BY AODHÁN CREALEY SEPTEMBER 16/1937 Ten male seasonal potato-gatherers, aged 13–23 years, from Achill Island perished in a fire in Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow. The group had only arrived in the village the previous evening. The females were lodged in a cottage and the ten males in a nearby bothy, which was basically a cowshed, … Read more
By Joe Culley @TheRealCulls During the Six Nations rugby championship we are regularly—even tediously—asked to contemplate battle with our ‘Celtic cousins’, yet a recent genetic study of Britain revealed no common link between the ‘Celtic’ peoples of these islands. As Caomhín De Barra explains in his intriguing The coming of the Celts AD 1860: … Read more
By Michele O’Dea The rocky outcrop that dominates the Cashel skyline has been both a royal fortress and an episcopal seat, distinguished today by the ecclesiastical structures that date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Rock of Cashel’s origins as a centre of power go back to the fourth or fifth century AD, when … Read more
By Felix M. Larkin The life and achievements of Nano Nagle (1718–84), outlined by Gillian O’Brien and Jessie Castle in the last issue (HI 26.4, July/August 2018), are memorialised as far afield as Hobart, Tasmania. There, in St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral, Nagle is one of three Irishwomen included in a beautiful stained-glass window dedicated to … Read more
August 2018 marked the 73rd anniversary of the ushering in of the nuclear age, with the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (on the 6th) and Nagasaki (on the 9th). Within twenty years all five permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, USSR, UK, France and China) were nuclear-armed, with … Read more