seamus dubhghaill

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


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Birth of Novelist Rosina Bulwer Lytton

rosina-bulwer-lytton

Novelist Rosina Bulwer Lytton (née Rosina Doyle Wheeler) is born in Ballywhire, County Limerick on November 4, 1802. She writes and publishes fourteen novels, a volume of essays and a volume of letters. Her husband is Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a novelist and politician. She spells her married surname without the hyphen used by her husband.

Rosina Doyle Wheeler’s mother is Anna Wheeler, the advocate of women’s rights and daughter of the Rev. Nicholas Milley Doyle, a Church of Ireland clergyman, Rector of Newcastle, County Tipperary. Her father is Francis Massey Wheeler, an Anglo-Irish landowner. One of her mother’s brothers, Sir John Milley Doyle (1781–1856), leads British and Portuguese forces in the Peninsular War and the War of the Two Brothers.

Rosina Doyle is educated at Reading Abbey Girls’ School in part by Frances Arabella Rowden, who is not only a poet, but, according to Mary Russell Mitford, “had a knack of making poetesses of her pupils.” This ties Rosina to other of Rowden’s pupils such as Caroline Posonby, later Lady Caroline Lamb, the poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon (“L.E.L.”), Emma Roberts, the travel writer and Anna Maria Fielding, who publishes as S.C. Hall.

Rosina Doyle Wheeler marries Edward Bulwer-Lytton, at that time surnamed simply Bulwer, on August 29, 1827. This is against the wishes of his mother, who withdraws his allowance, so that he is forced to work for a living.

His writing and efforts in the political arena take a toll upon their marriage, and the couple legally separates in 1836. Her children are taken from her. In 1839, her novel, Cheveley, or the Man of Honour, in which Edward Bulwer-Lytton is bitterly caricatured, is published.

In June 1858, when her husband is standing as parliamentary candidate for Hertfordshire, she appears at the hustings and indignantly denounces him. To silence her, Edward has her committed “insane.” Under the supervision of Robert Gardiner Hill, a British surgeon who specialises in the treatment of lunacy, she is incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. She is liberated a few weeks later following a public outcry. This is chronicled in her book A Blighted Life. For years she continues her attacks upon her husband’s character. She outlives him by nine years.

Rosina Bulwer Lytton dies in Upper Sydenham, London, England on March 12, 1882.


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Death of Richard Harris, Actor & Singer

richard-harris

Richard St. John Harris, Irish actor and singer, dies in London from complications of Hodgkin’s lymphoma and pneumonia on October 25, 2002.

Harris is born to a farming family on October 1, 1930, in Limerick, County Limerick. He is the son of Mildred Josephine (Harty) and Ivan John Harris. He is an excellent rugby player with a strong passion for literature. Unfortunately, a bout of tuberculosis as a teenager ends his aspirations to a rugby career. He becomes fascinated with the theater and skips a local dance one night to attend a performance of Henry IV. He is hooked and goes on to learn his craft at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, followed by several years in stage productions.

Harris makes his film debut in 1959 in the film Alive and Kicking and plays the lead role in The Ginger Man in the West End in 1959. His second film, Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), quickly scores regular work in films, including The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959), The Night Fighters (1960) and a good role as a frustrated Australian bomber pilot in The Guns of Navarone (1961).

Harris’ breakthrough performance is as the quintessential “angry young man” in the sensational drama This Sporting Life (1963), for which he receives an Academy Award nomination. He then appears in the World War II commando tale The Heroes of Telemark (1965) and in the Sam Peckinpah-directed western Major Dundee (1965). He next shows up in Hawaii (1966) and plays King Arthur in Camelot (1967), a lackluster adaptation of the famous Broadway play. Better performances follow, among them a role as a reluctant police informer in The Molly Maguires (1970) alongside Sean Connery. He takes the lead role in the violent western A Man Called Horse (1970), which becomes something of a cult film and spawns two sequels.

