Simpson signs for Rangers from Linfield for a sum of £11,500 in 1950. He spends nine years (1950–59) at Rangers making 239 appearances and scoring 163 goals. He wins three championship medals and a Scottish Cup winners medal with Rangers to add to the two Northern Ireland Football League and two Irish Cups he wins with Linfield. He leaves Ibrox Stadium in 1959 and spends the last couple of years of his career with Stirling Albion, Partick Thistle and (then non-league) Oxford United.
As an illustration of his popularity, in the fictional song “A Trip to Ibrox,” Simpson is credited with scoring twice in a “Ne’erday” Old Firm Derby at Ibrox. Whereby Rangers are 1-0 down at halftime, and Simpson inspires his team to a second half comeback after Willie Waddell has scored an equaliser.
In recognition of his service to that club, Simpson is made a member of the Rangers F.C. Hall of Fame.
Simpson makes his debut for Northern Ireland in 1951 against Wales, scoring in the process. He represents his country twelve times in total between 1951 and 1958, scoring five goals. He is selected in Northern Ireland’s squad for the 1958 FIFA World Cup in Sweden but a late injury ensures he does not play at all during the finals.
In April 2015, the feature-length documentarySpirit of ’58 is screened as part of the Belfast Film Festival. It features Simpson prominently alongside the other surviving players (Billy Bingham, Peter McParland, Jimmy McIlroy and Harry Gregg) as it tells the story of Northern Ireland’s journey throughout the 1950s under the managership of Peter Doherty, culminating in the 1958 World Cup.
Blanchflower is born on February 10, 1926, in the Bloomfield district of Belfast, the first of five children born to John and Selina Blanchflower. He is educated at Ravenscroft public elementary school and is awarded a scholarship to Belfast College of Technology. He leaves school early to become an apprentice electrician at Gallaher’s cigarette factory in Belfast. He also joins the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) and, in 1943, joins the Royal Air Force after lying about his age. By 1946, after a trainee navigator course at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and further training in Canada, he is back at Gallaher’s in Belfast and building a reputation as an outstanding footballer.
Blanchflower signs with Glentoran F.C. in 1946 before crossing the Irish Sea and signing with Barnsley F.C. for £6000 in 1949 at the age of 23. He transfers from Barnsley to Aston Villa F.C. for a fee of £15,000 and makes his First Division debut in March 1951. He makes 155 senior appearances for Villa before being bought by Tottenham Hotspur F.C. in 1954 for a fee of £30,000. During his ten years playing at White Hart Lane he makes 337 League appearances and 382 total appearances.
The highlight of Blanchflower’s time with the Spurs comes in the 1960–61 season, while serving as captain, the Spurs win their first 11 games and eventually win the league by 8 points. They beat Leicester City F.C. in the final of the FA Cup, becoming the first team in the 20th century to win the League and Cup double and a feat not achieved since Aston Villa in 1897.
In 1962, Blanchflower again captains the Spurs team to victory in the FA Cup in 1962, narrowly missing out on a second double when they finish a close third in the league behind Ipswich Town F.C. and Burnley F.C. In 1963, he captains the team to victory over Atlético Madrid in the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup, making Spurs the first English team to win a European trophy.
Between 1949 and 1963, Blanchflower earns 56 caps for Northern Ireland, often playing alongside his brother Jackie until the younger Blanchflower’s playing career is cut short as a result of injuries sustained in the Munich air disaster of February 1958. In 1958, he captains his country when they reached the quarter-finals of the FIFA World Cup.
On December 4, 1957, Blanchflower captains the Northern Ireland team against Italy in Belfast in a bad tempered game that comes to be known as the “Battle of Belfast.” He attempts to keep the peace as the game turns nasty.
Blanchflower announces his retirement as a player on April 5, 1964, having played nearly 400 games in all competitions for the Spurs and captains them to four major trophies.
Following his retirement as a player, Blanchflower coachs for the Spurs for a number of years. Manager Bill Nicholson intends for Blanchflower to be his successor but, when Nicholson resigns in 1974, Blanchflower is passed over in favour of Terry Neill. He leaves the Spurs and becomes manager of Northern Ireland for a brief spell in 1978 before being appointed boss of Chelsea F.C. The team wins only three of fifteen games under his charge and he leaves the team in September 1979.
On May 1, 1990, Tottenham holds a testimonial match for Blanchflower at White Hart Lane, but at this point he is in the early stages of what is later diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. He is eventually placed in a nursing home in Staines-upon-Thames where he dies as a result of pneumonia on December 9, 1993, at the age of 67.
Blanchflower’s hometown of Belfast has honoured him with an Ulster History Circle plaque, located at his childhood home at 49 Grace Avenue, recognising the late sportsman as one of the greatest players in the history of Tottenham Hotspur FC.
John McCredy McAlery, an Irish association football pioneer, is born in Rathfriland, County Down, on November 29, 1848. His accomplishments include organizing the first ever properly organized football match in the history of Irish football in 1878, founding the first Irish football club in 1879, helping found the Irish Football Association in 1880, and wearing the captain‘s armband in Ireland‘s first ever international match in 1882. He is known as the “father of Irish association football.”
