‘Get food and wine to give you strength and courage….’

Thu, Nov 14, 2019

On the Saturday afternoon, September 15 1962, before that fateful dinner with her husband Ted Hughes, and the poet and publisher Tom Kinsella, Richard Murphy, their host, had taken Sylvia Plath house hunting. She realised that her marriage to Ted was over, and however painful that was for her to accept, she believed that in Connemara with her two children, Frieda and Nicholas, she would be ‘safe from Ted’ and ‘get the first months of separation under way in a fresh setting.’

‘I am bloody, raw, nerves hanging out all over the place.’

Thu, Nov 07, 2019

If Sylvia Plath was hoping for some kind of rapprochement between herself and her husband Ted Hughes during their brief stay with the late Richard Murphy at Cleggan, Co Galway, in September 1962, she was to be quickly disillusioned. In fact she would be abandoned, and plunged into despair. Yet following a visit to Coole Park, and Thoor Ballylee, Sylvia was to take away a spiritual connection with the poet WB Yeats, and a feeling of peace in the tragic build up to her suicide some five months later.

True stories of the supernatural…

Thu, Oct 31, 2019

A little later the fairy made his way to the old woman. “Have you ever seen me before?” asked he.

Liam Mellows - tragic hero of 1916

Thu, Oct 24, 2019

On December 7 1922, Pádraic Ó Máille TD and his friend Sean Hales TD of Cork, walked out of a hotel on Ormonde Quay, by Dublin’s river Liffy. They just had lunch, and were on their way back to the Dáil in Leinster House, a short drive away. Ó Máille, Galway city and Connemara’s first TD, had been appointed Leas Ceann Comhairle (deputy speaker). As they reached their car a gunman stepped forward and opened fire. Both men were hit, but Hales was bleeding profusely. Although seriously injured Ó Máille managed to get Hales into the car and drove to the nearest hospital, where he collapsed, and died.

‘Shouting and cheering’ welcomes de Valera ‘home’.

Thu, Oct 10, 2019

After an initial welcome to New York, where Mellows was feted as a hero of the Rising, it all went sour. Despite warnings from the influential Clan na Gael to tone his rhetoric down, Mellows continued his war against Britain. He was kicked out of Clan na Gael by its leaders, the veteran Fenian John Devoy, and the ambitious Judge Cohalan, when he publicly campaigned against Irish Americans joining the army, to fight with Britain and her allies on the battlefields of France at the climax of World War I. This totally opposed the efforts of Clan na Gael not to isolate itself from mainstream American politics.

Mellows became destitute in New York

Thu, Oct 03, 2019

After the collapse of the Galway Rising, Easter 1916, its leader Liam Mellows managed to get to New York where he was embraced by the the influential American Fenian network, Clan na Gael, who regarded him as ‘the most capable man who had so far arrived in America’.

‘Laughter and fun never deserted them’.

Thu, Sep 26, 2019

Early on Easter Monday morning, April 24 1916, the Galway Volunteers sprang into action. It was a chaotic beginning to the rebellion which hoped to see a nation-wide rising of fully armed and committed men and women seizing control of the country. We know, however, the capture of the ship Aud, with its weapons, explosives and ammunition, off the Kerry coast on Good Friday, prompted the Dublin leadership to cancel the Rising. The order was ignored by Padraic Pearse and others, who had the benefit of arms imported into Howth two years previously. They took over key positions throughout Dublin city, which they held for six days.

‘Laughter and fun never deserted them’.

Wed, Sep 25, 2019

Early on Easter Monday morning, April 24 1916, the Galway Volunteers sprang into action. It was a chaotic beginning to the rebellion which hoped to see a nation-wide rising of fully armed and committed men and women seizing control of the country. We know, however, the capture of the ship Aud, with its weapons, explosives and ammunition, off the Kerry coast on Good Friday, prompted the Dublin leadership to cancel the Rising. The order was ignored by Padraic Pearse and others, who had the benefit of arms imported into Howth two years previously. They took over key positions throughout Dublin city, which they held for six days.

Liam Mellows - ‘I have failed lamentably’

Thu, Sep 19, 2019

Unlike the men executed after the 1916 Rising, there was little of the same idealisation given to the hundreds of men and women who died in the War of Independence, or, more emphatically, those executed during the regretable Civil War.

US Ambassador remembers act of kindness in September 1944

Thu, Sep 12, 2019

Shortly after dawn on Saturday, September 16 1944, Michael Conneely, a bachelor of 55 years, was asleep in his cottage at Ailleabreach, Ballyconneely, when loud banging on his door woke him. He shouted ‘who’s there?’ The storm of the previous two days had abated but he couldn’t make out what the voice said. Grabbing a pitchfork, he slowly opened to door. Outside were two men, wet to the skin, in deep distress. Michael put the pitchfork to the throat of the first man: “Who are you?”

