Crown forces hope to burn the town of Ballinalee as a reprisal for the deaths of several Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) personnel in the preceding days. This includes the killing of an RIC inspector, Philip St. Johnstone Howlett Kelleher, the previous week and an RIC Constable, Peter Cooney, the previous day. Cooney had been suspected of being a spy and his execution is reputedly ordered by Michael Collins. At the time of his killing, Cooney is allegedly carrying coded dispatches with the names of Longford IRA men.
The Crown forces, numbering 100 men in eleven trucks, are defeated by about twenty-five IRA members, of which four are involved in the main battle. Mac Eoin had placed several groups at the roads leading into the village, including one at a house, Rose Cottage, on the approach to the village centre. This group, referred to in some sources as the “Rose Cottage Four,” engage the much larger RIC force using rifle fire and grenades, and force their retreat after a two and a half hour gunfight.
Hickie attends the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 1882 to 1885. He is commissioned into his father’s regiment, the Royal Fusiliers at Gibraltar, in 1885 and serves with them for thirteen years in the Mediterranean, Egypt, and India, during which time he is promoted to captain on November 18, 1892. In 1899 he graduates as captain at the Staff College, Camberley, and is selected when the Second Boer War breaks out as a Special Service Officer in which capacity he acts in various positions of authority and command. He leaves Southampton for South Africa on board the SS Canada in early February 1900 and is promoted from captain of mounted infantry to battalion command as major on March 17, 1900. He is subsequently in command of a corps until eventually at the end of 1900 he is given command of an independent column of all arms. He holds this position for eighteen months. He serves with distinction at the Battle of Bothaville in November 1900 and receives the brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel on November 29, 1900. He serves in South Africa throughout the war, which ends with the Treaty of Vereeniging in June 1902. Four months later he leaves Cape Town on the SS Salamis with other officers and men of the 2nd battalion Royal Fusiliers, arriving at Southampton in late October, when the battalion is posted to Aldershot Garrison. In December 1902 he is elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).
After the end of the war in South Africa there follows various staff appointments, the first from December 1902 as deputy-assistant adjutant general for district staff in the Cork district. In 1907 Hickie is back in regimental service in Dublin and Mullingar with the 1st Royal Fusiliers, where he is in command of the regiment for the last two years. From 1909 to 1912 is appointed to the Staff of the 8th Infantry Division in Cork where for four years he is well known in the hunting field and on the polo ground. In May 1912, he is promoted to colonel and becomes Quartermaster General of the Irish Command at Royal Hospital Kilmainham for which he is appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath.
When war is declared, the Staff of the Irish Command becomes automatically the staff of the II Army Corps and accordingly with the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Hickie is promoted to brigadier general and, as part of the British Expeditionary Force in France, takes charge of the Adjutant and Quartermaster-General’s Department during the retreat of the II Corps after the Battle of Mons, to Paris, and during the First Battle of the Marne. In mid-September 1914, he relieves one of the brigadiers in the fighting line as commander of the 13th Brigade (5th Infantry Division) and then commands the 53rd Brigade (18th Infantry Division) until December 1915, when he is ordered home to assume command of the 16th (Irish) Division at Blackburn.
Promoted to major general, Hickie takes over from Lieutenant General Sir Lawrence Parsons. It is politically a highly sensitive appointment which requires the professionalism and political awareness he, fortunately, possesses as the division is formed around a core of Irish National Volunteers in response to Edward Carson‘s Ulster Volunteers. He is much more diplomatic and tactful than his predecessors and speaks of the pride which his new command gives him but does not hesitate to make sweeping changes amongst the senior officers of the Irish Division. After putting the division through intensive training, it leaves under Irish command of which each man takes personal pride. It arrives in December 1915.
In the next two years and four months during which Hickie commands the 16th (Irish) Division, it earns a reputation for aggression and élan and wins many memorials and mentions for bravery in the engagements during the 1916 Battle of Guillemont and the capture of Ginchy, both of which form part of the Battle of the Somme, then during the Battle of Messines, the Third Battle of Ypres and in attacks near Bullecourt in the Battle of Cambrai offensive in November 1917.
During this period the Division makes considerable progress in developing its operational techniques but at a price in losses. The growing shortage of Irish replacement recruits, due to nationalist disenchantment with the war and the absence of conscription in Ireland, is successfully met by Hickie by integrating non-Irish soldiers into the division.
