Irish History, Culture, Heritage, Language, Mythology
‘This series of executions is doing more harm than any Englishman in this House can possibly fathom.’ [Dillon makes mention of the shooting of Mr Sheehy-Skeffington.] ‘Horrible rumours which are current in Dublin, and which are doing untold and indescribable mischief, maddening the population of Dublin, who were your friends and loyal allies against this […]
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1318 – Richard de Clare, Lord of Thomond, a descendant of Strongbow, is killed while commanding his forces at the Battle of Dysert O’Dea. According to legend, the day before his death, Richard de Clare beheld a woman dressed in white on the river’s edge washing bloody clothing and armour. When he asked whose clothes […]
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1586 – Death of Lord Deputy of Ireland, Henry Sidney. Sidney was brought up at court as the companion of Prince Edward, afterwards King Edward VI, and he continued to enjoy the favour of the Crown, serving under Mary I of England and then particularly throughout the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. He was instrumental in […]
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1699 – According to Jonathan Swift’s book, Gulliver’s Travels, it was on this day that Lemuel Gulliver sets sail on board the Antelope from Bristol. 1715 – Joseph Deane, Justice of Assize for Munster and MP for Co Dublin, dies of a fever resulting from a cold he caught (allegedly caused by a total eclipse […]
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Grace was the second youngest of twelve children. Her sisters, Nellie and Muriel, were also avid nationalists as well as converts to Catholicism. Muriel married Thomas MacDonagh, who was executed in Kilmainham earlier on the day Grace married Joe Plunkett. It was said of the Gifford girls: “whenever those vivacious girls entered a gloomy Sinn […]
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1332 – Sir Anthony Lucy’s campaign in Munster ends on this date. 1656 – Birth of Sir Richard Levinge, Tory politician and Speaker of the House of Commons. 1788 – An Act on this date repeals tests imposed on Protestant Dissenters. 1794 – Archibald Hamilton Rowan escaped from Newgate prison in Dublin where he lay […]
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Jennie Wyse Power, born Jane O’Toole, in Baltinglass, Co Wicklow in 1858. In the 1880s she joined the Ladies Land League and found herself immersed in their activities during the Land War. She would compile lists of those evicted from their homes and also she organised the Land League in Wicklow and Carlow. In 1883 […]
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It is over a century after a unique All-Ireland football final between Kerry and Louth was played among the men interned in the wake of the 1916 Rising in Frongoch in north Wales. Over 1,800 Irishmen were rounded up and detained without trial under the Defence of the Realm Act at the prisoner of war […]
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1652 – Oliver Cromwell published a declaration that Irish Wolf Dogs or Irish Wolfhounds were prohibited to be exported and insisted that locals continue to breed sufficient numbers of the mighty hounds to hunt wolves. 1653 – The last major body of Irish Catholic troops under Phillip O’Reilly surrender to the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland […]
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1718 – Thomas St Lawrence, 13th Baron of Howth, received £215 14s 1 1/2d for the expense he incurred in building a quay at Howth for landing coals for the lighthouse. 1745 – John Allen, 3rd Viscount Allen, former MP for Carysfort, killed a dragoon in a street brawl. ‘His Lordship was at a house […]
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