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    Are you a True Gael or a West Brit Poster

    €80.00
    22cm x 28cm Quite hilarious now (but deadly serious at the time) political cartoon advertising the distinctions between a "True Gael" and a "West Briton",This was published in An Phoblacht in the 1930s,which was the media arm of Sinn Fein and its chief source of distributing propaganda. West Brit, an abbreviation of West Briton, is a derogatory term for an Irish person who is perceived as being anglophilic in matters of culture or politics.[1][2][3] West Britain is a description of Ireland emphasising it as under British influence.

    History

    "West Britain" was used with reference to the Acts of Union 1800 which united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Similarly "North Britain" for Scotland used after the 1603 Union of the Crowns and the Acts of Union 1707 connected it to the Kingdom of England ("South Britain"). In 1800 Thomas Grady, a Limerick unionist, published a collection of light verse called The West Briton, while an anti-union cartoon depicted an official offering bribes and proclaiming "God save the King & his Majesty's subjects of west Britain that is to be!"In 1801 the Latin description of George III on the Great Seal of the Realm was changed from MAGNÆ BRITANNIÆ FRANCIÆ ET HIBERNIÆ REX "King of Great Britain, France and Ireland" to BRITANNIARUM REX "King of the Britains", dropping the claim to the French throne and describing Great Britain and Ireland as "the Britains". Irish unionist MP Thomas Spring Rice (later Lord Monteagle of Brandon) said on 23 April 1834 in the House of Commons in opposing Daniel O'Connell's motion for Repeal of the Union, "I should prefer the name of West Britain to that of Ireland".Rice was derided by Henry Grattan later in the same debate: "He tells us, that he belongs to England, and designates himself as a West Briton."Daniel O'Connell himself used the phrase at a pro-Repeal speech in Dublin in February 1836:
    The people of Ireland are ready to become a portion of the empire, provided they be made so in reality and not in name alone; they are ready to become a kind of West Britons, if made so in benefits and justice; but if not, we are Irishmen again.
    Here, O'Connell was hoping that Ireland would soon become as prosperous as "North Britain" had become after 1707, but if the Union did not deliver this, then some form of Irish home rule was essential. The Dublin administration as conducted in the 1830s was, by implication, an unsatisfactory halfway house between these two ideals, and as a prosperous "West Britain" was unlikely, home rule was the rational best outcome for Ireland. "West Briton" next came to prominence in a pejorative sense during the land struggle of the 1880s. D. P. Moran, who founded The Leader in 1900, used the term frequently to describe those who he did not consider sufficiently Irish. It was synonymous with those he described as "Sourfaces", who had mourned the death of the Queen Victoria in 1901. It included virtually all Church of Ireland Protestants and those Catholics who did not measure up to his definition of "Irish Irelanders". In 1907, Canon R. S. Ross-Lewin published a collection of loyal Irish poems under the pseudonym "A County of Clare West Briton", explaining the epithet in the foreword:
    Now, what is the exact definition and up-to-date meaning of that term? The holder of the title may be descended from O'Connors and O'Donelans and ancient Irish Kings. He may have the greatest love for his native land, desirous to learn the Irish language, and under certain conditions to join the Gaelic League. He may be all this, and rejoice in the victory of an Irish horse in the "Grand National", or an Irish dog at "Waterloo", or an Irish tug-of-war team of R.I.C. giants at Glasgow or Liverpool, but, if he does not at the same time hate the mere Saxon, and revel in the oft resuscitated pictures of long past periods, and the horrors of the penal laws he is a mere "West Briton", his Irish blood, his Irish sympathies go for nothing. He misses the chief qualifications to the ranks of the "Irish best", if he remains an imperialist, and sees no prospect of peace or happiness or return of prosperity in the event of the Union being severed. In this sense, Lord Roberts, Lord Charles Beresford and hundreds of others, of whom all Irishmen ought to be proud, are "West Britons", and thousands who have done nothing for the empire, under the just laws of which they live, who, perhaps, are mere descendants of Cromwell's soldiers, and even of Saxon lineage, with very little Celtic blood in their veins, are of the "Irish best".
    Ernest Augustus Boyd's 1924 collection Portraits: real and imaginary included "A West Briton", which gave a table of West-Briton responses to keywords:
    Word Response
    Sinn Féin Pro-German
    Irish Vulgar
    England Mother-country
    Green Red
    Nationality Disloyalty
    Patriotism O.B.E.
    Self-determination Czecho-Slovakia
    According to Boyd, "The West Briton is the near Englishman ... an unfriendly caricature, the reductio ad absurdum of the least attractive English characteristics. ... The best that can be said ... is that the species is slowly becoming extinct. ... nationalism has become respectable". The opposite of the "West Briton" Boyd called the "synthetic Gael". After the independence of the Irish Free State, "West British" was applied mainly to anglophile Roman Catholics, the small number of Catholic unionists, as Protestants were expected to be naturally unionists. This was not automatic, since there were, and are, also Anglo-Irish Protestants favouring Irish republicanism (see Protestant Irish nationalism).

    Contemporary usage

    "Brit" meaning "British person", attested in 1884, is pejorative in Irish usage, though used as a value-neutral colloquialism in Great Britain. During the Troubles, among nationalists "the Brits" specifically meant the British Army in Northern Ireland. "West Brit" is today used by Irish people, chiefly within Ireland, to criticise a variety of perceived faults of other Irish people: Not all people so labelled may actually be characterised by these stereotypical views and habits. Public perception and self-identity can vary. During his 2011 presidential campaign, Sinn Féin candidate Martin McGuinness criticised what he called West Brit elements of the media, who he said were out to undermine his attempt to win the election. He later said it was an "off-the-cuff remark" but did not define for the electorate what (or who) he had meant by the term. On the other hand, Irish-born entertainer Terry Wogan, who spent most of his career in Britain working for the BBC, cheerfully described himself as a West Brit:
    I'm an effete, urban Irishman. I was an avid radio listener as a boy, but it was the BBC, not RTÉ. I was a West Brit from the start. ... I'm a kind of child of the Pale. ... I think I was born to succeed here [in the UK]; I have much more freedom than I had in Ireland.
    Wogan became a dual citizen of Ireland and the UK, and was eventually knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

    Similar terms

    Castle Catholic was applied more specifically by Republicans to middle-class Catholics assimilated into the pro-British establishment, after Dublin Castle, the centre of the British administration. Sometimes the exaggerated pronunciation spelling Cawtholic was used to suggest an accent imitative of British Received Pronunciation. These identified Catholic unionists whose involvement in the British system was the whole aim of O'Connell's Emancipation Act of 1829. Having and exercising their new legal rights under the Act, Castle Catholics were then rather illogically being pilloried by other Catholics for exercising them to the full. The old-fashioned word shoneen (from Irish: Seoinín, diminutive of Seán, thus literally 'Little John', and apparently a reference to John Bull) was applied to those who emulated the homes, habits, lifestyle, pastimes, clothes, and zeitgeist of the Protestant Ascendancy. P. W. Joyce's English As We Speak It in Ireland defines it as "a gentleman in a small way: a would-be gentleman who puts on superior airs." A variant since c. 1840, jackeen ('Little Jack'), was used in the countryside in reference to Dubliners with British sympathies; it is a pun, substituting the nickname Jack for John, as a reference to the Union Jack, the British flag. In the 20th century, jackeen took on the more generalized meaning of "a self-assertive worthless fellow".