McAlery moves to Belfast to learn the drapery business and soon becomes very successful, opening the Irish Tweed House gentleman’s outfitters on Royal Avenue. A talented cricketer in his youth, his first involvement in the Belfast sport scene is helping in the formation of the Cliftonville Cricket Club in 1870, later serving as club treasurer. In 1878, during his honeymoon in Scotland, he witnesses his first ever association football match, and enjoys it so much he decides to introduce the sport back home.
The first match of organized association football on Irish soil is played on October 24, 1878, between Caledonian and Queen’s Park. McAlery invites the Scottish sides to play in the exhibition match at the Ulster Cricket Ground in an attempt to showcase the game to the Belfast crowd. Queen’s Park achieves a 3–2 victory, and more importantly, the demonstration is well received by the locals.
On September 20, 1879, less than a year later, McAlery places an advertisement in both the News Letter and the Northern Whig soliciting for individuals interested in becoming members of the Cliftonville Association Football Club.
The newly formed Cliftonville F.C. side plays their first match just nine days later, losing 2–1 to a team of rugby players called Quidnunces. They achieve their first victory on November 1 with a 2–0 defeat of Knock F.C., a team of former lacrosse players.
On November 18, 1880, McAlery organizes a meeting at the Queen’s Hotel in Belfast between the seven Irish football clubs that have been established at the time: Alexander, Avoniel, Cliftonville, Lisburn Distillery, Knock, Moyola Park and Oldpark. These teams become the founding members of the Irish Football Association (IFA), with Lord Spencer Chichester serving as its president and McAlery as secretary. In an appendix to the minutes of the meeting, McAlery writes: “If the spirit which pervaded from those present be acted upon the result will be a strong Association for promoting the game which we have espoused.”
The meeting also provides for Ireland’s first official football competition, the Irish FA Cup. In the first Cup final of the inaugural competition, played on April 9, 1881, Cliftonville is defeated by Moyola Park. They suffer the same fate the following year, losing to Queen’s Island in the final of the 1881–82 edition. McAlery, who captains Cliftonville while playing at fullback, wins his first trophy on his third try, as his club defeats Ulster to win the 1882–83 Irish Cup.
McAlery does not play much after this, deciding to focus on his administrative role in Irish football. He referees international matches until 1887, and remains the Irish FA secretary until 1888.
McAlery captains Ireland’s first ever international match on February 18, 1882, playing at right back. On a “bittery cold” Belfast night with occasional rain and hail, Ireland loses to the far more experienced England team by a score of 13–0. A week later, he makes his second and final international appearance, captaining his team again as they lose 7–1 to Wales in Wrexham.
According to Sam Smyth in the Irish Independent, Mac Mathúna is “on a mission to collect songs and stories, music, poetry and dance before they were buried under the coming tsunami of pop music.”
Mac Mathúna presents the radio programme, Mo Cheol Thú, for 35 years. Upon his retirement in 2005, the managing director of RTÉ Radio, Adrian Moynes, describes him as “inseparable from RTÉ Radio.” Upon his death in 2009, the Irish Independent describes him as “a national treasure.”
After college Mac Mathúna works as a teacher and later at the Placenames Commission. In 1954, he joins Radio Éireann where his job is to record Irish traditional musicians playing in their own locales. This entails visiting such places as Sliabh Luachra, County Clare and County Sligo, and the resulting recordings feature in his radio programmes: Ceolta Tire, A Job of Journeywork and Humours of Donnybrook.
Mac Mathúna’s long-running Sunday morning radio series, Mo Cheol Thú (You are my music), begins in 1970 and continues until November 2005, when he retires from broadcasting. Each 45-minute programme offers a miscellany of archive music, poetry and folklore, mainly of Irish origin. It is one of radio’s longest running programmes. The last episode is broadcast on November 27, 2005, at 8:10 a.m.
Mac Mathúna wins two Jacob’s Awards, in 1969 and 1990, for his RTÉ Radio programmes promoting Irish traditional music. He receives the Freedom of Limerick city in June 2004. He is also awarded honorary doctorates by NUI Galway and the University of Limerick. In 2007, he receives the Musicians Award at the 10th annual TG4 Traditional Music Awards.
Joe Kennedy in the Sunday Independent in 2007 compares Mac Mathúna to “an amiable rock, rolling gently along, still picking up some moss and morsels of music that he may have missed.”
Mac Mathúna‘s wife, Dolly MacMahon (using the English version of her surname), is a singer of traditional songs. She comes from Galway and meets her husband in 1955. He has two sons named Padraic and Ciarán, one daughter named Déirdre, and four grandchildren at the time of his death: Eoin, Colm, Conor and Liam.
Musicians performing at the ceremony include Peadar Ó Riada, Cór Cúil Aodha and members of The Chieftains and Planxty. The corpse is then taken to Mount Jerome Crematorium. Journalist Kevin Myers says Mac Mathúna’s legacy will be the “rebirth of Irish music,” adding, “Well, if Ciarán Mac Mathúna can die, I suppose anyone can. Actually, I had always thought that he was immortal. He certainly appeared to have all the ingredients.”
