The crowning finish was given on Saturday the 19th of July to the great line of railway from Dublin to Galway, by placing the last rail on the Shannon Bridge. This splendid structure is 500 feet in length and constructed of wrought iron girders, with openings of 165 feet in the clear.
Mr Hermans, the chief engineer of the line, came with a staff of assistants to witness the completion of the bridge and test its strength by driving the locomotive over it. By ten o’clock at night, after great exertion, the closing rail was cut and laid in place, and amidst the cheers of a great crowd of spectators, the Venus engine was driven four times rapidly from end to end of the bridge, which bore the weight without the slightest apparent deflexion. The line was to be inspected for the Government in the course of the ensuing week and would be open to the public on the 1st of August
Colcannon recipe on bag of potatoes Photo: Sarah777 Wikimedia Commons
Colcannon
Six cups of boiled cabbage, three cups mashed potatoes, three heaped tablespoons butter, one cup of milk, seasonings.
Mix cabbage, potatoes, butter, milk and seasonings. Place in buttered baking dish. Dot with more butter and bake 40 minutes in hot oven. Serve with meat.
The Salt Lake Herald 14th June, 1903
Irish Colcannon
Peel and cut a large parsnip into small pieces, cook for fifteen minutes in boiling water; then add peeled potatoes and an onion. When the vegetables are very tender drain the mash, adding milk or cream until you have a smooth mess. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
The News and Herald 13th January, 1883 p4
Wash a head of white cabbage and put it over the fire to boil in plenty of salted boiling water Peel twelve large potatoes and put them to boil with the cabbage. When the cabbage and potatoes are done, drain of the water in which they were cooked, add to them four tablespoonfuls of butter, a cupful of good milk, or cream if it is plentiful, a level teaspoonful of pepper; chop all these ingredients together; then heat them and server the colcannon hot as a vegetable dish.
Philadelphia Colcannon
Fort Worth Daily Gazette 2nd February, 1886 p4 (abridged)
Irish speakers in 2011 SkateTier Wikimedia Commons –
The other day there left from Galway by the Midland railroad an able young man who could not understand one word of English. He had never spoken any other language but Irish. He had been a fortnight in Dublin and during that time required, in the capital of his native country, to be accompanied everywhere by a interpreter.
The young man is a native of the Island of Buffin, off the Connemara coast where out of 600 or 700 inhabitants only nine speak English.
Cows preen the velvet rise
Where stonewalls dip
Under blackberry and fern.
At the bend before the sea
Dun Guaire rises
Through gaps
Framed in wispy ash.
Rosehips,
Brambles,
Sloe.
At the ocean’s edge
Where heart and soul
And sea and soil meet
I am.
The Intermountain Catholic 28th February, 1903 p6 (abridged)
Irish crochet Creative Commons .
The industrial school of the Convent of Mercy, Gort, County Galway, Ireland will supply anything in lace.
It is gratifying to me to read from time to time extracts from subscriptions and business letters that come to this office, thanking for suggestions offered in this department. One just to hand is profuse in thanks for receiving laces ordered from Ireland, taken from the advertisement in our columns.
One reader asks: “Why do we not see this beautiful lace in our big stores?”
The answer is easy; Because you do not inquire for it, or, when you do, you exercise no judgment and permit yourself to be persuaded into purchasing an inferior article. Make it a point in shopping to ask for what you want, and do your own thinking as to whether or not you will purchase.
If you are a judge of lace then you know that some of the most exquisite laces in the world are made in Ireland, and you can even have a design worked out for you if you desire. The Irish laces were awarded prizes for designs and prizes for workmanship at the World’s fair at Chicago, which exposition was the greatest ever held in this country.
Edith Rayner in New York Freeman’s Journal
Newtown Castle, west of Gort Photo: Dr Charles Nelson Wikimedia Commons
At the Petty Sessions at Gort, County Galway, a priest names O’Higgins was committed for trial upon a charge of inciting to murder. He was escorted to jail by a detachment of cavalry.
KILLEENEY, a parish, partly in the barony of DUNKELLIN, but chiefly in that of KILTARTAN, county of GALWAY, and province of CONNAUGHT, 4 ½ miles (N. W.) from Gort, near the road from that place to Kinvarra; containing 820 inhabitants, and 5931 statute acres, as applotted under the tithe act. The land is very coarse and rocky, and the only seat is Normangrove, the residence of John Burke, Esq. It is a vicarage, in the diocese of Kilmacduagh, forming part of the union of Kilcolgan; the rectory is appropriate to the see, the deanery, and the vicarage of Ardrahan.
The tithes amount to £98. 0. 6., of which £21 is payable to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, £7. 7. to the dean, £42 to the incumbent of Ardrahan, and £27. 13. 6. to the vicar. There are some remains of the old church, with a small burial-ground attached. About a mile from Kinvarra is a hole in the rock, called the Pigeon Hole, which leads to a natural cavern, three or four hundred feet in extent. Here are the remains of the castle of Cahir Irlane, which is said to have belonged to the Killikellys.
