The first episode of Glenroe, a television drama series broadcast on RTÉ One, airs on September 11, 1983. The series runs for eighteen years, ending in May 2001.
A spin-off from Bracken, a short-lived RTÉ drama itself spun off from The Riordans, Glenroe is broadcast, generally from September to May, each Sunday evening at 8:30 PM. It is created, and written for much of its run, by Wesley Burrowes, and later by various other directors and producers including Paul Cusack, Alan Robinson and Tommy McCardle. Glenroe is the first show to be subtitled by RTÉ, with a broadcast in 1991 starting the station’s subtitling policy.
Glenroe centers on the lives of the people living in the fictional rural village of the same name in County Wicklow. The real-life village of Kilcoole is used to film the series. The series is also filmed in studio at RTÉ and in various other locations when directors see fit.
The main protagonists are the Byrne and McDermott/Moran families, related by the marriage of Miley Byrne to Biddy McDermott, colloquially known as Biddy and Miley. Other important characters include Teasy McDaid, the proprietor of the local pub, Tim Devereux, the Roman Catholicpriest, George Black, the Church of IrelandRector of the village, Fidelma Kelly, a cousin of Biddy, Blackie Connors, George Manning and Stephen Brennan.
Glenroe is noted for its original title sequence, which features the words “Gleann Rua” in Gaelic script morphing into “Glenroe” over a series of rural images. The original title sequence is used from the 1983-1984 season to the end of the 1992-1993 season. It is replaced with a more up-to-date title sequence at the start of the 1993-1994 season.
Glenroe‘s original theme tune is a traditional Irish song called “Cuaichín Ghleann Néifinn” and is arranged by Jim Lockhart of the Celtic rock band Horslips. A newly recorded version, arranged by Máire Ní Bhraonáin of the band Clannad, is introduced at the start of the 1993-1994 season.
In 2000 it seems the series is going into inevitable decline. On January 19, 2001, despite claims four years previously that it could run for another ten years, RTÉ announces that Glenroe is to end after eighteen seasons. The final episode of the series is broadcast on May 6, 2001.
Butt is called to the Irish bar in 1838 and the English bar in 1859. Intermittently from 1852 he represents, successively, one English and two Irish constituencies in the House of Commons. In 1848 he undertakes the defense of the Young Ireland leaders, who are charged with high treason for their abortive insurrection that year. From 1865 to 1869 he is the principal defense counsel for the imprisoned leaders of the Fenians (Irish Republican, or Revolutionary, Brotherhood).
Despite his legal work for the Fenians, Butt, who is basically a conservative, fears the consequences of a successful Fenian revolt. Disillusioned, however, by the British government’s failure to relieve the Irish Great Famine of the late 1840s, he becomes convinced that a native parliament is required for Irish land reform and other needs. In May 1870 he calls for an Irish Parliament subordinate to the imperial Parliament at Westminster, and later that year he forms the Home Government Association. From 1871 he quickens the Irish nationalist agitation in the House of Commons but gradually loses his leadership, partly because he disapproves of Parnell’s tactics of obstructing routine parliamentary business.
Butt amasses debts and pursues romances. It is said that at meetings he is occasionally heckled by women with whom he had fathered children. He is also involved in a financial scandal when it is revealed that he had taken money from several Indian princes to represent their interests in parliament.
Isaac Butt dies on May 5, 1879, in Clonskeagh in Dublin. His remains are brought by train to Stranorlar, County Donegal, where he is buried in a corner of the Church of Ireland cemetery beneath a tree by which he used to sit and dream as a boy. His grave has been restored and the memorial now includes a wreath.
Despite his chaotic lifestyle and political limitations, Butt is capable of inspiring deep personal loyalty. Some of his friends, such as John Butler Yeats and the future Catholic Bishop of Limerick, Edward Thomas O’Dwyer, retain a lasting hostility towards Parnell for his role in Butt’s downfall.