Aran people astounded by French habits

Thu, Aug 29, 2019

‘Them French are queer, I don’t understand them at all. They will give good money for snails and frogs. My young fellow got a bottle of cognac for a bucket full of snails.’

Introducing Ireland’s Love Club!

Fri, Aug 23, 2019

Welcome to Ireland’s Love Club, a revolutionary approach to dating - where together, we will create a platform that will change dating forever.

The magic of radio in days gone by...

Thu, Aug 22, 2019

When I was boy, as soon as school ended, my mother whisked us off to her home in west Cork, where my brother, sister and I spent most of the summer. It was a very different place to Galway. We enjoyed large family picnics, long afternoons fishing and rabbit shooting (everything was eaten), and picking fruit and vegetables in my grandparents’ large garden. Looking at old black and white photographs our everyday clothes were zipped corduroy jackets, short pants and wellies.

How Aran looked in the 1930s

Thu, Aug 15, 2019

When Thomas H Mason stepped onto the pier at Kilronan, Inishmór, in the summer of 1932, he described his feelings of surprise and sense of confusion. Writing in his masterly The Islands of Ireland * he realised that he was plunged into an Ireland he did not recognise. As an Irishman coming from the east coast, and geographically still in Ireland - he believed that he could have been 1,000 miles from Dublin.

How Aran looked in the 1930s

Wed, Aug 14, 2019

When Thomas H Mason stepped onto the pier at Kilronan, Inishmór, in the summer of 1932, he described his feelings of surprise and sense of confusion. Writing in his masterly The Islands of Ireland * he realised that he was plunged into an Ireland he did not recognise. As an Irishman coming from the east coast, and geographically still in Ireland - he believed that he could have been 1,000 miles from Dublin.

At that time he had never seen a currach, nor men and women dressed in home-made clothes, woven and knitted from the wool of their own sheep. Their features, he observed, were somewhat different from people on the mainland. They all spoke in Irish. ‘I felt a sense of wonder and interest which is common to travellers in strange places.’ As time passed by, of course, and Thomas found comfortable lodgings with Mrs McDonagh in Kilmurvey, he began to explore the Aran islands at his leisure. He became charmed by its spectacular landscape, the people and their stories.

Dear Mr Semple I am that girl……

Thu, Aug 08, 2019

Anne Root (formerly Browne) was about 16 years-of-age when she went to work for the Blakes at Menlo Castle. She was employed as a housemaid, and joined two other house staff, a parlourmaid, and a cook Delia Earley, with whom she shared an attic room. She and Delia became warm friends, and shared a terrifying ordeal when they were trapped together on the roof of the castle as it burnt in a raging fire on July 26 1910.

Tragedy at Menlo Castle

Thu, Aug 01, 2019

In the early hours of July 26 1910 Menlo Castle, on the bank of the river Corrib, was totally gutted by a fire. Sir Valentine and Lady Blake’s daughter, Ellen, was lost in the flames. The cook Delia Early, who lived on the attic floor, jumped to her death. Delia shared a room with housemaid Anne Browne, who waited until her clothes were in flames, before jumping. She landed on a pile of hay placed by other household staff to break her fall. Severely injured and burnt, Anne was driven on an open truck, slowly into the Galway Infirmary, lying on a door to ease her movement and pain. Local farmers gave her milk to drink to try to cool her down.

It was a dramatic night, and widely reported throughout these islands. Built in 1550, and occupied by the Blakes from 1600, the family had added a Jacobean mansion to its original old tower house. It enjoyed an outstanding view of the river. Surrounded by its famous woods Menlo Castle was a picturesque sight, and a popular meeting place for generations of Galway people who went there in their thousands to celebrate the Maying festival, during the first three Sundays of May. Even as an ivy clad ruin, it holds our gaze today as we pass it by boat, or view it from the Newcastle/Dangan side of the river.

The joy of crowds

Thu, Jul 25, 2019

Looking at the happy crowds in Galway for this year’s Galway Arts Festival, I can appreciate that the sense of joy and surprise is heightened because it is shared on a huge scale. The crowd itself is a key part of the attraction. People lose their inhibitions among the horde.

A god with feet of clay

Thu, Jul 18, 2019

Week VI
During Charles Lindbergh’s nation-wide tour, following the first solo transatlantic flight from Long Island, New York to Paris, in May 1927, he met his wife to be, Anne Morrow, in Mexico City. It was a wonder she even got near him. He was mobbed wherever he appeared.

Alcock and Brown showed the way...

Thu, Jul 11, 2019

Week V
As the unfolding 20th century began to wind its dramatic way through assassinations, persecutions, wars and peace, Europe’s link with America became imperative for commercial, military and diplomatic reasons. With the arrival of Marconi’s radio telegraph system, trans-continental communications had far outpaced travel, which, after trial and error, had come down in favour of the aeroplane.

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