A letter from the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. Thomas P Gilmartin is read at masses, following an ambush on English forces near Kilroe, Co Galway where members involving ‘D’ company, the ‘Auxiliary’ company in Galway had been ambushed: ‘The misguided criminals who fired a few shots from behind a wall and then decamped to a […]
1851 – Charles Plummer, Irish language scholar and editor of Lives of the Irish Saints, is born. 1897 – Death of novelist, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, née Hamilton. Born in Rosscarbery, Co Cork, her light romantic fiction was popular throughout the English-speaking world in the late 19th century and is best known by her book, Molly […]
1774 – Dudley Cosby (Baron Sydney), former MP for Carrick, commits suicide. 1803 – Death of brewer and the founder of the Guinness brewery, Arthur Guinness, in Dublin. He was also an entrepreneur and philanthropist. 1837 – Death of pianist, composer, and teacher, John Field. He was born in Dublin into a musical family, and […]
1761 – Birth of Henry Welbore Agar (Ellis), 2nd Viscount Clifden, perhaps the only person to sit consecutively in four different Houses of Parliament – the two in Ireland and the two in England. 1856 – Alfred Godley, classical scholar and writer, is born in Ashfield, Co Cavan. 1879 – Death of Nevill Coghill. Born […]
Daughter to a German-born governess (E. Hessler) and an Irish Literature Lecturer, (E. O’Reilly) Madigan O’Reilly grew up speaking German, Irish and English and travelling sporadically to Potsdam to visit her mother’s affluent relations. Both her parents were staunch republicans. Her father wrote poems and articles for ‘An Claidheamh Soluis’ and, aged just 13, Madigan […]
At Soloheadbeg the war began, And the next was heard the song Of the rescue of Seán Hogan At the Station of Knocklong. On the same day, the first Dáil was meeting, an ambush takes place at Soloheadbeg, Co Tipperary that is now seen as being the opening skirmish in the War of Independence. An […]
Ireland’s Independence Day – The Centenary of the first Dáil and the Declaration of Independence. The Dáil approved a Democratic Programme, based on the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, and read and adopted a Message to the Free Nations of the World in Irish, English and French. 1600 – Charles Blount, 8th Lord Mountjoy, […]
In the Liturgical Calendar, today is the Feast Day of St Manchán mac Silláin, Manchianus in Latin sources, is the name of an early Irish saint, patron of Liath Mancháin, now Lemanaghan, in Co Offaly. He is not to be confused with the scholar Manchán or Manchéne, abbot of Min Droichit (Co Offaly). There are […]
1003 – Death of Abbot, Kilian of Cologne. Kilian was a native of Ireland. In 974, he and a group of Irish missionaries, led by Minnborinus of Cologne (died 986), arrived at Cologne where they established St. Martin’s Abbey in an island on the Rhine. Minnborinus ruled as first abbot; upon his death, Kilian succeeded […]
In 1971 the Hillside Singers, in a song designed to inspire worldwide unity, sang of how they’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony; apparently the inspiration for the song came from the writers’ experiences while delayed at Ireland’s Shannon Airport. Documents unearthed by the Irish human rights NGO and The Pat […]