In May 2010 the Church of Ireland parishes of Stranorlar, Meenglass and Kilteevogue instigate an annual memorial Service and Lecture in Butt’s honour, inviting members of the professions of law, politics and journalism to reflect aspects of his life. Speakers have included Dr. Joe Mulholland, Senator David Norris, Dr. Chris McGimpsey and Prof. Brian Walker.
(Pictured: Isaac Butt, portrait by John Butler Yeats)
Bernard graduates with a BA in mathematics from Trinity College Dublin in 1880, is elected a Fellow there in 1884, and is later a member of the council of the university, where he holds the office of King’s Lecturer of Divinity from 1888 to 1902.
Bernard is appointed treasurer of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, by the DeanHenry Jellett in 1897. On Jellett´s death, in December 1901, Bernard becomes a favorite to succeed him as Dean, a position to which he is elected by the chapter of the cathedral on February 6, 1902. He serves as such until 1911, when he is appointed Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin. In 1915 he is appointed Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, serving until 1919.
A prolific scholar, in many fields, including Church history, theology and philosophy, Bernard is the president of the Royal Irish Academy from 1916 to 1921 and Provost of Trinity College Dublin from 1919 to 1927. He is a member of the Board of National Education in Ireland, in which capacity he serves as examiner of mathematics in the 1880s. He is regarded as an unrepentant Unionist, representing their interests as a delegate to the 1917–18 Irish Convention.
To make up for a deficiency in their living Hannay writes a short story and sends it to a London publisher. It is accepted for publication, and he receives a check of ￡10. On his wife’s advice, he gives up writing fiction and commits himself to the study of Christian theology with her. This bears fruit with the publications of The Spirit and Origin of Christian Monasticism (1903) and The Wisdom of the Desert (1904).
Hannay then serves as rector of Holy Trinity Church in Westport, County Mayo. It is here that he makes his debut as a novelist. His early writings raise the ire of nationalist Catholics, and he withdraws from the Gaelic League in the wake of ongoing protests about the tour of his successful play General John Regan.
Hannay becomes rector of Kildare parish from 1918 to 1920, and after serving as chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he joins the British ambassadorial team in Budapest in 1922. He returns to officiate at Mells, Somerset from 1924 to 1934, after which he is appointed vicar of Holy Trinity Church in the London suburb of Kensington where he serves from 1934 until his death in London on February 2, 1950.
Hannay enjoys sailing and is taught the rudiments by his father and grandfather in Belfast. When he is based in Westport, the financial success of his writing enables him to purchase a boat, a Dublin Bay Water Wag. In recognition of Hannay, the Water Wag Club of Dun Laoghaire returns to Westport and Clew Bay in 2016. In the frontispiece of his book The Inviolable Sanctuary Hannay includes a picture of the Water Wag.
Hyde is born at Longford House in Castlerea, County Roscommon, on January 17, 1860. In 1867, his father is appointed prebendary and rector of Tibohine, and the family moves to neighbouring Frenchpark, in County Roscommon. He is home schooled by his father and his aunt due to a childhood illness. While a young man, he becomes fascinated with hearing the old people in the locality speak the Irish language.
Rejecting family pressure to follow previous generations with a career in the Church, Hyde instead becomes an academic. He enters Trinity College, Dublin, where he gains a great facility for languages, learning Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and German, but his great passion in life is the preservation of the Irish language.
After spending a year teaching modern languages in Canada, Hyde returns to Ireland. For much of the rest of his life he writes and collects hundreds of stories, poems, and folktales in Irish, and translates others. His work in Irish helps to inspire many other literary writers, such as W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory.
In 1892, Hyde helps establish the Gaelic Journal and in November of that year writes a manifesto called The necessity for de-anglicising the Irish nation, arguing that Ireland should follow her own traditions in language, literature, and even in dress.