Power is born to Henry Power, a watchmaker, and Mary (née Atkins), an embroideress. He has one older brother, and one younger sister. He attends a Christian Brothersnational school in North Brunswick Street. As a child he plays in local clay brickyards and sculpts busts of his friends. After finishing his primary school education, he trains with a firm of sculptors run by Edward Smyth. In 1884, he enrolls as an evening pupil at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA), later attending as a full-time student from 1906 to 1911. During his time at the DMSA he is taught and strongly influenced by John Hughes, Oliver Sheppard and William Orpen. He wins a number of prizes during his time at the DMSA, including medals, three scholarships, book prizes, and the national gold medal for the best modeling of a nude figure, in Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands in 1911.
Power marries Agnes Kelly in 1903. The couple has ten children, four daughters and six sons, including May and James who also become sculptors.
Power establishes his own stone-carving business in 1912 from his new home at 18 Geraldine Street, Phibsborough, Dublin. As the firm grows, it moves to premises nearby at 15 Berkeley Street from 1930. He executes a wide range of works, including monuments and architectural features in bronze, marble, and stone. Among his notable works are the figure of “Science” designed by Sheppard from the façade of the new Royal College of Science for Ireland (later Government Buildings) on Merrion Street, Dublin, carved motifs and sphinxes for the Gresham Hotel, O’Connell Street, and four statues on the dome of Christ the King church, Carndonagh, County Donegal.
Power is considered the leading Irish sculptor of the 1920s and 1930s. He is a nationalist and promotes the use of Irish materials such as limestone from Durrow and Connemara marble. He is noted for his academic realist style. He exhibits regularly with the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1906, becoming an associate member in 1911, and a full member in 1919. Among those he models sculptures for are James Stephens (1913), W. B. Yeats (1918), and Lord Dunsany (1920). Among his patrons are Oliver St. John Gogarty, and through Gogarty he is commissioned to model a number of prominent Irish nationalists. Gogarty asks him to carve a portrait of Terence MacSwiney in 1920, while MacSwiney is on hunger strike in HM Prison Brixton, London. Smuggled into the prison to do a thumbnail sketch, Power then carves a portrait in the form of a life mask.
On Gogarty’s recommendation, Power is commissioned by the Irish Free State government to create portraits of a number of leading politicians including Arthur Griffith (1922), Michael Collins (1936), and Austin Stack (1939). He is also privately commissioned to execute a portrait of Éamon de Valera in 1944. Among his monumental works are sculptures of Tom Kettle (1919) at St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, Christ the King in Gort, County Galway, (1933), Pádraic Ó Conaire (1935) at Eyre Square, Galway, and W. B. Yeats (1939) at Sandymount Green, Dublin. He is one of the artists invited to submit designs for the new coinage of the Irish Free State in 1928.
Power dies in Dublin on July 10, 1945, following complications from a double hernia. His is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
Johnny Adair, leader of “C Company” of the Ulster Loyalistparamilitary organisation Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a cover name of the Ulster Defence Association, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on October 27, 1963. He is known as Mad Dog. He is expelled from the organisation in 2002 following a violent power struggle. Since 2003, he, his family and a number of supporters have been forced to leave Northern Ireland by other loyalists.
Adair is born into a working class loyalist background and raised in Belfast. He grows up in the Lower Oldpark area, a site of many sectarian clashes during “The Troubles.” By all accounts, he has little parental supervision, and does not attend school regularly. He takes to the streets, forming a skinheadstreet gang with a group of young loyalist friends, who “got involved initially in petty, then increasingly violent crime.” Eventually, he starts a rock band called Offensive Weapon, which during performances espouses support for the British National Front.
While still in his teens, Adair joins the Ulster Young Militants (UYM), and later the Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary organisation which also calls itself the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
By the early 1990s, Adair has established himself as head of the UDA/UFF’s “C Company” based on the Shankill Road. When he is charged with terrorist offences in 1995, he admits that he had been a UDA commander for three years up to 1994. During this time, he and his colleagues are involved in multiple and random murders of Catholic civilians. At his trial in 1995, the prosecuting lawyer says he is dedicated to his cause against those whom he “regarded as militant republicans – among whom he had lumped almost the entire Roman Catholic population.” Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detectives believe his unit killed up to 40 people during this period.
Adair once remarks to a Catholic journalist from the Republic of Ireland upon the discovery of her being Catholic, that normally Catholics travel in the boot of his car. According to a press report in 2003, he is handed details of republican suspects by British Army intelligence, and is even invited for dinner in the early 1990s. In his autobiography, he claims he was frequently passed information by sympathetic British Army members, while his own whereabouts were passed to republican paramilitaries by the RUC Special Branch, who, he claims, hated him.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing of a fish shop on the Shankill Road in October 1993 is an attempt to assassinate Adair and the rest of the UDA’s Belfast leadership in reprisal for attacks on Catholics. The IRA claims that the office above the shop is regularly used by the UDA for meetings and one is due to take place shortly after the bomb is set to explode. The bomb goes off early, killing one IRA man, Thomas Begley, and nine Protestant civilians. The UFF retaliates with a random attack on the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, County Londonderry, which kills eight civilians, two of whom are Protestants. Adair survives 13 assassination attempts, most of which are carried out by the IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
During this time, undercover officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary record months of discussions with Adair, in which he boasts of his activities, producing enough evidence to charge him with directing terrorism. He is convicted and sentenced to 16 years in HM Prison Maze. In prison, according to some reports, he sells drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy tablets and amphetamines to other loyalist prisoners, earning him an income of £5000 a week.