HC Deb 14 November 1916 vol 87 cc619-21W619W
§Mr. DUFFY
asked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that the view held generally in Ireland that the continued imprisonment of political prisoners at Frongoch is a fruitful policy leading to unrest and exasperation, and certain to keep open the sore created by the Easter Week disturbances in Ireland; whether representations have been made to him respecting the cases of John Kilkelly, John Glyn, Patrick Hansberry, John Burke, John Whelan, and David Hanlon, from the Kinvarra district, county Galway; and whether he will review their cases with a view to their discharge?
Mr. SAMUEL
With regard to the first part of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to what my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary and I said in the course of the Debate on 18th October. With regard to the second part, I had received no representations about the men mentioned before the question appeared on the Paper; but their cases are now being dealt with in accordance with the general statement which I made in this House on 10th October in reply to a question by the hon. Member for North Galway.
Lahinch is doomed unless £16,000 can be expended on defences to cheek the ravages of the sea. Slowly but surely it is giving way before the battering of the Atlantic, writes an ‘Irish Independent’ special representative in mid-February.
Permanent defences must, be erected, because patchwork is only a waste of time and money. This is the opinion of experts and of residents who are watching with growing apprehension the estimated yearly inroads of four yards along the beach.
Only one who has visited the place can appreciate the terrific force of the waves here. Giant breakers are pounding relentlessly against the promenade wall, and heavy stones dislodged from a high cliff about 310 yards away are being hurled against it with a force that only the most massive defences could withstand.
The past winter. has been one of the worst experienced in Lahinch within living memory.
The long, high ridge of stones and shingle at the western end of the promenade has been, I was told, pushed back about 15 or 20 yards by the sea during the past few months. During high tides or storms waves break on top of it and are carried inland in clouds, of spray. Soon, it is feared, the sea will claim the low-lying land at the back and cut off the famous golf course from the town. In places at the back of the links the sea has eaten in up to 50 yards, I was told, during the past 25 years.
Mountainous Seas.
So mountainous has the sea been here since Christmas that not only have the waves come over the promenade, 27 feet high, on several occasions, but the spray has fallen in showers on the roofs and chimneys of houses — some of them three storeys high. The sea has even coursed along one of tho principal streets, and 25 yards away from the promenade edge has torn, up the tarred surface of the road, compelling householders to build temporary defences outside their floors.
In one untenanted house facing the Atlantic steel shutters are used outside the timber shutters to keep out the waves, but they offer poor resistance, being dislodged almost every night. Only by constant vigilance during the past month has the town been saved.
On one occasion about a fortnight ago the sea was prevented from breaking through by workers throwing dozens of bags of sand into a break suddenly created. Had the sea got through, residents are convinced that half the town would have been swept away.
Because the ground is much lower to the back, and as many houses are built on a sandy foundation, they would fall an easy prey to the sea.
Constant Repair Work
‘They talk about Greystones and other places,’ said Mr, Considine, a County Council clerk of works, ‘but here you have the full force of the Atlantic.’ He was in charge of a gang of men carrying out a slow and most laborious work. In the hope of preventing the sea from eating under the promenade, they arc putting down concrete protections. To prevent the tide from carrying away the day’s work during the night, it has to be covered with timber, and two feet of shingle and stones, all of which has to be removed every morning before work can be begun. Were it not for the constant attention of Mr. Considine and his workers, one can conjecture what the fate of Lahinch would be.
The. people have now centred all their hopes on tho Coast Erosion Committee, because the financial resources of the County Council are -unable to cope with this most difficult problem.
This famous beauty spot is almost solely dependent on visitors. Over 2000 persons are often present during golf tournaments. So much do the people fear the headway tho sea has made in recent years that all new houses, are now being built a considerable distance inland.
County Surveyor’s Opinion
‘There is no doubt about it, Lahinch must go if the Government do not build sea defences there,’ said Mr. F. Dowling, County Surveyor, to me. ‘And even if they ‘ do build them the place will be still in danger; but I would like to see the defences tested.
Every year, since the winter of 1923 when two houses had to be vacated, the County Council has spent £300 on repair work, he explained. The sand and clay on which some of the town, is built make no fight against the sea, and he did not believe that there were such seas and wind in any other part of Ireland as in Lahinch.
It was unfair, he said, to expect the rate payers to expend money here year after year. If the sea got in at the promenade it would sweep away the whole town. His estimate for the defences, which would consist of reinforced concrete, with a stone, facing, was about £16,000.
At Cappa, on the outskirts of Kilrush, the occupants of two homes are in danger of being washed out during a storm or high tide. For about a mile between Kilaysart and Labasheeda, the road along which the mail car deliveries are made is being attacked by the Shannon to such an extent that in some places there is scarcely room for one cart. Mr. Dowling ‘s proposal was to divert the road at an estimated cost of £2000, but the County Council turned that down owing to lack of funds.
At Kilkee in recent years tho sea has made tremendous caverns through the rock,and these cut clean under the road. People were living in houses over caverns and were not even aware of it. As most of Kilkee, however, is built on rock there is no immediate danger.
A Sinn Fein tribunal in County Clare sentenced three men to a fortnight’s detention on Mutton Island for refusing the tribunal’s order to rebuild farm wall which they had demolished. The constabulary learned of the incident and sent a boat to rescue the marooned three who, however, stoned their would be rescuers, declaring themselves citizens of the Irish Republic and therefore the constabulary had no authority to intervene. The constabulary withdrew. The prisoners had ample provisions.
The Burren and Beyond 