In February 1918, Hickie is invalided home on temporary sick leave, but when in the hospital the German spring offensive begins on March 21, with the result that after his division moves under the command of General Hubert Gough it is practically wiped out and ceases to exist as a division. Although promised a new command, this does not happen before the Armistice in November. He typifies the army’s better divisional commanders, is articulate, intelligent and is competent and resourceful during the BEF’s difficult period 1916–17, laying the foundations for its full tactical success in 1918. He is advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1918.
Hickie retires from the army in 1922, when the six Irish line infantry regiments that have their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new Irish Free State are all disbanded. He identifies himself strongly with the Home Rule Act and says that its scrapping is a disaster and is equally outspoken in condemning the activities of the Black and Tans. In 1925, he is elected as a member of Seanad Éireann, the Irish Free State Senate.
Hickie holds his seat until the Seanad is dissolved in 1936, to be replaced by Seanad Éireann in 1937. He is President of the Area Council (Southern Ireland) of the Royal British Legion from 1925 to 1948. He never marries.
Hickie dies on November 3, 1950, in Dublin and is buried in Terryglass, County Tipperary.
Twysden is born in Kent, in the South East England region, on September 7, 1713, the third son of Sir William Twysden, 5th Baronet of Roydon Hall, East Peckham, Kent, by his wife (and distant cousin) Jane Twisden.
By his second wife, Twysden has two children: Mary, who dies in infancy, and a posthumous daughter named Frances (1753–1821). Frances, later Countess of Jersey, is one of the many mistresses of King George IV when he is Prince of Wales.
Twysden dies on November 2, 1752, at home in Jermyn Street, St. James’s, London. However, according to ecclesiastical historian and author Henry Cotton, he dies at Roydon Hall, East Peckham, his father’s country house. He is buried in the south chancel of St. Michael’s Church, East Peckham, under a plain stone with no inscription.
A story grows up that, having been made bankrupt, Twysden is shot while attempting to rob a stagecoach. The location of his alleged attempted career as a highwayman is either Hounslow Heath (west of London) or Wrotham Heath in Kent.
(Pictured: The Cathedral of St Eunan, Raphoe, the episcopal seat of the pre-Reformation and Church of Ireland bishops of Raphoe)
The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, comes into effect on November 1, 1993, formally establishing the European Union (EU).
Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve member states of the European Communities, the treaty announces “a new stage in the process of European integration.” The treaty establishes a European Union (EU), with EU citizenship granted to every person who is a citizen of a member state. EU citizenship enables people to vote and run for office in local and European Parliament elections in the EU country in which they live, regardless of their nationality. The treaty also provides for the introduction of a central banking system and a common currency (the euro), commits members to implement common foreign and security policies, and calls for greater cooperation on various other issues, including the environment, policing, and social policy.
Although these provisions are widely seen to presage a “federal Europe,” the focus of constitutional debate shifts to the later 2007 Treaty of Lisbon. In the wake of the European debt crisis unfolding from 2009, the most enduring reference to the Maastricht Treaty has been to the rules of compliance – the “Maastricht criteria” – for the currency union.
Against the background of the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, and in anticipation of accelerated globalisation, the treaty negotiates tensions between member states seeking deeper integration and those wishing to retain greater national control. The resulting compromise faces what is to be the first in a series of EU treaty ratification crises.
The twelve members of the European Communities signing the Treaty are represented by:
(Pictured: Stone memorial in front of the entry to the Limburg Province government building in Maastricht, Netherlands, commemorating the signing of the Maastricht Treaty)
Crilley is born in Newry, County Down, (present-day Northern Ireland), on August 1, 1884, one of six children of Patrick Crilley. Her date of birth is often given as July 29, 1888, though local records do not support this, suggesting she is born four years earlier. Having initially trained at Newry technical school with her sister Mary, intending to become a teacher, in 1905, she wins a scholarship to attend the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. There she studies under William Orpen, who regards her as one of his most promising students. She completes her studies in 1911 attaining an Art Teacher’s Certificate and begins working as Orpen’s assistant.
In 1914, Crilley marries her fellow student Harry Clarke, much to the surprise of their family and acquaintances. The couple moves into a flat at 33 North Frederick Street. They have three children, Michael, David and Ann. Harry’s brother, Walter, marries Margaret’s sister, Mary, in 1915.