In January 1998, Adair is one of five loyalist prisoners visited in the prison by British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam. She persuades them to drop their objection to their political representatives continuing the talks that leads to the Good Friday Agreement in April. In 1999, he is released early as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners after the Agreement.
Following his release, much of Adair’s activities are bound up with violent internecine feuds within the UDA and between the UDA and other loyalist paramilitary groupings. The motivation for such violence is sometimes difficult to piece together. It involves a combination of political differences over the loyalist ceasefires, rivalry between loyalists over control of territory and competition over the proceeds of organised crime.
In 1999, shortly after his release from prison, Adair is shot at and grazed in the head by a bullet at a UB40 concert in Belfast. He blames the shooting on republicans, but it is thought that rival loyalists are to blame.
In August 2000, Adair is again mildly injured by a pipe bomb he is transporting in a car. He again attempts to blame the incident on an attack by republicans, but this claim is widely discounted. A feud breaks out at the time between the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) leaving several loyalists dead. As a result of Adair’s involvement in the violence, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, revokes his early release and returns him to prison.
In May 2002, Adair is released from prison again. Once free, he is a key part of an effort to forge stronger ties between the UDA/UFF and the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), a small breakaway faction of the UVF loyalist paramilitary organization in Northern Ireland. The most open declaration of this is a joint mural depicting Adair’s UDA “C company” and the LVF. Other elements in the UDA/UFF strongly resist these movements, which they see as an attempt by Adair to win external support in a bid to take over the leadership of the UDA. Some UDA members dislike his overt association with the drugs trade, with which the LVF are even more heavily involved. A loyalist feud begins, and ends with several men dead and scores evicted from their homes.
On September 25, 2002, Adair is expelled from the UDA/UFF along with close associate John White, and the organisation almost splits as Adair tries to woo influential leaders such as Andre Shoukri, who are initially sympathetic to him. There are attempts on Adair’s and White’s lives.
Adair returns to prison in January 2003, when his early release licence is revoked by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy, on grounds of engaging in unlawful activity. On February 1, 2003, UDA divisional leader John Gregg is shot dead along with another UDA member, Rab Carson, on returning from a Rangers F.C. match in Glasgow. The killing is widely blamed on Adair’s C Company as Gregg is one of those who organised his expulsion from the UDA. Five days later, on February 6, about twenty Adair supporters, including White, flee their homes for Scotland, widely seen as a response to severe intimidation.
Adair is released from prison again on January 10, 2005. He immediately leaves Northern Ireland and joins his family in Bolton, Lancashire, where it is claimed he stays with supporters of Combat 18 and the Racial Volunteer Force.
The police in Bolton question Adair’s wife, Gina, about her involvement in the drugs trade, and his son, nicknamed both “Mad Pup” and “Daft Dog,” is charged with selling crack cocaine and heroin. Adair is arrested and fined for assault and threatening behaviour in September 2005. He had married Gina Crossan, his partner for many years and the mother of his four children, at HM Prison Maze on February 21, 1997. She is three years Adair’s junior and grew up in the same Lower Oldpark neighbourhood.
After being released, Adair is almost immediately arrested again for violently assaulting Gina, who suffers from ovarian cancer. Since this episode he reportedly moves to Scotland, living in Troon in Ayrshire.
In May 2006, Adair reportedly receives £100,000 from John Blake publishers for a ghost-written autobiography.
In November 2006, the UK’s Five television channel transmits an observational documentary on Adair made by Dare Films.
Adair appears in a documentary made by Donal MacIntyre and screened in 2007. The focus of the film centers around Adair and another supposedly reformed character, a Neo-Nazi from Germany called Nick Greger, and their trip to Uganda to build an orphanage. Adair is seen to fire rifles, stating it is the first time he has done so without wearing gloves. He also admits to being “worried sick” and “pure sick with worry” after Greger disappears in Uganda for days on end. It turns out that he had gone off and married a Ugandan lady. Adair confesses via telephone that he “thought something might have happened to Nick.”
On July 20, 2015, three Irish republicans, Antoin Duffy, Martin Hughes and Paul Sands, are found guilty of planning to murder Adair and Sam McCrory. Charges against one of the accused in the trial are dropped on July 1.
On September 10, 2016, Adair’s son, Jonathan Jr., is found dead in Troon, aged 32. He dies from an accidental overdose while celebrating the day after his release from prison for motoring offences. He had been in and out of prison since the family fled Northern Ireland. He served a five-year sentence for dealing heroin and crack cocaine. The year before, he had been cleared of a gun raid at a party and in 2012 is the target of a failed bomb plot. He was also facing trial later that year on drugs charges.
In December 2023, while recording a podcast with far-right activist Tommy Robinson, Adair surprisingly expresses a grudging respect for the IRA hunger strikers, describing the manner of their deaths as “dedication at the highest level” for a political cause and admitting that he would not have volunteered to do the same if asked.
Following the trial and execution of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, in May 1641, Ireland is in a state of turmoil. There is growing tension between Catholics and Protestants (particularly those of a Puritan tendency) with the former generally sympathetic to King Charles while the latter supports the English Parliament and the ScottishCovenanters in the dispute that shortly leads to the outbreak of the English Civil War. This forms part of the wider War of the Three Kingdoms.
