seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Book of Kells


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Birth of Nora Twomey, Animator, Director & Screenwriter

Nora Twomey, Irish animator, director, screenwriter, producer and voice actress, is born on October 31, 1971, in Cork, County Cork. She is best known as the co-founder of Cartoon Saloon, alongside Tomm Moore and Paul Young, an animation studio and production company, based in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny.

Twomey is educated at St. Mary’s Secondary School in Midleton, County Cork but leaves before completing the Leaving Certificate at the age of fifteen. She does manual labor at a local factory but continues to draw and briefly studies fine art before she is admitted to Ballyfermot Senior College in Dublin to their School of Animation program on the basis of her portfolio. In the factory she operates a conveyor belt for up to twelve hours on end during the night shift. She credits this period of her life to much of her success, as she wears headphones to drown out the loud noise of machinery, the silence combined with the monotony of the task she performs allows her to ponder concepts and generate ideas, many of which are put to film later in her life.

After graduating from Ballyfermot Senior College in 1995, Twomey begins to work for Brown Bags Film, an animation studio in Dublin. In 1999, she helps found Cartoon Saloon, along with Tomm Moore, Paul Young and Ross Murray. In 2002, she directs the award-winning short animated film From Darkness. The short film has no dialogue and is based on an Inuit folk tale where a man helps a woman with only a skeleton for a body to regenerate. She also works on the successful animated TV series Skunk Fu!.

Twomey goes on to write and direct the animated short Cúilín Dualach (Backwards Boy), released in 2004. Based on a story by Jackie Mac Donacha, a boy with his head on backwards finds only love and acceptance in his mother and has to work to gain that from the rest of his community but most of all his father.

Twomey co-directs, with Tomm Moore, The Secret of Kells, an animated feature film as well as doing additional voice acting for the film. The film is set in 9th century Ireland, at the time when the Book of Kells is written. In it, a 12-year-old orphan boy living at a monastery has the task of finishing a book with the art of illumination. The film premieres at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2009. The Secret of Kells is nominated in the category of Best Animated Feature Film at the 82nd Academy Awards.

Twomey continues to work on feature films with Cartoon Saloon with 2014’s Song of the Sea directed by Tomm Moore. She works as the film’s head of story and voice director.

Twomey next directs the animated film The Breadwinner, released in 2017. Based on the best-selling young adult novel by Deborah Ellis, an 11-year-old girl named Parvana must dress as a boy and become the titular breadwinner for her family when her father is wrongfully arrested by the Taliban. It premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017 with a wide release in November 2017. It is the first feature-length film she has sole director credit on. She works on the project with actress Angelina Jolie, who helps fund the project and works as an executive producer. The project is a huge success for Twomey, as she is recognized as a solo female filmmaker, and given accolades as well as being lauded by many as a source of female empowerment, all while battling cancer during production. During the development of The Breadwinner, she is named in Variety‘s “2017 10 Animators to Watch.”

Twomey is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Twomey becomes the seventh graduate of Ballyfermot Senior College to be nominated for an Academy Award with her work on The Breadwinner when it is nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 90th Academy Awards. She is also nominated for an award at the Golden Globe Awards.

The Breadwinner earns ten nominations at the 45th Annie Awards, including Outstanding Achievement for Directing in an Animated Feature Production for Twomey. It wins the award for best animated feature for an independent film. This marks the first time a sole female director directs the film that wins the award. It also wins the Cinema for Peace award for Justice in 2018.

Twomey’s work also has a heavy presence at the Emile Awards, an annual event held by the European Animation Awards Association that honors European creators of animation. During the awards of 2018, which are hosted in Lile, France, her film The Breadwinner wins awards in five categories: Best Direction, Best Storyboarding, Best Character Animation, Best Background, and Best Character Design.

Twomey has won several awards according to the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland (SDGI). These awards include the best New Irish Short Animation at the Galway Film Fleadh (2002), Best Short at the Boston Irish Film Festival (2003), Best Animation at the Kerry Film Festival (2003), and the Silver Award at the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (2003) for her film From Darkness. Her film Cúilín Dualach (Backwards Boy) also wins the Best Animated Short from the Irish Film & Television Academy (2005), Best Short Film at Cartoons on the Bay (2005), Best Animation for Children at Animadrid (2005) and the Best Animation at the Celtic Film Festival (2005). Among other awards, the 2018 Cinema for Peace Award for Justice for her movie The Breadwinner can be included.

Cartoon Saloon, the studio Twomey co-founds with contemporaries Paul Young and Tom Moore in Kilkenny, has been nominated for five Academy Awards, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award and several Emmy Awards.


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Birth of George Simms, Archbishop in the Church of Ireland

George Otto Simms, an archbishop in the Church of Ireland, and a scholar, is born in Dublin on July 4, 1910.

