Albury Banner and Wodonga Express 7th April, 1911 p36
A clever ruse adopted to trap the alleged writer of a threatening letter was described at Galway, Ireland. An American named Michael Walsh was remanded in connection with an attempt to obtain money from Count Blake. A letter was written to the count, who resides near Kinvara, threatening that if he did not leave £10 under a specified stone he would ‘get the same death as did Leech’s horse’ which was shot a fortnight ago.
Count Blake, acting on police advice, left an envelope containing two half-crowns under the stone and Walsh was caught by the police after he had removed the envelope and put it in his pocket.
The Richmond River Herald and Northern Districts Advertiser 13th July 1920 p4
(abridged)
On Sunday morning at 2 o’clock, the house of John Killeen, a labourer, living near Kinvara, was fired into. One bullet lodged in Killeen’s chest and the other fell beside him on the bed. Dr Connolly immediately was on the scene and had him removed to the County Infirmary where the bullet was extracted.
Killeen is a laborer employed by Mr Fergus O’Dea Kinvara who holds some land at Seamount from Mrs Nally, Kinvara. The division of the property has resulted in a strong agitation among the surrounding tenants. Mr O’Dea surrendered part of his land and Killeen and others took up an acre or so each. On Monday Mr Killeen walled in his portion.
By January 1848 temporary fever hospitals were established in Kinvarra and Killeenavau (G01/12/7, p28). In April 1848 the Board accepted the tender of Martin Linnane ‘for the erection of Fever sheds near Kinvarra for one hundred patients at one pound two shillings per foot lineal measurement…’ (G01/12/7, p122). The Board at this time also accepted the tender of Michael Nilan for the erection of fever sheds adjoining the Workhouse, costs divided as follows, Office sheds at £1.1.6 per foot, fever sheds including bedsteads at £1.3.6 per foot, finding and setting boilers at £1.6 pre gallon, and clothes stores £0.12.6 per foot (G01/12/7, p124).
Dublin, May 25.— The modern evils of the dance halls and the laxity of parental control formed the theme of the addresses of the Irish Hierarchy during the present season of visitation for administering Confirmatiion. Speaking in Tuam, the Most Rev. Thomas P. Gilmartin, Archbishop – of Tuam, said that laxity of parental control was too apparent, and that as a consequence too many young people attended dances, which he called nothing less than ‘orgies of sensuality held in devils’ dens.’ ‘Ireland is at present at the parting of the ways between pagan morals and a Catholic country,’ ‘ said Dr Gilmartin. ‘Combination is needed to build up the nation in the glorious traditions of the past; in this uplifting, the girls are the greatest influence.’
In Galway, the Right Rev, Thomas O’Doherty, Bishop of the United Dioceses of Galway and Kilmacduagh, said that dance halls were practically on all occasions dangerous to morals, and that ‘even the Government’ was alarmed about the abuses practiced in many of the, uncontrolled dance halls. The Bishop also denounced the evils of mixed bathing, which, he said, had led to the most ‘shameful thing in the history of mankind,’ the evil of beauty competitions. He was pleased to say that attempts to introduce mixed bathing in Galway had been, unsuccessful. The Right Rev. Patrick Collier, Bishop of.Ossory, speaking at Callan, urged parents to renew control, which he said has fallen to a low level in the last 15 years. Religion had suffered, he said, through the weakening of the family and the breakdown of parental control.
First registered postage stamp of Victoria, Australia 1 shilling, 1855 Wikipedia.org1861
The Argus (Melbourne) 17th October, 1861 p1
ELLEN GALVIN, late of Kinvarra, County Galway, Ireland – your sister Bridget is anxious to hear from you. Inquire Sergeant Johnston, William Street Police Barracks, Melbourne. Also Mary Scanlon, late of Kinvarra, to inquire for her niece at same place.
The Sydney Morning Herald 25th October, 1849 page 3
GO TO IRELAND.
(From the Times, June 15. – abridged)
A SEASON comes in every year when English- men are converted into a nation of tourists.
The high-pressure Parliamentary, professional, and commercial occupation is taken off, and the enjoyment of the holiday-making is in proportion to the irksomeness of the previous confinement. We are a good deal laughed at by foreigners for our roving propensities—they are never at the pains to consider the true explanation of the fact. It is because we work so hard that, when we find an opportunity, we travel so fast and so far. We are but changing our occupation after all, and making a business of our amusement.
An English traveller does his work as conscientiously as the most trustworthy bagman. He purchases one of Mr. Murray’s handbooks for a particular district, and verifies the indications it contains. He checks off the mountains, ruins, and galleries, and is very careful in communicating to Mr. Murray any information he may practically glean as to the qualities of inns and the peculiarity of diet. ” Tourism” is, in fact, a duty of annual recurrence, and must be discharged.
