"To Hell or to Connacht"  The saying "To Hell or to Connacht" refers to the 1652 Act for the Settlement of Ireland, which mandated the transplantation of Irish Catholics to Connacht (west of the River Shannon) and County Clare by May 1, 1654. This action was part of the Cromwellian Plantation, a policy of land confiscation and resettlement. The Act stipulated that those remaining in other provinces after the deadline wou...

Lady Gregory She was a key player in the Gaelic revival towards the end of the 19th century and the formation of the Abbey Theatre was central to the new Ireland which would emerge as the next century dawned. The death of Lady Gregory in May 1932 was widely lamented and her passing so shortly after Irish independence was a tragedy. The Irish Independent reported that: The death of Lady - Gregory creates a gap i...

The outbreak of the Easter Rising 109 years ago (Easter Monday - but in 1916 it was 24 April), the Easter Rising commenced in Dublin. With communications links cut, news spread slowly throughout the country. Looking through the pages of the Irish Newspaper Archive there are sporadic reports in provincial newspapers about what was happening in Dublin. One of the few to publish news of events was the Limerick Leader on We...

John A Costello This weekend marks the 76th anniversary of the declaration of the Irish Republic on Easter Monday. All of this of course had come about by the intervention of John A Costello. When he died in 1976 this momentous moment in Irish history was widely recalled. The Irish Press newspaper reported: John A. Costello lived one of the fullest political lives of this century. While a student he shared in the hopes a...

Margaret Skinnider and the fight for Irish Freedom In the fight for Irish independence women played a prominent role from the 1916 rising through to the War of Independence (1919-21). Amongst them was Margaret Skinnider, who fought under Commdt. Michael Mallin and Countess Markievicz in the College of Surgeons in 1916 and was wounded twice. She later fought in the War of Independence. Here the Irish Examiner reports on t...

Edward Whelan and Canadian history Long before JFK or Joe Biden made their mark on politics, a man from county Mayo was making his on the political world of Canada in the middle of the nineteenth century. Despite playing a prominent role as a member of the House of Assembly which he was elected to at age 21, Whelan was all but forgotten about in Ireland and Mayo. That was until recently and a recent article in the Weste...

The lost village in Wicklow An advertisement in the Irish Independent in January 1937asking for tenders announced to the world the intention of the ESB to commence work at Poulaphouca in county Wicklow. The tender noted: THE ELECTRICITY SUPPLY BOARD invites Tenders for the civil construction work of the _hydroelectrical development on the River Liffey at Poulaphuca, Co. Wicklow. The -work is divided into three sections: ...

The Good Friday Agreement Twenty-seven years ago this week Ireland, and indeed the world, looked on anxiously to see whether the latest phase of talks in Northern Ireland would see a positive conclusion. The news on Good Friday 1998 that an agreement had been reached was received with widespread approval and the beginning of sustained peace in Ireland. The final days of the negotiations had been fraught and the interventio...

Monsignor Horan and the airport at Knock The exploits of the Mayo priest, Fr James Horan from the 1950s to the 19803 in developing an international ariport in county Mayo are the stuff of legend. In what was a busy life, Horan succeeded where membrs of the public doubted that he would succeed. Undobutedly, today, the success of Monsignor Horan is still felt in Mayo, despite the changing social and economic papers. The Ev...

A Mayo man in Kenya Irishmen and women have always found themselves in the most unusual of places across the world. Scattered by famine and economic hardship, the Irish resilience helped them pave new lives on all continents. Involvement in the empire also brought the Irish to exotic locations. Take for example this report in the Ballina Herald of December 1949 which reported on the return of one native of the county fro...