AboutSimms is born to John Francis A. Simms and Ottilie Sophie Stange, who are both, according to his birth certificate, from Lifford, County Donegal. He attends the Prior School in Lifford for a time and later Cheltenham College, a public school in England. He goes on to study at Trinity College Dublin, where in 1930 he is elected a Scholar and graduates with a BA in Classics in 1932 and a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1936. He completes a PhD in 1950.

Simms is ordained a deacon in 1934 and a priest in 1936, beginning his ministry as a curate at St. Bartholomew’s Church, Clyde Road, Dublin, under Canon W. C. Simpson. In 1937, he takes a position in Lincoln Theological College but returns to Dublin in 1939 to become Dean of Residence in Trinity College Dublin and Chaplain Secretary of the Church of Ireland College of Education. 

He is appointed Dean of Cork in 1952. Consecrated a bishop, he serves as Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, between 1952 and 1956. At forty-two, he is the youngest Church of Ireland clergyman appointed to a bishopric since John Gregg in 1915. He serves as Archbishop of Dublin from 1956 to 1969. During this time, he maintains a courteous relationship with John Charles McQuaid, his Roman Catholic counterpart as Archbishop of Dublin. From 1969 to 1980, he serves as Archbishop of Armagh. 

Alongside Cardinal William Conway, Simms chairs the first official ecumenical meeting between the leaders of Ireland’s Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church in Ballymascanlon Hotel, Dundalk, County Louth, on September 26, 1973, an important meeting amidst the increasing violence in Northern Ireland. The meeting is protested by Ian Paisley.

Simms is a scholar, and publishes research on topics including the history of the Church of Ireland, and theological reflections on key texts including the Book of Kells, Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, and the Sarum Primer. He is also a fluent speaker of the Irish language.

Simms is also an accomplished journalist, and the author of many newspaper obituaries. His weekly Thinking Aloud column in The Irish Times is a popular reflection, and runs continuously for thirty-eight years. He also works on the research, preparation, and even performs the presentation, of a number of television programmes.

In 1978, Simms is made an honorary fellow of Trinity College Dublin.

Simms is the uncle of mathematician David J. Simms. In 1941, he marries Mercy Felicia Gwynn. They have five children. He dies in Dublin on November 15, 1991. He is interred with his wife in the cemetery attached to St. Maelruain’s Church, Tallaght, County Dublin.


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St. Columba Arrives on the Isle of Iona

iona-abbey-isle-of-iona

St. Columba, an Irish monk, and twelve followers arrive on the tiny isle of Iona, barely three miles long by one mile wide, on May 12, 563, establishing a monastic community and building his first Celtic church. Iona has an influence out of all proportion to its size on the establishment of Christianity in Scotland, England and throughout mainland Europe.

Once settled, Columba sets about converting most of pagan Scotland and northern England to the Christian faith. Iona’s fame as a missionary centre and outstanding place of learning eventually spreads throughout Europe, turning it into a place of pilgrimage for several centuries to come. Iona becomes a sacred isle where kings of Scotland, Ireland and Norway are buried.

Columba is born of royal blood in 521 AD in Ireland, or Scotia as it is then called. He is the grandson of the Irish King Niall. He leaves Ireland for Scotland not as a missionary but as an act of self-imposed penance for a bloody mess he had caused at home. He had upset the king of Ireland by refusing to hand over a copy of the Gospel he had illegally copied, leading to a pitched battle in which Columba’s warrior family prevailed. Full of remorse for his actions and the deaths he had ultimately caused, he flees, ultimately settling on Iona as it is the first place he finds from which he is unable to see his native Ireland. One of the features on the island is even called “The Hill with its back to Ireland.”

Columba, however, is not the shy retiring type and sets about building Iona’s original abbey from clay and wood. In this endeavour he displays some strange idiosyncrasies, including banishing women and cows from the island. The abbey builders have to leave their wives and daughters on the nearby Eilean nam Ban (Woman’s Island). Stranger still, he also banishes frogs and snakes from Iona, although how he accomplishes this feat is not well documented.

The strangest claim of all however is that Columba is prevented from completing the building of the original chapel until a living person has been buried in the foundations. His friend Oran volunteers for the job and is duly buried. It is said that Columba later requests that Oran’s face be uncovered so he can bid a final farewell to his friend. Oran’s face is uncovered and he is found to be still alive but utters such blasphemous descriptions of Heaven and Hell that Columba orders that he be covered up immediately.

Over the centuries the monks of Iona produce countless elaborate carvings, manuscripts and Celtic crosses. Perhaps their greatest work is the exquisite Book of Kells, which dates from 800 AD, currently on display in Trinity College, Dublin. Shortly after this, in 806 AD, come the first of the Viking raids and many of the monks are slaughtered and their work destroyed.