As the 1970s progress, Harris continues to appear regularly on screen, however, the quality of the scripts vary from above average to woeful. His credits during this period include directing himself as an aging soccer player in the delightful The Hero (1971), the western The Deadly Trackers (1973), the big-budget “disaster” film Juggernaut (1974), the strangely-titled crime film 99 and 44/100% Dead (1974), with Connery again in Robin and Marian (1976), Gulliver’s Travels (1977), a part in the Jaws (1975) ripoff Orca (1977) and a nice turn as an ill-fated mercenary with Richard Burton and Roger Moore in the popular action film The Wild Geese (1978).

The 1980s kick off with Harris appearing in the silly Bo Derek vanity production Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981) and the remainder of the decade has him appearing in some very forgettable productions.

However, the luck of the Irish once again shines on Harris’ career and he scores rave reviews and another Oscar nomination for The Field (1990). He then locks horns with Harrison Ford as an Irish Republican Army sympathizer in Patriot Games (1992) and gets one of his best roles as gunfighter English Bob in the Clint Eastwood western Unforgiven (1992). He is firmly back in vogue and rewards his fans with more wonderful performances in Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993), Cry, the Beloved Country (1995), The Great Kandinsky (1995) and This Is the Sea (1997). Further fortune comes his way with a strong performance in the blockbuster Gladiator (2000) and he becomes known to an entirely new generation of film fans as Albus Dumbledore in the mega-successful Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). His final screen role is as “Lucius Sulla” in Julius Caesar (2002).

Harris is diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in August 2002, reportedly after being hospitalised with pneumonia. He dies at University College Hospital in Fitzrovia, London on October 25, 2002, after spending his final three days in a coma. His body is cremated, and his ashes are scattered in the Bahamas, where he had owned a home.


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Death of Dan Keating, Last Survivor of the Irish War of Independence

dan-keating

Daniel “Dan” Keating, lifelong Irish republican and patron of Republican Sinn Féin, dies in Knockbrack, County Kerry on October 2, 2007. At the time of his death, he is Ireland’s oldest man and the last surviving veteran of the Irish War of Independence.

Keating is born on January 2, 1902, in Castlemaine, County Kerry. He receives his education in local schools, including the Christian Brothers’ School in Tralee. Tralee is also the place where Keating does his apprenticeship. During this time, he becomes a skillful Gaelic football player in his native Kerry.

Keating joins Fianna Éireann in 1918. In 1920, during the Irish War of Independence, he joins the Boherbee B Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Kerry Brigade, Irish Republican Army (IRA). He first brings a firearm of a Liverpool Irish soldier of the British Army into a public house in which he works. On April 21, 1921, Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Constable Denis O’Loughlin is shot dead in Knightly’s public house in Tralee. Keating, Jimmy O’Connor and Percy Hanafin are suspected of the killing and are forced to go on the run. On June 1, Keating is involved in an ambush between Castlemaine and Milltown which claims the lives of five RIC men. On July 10, a day before the truce between the IRA and British forces, his unit is involved in a gun battle with the British Army near Castleisland. This confrontation results in the deaths of four British soldiers and five IRA volunteers.

Keating opposes the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and fights on the anti-treaty side in the Irish Civil War. He is involved in operations in counties Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary, before his flying column is arrested by Free State Forces. Keating spends seven months in Portlaoise Prison and the Curragh prison before being released in March 1923.

Keating remains an IRA member for a long time after the Civil War. He is arrested several times during the 1930s on various charges. He is active in London during the 1939/1940 IRA bombing campaign.

In 1933, Keating is involved in an attempt to assassinate the leader of the Irish Blueshirts, Eoin O’Duffy, during a visit to County Kerry. The attack is to happen at Ballyseedy, where Free State forces had carried out the Ballyseedy Massacre during the Irish Civil War. However, the plot fails when the person travelling with O’Duffy refuses to divulge in which car O’Duffy would be riding.