    Antonyms

    The term is sometimes contrasted with Little Irelander, a derogatory term for an Irish person who is seen as excessively nationalistic, Anglophobic and xenophobic, sometimes also practising a strongly conservative form of Roman Catholicism. This term was popularised by Seán Ó Faoláin."Little Englander" had been an equivalent term in British politics since about 1859. An antonym of jackeen, in its modern sense of an urban (and strongly British-influenced) Dubliner, is culchie, referring to a stereotypical Irish person of the countryside (and rarely pro-British).
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  • Ballaghaderreen Anti conscription Poster from 1918

    €90.00
    Superb historical,anti conscription poster from 1918 publicising an event at the sports filed in Ballaghaderreen on Sunday June 23rd 1918 with Countess Plunkett amongst others in attendance . Ballaghaderreen Co Roscommon  48cm x 38cm The Conscription Crisis of 1918 stemmed from a move by the British government to impose conscription (military draft) in Ireland in April 1918 during the First World War. Vigorous opposition was led by trade unions, Irish nationalist parties and Roman Catholic bishops and priests. A conscription law was passed but was never put in effect; no one in Ireland was drafted into the British Army. The proposal and backlash galvanised support for political parties which advocated Irish separatism and influenced events in the lead-up to the Irish War of Independence.

    Background

    See also: Ireland and World War I and History of the United Kingdom during World War I
    In early 1918, the British Army was dangerously short of troops for the Western Front. In the German Spring Offensive of 1918, German troops broke through the Alliedlines in several sectors of the front in France, with a local advantage in numbers of four to one, putting severe strain on the Allied armies.The British Army, in one day, suffered a major setback, with the Imperial German Army over-running 98 square miles (250 km2) of territory and penetrating, at the furthest point, to a depth of four and a half miles (7 km). Conscription in Great Britain had already been established by the Military Service Act of January 1916, which came into effect a few weeks later in March 1916. By 1918 David Lloyd George was Prime Minister, leading a coalition government, and in addressing a very grave military situation it was decided to use a new 'Military Service Bill' to extend conscription to Ireland and also to older men and further groups of workers in Britain, thus reaching untapped reserves of manpower. Although large numbers of Irishmen had willingly joined Irish regiments and divisions of the New Army at the outbreak of war in 1914, the likelihood of enforced conscription created a backlash. This reaction was based particularly on the fact that, in a "dual policy", Lloyd George controversially linked implementation of the Government of Ireland Act 1914 or a new Home Rule Bill (as previously recommended in March by the Irish Convention) with enactment of the Military Service Bill. This had the effect of alienating both nationalists and unionists in Ireland. The linking of conscription and Home Rule outraged the Irish nationalist parties at Westminster, including the IPP, All-for-Ireland League and others, who walked out in protest and returned to Ireland to organise opposition.Despite opposition from the entire Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), conscription for Ireland was voted through at Westminster, becoming part of the 'Military Service (No. 2) Act, 1918'  Although the crisis was unique to Ireland at the time, it followed similar campaigns in Australia (1916–17) and Canada (1917). In Australia, Irish Catholics mostly opposed conscription; in Canada (and the US), Irish Catholics supported conscription. The threat of conscription resulted in a plan, proposed by Cathal Brugha, to assassinate British cabinet members in April 1918, before they could vote on conscription (or as reprisal for having done so). Though the plan was never carried through, the stress of the plan reputedly had a significant impact on the republicans involved.

    Conferences and pledge

     
    The nine Anti-Conscription Committee members
    On 18 April 1918, acting on a resolution of Dublin Corporation, the Lord Mayor of Dublin (Laurence O'Neill) held a conference at the Mansion House, Dublin. The Irish Anti-Conscription Committee was convened to devise plans to resist conscription, and represented different sections of nationalist opinion: John Dillon and Joseph Devlin for the Irish Parliamentary Party, Éamon de Valera and Arthur Griffith for Sinn Féin, William O'Brien and Timothy Michael Healy for the All-for-Ireland Party and Michael Egan, Thomas Johnson and William O'Brien representing Labour and the trade unions. On the evening of the same day, the Roman Catholic bishops were holding their annual meeting and declared the conscription decree an oppressive and unjust law, calling on the Church's adherents to resist "by the most effective means at our disposal" (if "consonant with the law of God.") The Anti-Conscription Committee and bishops proposed an anti-conscription pledge that was to be taken at the church door of every Roman Catholic parish the next Sunday, 21 April, which read:
    Denying the right of the British government to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist conscription by the most effective means at our disposal.

    Strikes and other actions in Ireland

    Following their representation at the Mansion House, the labour movement made its own immediate and distinctive contribution to the anti-conscription campaign. A one-day general strike was called in protest, and on 23 April 1918, work was stopped in railways, docks, factories, mills, theatres, cinemas, trams, public services, shipyards, newspapers, shops, and even Government munitions factories. The strike was described as "complete and entire, an unprecedented event outside the continental countries". In the following weeks, anti-conscription rallies were held nationwide, with 15,000 people attending a meeting in County Roscommon at the start of May, where John Dillon, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and Éamon de Valera of Sinn Féin shared the platform. This in itself is notable as, while sharing nationalist views, Dillon and de Valera's parties had previously been divided in opinion as to the means of gaining legislative or complete independence from the United Kingdom. On 11 June Dublin's Lord Mayor, Laurence O'Neill, in a letter to the President of the United States Woodrow Wilson called for support against conscription:In the fourth year of a war ostensibly begun for the defence of small nations, a law conscribing the manhood of Ireland has been passed, in defiance of the wishes of our people .... To warrant the coercive statute, no recourse was had to the electorate of Britain, much less to that in Ireland. Yet the measure was forced through within a week, despite the votes of Irish representatives and under a system of closure never applied to the debates, which established conscription for Great Britain on a milder basis. Over a year earlier Wilson had introduced the Selective Service Act of 1917; by June 1917 it enabled the registration of all American men aged between 21 and 31 for conscription.

    "German plot"

    Dillon on platform during Roscommon anti-conscription rally in 1918
    Nervous of growing unrest and still with dire need to progress conscription in Ireland, Lloyd George's government undertook several initiatives to quell the backlash. As Sinn Féin was publicly perceived to be the key instigator of anti-government and anti-conscription feeling, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Lord French, claiming evidence of a treasonable plot between Sinn Féin and the Germans, ordered the arrest of 73 Sinn Féin leaders, including Griffith and de Valera, on 17 May. The heavy-handed response by the Dublin Castle authorities did little to defuse the situation. In fact, because of the lack of evidence, the German Plot was little believed in Great Britain, Ireland or the United States, but aggravated opinion and increased support for Sinn Féin.

