSNF75E3UZKHEYFFBDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143268},"content":"And I thought I had found an example, from 1942. But that turned out to be a former IT editor, Bertie Smyllie, lamenting an effect of the war: the shortage of rubber.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VBX4NHW7FJBIRFMKY2TFJNQVKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143269},"content":"“Do not think that I feel aggrieved because we have been told that there will be no more tyres for private motorists,” Smyllie wrote. “If I can scrounge a couple of second-hands for my dilapidated push-bike, I shall not grumble; for I kissed goodbye to private motoring on the day when Poland was invaded.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NVGSDKJCU5DIPPWOYRCQS7CLYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143270},"content":"Then, in a reverse of the London Times before an earlier war – and pausing for a Mylesian pun – he predicted a car-free future:","type":"text"},{"_id":"HQG3GX2T3BAZHF5EXEWH74HKMM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730394143271},"content":"“But there will be thousands of worthy citizens of Éire who will feel the wrench badly (as Myles na gCopaleen would put it, ‘Hold that one, Joe, it’s slippery!’); and I am afraid that millions of tons of petrol will flow down the various oleoferous regions . . . before private motorists . . . will be able to take their cars out again.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"There is, for some cyclists, a principled objection to the term “push-bikes”"},"display_date":"2024-10-31T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Push notification — Frank McNally on an “offensive” cycling term that refuses to die","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3XHQP5ROSZFKJJ2FILI3Q3UCHA","auth":{"1":"8929260e50cdc2654b033c63e5b846d8d1205e93ac4dce4275ed1de77ed76f77"},"focal_point":{"x":1519,"y":972},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3XHQP5ROSZFKJJ2FILI3Q3UCHA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/31/push-notification-frank-mcnally-on-an-offensive-cycling-term-that-refuses-to-die/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"O5XSC2BP65FQ5INNGF23B7ST6Q","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/30/pork-scratchings-frank-mcnally-on-racist-piggy-banks-the-decline-of-thrift-and-the-joy-of-building-playgrounds/","content_elements":[{"_id":"NGGFHECTIZGC7PEV5RFDBDZQWI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Among the collection of 19th-century antiques in a house I visited a while back was a magnificently racist piggy bank from 1882. Made in Connecticut, it was officially the “Shamrock Bank”. But its inspiration was another, unlovelier Hibernian stereotype. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LYA7RYXNLNHYFDNRKCYILKHF2Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Irishman depicted in it had an outsized head on a leprechaunish body, and tucked into his pocket was a jug of whiskey. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"XSTVP5K4OREMFCSVP7KCDHECOM","additional_properties":{},"content":"The central feature, however, was a pig, wedged between Paddy’s thighs with its snout in the air, so positioned you could rest a coin on it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JVISZWLKDJCWRNPIVETKM3S32Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Then you pulled a lever, and with an overhead flick of its left trotter, the pig deposited the coin via Paddy’s mouth, which opened to receive it, communion like, on a pink tongue. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"SD2VLHBH3JDDTNZKOVHB4WKPPM","additional_properties":{},"content":"As he swallowed the money, Paddy rolled his eyes in delight.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ICBUESSPD5AGTOWLH3462LMNIQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"This was one of several mechanical banks made by the J & E Stevens Company, based in a town named – wait for it – “Cromwell”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T6WPRTUD4RC5XHC6VO3KCLEIMA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Other models included the “Reclining Chinaman” and one from 1883 in which a native American chief offered a pipe of peace to a newly arrived immigrant from Europe, Christopher Columbus.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CJKZU5VQX5AINOPI3JYXWCPFDQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Paddy’s piggybank was popular with New York saloon keepers, apparently, but not – we presume – in Irish bars. Either way, it is now a collector’s item. One I saw on eBay had an asking price of $2,450.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SUQ3RHMCUJAMFB66YU2SLYXYR4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Commercial value aside, the antique may also serve a social role these days: a useful reminder that for many in Donald Trump’s New York, not so long ago, Irish immigrants were as much despised as Puerto Ricans and others are by some people now.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LSTASWG54NHWHGJQHWNLWTBMXE","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"2Z24YGVNEBD7DLVKFKAKDAHOHY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The piggy bank is doubly apt this week because October 31st is World Savings Day, aka World Thrift Day, an event still marked in many countries, although no longer – it seems – here. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UIXJWONZVFBLNI2DG3TCHY2VFQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"In fact, the latest instalment is the centenary of the original, the First International Thrift Congress, held in Milan on this date in 1924.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3732O5VEZBEDTAKNFXCWJHAL7M","additional_properties":{},"content":"The new Irish Free State was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea that saving money was the surest path to prosperity. Not surprisingly, early champions of Thrift Day included Belfast-born minister for finance, Ernest Blythe, now best remembered as the man who took a shilling off the pension in 1924.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZAE4USIJBVCHJA7ARWZ3ISEXIM","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1931, addressing the Irish Thrift Congress, Blythe invoked the parable of the “Wise Virgins” who stocked up on lamp oil for emergencies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F7WOX765RNDLFISIRJTUOUFYMM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Alas, Ireland’s wise virgins were already a threatened species by then. A motion to the congress warned of “serious, if not fatal, results to the national thrift movement . . . from the stimulus to gambling given to all classes of our people by the recently organised [hospital] sweeps.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"S4BUIBYPKVEGRG5LWS3YITUWVQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Sure enough, the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes went on to be vastly popular not just here, but in Britain and America too, using big horse races as the basis for a lottery in which the prizes could be enormous.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BUYSXKAA6FCHBMLJFTH7FQPO5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"This may help explain why the national thrift movement appears to have withered away in the 1930s. There is no mention of it in The Irish Times after 1936. No doubt a few wise virgins held out longer elsewhere, but the most recent newspaper reference I can find is from the Strabane Chronicle in 1961.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6GXRFOBZ6RDN3IBHMKYZT4B4H4","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"VX55QU44Q5FB3DTNGPP2RHMDV4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Perhaps the sweepstakes’ success in the US was Paddy’s revenge for pig-related offences past (although the biggest beneficiary of the scheme, notoriously, was not a Paddy but a Joe – McGrath, the politician who founded it).","type":"text"},{"_id":"IVKM35CHPBBXBHIJEJCQGJX7EU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Then again, one measure of its cultural fame was a 1939 Columbia Pictures cartoon called “Lucky Pigs”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GCJ5WOWFLVGCDMYQXBUFUXS6HQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"This depicted a down-and-out porcine family whose fortunes are changed when the feckless father (“Peter Pig”, although I suspect there were debates in studio about which P-name to give him) wins the “Irish Sweepstakes”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MJW42CC5MRHXVGPHMIRQ372ITY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The family wallows in vulgar wealth for a time, until 98 per cent tax rates and other misfortunes reduce them to penury again. Finally, only their son’s full piggy bank survives. Then – plot spoiler alert – a horse turns up at the door and claims that as his share of the winnings.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R3DO2RRHLFC7PB2IVXSDXP4VRQ","additional_properties":{},"content":" ***","type":"text"},{"_id":"MEPAYQCIUND6FCRKBGMZKTUGV4","additional_properties":{},"content":"In a much greater movie from 1952, Ikiru, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa portrays a frustrated, terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat who finds meaning and happiness at the end of his life by championing the cause of a children’s playground.","type":"text"},{"_id":"53EYVOUECVEBPDO2S2QKV3PO3E","additional_properties":{},"content":"I was reminded of this by the organisers of a Dublin table quiz next month (Wednesday, November 13th), who point out that participants will have a unique opportunity to share the joy experienced by the film’s Kanji Watanabe, but without the inconvenience of dying.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRJH2ILYTJEAHFGUDUGUFW64XA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The event aims to raise funds for a “special autism playground” at the Red Door School, Monkstown. And it’s no mere table quiz: it’s a “gala quiz night”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"523TWSYA2BAHTLJR5FQOICUD4I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Which means that if the promise of adding joy and meaning to your life is not enough, there will also be spectacular prizes and auction items, not least an original painting by artist Tom Byrne and a dinner party cooked in your own home by a two-star Michelin chef, Damien Grey from Liath restaurant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KHEWBRUFBNBQPAUSPNN5VE7IIY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Quiz master will be a certain Paul Howard (possibly assisted by Ross O’Carroll-Kelly) of this parish. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"5ZTC6YUPIBGMLKU2MWBYGPS7RQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"All the other details are on the event website, <a href=\"http://reddoorschoolquiz.com\" target=\"_blank\">reddoorschoolquiz.com</a>.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"As he swallowed the money, Paddy rolled his eyes in delight"},"display_date":"2024-10-30T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Pork scratchings – Frank McNally on racist piggy banks, the decline of thrift, and the joy of building playgrounds","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"HDFCS33FVNGU5I3UXKYQM7YUA4","auth":{"1":"d3340b12c2d2a7417ddfcb2d63f0015c68f2c296e2ece1c22bf55129e5723b8d"},"focal_point":{"x":610,"y":662},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/HDFCS33FVNGU5I3UXKYQM7YUA4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/30/pork-scratchings-frank-mcnally-on-racist-piggy-banks-the-decline-of-thrift-and-the-joy-of-building-playgrounds/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"T4UBQNMKWJB7LHDLKCSO7GR4JA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":312,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9ec8c0ad-fe41-470a-96ed-281af74afdf4/versions/1730228285/media/f40241dc9fa7338c6574793d61549650_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/30/dare-devil-parliamentarian-tim-fanning-on-the-ogorman-mahon/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AMHJZYQNBBA3ZBARNSCDE6NKT4","additional_properties":{},"content":"The lengthy political career of Charles James Patrick Mahon was intertwined with both Daniel O’Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell. In fact, he may be said to have played a crucial role in both of the careers of the two titans of 19th-century Irish nationalism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JXQDQCE4BZGAVCHOB5N7YC2YWQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the 1820s, Mahon became a member of the Catholic Association and encouraged Daniel O’Connell to stand for election in Clare. In the late 1870s, he ran for parliament as a supporter of Parnell, being returned for Clare with a certain William O’Shea. It was Mahon who introduced Parnell to O’Shea, and, thus, indirectly, O’Shea’s estranged wife, Kitty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DXIILXBMTBGTVKPGGRJLNHIV6E","additional_properties":{},"content":"Mahon’s parliamentary career began in 1830, when he himself was elected for Clare, but came to an abrupt halt a year later when it was discovered that he had corruptly bought the seat. He and O’Connell fell out when the latter opposed Mahon’s candidacy. It was not until 1847 that Mahon returned to the British parliament, this time for the constituency of Ennis. This second period in parliament coincided with the worst years of the Great Famine. His final stint in the Commons, representing Clare (1879-1885) and Carlow (1887-1891), took place during the great parliamentary agitation for Home Rule.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CYYPLXYNL5F7TJLTUW3XVDZ67Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"While his political career was significant if unspectacular, Mahon himself was one of the most colourful characters to roam the corridors of Westminster. He styled himself “the O’Gorman Mahon”, claiming ancestry to a dynasty of Gaelic chieftains, leading to Thackeray caricaturing him as the portentous “the Mulligan” in his novel Mrs Perkins’s Ball.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XCUBP2J4U5HQRI7LRGDJ2KZBHA","additional_properties":{},"content":"“The greatest offence that can be offered to him, is to call him Mr. Mulligan,” wrote the esteemed novelist in a passage that somewhat betrays the British Establishment’s attitude towards the Irish in that era. ‘”Would you deprive me, Sir,” says he, “of the title which was bawren be me princelee ancestors in a hundred thousands battles? In our green valleys and fawrests, in the American Savannaghs, in the Sierras of Speen, and the Flats of Flandthers, the Saxon has quailed before me war-cry of MULLIGAN ABOO!”’","type":"text"},{"_id":"FDKSGJ3BF5H2XMSQ5I4ILIDK4E","additional_properties":{},"content":"More recently, one historian of the British Houses of Parliament has described Mahon as “a grotesque figure even by the exotic standards of some of the Irish Members in this period” and “a figure of pure self-invention”. Another biographer, Frederick William Whyte, wrote that he was “one of the last of the old race of dare-devil Irish gentlemen”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDBUAGWQNFAWLHJ277P7TKR64Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"As was common of that breed – and the English perception of it – Mahon was quick to pick up his duelling pistols. Accounts vary, but it seems Mahon fought more than a dozen duels, although some biographers put the total closer to 20. Whyte even claimed that a couple of notches on one of Mahon’s duelling pistols seemed significant. In his defence, Mahon claimed never to have done anything deliberately to provoke a challenge.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6FYFDZN7UNFTDL6O7A5CCERHJY","additional_properties":{},"content":"He did, however, evince a compulsion for adventure. Shortly after being called to the Irish bar – he never practised – he set off for Europe. In France, he met Talleyrand and spent time at the court of Louis Philippe. In Russia, he served in the army and allegedly went hunting bears with the Tzarevitch. His travels took him to Turkey, China, India, Arabia and South America. In Chile, he was said to have commanded a fleet, in Uruguay a brigade. In Brazil, he claimed to have been consecrated an archbishop.