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Death of Agnes O’Farrelly, Professor Of Irish at UCD

Agnes Winifred O’Farrelly (Irish: Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh), academic and Professor of Irish at University College Dublin (UCD), dies in Dublin on November 5, 1951.

O’Farrelly is born Agnes Farrelly on June 24, 1874, in Raffony House, Virginia, County Cavan, one of five daughters and three sons of Peter Dominic Farrelly and Ann Farrelly (née Sheridan), a family with a traditional interest in the Irish language. After her articles Glimpses of Breffni and Meath are published in The Anglo-Celt in 1895, the editor, E. T. O’Hanlon, encourages her to study literature. Graduating from the Royal University of Ireland (BA 1899, MA 1900), she is appointed a lecturer in Irish at Alexandra College and Loreto College. A founder member in 1902, along with Mary Hayden, of the Irish Association of Women Graduates and Candidate Graduates, to promote equal opportunity in university education, she gives evidence to the Robertson (1902) and Fry (1906) commissions on Irish university education, arguing successfully for full co-education at UCD. Appointed lecturer in modern Irish at UCD in 1909, she is also a member of the first UCD governing body and the National University of Ireland (NUI) senate (1914–49). In 1932, on the retirement of Douglas Hyde, she is appointed professor of modern Irish at UCD, holding the position until her retirement in 1947. She is also president of the Irish Federation of University Women (1937–39) and of the National University Women Graduates’ Association (NUWGA) (1943–47).

One of the most prominent women in the Gaelic League, a member of its coiste gnótha (executive committee) and a director of the Gaelic press An Cló-Chumann Ltd, O’Farrelly is a close friend of most of its leading figures, especially Douglas Hyde, Kuno Meyer, and Eoin MacNeill. One of Hyde’s allies in his battle to avoid politicising the league, she is so close to him that students at UCD enjoy speculating about the nature of their friendship. She advocates pan-Celticism, but does not get involved in disputes on the matter within the league. A founder member, and subsequently principal for many years, of the Ulster College of Irish, Cloghaneely, County Donegal, she is also associated with the Leinster and Connacht colleges and serves as chairperson of the Federation of Irish Language Summer Schools.

Having presided at the inaugural meeting of Cumann na mBan in 1914, espousing its subordinate role in relation to the Irish Volunteers, O’Farrelly leaves the organisation soon afterward because of her support for recruitment to the British Army during World War I. A close friend of Roger Casement, in 1916, along with Col. Maurice Moore she gathers a petition that seeks a reprieve of his death sentence. She is a member of a committee of women which negotiate unsuccessfully with Irish Republican Army (IRA) leaders to avoid civil war in 1922, and is heavily defeated as an independent candidate for the NUI constituency in the general elections of 1923 and June 1927. In 1937 she is actively involved in the National University Women Graduates’ Association’s campaign against the constitution, seeking deletion of articles perceived as discriminating against women.

Popular among students at UCD, O’Farrelly has a reputation as a social figure and entertains frequently at her homes in Dublin and the Donegal Gaeltacht. A founder member (1914) and president (1914–51) of the UCD camogie club, she persuades William Gibson, 2nd Baron Ashbourne, to donate the Ashbourne Cup for the camogie intervarsities. She is also president of the Camogie Association of Ireland in 1941–42. A supporter of native Irish industry, she is president of the Irish Industrial Development Association and the Homespun Society, and administrator of the John Connor Magee Trust for the development of Gaeltacht industry. A poet and writer in both Irish and English, often using the pseudonym ‘Uan Uladh’, her principal publications in prose are The reign of humbug (1900), Leabhar an Athar Eoghan (1903), Filidheacht Segháin Uí Neachtáin (1911), and her novel Grádh agus crádh (1901); and in poetry Out of the depths (1921) and Áille an domhain (1927).

O’Farrelly retires from UCD in 1947, and lives at 38 Brighton Road, Rathgar. An oil portrait by Seán Keating, RHA, is presented to her by the NUWGA on her retirement. She dies on November 5, 1951 in Dublin. Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and President Seán T. O’Kelly attend her funeral to Dean’s Grange Cemetery. She never marries, and leaves an estate valued at £3,109.


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Death of Kathleen Mills, Senior Camogie Player

Kathleen “Kay” Mills-Hill, a sportsperson who plays senior camogie with Dublin from 1941 until 1961, dies at her home in Dublin on August 11, 1996. She is regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time, winning fifteen All-Ireland Senior Medals.