    Hay Plan

    Simultaneously, a more subtle effort (and assessed by later historians as having more potential for success)was undertaken from the offices of Lord Northcliffe under the Minister of Information. The "Hay Plan" was conceived by Stuart Hay—a British Army Captain, who was under orders to establish a proposal to work around widespread anti-conscription feeling and to persuade Irish nationalists to join the French army (initially as labourers in specialised battalions). Hay's plan relied on the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland (and empathy among its supporters for fellow Catholics in Belgium and France suffering from German invasion), to sway opinion:
    If the church were definitely or even in a large measure converted and the support it has given to disloyal elements be not taken away but thrown on to the other side in the controversy [the conscription crisis], much would be done for the future of the peace in Ireland.
    — Stuart Hay
    The plan simply called for a letter (drafted by Hay and approved by Edward Shortt and then Chief Secretary for Ireland) to be sent by the French Primate to the Irish bishops, requesting that they soften their opposition to conscription to aid the war effort in France. Despite some progress in August in persuading Primate of All Ireland Cardinal Logue, the "Hay Plan" was delayed and ultimately stymied by complications in diplomatic channels and by political rivalries. The latter included concerns by some in the British Parliament that reciprocal French support of Irish interests would not be to Britain's advantage after the war. In France, the German Spring Offensive and its following attacks had failed by July, and the Allies counterattacked successfully at the Second Battle of the Marne and the Hundred Days Offensive. Recruitment efforts through September and October continued to have very limited success, and by the time of the November Armistice, marking the end of World War I, conscription had still not been implemented in Ireland.

    After-effects

    By June 1918 it had become apparent to most observers in Britain and Ireland that following American entry into the war the tide of war had changed in favour of the Allied armies in Europe, and by 20 June the Government had dropped its conscription and home rule plans, given the lack of agreement of the Irish Convention. However the legacy of the crisis remained. Completely ineffectual as a means to bolster battalions in France, the events surrounding the Conscription Crisis were disastrous for the Dublin Castle authorities, and for the more moderate nationalist parties in Ireland. The delay in finding a resolution to the home rule issue, partly caused by the war, and exaggerated by the Conscription Crisis in Ireland, all increased support for Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin's association (in the public perception at least) with the 1916 Easter Rising and the anti-conscription movement, directly and indirectly led on to their landslide victory over (and effective elimination of) the Irish Parliamentary Party, the formation of the first Dáil Éireann and in turn to the outbreak of the Anglo-Irish War in 1919. This opposition also led in part to Sinn Féin being ignored by the subsequent victors at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, despite its electoral success. It appointed representatives who moved to Paris and several times requested a place at the conference, with recognition of the Irish Republic, but never received a reply. The crisis was also a watershed in Ulster Unionism's relations with Nationalist Ireland, as expressed by Unionist leader James Craig: "for Ulster Unionists the conscription crisis was the final confirmation that the aspirations of Nationalists and Unionists were irreconcilable.

    Voluntary enlistment

    Memorial to casualties of Irish volunteer regiments at Island of Ireland Peace Park
    The bulk of opposition to the Great War in Ireland was to compulsory conscription, not to the war nor to voluntary enlistment in the British Army. In fact, many Irish supported the war and Irish involvement. Support and enlistment were more prominent amongst Irish Unionist and Protestant traditions, but nationalist and Roman Catholic enlistment was also common, as the war was seen to be fought in defence of smaller Catholic countries like occupied Belgium. In this cause, those who would later become detractors of conscription (including John Dillon, William O'Brien and the Roman Catholic bishops) were prominent on recruitment platforms at the outbreak of the war. In all, 200,000 to 300,000 Irishmen served with British forces during the Great War, and, of the 680,000 fatalities from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, some 40,000 to 49,000were from Ireland. In all about 12.3 per cent of Irish men of service age actually served, approximately 25 per cent of the rate in the rest of the UK; 57 per cent of them were Roman Catholics.
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  • Beautiful WW1 print of a smiling Irish soldier-Its a long long way to Tipperary

    €150.00
    Very charming and interesting print of a smiling Irish soldier with a pipe in his mouth on his way to the front during WW1.Over 200,000 Irishmen served with the British Armed Forces in WW1 with more than 50,000 fatalities .The song Its a long long way to Tipperary became the song of the War with even the Germans singing a translated version in their own trenches after Count John McCormack recorded the definitive version in 1914.This print hung in a pub in Tipperary owned by an old woman whose father and two uncles were all killed during the carnage of the First World War. Cahir Co Tipperary   52cm x 42cm
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  • Bloody Sunday Photo Collage 1920

    €80.00
    35cm x 50cm Limerick

    loody Sunday, 21st November 1920

     In 1920 the War of Independence was ongoing in Ireland.

    On the morning of November 21st, an elite assassination unit known as ‘The Squad’ mounted an operation planned by Michael Collins, Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Their orders were clear – they were to take out the backbone of the British Intelligence network in Ireland, specifically a group of officers known as ‘The Cairo Gang’. The shootings took place in and around Dublin’s south inner city and resulted in fourteen deaths, including six intelligence agents and two members of the British Auxiliary Force. Later that afternoon, Dublin were scheduled to play Tipperary in a one-off challenge match at Croke Park, the proceeds of which were in aid of the Republican Prisoners Dependents Fund. Tensions were high in Dublin due to fears of a reprisal by Crown forces following the assassinations. Despite this a crowd of almost 10,000 gathered in Croke Park. Throw-in was scheduled for 2.45pm, but it did not start until 3.15pm as crowd congestion caused a delay.
    Dublin Team, Bloody Sunday 1920
    Eye-witness accounts suggest that five minutes after the throw-in an aeroplane flew over Croke Park. It circled the ground twice and shot a red flare - a signal to a mixed force of Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.), Auxiliary Police and Military who then stormed into Croke Park and opened fire on the crowd. Amongst the spectators, there was a rush to all four exits, but the army stopped people from leaving the ground and this created a series of crushes around the stadium. Along the Cusack Stand side, hundreds of people braved the twenty-foot drop and jumped into the adjacent Belvedere Sports Grounds. The shooting lasted for less than two minutes. That afternoon in Croke Park, 14 people including one player (Michael Hogan from Tipperary), lost their lives. It is estimated that 60 – 100 people were injured.
    Tipperary Team, Bloody Sunday 1920
    The names of those who died in Croke Park on Bloody Sunday 1920 were. James Burke, Jane Boyle, Daniel Carroll, Michael Feery, Michael Hogan, Thomas (Tom) Hogan, James Matthews, Patrick O’Dowd, Jerome O’Leary, William (Perry) Robinson, Tom Ryan, John William (Billy) Scott, James Teehan, Joseph Traynor. In 1925, the GAA's Central Council took the decision to name a stand in Croke Park after Michael Hogan. The 21st November 2020 marks one hundred years since the events of Bloody Sunday in Croke Park.
    Michael Hogan
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  • Capel St Dublin Original Cast Iron Street Sign

    Fire damaged but still robustly intact cast iron Capel St street sign .This pieced of Dublin history was acquired in the UK where the story goes a former British soldier brought it home as a souvenir after extracting it from the post 1916 Easter rising burning rubble.Whether this anecdote is true or not, we feel this is a unique and once off item not to be missed ! For further information on pricing and shipping costs please contact us directly at irishpubemporium@gmail.com 60cm x 14cm 5kg It is sometimes claimed that the street takes its name from the chapel of St Mary's Abbey; other Capel Streets may be named after chapels, but this one is named after Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1672–1677. Built by Sir Humphrey Jervis in the late 17th century, he also built Essex Bridge (today Grattan Bridge), and the street was known for its mansions and a royal mint. In the 18th century, it became a commercial hub, with two-bay buildings replacing the "Dutch Billy" houses.The Capel Street Theatre also stood there in the 18th century. The Torch Theatre operated on Capel Street in 1935–41. The street declined in the 20th century, before a revival around the 1980s. Today it is known for its variety of restaurants, shops, cafés and pubs; as Panti, the owner of Pantibar put it, "You can buy a lightbulb, sexual lubricant, Brazilian rice, get a pint and go to a trad session." Louis Copeland's tailor is another notable business.
    • Berlin Optician, 157 Capel Street
    • Site of the Torch Theatre, 114–116 Capel Street
    • Slattery's Bar, 129 Capel Street
    • Jack Nealon's pub, 165 Capel Street
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  • Charles J Haughey Fianna Fáil 1980s Election Poster