Keating subsequently returns to Dublin and works as a barman in several public houses. He retires and returns to his native Kerry in 1978, living out the rest of his life with relatives in Knockbrack. Until his death he refuses to accept a state pension because he considers the 26-county Republic of Ireland an illegitimate state which usurps the 1916 Irish Republic.

“All the talk you hear these days is of peace. But there will never be peace until the people of the 32 counties elect one parliament without British interference.”

In 2002, Keating refuses the state’s standard €2,500 award to centenarians from President Mary McAleese. After former IRA volunteer George Harrison dies in November 2004, Keating becomes patron of Republican Sinn Féin until his own death. At the time of his death at the age of 105 on October 2, 2007, he is the oldest man in Ireland. He is buried in Kiltallagh Cemetery, Castlemaine.


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The Whiteboys

the-whiteboys

The Whiteboys, a secret Irish agrarian organisation in 18th-century Ireland which uses violent tactics to defend tenant farmer land rights for subsistence farming, is created on October 1, 1761. Their name derives from the white smocks the members wear in their nightly raids. They seek to address rack-rents, tithe collection, excessive priests’ dues, evictions and other oppressive acts. As a result they target landlords and tithe collectors. Over time, Whiteboyism becomes a general term for rural violence connected to secret societies. Because of this generalisation, the historical record for the Whiteboys as a specific organisation is unclear. There are three major outbreaks of Whiteboyism: 1761–64, 1770–76 and 1784–86.

Between 1735 and 1760 there is an increase in land used for grazing and beef cattle, in part because pasture land is exempt from tithes. The landlords, having let their lands far above their value, on condition of allowing the tenants the use of certain commons, now enclose the commons, but do not lessen the rent. As more landlords and farmers switch to raising cattle, labourers and small tenant farmers are forced off the land. The Whiteboys develop as a secret oath-bound society among the peasantry. Whiteboy disturbances had occurred prior to 1761 but were largely restricted to isolated areas and local grievances, so that the response of local authorities had been limited.

Their operations are chiefly in the counties of Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Tipperary. This combination is not political. It is not directed against the government, but against the local landlords. Members of different religious affiliations take part.

The first major outbreak occurs in County Limerick in November 1761 and quickly spreads to counties Tipperary, Cork, and Waterford. A great deal of organisation and planning seems to have gone into the outbreak, including the holding of regular assemblies. Initial activities are limited to specific grievances and the tactics used non-violent, such as the levelling of ditches that closed off common grazing land, although cattle hamstringing is often practised as the demand for beef prompts large landowners to initiate the process of enclosure. As their numbers increase, the scope of Whiteboy activities begins to widen, and proclamations are clandestinely posted stipulating demands such as that rent not be paid, that land with expired leases not be rented until it has lain fallow for three years, and that no one pay or collect tithes demanded by the Anglican Church. Threatening letters are also sent to debt collectors, landlords, and occupants of land gained from eviction, demanding that they give up their farms.

March 1762 sees a further escalation of Whiteboy activities, with marches in military array preceded by the music of bagpipes or the sounding of horns. At Cappoquin they fire guns and march by the military barracks playing the Jacobite tune “The lad with the white cockade.” These processions are often preceded by notices saying that Queen Sive and her children will make a procession through part of her domain and demand that the townspeople illuminate their houses and provide their horses, ready saddled, for their use. More militant activities often follow such processions with unlit houses in Lismore attacked, prisoners released in an attack on Tallow jail and similar shows of strength in Youghal.

The events of March 1762, however, prompt a more determined response, and a considerable military force under Charles Moore, 1st Marquess of Drogheda is sent to Munster to crush the Whiteboys.

On April 2, 1762 a force of 50 militia men and 40 soldiers set out for Tallow. By mid-April at least 150 suspected Whiteboys have been arrested. Clogheen in County Tipperary bears the initial brunt of this assault as the local parish priest, Fr. Nicholas Sheehy, had earlier spoken out against tithes and collected funds for the defence of parishioners charged with rioting. An unknown number of “insurgents” are reported killed in the “pacification exercise” and Fr. Sheehy is unsuccessfully indicted for sedition several times before eventually being found guilty of a charge of accessory to murder, and hanged, drawn and quartered in Clonmel in March 1766.