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JQJJJQXHAFFVFGIHXPBJQBYP7U","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1860, he found himself in Lima, investigating a murder. During the voyage to Peru, aboard the Vixen, Mahon had become friendly with the ship’s commander, Capt Lionel Lambert. Shortly after arriving in Lima, Capt Lambert had ventured out of his lodgings to bathe in a river when he was set upon by thieves and killed. Mahon took up the case of the deceased, pressurising the Peruvian government to find the murderers and even raising the issue with Lord Palmerston, the British prime minister.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMVIJLJPL5HZ5E52TEFAKOMU5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"After Lima, Mahon spent time in the United States, where he claimed to have fought on the Union side in the civil war, and in Berlin, during which period he tried to convince Bismarck to give him a concession to open a joint-stock bank. By the beginning of the 1870s, he was back in Ireland, participating in Isaac Butt’s Home Rule movement.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VFK5H7PXSBBH7D37SNY6AOEBVU","additional_properties":{},"content":"During Mahon’s last years in parliament, he became an enthusiastic adopter of obstructionism before publicly repudiating Parnell during the split in the Irish Party. He died on June 21st, 1891, and was buried in the O’Connell Circle in Glasnevin Cemetery. Three and a half months later, his one-time leader, Parnell, was also dead.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Tim Fanning"}]},"description":{"basic":"One of the most colourful characters to roam the corridors of Westminster"},"display_date":"2024-10-30T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Dare-devil parliamentarian – Tim Fanning on the O’Gorman Mahon","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"TUJ7PISG55FX3A3R3X3VBY35NU","auth":{"1":"5cb56ff6bacf5611cdca576ba0aa30763d3603b8aec35169c4eb6b990f189aa6"},"focal_point":{"x":335,"y":181},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/TUJ7PISG55FX3A3R3X3VBY35NU.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/30/dare-devil-parliamentarian-tim-fanning-on-the-ogorman-mahon/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"F6UH4QAS4NC7RNZQI4UF6Y5XTI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":296,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/0aaf6d31-a420-40b3-adba-3dd45974f5f4/versions/1730200153/media/be19b63eeaed251beb97d4134442a958_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/28/live-from-the-gpo-brendan-balfe-on-making-waves-at-radio-eireann/","content_elements":[{"_id":"B3XOYQBNOJDU7DRFDY4JEQELZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"The sign read “Radio Éireann”. It was over the first door in Henry Street, a side entrance to the GPO.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MTH25M7NEBFSZG7FT223ZZFS5U","additional_properties":{},"content":"On Monday, February 10th, 1964, I walked in for the first time and took the lift to the third floor. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"BVU4DJ55WBC7HJZDPMIJ3YFTAI","additional_properties":{},"content":"I was there for a voice test, along with a sample programme I had devised. The audition was successful and led to a six-week engagement to present a music series called Then and Now, starting on Sunday, July 5th, at 11pm. The programmes contrasted early and recent records by the same singers. The signature tune was This Could Be the Start of Something Big. I was 18 years old.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NMOK3HMNVFCOZFFIIDH4Q64PJM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Radio Éireann was originally 2RN, which opened on January 1st, 1926, over a small post office in Little Denmark Street, currently the site of the Ilac Centre. In October 1928, it moved to the GPO, rebuilt after the damage of the 1916 Rising. At first, it comprised one general studio and a small speech studio on the fourth floor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PMPUHNQGKZG5FMEAOWYUOCT4T4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Over the years, it developed with extra staff and facilities, and in 1937, it became Radio Éireann, still part of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. Offices lined a long corridor, 100 metres at least, running along the third floor parallel with Henry Street. It was lined with white tiles and frosted glass, prompting the conductor Sir John Barbirolli, in studio for an interview with Eamonn Andrews, to dub it “the longest row of lavatories in the world”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W34ZPNAEYJA2BKBMCINYMLTLAA","additional_properties":{},"content":"For many years, it broadcast only in the evenings, but in the late Fifties, it had increased its broadcasting hours in the morning and lunchtime, mainly by the introduction of sponsored programmes. In the Sixties, management had noticed that popular music was popular and Ireland’s Top Ten began, complementing other favourites like Hospitals Requests, Question Time, Take the Floor, and the sponsored serial The Kennedys of Castleross.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JOXF4APN3FAC5L67CTYYUXXLIU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Meanwhile, I was working in insurance but had heard that Radio Éireann also engaged relief continuity announcers. I got in touch with Denis Meehan, the head of the announcing section, to ask for an audition. Following another test, I was offered a place on the next six-week training course starting on June 14th, 1965. It was given by Denis Meehan, his assistant, Brigid Kilfeather, and the former bank clerk who was now chief announcer, Terry Wogan. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"COM2HZQ2ONHMTLZHP5WMPJUS2E","additional_properties":{},"content":"Denis always reminded us to respect the listener, stressing that they may lack some information, but they are not stupid.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A4E3US3JYBCX3LH2V4FIFWJYKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Six weeks later, I was offered the job and on my first morning as a continuity announcer, Terry was in the studio to mind me, as he said. This entailed pouring a jug of water over my head, as I made my very first live announcement, opening the station. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PSHUVZTZ6ZHCNIE6G7AUEGM3UE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Later in the week, despite my protestations, he accompanied me to the studio of Farmers Forum to read the Cattle Market Report. Two seconds before the mic went live he said, “and remember it’s fat bullocks, not fat bollocks. Off you go.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"4LNNOMGYEJDULPBLM7IGPLVYPQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"At first a casual, I was later made a staff announcer and joined the band of delightful colleagues in the announcing section: Mike Murphy, Lorna Madigan, John Skehan, Maurice O’Doherty, Valerie McGovern, Una Sheehy, and, later, Pat Kenny. I was also mixing with Gay Byrne, Larry Gogan, Joe Linnane, and numerous actors, musicians, poets and writers. It was almost like an Arts Club, with intellectual weight and an artistic philosophy. In broadcasting, I always remember the lines of Henry David Thoreau, “To affect the quality of the day- that is the highest of arts.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LEXD2RULD5CBBJ3KLMJ4CFFDJ4","additional_properties":{},"content":"My memories of the GPO are all happy, if some are rather bizarre; like a 12-hour continuity duty in 1968 covering the funeral of Robert Kennedy; at the time, a record. I also recall the evening that the compere of Céilí House was unable to perform (or speak), so I had to race down the long corridor, down in the lift and up to the O’Connell Hall (opposite the Gresham Hotel) to present the programme.","type":"text"},{"_id":"372GHRM5ENHWFI6BFA5VEVKO6I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Una Sheehy also told me of an embarrassing moment. One Sunday, she handed over to Michael O’Hehir for a commentary from Croke Park. She turned her monitor to low, but after a while, she discerned a distinct silence from Michael. She apologised for the technical trouble and played a record. What she didn’t know was that the public address in the stadium had asked for a minute’s silence to mark the death of President Kennedy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PXSNILVLHFHKJMZ7IG42RUUI7E","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1973, the first months of the Gay Byrne Hour were still in Henry Street, but the move to the Montrose Radio Centre had begun. On Monday, November 8th, 1976, Mike Murphy and I joined colleagues gathered outside the continuity studio as Ray Lynott made the final announcement – and the GPO fell silent. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brendan Balfe"}]},"description":{"basic":"Terry Wogan was in the studio to mind me, as he said. This entailed pouring a jug of water over my head as I made my first live announcement"},"display_date":"2024-10-29T16:50:41.507Z","headlines":{"basic":"Live from the GPO – Brendan Balfe on making waves at Radio Éireann ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"VH2MOJP4CZEGJKDR7XZJFP3MG4","auth":{"1":"8b54c2c2a2354386ce31675cda691ad27559cbcd7c2e3c5e2b4a6f9ab5821d6a"},"focal_point":{"x":217,"y":283},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VH2MOJP4CZEGJKDR7XZJFP3MG4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/28/live-from-the-gpo-brendan-balfe-on-making-waves-at-radio-eireann/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"CFCIEAWALJBVLB4CIYT3ZDUGUM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":362,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/c995499a-3ff2-4cb7-b907-6c55ee5447be/versions/1730043939/media/9e1901c37a1ea7b5749aa2671a69100a_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/27/sean-macbride-despite-the-nobel-prize-winners-warning-the-possibility-of-facing-the-indescribable-is-greater-than-ever/","content_elements":[{"_id":"Q37TVBKX6JAZXNQC4EEOB3GF2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784219},"content":"Japanese disarmament campaigners won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize “for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”. These survivors of the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Nobel committee said, had described “the indescribable”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7XE32QVLMJGSTHQSIA2K5VY3QE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730042928415},"content":"Delivering the peace prize lecture in Oslo 50 years ago, Nobel laureate Seán MacBride warned that the world’s superpowers had chosen the “dangerous” option of increasing their nuclear capability. He called on them to begin a process of general disarmament. MacBride, the UN commissioner for Namibia, then occupied by apartheid South Africa, shared the 1974 peace prize with a former Japanese prime minister, Eisaku Sato, who also opposed the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BSE3G2RJHJFDNN6ZUPIIGBQT7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784221},"content":"MacBride was a relatively unusual Nobel Prize winner in that the Soviet Union awarded him the Lenin Peace Prize in 1977. Previous winners included Pablo Picasso and Fidel Castro. MacBride regarded the honour as “an indication of the interest which the Soviet Union has in putting an end to the arms race”. Nato’s “warmongering generals”, he argued, ridiculed this objective.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I5TVRIYZSZA6BKEG5F3FAHSKN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729867492095},"content":"The “fantastic sums” being poured into researching new missiles should instead be diverted into projects that would benefit mankind such as technology to develop solar, tidal and wind energy. On this occasion MacBride’s award was greeted with less enthusiasm, being seen as a dubious prize for an international human rights activist.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IPR7TNWCXFHCZNMCDZPT3AI2II","additional_properties":{"_id":1730042928418},"content":"The Lenin committee, however, lauded him as “the outstanding statesman” of Ireland, whose career should be seen as “a brilliant example of selfless service to noble ideals of peace and progress”. The Russians here had conveniently forgotten about MacBride’s “anti-communist” tenure as minister for external affairs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3ZGNKKWQM5EAVJZU73VSOJH6GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784222},"content":"In 1947, blocking Ireland’s bid to join the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-nations\" target=\"_blank\">UN</a>, a Soviet spokesman stated that de Valera’s Ireland and Salazar’s Portugal could not be regarded as “peace-loving” because they had – by upholding neutrality – “supported fascism” during the recent World War. He also contended that they maintained “particularly friendly relationships with Franco’s Spain, the last offshoot of fascism in Europe”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PCGTWFQDLFBC3H5RSOEKUJUMQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730042928420},"content":"The same year, having made his name as a lawyer defending former comrades in the IRA, the new “republican” party led by MacBride, Clann na Poblachta, threatened Fianna Fáil’s dominance by winning two byelections. It then won 10 seats in the “put them out” election of 1948.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YVCZXBW36BFHVLKWU73HMVKDNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784223},"content":"With Fine Gael’s John A Costello as taoiseach, MacBride became minister for external affairs in a five-party government whose first act was to send a telegram to the pope desiring “to repose at the feet of your Holiness the assurance of our filial loyalty and devotion to your August Person”. In doing this the Cabinet overruled the objection of the secretary of the taoiseach’s department that such wording was inappropriate for a sovereign government. MacBride then got involved in the Italian general election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WINNO74FD5DXXH27O72F6P7ZJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730042928422},"content":"Amid fears that a communist/socialist alliance would win – the Irish ambassador to the Vatican feared this contest amounted to “a fight for western civilisation” – the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, made a radio appeal for money to combat the left in Italy. Other bishops followed suit and more than £60,000, a considerable sum, helped to fund the Christian Democrats.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7UP5DZDRPJCSVOAVQDW5L4KC5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729867492098},"content":"MacBride facilitated the transfer of this collection through diplomatic channels, which may have proved more useful than the prayers of schoolchildren in Dublin. Neither the Vatican, nor McQuaid, were pleased when Ireland – a Catholic state in their eyes – did not join Nato. MacBride rejected the Americans’ invitation to become a member of the alliance in 1949, not because he was unenthusiastic about US efforts to contain Soviet expansionism but because Nato membership necessitated recognition of partition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2AVNEZYNHVA2PPE44U73JB3GXA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784224},"content":"MacBride’s political career in Ireland never recovered from the “mother and child” debacle in 1951 when the government meekly agreed with the Catholic bishops’ opposition to Noël Browne’s healthcare reform. Browne, who believed that his Cabinet colleagues had submitted to Rome, resigned. He was re-elected as an Independent in the general election two months later, whereas MacBride, who topped the poll three years earlier, scraped in on the last count. Clann na Poblachta returned just two TDs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3PLERXRKEZEHVOURHYSXWOWFVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784225},"content":"Having resumed his legal practice, MacBride lost his Dáil seat in 1957. Over the course of the next decade he became a familiar figure on the international scene, playing an important role in Amnesty International and becoming secretary general of the International Commission of Jurists, based in Geneva. When he took on his responsibility for Namibia in 1973, he became an assistant secretary general of the UN.