MacLiammóir’s magic captivates an innocent Galway

Thu, Mar 13, 2014

Geraldine Neeson, whose family kept theatre people when they visited Cork, described Mícheál MacLiammóir ‘as beautiful as a young god’, and his companion Hilton Edwards as a man endowed ‘with exuberant spirit and all-embracing gestures,’ diplomatically hinting that perhaps he was somewhat less prepossessing.

An Taibhdhearc - Spreading the News

Thu, Mar 06, 2014

Almost five years following a disastrous fire, Ireland’s unique Irish theatre An Taibhdhearc, situated in the very heart of the city, has opened its doors again. Perhaps the fire may have been a blessing in disguise. The theatre has reopened in a confident mood. Its distinctive new signage makes its mark, especially on dark winter evenings; and its facilities have been up-dated both for the audience and actors. Yet it has retained its remembered intimacy, and sense of Irishness. Micheál MacLiammóir’s golden Celtic peacocks, on the black fire-curtain, proudly remain as rampant as ever!

‘Mr Huston would you like a little night-cap?’

Thu, Feb 27, 2014

It was John Huston’s wife Ricki, who first saw St Clarens, a large Georgian house, and gardens near Craughwell, Co Galway. She had been staying with Derek and Pat Trench at Woodford House for the Galway Races. When she heard the house was coming up for sale by public auction she went to check it out. Once owned by the O’Hara Burkes,* it was then a virtual ruin, and in the hands of the Land Commission.

Ricki Soma - Anjelica’s beautiful mother

Thu, Feb 20, 2014

Anjelica Huston’s mother, Ricki Soma, grew up over a popular Broadway Italian restaurant called Tony’s Wife on West Fifty-Second Street in New York. At 14 years of age she was already a beauty, and a ballet dancer. She looked like the Mona Lisa, in fact she was considered so beautiful that a few years later her photograph appeared on the cover of Life magazine.

The Galway ladies who ride

Thu, Feb 13, 2014

John Huston was an expert rider, and expected his children to be so too. From an early age both Anjelica and her brother Tony were given horses. St Clerans, a magnificent Georgian house on a large estate at Craughwell, County Galway, had a full stable, watched over and trained by Paddy Lynch, a former jockey. Huston brought his family to live there in the 1950s while he travelled the world making films. He would come home for energetic holidays usually with Hollywood friends, and at times with his latest mistress. Once home, however, the sometimes lonely childhood lives of his two children would burst into action. Huston impressed upon them that the most important things in life were courage, and not to be a ‘dilettante’. He explained, as he smoked his brown cigarillo, that a ‘dilettante’ was a ‘dabbler, an amateur, someone who simply skims the surface of life without commitment.’

Hollywood came to Galway

Thu, Feb 06, 2014

The renowned film actor, and patron of the Galway Huston School of Film, Anjelica Huston, was born in Los Angeles on July 8 1951. The news of her arrival was promptly cabled to the post office of Butiaba, in western Uganda. Two days later a barefoot runner bearing a telegram finally arrived at Murchison Falls, on the Nile, deep in the heart of the Belgian Congo, where The African Queen was being filmed.

The realities of War

Thu, Jan 30, 2014

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,

Lady Rachel Dudley- a superwoman of her time

Thu, Jan 16, 2014

There is a sad little story told by one of the so called Lady Dudley Nurses in Carna shortly after the nursing scheme had been introduced in 1903. A nurse had been attending a sick child for some time. The child had suffered, but was getting better. One day the nurse brought her a doll, with a smiley face, and nice clothes. The girl had never seen a doll before. She held it in awe and with gentleness. But the next time the nurse visited the house the child was in despair. “Oh nurse,” she cried, “the little one hasn’t eaten a thing since you were here and I am afraid she will die, and I’ll be sick again wanting her back”...

The stranger waiting at Maam Cross station

Thu, Jan 02, 2014

There was a humorous mix-up when Pádraig Pearse first visited Ros Muc in 1903. He was 24 years of age, and already imbued by a passion, and a vision for the Ireland of the new century.

The boy who learned ‘slabs of poetry’

Thu, Dec 19, 2013

Seamus Heaney was not quite sure whether, as an adult, he ‘invented backwards’ some of his earliest fascination with words, but he didn’t think so. Because he could still picture the small boy absorbed by the old wireless in his farmhouse home, between Castledawson and Toomebridge, in Northern Ireland.* He would touch and pronounce some of the names on its dial, such as Hilversum, Stuttgart and Leipzig.

A royal visitor in ‘Pollok’s Time’

Thu, Dec 12, 2013

Earlier this year Galway Diary discussed the evictions implemented by Marcella Netterville and John Gerrard on their 7,000 acre estate at Ballinlass, near Mount Bellew Co Galway. In 1846 more that 400 families were heartlessly thrown out on the road, without any compensation. The land was being cleared to fatten cattle, which would have been far more profitable than tenants; many of whom, as the Great Famine tightened its terrible grip, were unable to pay their way. The Times of London famously commented that the Ballinlass evictions showed ‘the sublime indifference to social considerations of which no one but an Irish landowner is capable.’