In the cities, suspected Whiteboy sympathisers are arrested and in Cork, citizens form an association of about 2,000 strong which offer rewards of £300 for capture of the chief Whiteboy and £50 for the first five sub-chiefs arrested. They often accompany the military on their rampages. The leading Catholics in Cork also offer similar rewards of £200 and £40 respectively.

Acts passed by the Parliament of Ireland (to 1800) and Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (from 1801) to empower the authorities to combat Whiteboyism are commonly called “Whiteboy Acts.”


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Birth of Seán Keating, Romantic-Realist Painter

sean-keating-an-allegory

Seán Keating, Irish romantic-realist painter who painted some iconic images of the Irish War of Independence and of the early industrialization of Ireland, is born in Limerick, County Limerick on September 28, 1889.

Keating studies drawing at the Limerick Technical School before a scholarship arranged by William Orpen allows him to go study at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin at the age of twenty. Over the next few years, he spends two weeks or so during the late summer on the Aran Islands and his many portraits of island people depict them as rugged heroic figures.

In 1914 he wins the RDS Taylor award with a painting titled The Reconciliation. The prize includes £50.00 which allows him to go to London to work as Orpen’s studio assistant in 1915. In late 1915 or early 1916, he returns to Ireland where he documents the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Irish Civil War. Examples include Men of the South (1921–22) which shows a group of Irish Republican Army (IRA) men ready to ambush a military vehicle and An Allegory (first exhibited in 1924), in which the two opposing sides in the Irish Civil War are seen to bury the tri-colour covered coffin amid the roots of an ancient tree. The painting includes a self-portrait of the artist.

Keating is elected an Associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1918, and a full member in 1923. One of the cardinal achievements of the Irish Free State in the 1920s is the building, in partnership with Siemens, of a hydro-electric power generator at Ardnacrusha, near Limerick. Between 1926 and 1927, at his own volition, he produces a considerable number of paintings related to this scheme. He exhibits several examples of the paintings in the RHA exhibitions in 1927 and 1928. Most of the paintings are now in the collection of ESB Group.

In 1936 group of prominent Limerick politicians, artists and patrons establish the first Limerick City Collection of Art from various donations and bequests. Keating is part of this artist-led initiative to form a municipal art gallery in Limerick similar to those already in Dublin and Cork. The collection is formed primarily out of donations and bequests. As a pivotal member of the committee, Keating himself donates many works to the collection which is first exhibited as a municipal collection in the Savoy Cinema, Limerick City on November 23, 1937. It is not until 1948 that an extension to the rear of Limerick Free Library and Museum becomes the home to the City Collection as the Limerick Free Art Gallery. In 1985 the Library and Museum are transferred to larger buildings.

In 1939 Keating is commissioned to paint a mural for the Irish pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. He is President of the RHA from 1950 to 1962, and shows at the annual exhibition for 61 years from 1914. Although he is an intellectual painter in the sense that he consciously sets out to explore the visual identity of the Irish nation, and his paintings show a very idealised realism, he fears that the modern movement will bring back a decline in artistic standards. Throughout his career, he exhibits nearly 300 works at the RHA and also shows at the Oireachtas.

Seán Keating dies on December 21, 1977 at the Adelaide Hospital in Dublin and is buried at Cruagh Cemetery, Rathfarnham. The 1978 RHA Exhibition features a small memorial collection of his work.

Posthumous exhibitions of his work are mounted by The Grafton Gallery, Dublin (1986) and the Electricity Supply Board (1987). Sean Keating – The Pilgrim Soul, a documentary presented and written by his son Justin Keating, airs on RTÉ in 1996.

(Pictured: Photograph of Keating’s “An Allegory” painted between 1922 and 1924. The painting represents Keating’s own disillusionment and loss of idealism resulting from the outbreak of the Irish Civil War. The only figure of the group addressing the observer is a self-portrait of the artist.)