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I4IK5KH2FZHZHE47S3AH7MV7CA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729082784226},"content":"In 1989, one year after MacBride’s death, as the two superpowers engaged meaningfully to cool tensions, the “delighted” taoiseach, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/charles-haughey\" target=\"_blank\">Charlie Haughey</a>, welcomed the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to Ireland. Then the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War came to an end, and with it the geopolitical certainties of that period.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L56UVH4S2NHAJCJ4X2U3EBAVYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730042928427},"content":"We now live in a more uncertain world, where threats have been made to use nuclear missiles. As the Nobel committee pointed out this year, the “taboo” against their use has come “under pressure” in ongoing warfare – in Ukraine, for example. The possibility of facing “the indescribable” is greater than ever.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"John Mulqueen"}]},"description":{"basic":"‘Taboo’ against the use of nuclear weapons has come ‘under pressure’ in ongoing warfare once again"},"display_date":"2024-10-27T19:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Seán MacBride: Despite the Nobel prize winner’s warning, the possibility of facing ‘the indescribable’ is greater than ever","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"CYAPGAS3UNFRLTZKAUNHGWNYXA","auth":{"1":"348319afd939e975aa3e1ea7d71c3110edcee8799291b6d2b86b51b39bfa3a54"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/CYAPGAS3UNFRLTZKAUNHGWNYXA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/27/sean-macbride-despite-the-nobel-prize-winners-warning-the-possibility-of-facing-the-indescribable-is-greater-than-ever/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"BV4LWVUKJFFWRGWFG4NQQNA6NQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":312,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/d59a6d75-d731-4907-8cfd-673497010bff/versions/1729869978/media/2c75c00afca2bcdde272d218538513be_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/25/anyone-for-tennyson-frank-mcnally-on-the-lesser-known-charge-of-the-heavy-brigade-170-years-ago-this-weekend/","content_elements":[{"_id":"6EOX7N53SNCVBFZ6XYJFEEDH3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222423},"content":"Thanks alone to one corner of the Crimean peninsula, October 25th, 1854 was what journalists called a busy news day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V3AGBKC7OZG4JFRV45BIEBBYQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222424},"content":"Its main headline grabber was the spectacularly disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade, immortalised in poetry by Tennyson and in irony by an incredulous French general who commented: “C’est magnifique mais ce n’est pas la guerre.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GYABL4O35JCTPNCDZE4R5EI6BU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222425},"content":"Elsewhere at the Battle of Balaclava, the “Thin Red Line” (a phrase coined by Dubliner William Russell, war reporter with the London Times) became proverbial after a fearless Scottish stand against Russian cavalry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VQ3YDRKECRH5PAYQXCBK4EAG2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222426},"content":"Relegated to the inside pages of history, meanwhile, was the Charge of the Heavy Brigade.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EKVCNQYTOZCZXFXJOIRHHT2F2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222427},"content":"Unlike the celebrated catastrophe later the same morning, that was a success, although whether it was a charge at all is debatable. The Heavies had to attack uphill, from a standing start, so it may have been more of a drag.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3FFMKTRW75FZDE7E427IJCKZ74","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222428},"content":"Their victory would have been even greater had the watching Light Brigade joined in to rout the retreating Russians. Instead, and in contrast with the recklessness for which they would soon be famous (and in many cases dead), they were held back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZFVBFRAPVRHJLPIFW7QDZI2UJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222429},"content":"Tennyson wrote about the Heavy Brigade’s charge too. But whereas he eulogised the Lights’ disaster in the immediate aftermath, his celebration of the Heavies came 28 years later, in 1882, by which time his fame had outrun his talent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A3Z2D3YRSFEQXOKMK34HSLN7DQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222430},"content":"He was paid five guineas a line for “The Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava”. Alas, like many big-budget sequels, it was not a critical success. The Irish Times review first quibbled with its portrait of General James Scarlet’s dashing attack:","type":"text"},{"_id":"EWL3SXHC3BBG5KJGMUOXDO7HMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222431},"content":"“Mr Tennyson’s notion of praising the leader for galloping far ahead away from his men, and acting like an Englishman in a simply insane and unprofessional proceeding, must be attributed to his ignorance of military precepts; nor is the allusion to ‘an Englishman’ in this case very flattering to national military characteristics.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YHEGPZQPIVDILEBZTIBNIPUKNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222432},"content":"From there, the paper’s critic launched his own all-out assault:","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y67WOM2USNG7BHA4LBJLFHBU3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222433},"content":"“As for likening the charge to cannon shots, bursting thunderbolts(!), hurricanes, and so forth, and the firmness of the men to rocks in stormy seas, we certainly cannot envy the reader who find pleasure in these old and stale comparisons, which have long been the property of all writers, but are now scarcely expected to be put into use outside the literature of street ballads.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XTC2MXAW5FHWRAX2WAV6RU26R4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222434},"content":"While Tennyson played up the heroic Englishman angle, the Charge of the Heavy Brigade was heavily Irish too. The Fourth Dragoon Guards attacked the Russians with the old Gaelic war-cry “Faugh-a-Ballagh” (“Clear the way”). And among the many veterans of the engagement was a horse called Dickie Bird, whose skeleton is now displayed at Collins Barracks in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H2KM5EK4TBGCJIEVXM4UC22ACQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222435},"content":"Overall, about one-third of the British army in the Crimean War was Irish. And although English, all the main leaders at Balaclava – incompetent and otherwise – had strong connections with Ireland too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6SHKBVYP5GGBMGJLD7FRBBFDU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222436},"content":"These included Generals Raglan and Cardigan, both blamed for the Light Brigade debacle. Then there was Louis Nolan, who may have tried to stop the charge but then died in it. Finally, there was Lord Lucan (an ancestor of the famously disappeared one), who owned vast estates in Mayo while despising the natives.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P7GO5F2ZGJC4HPHMICTZJMTHOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222437},"content":"Historian Cecil Woodham-Smith wrote of him: “It is doubtful if he considered the Irish as human beings at all. During the famine, when he was called the Exterminator, he regarded his tenants as vermin to be cleared off the land.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"2NKUC6IPMZGKVOKR5ZNQ7HOMVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222438},"content":"This seems only to have recommended him for military service. Another historian has claimed: “It was Lucan’s conduct in Ireland, his ruthlessness, which decided the government to select him for a command in the Crimea.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QU3IZH7YF5HMHDLID7EHXZIIWQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222439},"content":"The Tallaght-born Russell is widely considered the first modern war correspondent. It was his account of the Light Brigade’s 25 minutes of infamy that set the tone for history: “At 11.10[am] our Light Brigade rushed to the front. They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun ... At the distance of 1,200 yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from 30 iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame, through which hissed the deadly balls.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4OHZ5LRR7RDSZF4OJ3GX7JAUYI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222441},"content":"“Their flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain … At 11.35 not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front of these bloody Muscovite guns.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"K4DN3FM3ZZGTZC42IY2DMJB4WY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222442},"content":"That was not published until three weeks later, in mid-November. But its effect on Tennyson was electrifying. There are those who think his poem about the Light Brigade is also a terrible piece of work. And he himself may have had doubts because manuscripts suggest he crossed out half the lines at one point or other.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HNSNROGHMJGRPJF44XQH7UCSOY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729868222443},"content":"Whatever its artistic merits, however, the finished work seems to have achieved what a Flann O’Brien character, commenting on a different poem, called “permanence”. A hundred and seventy years on, it is still most quoted. Most of us can remember at least these lines: “Theirs not to reason why,/Theirs but to do and die./Into the valley of Death/Rode the six hundred.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Unlike the celebrated catastrophe later the same morning, that was a success, although whether it was a charge at all is debatable"},"display_date":"2024-10-25T18:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Anyone for Tennyson? Frank McNally on the lesser-known Charge of the Heavy Brigade, 170 years ago this weekend","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"XC7VTWDJBCD7YD2E3N7X2IHC4I","auth":{"1":"f3ab70d83b62516853d8662e5a3297fb6815bfadbeb5e3e9edba7e464c9d2c1d"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/XC7VTWDJBCD7YD2E3N7X2IHC4I.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/25/anyone-for-tennyson-frank-mcnally-on-the-lesser-known-charge-of-the-heavy-brigade-170-years-ago-this-weekend/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"6OKIPNZ6LVHJ5ONM26AMJ5OJ5M","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":304,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/293dc91c-d1f2-4ae9-80c9-796428a5e14f/versions/1729786281/media/8afe9629cbdb63cf2297636a7d320414_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/24/skeleton-service-frank-mcnally-on-why-horses-heads-and-the-occasional-saint-used-to-be-buried-under-buildings/","content_elements":[{"_id":"FT33CCP3HBBXHE3CQ7NMLP3N7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101442},"content":"In any building, foundations are all important, whatever the cost. So it was that, on the island of Iona in 548AD, when St Colmcille discovered structural problems with a new church, he also diagnosed what was needed to fix them: the insertion of a human being underneath the walls.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZFKH43VZVGI3N4ZNQBU243TYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101443},"content":"Step forward St Oran (aka Odran), one of the 12 monks who had followed Colmcille from Ireland, and who would now prove himself the man in the gap. He volunteered to be buried alive, as any good early Christian monk would. The church was thereby stabilised.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q3FVW75LNJGP5N5YPKJNWWM7ZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101444},"content":"But some days passed and, missing his friend’s company, Colmcille dug him up again. Oran emerged none the worse from his period underground – except, alas, that it had turned him into a raving heretic.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6E4X7P5PTJEK3C2UZM2UXZI26Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101445},"content":"Climbing out of the grave, he declared conventional belief in the afterworld a delusion. “There is no Hell as you suppose, nor Heaven that people talk about,” he said. A horrified Colmcille hastily reburied him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3KQTFZSQK5GINKOZZPYHQLQCAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101446},"content":"The story of Oran – whose feast day falls this coming Sunday – is a local variant of what seems to be an ancient and international folk tradition, the “foundation sacrifice”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BZFYIY6GA5E6FCDNAHT6MQH7C4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101447},"content":"It turns up in Arthurian legend too, when the warlord Vortigern is advised to secure fortress by burying a fatherless child underneath.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CQHY5LL6NNFWDA274CARE6DVXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101448},"content":"Less drastically, it may also be behind a once-common practice in these islands: placing horses’ heads under the floorboards of certain buildings – although that seems to have served a secondary, more frivolous purpose: enhancing the acoustics of dance halls and music venues.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AMLOGHWIUJAR3JBYKD2J57JL2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101449},"content":"The horse-head phenomenon featured in a book published by Queen’s University Belfast some years ago: From Corrib to Cultra, a series of essays on Irish folk life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQQ4SQGZRVGLLA7WYB3EAS3GXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101450},"content":"One writer in it quoted the Scandinavian custom that skulls were buried under threshing floors to increase the echoes of industry and, in effect, show off to the neighbours. But behind this and the musical motivations, it was argued, lurked a deeper and older belief: that some sort of sacrifice was required in a building to keep evil at bay.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XC3XTKB67ZCOJPSUARYUL2N534","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101452},"content":"Whatever the reason, when a house in Wales was being rebuilt in 1870, on a site that had once been a dance hall, 40 horses’ skulls were uncovered in the foundations.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SJIBCXUCBFCEPB4CBO264O5J4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101453},"content":"And the Queen’s book also quoted the case of a woman underneath whose house five horse skulls were found. She professed not to believe in superstition, but nevertheless left them where they were, just to be on the safe side.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J7KUFNSNUNGODP6RZSQHPDMDHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101454},"content":"Evidence of equine sacrifice has turned up under much farther-flung and more ancient buildings too, however.