Mills is born in 31 South Square, Inchicore, Dublin, on October 8, 1923. Her mother, Winifred (née Wills), is from Inchicore and her father, Thomas, is from Glanmire, County Cork. Her father works for Great Southern Railways. She has three siblings, Gertrude, Ada and Robert. Her mother dies when she is just eighteen months old, leaving her to be raised by her maternal grandmother, Charlotte Wills, who lives at 1 Abercorn Terrace, Inchicore. She is educated at St. Vincent’s Industrial School, Goldenbridge, where she plays table tennis and association football as well as doing gymnastics. However, camogie is her first love, which she starts playing at age five. She leaves school at a young age, and goes to work in Lamb’s jam factory.

Through her father, Mills is able to participate in and avail of the sporting activities in the GSR Athletic Union. Two pence per week are deducted from the worker’s wages to go toward the financing of the sports activities in the Railway. In 1947, she marries George Hill. They run the Red Seal Handbag Company from the North Circular Road, and later Hill Street. Later they become vintners, running the Seventh Lock public house on the Grand Canal, Ballyfermot.

Mills makes her camogie debut with the Great Southern Railways club in Dublin in 1938 at the age of fourteen, and is promoted to the senior team for her second match. Three years later she makes her debut for Dublin while still sixteen and plays in Dublin’s unsuccessful 1941 All-Ireland Senor Camogie Championship final against Cork, winning her first All-Ireland medal after a replay against Cork a year later in the 1942 All-Ireland Senior Camogie Championship final.

In 1943, the same counties meet in the All-Ireland final for the third consecutive year. Once again Mills ends up claiming an All-Ireland medal, her goal from fifty yards range being described as the highlight of the match. The following year, 1944, brings a third All-Ireland medal. In 1945 and 1946, a dispute in the camogie association keeps Dublin out of the All-Ireland championship in spite of being Leinster champions in both years. In 1948, Dublin is back on form and Mills captures a fourth All-Ireland medal. She takes no part in the 1949 championship, however, the 1950s brings much success to Mills.

From 1950 to 1955, Mills captures six consecutive All-Ireland titles. In 1956, “the Dubs” surrender their crown to Antrim but it is soon reclaimed in 1957. In 1958, she is appointed captain of the Dublin camogie team. Led by her, Dublin defeats Tipperary to capture yet another All-Ireland title. She captures three more All-Ireland medals in 1959, 1960 and 1961. The occasion of the 1961 final is special as it is her 38th birthday and her last outing in a Dublin jersey.

In her playing days Mills is regarded as one of the all-time greats. She is regarded as camogie’s first superstar she has often been described as the Christy Ring, Mick Mackey, Nicky Rackard and Lory Meagher of the camogie world. With a haul of fifteen senior All-Ireland medals, she is the most decorated player in the history of Gaelic games at the time of her retirement. Since then Rena Buckley and Briege Corkery have won more than Mills.

Mills-Hill dies on August 11, 1996, from undisclosed causes, at her home on the Naas Road, Dublin. She is buried in Palmerstown Cemetery. In 2010, the camogie trophy for the annual inter-county All-Ireland Junior Camogie Championship is named in her honour. The Kay Mills Cup is a replica of the O’Duffy Cup. A plaque to Mills is erected at her former home, 1 Abercorn Terrace, Inchicore.


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Birth of Máire Ní Chinnéide, Language Activist & Playwright

Máire Ní Chinnéide (English: Mary or Molly O’Kennedy) Irish language activist, playwright, first president of the Camogie Association and first female president of Oireachtas na Gaeilge, is born in Rathmines, an affluent inner suburb on the Southside of Dublin, on January 17, 1879.

Ní Chinnéide attends Muckross Park College and the Royal University of Ireland (later the National University of Ireland) where she is a classmate of Agnes O’Farrelly, Helena Concannon, and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. She learns the Irish language on holiday in Ballyvourney, County Cork, and earns the first scholarship in Irish language from the Royal University of Ireland, worth £100 a year, which is spent on visits to the Irish college in Ballingeary.

She studies in the school of Old Irish established by Professor Osborn Bergin and is strongly influenced by the Irish Australian professor O’Daly. She later teaches Latin through Irish at Ballingeary and becomes proficient in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

She spends the last £100 of her scholarship on a dowry for her marriage to Sean MacGearailt, later first Accountant General of Revenue in the Irish civil service, with whom she lives originally in Glasnevin and then in Dalkey.