    €140.00
    Original Fianna Fail Charles J Haughey Election Poster from the 1980s.Anyone who remembers the period of Irish Life when Charlie held sway over the country will either look at this poster with fond admiration or in horror -there is no middle ground !The most polarising and controversial figure of modern Irish history. Dublin       83cm x 63cm
    When, after protracted negotiations, numerous disappointments and postponements, you finally get to interview Charles J. Haughey, it emerges that the procedure is slightly differenet than with other interviews. First of all Charles J. Haughey interviews you. This, presumably, is so that he can reassure himself that you're not the kind of person who's going to come out with what is eloquently summed up by his colourful press secretary P.J. Mara as "any of that Arms Trial shite." P.J. is very good on the subject of what happens when people do. Or when they confront The Boss with Sean Doherty, telephone tapping and tape-recorders. "The shutters come down," says P.J., illustrating graphically with both hands the downward motion of imaginary shutters descending to obscure Charles J. Haughey's face. "The fuse starts to burn. And then you've had it." ***** "You like very MI5-ish," says C.J. Haughey as he rises to greet the Hot Pressreporter. His right hand is pressed against the left side of his midriff; either he's trying to look Napoleonic or the stomach is at him. "What in the name of Jazus do you want to talk to me about?" Haughey's tone is one of wearied resignation, leavened with a sizable dollop of friendliness. P.J. Mara points out that all the details were in the letter he gave him a few weeks ago. "What letter?" Haughey demand blankly. "You gave me no letter. You never give me anything!" His gaze, mischievous but unflinching, meets P.J.'s head on. He knows that P.J. knows that he knows that in all probability P.J. did give him the letter. P.J. keeps his counsel. It's explained to Haughey that rather than dealing with the nitty gritty of issues and policies - his views on which are already well documented - the interview will be personal in emphasis. We would like to talk to him about issues affecting young people in modern Ireland but with particular reference to his own experiences as an, ahem, young person. A flicker of a smile breaks through Haughey's blank, quizzical expression. "Sure I'd never be able to remember that far back! That's a long time ago." What kind of "issues"? Crime, vandalism... "Well what could I say about that?" he thinks out loud. "I don't think I could say that I approve of youngsters knocking off BMW's and so on," he muses. "Although, I must admit, I always had a hidden desire to do something like that! I don't suppose I could say anything like that, now could I?" Hardly. "What kind of other issues?" The drug problem... "Sex?" he asks and smiles sardonically. The reporter takes the opportunity to stress that the whole point of the interview is to portray the lighter, more personal side of Charles Haughey, which doesn't normally come across in the media. Most people see him as an austere individual. "Oh but I am austere" he responds, deadpan. "Deep down I'm very austere." There isn't the merest flicker of a smile. The reporter meets his stare, wondering if he's supposed to laugh. He does. So does Charles J. Haughey. The reporter, it appears, has passed the audition, and the interview is duly arranged for the following Monday, which as it happens is the day that Garret Fitzgerald and Margaret Thatcher are due to have their now infamous summit meeting. "What other people have you interviewed?" Haughey enquires. The reporter does a quick mental check, in search of some respectable names to drop. For some odd reason he mentions Christy Moore. "Ah, he's a bit of a rebel, isn't he?" remarks Charles J. Haughey. "Christy wants to change the world!" He pauses. "I gave up trying to change the world a long time ago." You were born in Castlebar. How much do you remember about it? "Well, I was only born in Castlebar. I left at a stage I don't even remember. As a child I lived in Dublin, to all intents and purposes. I also spent a lot of summer holidays in the north, in my grandmother's house. It was a small farm and I got a very good insight there of life on a small farm and of the social life and economics of small farming. And I also got a very clear impression of the community situation in Northern Ireland - how the Catholic small farmers viewed their Protestant neighbours and how they lived with them. But all my life, really, was spent in Dublin. I mean, I'm a Dublin person. Were you very bright at school? "I'm afraid I was, yes. In those days there used to be a Dublin Corporation scholarship at primary school level, and I got first in Dublin. You went to the Christian Brothers. They had quite a reputation in those days for violence towards pupils... "I would reject that. I liked school. By and large, the games at school made up for the less attractive side of it. If you did something particularly awful or outrageous, you got the leather, but it certainly left no lasting scars on me. It was just something of momentary importance. Tomorrow was a new day and the school would be playing Brunner - which was Brunswick Street - in the Phoenix Park, and you'd be off to that. What other kind of pastimes did you have? "Well the main preoccupation in life was football and hurling - playing for the school and later for Vincent's and Parnell's. At a younger stage in my life I used to take up things like birdnesting - collecting bird's eggs maybe. What else did we do? We went to the pictures once a week - if we had the money. KIds those days didn't have any money." What kind of films did you like? "Well now...(pause)They're all jumbled up in my mind. Cowboy films were the big deal. People like Gene Autrey and things like that. Then, later on, I suppose, Humphrey Bogart and things like that. War films. Do you go to the cinema nowadays? "No. (Shakes head) very rarely." Can you remember the last film you went to? "No (laughs) I don't know." What was it like to be a teenager in your day? "When I was a teenager, the war was on, so the whole environment was totally different. Of course there were no motor cars. Everybody went on bikes. The whole country was down to subsistence level. You couldn't leave the country - there was no foreign travel. Young people today know absolutely nothing about it. (Pause) But it wasn't all that terrible. Looking back on it now you'd think it must've been awful, but it wasn't really." There wouldn't have been a lot of teenage crime in those days... "No. Almost certainly not. Literally, we only saw a policeman when he came to stop us playing football on the road! Of course we robbed orchards and things like that, but there was no great tension about it." Do you think the advantages outweighed the disadvantages, that it was a better time to be growing up than today? "Ah, no. (Pauses) I wouldn't say it had any advantages, to be honest with you. I think teenagers today have a great time. I don't mean just now, in the middle of this terrible economic recession, but for a long period post-war, most of them had a great time - great opportunities, all sorts of new things: television, the exploration of space and all these things. And they had a thing that we never could have as teenagers, foreign travel. We just couldn't leave the country - unless you wanted to go off and join the British army, and fight in the war!" What are your recollections of the war? "The big thing was the number of one's friends that went off to join the British army. Because there was no work. You either joined the Irish army or the British army. And kids, if they were in a rebellious mood, and were, y'know rowing with their teachers or parents, they'd go "Fuck you! I'll go off and join the British army if you don't appreciate me or treat me properly!" Did you ever try that one? "No, I never said that. I was in the L.D.F. and the F.C.A. subsequently." As a young man, did you have any inkling that one day you might end up as Taoiseach? "No. Not in the slightest." You weren't aware of being different or special in any way? "Oh Jesus Christ, no!! (Laughs)" What difference do you notice between young people nowadays and back then? "Well, the big difference is that young people today have far more confidence. Admittedly they're probably very depressed immediately now, about job prospects and so on. But apart from that, they have far more self-reliance and confidence than we ever had. They're a more sure generation. Our outlook, our scope, our dimensions were very limited. When I was young, you were very restricted in terms of careers. You dedicated yourself to the Civil Service or teaching, or whatever. It was all very regimented. It was very important to have what was known as a "good job". But young people today have none of those inhibitions. They couldn't give a damn about anything like that. And also, the way they dress: in our day it was very important to wear the right kind of clothes - you had to have a suit and tie and so on; nowadays kids are quite happy to go around in a pair of jeans and a jumper. "I think young people today are fabulous. I love to be with young people. They make me feel good. I love their attitude to life. " What advice would you give to young people who feel depressed by the current economic climate? "Well the first thing I'd say to them is "stay here". I don't think it's any better anywhere else. I know a lot of my son Ciaran's friends are now in New York. There's a lot of young Irish people now opting for that sort of sub-stratum in New York or maybe London - they're working as barmen and waiters and waitresses and that sort of thing. But what I would say to young people is: "Stay, if you possibly can." I think that this present situation is a temporary aberration, a loss of direction, a loss of will and a loss of political leadership, and that there is, and that there is, there must be, a future here. I know that a lot of them are fed up doing courses training for jobs that aren't there. (Pause) On the other hand, we're moving into a technological world - computers and electronics and so on. It's a world that's very foreign to me. I don't understand it. Like my kids now - they treat me like a semi-imbecile, because