In 1893, Hyde founds the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) along with Eoin MacNeill and Fr. Eugene O’Growney and serves as its first president. Many of the new generation of Irish leaders who play a central role in the fight for Irish independence in the early twentieth century, including Patrick Pearse, Éamon de Valera, Michael Collins, and Ernest Blythe first become politicised and passionate about Irish independence through their involvement in the Gaelic League. Hyde does not want the Gaelic League to be a political entity, so when the surge of Irish nationalism that the Gaelic League helps to foster begins to take control of many in the League and politicize it in 1915, Hyde resigns as president.
In 1938, Hyde is unanimously elected to the newly created position of President of Ireland, a post he holds until 1945. He is inaugurated on June 26, 1938, in the first inaugural ceremony in the nation’s history. He sets a precedent by reciting the Presidential Declaration of Office in Irish. His recitation, in Roscommon Irish, is one of a few recordings of a dialect of which Hyde is one of the last speakers. Upon inauguration, he moves into the long vacant Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park, since known as Áras an Uachtaráin.
Despite being placed in a position to shape the office of the presidency via precedent, Hyde by and large opts for a quiet, conservative interpretation of the office.
In April 1940 Hyde suffers a massive stroke and plans are made for his lying-in-state and state funeral, but to the surprise of everyone he survives, albeit paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. One of Hyde’s last presidential acts is a visit to the German ambassador Eduard Hempel on May 3, 1945, to offer his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler, a visit which remains a secret until 2005.
Hyde leaves office on June 25, 1945, opting not to nominate himself for a second term. He opts not return to his Roscommon home due to his ill-health but rather moves into the former Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant’s residence in the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin, where he lived out the remaining four years of his life.
Hyde dies in Dublin on July 12, 1949, at age 89. As a former President of Ireland, he is accorded a state funeral which, as a member of the Church of Ireland, takes place in Dublin’s Church of Ireland St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Since contemporary rules of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland at the time prohibit Roman Catholics from attending services in non-Catholic churches, all but one member of the Catholic cabinet remains outside the cathedral grounds while Hyde’s funeral takes place. Hyde is buried in Frenchpark, County Roscommon at Portahard Church.
Agar is the second son of Henry Agar, a former MP for Gowran, and Anne Ellis, and is probably born at Gowran Castle in County Kilkenny. On March 20, 1760, he marries Lucia Martin, widow of Henry Boyle-Walsingham. Together they have three children: Henry-Welbore Agar-Ellis (b. January 22, 1761), John Ellis (b. December 31, 1763), and Charles-Bagnell (b. August 13, 1765).
In addition to being a Member of Parliament (MP) for Gowran, for which he sits three times, from 1753 to 1761, again from 1768 to 1769 and finally from 1776 to 1777, Agar controls three other borough seats through the strength of his family holdings. He represents Kilkenny County between 1761 and 1776 and Thomastown between 1768 and 1769. He holds the post of joint Postmaster General of Ireland with William Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby between 1784 and 1789.
James Agar dies on January 1, 1789. His eldest son, Henry-Welbore Agar-Ellis, becomes 2nd Viscount Clifden and Baron Mendip.
(Pictured: Arms of Agar-Ellis: 1st and 4th quarter: a cross sable charged with five crescents argent for Ellis; 2nd and 3rd quarter: azure with a lion rampant for Agar)
The first clash of the Tithe War takes place on March 3, 1831, in Graiguenamanagh, County Kilkenny, when a force of 120 yeomanry attempts to enforce seizure orders on cattle belonging to a Roman Catholic priest. Encouraged by his bishop, he has organised people to resist tithe collection by placing their stock under his ownership prior to sale.
The Tithe War is a campaign of mainly nonviolent civil disobedience, punctuated by sporadic violent episodes, in Ireland between 1830 and 1836 in reaction to the enforcement of tithes on the Roman Catholic majority for the upkeep of the established state church – the Church of Ireland. Tithes are payable in cash or kind and payment is compulsory, irrespective of an individual’s religious adherence.
