#OTD in Irish History | 21 December:

21/12/2022.Reading time 7 minutes.

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year. While the Solstices were not as important to the ancient Irish as the major fire festivals, they were nonetheless celebrated. Of the Solstices and Equinoxes, the Winter Solstice was the most important, since it marked the rebirth of the sun after […]

#OTD in Irish History | 20 December:

20/12/2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

1638 – Birth of provost of Trinity College Dublin and founder of Marsh’s Library (the oldest public library in Ireland), Narcissus Marsh, in Wiltshire, England. 1645 – Edward Worcester, Earl of Glamorgan, aristocrat and inventor, is sent to Ireland to raise troops for the king; he makes two secret treaties with the confederates; one on […]

#OTD in 1920 – Countess Markievicz was court-martialed by the British administration.

02/12/2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

She had been held in Mountjoy since her arrest at Rathmines on 26th September. The proceedings took place at the Royal Barracks (now Collins Barracks). Her close friends Dr. Kathleen Lynn, Maud Gonne MacBride and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington were permitted to attend but under strict conditions. Markievicz was charged with conspiring to ‘organise and promote’ Fianna […]

#OTD in 1953 – Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, Maude Gonne MacBride died in Roebuck, Clonskeagh, and was later buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

27/04/2022.Reading time 5 minutes.

“More and more I realised that Ireland could rely only on force, in some form or another, to free herself.” –Maud Gonne MacBride The daughter of an Irish army officer and his English wife, Maud Gonne converted to republicanism by an eviction she saw during the 1880s, and became a speaker for the Land League. […]