I don't know how to work tape-recorders and videos, and record things! And, y'know, when I'm going out and there's a programme on television that I want to record on the video, I have to get one of them to do it. They say: "Ah, go away! Leave it to me. I'll do it for you!" "So that, it's their world. And I think we're very, very fortunately placed in Ireland in that whole area. We've a small population and it's an intelligent population. It's well-educated. And, as I said, I think they're terribly confident and self-assured in a way that we weren't in our day. And they have a far better grasp on the world and don't mind getting in an aeroplane and going to Germany or the United States. When you think about it, our total workforce is a million - which is nothing, if you take it that the normal running of the country takes the vast bulk of them. So you're really only dealing with a couple of hundred thousand people, and that's not a lot to train and educate for these new technological industries." Have you studied the report of the National Youth Policy Committee? "Ah, no. I know exactly what I want for young people and I don't need any committee to tell me. I know, from my own constituency, what's needed: they need plenty of facilities - sporting facilities, particularly. I'm a bit old fashioned: I really believe that kids who are into sport - football, hurling, racing, any good sporting activity - never get into drugs or anything else. It's a simple thing I've always found. Didn't have time! So I believe in giving them everything possible for sports and recreational activities. That's the first thing. And then jobs: give them the training for the very best scientific and technical jobs. It's been proved that, far from being intimidated by this technical stuff, it's a cake-walk for them. Kids have taken to playing with computers now. I'd be afraid of them! I just couldn't do it. And that's a tremendous thing: what should be a great, big intimidating, fearsome new world, is in fact child's play to them. So I'd get them a hundred million pre cent into all that technological and science-related area." "After that, I'd love to see every single young person having some creative side to their life. I think a whole new dimension has to be grafted onto our educational system, to try and get every youngster into doing something in a creative sense." Do you subscribe to the current viewpoint which sees our large young population as some kind of "problem"? "I don't know. I don't think so, basically. It's hard to say. There are a lot of young people around now. Y'know? You go through towns and streets - like where I live in Malahide - and it's crawling with young people. Drive through the country - there's young people everywhere. And therefore, to that extent, our society is presumably more volatile than an older, more conservative, settled type of society. Ant that's bringing changes, there's no doubt about that. But I don't think that there's any...I wouldn't be all that worried about an explosion. Y'see, if you go back, all the campuses in America were exploding and you had the French situation - well that's all suddenly changed. There's a big reversal, I think now, among young people. They've become much more cautious - not conservative. But much more committed to trying to find their own way in life, rather than trying to change society. Somebody told me they were in U.C.D. recently, and they were astonished at how conservative the place had become - not conservative really, but how settled down it has become, how serious everybody is." Yes. The '80s seems to be a complete revesal of the '60s? "Oh, a total reversal. I think that's true, isn't it?" You'd have been in your mid-thirties at the beginning of the '60s. Were you aware of the Beatles and all that stuff? "Oh very much. Well. Y'see, I experienced all through my children. I saw what they were doing and what they were interested in. So I was very aware of it. Not part of it, but very conscious of what was happening and what was affecting young people and what their interests were. And I could see the amazing changes in them, between them and me as a young fellow." Did you go to dances as a teenager? "Oh yes. The local dances in the local halls. Much the same as they are now. There wasn't such a thing as a disco as far as I know. Just a band, y'know? Dance bands." What kinds of music? "American music, largely. American jazz and American music. One of the big things that came in my lifetime was the swingback to traditional music and folk songs, the Dubliners and all that. When I was young, that sort of thing wasn't happening. The Clancy Brothers started all of that, I think." What do you think of the current adulation of pop stars? "I think it's perfectly understandable. Kids always related to someone. We idolised somebody - I don't even remember who it was - some female filmstar. I can't even remember their names now! (Laughs) But we sort of related to them and idolised them and worshipped them. A big deal! And it's not any different now. No. I understand that completely." It is, perhaps, slightly different insofar as the modern day stars like Boy George and so on wear make up and dresses and are openly bisexual. "Yeah, but there's also a tremendous following for people like the Dubliners. Ronnie Drew. And my friends The Fureys - they have their own following, and...Ah no, there's a sort of a healthy disparateness about the whole thing. I mean what was the last fellow in Croke Park there now? Or Slane Castle? Y'know? I totally appreciate and understand that. My kids go to that." What do you think of Boy George? "I don't know anything about him. He seems a bit weird. But most of them, I think are top class musicians and professional artists." You like the Fureys a lot? "I love the Fureys. I think they're great. My favourite piece of music is "The Lonesome Boatman" as you know. But I also think the Chieftains are fabulous. I'd go anywhere to hear the Chieftains and the Dubliners, and most of those." What about the Wolfe Tones? "Yeah. I like them. They're a bit of the ould rabble-rousin', but sure they're alright! (Laughs) They've a very sort of limited medium, haven't they? What about country and western? Do you like that at all? "No (Shakes head) I don't. I never hear it. (Laughs) I don't know if I should say that, because Paschal Mooney is on the National Executive of Fianna Fail!" Do you think that there should be some mechanism to allow young people a quicker access to politics? "Politics is not the Boy Scouts! It's a bit of a haul. And I think, per se it has to be; you've to sort of win your spurs and fight your way through. It's like anything: it's like what we were talking about - music and the entertainment world. It's a long, hard haul: most of the guys who are at the top have served out a pretty tough, demanding apprenticeship. And politics is the same. Experience counts a lot in politics. I don't mean that we all have to be like the Chinese: eighty years of age and very wise. But you have to find your way and get to know and handle people." Young people are very cynical about politics and politicians. "But sure, everybody hates politicians! (Laughs) Old people are not any different. The ordinary guy in the pub thinks politicians are all useless and crooked and so on. That's not confined to young people. That's a healthy cynicism and distrust which most modern democracies - and certainly the Irish people - have always had, at all ages." Do you think that the Irish are a particularly political race? "They're tremendous politicians, the Irish people. They're fascinated with politics. The ordinary guy in the pub can talk more intelligently and more wisely and with more depth about politics than anybody in any country in the world. Certainly he's about fifty times ahead of his bovine English counterpart, who knows about Margaret Thatcher and maybe one or two others - but that's all he knows." "You see, the Irish invented American politics. The whole American system is Irish founded and based. They made the Democratic Party. Brian Lenihan is very good on this - he's made a study of it. The Irish were trained here in local politics back in the 19th Century, and when they went to the States they knew how to handle things, which most of their European counterparts didn't. The German and the French, for instance, knew nothing about democratic politics - they came from empire states. " One of the tendencies we've imported from America is the increasing emphasis on the personalities. "Yes. It's become increasingly so now, with the media. The individual politician or political leader becomes the focus, because the media haven't the interest or don't care about the issues. They're too tedious and take too much time to explain. They're much more interested in trying to hone in on A, B or C - on one person and what they're thinking and doing." You see that as a negative development? "It's a bad thing, yeah." But we Irish do seem to go for a strong personality. "Well, it's very tribal you see. In rural Ireland, particularly, you have rural Chieftains, like Blaney in Donegal and so on. I suppose it's a throwback to, a descendent from the Irish Clan/Chieftain system." Yet politicians generally come across as fairly straight-laced, humourless, one-dimensional people. "I think politicians are hard-done-by, but then everybody thinks that about their own profession, I suppose. I don't think that the criticisms of politicians are very well balanced. Nobody ever sets out to try and describe a politician in the round, and say okay, maybe he's very wrong about this, but at least he's trying to do that. But then there's no point in complaining about that. That's part of the apparatus of political life - to be attacked and criticised. Very often, in one's own view, almost continually wrongly." "And there's another thing about this, which is that the ordinary...I hate using that word but it's hard to find another. There's no such thing as 'ordinary people': there's just people but, people are not fooled by all of this. I know that I have a perfectly good relationship with my people, my constituency. They know me, I know they trust me and I think they like me. They don't think I'm a bad person or am out to do anything detrimental to them or to their interests. And