She is a founder member of the radical Craobh an Chéitinnigh, the Keating branch of Conradh na Gaeilge, composed mainly of Dublin-based Kerry people and regarded, by themselves at least, as the intellectual focus of the League.

In August 1904, some six years after the establishment of the earliest women’s hurling teams, the rules of camogie (then called camoguidheacht), first appears in Banba, a journal produced by Craobh an Chéitinnigh. Camogie had come to public attention when it was showcased at the annual Oireachtas (Conradh na Gaeilge Festival) earlier that year, and it differed from men’s hurling in its use of a lighter ball and a smaller playing-field. Ní Chinnéide and Cáit Ní Dhonnchadha, like Ní Chinnéide, an Irish-language enthusiast and cultural nationalist, are credited with having created the game, with the assistance of Ní Dhonnchadha’s scholarly brother Tadhg Ó Donnchadha, who drew up its rules. She is on the first camogie team to play an exhibition match in Navan, County Meath, in July 1904, becomes an early propagandist for the game and, in 1905, is elected president of the infant Camogie Association.

Ní Chinnéide later serves as Vice-President of Craobh an Chéitinnigh, to Cathal Brugha. She is active in Cumann na mBan during the Irish War of Independence and takes the pro-treaty side during the Irish Civil War and attempts to set up a woman’s organisation “in support of the Free State” alongside Jennie Wyse Power.

She first visits the Blasket Islands in 1932 with her daughter Niamh, who dies tragically young. In the summer of 1934, she puts the idea into Peig Sayers‘s head to write a memoir. According to a later interview with Ní Chinnéide “she knew and admired her gift for easy conversation, her gracious charm as a hostess, her talent for illustrating a point she was making by a story out of her own experience that was as rich in philosophy and thought as it was limited geographically.” Peig answers that she has “nothing to write.” She had learned only to read and write in English at school and most of it has been forgotten.

Ní Chinnéide suggests Peig should dictate her memoir to her son Micheal, known to everyone on the island as An File (“The Poet”), but Peig “only shook her head doubtfully.” At Christmas, a packet arrives from the Blaskets with a manuscript, she transcribes it word for word and the following summer brings it back to the Blaskets to read it to Peig. She then edits the manuscript for the Talbot Press. Peig becomes well known as a prescribed text on the Leaving Certificate curriculum in Irish.

Ní Chinnéide has an acting part in the first modern play performed in Irish on the stage, Casadh an tSugáin by Douglas Hyde in 1901. She is later author of children’s plays staged by An Comhar Drámuidhachta at the Oireachtas and the Peacock Theatre, of which Gleann na Sidheóg and An Dúthchas (1908) are published. She is a broadcaster in Irish on 2RN, a wholly owned subsidiary of Raidió Teilifís Éireann, after its foundation in 1926 and author of a translation of Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1923). She is president of the Gaelic Players Dramatic group during the 1930s and a founder of the Gaelic Writers Association in 1939.

She soon becomes interested in writing children’s plays, including Gleann na Sidheóg (Fairy Glen, 1905) and Sidheoga na mBláth (Flower Fairies, 1909. Although there is little information available on the staging of her first play, by the time her second children’s play, Sidheóga na mBláth, is published in An Claidheamh Soluis in December 1907, “Éire Óg” (“Young Ireland”) branches of Conradh na Gaeilge have been established in conjunction with adults’ branches. Patrick Pearse in particular voices the expectation that this play will be staged by many “Éire Óg” branches “before the New Year is very old,” thus indicating the immediate take up of such plays. Indeed, a week after the play’s publication, it is staged in the Dominican College in Donnybrook, Dublin, where Ní Chinnéide had spent several years as an Irish teacher.

Ní Chinnéide dies on April 25, 1967, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.

In 2007 the camogie trophy (Máire Ní Chinnéide Cup) for the annual inter-county All-Ireland Junior Camogie Championship is named in her honour.

(Pictured: Máire Ní Chinéide at her graduation, photograph from Banba, 1903)


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Birth of Irish Hurler Dillon Quirke

Dillon Quirke, Irish hurler who plays for Tipperary Senior Hurling Championship club Clonoulty–Rossmore and at inter-county level with the Tipperary senior hurling team, is born in Rossmore, County Tipperary, on February 28, 1998.