Ballybranigan EJO’D
This year, unfortunately, the continent is sealed to pleasure-seekers. To which of the old remembered spots shall a tourist convey himself and his family? To be sure, if he has a taste for Dutch pictures there is the Hague, and the flat plains of the peaceful lHollanders. Between this and Turkey a traveller must make his election if he desire to travel in continental parts. In Paris a man’a dressing-case and the bonnet-boxes of his helpmate might at any moment be converted into the topmost ornaments of a tasty barricade. If a summer party should try the Rhine, this is but another word for offering themselves as targets to the Trans Rhenane marksmen. A corpulent merchant or a dust conveyancer who should adventure his person at Baden would, as a matter of course, in twenty-four hours find his head decorated with a gaily-plumed hat, and himself marching under the greenwood tree to various Republican airs of an exciting character. Prussia won’t do. Saxony with its beautiful capital is still worse. Who would willingly try the Danube and Austria ? The Italian peninsula is out of the question. From desecrated Venice to that city which has been so rashly styled Eternal, and thence to Naples, all is trouble, disorder, or actual warfare. For this year the Continent is hermetically sealed to all but the most adventurous and irresponsible tourists.
We are so far happy in the British isles, that it is rather an advantage to those amongst us who love beautiful scenery for its own sake to be turned back upon our own country. The impulse to “take a run upon the continent” when we have a month to spare is too strong to contend against. Now, whether we will or no, we must fall back upon our own resources. There are the Scotch Highlands and the English lakes; there are North and South Wales-Snowden and the Vale of Festiniog ; Chepstow and the Wye ; there is Devonshire with the Dart and the Exe ; there are the southern counties with all their beautiful home scenery. All these points are more or less visited by all wanderers.
IRELAND
There is one portion of the British isles, however, which, as far as beauty and variety of scenery are concerned, yields to no other, but yet remains comparatively unknown. How few are the persons who, except for business purposes, have visited the southern and western districts of Ireland? One occasionally meets a stray sportsman who has gone salmon-fishing in the Shannon, or spent a season in Connemara, but these are rare exceptions to the rule.
Ireland, by mere tourists, not being natives of the country, is rather less frequented than the Spanish Peninsula, and yet it would be easy to point out in it districts which, once seen, would hang in the recollection for ever as spectacles of natural beauty. There is the Bay of Dublin; nearly the whole of the county of Wicklow; the counties of Waterford and Cork; Kerry with the Killarney Lakes; the South Riding of Tipperary with the Golden Vale; portions of Limerick; Clare with the Mohir Cliffs and its fine coast scenery; Galway with its magnificent bay; Connemera with the Killeries, and districts of Mayo,
If a tourist should visit the spots we have just indicated he would return with the conviction, that beautiful as continental scenery may be, there are points in Ireland which may stand competition with the show districts of any other country.
In the advertising columns of The Times of this day will be found an advertisement to which we wish to give every support in our power. An agreement has been come to between the London and North-Western Railway Company, the Chester and Holyhead Railway Company, and the Great Southern and Western Railway Company, by which tourists can be transported from London to Killarney and back for £6 in the first, and £4 in the second class.
They will have an opportunity given them of visiting the Cove of Cork and the beautiful scenery of the south of Ireland. Other advantages are offered, particulars of which will be found in the advertisement. There is no way in which a fortnight could be more profitably or ” enjoyably” spent than in such a trip; but, independently of this, we wish to recommend the scheme to public attention for other considerations.
Donnchadh Mór Ó Dálaigh (who died in 1244) lived in Finavarra in County Clare. A monument in his memory was erected at Pouldoody Bay opposite the site thought to be the poetry school of the Ó Dálaigh’s. According to O’Donovan the Annals of the Four Masters states that he was the head of the O’Dalys of Finavarra. The Ó Dálaigh’s of Finavara were hereditary poets to the Ó Lochlainn’s of the Burren.
MOST IMPORTANT LITERARY MEN IN IRELAND. (abridged)
From about the 13th century to the close of the 16th the hitherto despised family bard became the most important literary man in Ireland. Bards were not simply makers of verse or singers of elegies. They were much more than this. They were personages of considerable political power who made it their business to inflame the ardour or soothe the passions of their chiefs. By their songs, reciting the deeds of the ancestors of their lords, they stirred them up to wars; by persuasion, they averted displeasure from some personage or clan in whom they felt an interest. It was they who advised, warned, threatened or encouraged; their praise was as much sought after as their blame was dreaded. Moreover, they wandered about the country, welcomed and feasted wherever they went, and the acquaintance that they formed with tribal affairs and with the trend of events was of service to their own chiefs and available for the guidance of the tribe at large. They were trained from birth for their office, and, as Dr. O’Donovan says;
they discharged the functions and wielded the influence of the modern newspaper and periodical press.
They formed a guild apart, and for substantial rewards they gave information and encouragement useful to their patrons, sang their praises and deplored their deaths.
The influence wielded by the bards is best shown by the anxiety of the English Government to suppress an order which they felt to be dangerous to their power in Ireland, or, failing this; to buy their services for their own use. A great number of laws were passed with the object of limiting their power, and occasionally regular raids were made upon them, as, for example, when in 1415 Lord Justice Talbot
harried a large contingent of Ireland’s poets, as O’Daly of Meath, Hugh Oge Magrath, Duffach son of the learned Eochy and Maurice O’Daly.