that's what matters. That is the compensation for when you read something in the paper that you know is unfair - grossly unfair - and wrong. And when that happens you're inclined to get outraged and angry about it, and upset about it. But that's only passing." "But, if the day ever comes when I'm driving through the city and the busman doesn't say "Howya Charlie?" or the taxi fellow doesn't say "Hello there, how's the goin'?" - if that day comes, then I'll be upset. All this stuff in the newspapers - it does upset, I can't deny that. You'd be a particularly insensitive and inhuman sort of individual if it didn't bother you, from time to time. But it's passing. The other thing is the reality. That's the sustaining reality." What aspect of Ireland or Irish society angers you the most? "Ah, there's nothing really. I couldn't live anywhere but in Ireland. I'm not perpetually angry about anything. I might suffer minor irritations, exasperations or anger about particular things, but...no, I like living in Ireland and in the Irish community. (Here, he pauses at length and reflects, he looks me straight in the eye before continuing). I could instance a load of fuckers whose throats I'd cut and push over the nearest cliffs, but there's no percentage in that! (Laughs) "Smug people. I hate smug people. People who think they know it all. I know from my own experiences that nobody knows it all. Some of these commentators who purport to a smug knowallness, who pontificate...They'll say something today and they're totally wrong about it - completely wrong - and they're shown to be wrong about it. Then the next day they're back, pontificating the same as ever. That sort of smug, knowall commentator - I suppose if anything annoys me, that annoys me. But I don't have sleepless nights about it." Were drugs a big concern for you when you're kids were growing up? "I have to say it was more of a worry for me as a politician than as a parent. I was lucky in that I've never, never....well, I don't know what temptations my kids had to confront or to deal with, but they did whatever they were. And indeed none of their pals, that I know of, ever dropped out or became addicted or anything like that. It was just, I suppose, one of those chances of life, that they happened to be in a milieu of their own crowd, who didn't get involved in all that." On the subject of the current contraception debate: isn't it true that the actual behaviour and practice of young people has long since made the question irrelevant? "(Pause) Ah yeah, I think that's probably true enough." It's all very academic at this stage... "Yeah. (Laughs) I think so, yeah." What about in your own day? Was it like that then? "Ah now! (Laughs) To my dying day, I'll regret that I was too late for the free society! We missed out on that! It came too late for my generation!" "But yes, there was a very definite change. See, when I was young, too, authority was much more of a thing. Authority in society, in the community, in school, and of course the guards. You were afraid of the guards. Nowadays, kid's aren't: they just call them "pigs", y'know? But in my day, if a guard said to you "fuck off", you fucked off as quick as you could! There was far more authority, and that was a big change. Kids nowadays have developed their own ethos and mores. And I think we've changed as parents too. I think we were much more understanding and sympathetic to our children than our parents were to us. My mother knew what was best for me, and told me what to do, and what not to do, and insisted that I did or didn't do it. I wasn't like that with my children. We certainly trusted them far more. We felt that what you had to was just give them a home where they knew they were important, where they were loved and where they were trusted and where they could always come back to. If they made a fuck-up of things, they could always come back home and they would be welcomed and looked after and protected and helped. But our parents were different. So, not alone are young people different today, but we as parents were different to them." So is there a dichotomy there between how you would find yourself responding to issues, like contraception, as a parent, and the way you would feel obliged to respond to them as a politician? "Well.....no.(Long pause) You could exaggerate that. Y'see politics is concerned with more than just sexual morality and contraceptives and things like that. Now, mind you, these are the things that have a moreorless fatal preoccupation for journalists. It's extraordinary that for one journalist who comes to me and asks me my views on economics, or the health services, or social welfare, or the North of Ireland, there's ten that want to know what I think about contraceptives. We, in the political world are dealing with practical things. The social welfare system, for instance, looms very large in modern society - all the anomalies and the problems and the snarl-ups - that's an enormous area, and it affects far more people than the contraceptives thing." What about the Nuclear issue - how do feel about that - on a personal level? "I'm increasingly angry about it, I think it's just lunacy itself - the stockpiling of atomic weapons. Like, what's going to happen? What are they there for? Ah, I don't, I suppose, basically believe that we're all going to be wiped out tomorrow morning by a nuclear war. I suppose if any of us really believed that we'd just go and stick our heads in a gas oven. It's too awful to contemplate. Even the most grotesque film can only give you the vaguest impression of what the devastation is likely to be. So I don't suppose, basically that I really think that we're going to go up in a nuclear holocaust. But I do think that it's a very real danger." Is there anything that can be done about it? "Sometimes I like to think that you could get all the nuclear arms into one, great big rocket - remember that rocket that went away into outer space once? It was going to go around Mars once and then go away into the infinite, never to be seen again. Well, if you could put all the nuclear weapons into some sort of rocket like that. (Pauses, laughing) But, sure, when the rocket would blast off, you'd probably go up anyway! But it'd be a marvelous solution." Maybe it'd be safer if we all took off in the rocket and left the bombs here... "(Laughs) Yeah! You take your pick and I'll take mine! But what's going to happen? I don't know. (Pause) The question of nuclear waste too, and the pollution of the seas and the atmosphere is something that worries me. Not paranoiac, or dramatically, or emotionally disturbed about it, but I can understand people who are. I get increasingly angry at the failure of mankind to get to grips with it." What do you do in your spare time? "Anything that comes up of interest, I'll have a go at it. Most recently, I like to go down to my island, Inishvickillane. The main attraction of the island, apart from its natural beauty, and the wildness of it, is that we're more of a family down there. Fortunately, the kids and the wife like it as much as I do. It's as much their place as mine. I really got to know my kids better down there: in Dublin we're always coming and going. We meet tangently, coming and going out in the hall. But down there we're together, and we share experiences together. But I try and do as many things as possible. Like, for instance, my son Conor is an expert on scuba-diving, and I've got him to give me a little bit of instruction on that." Do you read much? "I do and I don't. I certainly don't read anything like as much as I should. When I was younger, and at school and that, I read and read and read and read. I just read everything. But it's so difficult: you read a review of a book and you say "I must read that". And then there's another one. There's so much going on in the world of literature that even if you had the time, it's very difficult to decide what to read. There's so much you want to read." What would you read, if you had the time? "Well, let me see now...I like history type of books - historical novels, that sort of thing. And then I'm increasingly interested in wildlife, in nature, in the sea, and all that type of thing." Do you watch much television? "No. Not very much. I think most television is tripe. Boring rubbish. To me, television is the News, or occasionally some very good documentary-type programmes. Very few. The News, some documentaries and sport." Do you ever see Dallas or any of those things? "(Laughs) I see them because I have to confess that in my home there are those who look at Dallas. And well, I might go and do a bit of work, but sometimes I might sit through it. I really think it's shit. I think it's terrible shit. But then I know that's a minority view. (Laughs) I think most people think it's shit, like, but they look at it all the same." Did you have any heroes growing up? "Well, I suppose Sean Lemass. He was the greatest human being that I ever met. Or could ever hope to meet." What is the most important quality in a friend? "Wel, there was a great word, d'ya see, that Sean Lemass in his whole life instanced but could never pronounce. Like most Dublin people, he could never pronounce "loyalty" - he always pronounced it "loylaty". And I think that's the most important thing: loyalty. A Dublin man's loylaty. Not loyalty, because that's something different. But loylaty. I think that's the most important characteristic in friends." Christmas is only a few weeks away now. Do you like Christmas? "Oh yeah! And I have to be at home for Christmas. To me, Christmas is a Dublin thing. I couldn't be anywhere else except home in Dublin for Christmas, meeting all my friends, having a drink with them, giving out presents, getting presents. I'm a sucker for Christmas!" Is there a day in your life that you remember as the happiest? "Oh, FUCK OFF!! (Laughs) No!!! You're turning into a fuckin' woman's diary columnist now!' Have you ever read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four? "Yes." What would find in Room 101? What, for Charles J. Haughey, is The Worst Thing in the World? "Ah, I'm not too introverted like that. (Pause) Deep down, I'm a very shallow person. (Laughs)
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  • Charles Stuart Parnell-The uncrowned King of Ireland

