The traditional game of caid was popular with the Kerry peasantry throughout the nineteenth century. The game used a ball made of farm animal skins with an inflated bladder within, giving it an oval shape. It was played in the winter months, usually between teams from two neighbouring parishes, the ball being thrown up among … Read more
Prior to the eighteenth century Ireland’s physicians had trained in Europe—in France, Belgium, Italy, Holland or England. When medicine became well established in Scotland, many Irish medical students, especially those from Ulster, went there. Leiden The teaching of medicine in seventeenth-century Europe had followed developments in science, and the University of Leiden in Holland had … Read more
Thomas Molyneux was the first professor of physic in the new medical school. He was a Trinity graduate, having studied for his BA from 1676 to 1680. Medical studies followed between 1683 and 1687, when he spent time in England, Leiden and Paris. While he was at Leiden he compiled a catalogue of two collections … Read more
Myles Walter Keogh (1840–76) was born in Carlow on 25 March 1840 and was commissioned an officer in the Irish Battalion of the Papal Army on 7 August 1860. He helped defend the Papal States against Italian nationalists, serving at the siege of Ancona from 12 to 28 September 1860. He resigned his commission on … Read more
‘I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes’, wrote the American poet Carl Sandberg. For Irish historians this line rings true quite literally. The explosion that ripped through the Public Record Office of Ireland at the Four Courts, Dublin, on 30 June 1922 destroyed much of Ireland’s documentary heritage dating back to the … Read more