Irish History, Culture, Heritage, Language, Mythology
Fuair sé bás ar son Saoirse na hÉireann. Twas England bade our wild geese go, that ‘small nations might be free’; Their lonely graves are by Suvla’s waves or the fringe of the great North Sea. Oh, had they died by Pearse’s side or fought with Cathal Brugha Their graves we’d keep where the Fenians […]
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Fuair sé bás ar son Saoirse na hÉireann. Twas England bade our wild geese go, that ‘small nations might be free’; Their lonely graves are by Suvla’s waves or the fringe of the great North Sea. Oh, had they died by Pearse’s side or fought with Cathal Brugha Their graves we’d keep where the Fenians […]
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At approximately 4.30pm a mixed patrol of British Army soldiers and RUC pulled up to no.24 Balkan Street, in the Lower Falls in west Belfast. They were acting on a tip-off from a ‘concerned resident’ about a stash of weapons hidden in the property. What happened next is widely seen as having changed the course […]
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In January 1921, at his first Dáil meeting after his return to a country gripped by the War of Independence, de Valera introduced a motion calling on the IRA to desist from ambushes and other tactics that were allowing the British to successfully portray it as a terrorist group, and to take on the British […]
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“Come on, he cried, Come show your hand, you have boasted for so long, How you would crush this rebel band with your armies great and strong”. No surrender”, was his war cry, “Fight on lads, no retreat” –Brave Treacy cried before he died, shot down in Talbot Street.” Revolutionary, Seán Treacy was born at […]
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In mid-January 1922 the Monaghan football team was arrested in the North on their way to play Derry in the final of the Ulster Championship. On 7 February the IRA responded by kidnapping forty-two prominent loyalists in Fermanagh and Tyrone and held them as hostages. A party of eighteen armed B-Specials, when travelling by train […]
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On 7 January 1922 the Anglo-Irish Treaty was approved by the Second Dáil by a close vote of 64–57. On 5 February a convention was held to discuss this, and 419 Cumann na mBan members voted against as opposed to 63 in favour. In the ensuing Civil War, its members largely supported the anti-Treaty Republican […]
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Now’s here’s a proof of Irish sense Here Irish wit is seen When nothing’s left that’s worth defence, We build a Magazine. –Jonathan Swift, Magazine Fort, c. 1737 The reason for Jonathan Swift’s ditty, in making light of the starfort, was that Dublin was relatively impoverished at that time: What is there to defend in […]
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The Irish Volunteers (IVF) was a military organisation publicly launched in Dublin by Irish nationalists. It emerged in response to an article, ‘The North Began’ written by Eoin MacNeill in the Gaelic League paper ‘An Claidheamh Soluis’. The IRB knew they would need a highly regarded figure as a public front that would conceal the […]
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The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in the Irish Free State was an armed, plain-clothed counter-insurgency police unit that operated during the Irish Civil War. It was organised separately from the unarmed Civic Guard. The unit was formed shortly after the truce with the British (11 July 1921) and disbanded in October 1923. The CID was […]
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