    €70.00
    32cm x 25cm Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) will be remembered as one of the most iconic and indeed controversial politicians in Irish history.MP and Leader of the Irish Parliamentary or Home Rule Party from1882 to 1891 until revelations of his adulterous love affair with Kitty O'Shea forced his resignation.He died shortly afterwards from pneumonia in the arms of his newly divorced and remarried wife Katherine.His death was considered to be a direct result of the stresses he endured because of the Victorian era scandal and his subsequent funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin was attended by more than 200000 people.His notability was such that his gravestone of unhewn Wicklow granite, erected in 1940,reads only Parnell. This faithful portrayal of Parnell,well over 130 years old, by the artist JG Wills dates to 1884 and is a beautiful homage to the "uncrowned king of Ireland".  
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  • Classic Eamon De Valera Portrait

    €150.00
    Ennis Co Clare   50cm x 60cm De Valera was a near demagogue type politician who dominated Irish Political life from 1917 to 1973,whether as Prime Minister or President or as leader of the Opposition.Known as the Long Fella,Irish people either loved or hated him-there was simply no ambivalent feelings about this most polarising of politicians.This fine portrait of De Valera catches him perfectly and would make a superb addition to any Irish Pub ,both at home or abroad with a Fianna Fail or Republican bias or anyone from Clare,a county where he was always at his most popular. Eamon de Valera, first registered as George de Valero; changed some time before 1901 to Edward de Valera;14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) was a prominent statesman and political leader in 20th-century Ireland. His political career spanned over half a century, from 1917 to 1973; he served several terms as head of government and head of state. He also led the introduction of the Constitution of Ireland. Prior to de Valera's political career, he was a Commandant at Boland's Mill during the 1916 Easter Rising, an Irish revolution that would eventually contribute to Irish independence. He was arrested, sentenced to death but released for a variety of reasons, including the public response to the British execution of Rising leaders. He returned to Ireland after being jailed in England and became one of the leading political figures of the War of Independence. After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, de Valera served as the political leader of Anti-Treaty Sinn Fein until 1926, when he, along with many supporters, left the party to set up Fianna Fáil, a new political party which abandoned the policy of abstentionism from Dáil Éireann. From there, de Valera would go on to be at the forefront of Irish politics until the turn of the 1960s. He took over as President of the Executive Councilfrom W. T. Cosgrave and later Taoiseach, with the passing of Bunreacht Na hEireann (Irish constitution) in 1937. He would serve as Taoiseach on 3 occasions; from 1937 to 1948, from 1951 to 1954 and finally from 1957 to 1959. He remains the longest serving Taoiseach by total days served in the post. He resigned in 1959 upon his election as President of Ireland. By then, he had been Leader of Fianna Fáil for 33 years, and he, along with older founding members, began to take a less prominent role relative to newer ministers such as Jack Lynch, Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney. He would serve as President from 1959 to 1973, two full terms in office. De Valera's political beliefs evolved from militant Irish republicanism to strong social, cultural and economic conservatism.He has been characterised by a stern, unbending, devious demeanor. His roles in the Civil War have also portrayed him as a divisive figure in Irish history. Biographer Tim Pat Coogan sees his time in power as being characterised by economic and cultural stagnation, while Diarmaid Ferriter argues that the stereotype of de Valera as an austere, cold and even backward figure was largely manufactured in the 1960s and is misguided.
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  • Commemorative Kevin Barry Portrait-Died for Ireland 1920