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Birth of Philip Embury, Methodist Preacher

Philip Embury

Philip Embury, Methodist preacher and a leader of one of the earliest Methodist congregations in the United States, is born in Ballingrane, County Limerick on September 21, 1729.

Embury’s parents are members of the colony of Germans that emigrate from the Palatinate to Ireland early in the eighteenth century, and in which Methodism co-founder John Wesley labors with great success. The colony forms from refugees from the War of the Spanish Succession. Embury is educated at a school near Ballingrane and learns the carpentry trade. He is converted on Christmas day 1752, becomes a local preacher at Court-Matrix in 1758 and marries Margaret Switzer that fall.

In 1760, due to rising rents and scarce land, he goes to New York City and works as a schoolteacher. In common with his fellow emigrants, he begins to lose interest in religious matters and does not preach in New York until 1766 when, moved by the reproaches of his cousin Barbara Heck, sometimes called the “mother of American Methodism,” he begins to hold services first in his own house on Barrack Street, now Park Place, and then in a rigging loft on what is now William Street. The congregation thus forms what is probably the first Methodist congregation in the United States, though it is a disputed question whether precedence should not be given to Robert Strawbridge, who begins laboring in Maryland about this time. Before this, he and Barbara Heck worship along with other Irish Palatines at Trinity Church in Manhattan, where three of his children are baptized.

The first Methodist church is built under Embury’s charge in 1768, in association with Thomas Webb and others, on the site of the present John Street United Methodist Church. He himself works on the building as a carpenter and afterward preaches there gratuitously. In 1769, preachers sent out by John Wesley arrive in New York City, and Embury goes to work in the vicinity of Albany at Camden Valley, New York, where he continues to work at his trade during the week and preaches every Sunday. He and several others receive a grant of 8,000 acres to develop for the manufacture of linen. He organizes among Irish emigrants at Ashgrove, near Camden Valley, the first Methodist society within the bounds of what becomes the flourishing and influential Troy Conference.

Philip Embury dies suddenly in Camden, New York in August 1775, in consequence of an accident in mowing. He is buried on a neighboring farm but in 1832 his remains are removed to Ashgrove churchyard and in 1866 to Woodland cemetery, Cambridge, New York, where a monument to him is unveiled in 1873, with an address by Bishop Matthew Simpson.

(Pictured: Portrait of Philip Embury by John Barnes, Salem, 1773)


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Alleged Marriage of Catherine Coll & Juan Vivion de Valera

catherine-and-eamon-de-valera

Allegedly, Catherine Coll and Juan Vivion de Valera are married in St. Patrick’s Church, Greenville, New Jersey on September 19, 1881. They are the parents of Irish statesman and politician Éamon de Valera, who serves as the 3rd President of Ireland and Taoiseach.

Catherine Coll is born on December 21, 1856, in Bruree, County Limerick and emigrates to New York City in 1879. She first takes a job with a wealthy French family that is living in Manhattan. This is where she allegedly meets Juan Vivion de Valera (born 1854), a Spanish sculptor who comes to the home of her employers to give music lessons to the children.

It is alleged that Vivion de Valera, always in poor health, leaves his young family behind in 1885 and travels to Colorado, hoping that perhaps the healthier air will help him out only to die within a few months.

Though Éamon de Valera’s official biography (Longford/O’Neill, Hutchinson, London, 1970) states that his parents were married at St. Patrick’s Church on September 19, 1881, the parish records show no record of any Coll–de Valera wedding either at St. Patrick’s or any church, nor were any civil records found, in the vicinity during the period from 1875 to 1887. Also, initially de Valera is not registered in his father’s name.

However, not merely is there no record of the wedding. No record exists of the existence of a “Juan Vivion de Valera” anywhere in the United States: no birth certificate, no baptismal certificate (if he was a Catholic), no marriage certificate and no death certificate. While it is possible that he was born abroad and so either had a foreign birth certificate or was not registered, the absence of a death certificate for someone stated definitely in Éamon de Valera’s family history to have died in the United States has puzzled researchers. Some scholars have questioned whether Juan Vivion de Valera ever existed.