The Celtic Church, lacking central control and organisation, diminishes in size and stature over the years to be replaced by the much larger and stronger Roman Church. Even Iona is not exempt from these changes and in 1203 a nunnery for the Order of the Black Nuns is established and the present-day Benedictine abbey, Iona Abbey, is built. The abbey is a victim of the Reformation and lay in ruins until 1899 when restoration is started.

No part of Columba’s original buildings have survived, however on the left hand side of the abbey entrance can be seen a small roofed chamber which is claimed to mark the site of the Columba’s tomb.

(From: “St. Columba and the Isle of Iona” by Ben Johnson, historic-uk.com, pictured is the Iona Abbey and Nunnery)


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Birth of St. Columba

St. Columba, also called Colum or Columcille, Irish abbot and missionary Evangelist is born on December 7, 521, in Tír Chonaill (mainly modern County Donegal) in the north of Ireland. He is credited with spreading Christianity in what is today Scotland at the start of the Hiberno-Scottish mission. He also founds the important abbey on Iona, which becomes a dominant religious and political institution in the region for centuries. He is the Patron Saint of Derry and is highly regarded by both the Gaels of Dál Riata and the Picts. Today he is remembered as a Catholic saint and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.

Columba studies under Saints Finnian of Movilla and Finnian of Clonard and is ordained into the priesthood around 551. He founds churches and the famous monasteries Daire Calgaich, in Derry, and Dair-magh, in Durrow.

Columba and his twelve disciples erect a church and monastery on the island of Iona (c. 563) as their springboard for the conversion of Scotland. It is regarded as the mother house and its abbots as the chief ecclesiastical rulers even of the bishops. Columba gives formal benediction and inauguration to Áedán mac Gabráin of Dunadd as king of Dál Riata.

Columba accompanies Aidan to Ireland in 575 and takes a leading role in a council held at Druim Cetta, which determines the position of the ruler of Dál Riata in relation to the king of Ireland. The last years of Columba’s life are apparently primarily spent in Iona, where he is already revered as a saint. He and his associates and successors spread the gospel more than any other contemporary group of religious pioneers in Britain.

Columba dies on Iona and is buried in 597 by his monks in the abbey he created. In 794 the Vikings descend on Iona. Columba’s relics are finally removed in 849 and divided between Scotland and Ireland. The parts of the relics which go to Ireland are reputed to be buried in Downpatrick, County Down, with St. Patrick and St. Brigid or at Saul Church neighbouring Downpatrick.

Three Latin hymns may be attributed to Columba with some degree of certainty. Excavations in 1958 and 1959 revealed Columba’s living cell and the outline of the original monastery.

St. Columba’s Feast Day, 9 June, has been designated as International Celtic Art Day. The Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, great medieval masterpieces of Celtic art, are associated with Columba.


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The Founding of Trinity College, Dublin

trinity-college

On March 3, 1592, a small group of Dublin citizens obtain a charter by way of letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I incorporating the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, later to become known as Trinity College (Coláiste na Tríonóide). It is one of the seven ancient universities of Britain and Ireland, as well as Ireland’s oldest university.

Originally established outside the city walls of Dublin in the buildings of the dissolved Augustinian Priory of All Hallows, Trinity College is set up in part to consolidate the rule of the Tudor monarchy in Ireland, and it is seen as the university of the Protestant Ascendancy for much of its history. Although Catholics and Dissenters have been permitted to enter since as early as 1793, certain restrictions on their membership to the college, such as professorships, fellowships, and scholarships, remain until 1873. From 1956 to 1970, the Catholic Church in Ireland forbids its adherents from attending Trinity College without permission from their archbishop. Women are first admitted to the college as full members in January 1904.

long-room-trinity-college

Trinity College is now surrounded by Dublin and is located on College Green, opposite the former Irish Houses of Parliament. The college proper occupies 47 acres, with many of its buildings arranged around large quadrangles and two playing fields. Academically, it is divided into three faculties comprising 25 schools, offering degree and diploma courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

In 2015, Trinity College is ranked by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings as the 160th best university in the world. The QS World University Rankings places Trinity as the 78th best. The Academic Ranking of World Universities has it within the 151–200 range. All three publications rank Trinity College as the best university in Ireland. The Library of Trinity College is a legal deposit library for Ireland and the United Kingdom, containing over 4.5 million printed volumes and significant quantities of maps, music, and manuscripts, including the Book of Kells.

On a side note, the organization of the exhibits within the main building of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas was inspired by the famous Long Room in the Old Library at Trinity College, which Bill Clinton first saw when he was a Rhodes Scholar.