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M2YHM4OA5ZDR3LO7BDMK3TIBIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101455},"content":"In a 1934 travelogue on the Holy Land, for example, the English writer HV Morton described a visit to the great Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie, then excavating a site in Gaza: “We went out on the hill and looked at the ruins of three palaces, built one on top of the other,” wrote Morton. “The first was built in 3100BC, the second in 2500BC, and the third – with a horse’s skeleton marking a foundation sacrifice – in 2200BC.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"I7O2SFLEZZHETELD2ZJIWKLDK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101457},"content":"And yet the horse was not the most interesting thing Petrie had found there. In his very next sentence, Morton mentions another of the archaeologist’s recent discoveries that had caused a sensation in Ireland and elsewhere: “What astonished me even more than a bathroom built in 3100BC, and perfectly preserved mud doorways through which Abraham might have walked, were Celtic earrings of Irish gold exactly like the prehistoric […] ornaments in the Dublin museum.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZKD65E27UJFSFDBJRS6FADUH4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101459},"content":"Petrie’s apparent find, and his explanation, made headlines around the world. “Irish earrings in Gaza laid to Phoenicians” declared the New York Times in June 1932.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KAEOOKUCSBF7FO5MZPAVIS3L2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101460},"content":"The Irish Times, meanwhile, quoted the archaeologist saying: “Long before the days of Moses, Ireland was the greatest source of gold in Europe.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIZCSG22UJCLLIRPNMOUWACRYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101461},"content":"Of a supposed ancient trade between this island and the Middle East, the paper rhapsodised: “Irish gold enriched the thrones of Pharaohs, may have shone in [the Trojan] Helen’s hair and may have adorned the pillars of Solomon’s Temple.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"L6ZP72N24NDOJCCCJCFY6JDVY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101462},"content":"Alas, Prof Petrie’s conclusions about the earrings he had found were built on shakier foundations than those ancient palaces.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EAUPJEHBS5E6HILRRK3ETDNQFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101463},"content":"Later scientific research would suggest that their lookalikes in Dublin were of African origin (and from later than first thought), as presumably were the ones in Gaza.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2TMWIXWNORBU7AR4JZOAK7DMHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101464},"content":"When Sir Flinders died in 1942, in Jerusalem, his body was interred in the local Protestant cemetery. Most of his body anyway. In recognition of the scientific interest in it, he had bequeathed his head to the Royal College of Surgeons in London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LMQVVKXOGNH3JGSTOSCW5UBUUA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729784101465},"content":"It’s not true, as popular belief once had it, that Petrie’s widow brought the head back to England in a hatbox. But after a delay caused by the war, it travelled back somehow. For years thereafter, in a no doubt accidental variant of the foundation sacrifice, it was stored in a jar in the college basement.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"The foundation sacrifice"},"display_date":"2024-10-24T18:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Skeleton service - Frank McNally on why horses’ heads (and the occasional saint) used to be buried under buildings","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"63WHVZDS4FAM3D4QDYA4TRMPRQ","auth":{"1":"f28b97d34fcd0a8e2db0c5c4d97fd34165a33efadfe82c993828d6fb21b455bc"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/63WHVZDS4FAM3D4QDYA4TRMPRQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/24/skeleton-service-frank-mcnally-on-why-horses-heads-and-the-occasional-saint-used-to-be-buried-under-buildings/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"GURIUT6HZBD6LPUFPZ5MKLP7N4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":336,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/6540cf6a-98ad-4991-873b-701348203a21/versions/1729705512/media/506c9bbfcbb2e916875cd0078b5e187d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/23/red-letter-day-frank-mcnally-on-the-zinoviev-letter-an-october-surprise-of-1924/","content_elements":[{"_id":"O224XFCRIJE7DBIOXDW4NLUF3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291550},"content":"The “October Surprise” is an infamous feature of US presidential elections: an accident or ambush so late in the campaign that the candidate on the receiving end has no time to recover. But 100 years ago this week, there was a classic British version of the phenomenon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GOJV5WFE4ZCQBMQ2RPJ7TJ4YIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291551},"content":"The 1924 general election, in which the first-ever Labour government sought a second term, was scheduled for October 29th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AQJTSM3ZVRDRPL4RMNOR2HSSUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291552},"content":"It was the third election in two years and the incumbents, only 10 months in office and already a minority, might well have lost anyway.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XUV2UGYD6BCFNCVBTGW6BZG72A","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291553},"content":"Then, four days before polling, the Daily Mail newspaper published the “Zinoviev Letter”, and Labour’s fate was sealed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YVP5G6TGRBEHRMOKVDC2I62YLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291554},"content":"Ostensibly signed by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Communist International (Comintern), it purported to be a directive to the British Communist Party urging seditious activities that, combined with Labour’s policy of normalising British-Soviet relations, would incite the working class to revolution.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BYKNS344XVF6DKIIK2SBPYMUZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291555},"content":"Like Richard Pigot’s notorious creation of 40 years earlier, published by the London Times to undermine Parnell, this too was a forgery (or so most scholars believe).","type":"text"},{"_id":"TVOIQECUERE75F6LGL53TG7B6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291556},"content":"But despite immediate denials by Zinoviev, it passed for truth – trumpeted by the other right-wing newspapers – long enough to help sweep the Conservatives back into power.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CEUTIAZQMFHQXBNDTHV5WT4LTE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291557},"content":"How decisive it really was is still debated. The Labour vote more than held up and the Tories gained mainly at the expense of the old Liberal party, whose demise was collateral damage from the affair.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AAHOREURSRC5VASEA4HLH2IAZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291558},"content":"One school of opinion argues that, by giving Labour an egregious excuse for a defeat that might have happened anyway, the scandal’s greatest legacy was to prevent them learning the right lessons and undertaking necessary reforms.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YD2N5VYMD5ECZC24TV7DLSVSXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291559},"content":"In any case, the Tories won a landslide under Stanley Baldwin, prime minster for the next five years. Another winner was Winston Churchill who, having campaigned as an independent, returned to the Conservatives as chancellor of the exchequer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZRL7GJSDFFWZGLPEFH5FX7YVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291560},"content":"There was a small Irish subplot too, because despite becoming an eponym, Zinoviev was not the only name on the letter. Another supposed signatory was Arthur McManus (1889 –1927), a Belfast-born Scottish trade unionist who had become Comintern’s colonial secretary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QKNKGOBZINDL5JXTZ5SIHHHQXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291561},"content":"McManus was later imprisoned for incitement to mutiny. He re-emerged to attend the inaugural meeting of the League against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression in 1927, before dying later that year aged only 38.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V5Q457RXS5FFDKIMCIMLT6HAZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291562},"content":"His ashes are among those in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2OOE2YILIFGGDKARNBE653HHB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291563},"content":"There was also an Irish-sounding subplot in the scandal, thanks to Sidney Reilly, aka “Reilly Ace of Spies”: the real-life espionage agent who became a model for James Bond.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B5UIC6ZB2BHSFAADZKA2LMWB7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291564},"content":"There was nothing Irish about Reilly, really. Born under the surname Rosenblum, probably in Odessa, he borrowed his fake ID from one of his several wives, widow Margaret Thomas, who had been a Reilly before marriage.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T4VG4375RBD27PADXVMURQGCPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291565},"content":"Under the new guise, he posed variously as an Irish clergyman or the son of an Irish sea merchant, and claimed to have been born in Clonmel. Explaining his choice of pseudonym once, he said: “In Europe, only the British hate the Irish, but everyone hates the Jews.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"25ZY7AKJZRBJ5BJYFUDFJOXWZ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291566},"content":"Complicating the story further is that one of Reilly’s many affairs was with Ethel Voynich (1864–1960), a woman who does not sound at all Irish but – by birth at least – was.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NJL3RF5V2NF5JKB73YXU5CK2VE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291567},"content":"Born in Cork as Ethel Boole – daughter of the great English mathematician George Boole, then a professor in the forerunner of UCC – Voynich may be the most successful Irish-born writer that nobody in Ireland has ever heard of.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHKEE3OIUBDFPLQYJI7HEJL2JA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291568},"content":"Her 1897 novel The Gadfly became a favourite of the Bolsheviks and required reading in the USSR, where it sold millions. Which is ironic, because it was partly inspired by Reilly, her lover at the time, whom the Russians would eventually consider it necessary to execute","type":"text"},{"_id":"JYBUNKCQSJDK3LDT2SH6GYEMUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291569},"content":"Reilly was not involved in forging the Zinoviev letter, but he was certainly implicated in smuggling it into Britain.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FCD2WYD3NBBERNKHS4ABJTHYQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291570},"content":"He was a great admirer of Churchill, one of the main beneficiaries. Indeed, Churchill found it necessary to put distance between them afterwards, while also arguing that, even if the letter was a forgery, it expressed only what was already known communist policy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QTLY724FYRCRTDTU4ZEMXFEJQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291571},"content":"Reilly did not long outlive his involvement. A year later, he was lured back to Russia to liaise with presumed anti-Bolshevik activists. It was a trap. Arrested and interrogated, he was shot dead in a forest outside Moscow in November 1925.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C6NAQMKMJRGLTBMUGCVZZAKDAE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291572},"content":"Whatever its true influence, the scandal that broke on October 25th, 1924, soon became a metaphor for all disastrous surprises in print.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B7WAGKB6JZH5TCHASJOBF4HSDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291573},"content":"Decades later, in 1952, its spectre haunted even a Dublin libel trial taken by the poet Patrick Kavanagh. A sub-plot there was the mutual enmity that existed by then between Kavanagh and Brendan Behan, a subject on which the former was drawn out expertly by defence counsel John A Costello.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y5AKG7SDWJEW3MLUHQTS3NHI2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291574},"content":"Then, after Kavanagh had repeatedly and vehemently denied that the writers had ever been friends, Costello produced Behan’s copy of Kavanagh’s novel Tarry Flynn, inscribed by the author: “For Brendan, poet and painter, on the day he decorated my flat, Sunday 12th, 1950.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MDL4RMEAP5AFTO4TZ3MJL5I4FE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729752291575},"content":"There was no recovering from that. As Anthony Cronin wrote years later, Costello had wielded “his secret weapon, his Zinoviev letter”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"How decisive the letter really was is still debated"},"display_date":"2024-10-23T17:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Red Letter Day — Frank McNally on the Zinoviev Letter, an ‘October Surprise’ of 1924","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3OIWZUK4INASROJUKT6CEANMZY","auth":{"1":"373797b0a51f2ab00872cb3b299f7d90f6a81003cedde121a5457f570b53b7e8"},"focal_point":{"x":201,"y":156},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3OIWZUK4INASROJUKT6CEANMZY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/23/red-letter-day-frank-mcnally-on-the-zinoviev-letter-an-october-surprise-of-1924/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"PWLKGBJG45GZTID6MWCLNFPIVA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":306,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/d13c24f4-5df4-435b-b06b-3f76180c120f/versions/1729617381/media/11c0c0a234d0297322c18436f81484ca_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/22/schmuck-spreader-frank-mcnally-on-the-unholy-resonance-of-an-old-christian-hymn/","content_elements":[{"_id":"VH73N4XWRBFMFETLUFWSDDUYME","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541650},"content":"Among this week’s minor musical milestones, I see, is the 300th anniversary of a premiere involving Johann Sebastian Bach’s setting of the old Lutheran hymn: Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4WXM4VD5AVETZIG4G2ZEXXVRKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541651},"content":"I only noticed this, to be honest, because it sounds very rude in English. But in German, of course, it’s not.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G3R6634DGZFK3BLBAZ6QPSFESM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541652},"content":"On the contrary, the hymn’s lyrics compare the unity between Jesus and a Christian receiving communion with that of a bridegroom and his bride. The title translates as nothing more offensive than “Adorn thyself, my soul, with gladness.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"HED24GD75FDNHGMMPRGFG7QXIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541653},"content":"So where in this, I wondered, is the basis of the popular Yiddish term of abuse, schmuck? You know – the word that means variously “idiot”, “detestable fellow”, or “penis”? Well, apparently, etymologists don’t know either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7KBZY7Q3YFEFTEKEEUUSXGR6LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541654},"content":"Expert opinion is divided as to whether the slang term comes from the Polish schmok (meaning “serpent” or “tail”), or the German schmucke, meaning “jewel” or “ornamentation” as in the hymn, but used sarcastically.