Quirke, whose father, Dan Quirke, won an All-Ireland medal at under-21 level in the All-Ireland Under-21 Hurling Championship, first plays as a schoolboy in various juvenile competitions at Rossmore National School before later lining out as a student at CBS Thurles. He lines out in all grades and is a member of the CBS Thurles senior team that beats St. Francis’ College to win the Dr. Harty Cup in 2015, before losing the subsequent All-Ireland Post-Primary Schools Croke Cup final to St. Kieran’s College.

Quirke begins his club career at juvenile and underage levels with Clonoulty–Rossmore. He wins consecutive divisional championship titles with the club’s minor team in 2014 and 2015, before winning a Tipperary U21AHC title after a defeat of Thurles Sarsfields in the final. He scores two points from play when Clonoulty–Rossmore beats Nenagh Éire Óg in the 2018 Tipperary Senior Hurling Championship final.

Quirke begins a two-year association with the Tipperary minor hurling team in advance of the 2015 Munster Minor Hurling Championship. He is an unused substitute for the Munster final defeat of Limerick, and again for the All-Ireland final defeat by Galway. Again eligible for the minor grade in 2016, he wins a second successive Munster Minor Hurling Championship medal from the substitutes’ bench after a 17-point defeat of Limerick in the Munster final. He later wins an All-Ireland Minor Hurling Championship medal on the field after coming on as a substitute in the 1–21 to 0–17 defeat of Limerick.

After a year away from the inter-county scene, Quirke is called up to the Tipperary under-21 hurling team for the 2018 Munster Under-21 Hurling Championship. After lining out at left wing-back in Tipperary’s 2–23 to 1–13 defeat by Cork in the Munster final, he is in the same position when the result is reversed and Tipperary beats Cork in the subsequent 2018 All-Ireland Under-21 Hurling Championship final.

Quirke is one of twelve under-21 players called up to the senior team‘s pre-season training panel in November 2018, however, he is later released from the panel. He is later recalled to the senior panel and makes his first appearance in a 2–14 to 0–18 defeat by Limerick in the first round of the 2020 National Hurling League. Later that season, he makes his championship debut when he comes on as a 73rd-minute substitute for Jason Forde in an All-Ireland qualifier defeat of Cork. By 2022, he is a regular member of the starting fifteen and starts all four games in Tipperary’s unsuccessful Munster Championship campaign.

On August 5, 2022, Quirke collapses and dies while playing a Tipperary Senior Hurling Championship match for his club against Kilruane MacDonagh’s at Semple Stadium. The match is abandoned after he is taken to Tipperary University Hospital. Tipperary GAA postpones the weekend’s matches as a mark of respect. President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins and Taoiseach Micheál Martin pay tribute. A vigil is held at his home club on August 6. Tributes are also paid on television ahead of the camogie finals on August 7.

Quirke’s funeral is held on August 9 in Clonoulty. His inter-county and club teammates, as well as the opposition Kilruane MacDonagh’s team from the fateful match, provide a guard of honour as the cortege makes its way from the GAA Clubhouse through the village to St. John the Baptist Church for the Requiem Mass. The coffin is draped in the colours of his club side as well as his county and is brought into the church by his Clonoulty-Rossmore teammates.


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Birth of Agnes O’Farrelly, Academic & Professor of Irish at UCD

Agnes Winifred O’Farrelly (Irish: Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh), academic and Professor of Irish at University College Dublin (UCD), is born Agnes Farrelly on June 24, 1874, in Raffony House, Virginia, County Cavan.

O’Farrelly is one of five daughters and three sons of Peter Dominic Farrelly and Ann Farrelly (née Sheridan), a family with a traditional interest in the Irish language. After her articles Glimpses of Breffni and Meath are published in The Anglo-Celt in 1895, the editor, E. T. O’Hanlon, encourages her to study literature. Graduating from the Royal University of Ireland (BA 1899, MA 1900), she is appointed a lecturer in Irish at Alexandra College and Loreto College. A founder member in 1902, along with Mary Hayden, of the Irish Association of Women Graduates and Candidate Graduates, to promote equal opportunity in university education, she gives evidence to the Robertson (1902) and Fry (1906) commissions on Irish university education, arguing successfully for full co-education at UCD. Appointed lecturer in modern Irish at UCD in 1909, she is also a member of the first UCD governing body and the National University of Ireland (NUI) senate (1914–49). In 1932, on the retirement of Douglas Hyde, she is appointed professor of modern Irish at UCD, holding the position until her retirement in 1947. She is also president of the Irish Federation of University Women (1937–39) and of the National University Women Graduates’ Association (NUWGA) (1943–47).