After Emancipation in 1829, an organized campaign of resistance to collection begins. It is sufficiently successful to have a serious financial effect on the welfare of established church clergy. In 1831, the government compiles lists of defaulters and issues collection orders for the seizure of goods and chattels. Spasmodic violence breaks out in various parts of Ireland, particularly in counties Kilkenny, Tipperary and Wexford. The Royal Irish Constabulary, which had been established in 1822, attempts to enforce the orders of seizures. At markets and fairs, the constabulary often seize stock and produce, which often results in violent resistance.
A campaign of passive resistance is proposed by Patrick “Patt” Lalor, a farmer of Tenakill, Queen’s County (now County Laois), who later serves as a repeal MP. He declares at a public meeting in February 1831 in Maryborough that he would never again pay tithes and, although the tithe men might take his property and offer it for sale, his countrymen would not buy or bid for it if offered for sale. Lalor holds true to his word and does not resist the confiscation of 20 sheep from his farm but is able to ensure no buyers appear at subsequent auctions.
Following the clash at Graiguenamanagh, the revolt soon spreads. On June 18, 1831, in Bunclody, County Wexford, people resisting the seizure of cattle are fired upon by the Royal Irish Constabulary, who kill twelve and wound twenty. One yeoman is shot dead in retaliation. This massacre causes objectors to organise and use warnings such as church bells to signal the community to round up the cattle and stock. On December 14, 1831, resisters use such warnings to ambush a detachment of 40 Constabulary at Carrickshock, County Kilkenny. Twelve constables, including the Chief Constable, are killed and more wounded.
Regular clashes causing fatalities continue over the next two years. On December 18, 1834, the conflict comes to a head at Rathcormac, County Cork, when armed Constabulary reinforced by the regular British Army kill twelve and wound forty-two during several hours of fighting when trying to enforce a tithe order reputedly to the value of 40 shillings.
Finding and collecting livestock chattels and the associated mayhem creates public outrage and proves an increasing strain on police relations. The government suspends collections. In 1838, parliament introduces a Tithe Commutation Act. This reduces the amount payable directly by about a quarter and makes the remainder payable in rent to landlords. They in turn are to pass payment to the authorities. Tithes are thus effectively added to a tenant’s rent payment. This partial relief and elimination of the confrontational collections ends the violent aspect of the Tithe War.
While working in Belfast and Inishowen in 1931, Quinn is promoted to the post of deacon. In 1961, he is appointed professor of Biblical Greek at Trinity College and begins work on a new translation of the New Testament. He also translates the Book of Psalms and the Prayer Book of the Church of Ireland into Irish, as well as several Spanish works. Although it is unusual in his lifetime for Protestants to hold leading positions in the Irish language movement, Quinn is for a time President of Oireachtas na Gaeilge. He is made a canon of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1966, before retiring from the ministry in 1971.
Gwynn spends his early childhood in rural County Donegal, which shapes his later view of Ireland. He is educated at St. Columba’s College and goes on to Brasenose College, Oxford, where, as scholar, in 1884 he is awarded first-class honours in classical moderations and in 1886 literae humaniores. During term holidays he returns to Dublin, where he meets several of the political and literary figures of the day.
After graduating Gwynn moves to France where he works as a schoolmaster for ten years. In December 1889 he marries his cousin Mary Louisa Gwynn. They have four sons and two daughters. Having dabbled in journalism since his student days, he moves to London in 1896 to pursue a career as a writer. He soon becomes a prominent figure in literary and journalistic circles.
At the outbreak of World War I, Gwynn gives his support to John Redmond that Irishmen should enlist in the British forces. At the age of fifty-one he enlists as a private in the 7th Leinster Regiment and is later commissioned lieutenant in the 6th Battalion Connaught Rangers, attached to the 16th (Irish) Division. He is promoted to captain in 1915 and serves with his battalion at the battles of Ginchy and Guillemont during the Somme offensive and also at Messines in 1917, leaving the front line shortly afterwards.
