Search Results for 'Bridget'

Once upon a time, when a renowned bardic poet visited the castle a sort of hysteria broke out. Women ran to the kitchens to prepare hogs and stuffings for a great feast. Banners and flags were flown from the battlements. Musicians urgently practiced new songs in his  praise. Tavern keepers rolled in their best barrels of beer and wine, and weapons were nosily discarded. All prisoners and lunatics were released. Fathers were invited to bring to the fore their young daughters, so that they may be admired! 

The funeral of 63-year-old Barney McGinley, who was shot dead while attending a family wedding in Fermanagh last week, took place in Athlone on Monday (February 16).

When it comes to the story of Galway and World War I there is no better man than William Henry. He came upon ‘the secrets in the attic shoe box’ some years ago when writing in a parish magazine he mentioned a relation of his in that war, and surprisingly opened a Pandora’s Box. People met him on the streets and told him that their grandfather, great-uncle, or cousin, or family friend also fought in that war. They had a box of their medals and uniform, letters or diaries somewhere at home.

It has been 21 years since its premiere but Patricia Burke Brogan’s Eclipsed has lost none of its power, as the fine new production from Mephisto Theatre Company, currently running at the Town Hall, amply demonstrates. It is also fitting that the play should be getting a major new production in the same year that the Magdalenes have finally got official State recognition via the McAleese Report and the Government decision to grant them compensation. In ways the play’s journey has paralleled that of the Magdalenes; Eclipsed was one of the very first works to alert the world to their story and its periodic revivals in the intervening years, both here and abroad, helped keep that story in the public eye.

On a historic night for Castlebar Town Council, when Cllr Noreen Heston became the final Mayor of the authority, there was not much room left to spare in the packed chamber of Marsh Haouse, as family and friends from Ballycroy to Castlebar and even London were packed in to the chamber and down the stairs in the building to see her accept the chain of office. Cllr Heston succeeded her Fine Gael party colleague Cllr Brendan Henaghan for the position, and became only the second woman to hold the honour in the town. Fittingly for the night that was in it, the first female mayor, Eanya Egan, was present in the chamber and she took a seat at the council table and was not afraid to throw a few barbs across the chamber at some of her former colleagues, during some of the light hearted moments of the evening.

One of the longest continuously-trading businesses in Mullingar - Egan’s fishmongers on Dominick Street - may only have to wait until March to have their position regularised, it has been revealed this week.

In April 1980, I interviewed Mrs Sarah Lynskey from Bridge Street, on her 100th birthday, for this column. In the course of our conversation, she told me her earliest memory was of “kneeling on the Salmon Weir Bridge with my mother and a lot of Claddagh women praying. I know they were Claddagh women because I can still see the triangles of shawl as they knelt on the bridge. We were praying for a fellow, they were going to hang him the next day. Joyce was his name”. She was talking about Myles Joyce, an innocent man who was to be hanged along with two others for the Maamtrasna murders.

Following the extensive publicity and extraordinary use of more than 700 military, police, emergency men and bailiffs, to evict five families from the marquis of Clanricarde’s estate, the people of Woodford and all of east Galway were in a state of shock, anger and fear. It was now clear that Clanricarde would use every method within his considerable powers to evict any of his tenants who refused to pay their rent. Despite pleas for a rent reduction because of successive bad weather, he refused to even consider it. He scoffed at John Dillon’s Plan of Campaign, supported by the Land League, which urged tenants to stick together, and to refuse to pay unreasonable rent.