There has been a mischievous suggestion that he was related to the French painter Achille Devéria as Éamon de Valera “was known to be particularly fond of his works.” This claim is hardly likely given that Devéria was a painter of erotica, and de Valera nothing if not a prude. It should also be noted that Devéria died in 1857, at least 20 years before Éamon de Valera was born.

It has also been alleged by some that Catherine Coll invented Juan de Valera to give her son legitimacy.

(Pictured: Irish republican leader and founder of Fianna Fail, Éamon de Valera, with his mother Catherine Coll, April 01, 1927)


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The Sack of Cashel

rock-of-cashel

The Sack of Cashel (also known as the Massacre of Cashel) is a notorious atrocity which occurs in County Tipperary on September 15, 1647, during the Irish Confederate Wars, part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

In the summer of 1647, Murrough O’Brien, 6th Baron Inchiquin, the Irish Protestant commander of the Protestant army of Cork, commences a campaign against the Irish Catholic strongholds in Munster. The counties of Limerick and Clare are raided, and he soon turns his attention to the bountiful eastern counties of Munster. In early September, his forces quickly take the Cahir Castle in Tipperary. This strong castle is well positioned to become a base for the Cork Protestant army, and it is used to raid and devastate the surrounding countryside. The Munster army under Lord Taaffe does not make any serious effort to oppose Inchiquin, probably the result of the political scheming of Donough MacCarty, 2nd Viscount Muskerry and other powerful Irish lords who hope to keep the Munster army intact for their own ends. As such, Inchiquin is allowed to make a major push towards the town and ecclesiastical centre of Cashel.

Inchiquin has already launched two minor raids against Cashel, and he now has the opportunity to launch a major assault. The Parliamentarian forces first storm nearby Roche Castle, putting fifty warders to the sword. This attack terrifies the local inhabitants of the region, some of whom flee to hiding places, while hundreds of others flee promptly to the Rock of Cashel, a stronger place than the town itself. Lord Taaffe has placed six companies in the fortified churchyard that sits upon the rock, and considers the place defensible, though he himself does not stay to put it to the test, leaving command to the Governor Lieutenant-Colonel Butler.

Arriving with his army at the Rock, Inchiquin calls for surrender within an hour. The defenders of the churchyard offer to negotiate but that is refused, and on the afternoon of September 15 the assault commences. The Parliamentarians are first reminded of earlier atrocities against Protestants, and then begin to deploy. The attack is led by around 150 dismounted horse officers with the remainder of the infantry following. Troops of horse ride along the flanks of the advancing force to encourage the infantry. The Irish soldiers attempt to drive off the attackers with pikes while the civilians inside hurl rocks down from the walls. In turn the attackers hurl firebrands into the compound, setting some of the buildings inside on fire. Although many are wounded, the Parliamentarians gradually fight their way over the walls, pushing the garrison into the church.

Initially, the Irish defenders manage to protect the Church, holding off the attackers trying to get through the doors, but the Parliamentarians then place numerous ladders against the many windows in the church and swarm the building. For another half an hour fighting rages inside the church, until the depleted defenders retreat up the bell tower. Only sixty soldiers of the garrison remain at this point, and they thus accept a call to surrender. However, after they have descended the tower and thrown their swords away, all are killed.

In the end all the soldiers and most of the civilians on the Rock are killed by the attackers. The Bishop and Mayor of Cashel along with a few others survive by taking shelter in a secret hiding place. Apart from these a few women are spared, after being stripped of their clothes, and a small number of wealthy civilians are taken prisoner, but these are the exceptions. Overall, close to 1,000 are killed, amongst them Lieutenant-Colonel Butler and catholic scholar Theobald Stapleton. The bodies in the churchyard are described by a witness as being five or six deep.