Clarke first exhibits with the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1913 and goes on to exhibit over 60 artworks in the forty years until 1953, the majority being portraits. Among the portrait commissions she receives are ones for Dermod O’Brien, President Éamon de Valera, ArchbishopJohn Charles McQuaid, and Lennox Robinson. She spends a great deal of time on the Aran Islands with fellow artist Seán Keating and her husband, from which she produces a number of landscapes and smaller studies.
Clarke becomes the director of the Harry Clarke Stained Glass Studios following the death of her husband in 1931.
A critic notes in 1939 that Clarke produces “remarkable drawings in which individuality is caught in a few swift economical lines.” Over her lifetime she wins many awards including the Tailteann gold, silver and bronze medals in 1924, and another Tailteann bronze in both 1928 and 1932. She is elected an Associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy (ARHA) in 1926, and a full RHA member in 1927. Upon the founding of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943, she is appointed a member of the executive committee.
Clarke dies in Dublin on 31 October 31, 1961, and is buried in the Redford Cemetery, Greystones, County Wicklow. She is commemorated with a blue plaque at her birthplace in Newry.
Ryan has two spells with Coventry City. In April 1943, he signs for the club as an amateur and during the 1942–43 season he plays two games in wartime regional leagues. He then turns professional in August 1944 and makes a further four appearances for the club during the 1944–45 wartime season. After playing for West Bromwich Albion and Derby County, he returns to City in September 1958. He then helps the club win promotion from the newly formed Football League Fourth Division, after they finish as runners-up in 1959. During his second spell with City he plays 70 times in all competitions.
Ryan signs for Derby County in June 1955 for a fee of £3,000. He is appointed team captain by manager Harry Storer, Jr., and during his three seasons with the club misses only three matches – two because of injury and one because of international duty. He is a member of the side promoted as champions of the Third Division North to the Football League Second Division in 1956–57. In 1955 he also plays for an English Division Three North XI against an English Division Three South XI. He plays 133 league games for County, scoring 30 goals. He also plays a further six games for the club in the FA Cup, scoring a further goal.
When Ryan begins his international career in 1949 there are, in effect, two Ireland teams, chosen by two rival associations. Both associations, the Northern Ireland–based Irish Football Association (IFA) and the Republic of Ireland–based Football Association of Ireland (FAI) claim jurisdiction over the whole of Ireland and select players from the whole island. As a result, several notable Irish players from this era, including Ryan, play for both teams.
Between 1949 and 1955 Ryan makes 16 appearances and scores 3 goals for the FAI XI. He makes his debut in a 3–1 defeat to Sweden on November 13, 1949, in a qualifier for the 1950 FIFA World Cup. He scores his first two goals for the FAI XI in October 1953 during the qualifiers for the 1954 FIFA World Cup, one against France in a 5–3 defeat and the second, a penalty, against Luxembourg in 4–0 win. On November 7, 1954, in a friendly against Norway, he scores his third goal, again from the penalty spot, and earns the FAI XI a 2–1 victory. He makes his last appearance for the FAI XI on November 27, 1955, in a 2–2 draw with Spain.
Ryan makes his one and only appearance for the IFA XI in a 0–0 draw with Wales on March 8, 1950. As well as being part of the 1950 British Home Championship, the game also doubles up as a qualifier for the 1950 FIFA World Cup. Ryan, together with Con Martin, Davy Walsh and Tom Aherne, is one of four players born in the Irish Free State, included in the IFA XI that day. He earlier plays for the FAI XI in the same competition, and as a result, plays for two different teams in the same FIFA World Cup tournament. This situation eventually leads to intervention by FIFA and, as a result, Ryan becomes one of the last four Irish Free State–born players to play for the IFA XI.
After retiring as a player in November 1960, Ryan works as a pools supervisor for both Coventry City (1960–1961) and West Bromwich Albion (1961–1962). Between September 1962 and October 1976, he is chief scout for West Brom. He later works as a scout for various clubs including Aston Villa F.C., Derby County F.C., Hereford United F.C. and Leeds United F.C. before retiring in 1994.
The opera is originally prepared for the English Opera House but for some reason the theatrical manager, Samuel James Arnold, does not want it. Instead, Alfred Bunn, the manager of Drury Lane Theatre, seizes the opportunity and begins what is a very fruitful collaboration with Balfe that lasts a decade. Balfe is to become the mainstay of English Opera for almost the next 30 years with a succession of popular operas.