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VCXMKPLXCJFU7OA72I2GJZWRKA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541655},"content":"However derived, schmuck was once considered so offensive that people had to invent a politer alternative. Hence Schmo(e), which performs a similar role in American English as the Hiberno-English Feck does for a certain Anglo-Saxon swear word.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QSP5KONB2ZHJ3ORF6M7I77PQOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541656},"content":"Like Hiberno-English, clearly, Yiddish is a language rich in insult. I recall somebody somewhere once suggesting that, in common with the supposed Eskimo vocabulary for snow, Yiddish must have at least 50 different words for “loser”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5IMWU7JJ2ZHLXOT7PUS5ORYEEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541657},"content":"From the same corner of the dictionary as schmuck, for example, comes schlep, schlub, schlemiel, and schlimazel.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2MVNMWTFKVH2TCHDDDCW3A7QUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541658},"content":"To Irish ears, a schlep sounds like something you might get off a Kerry corner-back if you weren’t careful. In fact, it’s primarily a verb meaning to “pull” or “drag” (also popular tactics in Gaelic football).","type":"text"},{"_id":"RNRUC36SW5AKTIXOBN3APFYOJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541659},"content":"And it was in that harmless sense the word was first introduced into English, by James Joyce no less, when in Ulysses he has Stephen Dedalus waxing poetical about a gypsy woman picking cockles on Sandymount Strand:","type":"text"},{"_id":"EMCNXUJ7DVFEFKJ4BXXSOK3GUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541660},"content":"“Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LFD43UNP5VBZBLKDPUKVRCYO5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541661},"content":"But yes, sure enough, there is also a related Yiddish noun describing underachievement: schlep being short for schlepper, on “an inept and stupid person”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2XOUJTQ2NVGPNJIRTABI4B2ES4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541662},"content":"In schlimazel, we also have the origins of schemozzle, a word that has gone strangely native in Ireland, thanks to the GAA.","type":"text"},{"_id":"65CMDK4WCFEY3FOFUXP5Z2Z6UI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541663},"content":"How this happened is very mysterious.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MMIEFF7ISFCOHPGNOR5VDU5RUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541664},"content":"Based only on the fact that its popularity here seems to date from the early 1950s, and that the late Micheál O’Hehir is especially associated with it, I used to have a theory that it had been smuggled home in O’Hehir’s luggage after the 1947 All-Ireland Football Final in New York.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3CQJTKH6YBFBLNKPNJQTH2O3DA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541665},"content":"But Myles na gCopaleen of this newspaper was an early adopter in print (albeit he usually spelled it without a “c”) and he was no GAA fan. Besides which, I have also found it in a 1929 Evening Herald article about a court case from London’s Old Bailey, where it had been used in evidence to some puzzlement.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CAHXAOFUTZDWNGOQFOGRJDON6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541666},"content":"Asked to comment, a professor of Hebrew declared it “Jewish slang [from the] East End, where no many familiar slang words originate.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6UQVBLK6SZGSXGEFUUZRAJZPQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541667},"content":"He went on to explain that it was a corrupted portmanteau of the German schlim (meaning “slim”) and the Hebrew mazzal (“planet”). As combined in astrology, those added up to bad luck, or to “any situation in which unlucky fellows are involved”. Losers yet again.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4FE7WRASTRHQHK44LHEXUTLIDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541668},"content":"Early Irish references include another court case, from Waterford in 1954. That involved a three-way collision outside the city’s hospital, involving a motorbike, a car, an ambulance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GKJANYSIDJEWVEI6RHLMZTOZDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541669},"content":"Some flavour of the Munster Express’s report is conveyed it its subheadings, which include “Looked left and right”, “‘Terrific’ Application of Brakes”, and “[Drunk!] Is it codding me you are?”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SHTPN7ZNABCB7CTLU2WRQ45RTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541670},"content":"The drivers involved all appeared to have been schlimazels in the ill-starred original sense of the term, and the incident was certainly a schemozzle in the later one.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EW3VJIFA4NCMLHKMGHBSHSMZGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541671},"content":"But soon after that, the word began to appear in GAA coverage too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3TASHUFB5ZFV7AA53J6GYUZHC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541672},"content":"After Cork’s shock defeat to Clare in a 1955 Munster Championship, for example, a match report suggested the losers had been fatally handicapped by the absence of a star defender, who was considered man of the match in absentia.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTKXNLXU3JGQNB4F32LDKZN22E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541673},"content":"“One man, had he been playing, could have won the game... He was Jerry O’Riordan, whose sound defensive play would have been invaluable in the various schemozzles around the Cork goal.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7MMMVIUFLZGL5GG2AAI3HPANRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541674},"content":"Perhaps O’Riordan had a talent for administering schleps, in the Kerry or Yiddish sense, or both.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AHI4AQJUTRGXRF6WZM3MW73DRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729616541675},"content":"In any case, circa 1955, the other sch-word was clearly in the process of putting down roots here. By the end of the decade, to borrow from a different James Joyce story, schemozzles were general, all over Ireland.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Schmuck was once considered so offensive that people had to invent a politer alternative"},"display_date":"2024-10-22T17:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Schmuck spreader – Frank McNally on the unholy resonance of an old Christian hymn","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"UDHBVN2KLJEUHFYO2RXBKGKJTY","auth":{"1":"7c4ceefb653b4fdfd2cd1b6ebafbd06afa19d072e2eb6e77c7f0829bbd6e0aae"},"focal_point":{"x":419,"y":460},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/UDHBVN2KLJEUHFYO2RXBKGKJTY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/22/schmuck-spreader-frank-mcnally-on-the-unholy-resonance-of-an-old-christian-hymn/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"7ZNYEZOHTJDJROSAPTAPE4L2K4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":349,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/a9b3371d-ab83-45bf-8799-0a9786d2b004/versions/1729534199/media/7a8eac296433aeb10676c143729c389f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/21/war-and-remembrance-ronan-mcgreevy-on-the-battle-of-le-pilly/","content_elements":[{"_id":"C7UNHPF4FVHL5M4KCOXLZC2Z5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365901},"content":"In April 1918 the German army came perilously close to a breakthrough which could have made an Allied victory impossible in the first World War.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JHEHUIWBENBB3HFUJU3IX4FODQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365902},"content":"Also know as the fourth Battle of Ypres and to the Germans as Operation Georgette, it was the last attempt by the Germans to break through the Allied lines in Belgium and northern France and seize the Channel ports.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J5SXAJ7IZJGNLHGF7QGJPKTS6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365903},"content":"German successes were such in the early days that the British commander-in-chief Sir Douglas Haig issued a famous edict, “With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VEGKABKC7FDAVB5MYXVRSCKKCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365904},"content":"The Germans advanced 15 kilometres in just two days and took thousands of Allied prisoners. Among them was Pte William Rusling of the Northumberland Fusiliers from Sheffield.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WMK2T4XBPRCNLLPT54FSQRHZHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365905},"content":"Tragically, he was mortally wounded by friendly fire behind German lines where prisoners-of-war were being processed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OPY6Y4MUZBFSXF2GKSWOJEAT2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365906},"content":"He was taken to Le Pilly farm outside France, where there was a German casualty clearing station. His wounds from an exploding shell were so severe that nothing could be done for him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIM7F6VLOFERFIURNJEV5J65KM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365907},"content":"He was comforted in his last moments by a German soldier, Emil Mannheimer, from Hamburg. He noted Rusling’s address from a letter he kept on him. In July 1919, Mannheimer wrote to Rusling’s widow, offering his condolences. Her husband in his last moments, he recalled, stared at a photograph of her and their children that he had in his breast pocket.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GDDO25SLYZA7DFL4YN7ZHIFM2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365908},"content":"He then asked Mannheimer to read to him the Gospel of St John’s account of the death of Jesus.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LZVXDDCVBVEZZKK7ZONUY5GKMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365909},"content":"“Never in my life have I felt myself so near to my God as in that hour where I, a German and a Jew, helped to ease the last hour of the dying Englishman with the solace of his faith!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NUSVU5RDQJDF7KW7EQUI7WKHXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365910},"content":"The German soldiers dug a grave for Rusling opposite Le Pilly farm and buried him there. He told Rusling’s widow that her husband was buried beside men from the German Infantry Regiment 56 and beside them there was a mass-grave for Englishmen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5CC6ZAYATNCEPAETZGMGYTJSQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365911},"content":"The men most likely to be buried in that mass grave are not Englishmen, but the Irishmen of the 2nd Royal Irish Regiment who were killed at the Battle of Le Pilly on October 19th and 20th, 1914.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GHUY47TGTBGFXGLPLVZNKX2ROU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365912},"content":"The battle took part in the early stages of the war before trenches became the norm and the first World War was still a war of movement. It was a calamity for the 2nd Royal Irish Regiment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6FWSZ5R75NBMHCU6IYEMW3W72Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365913},"content":"They were isolated, surrounded, massacred or taken prisoner. On October 19th, the strength of the battalion was 20 officers and 881 men. Two days later, it was one surviving officer, a transport officer and 135 men. The regimental diary is chilling in its succinctness. “Unfortunately, little evidence is obtainable of what occurred on this day.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DC5Y4RAO7RH7VN4RL5O3LIC6V4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365914},"content":"Some 165 men were killed. The battle claimed the lives of 29 men from Waterford, 27 each from Tipperary and Wexford, 13 from Kilkenny and seven from Cork.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RBO4AAFSJJAYFBN3EBRRPO5ILI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365915},"content":"Of those who died, the bodies of 152 men are missing and they are remembered on the Le Touret memorial nearby. Tragically, more than 500,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in the first World War have no known grave, but this battle was unusual.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IICB5MQUARD3RBKE6VNT55NXYI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365916},"content":"It was small scale by the standards of the war and, aside from this early battle, it was behind the German lines for the duration of the war. Therefore, it ought not to be difficult to find these bodies, but where are they?","type":"text"},{"_id":"4AB4IJN24BHIVFMMOBFZSBUIA4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365917},"content":"Since the Battle of Le Pilly was rediscovered in 2013 by Waterford-based historian Michael Desmond, the conviction has grown among many experts that the site opposite Le Pilly farm is where these Irishmen are buried. The Mannheimer letter only strengthens that belief given that the German regiment who faced them was the 56th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CEE5DHGKMBHTRBSKO4EPTY7EQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365918},"content":"First World War historians and battlefield guides Iain McHenry and Jonathan Porter have searched burial records and have accounted for a possible 71 men who are buried as unknown soldiers in surrounding military cemeteries which still leaves 80 bodies unaccounted for. A lidar (light detection and ranging) study, which measures underground cavities, has detected a distinct rectangle-shaped perturbation consistent with a mass grave and a magnetometry study found evidence of metal buckles and buttons.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TJRCSKJ5VVCBTKPS56LCQYAUNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365919},"content":"Locals in Herlies erected a beautiful memorial to the 2nd Royal (Irish) Regiment in 2018 and host a commemoration service every October. They have diligently honoured these men for the last decade.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y3GQ3HOQLZCCLK3O2NR3GEWGZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365920},"content":"In nearby Fromelles, the remains of 250 men, of whom 205 were Australian, were found in a mass grave. They died in July 1916 in a futile attack which surpassed in bloodshed anything the Australians experienced in Gallipoli.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EHMZPXZDRRH43M7EZBJBM52J3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365921},"content":"Excavating the men became a political imperative given the first World War’s seminal place in the Australian national story. Those who could be identified were buried in marked graves.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QPZUCUBHA5HGDJKV4MTXGRRPXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365922},"content":"The men who died at Le Pilly were Irishmen fighting with the British army in France against a German enemy which occupied this part of France for four years. The exhumation of these Irishmen and their erstwhile German foes would be a powerful reminder of western Europe’s bloody past and how far we have come in the last century.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AUKAGBWEABGTDDIQPLP2IYKNCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729533365923},"content":"What happened to Mannheimer? The man who wrote the letter to Rusling’s widow fled the country that he had served during the war and died in 1948 in Palestine.