The slaughter is followed by extensive looting. There is much of value inside, for apart from pictures, chalices and vestments of the church, many of the slain civilians had also brought their valuables with them. The sword and ceremonial mace of the mayor of Cashel, as well as the coach of the bishop are captured. The plunder is accompanied by acts of iconoclasm, with statues smashed and pictures defaced. The deserted town of Cashel is also torched.

The atrocity at Cashel causes a deep impact in Ireland, as it is the worst single atrocity committed in Ireland since the start of fighting in 1641. Previously, the most infamous massacre amongst the Catholic population is that at Timolin in 1643, when 200 civilians are killed by James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond‘s English Royalist army, but many more than this are killed at Cashel, and the Rock of Cashel is one of the chief holy places of Ireland. The slaughter of the garrison at Cashel and the subsequent devastation of Catholic held Munster earns Inchiquin the Irish nickname, Murchadh na Dóiteáin or “Murrough of the Burnings.”


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Birth of Dolores O’Riordan, Singer & Songwriter

dolores-o-riordan

Dolores Mary Eileen O’Riordan, Irish musician, singer and songwriter, is born in Ballybricken, County Limerick on September 6, 1971. She leads the rock band The Cranberries from 1990 until their break-up in 2003. They reunite in 2009. She is known for her lilting mezzo-soprano voice, her emphasised use of yodeling, and her strong Limerick accent.

O’Riordan is the youngest of nine children, two of whom die in infancy. Her father, Terence Patrick “Terry” O’Riordan (1937–2011), is a farm labourer who is left unable to work due to brain damage caused by a motorbike accident in 1968. Her mother, Eileen, is a school caterer. She attends Laurel Hill Coláiste FCJ school in Limerick. She leaves school without any qualifications.

In 1989, brothers Mike and Noel Hogan form The Cranberry Saw Us with drummer Fergal Lawler and singer Niall Quinn, in Limerick. Less than a year later, Quinn leaves the band. The remaining band members then place an advertisement for a female singer. O’Riordan responds to the advertisement and auditions by writing lyrics and melodies to some existing demos. When she returns with a rough version of “Linger,” she is hired, and they record Nothing Left At All, a three-track EP released on tape by local record label Xeric Records, which sells 300 copies. The group changes their name to “The Cranberries.” The owner of Xeric Studios, Pearse Gilmore, becomes their manager and provides the group with studio time to complete another demo tape, which he produces. It features early versions of “Linger” and “Dreams,” which are sent to record companies throughout the United Kingdom (UK).

This demo earns the attention of both the UK press and record industry and sparks a bidding war between major British record labels. Eventually, the group signs with Island Records. As part of The Cranberries she releases along with them five albums: Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? (1993), No Need to Argue (1994), To the Faithful Departed (1996), Bury the Hatchet (1999), and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (2001), and a greatest-hits compilation, Stars: The Best of 1992–2002. In 2003, the band decides to take a temporary time-out to experiment on solo projects.

In 2003, O’Riordan embarks on a solo career which includes an appearance with the Italian artist Zucchero Fornaciari on the album Zu & Co., with the song “Pure Love.” The album also features other artists such as Sting, Sheryl Crow, Luciano Pavarotti, Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Macy Gray, and Eric Clapton.

In 2005, O’Riordan appears on the Jam & Spoon‘s album Tripomatic Fairytales 3003 as a guest vocalist on the track “Mirror Lover.” She makes a cameo appearance in the 2006 Adam Sandler comedy Click as a wedding singer performing an alternate version of The Cranberries’ “Linger” set to strings. Her first single, “Ordinary Day,” is produced by BRIT Awards winner Youth, whose previous credits include The Verve, Embrace, Primal Scream, U2, and Paul McCartney.

Are You Listening? is released in Ireland on May 4, 2007, in Europe on May 7, and in North America on May 15. In 2008, O’Riordan wins a European Border Breakers Award (EBBA) which is presented annually to recognize the success of ten emerging artists or groups who reach audiences outside their own countries with their first internationally released album in the past year. Her second album, No Baggage, featuring eleven tracks, is released in August 2009.