James Michael Curley’s Last Hurrah

Thu, Nov 28, 2013

Despite all his bravura and political showmanship, his coarse humour,* a great fixer, a downright trickster and grafter, yet with a genuine kindness that endeared him to vast swathes of Boston voters, James Michael Curley’s personal life was unusually tragic. Following the death of his first wife ‘ Mae’ (nee Herlihy), he remarried a widow, Gertrude Dennis with two sons. This was on the last day of his term as Governor of Massachusetts, January 7 1937, “ to give her at least one day as first lady of the Commonwealth.” Between his two wives he had nine children; but incredibly seven of them predeceased him.

Boston - A tale of three cities

Thu, Nov 21, 2013

James Michael Curley - four times mayor of Boston, twice elected to the House of Representatives, one term as Governor of Massachusetts, and two terms in jail, was the son of County Galway parents who emigrated as children to the US in the 1860s. The stories told about Curley are proverbially legion. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter rarely let an Irish politician go without asking if they had any stories about James Michael Curley. (The one president who shunned anything to do with Curley, was president John F Kennedy. But more about that in a moment).

Through chicanery, charm, bullying, and barroom brawls, with unashamed bribery and corruption, laced with brilliant and passionate oratory in a fine clear voice, James Michael Curley brought Tammany Hall politics to an art form. In the early decades of the 20th century, he mobilised his Irish Catholic constituents by doing what the best machine bosses do well: He gave them all municipal jobs, good, fat municipal contracts, and created a network of favours, which he called in on election day.

ó’Máille’s - Telling the story of island life

Thu, Nov 14, 2013

Tourism in Ireland is changing. Yes, there will always be a market for the Book of Kells, The Ring of Kerry, the Aran Islands, and Paddy Reilly’s Fields; but we have seen this year how the call for The Gathering has worked a treat. Surely Galway has never had a busier summer? To achieve above average visitor numbers you clearly must offer more than the chocolate box Ireland.

The Duke avoids a shootout at Ó’Máille’s

Thu, Nov 07, 2013

Tom Grealy, the well known Galway accountant and music aficionado, remembers as a schoolboy the day John Wayne rode into the town. In 1951 Wayne, probably the best known cowboy actor of his day, was in Cong filming The Quiet Man. The film, somewhat surprisingly, remains a world -wide favourite. More than half a century later, it is still regarded by many film makers as the ‘perfect told story’. The involvement of local people among its star studded cast, which included Maureen O’Hara, Barry Fitzgerald, Victor McLaglen, and Arthur Shields, all at the peak of their careers at the time, won their lasting affection. The occasion is still celebrated in Cong today.

Strange visions and beliefs in the west of Ireland

Thu, Oct 31, 2013

Until recent times there was widespread belief in fairies; both the malignant and the more innocent kind. Many people believed that the fairies would steal away certain children, or an adult, and replace them with a changeling. These beliefs were mostly found in rural communities; and were often an attempt to explain, or to invite compassion or ‘kindness’ for a handicapped child, or someone who was temporarily ‘not themselves.’ The phrases used to describe this transformation are various; but locally included the words ‘touched’, or ‘swept’, or ‘taken’.

‘It was the landlord’s right to do as he pleased.’

Thu, Oct 24, 2013

The succession by the infamous Marcella Netterville to a large estate near Mount Bellew, Co Galway, in the 1820s owed as much to chance as it was to her unlikely mother-in-law, with the wonderful name, Kitty Cut-a-Dash. The Nettervilles were an ancient Norman family, who came to Galway from County Meath after purchasing land from the Bellew family. A judicious marriage with the Trenchs of Garbally, Ballinasloe, increased their holdings. It appears that for a time both the Nettervilles and their tenants lived at peace and in some prosperity, at least until Frederick Netterville began to spread his wild oats somewhat wide of the field.

The heartless evictions from the Gerrard estate, 1846

Thu, Oct 17, 2013

Friday March 13 1846 turned out to be a very unlucky day for the 447 tenants on the Gerrard estate in the townland of Ballinlass, near Mount Bellew Co Galway. Shortly after dawn the sheriff, accompanied by a large force of the 49th Regiment under the command of Captain Browne, and an equally large detachment of police, arrived at ‘the place marked out for destruction.’ Despite the vehement protestations of the people, and their insistence that they had their rent money ready for payment, and that their repeated efforts to pay their rent was refused, the soldiers and police began systematically to demolish their homes, 67 in number. *

The Coole door knocker will rat-a-tat-tat once again

Thu, Oct 10, 2013

How many famous people lifted that heavy brass knocker on the door of Lady Augusta Gregory’s home at Coole, Co Galway, and gave it a resounding rat- a -tat -tat? It resounded again last weekend with all the authority of a grumpy judge’s gavel. The writer and broadcaster John Quinn, chairman of the 19th Autumn Gathering, used it to great effect to keep speakers to their time, and to summon people to the next event.

The romance of steam

Thu, Oct 03, 2013

In late October 1890, Arthur J Balfour, nephew of the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury of the time, and recently appointed Chief Secretary of Ireland, went on a walking tour of the distressed districts along the Galway and Mayo coast. Accompanied only by his sister, and local officials who joined them as they passed through different districts, they travelled without police escort. Remembering that it was only eight years since the Phoenix Park Murders* it was a brave gesture. But Balfour was probably the best of them.** He was genuinely anxious to improve the conditions of the area. He had influence in London, and an imaginative grasp of his brief for Ireland. He met and talked with the local community leaders, listened to what they had to say; and sat by the open fires listening to the mná tí.

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