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::Irish History...
Birthdays this Month
Thomas McGlade February 20
Irish Saying of the Week
Spike Milligan was asked if anything was worn under the kilt. Always quick with a comeback, Spike responded "No, it's all in perfect working order."
Today in Irish History...February 12th
Today is the Feast Day of Bl. Thomas Hemerford
1584
English martyr. A native of Dorsetshire, he was educated at Oxford and then studied for the priesthood at English College, Rome. He was ordained in Rome in 1583, and returned to England, where he was swifily arrested. Condemned for being a priest, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn with four companions. He was beatified in 1929.
February 12
1722 - Thomas Burgh, MP for Naas, and Richard Stewart, MP for Strabane, receive the first £2,000 of £8,000 from the Irish parliament for operating their colliery at Ballycastle, Co. Antrim
1782 - The right of habeas corpus is introduced in Ireland
1820 - The ships East Indian and Fanny, with about 350 Irish emigrants aboard, leave Cork for Cape Colony, carrying some of the "1820 settlers"
1848 - John Mitchel publishes first United Irishmen
1923 - Birth in Castledawson, Co. Derry/Londonderryof James Chichester-Clark, Northern Ireland Prime Minister from 1969 to 1971
1930 - The first Free State Censorship Board is appointed
1945 - Jimmy Keaveney, Dublin Gaelic footballer, is born in Dublin
1949 - Fergus Slattery, rugby player, is born in Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin
1971 - Delia Murphy, ballad singer, dies
1976 - Frank Stagg, Irish political prisoner, dies on hunger strike in English prison
1989 - Patrick Finucane is murdered by Unionist assassins; Finucane, who acted as solicitor for republican hunger striker Bobby Sands was shot dead at his north Belfast home in front of his wife and children
1998 - The IRA insists that their ceasefire is still in place — despite "speculation surrounding recent killings in Belfast"
1998 - It is confirmed that Ireland has one of Europe's top economies and our ability to compete globally outstrips Germany and France
1999 - President Mary McAleese says Pope John Paul has told her, in their private meeting at the Vatican, he is considering a return visit to Ireland
1999 - Literary legend John B. Keane discloses that he is back writing again after a four-year break due to illness
1999 - A new political storm rages after Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams predicts that the North would be moving toward a united Ireland in 15 years time
2002 - Health Minister Micheál Martin vows to press ahead with further restrictions on smoking in pubs, despite opposition from publicans
2002 - Two Dublin film companies are nominated for Oscars in the Best Animated Short Film category and Donegal singer/songwriter Enya is nominated for best song with May It Be, from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack
2003 - Irish musicians are hoping their plea to stop US military aircraft refuelling at Shannon will strike the right chord with the Government. More than 50 top acts have signed an open letter which will be sent to the Taoiseach asking him to end the refuelling stopover at the airport
2003 - Mystery surrounds the identity of an artist as 24 of his paintings are launched at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). Known only as “John the Painter”, he has been in psychiatric care in Cork city for more than 30 years
2003 - Talks between the Taoiseach, the British Prime Minister and Northern politicians conclude in Hillsborough Castle, Co Down.
In Tribute to W.B.Yeats
by Hartson & Helen O'Doud
He was born on June 13th, 1865 and he died on January 28th, 1939.
On the Dublin road, a few miles out of Sligotown, in Drumcliff and its famous churchyard is where William Butler Yeats is buried. St. Colmcille founded a monastery here in A.D. 574 and there is a fine high cross to mark the spot.
Although William Butler Yeats was not born in Sligo, he started going there as a boy with his parents who were both Sligonians. He wrote a number of poems about Sligo, including the very popular Lake Isle of Innisfree.
The central theme in Yeats' poems is Ireland, its history, folklore and contemporary public life. In 1917, he married Georgie Hyde-Lee; they had a son and a daughter. Yeats received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
He died in France and his body was taken home to Ireland at his own request, to be re-interred in Drumcliff where his grandfather had once been rector. The inscription on his gravestone reads:
Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!
W.B.YEATS
June 13th 1865
January 28th 1939
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree.
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made.
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wing.
I will arise and go now. For always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
Irish Folklore
So much of Ireland's History was passed down in the forms of story, poetry and song.
The following speaks of the teaching of English in Irish schools and the notches placed on the sticks worn around the children's necks
A Grafted Tongue
by John Montague
(Dumb,
bloodied, the severed
head now chokes to
speak another tongue -
As in
a long suppressed dream,
some stuttering garb -
led ordeal of my own)
An Irish
child weeps at school
repeating its English.
After each mistake
The master
gouges another mark
on the tally stick
hung about its neck
Like a bell
on a cow, a hobble
on a straying goat.
To slur and stumble
In shame
the altered syllables
of your own name:
to stray sadly home
And find
the turf-cured width
of your parents' hearth
growing slowly alien:
In cabin
and field, they still
speak the old tongue.
You may greet no one.
To grow
a second tongue, as
harsh a humiliation
as twice to be born.
Decades later
that child's grandchild's
speech stumbles over lost
syllables of an old order.
"To be Irish is a Blessing, To be a Hibernian is an Honor."
Irish News (updated every
six hours)
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