In January 2009, the University Philosophical Society at Trinity College, Dublin invites The Cranberries to reunite for a concert celebrating O’Riordan’s appointment as an honorary member of the Society, which leads the band members to consider reuniting for a tour and a recording session. On August 25, 2009, while promoting her solo album No Baggage in New York City on 101.9 RXP radio, O’Riordan announces the reunion of the Cranberries for a world tour. The tour begins in North America in mid-November, followed by South America in mid-January 2010 and Europe in March 2010. She remains in the band until her unexpected death.

She appears as a judge on RTÉ‘s The Voice of Ireland during the 2013–2014 season. In April 2014, O’Riordan joins and begins recording new material with the trio D.A.R.K.

On January 15, 2018, at the age of 46, while in London for a recording session, O’Riordan dies suddenly at the London Hilton on Park Lane hotel in Mayfair. The cause of death is not immediately made public. Police say it is not being treated as suspicious. The coroner’s office says the results of its inquiry would not be released until April 3 at the earliest. On April 3 the inquest is cancelled with no new date announced.

A three-day memorial in her hometown, with O’Riordan lying in repose, lasts from January 20-22 at St. Joseph’s church. On January 23, she is buried after a service at Saint Ailbe’s Roman Catholic Church, Ballybricken, County Limerick. It begins with the studio recording of “Ave Maria” as sung by O’Riordan and Luciano Pavarotti. She is buried alongside her father.


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Death of Philologist Eugene O’Curry

eugene-ocurry

Eugene O’Curry, philologist and antiquary, dies of a heart attack in Dublin on July 30, 1862.

O’Curry is born at Doonaha, near Carrigaholt, County Clare, the son of Eoghan Ó Comhraí, a farmer, and his wife Cáit. Eoghan has spent some time as a traveling peddler and has developed an interest in Irish folklore and music. Unusual for someone of his background, he is literate and is known to possess a number of Irish manuscripts. It is likely that Eoghan is primarily responsible for his son’s education.

Having spent some years working on his father’s farm and as a school teacher, O’Curry moves to Limerick in 1824 and spends seven years working there at a psychiatric hospital. He marries Anne Broughton, daughter of John Broughton of Killaderry near Broadford, County Limerick on October 3, 1824. He is a supporter of Catholic emancipation and in 1828 writes a poem congratulating Daniel O’Connell on his election as an MP.

During this period O’Curry is establishing a reputation for his knowledge of the Irish language and Irish history, and, by 1834, is in correspondence with the antiquary John O’Donovan. He is employed, from 1835 to 1842, on O’Donovan’s recommendation, in the topographical and historical section of Ordnance Survey Ireland. O’Donovan goes on to marry O’Curry’s sister-in-law, Mary Anne Broughton, in 1840. O’Curry spends much of the remainder of his life in Dublin and earns his living by translating and copying Irish manuscripts. The catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Museum (1849) is compiled by him for a fee of £100. He is responsible for the transcripts of Irish manuscripts from which O’Donovan edits the Annals of the Four Masters between 1848 and 1851.

In 1851 O’Curry is elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and, on the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854, he is appointed professor of Irish history and archaeology. He works with George Petrie on the Ancient Music of Ireland (1855). In 1852, he and O’Donovan propose the Dictionary of the Irish Language, which is eventually begun by the Royal Irish Academy in 1913 and finally completed in 1976.

O’Curry’s lectures are published by the university in 1860, and give a better knowledge of Irish medieval literature than can be obtained from any other one source. Three other volumes of lectures are published posthumously, under the title On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish (1873). His voluminous transcripts, notably eight huge volumes of early Irish law, testify to his unremitting industry. The Celtic Society, of the council of which he is a member, publishes two of his translations of medieval tales.

Eugene O’Curry dies of a heart attack at his home in Dublin on July 30, 1862, and is survived by two sons and two daughters. He is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. O’Curry Road in the Tenters area of Dublin 8 is named in his honour.