On October 23, a major uprising breaks out in Ulster organised by leading members of the Gaelic aristocracy. The rebels attack Protestant plantation settlements as well as native Irish Protestants and take garrison towns held by the Irish Army. Irish government authorities in Dublin struggle to contain the insurgency with the limited number of troops they have at their disposal. A last-minute warning saves Dublin Castle from a surprise attack, although O’Neill is clearly unaware of the failure of the Dublin plot when he issues his proclamation.
After seizing several key strategic points in Ulster over the previous twenty-four hours, O’Neill makes his proclamation in Dungannon, a town that has symbolic importance as the traditional capital of the O’Neill dynasty.
In support of his actions, O’Neill claims to have a document from King Charles commissioning him. The Commission is supposedly signed under the Great Seal of Scotland. By declaring their loyalty to the Crown and defence of the Catholic religion, O’Neill and his followers adopt a political stance which is taken up by the subsequent Irish Confederation which governs rebel-controlled territory in the name of the King from 1642 until 1649. The Proclamation encourages many Catholics to believe they can lawfully join the rising with the King’s blessing, while Protestants are left demoralised.
O’Neill’s second and more trenchant proclamation is made “from our camp at Newry” on November 4, 1641 alongside Rory Maguire. He also publishes the actual royal commission that gives authority for his earlier proclamation. It is subtly different, in that it empowers him to arrest and seize property from all of Charles’s English Protestant subjects living in Ireland, but exempts his Irish and Scottish subjects.
Until the late nineteenth century historians generally accept that the commission is genuine, or at the very least Charles had secretly encouraged the Irish Catholics to launch a rising. Since then, for a variety of reasons, it has been considered to be a forgery produced by O’Neill and his associates without the knowledge of the King. They may well have acquired a copy of the Great Seal of Scotland when they captured the garrison town of Charlemont on October 23.
The historian David Stevenson notes that it would be unlikely that the commission would have been addressed to O’Neill. Had it been genuine it would almost certainly have been issued to more senior Irish Royalists such as the James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, or the leading Catholic noble of Ulster, Randal MacDonnell, 1st Marquess of Antrim. It is also unlikely to have been issued at Edinburgh as O’Neill claimed. However, King Charles was in Edinburgh on October 1, dealing with Scottish political matters.
Forgery or not, King Charles publicly proclaims all the Irish rebels as traitors on January 1, 1642.
That the Commission is genuine is widely accepted in England and Scotland by the King’s opponents and even some of his own supporters. It seems to tie in with earlier rumours of an army plot which had suggested that Charles might bring over the New Irish Army, made up largely of Ulster Catholics, to impose his will on England and Scotland. Anger at the King’s alleged links with the insurgents grow – particularly as horror stories of atrocities committed, such as the Portadown Massacre, begin to filter across the Irish Sea. Tensions arising from news of the Irish rebellion is a factor in the English push to Civil War in early 1642.
The Scottish authorities dispatch an Army which quickly retakes much of Ulster from the insurgents. Once the English Civil War breaks out in October 1642, Charles’ emissaries begin negotiations with the Irish rebels for their support, which seems to present further evidence to his opponents of his links with the Catholic Ulster leaders. Many of these later dealings are exposed when Charles private letters are captured during the Battle of Naseby (1645) and published as King’s Cabinet Opened.
When O’Neill is captured in 1653 following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, he is put on trial for his life. The authorities offer to spare him if he will repeat his earlier claims that Charles had ordered the Catholics to rise in 1641. O’Neill now refuses to implicate the King, who had been executed four years earlier, and is put to death himself. Nonetheless, the English Republicans continue to use O’Neill’s earlier claims of the King’s involvement to justify their decision to commit regicide.
Séamus Ennis (Irish: Séamas Mac Aonghusa), Irish musician, singer and Irish music collector, dies in Naul, County Dublin, on October 5, 1982. He is most noted for his uilleann pipe playing and is partly responsible for the revival of the instrument during the twentieth century, having co-founded Na Píobairí Uilleann, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to the promotion of the uilleann pipes and its music. He is recognised for preserving almost 2,000 Irish songs and dance-tunes as part of the work he does with the Irish Folklore Commission. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest uilleann pipers of all time.
Ennis’s father, James, works for the Irish civil service at Naul, County Dublin. In 1908, James Ennis is in a pawn shop in London and purchases a bag containing the pieces of a set of old uilleann pipes. They were made in the mid nineteenth century by Coyne Pipemakers of Thomas Street in Dublin. In 1912, he comes in first in the Oireachtas competition for warpipes and second in the uilleann pipes. He is also a prize-winning dancer. In 1916, he marries Mary Josephine McCabe, an accomplished fiddle player from County Monaghan. They have six children, Angela, Séamus, Barbara, and twins, Cormac and Ursula (Pixie) and Desmond. Séamus is born on May 5, 1919, in Jamestown in Finglas, Dublin. James Ennis is a member of the Fingal trio, which includes Frank O’Higgins on fiddle and John Cawley on flute, and performs regularly with them on the radio. At the age of thirteen, Séamus starts receiving lessons on the pipes from his father. He attends a Gaelscoil, Cholmcille, and a Gaelcholáiste, Coláiste Mhuire, which gives him a knowledge of the Irish language that serves him well in later life. He sits in an exam to become Employment Exchange clerk but is too far down the list to be offered a job. He is twenty and unemployed.