After the war Gwynn continues with his writing and political life. He receives honorary doctorates from the National University of Ireland in 1940 and the University of Dublin in 1945. He dies on June 11, 1950, at his home in Terenure, Dublin and is buried at Tallaght cemetery.
Luby is the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman from Templemore, County Tipperary, his mother being a Catholic. He is educated at Trinity College Dublin where he studies law and puts in the necessary number of terms in London and Dublin where he acquires a reputation as a scholar and takes his degree. He goes on to teach at the college for a time.
In 1851 Luby travels to France, where he hopes to join the French Foreign Legion to learn infantry tactics but finds the recruiting temporarily suspended. From France he goes to Australia for a year before returning to Ireland. From the end of 1855 he edits the Tribune newspaper founded by John E. Pigot who had been a member of The Nation group. During this time, he remains in touch with the small group of ’49 men including Philip Gray and attempts to start a new revolutionary movement. Luby’s views on social issues grow more conservative after 1848 which he makes clear to James Stephens whom he meets in 1856.
In the autumn of 1857 Owen Considine arrives with a message signed by four Irish exiles in the United States, two of whom are John O’Mahony and Michael Doheny. The message conveys the confidence they have in Stephens and asks him to establish an organisation in Ireland to win national independence. Considine also carries a private letter from O’Mahony to Stephens which is a warning, and which is overlooked by Luby and Stephens at the time. Both believe that there is a strong organisation behind the letter, only later to find it is rather a number of loosely linked groups. On December 23 Stephens dispatches Joseph Denieffe to America with his reply which is disguised as a business letter dated and addressed from Paris. In his reply, Stephen’s outlines his conditions and his requirements from the organisation in America.
On March 17, 1858, Denieffe arrives in Dublin with the acceptance of Stephens’s terms by the New York Committee and the eighty pounds. On that very evening the Irish Republican Brotherhood is established in Peter Langan’s timberyard in Lombard Street.
In mid-1863 Stephens informs his colleagues he wishes to start a newspaper, with financial aid from O’Mahony and the Fenian Brotherhood in America. The offices are established at 12 Parliament Street, almost at the gates of Dublin Castle. The first issue of the Irish People appears on November 28, 1863. The staff of the paper along with Luby are Charles J. Kickham and Denis Dowling Mulcahy as the editorial staff. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and James O’Connor have charge of the business office, with John Haltigan being the printer. John O’Leary is brought from London to take charge in the role of Editor.
On July 15, 1865, American-made plans for a rising in Ireland are discovered. Superintendent Daniel Ryan, head of the G Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police at Dublin Castle, has an informer within the offices of the Irish People who supplies him with an “action this year” message on its way to the IRB unit in Tipperary. With this information, Ryan raids the offices of the Irish People on Thursday, September 15, followed by the arrests of Luby, O’Leary and O’Donovan Rossa. Kickham is caught after a month on the run. Stephens is also caught with the support of Fenian prison warders. The last number of the paper is dated September 16, 1865.
After his arrest and the suppression of the Irish People, Luby is sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude. He is released in January 1871 but is compelled to remain away from Ireland until the expiration of his sentence.
Upon his release Luby goes first to the Continent and later settles in New York City. He lectures all over the country for years and writes for a number of Irish newspapers on political topics. At the memorial meeting on the death of John Mitchel, he delivers the principal address in Madison Square Garden.
Thomas Clarke Luby dies at 109½ Oak Street, Jersey City, New Jersey of paralysis, on November 29, 1901, and is buried in a grave shared with his wife in Bayview Cemetery in Jersey City. His epitaph reads: “Thomas Clarke Luby 1822–1901 He devoted his life to love of Ireland and quest of truth.”
seamus dubhghaill 