The opera runs for 70 nights on its initial run and is revived in the following three seasons with Balfe singing the role of Michel. Queen Victoria sees the opera on November 15, 1837, her first state visit to a theatre during her reign. In 1836, the opera is reported as staged in Leeds, York, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Bath and Dublin with Abigail Betts as Clara. John Wilson, who sings in the initial run of the opera, also sings in, at least, some of these. Madame Balfe chooses the opera for her benefit in 1841, and Bunn opens his 1843 season with it on September 30. Emma Romer uses it to open her 1853 season at the Surrey Theatre, although it is being described by then as “somewhat hacknied.”
October 1875 sees a revival of the opera by the Carl Rosa Opera Company at the Princess’s Theatre, and it is then included in the company’s repertoire that tours to Manchester in 1875, Liverpool in 1876, Birmingham in 1877 and Dublin in 1879. The Turner Company tours it in 1893. This is possibly the opera’s last performance until the Wexford Festival Opera performances in 1963. The overture and songs from the opera, such as “When I beheld the anchor weigh’d” continue to retain a place in the concert hall and the home into the 20th century.
In 1838, the opera is performed by the Caradori-Allan troupe at the Park Theatre in New York but fails although it appears to be retained in the repertory. In 1839, it is performed again in Dublin with Balfe as Michel and in Sydney in 1848.
The opera’s production sparks an acrimonious argument between a correspondent in The Examiner accusing Balfe of plagiarism from Luigi Ricci‘s 1832 opera, Chiara di Rosemberg, and, in defence, Frederick Beale, from Balfe’s publishers, and Balfe. The matter seems to be settled in Balfe’s favour when the score of Chiara di Rosemberg is displayed at music publisher Cramer, Beale and Co. so that people can compare the two for themselves. While Edward Fitzball probably uses Ricci’s libretto as the basis for his, it does not seem to have been a straight translation, as some allege, but similarities would help to feed the accusations of plagiarism, bolstered by the Italian training and approach of both composers and the fact that Balfe had sung in Chiara di Rosemberg in Italy in 1834.
Balfe is said to have been paid £5 a night by Bunn and 400 guineas for the score by the publishers Cramer, Beale and Co. In 1871, the Bury and Norwich Post (April 11, 1871) report that the copyright has sold for £156 and just over ten years later the AberdeenEvening Express (May 8, 1883) notes that the copyright has been sold again for approximately £20, adding “So much for Balfe’s ‘popularity.”
Burke is born in Moycullen, County Galway, a daughter of George Edmond Burke of Danesfield and his wife Theresa Quin. She becomes an activist in Irish industrial, charitable and cultural groups, serving as second president of the Camogie Association and first president of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association. She is also a noted literary hostess, whose salon at Earlsfort House is a centre of Dublin intellectual life for many years.
In 1883, Burke marries Arthur James Francis Plunkett, 11th Earl of Fingall, 4th Baron Fingall (1859–1929), state steward to the administration in Dublin Castle and one of the few Catholics to hold an Irish peerage, thus becoming Countess of Fingall.
A friendship with Máire Ní Chinnéide, forged through theatrical circles, leads to Burke-Plunkett accepting the patronage of Camogie Association of Ireland from 1910 to 1923. She also presents a cup and medals for the winners of the Dublin League. She serves largely in an honorary role, attending a few meetings of what is then known as Cualacht Luithchleas na mBan Gaedheal.
A liberal unionist, Burke-Plunkett becomes active in the promotion of Irish agriculture, industry and culture. She is a founder member of Horace Plunkett’s Irish co-operative movement, is the first president of the Society of United Irishwomen from 1912 to 1921, and of its successor, the Irish Countrywomen’s Association until 1942. She presides at suffragette meetings in Dublin, is a founder of the Irish Distressed Ladies Committee, and serves on the board of the Irish Industries Association. She is also the chairperson of the Irish Central Committee for the Employment of Women.
Burke-Plunkett dies on October 28, 1944, at Earlsfort House, her Dublin home, where she had held her famous Thursdays “at home” for many years. She is buried on the grounds of Killeen Castle, County Meath, following a Requiem Mass at University Church in Dublin.