Colm Ó Lochlainn is editor of Irish Street Ballads and a friend of the Ennis family. In 1938, Ennis confides in Colm that he intends to move to England to join the British Army. Colm immediately offers him a job at The Three Candles Press. There Ennis learns all aspects of the printing trade. This includes writing down slow airs for printed scores – a skill which later proves important. Colm is director of an Irish language choir, An Claisceadal, which Ennis joins. In 1942, during The Emergency, shortages and rationing mean that things become difficult in the printing trade. Professor Seamus Ó Duilearge of the Irish Folklore Commission hires the 23-year-old to collect songs. He is given “pen, paper and pushbike” and a salary of three pounds per week. Off he goes to Connemara.
From 1942 to 1947, working for the Irish Folklore Commission, Ennis collects songs in west Munster; counties Galway, Cavan, Mayo, Donegal, Kerry; the Aran Islands and the Scottish Hebrides. His knowledge of Scottish Gaelic enables him to transcribe much of the John Lorne Campbell collection of songs. Elizabeth Cronin of Ballyvourney, County Cork, is so keen to chat to Ennis on his visits that she writes down her own songs and hands them over as he arrives, and then gets down to conversation. He has a natural empathy with the musicians and singers he meets. In August 1947, he starts work as an outside broadcast officer with Raidió Éireann. He is a presenter and records Willie Clancy, Seán Reid and Micho Russell for the first time. There is an air of authority in his voice. In 1951, Alan Lomax and Jean Ritchie arrived from the United States to record Irish songs and tunes. The tables are turned as Ennis becomes the subject of someone else’s collection. There is a photograph from 1952/53 showing Ritchie huddled over the tape recorder while Ennis plays uilleann pipes.
Late in 1951, Ennis joins the BBC. He moves to London to work with producer Brian George. In 1952, he marries Margaret Glynn. They have two children, the organist Catherine Ennis and Christopher. His job is to record the traditional music of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and to present it on the BBC Home Service. The programme is called As I Roved Out and runs until 1958. Meeting up with Alan Lomax again, he is largely responsible for the album Folk and Primitive Music (volume on Ireland) on the Columbia Records label.
In 1958, after his contract with the BBC is not renewed, Ennis starts doing freelance work, first in England then back in Ireland, with the new TV station Teilifis Éireann. Soon he is relying totally on his musical ability to make a living. About this time, his marriage breaks down and he returns to Ireland. He suffers from tuberculosis and is ill for some time. In 1964, he performs at the Newport Folk Festival. His father gives him the pipes he had bought in 1908. Although most pipers can be classed as playing in a tight style or an open style, Ennis is in between. He is a master of the slow air, knowing how to decorate long notes with taste and discreet variation.
Two events will live in legend among pipers. The first is in Bettystown, County Meath, in 1968, when the society of Irish pipers, Na Píobairí Uilleann, is formed. Breandán Breathnach is playing a tape of his own piping. Ennis asks, “What year?” Breandán replies, “1948.” Ennis says, “So I thought.” For a couple of hours the younger players perform while Ennis sits in silence. Eventually he is asked to play. Slowly he takes off his coat and rolls up his sleeves. He spends 20 minutes tuning up his 130-year-old pipes. He then asks the gathering whether all the tape recorders are ready and proceeds to play for over an hour. To everyone’s astonishment he then offers his precious pipes to Willie Clancy to play a set. Clancy demurs but eventually gives in. Next, Liam O’Flynn is asked to play them, and so on, round the room. The second unforgettable session is in Dowlings’ Pub in Prosperous, County Kildare. Christy Moore is there, as well as most of the future members of Planxty.
Ennis never runs any school of piping but his enthusiasm infuses everyone he meets. In the early 1970s, he shares a house with Liam O’Flynn for almost three years. Finally, he purchases a piece of land in Naul and lives in a mobile home there. One of his last performances is at the Willie Clancy Summer School in 1982. He dies on October 5, 1982. His pipes are bequeathed to Liam O’Flynn. Radio producer Peter Browne produces a compilation of his performances, called The Return from Fingal, spanning 40 years.
Séamus Ennis Road in his native Finglas is named in his honour. The Séamus Ennis Arts Centre in Naul is opened in his honour, to commemorate his work and to promote the traditional arts. He is also the subject of Christy Moore’s song “The Easter Snow.” This is the title of a slow air Ennis used to play, and one after which he named his final home in Naul.
Twenty miles off the coast of County Donegal on October 2, 1942, the luxury Cunard liner RMS Queen Mary, converted into a troop carrier for World War II, smashes into her escort ship, the British Royal NavycruiserHMS Curaçoa (D41). The HMS Curacoa, which had connected with the RMS Queen Mary to escort her for the final two hundred miles to the port of Greenock, Scotland, sinks with the loss of 338 men. As are his orders, Captain Cyril Illingworth of the RMS Queen Mary, which is carrying an estimated 15,000 U.S. troops, does not stop to mount a rescue operation.
On a near perfect afternoon, the RMS Queen Mary is off the Irish coast. The vessel is setting a zigzag course to help evade U-boats and long-range Germanbombers. The RMS Queen Mary has caught up with her 4,290 tonne escort vessel, the HMS Curacoa, and is set to overtake her.
