‘Dedication’ by Patrick MacGill – The Navvy Poet

16/01/2019.Reading time 3 minutes.

‘Dedication’ by Patrick MacGill –The Navvy Poet I speak with a proud tongue of the people who were And the people who are, The worthy of Ardara, the Rosses and Inishkeel, My kindred– The people of the hills and the dark-haired passes My neighbours on the lift of the brae, In the lap of the […]

#OTD in 1935 – Nineteen Donegal islanders are drowned when their currach founders.

09/11/2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

At 5.30pm on Saturday the 9 of November 1935, a yawl left Burtonport harbour, for Arranmore Island. In order to avoid being kept at sea too long in the dark, in the heavy swell, it was apparently decided to take a short course between rocks which the sea is studded for a large area between […]

#OTD in Irish History – 3 November:

03/11/2018.Reading time 10 minutes.

In the Liturgical calendar, today is the Feast day of Maél Máedoc Úa Morgair, St Malachy of Armagh. 1380 – Edmund Mortimer, 6th Earl of Ulster, holds a parliament at Dublin, which confirms the Statutes of Kilkenny. 1692 – The only session of the exclusively Protestant Irish parliament of William III and Mary ends on […]

#OTD in 1803 – James Napper Tandy, Irish patriot, dies in exile in France.

24/08/2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

James Napper Tandy was born in the Cornmarket area of Dublin in 1740; one of three children born to James Tandy, an iron works merchant, and Maria Bella Jenkins. Tandy received his education at the Quaker boarding school in Ballitore, Kildare, amongst its alumni Edmund Burke, a champion of Catholic emancipation and a supporter of […]

#OTD in 1608 – Preparations commence for the plantation of six Ulster counties (Armagh, Cavan, Coleraine, Donegal, Fermanagh and Tyrone).

19/07/2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

The Plantation of Ulster was presented to James I as a joint “British”, or English and Scottish, venture to ‘pacify’ and ‘civilise’ Ulster, with at least half the settlers to be Scots. James had been King of Scots before he also became King of England and needed to reward his subjects in Scotland with land […]