One of the most prominent women in the Gaelic League, a member of its coiste gnótha (executive committee) and a director of the Gaelic press An Cló-Chumann Ltd, O’Farrelly is a close friend of most of its leading figures, especially Douglas Hyde, Kuno Meyer, and Eoin MacNeill. One of Hyde’s allies in his battle to avoid politicising the league, she is so close to him that students at UCD enjoy speculating about the nature of their friendship. She advocates pan-Celticism, but does not get involved in disputes on the matter within the league. A founder member, and subsequently principal for many years, of the Ulster College of Irish, Cloghaneely, County Donegal, she is also associated with the Leinster and Connacht colleges and serves as chairperson of the Federation of Irish Language Summer Schools.

Having presided at the inaugural meeting of Cumann na mBan in 1914, espousing its subordinate role in relation to the Irish Volunteers, O’Farrelly leaves the organisation soon afterwards because of her support for recruitment to the British Army during World War I. A close friend of Roger Casement, in 1916, along with Col. Maurice Moore she gathers a petition that seeks a reprieve of his death sentence. She is a member of a committee of women which negotiate unsuccessfully with Irish Republican Army (IRA) leaders to avoid civil war in 1922, and is heavily defeated as an independent candidate for the NUI constituency in the general elections of 1923 and June 1927. In 1937 she is actively involved in the National University Women Graduates’ Association’s campaign against the constitution, seeking deletion of articles perceived as discriminating against women.

Popular among students at UCD, O’Farrelly has a reputation as a social figure and entertains frequently at her homes in Dublin and the Donegal Gaeltacht. A founder member (1914) and president (1914–51) of the UCD camogie club, she persuades William Gibson, 2nd Baron Ashbourne, to donate the Ashbourne Cup for the camogie intervarsities. She is also president of the Camogie Association of Ireland in 1941–42. A supporter of native Irish industry, she is president of the Irish Industrial Development Association and the Homespun Society, and administrator of the John Connor Magee Trust for the development of Gaeltacht industry. A poet and writer in both Irish and English, often using the pseudonym ‘Uan Uladh’, her principal publications in prose are The reign of humbug (1900), Leabhar an Athar Eoghan (1903), Filidheacht Segháin Uí Neachtáin (1911), and her novel Grádh agus crádh (1901); and in poetry Out of the depths (1921) and Áille an domhain (1927).

O’Farrelly retires from UCD in 1947, and lives at 38 Brighton Road, Rathgar. An oil portrait by Seán Keating, RHA, is presented to her by the NUWGA on her retirement. She dies on November 5, 1951 in Dublin. Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and President Seán T. O’Kelly attend her funeral to Deans Grange Cemetery. She never marries, and leaves an estate valued at £3,109.


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Birth of Máire Drumm, VP of Sinn Féin

maire-drumm

Máire Drumm, vice president of Sinn Féin and a commander in Cumann na mBan, is born in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland on October 22, 1919.

Drumm is born to a staunchly Irish republican family. Drumm’s mother has been active in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. Drumm grows up in the village of Killean, County Armagh, where she plays camogie. She is active in the republican movement after meeting her husband, a republican prisoner. She begins to speak at many rallies and protest meetings and is soon elected as Vice President of Sinn Fein. She becomes involved in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in the 1960s and works to rehouse Irish Catholics forced from their homes by loyalist intimidation.

Drumm is jailed twice for seditious speeches. After she is released from HM Prison Armagh, raids on her house by the security forces escalate. She is widely demonised in the British media and is already a target for assassination when she is admitted to Belfast’s Mater Hospital for eye treatment in October 1976.

While recovering from the operation, Drumm is shot at point blank range on October 28, 1976, in a joint operation by the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association who are dressed as doctors enabling them to enter and leave the hospital undisturbed. No one has ever been convicted of her murder.

Drumm’s speeches and quotations can be found on murals across Northern Ireland, including:

“The only people worthy of freedom are those who are prepared to go out and fight for it every day, and die if necessary.”

“We must take no steps backward, our steps must be onward, for if we don’t, the martyrs that died for you, for me, for this country will haunt us forever.”