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Ronan McGreevy"}},"name":"Ronan McGreevy"}]},"description":{"basic":"A dark time for the 2nd Royal Irish Regiment"},"display_date":"2024-10-21T19:05:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"War and remembrance – Ronan McGreevy on the Battle of Le Pilly","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"CWYXIDDJ4BA2REGGMA5A2ZDS4A","auth":{"1":"fb2b05f5b1065a52c2ea0f7a99d4b4a30f4f1c10b9514b7ed31c2e004c352ab1"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/CWYXIDDJ4BA2REGGMA5A2ZDS4A.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/21/war-and-remembrance-ronan-mcgreevy-on-the-battle-of-le-pilly/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"XJRAPH2GNNEBRMHSTVQEGCGI44","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":305,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/618ca018-7c62-45ba-a1bc-f824e44b4b6b/versions/1729422229/media/c476d309c1547015d4b6b6053d9a5606_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/20/bridges-to-the-past-brian-maye-on-architect-john-benson/","content_elements":[{"_id":"OYXV77IZSRFQPBM4C27CTHGVAM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Although he came from the little village of Collooney, Co Sligo, he made an impressive and lasting impact on the cityscape of Cork. His name was John Benson and he died 150 years ago on October 17th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3MCD2DCERZGOLDM7NJ3JLR3744","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was born in modest circumstances in 1812 (date and month unknown), the only son of a father of the same name. Little is known of his schooling or upbringing except that the Coopers of Markree Castle, near Collooney, must have taken him under their wing because the astronomer Joshua Cooper, of that family, sent him, at the age of 19 or 20, to be trained at the Royal Dublin Society’s School of Architectural Drawing, where he is recorded as gaining premiums in March and December 1832.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JN6M57KOCVDUHNMRD5S6RDRMVY","additional_properties":{},"content":"He received some commissions in his native Sligo, including restoration work on Markree Castle, a number of churches, especially the Catholic Church of the Assumption (done in the Gothic-revival style), Collooney (1843-78), and Victoria (now Hyde) Bridge in Sligo town.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZCGB3YMTBE2LAW5W5SMNZTYLY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Following a period with the Board of Works, he passed the qualifying examination for the office of county surveyor in 1846 and was appointed county surveyor for the West Riding of Cork that year but was almost immediately transferred to the East Riding, which position he held until 1855. He and the new surveyor for the West Riding, William Augustus Treacy, faced the formidable job of overseeing the Famine-relief works in the county, during which they superintended the construction of several hundred miles of road.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4F6LKCPEDVGQPOS7FGDX66UHH4","additional_properties":{},"content":"In May 1848, Benson was given the additional appointment of consulting engineer to the Cork Harbour Board, and in January 1851, he was also made engineer to the city; the two positions were amalgamated in November 1854 and he was elected to the new post of city engineer, which he held until resigning because of poor health in April 1873.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NPZETTEHYJC3ZOF3AVUL22KK2I","additional_properties":{},"content":"The bridges for the construction of which he was responsible included St Patrick’s Bridge and North Gate Bridge, both beautifully designed, and Benson Bridge, which bears his name.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WCVG6IGYBFEXDBHXDJG76JIIC4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Waterworks, quays and piers were also designed by him, such as the deep-water Victoria Quay, which “with improved dredging of the river, enabled the largest ships to dock, doubling Cork harbour revenues,” according to Helen Andrews, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z4W2BKAUWNGQBHZWRLHJIY5WJQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Railway construction in the Cork area also saw him deeply involved in various capacities, including engineer of the Cork and Macroom Railway, the Rathkeale and Newcastle Railway and the Cork and Limerick Railway; chief engineer and architect to the Cork and Passage Junction Railway, and director of the Cork and Kinsale Railway. Helen Andrews tells us that he designed the Penrose Marsh terminus for the Great Southern and Western Railway, “with its impressive Doric colonnade”, finished in 1860 but later sadly demolished.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UGRZSXHTURG75DQYWSM7D463OE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Frank Keohane, in his book Cork: City and County (2020), referred to Benson’s many buildings and praised their sophistication; they were individualistic while reflecting the styles fashionable at the time. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"ARGNZ3MCKZBVTHSYIQN6J6GOPI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Italian Lombardic style was popular with him and Keohane commended how he combined the contrasting Cork red sandstone with white sandstone. The best example of this was the new Cork Waterworks, which is now the Lifetime Lab visitor centre. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"L2V2VG3EGRCULO3DN6P7BDFKWE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Other fine structures of his that have found new uses are the double-arched entrance to the demolished Cornmarket, now in Bishop Lucey Park, and the Butter Exchange and Firkin Crane (also used in the butter trade), which are now technology and enterprise, and dance centres respectively. Keohane also singled out for special praise Benson’s Princes Street entrance to the famous English Market and the impressively imposing St Vincent’s Church on Sunday’s Well Road (now no longer a church and owned by UCC).","type":"text"},{"_id":"FWX2ZWRGGNGDXF7MIGWO7ZEZ4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"Benson won the competition for designing the premises for the Dublin Exhibition of 1853, supervising the building of it himself on Leinster Lawn, on the south side of Leinster House. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YXKT6M43JBFGRLHYAO5DV5HEQA","additional_properties":{},"content":"On the exhibition’s opening day, he was knighted by the Lord Lieutenant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5TQTZB4CIFF5FFSYBLAHJNTBUE","additional_properties":{},"content":"He published many articles in the Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland, was a member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (admitted in 1856) and of the Institute of Civil Engineers (admitted in 1861), held office in the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, and was a master and provincial grand architect in the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RCXQB552NJEEXOBO6UVUHRMKDI","additional_properties":{},"content":"He married Mary Clementine Pyne in 1849. They had no children. They went to England for health reasons in 1873 and were living at Alexander Square, Brompton, London, where he died. “Benson had a pleasant disposition and was highly respected,” according to Helen Andrews.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Brian Maye"}]},"description":{"basic":"An impressive and lasting impact on the cityscape of Cork"},"display_date":"2024-10-20T17:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Bridges to the past – Brian Maye on architect John Benson ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"BRITCGKW5VA23M2OWM5YLJXQOA","auth":{"1":"5e1bb8587cc22072e29102298ec32b59cf3e1c53e010e766c814a6714aa87523"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/BRITCGKW5VA23M2OWM5YLJXQOA.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/20/bridges-to-the-past-brian-maye-on-architect-john-benson/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"HYM3H7VMZBDWXAU3HPDBBEJUAA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":321,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/85e26f7f-c571-4035-bc0f-04b12a334b17/versions/1729273748/media/9e85f2118608785c3ff6ddb944c0b0f9_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/18/old-haunt-frank-mcnally-on-the-sinister-past-of-a-dublin-street-garden/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ZCSUMOEKGNGVXOOT2HUGIVSFIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743448},"content":"In the Clonliffe House pub, Ballybough, for a history talk one night recently, I crossed the road to visit one of Dublin’s more fascinating gardens.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GDCWSK7Q7BDJDH23AVNOFS3UYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743449},"content":"“Garden” might be an overstatement – it’s just a landscaped street corner really, with flowers, shrubbery, and a pair of benches. But it’s remarkable that this is now a pleasant place to linger, day or night. Because in former times, it was somewhere to avoid or hurry through.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WUOEOJ2WJFG6PFOACKPHBE3RIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743450},"content":"In his book The Neighbourhoods of Dublin (1913), Weston St John Joyce recalled a time when people “would have gone a considerable round rather than pass that unhallowed spot after nightfall”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QNAWMKW5GFFXJDWVKV6MJCXGEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743451},"content":"And as recently as 1990, when Ballybough featured in a Dáil debate, TD John Stafford spoke of a tradition whereby “spirits” were believed to haunt another green space nearby: “the park beside Luke Kelly Bridge”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QCP4C3VAJFAJ3EBL3X4VTWEIXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743452},"content":"A Dublin City Council sign at the landscaped corner explains the area’s reputation:","type":"text"},{"_id":"KXKZ6USDZJB4ZMLCHKRRIPCHXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743453},"content":"“By tradition, this site at the junction of Ballybough and Clonliffe Roads is an old Felo de Se burial ground. Felo de Se or the crime of murdering one’s self was an ancient Common Law practiced in England and current in Ireland from the sixteenth century up to the law’s reformation in 1823.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JSSDHM7FQZHB7CW6QAB3E7235Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743454},"content":"“A person found guilty . . . was sentenced to be buried at midnight at a crossroads and a stake run through their heart to prevent them returning to disturb the living.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"V5VURJN5MVGBNNKNTSPKC4JL7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743455},"content":"Long shunned by superstitious locals, the place seems to have had a conversely magnetic pull on writers, especially those of Gothic bent. The sign continues:","type":"text"},{"_id":"5KNHUAO6CRBEHB7QI4O7LBU6ME","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743456},"content":"“In literature it has inspired the poets James Clarence Mangan, Thomas Caulfield Irwin], and Thomas McDonagh among others. It is widely accepted that the Clontarf-born writer, Bram Stoker, visited the site as a child and drew inspiration for his ground-breaking novel Dracula.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UADRK37PFBA7TJ3WL3GPJW6FPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743457},"content":"But that was then. Now, it seems, the sinister associations have subsided sufficiently for the site to be a charming public amenity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P4UOO6VMXRABHLLAEIUPG56T2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743458},"content":"It was close to midnight when I visited. And I can honestly report that the only spirit I was conscious of was the one I had consumed in the pub earlier as part of a whiskey-tasting event: a practical companion to the talk by Sean Deegan on the history of Jones’s Road Distillery.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RP6G74XVXJAD3CU5CH5SDP5QIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743459},"content":"While there too, and still on the subject of corners, I was also given a tour of the pub’s exhibition of Ballybough history.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TR7OG6FDZFEUPJJO55MGXZPOHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743460},"content":"As revealed by curator Laura Williams, this included a “Frank McNally Corner”, which turned out to be a pair of framed Irishman’s Diaries about the area. So there it is. If I hadn’t previously achieved that status elsewhere, I am at last officially a corner boy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IAKB6CMRYZFJTNTCPMGBISUI5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743461},"content":"***","type":"text"},{"_id":"PRJ6R7ALLJEHHPO4SLXXYYFQYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743462},"content":"The aforementioned Mangan (1803-1849) was a vampirologist before Stoker (1847-1912) ever saw the dark of night. The former’s poems include one called “Enigma – a Vampire”. And although he was born and died in the southside Liberties, Mangan had enough of an association with northside Ballybough for it to feature undercover in one of his more elaborate pseudonyms.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DIPXC3MY65FEXN23Q6Q6EHJ7NQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743463},"content":"His connection with the area was via a pub that in the early 1800s hosted a literary circle. This was enough for him to sign himself occasionally as “Peter Puff Secundus, of Mud Island, near the bog”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EM2ABHLHLFHP7LYWFKZYNVDGTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743464},"content":"A once-infamous part of northeast Dublin, Mud Island was said to be inhabited by “smugglers, thieves, highway robbers, and desperadoes of all description”. The desperadoes even elected a “king” from their ranks. As for the city’s official authorities, they were reluctant to set foot there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NORDDM6XJVHGZGF6HABJYTTWYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743465},"content":"Mud Island has long since vanished but may live on in the modern suburb’s name. Ballybough is usually said to derive from “Baile Bocht”, or the “poor town”. But as suggested to me by Dublin City Councillor and former city mayor Nial Ring, also in Clonliffe House that night, it was more likely a soft town: Baile Bog.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DHYQNK23YBEK7LFUSFGSSBPSLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743466},"content":"Getting back to the area’s writers, the most famous of them is the excuse the forthcoming Féile Bram Stoker, which runs from October 25th to the 28th, promising “four days and nights of deadly adventures”. And not just deadly adventures, according to the programme, but revelatory ones too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EWZ73AVYGNCFBKMBIRA2XNYAR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743467},"content":"Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital is better known for delivering tiny bundles of joy. Next Saturday (October 26th) in the Pillar Room, however, it promises a large, literary revelation: “An extraordinary Bram Stoker Discovery (Worldwide Exclusive)”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q5AKZQ2FLBCPJHJ5ZGGYLWC2QU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743468},"content":"The obstetrician will be Brian Cleary, “a lifelong Stoker enthusiast”, who has made “a discovery of major literary and historical significance”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QBFQ7I4CXVGBZDD7ILSOX5ZMNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743469},"content":"Miriam O’Callaghan will be the midwife, given the task of interviewing Cleary about a revelation described variously on the festival website as “heartwarming”, “fascinating”, and “incredible” and as having left those in the know about it “stunned and thrilled”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WSEVIW7ZG5AP3I6TLRNVKVLBZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743470},"content":"As if all that wasn’t enough, the event organisers also promise a “very, very special unveiling”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FVVJHTPLIBHNBKA3FGEVG43RRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729268743471},"content":"I am somehow reminded of another word here, meaning “to be very excited or happy”. It’s an informal term, used mainly in the US and Australia. But I think we can safely apply it to this case too and declare that all involved in the impending literary exposé are well and truly stoked.