In the ensuing summer he raided O’Daly of Corcomrua (County Clare).
The bards did not always succeed in pleasing their own patrons. For instance, about 1213, the poet Murdoch O’Daly of Lisadill had a quarrel with a steward of O’Donnells, a vulgar loon who fell to wrangling with him about a cess to be paid to the chief. ‘
The man of verse,’ says the Four Masters, ‘lost his temper with him, and having taken into his hand an extraordinary sharp axe, dealt him a stroke whereby he left him dead – lifeless.’
The bard flew to Clanrickard (County Galway), and the Northern Chief, more to avenge the insult to himself than to punish the breach, followed. He marched in chase of the offending bard, ravaged Clare and laid siege to Limerick, whence the culprit was passed on from house to house till he reached Dublin. Thither again O’Donnell pursued him, and the bard was finally banished to Scotland, from which circumstance he is known as ‘Scottish Murray’ (Muireadhach Albanach), underwhich name he wrote several good poems, found both in Scottish, and Irish collections.
He seems to have travelled. One of his works mentions a visit made by him to the Mediterranean, and he frequently expresses the joy it would be to him to find himself off the Scottish coast or to breathe the breath of Ireland. He seems to have slipped back to Ireland and to his old home more than once. Finally he gained O’Donnell’s pardon and a grant of land by the production of three poems in his honor. ‘Scottish Murray’s’ own comment on his deeds and their punishment is pithy and quaint. In one of his poems he says: Trifling is our difference with the man (O’Donnell) that a bumpkin was abusing me and that I killed a serf— O God, doth this constitute a misdemeanor?
Tyrone House home of St. George family Photo: Tom Cosgrove Creative Commons
Freeman’s Journal 17th March, 1910 p14
Through the exertions of the Most Rev. Dr. O’Dea, Bishop of Galway, and the Rev. Miohael Walsh.. P.P., Ballinderreen, Kilcolgan, the trouble on the Tyrone estate is at last practically at an end. There are close upon two hundred holdings in the vicinity of the Tyrone estate, and in about 70 per cent, the rent ranges from £1 to £8. The ‘acreage’ of the farms is in many cases little more than one acre, and in no case larger than twenty.
The land allotted to the tenants is full of rock, an held in rundale. Although the tenants had entered the Land Court, the rents are still exorbitant. Under these circumstances the people were forced into a vigorous agitation. Experience has taught them that nothing but agitation would win for them the right to live as every human being is entitled to live, in peace and – in their own land.
Under the settlement which has just been arrived at, 400 acres of grass land on the Tyrone farm; the property of Mrs. St. George and Mrs. Concannon, together with the Drumcoo and Killeenarin farms are to be handed over to the Estates Commissioners. The tenants have agreed to pay a year’s, rent down on the understanding that a half year’s rent is remitted, and they will get a general reduction of 4s in the £. First term tenants are to get a reduction of 6s in the £, and the game rights are to be reserved to the tenants..
Bendigo Advertiser 8th April. 1856 p3
A public subscription is being raised by the inhabitants of Clare, for the erection of a monument in honour of Cornelius O’Brien, M.P. on the celebrated Cliffs of Moher, which he has so elegantly improved and arranged for the convenience of tourists.
Old Church near Kilbaha Photo: Fred Creative Commons
The Sydney Morning Herald 21st February, 1852 P6 (abridged)
The Clare Journal states, that on Sunday, the 28th of September last, at a chapel in the county of Clare, sentence of excommunication was pronounced by a priest, at the altar, on all the people of Kilbaha, who had sent their children to Kiltrellig school, or who would send their children there for the future. Consecrated candles were extinguished, the bell was rung, the book was closed, the crucifix was prostrated, and the following curse pronounced :-
“I pray God to send down all vengeance on those who sent their children to Kiltrellig school last week, particularly two; may the devil be their guide on the right and on the left, lying and rising, in bed and out of bed, sitting and standing, within and without; may all misfortune attend their families and labourers. And any person or persons sending their children to this school henceforth, may they be struck blind and deaf, so as never to see any of their children again; and may the children sent to this school go wild; may they never leave this world until they be such examples as that the marrow may come out through their shin bones; may they be pained both sitting and standing, and may they never leave this world until they are in such a state that the dogs could not bear coming near the carcasses when dead. I pray to God that every child who goes to the school, that for every day he spends in it his life may be curtailed a twelvemonth, and that they may never enjoy the years of maturity; and those people who send their children to the school, that their crops and their goods may be taken away by the devil, and may all these misfortunes attend any person taking their posterity in marriage thirty years hence. I pray the Almighty to hear this prayer, as the Minister of God; and I now strictly command this congregation to kneel down and pray to God to grant my prayer.”
Note: The above was attributed to a Fr Meehan, priest at Kilbaha. The sentence of excommunication was passed due to the proselytising nature of Kiltrellig school. Tensions were exacerbated by a local landlord who obstructed the building of a Roman Catholic Church in the vicinity. Father Meehan’s solution was to build “The Ark”, a church on wheels in which mass was celebrated.
The Burren and Beyond 