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The Execution of Tom Williams, IRA Volunteer

File source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vol._Tom_Williams.jpg

Thomas Joseph Williams, a volunteer in C Company, 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade in the Irish Republican Army (IRA), is hanged in the Crumlin Road Gaol on September 2, 1942, for his involvement in the killing of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officer Patrick Murphy during the Northern campaign.

Williams is born in the Beechmount area of Belfast on May 12, 1923. He is the third child in a family of six. After the death of his mother, he and his brother go to live with their grandmother at 46 Bombay Street in the Clonard area of Belfast. The Williams family has to leave the small Catholic enclave in the Shore Road area of Belfast after their house is attacked and burned.

As a child, Williams suffers from asthma and as a result is often very ill. He attends St. Gall’s Primary School but leaves at an early age to obtain work, which at the time is difficult due to discrimination. His work therefore consists of labouring and as a delivery boy.

As soon as Williams is old enough, he joins Na Fianna Éireann, the republican Scout Organisation founded by Constance Markievicz in 1909, becoming a member of the Con Colbert slua in the Clonard area. Alfie Hannaway, a friend of Williams, is his OC in Na Fianna, and assigns him to the rank of Quartermaster for the company. He takes his role in Na Fianna very seriously and all who came to know him are struck by his dedication and maturity, even at this early age.

At the age of 17, Williams is old enough to become a volunteer and joins C Company of the IRA in the Clonard area where he lives. Due to his “dedication and his remarkable ability” he is appointed to the role of Adjutant of C Company.

At Easter 1942 the government of Northern Ireland bans all parades to commemorate the anniversary of the Easter Rising. An IRA unit of six men and two women stage a diversionary action against the RUC to allow three parades to take place in West Belfast, but in this clash a RUC officer is killed, and the six IRA men are captured. The RUC officer, Constable Patrick Murphy, a father of nine children, from the Falls Road area of Belfast, is one of a minority of Catholics serving in the RUC.

There is debate over the years about who actually fired the fatal shot. The six IRA members are convicted and sentenced to death for murder under the law of common purpose. Five have their sentences commuted. The sentence of Williams, who acknowledges that he is the leader of the IRA unit involved and takes full responsibility for the actions of his men, is not commuted.

Williams is hanged in Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast on the morning of September 2, 1942. The executioner is the official English hangman Thomas Pierrepoint, assisted by his nephew Albert Pierrepoint. Afterwards Williams’ body is interred in unhallowed ground in an unmarked grave within the grounds of the prison. His remains are only released in January 2000 after the closure of the prison in 1996 and a lengthy campaign by the National Graves Association, Belfast.

Williams’s funeral is held on January 19, 2000, and is attended by thousands, with burial at Milltown Cemetery. Joe Cahill, Williams’s cell mate, and John Oliver, sentenced to death with Williams but later reprieved, as well as Madge McConville, who had been arrested with Williams, Greta McGlone, Billy McKee, Eddie Keenan and perhaps least known, Nell Morgan, Williams’s girlfriend at the time of his death, are all present. Six senior Sinn Féin members including Gerry Adams are also present in St. Paul’s Church on the Lower Falls Road for the Mass.

Williams is remembered in a ballad Tom Williams. Various recordings have been made, most notably by the Flying Column and Éire Óg, who preamble their version with the story of the campaign to release his body. The now disbanded, Volunteer Tom Williams Republican Flute Band from Glasgow, Scotland is named in his memory as is the Tom Williams Camogie Club in Belfast.

(Pictured: Tom Williams’ headstone at Milltown Cemetery after being reinterred)


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Founding of the Gaelic Athletic Association

gaelic-athletic-associationThe Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is founded on November 1, 1884, by a group of Irishmen gathered in the billiard room of the Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles, County Tipperary. The architects and founding members are Michael Cusack of County Clare, Maurice Davin, Joseph K. Bracken, Thomas St. George McCarthy, P.J. Ryan of Tipperary, John Wyse Power, and John McKay. Their goal is to to formulate a plan and establish an organisation to foster and preserve Ireland’s unique games and athletic pastimes.

The GAA focuses primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball, and rounders. The Association also promotes Irish music and dance, as well as the Irish language.

It has more than 500,000 members worldwide, assets in excess of €2.6 billion, and declares total revenues of €94.8 million in 2010, with a total gross profit of €78.5 million.