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"A part of Ballybough that was once shunned by superstitious locals"},"display_date":"2024-10-18T17:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Old Haunt - Frank McNally on the sinister past of a Dublin street garden","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"N7FQTKVXGNGHLODNZNCIFUHQA4","auth":{"1":"2d4ed3be45cc886dfe02ea168e53f7ad17ed5a3df50c1afbe75e83692da98efb"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/N7FQTKVXGNGHLODNZNCIFUHQA4.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/18/old-haunt-frank-mcnally-on-the-sinister-past-of-a-dublin-street-garden/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"D5YTSHTBHZE6VBMFZQCVHA3YFY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":263,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/871c74e4-0cc2-4573-af59-53fa290723cb/versions/1729181786/media/df4e47294b2b18708c21e24ab47c72aa_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/17/head-over-heels-alison-healy-on-cupids-arrow/","content_elements":[{"_id":"2NR5JJO7WZFL3AT6YJCG6NCZ7A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Irish mammies are known for dropping pearls of wisdom everywhere they go, and Kate Bush’s late mother Hannah was no different. When Hannah Daly emigrated from the family farm in Waterford to work as a nurse in England, she brought her wise insights with her. Kate Bush once heard her mother saying: “Every old sock meets an old shoe” and the phrase delighted her. It eventually made its way into her Moments of Pleasure song, complete with a reference to her mother.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GDRYP6TCG5DK3DSEONRS6RWYRI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The singer later told BBC Radio 2 that her mother thought it was hilarious when she played the song for her. “She couldn’t stop laughing, she just thought it was so funny that I’d put it into this song,” she recalled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HY2RONEY75GQBLUKC2N2BCLIHY","additional_properties":{},"content":"The genre-defying artist also used her mother in another song – evoking a scene that has often put the heart crossways in me. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"RGFK3BVETJEPZLANOGZF64SD3U","additional_properties":{},"content":"It’s that moment when you awake with a jolt in the middle of the night and there is a small child standing silently by your bedside staring at you.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QK7UKWONJFFBXIK757ZF7XNLBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"When she had a nightmare, the young Kate Bush would go into her parents’ bedroom and stand in silence in the dark, waiting for her mother to sense her presence and wake up. Imagine awakening to see a small Kate Bush standing in her nightdress in the dark, hair probably askew and clutching a teddy? After Hannah got over the fright, she would lift the bedclothes and say: “Come here with me now”. And so she asked her mother to voice those very words on the song And Dream of Sheep.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DY3KXV5ALRA2DD33ANEDVR4YCE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Kate Bush’s Irish mammy sounds like a rock of sense. Of course, she was right about there being someone for everyone. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"4B3RMSVXQRGSFG6CBHNHWA3PZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"There is indeed a sock for every shoe but sometimes socks have trouble finding shoes, and vice versa. And sometimes the socks have travelled a distance before they find their shoe, or should that be solemate?","type":"text"},{"_id":"WY2GEBGF7FGOZJLGWWAVKUFQAY","additional_properties":{},"content":"That was the case for one couple who met in the strangest of circumstances. It was during that tricky time a few years ago when people all over the world were queuing for the Covid-19 vaccine. Among them were Linda and John, two strangers who lived at the Lakes at Stillwater senior living campus in Minnesota.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IF6FVLKWSNG7XPMEN75OTPB3RU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Linda was obediently standing on her blue social distancing spot when she felt what she called “a shift in the universe”. She hadn’t had the vaccination yet so that couldn’t be blamed as a side effect. When she turned around, John was coming towards her to stand on the next blue spot.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BGWRSXAA65HYBD25AITGWUJKEA","additional_properties":{},"content":"It seems that all the social distancing signs in the world were not enough to keep the senior citizens apart. After the vaccination, they went into a hall to sit for 15 minutes in case of a reaction. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6W66G7VPIJELJMUQOCPN7IHE5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"They found that there was, in fact, an immediate, and very strong reaction, and again, it was nothing to do with the vaccine. They had both contracted a chronic case of lovesickness. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y6E5IQ62DRCRXNJ6M3QK5F5YCY","additional_properties":{},"content":"They got married the following year in the hall where it all happened, and the blue dot Linda was standing on was framed for posterity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LMFTYQBVKZALVCGMUQOX5XSH3U","additional_properties":{},"content":"It would be nice to have a dramatic “How We Met” story, instead of telling people you met at a disco when slow sets were all the rage and you got free chicken and chips because of a quirk in the night-club licence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GPREQVX6WZA7XDO3QMOKVRW4MM","additional_properties":{},"content":"One of the best “How We Met” stories unfolded under our noses this summer when the Villa Vie Odyssey cruise ship was grounded in Belfast for four months. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHSOE4KPCJB5DKONUGYZADCMP4","additional_properties":{},"content":"This is a residential cruise ship so some of the passengers will spend 15 years floating around the world. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"S3TEKCZ3ZNBLRFBNZ7VU6NVQCQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"A few of them headed home while waiting for the ship to set sail but Canadian Gian Perroni and American Angie Harsanyi were among the passengers who opted to spend their days wandering around Belfast. They fell into step as they walked between the ship and the city and while their ship was going nowhere, it was full steam ahead for their love affair. The couple are engaged to be married in April.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LATEXE3XHFF6FMTQMAPP3QEPHY","additional_properties":{},"content":"No doubt they visited the Titanic Museum during their perambulations and remembered the Titanic movie and the love story of Rose and Jack. Let’s hope the happy couple did not dwell on the fact that the ship sunk and the movie ended with the Kate Winslet character hogging a floating piece of debris while Leonardo DiCaprio’s character clung to it before succumbing to the icy water.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MNXDR57DQFAGNCNFQUMWAKSO5E","additional_properties":{},"content":"Rose’s sock may have found Jack’s shoe but when the going got tough, she kicked it off and found another shoe on dry land. ","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"While the ship was going nowhere, it was full steam ahead for a love affair"},"display_date":"2024-10-17T17:55:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Head over heels – Alison Healy on cupid’s arrow ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"TU57XGDFWO5CYIC6J45OMJBGBY","auth":{"1":"1bf46f39bdc064096c6c31840026ab46a1cd93e7c1d5d44d265b8b8b3a9897e9"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/TU57XGDFWO5CYIC6J45OMJBGBY.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/17/head-over-heels-alison-healy-on-cupids-arrow/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"C6BURRRPH5FP3DHM2UECASSWMQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":330,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/fbcf05d7-4873-4792-a720-f7e42e2a8e33/versions/1729099221/media/f908bd336decbec1d5e8b12139325501_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/17/going-undercover-frank-mcnally-on-an-exhibition-about-the-irish-of-the-french-resistance/","content_elements":[{"_id":"BA2HQJH7T5EP3MZNXXPCBZNH7A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The mysterious spirit of the French résistance is alive and well at a Dublin venue currently hosting an exhibition on Irish involvement in that cause.","type":"text"},{"_id":"63OEN2LYKBBXZHME4ULV7EUQKA","additional_properties":{},"content":"I missed the official launch last weekend but on Monday dropped by to see the show, noting from my invitation that the venue was the “Ireland Institute” at No 27 Pearse Street in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M6VW5FXRLRDGNIUI3AJSQXHSC4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Surprised I had no recollection of ever seeing this important-sounding place, I nevertheless made my way to No 27 and was somewhat puzzled there to find no sign identifying it as an Institute, Ireland or otherwise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CHKJJ2WLBBB2BPFAUSC5KO7W5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"Instead, there was an old shop sign reading “Pearse & Sons, ecclesiastical and architectural sculptures”. And yes, that was those Pearses, as confirmed by a double stone plaque on the wall commemorating the revolutionary brothers Patrick and Willie in the house where they grew up.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HFL55GTYSJCDXGJH63DIIOAJB4","additional_properties":{},"content":"To underline the point, a plaque beside the (forbiddingly closed) Georgian doorway read “Ionad an Phiarsaigh – the Pearse Centre”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QCU2ASVEFFADPAQ5FM7BGGRNCM","additional_properties":{},"content":"For a moment, I wondered if there were upper and lower Pearse Streets, with two No 27s. But intelligence gathered from my iPhone, via Agent Google Maps, confirmed that this was indeed the Ireland Institute, albeit apparently in disguise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WNVHEY6OZVD6VJKLVBHKH6DA5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Luckily, a courier had called to the door just ahead of me, seeking a place that turned out to be elsewhere. When he left, I asked the young woman who had answered him if there was something called the Ireland Institute inside.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OCVFSYZQSFGTLFTPSQSKURI2IY","additional_properties":{},"content":"There was, she thought, although she seemed a little unsure until I mentioned the exhibition – it felt like a codeword – at which point she confirmed this was the right place. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PUGRLHJZZNCTDODWTYNDS4UCZQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Once safely inside, I reflected that only in Ireland could you find an officially designated institute (for arts and culture) hiding under the cover of a nest of revolutionaries.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WGDSQB6RFFB3LEM3DZBFXVJJU","additional_properties":{},"content":"But somehow, this makes it a fitting venue for an exhibition called Irish In Resistance: a multidisciplinary show in which painters, poets, and film-makers respond to the stories of a dozen Irish people – 10 of them women – who worked undercover in occupied France and Belgium during the second World War.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T4SIILI7AJCGBAZ4RQHY67GSWI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Everyone knows about Samuel Beckett’s involvement in that struggle, with undercover agents including “Jimmy the Greek”, which won him a Croix de Guerre and a Médaille de la Résistance. And sure enough, he features again here too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BFMWGAUMBNAHLFYSAP32OJFFSY","additional_properties":{},"content":"But the exhibition includes other, less celebrated heroes of the time, such as Maureen Patricia “Paddy” O’Sullivan (1918-1994), who grew up in Dublin and later Belgium, joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in England during the war, and parachuted into France a few months before D-Day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HNAEFREJC5FEHD7B775IQD3YFQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It was a rough landing. She might have died had the impact not been softened by a backpack stuffed with two million French francs. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YQCR7D6GYBAQPESDDFSYW67PYM","additional_properties":{},"content":"As it was, she suffered concussion only, and survived to become a wireless operator for a resistance group in the area around Limoges. She too lived to win a Croix de Guerre and, back in England, an MBE.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5GFQ6YTT6BD7DOWWLWWAY24ZNU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Others were less lucky: Catherine Crean (1879-1945) for one. Born in Dublin’s Moore Street, Crean later moved to Belgium to work and was in her 60s by the time the second World War started. A live-in governess in Brussels, she then became involved in a local resistance network helping Allied soldiers and citizens to escape Nazi-occupied areas. Arrested in 1942, she was probably interrogated and tortured – details are scarce – before being deported to Ravensbruck concentration camp. She died there, of dysentery, in April 1945.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHKFNJZM2RAS3DOVJXQA4QGOSE","additional_properties":{},"content":"A Belgian friend fellow inmate recalled that on their last meeting, a dying Catherine asked her to “comb her beautiful red hair which lay scattered around her pale face”. Herself weakened by hunger, the friend could barely hold the comb.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R5QS7HGUVZGSTJN5NRXXQJ7TEM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Happier stories include the extraordinary Margaret Kelly (1910-2004), born in Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital to a poor mother who couldn’t keep her. She was placed with a foster family from nearby O’Connell Street, where she was living when the Easter Rising broke out.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLDIEPDKLZEATNCKQEK6TQDVMM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nicknamed “Bluebell” (for her bright eyes) by a Dublin doctor, she later emigrated to Liverpool and took dance classes there to strengthen her skinny legs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YFC7QUBGGRCTXPYZRH6BUD5PV4","additional_properties":{},"content":"This led eventually to a professional career, with her own troupe of dancers, the “Bluebell Girls”. Their revue became the Riverdance of its time: three different groups performing simultaneously in Paris, Las Vegas, and on tour.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DBQ7WQHUNBGIXBBK7XAQEQHXTU","additional_properties":{},"content":"But marriage to a Jewish-Romanian pianist pitched Kelly into the resistance too. Both were interned for a period. Later, suspected (rightly) of hiding her husband, Kelly was held for questioning by the Gestapo, but survived. Francois Truffaut’s The Last Metro (1980) was part inspired by the story.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FON34RE3TZHKTFFARLAB4UH7KI","additional_properties":{},"content":"She lived to be 94 and her gravestone in Montmartre now depicts the several French military medals she won. It also includes the name given to her by a Dublin GP, nine decades earlier: “Miss Bluebell”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZGUS6PWDIRATBGSYQAD7PMN6TQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"The Irish in Resistance exhibition is curated by artist Mary Moynihan and includes contributions from Hina Khan, Féilim James, and Amna Walayat.