Shanahan is involved in the Easter Rising in Dublin in April 1916. This leads to him having legal difficulties over the licence of his public house. He consults the lawyer and politician Tim Healy who comments:
“I had with me today a solicitor with his client, a Dublin publican named Phil Shanahan, whose licence is being opposed, and whose house was closed by the military because he was in Jacob’s during Easter week. I was astonished at the type of man – about 40 years of age, jolly and respectable. He said he ‘rose out’ to have a ‘crack at the English’ and seemed not at all concerned at the question of success or failure. He was a Tipperary hurler in the old days. For such a man to join the Rebellion and sacrifice the splendid trade he enjoyed makes one think there are disinterested Nationalists to be found. I thought a publican was the last man in the world to join a rising! Alfred Byrne, MP, was with him, and is bitter against the Party. I think I can save Shanahan’s property.”
Shanahan is elected for Dublin Harbour at the 1918 Irish general election, defeating Alfred Byrne. Like other Sinn Féin MPs, he does not take his seat at Westminster, but becomes a member of the revolutionary Dáil. He represents Dublin Harbour in the First Dáil from 1919 to 1921. He is arrested and detained in custody by the British government in April 1920 but is released in time to attend the next meeting of the Dáil on June 29, 1920.
During the Irish War of Independence, Billy Dunleavy recalls, “The IRA were the best men we ever had at that time. The Tans used to go around in the tenders with a wire over the top and if it was going by up there in Talbot Street they’d (IRA) say, ‘Get out of the way, quick!’ and they’d throw a hand grenade into the car. Now Phil Shanahan, he owned a pub over there on the corner, he was a great man and he used to hide them after they’d been out on a job. He had cellars and all the IRA men used to go there and hide their stuff.”
Joyce is brought up between Mary Street, in the city centre, and the GalwayGaeltacht. Galway is the ancestral home of both his mother’s and father’s families, and Patrick Weston Joyce, historian, writer and collector of Irish music, and Robert Dwyer Joyce, poet, writer and fellow collector of music, are numbered among his great granduncles. Recent poems such as “Trem Neul” see Joyce appropriate elements of the folk music gathered by Patrick Weston Joyce and engage ideas of lineage and transmission.
Joyce’s early books include Sole Glum Trek (1967), Watches (1969), Pentahedron (1972) and The Poems of Sweeny Peregrine: A Working of the Corrupt Irish Text (1976). The last of these is a version of the Middle-Irish Buile Shuibhne, well known from Seamus Heaney‘s later translation in Sweeney Astray (1983).
After a near-total silence for 20 years, Joyce resumes publishing in 1995 with stone floods, followed by Syzygy and Without Asylum (1998). In 2001, with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold is published, which gathers all of the poet’s major work from 1966 to 2000. In 2007, What’s in Store: Poems 2000–2007 appears, and in 2009 he publishes Courts of Air and Earth. His work appears in many anthologies, including Keith Tuma’s Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry and Patrick Crotty’s The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry.
Joyce’s poetry employs a wide range of forms and techniques, ranging from traditional to modern experimentalism. He has published notable versions from Chinese and from the middle-Irish, which he refers to as “workings” rather than “translations” to emphasise that they are poetic reimaginings in the tradition of Ezra Pound rather than “straight” translations.
A collected poems up to 2000, including his “workings” from the Irish and Chinese, is published as with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold (2001). He also experiments with web-based poetry projects such as the collaborative project OffSets. A collection of his post-with the first dream work, What’s in Store, is published in 2007. A separate collection of new and old translations from the Irish, entitled Courts of Air and Earth, is issued by Shearsman in 2009 and is shortlisted for the Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation 2009.
Joyce also publishes several papers on contemporary poetics, and lectures and gives public readings of his work throughout Ireland, the UK and the United States.
Awarded a Literary Bursary by the Irish Arts Council in 2001, Joyce is a Fulbright Scholar for the year 2002–03. In 2004 he is elected a member of Aosdána, the Irish affiliation of artists, and is the first writer to be awarded a fellowship by the Ballinglen Arts Foundation. He holds the Judith E. Wilson Fellowship for poetry to the University of Cambridge for 2009-10. In 2017 he is named by previous winner, the English poet Tom Raworth, as the latest recipient of the biennial N. C. Kaser prize for poetry.
seamus dubhghaill 