Gaelic football and hurling are the most popular activities promoted by the organisation, and the most popular sports in the Republic of Ireland in terms of attendances. Gaelic football is also the largest participation sport in Northern Ireland. GAA competitions, activities, and structures are organised on an all-Ireland basis, without reference to the border drawn in 1921. The women’s version of these games, ladies’ Gaelic football and camogie, are organised by the independent but closely linked Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association and the Camogie Association respectively. GAA Handball is the Irish governing body for the sport of handball, while the other Gaelic sport, rounders, is managed by the GAA Rounders National Council.

Since its foundation in the late 19th century, the Association has grown to become a major influence in Irish sporting and cultural life with considerable reach into communities throughout Ireland and among the Irish diaspora.


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Assassination of Máire Drumm, VP of Sinn Féin

maire-drumm

Máire Drumm, vice president of Sinn Féin and a commander in Cumann na mBan, is shot dead on October 28, 1976, by Ulster loyalists dressed as doctors while recovering from an eye operation in Belfast‘s Mater Hospital.

Drumm is born in Newry, County Down to a staunchly Irish republican family. Drumm’s mother has been active in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. Drumm grows up in the village of Killean, County Armagh, where she plays camogie. She is active in the republican movement after meeting her husband, a republican prisoner. She begins to speak at many rallies and protest meetings and is soon elected as Vice President of Sinn Fein. She becomes involved in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in the 1960s and works to rehouse Catholics forced from their homes by loyalist intimidation.

Drumm is jailed twice for seditious speeches. After she is released from HM Prison Armagh, raids on her house by the security forces escalate. She is widely demonised in the British media and is already a target for assassination when she is admitted to Belfast’s Mater Hospital for eye treatment in October 1976.

While recovering from the operation, Drumm is shot at point blank range in a joint operation by the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association who are able to enter and leave the hospital undisturbed. No one has ever been convicted of her murder.

Drumm’s speeches and quotations can be found on murals across Northern Ireland, including:

“The only people worthy of freedom are those who are prepared to go out and fight for it every day, and die if necessary.”

“We must take no steps backward, our steps must be onward, for if we don’t, the martyrs that died for you, for me, for this country will haunt us forever.”


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Birth of Katie Taylor, Olympic Boxing Champion

katie-taylor

Katie Taylor, Irish sportswoman who has represented Ireland in both boxing and association football, is born in Bray, County Wicklow, on July 2, 1986. As of this writing, she is the Irish, European, World, and Olympic boxing champion in the 60 kg division. Regarded as the outstanding Irish athlete of her generation, she is the flag bearer for Ireland at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony before going on to win an Olympic gold medal in the lightweight division.

Taylor first begins boxing in 1998 at the age of eleven. Her father coaches her and her two older brothers, Lee and Peter, at St. Fergal’s Boxing Club, which operates out of a former boathouse in Bray. At 15, she fights the first officially sanctioned female boxing match in Ireland at the National Stadium and defeats Alanna Audley from Belfast.

Between 1999 and 2005 Taylor attends St. Kilian’s Community School in Bray with her three older siblings. In addition to boxing and playing association football, Taylor also plays Gaelic football and camogie with her local GAA clubs, Bray Emmets and Fergal Ógs. Several American colleges reportedly offer her athletic scholarships while she is still a pupil at St. Killian’s. She opts, however, to attend University College Dublin. Although UCD is well known for sports scholarships, Taylor qualifies via her Leaving Cert results. As her sporting career begins to take off, however, she chooses not to complete her studies at UCD.

Taylor qualifies for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the first time women’s boxing has been considered for inclusion. Crowds gather on the streets of her hometown to watch her progress on giant screens erected especially for the occasion.

Taylor’s first appearance at the 2012 Summer Olympics comes on August 6, after a first-round bye. She achieves an impressive 26-15 victory over Great Britain‘s Natasha Jonas, booking her place in the semi-final and guaranteeing her, at least, an Olympic bronze medal.

In the semi-final on August 8, 2012, she proves far too good for Tajikistan‘s Mavzuna Chorieva and wins in a 17-9 victory, booking her place in the final and guaranteeing her of at least a silver medal.

Taylor defeats Russia‘s Sofya Ochigava in the final bout by 10-8 on August 9, 2012, winning the Olympic gold medal and becoming the first ever Olympic female lightweight champion.

On her return to Dublin with the rest of the Olympic squad she gets into the cockpit of the plane and leans out the window waving an Irish flag.