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AVEFOMLGPFHGTNZD3VMLVS24XQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It runs daily (including Sundays) until the end of October at the Ireland Institute, aka the Pearse Centre. If the door is closed when you get there, knock three times and tell them “Frank the Irishman” sent you.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"A fitting venue"},"display_date":"2024-10-16T17:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Going Undercover – Frank McNally on an exhibition about the Irish of the French Résistance","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"UHFI2IZFVVF2VBAMYOQPKYY3MM","auth":{"1":"93a50fa096957bd20c31ac4c44e75f4755192ce2a86ac69813b0406c26d5f174"},"focal_point":{"x":115,"y":168},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/UHFI2IZFVVF2VBAMYOQPKYY3MM.jpg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/17/going-undercover-frank-mcnally-on-an-exhibition-about-the-irish-of-the-french-resistance/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"RGEA7JZTA5DCRGH3O4DFBTKCKI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":308,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/2b886a21-8e2c-49c3-a47e-a3428ecdc6b9/versions/1729009695/media/0a532a719e3d4d76a8c35f0bae51d914_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/15/apostrophe-catastrophe-frank-mcnally-on-a-vexed-punctuation-mark/","content_elements":[{"_id":"GTTU6BHLO5C2XP6W4APKYXFSAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408760},"content":"There was a minor emergency somewhere in The Irish Times recently, I gather, after a rogue apostrophe gained entrance to the office and inserted itself in the name of a well-known charity, which was thereby rendered “Barnardo’s” (sic) in our print edition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OBXUBNXL7JHL3JPKOEUEEOKRPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408761},"content":"Pedantic readers may argue there is nothing roguish about that. But au contraire. Barnardos Ireland chooses to style itself thus, without the punctuation mark, to distinguish itself from Barnardo’s in the UK.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PWHER53YQ5AHVCV4NKOM7LZJLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408762},"content":"This was subsequently pointed out to the innocent reporter, who had in fact used the company’s style correctly before the unauthorised apostrophe somehow infiltrated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TWPGPGYJZRAKHMIM7ED4GBCPQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408763},"content":"Investigations are continuing, of course. In the meantime, the controversy reminded me that I pass the Dublin birthplace of Dr Thomas Barnardo (1845-1905) almost every day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R7TNCSMKANAHFP2DEC6A4D4PUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408764},"content":"It’s on Dame Street – or used to be anyway. The location of the long-gone house is now marked by a plaque on the ground at the corner of a small square also now named after him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z2F4DMMVQNGEPLBEGWIFRF6V4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408765},"content":"So I stopped by there yesterday to check if the tourist information sign alongside it had an apostrophe. And well, it does and doesn’t.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VXPIY5XP3RHAFKQ2KKLF2MIO3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408766},"content":"The sign declares the place to be “Barnardo Square”. But in small print at the top is the attribution “Courtesy of Barnardo’s”, while in the text below it notes that “Barnardo’s no longer runs children’s homes . . .” All very confusing.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7YPMLQSGHNFG3MXUXGBI4PV33A","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408767},"content":"While there, I was intrigued to notice for the first time that the side-door of the adjoining building – City Hall – has an inscription in gold letters over it insisting that this is in fact “Dublin’s City Hall”, complete with possessive apostrophe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"23BFXP3T65HZ7NB5YY4ESLNSGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408768},"content":"This seems superfluous. After all, it’s unlikely anyone would mistake the venue for, say, Belfast’s City Hall. Or that agents for the People’s Republic of Cork would ever try to claim it as their own. Having said which, I also remembered that only a few metres from where I stood, Dame Street suddenly turns into “Cork Hill”. I suppose you can’t be too careful with those people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V5JIK7OBZRHF5KXG55L5CIG52U","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408769},"content":"Another thing I noticed in Barnardo Square, by the way, is the big banner currently draping the Dublin Tourist information Centre to advertise Féile Bram Stoker later in the month.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X2LPFNYCERBTJOWUKEESAV4QKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408770},"content":"“Four days and nights of deadly adventures,” it promises. Which must be worrying if you’re an overseas visitor, unfamiliar with the non-fatal nature of deadliness in these parts. On a side issue, when we speak of fun involving vampires, surely the phrase should be “undeadly”?","type":"text"},{"_id":"RETLGLFLL5FW3MH2GJTBBUKI2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408771},"content":"Getting back to punctuation, just down from Barnardo Square, in the diminutive Palace Street, is one of Dublin’s most famous ghost signs, for “The Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society”, founded in 1790 and still going, but now located elsewhere.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YHII6SOAIND4BKVQ5YVLLBA4EQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408772},"content":"That too could have had a possessive apostrophe, before or after the “s” in “Roomkeepers”. But it doesn’t, presumably because the word is used as a noun-adjective. And the lack of possessiveness may be doubly apt, given the charity’s original mission.","type":"text"},{"_id":"746PFCTY7VGN3COHDMM67ZGQVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408773},"content":"I used to think “sick and indigent roomkeepers” were hoteliers or guesthouse owners who had fallen on bad times. On the contrary, they were tenants of rooms, unable to keep paying the rent or even to feed themselves.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RHCBYUB6SVCOTBKKLFHH7BR63Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408774},"content":"Hence the description of the society in one early 19th-century history book as having been founded: “by a few individuals in the middle ranks of life who], inhabiting a part of the town where the population was poor and crowded, had daily opportunities of knowing that many poor creatures who were unable to dig and ashamed to beg expired of want and were often found dead in the sequestrated garrets and cellars to which they had silently returned.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EBNKDR4TQBHSVH4PHSVIRZGXTA","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408775},"content":"Next door to the ghost sign is one of Dublin’s most picturesque restaurants, also devoid of possessive apostrophes because, like everything else about the café, its name is French: Chez Max.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ATBAOF2FPNHTNN5PYQXWRP7BPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408776},"content":"That would be “Max’s Place” in English. But so far, the French have avoided a plague that has been afflicting German in recent years: the importation of redundant apostrophes from English.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5BWN4DFZSVCR7M2ABOFBB5SDLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408777},"content":"German traditionally does not use apostrophes to indicate the genitive case or possession. Usage is changing, however. Where, for example, “Rosis Bar” and “Katis Kiosk” were once (and remain) correct, imitation of English has led increasingly to he likes of “Rosi’s Bar” and “Kati’s Kiosk” on signs instead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UH7LJUYOIBEULLAXB5LFKM6SSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408778},"content":"This is decried as the “Deppenapostroph” (“idiot apostrophe”) by grammar enthusiasts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H76C5CK3YBGTJKDL6YA3JSQ4H4","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408779},"content":"But so widespread has it become that the official gatekeepers of Standard High German recently conceded defeat on the usage and declared it permissible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"443BIGX34FHR5LCAM47BTGVBLI","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408780},"content":"Hardliners continue to be outraged. A columnist for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung lamented acceptance of the apostrophe as part of a “victory march” by English.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K7RXCJKDPNHWNNQCN4QRCRK2NU","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408781},"content":"Back in Dublin, meanwhile, Barnardos is marching in the opposite direction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WAIM6UMZFFEPEWA4VJIKCLRCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1729009408782},"content":"Grammarians may accept this reluctantly while hoping that the charity’s laid-off apostrophe never finds work in a nearby restaurant and changes the name to “Chez Max’s”.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Frank McNally"}},"name":"Frank McNally"}]},"description":{"basic":"Squares and hardliners"},"display_date":"2024-10-15T17:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Apostrophe catastrophe – Frank McNally on a vexed punctuation mark","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"5469"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"6UNHARBOW5B4LGEBGVOEMJLBGA","auth":{"1":"bb05bf7d4eed6ce7fde94031c7f4775e9fe9248390840aabf02d39e2e2f3e32a"},"focal_point":{"x":647,"y":1007},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/6UNHARBOW5B4LGEBGVOEMJLBGA.jpeg"}},"subtype":"columnist","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"An Irish Diary"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/15/apostrophe-catastrophe-frank-mcnally-on-a-vexed-punctuation-mark/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/opinion/an-irish-diary","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"An Irish Diary"}}}},{"_id":"TSBLBXHSU5HP5AXVTCSOE6NLQA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":315,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/4a140bc3-24b0-4dd7-8bda-176948608072/versions/1728912813/media/2ad24f7d40b4b5a8088360ad808b5c13_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/opinion/an-irish-diary/2024/10/14/philadelphia-bound-brian-maye-on-scientist-and-politician-james-logan/","content_elements":[{"_id":"TX4OVFFVUZERVDSUAAFGV4UPTA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Regarded as the leading intellectual of his time and deeply involved in the development of Pennsylvania, Lurgan-born James Logan rose to great prominence in colonial America. He was born 350 years ago on October 20th. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"BKEOYTV24BC6RJ56BWCHLDF5LE","additional_properties":{},"content":"His father, Patrick, a schoolmaster, had been a clergyman in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland before becoming a Quaker, and his mother was Isabel Hume; they had married in Midlothian in Scotland and moved to Ireland to avoid persecution.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FASWRWH4DFF6TJR2WD3Q5UPQAI","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was educated originally by his father but was largely self-taught and was an avid reader all his life. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"DDANRWDZQ5HJRA3JMUGOXA4SFA","additional_properties":{},"content":"His Dublin linen apprenticeship was interrupted when his family fled back to Scotland due to the Williamite Wars, before moving to Bristol in 1694, where he was put in charge of Friar Meeting House Quaker school after his father returned to Ireland. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"GAUEG6V2DBAMFHUFGLSBLYDZTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"It seems he returned to the linen trade a few years later and in 1699 sailed on board the Canterbury with William Penn for America to what became known as the colony of Pennsylvania.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6MSGEBMMBG5VKIWKINRNPGYWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"In America, he became involved in the fur trade, “using methods that were certainly unscrupulous and bordered on the illegal: he sold rum to Native Americans and left many fur traders in debt,” according to Patrick Geoghegan, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. He would also have been a slave owner. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"27MULD64PVBWFHQUVXRHTLI4G4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was Penn’s secretary and so was closely associated with the development of Pennsylvania, acting as secretary of the province and clerk of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania. Appointed to a number of senior offices, he was mayor of Philadelphia (1722-23) and during his tenure he allowed Irish Catholic immigrants to celebrate with others the city’s first public Mass. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LFCHLPXB2NF45PAETH6ZGJYI5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Other offices included chief justice in the supreme court of Pennsylvania (1731-39), and acting governor of Pennsylvania (1736-37), during which he opposed Quaker pacifism and resistance to war tax, and he was a founding trustee of the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania).","type":"text"},{"_id":"L4XT4OKBJRCRRNRWZVGSSNMVQY","additional_properties":{},"content":"His investments in land, and trade with native Americans, led to his becoming very wealthy. Despite his practices, he was always on good terms with Native Americans, according to Patrick Geoghegan. However, although William Penn and his immediate successors had a policy of friendship towards the Lenape Native American tribe, Logan and other landowners, including Penn’s three indebted sons, implemented a policy of land acquisition before eventually concluding an official treaty with the Lenape. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5PXXHWWTZEPXHKRUTT7ENTOX4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He was less than fair to them and used the powerful Iroquois Confederacy to override Lenape rights. The result was a massive expansion of the colony and the scattering of the Lenape.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I2J4UAFC2NDSZFCNO2QG5SMFNE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Interested in learning and the sciences from an early age (he and his younger brother William, who remained in Bristol and became a physician, regularly corresponded on scientific subjects), he came to be recognised for his knowledge of mathematics, natural history and astronomy. He published regularly on the subjects of optics and botany and his work on plant pollination led to a breakthrough in the hybridising of plants as his recognition of how maize reproduced proved revolutionary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MYMYOHYZ3JDMTMB6QEHNOE2ZMI","additional_properties":{},"content":"“His most important scientific contribution, however, was not his own research but his role as advisor to others,” according to Patrick Geoghegan. One who benefitted from his tuition (in Latin) was the American botanist John Bartram, whom he put in touch with the pioneering Swedish biologist and physician Linnaeus. 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