Aboard the HMS Curacoa, seaman Ernest Watson is admiring the RMS Queen Mary’s majestic lines when he notices the bow is swinging toward the cruiser. To his horror, she continues to swing and is soon on a collision course. The gap narrows inexorably as the stunned Watson finally finds his vocal cords and screams, “She’s going to ram us.” Later Watson describes how many of his mates are so shocked they cannot move.
Within seconds, there is a screech of twisted metal followed by the hiss of steam and the screams of those injured or trapped below. The RMS Queen Mary, twenty times larger than the cruiser, has been traveling at top revs giving her a speed of 28.5 knots. The impact swings the HMS Curacoa broadside on and the troopship slices through her 10 cm armour plating. It is all over in seconds, and the troopship continues on her zigzag course leaving the HMS Curacoa cut in two with the forward and aft sections separated by 100 metres of ocean.
At the moment of impact, as the HMS Curacoa reels in the water, Watson and many other seaman on deck are thrown into the freezing water. Even as they surface they watch in horror as the stern quickly sinks, taking with it the men trapped behind the water-tight doors. The forward section follows soon after, leaving the men in the murky water surrounded by debris, oil and drowned or mutilated bodies. It is every man for himself as survivors cling to floating wreckage. They are about 20 nautical miles off the Irish coast which, had boats or rafts been launched, would put them within easy reach of safety.
The survivors believe the RMS Queen Mary will turn back to pick them up, however, it is with obvious despair that they watch her disappear over the horizon. To sail on is probably the toughest decision Captain Illingworth ever has to make. The World War I veteran has many years of experience by the time he has risen to become Cunard-White Star Line’s senior commander and master of the RMS Queen Mary. He is obeying orders that under no circumstances is he to stop until the RMS Queen Mary has safely delivered the troops to Britain. His only option is to signal nearby British destroyers to rescue survivors.
Two destroyers react to Captain Illingworth’s message and steam toward the wreckage where two hours after the collision, they find many bodies of sailors who have died of hypothermia. Only the hardiest live long enough to land in Londonderry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the next day. Of the HMS Curacoa’s 430 personnel, only 99 seamen and two officers survive. Because of war-time security the official inquiry is delayed until the war in Europe is over. Then, in June 1945, only a few weeks after VE Day, the Admiralty Commissioners sued Cunard-White Star Line claiming the RMS Queen Mary had been responsible.
It appears to be a clear-cut case. The HMS Curacoa’s captain, John Boutwood, gives evidence to a Royal Navy inquiry and is acquitted without a reprimand. Later he gains the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). Boutwood says the HMS Curacoa steamed at some 3 knots slower than the larger vessel which had been in the process of overtaking at the time of the collision. He says he had been amazed when the troopship continued turning to starboard and closed the gap between the vessels. When the collision occurred he, and all others on the bridge, had clung to whatever was nearest.
At first, Boutwood vainly hopes the damaged ship will stay afloat. He also says it was impossible to give orders because of the noise of escaping steam from the boiler room. The RMS Queen Mary’s first officer gives evidence that he had taken over the helm less than two minutes before she rams the cruiser. She is about 500m away and on the starboard bow. He is unconcerned at the narrow gap because he expects HMS Curacoa to take evasive action. He believes the cruiser, a more manoeuvrable vessel, would change course.
The first officer had also been reassured by Captain Illingworth, that the cruiser was “experienced in escorting and would keep out of the way.” At a later hearing some months after the opening, Illingworth says he had felt a bump at the time of the collision and had asked the quartermaster if they had been hit by a bomb. The answer was: “No sir, we have hit the cruiser.”
The judge holds the cruiser responsible saying the normal rules of an overtaking vessel keeping clear of the other does not apply in this case. He says the cruiser could have avoided the collision up to seconds before it occurred. The Admiralty, faced with huge compensation to the families of the dead sailors, appeals. In appeal the ruling is that the cruiser was responsible for two-thirds of the damage and the RMS Queen Mary for one-third. Still not satisfied, the case goes to the House of Lords where the verdict of the Appeal Court is upheld in February 1949. No survivor comes out unscathed but above all others, Illingworth has to live with the memory of leaving British sailors to fight for their lives in the ocean.
However, when asked at the first hearing if he felt Illingworth had made the right decision, the captain of the HMS Curacoa says, “I would say, yes.” The RMS Queen Mary continues as a troopship until August 11, 1945. The vessel is now a floating attraction at Long Beach, California.
(From: “SS Queen Mary & the loss of HMS Curacoa 1942” by A. N. Other and NHSA Webmaster, Naval Historical Society of Australia, https://navyhistory.au)
Smyllie is born on March 20, 1893, at Hill Street, Shettleston, Glasgow, Scotland. He is the eldest of four sons and one daughter of Robert Smyllie, a Presbyterian printer originally from Scotland who is working in Sligo, County Sligo, at the time, and Elisabeth Follis, originally from Cork, County Cork. His father marries in Sligo on July 20, 1892, and later becomes proprietor and editor of the unionistSligo Times. Smyllie attends Sligo Grammar School in 1906 and enrolls at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1911.
