‘On Yonder Hillside Sloping’ © Joe Canning 2018. All Rights Reserved.

19/09/2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

‘On Yonder Hillside Sloping’ © Joe Canning 2018. All Rights Reserved. On yonder hillside sloping, A fallen house I see, Where boiled the blackened saucepan, To peasant family feed. Where once was baked the oaten scone, All dressed with fresh churned butter, Where once they prayed in grateful thanks For the tatties on […]

#OTD in 1845 – Death of revolutionary and writer, Thomas Osborne Davis, in Dublin.

16/09/2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

Thomas Osborne Davis was an Irish writer who was the chief organiser of the Young Ireland movement. Thomas Davis was born in the town of Mallow, Co Cork, the son of a Welsh father, a surgeon in the Royal Artillery, and an Irish mother. Through his mother he was descended from the Gaelic noble family […]

‘Chatting to my Mother’ © Joe Canning 2018. All Rights Reserved.

10/09/2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

‘Chatting to my Mother’ © Joe Canning 2018. All Rights Reserved. Today I shook hands with my dad; in The fresh air, on the outside. For fourteen years he’s looked at me From across a visitor’s table. Today I tasted a small gift of freedom. I walked with my sister outside the walls. […]

#OTD in 1916 – Death of Thomas Michael “Tom” Kettle on the 71st day of the Battle of the Somme.

09/09/2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

Tom Kettle was a journalist, barrister, writer, poet, soldier, economist and Home Rule politician. As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for East Tyrone from 1906 to 1910 at Westminster. He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913, then on the outbreak of World War I in 1914 enlisted […]

‘An Opening of Eyes’ © Joe Canning 2018. All Rights Reserved.

05/09/2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

‘An Opening of Eyes’ © Joe Canning 2018. All Rights Reserved. Sit a while and listen whilst a tale I tell ye all, Close thine eyes and picture well the scene. Let me take ye back to sad and distant times, To places like Mayo and Skibbereen. Gaze across a barren field, see […]

#OTD in 1866 – Birth of nationalist poet and writer, Alice Milligan, in Omagh, Co Tyrone.

04/09/2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

Alice Milligan was born and brought up as a Methodist in Gortmore, near Omagh, Co Tyrone. Alice was one of eleven children and from 1877 to 1887 attended Methodist College, Belfast, after which she completed a teacher-training course. Together with her father she wrote a political travelogue of the north of Ireland in 1888, Glimpses […]

‘The Meeting of the Waters’ by Thomas Moore

03/09/2018.Reading time 1 minute.

‘The Meeting of the Waters’ Thomas Moore There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet; O, the last rays of feeling and life must depart, Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart. Yet it was not that Nature […]

#OTD in 2013 – World-renowned poet and playwright Seamus Heaney died in the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin following a short illness, aged 74.

30/08/2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

“History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme.” ―Seamus Heaney Seamus Heaney was awarded numerous prizes over the years and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. He was born to a farming […]

‘She Is Far From The Land’ by Thomas Moore

25/08/2018.Reading time 1 minute.

Robert Emmet’s love affair with Sarah Curran inspired Thomas Moore to write ‘She Is Far From The Land’. ‘She is Far from the Land’ By Thomas Moore She is far from the land, where her young hero sleeps, And lovers are round her, sighing; But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps, For her […]

11/08/2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

‘Gobstoppers, Marbles and Conkers’ © Joe Canning 2018. All Rights Reserved. Joe Canning ‘ A look at Ireland in verse’ Oh for the days when I ran in the fields, Through benweed and thistle on imaginary steed. With a broom for a horse trying to make it run fast, Shout “Giddy up there’! […]

Stair na hÉireann/History of Ireland

Tag: Poet