After two years at TCD, Smyllie’s desire for adventure leads him to leave university in 1913. Working as a vacation tutor to an American boy in Germany at the start of World War I, he is detained in Ruhleben internment camp, near Berlin, during the war. As an internee, he is involved in drama productions with other internees. Following his release at the end of the war, he witnesses the German revolution of 1918–1919. During this period, he encounters revolutionary sailors from Kiel who temporarily make him a representative of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, and he observes key events including the looting of the Kaiser’s Palace and violent clashes between rival factions in Berlin. It is also during this period that he secures a personal interview with David Lloyd George at the Paris Convention of 1919. This helps Smyllie gain a permanent position with TheIrish Times in 1920, where he quickly earns the confidence of editor John Healy. Together, they take part in secret but unsuccessful attempts to resolve the Irish War of Independence.
Smyllie contributes to the Irishman’s Diary column of the paper from 1927. In 1927, he publishes an exclusive report outlining a draft government including both Labour Party and Fianna FáilTDs, signaling the volatile politics of the early state years.
Smyllie’s knowledge of languages (particularly the German he had learned during his internment) led to numerous foreign assignments. His reports on the rise of National Socialism in 1930s Germany are notably prescient and instill in him a lasting antipathy towards the movement.
When Healy dies in 1934, Smyllie becomes editor of TheIrish Times and also takes on the role of Irish correspondent for The Times (London), a position that brings significant additional income. Under Healy’s leadership, The Irish Times shifted from representing the Anglo-Irish ascendancy to becoming an organ of liberal, southern unionism, and eventually becomes a critical legitimising force in the Irish Free State. Smyllie enthusiastically supports this change. He establishes a non-partisan profile and a modern Irish character for the erstwhile ascendancy paper. For example, he drops “Kingstown Harbour” for “Dún Laoghaire.” He also introduces the paper’s first-ever Irish-language columnist. He is assisted by Alec Newman and Lionel Fleming, recruits Patrick Campbell and enlists Flann O’Brien to write his thrice-weekly column “Cruiskeen Lawn” as Myles na gCopaleen. As editor, he introduces a more Bohemian and informal style, establishing a semi-permanent salon in Fleet Street’s Palace Bar. This becomes a hub for journalists and literary figures and a source of material for his weekly column, Nichevo.
One of Smyllie’s early political challenges as editor concerns the Spanish Civil War. At a time when Irish Catholic opinion is strongly pro-Franco, he ensures TheIrish Times coverage is balanced and fair, though advertiser pressure eventually forces the withdrawal of the paper’s young reporter, Lionel Fleming, from the conflict. His awareness of the looming European crisis earns him the Order of the White Lion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. However, during World War II, he clashes with Ireland’s censorship authorities, especially under Minister Frank Aiken. He challenges their views both publicly and privately, though his relationship with the editor of the Irish Independent, Frank Geary, is cold, reducing the effectiveness of their joint opposition to censorship.
During the 1943 Irish general election, Smyllie uses the paper to promote the idea of a national government that could represent Ireland with authority in the postwar world. He praises Fine Gael’s proposal for such a government and criticises Éamon de Valera for dismissing it as unrealistic. This leads to a public exchange between de Valera and Smyllie, with the latter defending The Irish Times’s role as a constructive voice for Ireland’s future rather than a partisan interest.
Following the war, Smyllie’s editorial stance shifts toward defending Ireland’s neutrality and diplomatic position. When Winston Churchill accuses de Valera of fraternising with Axis powers, Smyllie counters by revealing Ireland’s covert collaboration with the Allies, such as military and intelligence cooperation, despite official neutrality. In the same period, he continues to oppose censorship, particularly the frequent banning of Irish writers by the Censorship of Publications Board. This opposition features prominently in a controversy on TheIrish Times letters page in 1950, later published as the liberal ethic. The paper also adopts a critical stance toward the Catholic Church, notably during the 1951 resignation of Minister for HealthNoël Browne amid opposition from bishops and doctors to a national Mother and Child Scheme. His editorials suggest the Catholic Church is effectively the government of Ireland, though he maintains a cordial relationship with Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, who invites him annually for dinner.
Smyllie is also wary of American foreign policy, showing hostility particularly during the Korean War. American diplomats in Dublin allege that Smyllie is “pro-communist“. Despite growing readership among an educated Catholic middle class, TheIrish Times’s circulation in 1950 remains under 50,000, far below the Irish Independent and the Fianna Fáil-aligned The Irish Press.
In later years, Smyllie’s health declines, prompting a quieter lifestyle. He moves from his large house in Pembroke Park, Dublin, to Delgany, County Wicklow. As he does not drive, he becomes less present in the newspaper office in D’Olier Street, contributing to a decline in the paper’s dynamism. His health deteriorates further, resulting in frequent absences from his editorial duties, though he retains his position despite management attempts to limit his authority, especially over finances. He dies of heart failure on September 11, 1954.
In 1925, Smyllie marries Kathlyn Reid, eldest daughter of a County Meath landowner. They have no children.
Smyllie is an eccentric: he hits his tee shots with a nine iron, speaks in a curious mix of Latin phrases and everyday Dublin slang, and weighs 22 stone (308 lbs.; 140 kg) yet still cycles to work wearing a green sombrero.
seamus dubhghaill 