    €80.00
    The iconic portrait of a teenage Kevin Barry,one of our most celebrated republican martyrs-in the black and white hooped rugby jersey of Belvedere College SJ. 26cm x 30cm          Dunmanway  Co Cork Kevin Gerard Barry (20 January 1902 – 1 November 1920) was an Irish republican paramilitary who was executed by the British Government during the Irish War of Independence. He was sentenced to death for his part in an attack upon a British Army supply lorry which resulted in the deaths of three British soldiers. His execution inflamed nationalist public opinion in Ireland, largely because of his age. The timing of the execution, only days after the death by hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, the republican Lord Mayor of Cork, brought public opinion to a fever-pitch. His death attracted international attention, and attempts were made by U.S. and Vatican officials to secure a reprieve. His execution and MacSwiney's death precipitated an escalation in violence as the Irish War of Independence entered its bloodiest phase, and Barry became an Irish republican martyr.

    Early life

    Kevin Barry was born on 20 January 1902, at 8 Fleet Street, Dublin, to Thomas and Mary (née Dowling) Barry. The fourth of seven children, two boys and five sisters, Kevin was baptised in St Andrew's Church, Westland Row. Thomas Barry Sr. worked on the family's farm at Tombeagh, Hacketstown, County Carlow, and ran a dairy business from Fleet Street. Thomas Barry Sr. died in 1908, aged 56. His mother came from Drumguin, County Carlow, and, upon the death of her husband, moved the family to nearby Tombeagh. As a child he went to the national school in Rathvilly. On returning to Dublin, he attended St Mary's College, Rathmines, until the school closed in the summer of 1916.When he was thirteen, he attended a commemoration for the Manchester Martyrs, who were hanged in England in 1867. Afterwards he wished to join Constance Markievicz's Fianna Éireann, but was reportedly dissuaded by his family.

    Belvedere College

    From St Mary's College he transferred to Belvedere College, where he was a member of the championship Junior Rugby Cup team, and earned a place on the senior team. In 1918 he became secretary of the school hurling club which had just been formed, and was one of their most enthusiastic players.
    Belvedere College, the Jesuit college attended by Kevin Barry. To mark the anniversary of his execution, Belvedere's museum mounted a special exhibition of Kevin Barry memorabilia.
    A Jesuit priest, Thomas Counihan, who was Barry's science and mathematics teacher, said of him: "He was a dour kind of lad. But once he got down to something he went straight ahead… There was no waving of flags with him, but he was sincere and intense." Notwithstanding his many activities, he did not neglect his studies. He won a merit-based scholarship given annually by Dublin Corporation, which allowed him to become a student of medicine at UCD.

    Medical student

    He entered University College Dublin in 1919. His closest friend at college was Gerry MacAleer, from Dungannon, whom he had first met in Belvedere. Other friends included Frank Flood, Tom Kissane and Mick Robinson, who, unknown to many in the college, were, along with Barry, members of the Irish Volunteers.

    Volunteer activities

    In October 1917, during his second year at Belvedere, aged 15, he joined the IRA. Assigned originally to ‘C’ Company 1st Battalion, based on the north side of Dublin, he later transferred to the newly formed ‘H’ Company, under the command of Capt. Seamus Kavanagh. His first job as a member of the IRA was delivering mobilisation orders around the city. Along with other volunteers, Barry trained in a number of locations in Dublin, including the building at 44 Parnell Square, the present day headquarters of Sinn Féin, now named Kevin Barry Hall. The IRA held Field exercises during this period which were conducted in north county Dublin and in areas such as Finglas.
    Wall plaque marking the site in 1919, where the Active Service Unit of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Army was founded. The building is in Great Denmark Street, Dublin.
    The following year, at the age of 16, he was introduced by Seán O'Neill and Bob O'Flanagan to the Clarke Luby Club of the IRB, which had been reorganised. He took part in a number of IRA operations in the years leading up to his capture. He was part of the unit which raided the Shamrock Works for weapons destined to be handed over to the R.I.C. He also took part in the raid on Mark's of Capel Street, looking for ammunition and explosives. On 1 June 1920, under Vice-Commandant Peadar Clancy, he played a notable part in the seizing of the King's Inn, capturing the garrison’s arms. The haul included 25 rifles, two light machine guns and large quantities of ammunition. The 25 British soldiers captured during the attack were released as the volunteers withdrew. In recognition of his dedication to duty he was promoted to Section Commander.

    Ambush

    On the morning of 20 September 1920, Barry went to Mass, then joined a party of IRA volunteers on Bolton Street in Dublin. Their orders were to ambush a British army lorry as it picked up a delivery of bread from the bakery, and capture their weapons. The ambush was scheduled for 11:00am, which gave him enough time to take part in the operation and return to class in time for an examination he had at 2:00pm. The truck arrived late, and was under the command of Sergeant Banks. Armed with a .38 Mauser Parabellum, Barry and members of C Company were to surround the lorry, disarm the soldiers, take the weapons and escape. He covered the back of the vehicle and, when challenged, the five soldiers complied with the order to lay down their weapons. A shot was then fired; Terry Golway, author of For the Cause of Liberty, suggests it was possibly a warning shot from an uncovered soldier in the front. Barry and the rest of the ambush party then opened fire. His gun jammed twice and he dived for cover under the vehicle. His comrades fled and he was left behind. He was then spotted and arrested by the soldiers.One of the soldiers, Private Harold Washington, aged 15, had been shot dead. Two others, Privates Marshall Whitehead and Thomas Humphries, were both badly wounded and later died of their wounds. The British Army released the following statement on Monday afternoon:
    This morning a party of one N.C.O. and six men of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment were fired on by a body of civilians outside a bakery in Church Street, Dublin. One soldier was killed and four were wounded. A piquet of the Lancashire Fusiliers in the vicinity, hearing the shots, hurried to their comrades' assistance, and succeeded in arresting one of the aggressors. No arms or equipment were lost by the soldiers.
    Much was made of Barry's age by Irish newspapers, but the British military pointed out that the three soldiers who had been killed were "much the same age as Barry". On 20 October, Major Reginald Ingram Marians OBE, Head of the Press Section of the General Staff, informed Basil Clarke, Head of Publicity, that Washington was "only 19 and that the other soldiers were of similar ages." General Macready was well aware of the "propaganda value of the soldier's ages." Macready informed General Sir Henry Wilson on the day that sentence was pronounced "of the three men who were killed by him (Barry) and his friends two were 19 and one 20 — official age so probably they were younger... so if you want propaganda there you are."It was later confirmed that Private Harold Washington was 15 years and 351 days old, having been born 4 October 1904. About this competing propaganda, Martin Doherty wrote in a magazine article entitled 'Kevin Barry & the Anglo-Irish Propaganda War':
    from the British point of view, therefore, the Anglo-Irish propaganda war was probably unwinable [sic]. Nationalist Ireland had decided that men like Kevin Barry fought to free their country, while British soldiers — young or not — sought to withhold that freedom. In these circumstances, to label Barry a murderer was merely to add insult to injury. The contrasting failure of British propaganda is graphically demonstrated by the simple fact that even in British newspapers Privates Whitehead, Washington and Humphries remained faceless names and numbers, for whom no songs were written.”

    Capture and torture

    Sinn Féin's Dublin HQ at the Kevin Barry Memorial Hall
    Barry was placed in the back of the lorry with the young body of Private Harold Washington, and was subjected to some abuse by Washington's comrades. He was transported then to the North Dublin Union. Upon arrival at the barracks he was taken under military police escort to the defaulters' room where he was searched and handcuffed. A short while later, three sergeants of the Lancashire Fusiliers and two officers began the interrogation. He gave his name and an address of 58 South Circular Road, Dublin (his uncle's address), and his occupation as a medical student, but refused to answer any other questions. The officers continued to demand the names of other republicans involved in the ambush. At this time a publicity campaign was mounted by Sinn Féin. Barry received orders on 28 October from his brigade commander, Richard McKee, "to make a sworn affidavit concerning his torture in the North Dublin Union." Arrangements were made to deliver this through Barry's sister, Kathy, to Desmond Fitzgerald, director of publicity for Sinn Féin, "with the object of having it published in the World press, and particularly in the English papers, on Saturday 30th October." The affidavit, drawn up in Mountjoy Prison days before his execution, describes his treatment when the question of names was repeated:
    He tried to persuade me to give the names, and I persisted in refusing. He then sent the sergeant out of the room for a bayonet. When it was brought in the sergeant was ordered by the same officer to point the bayonet at my stomach ... The sergeant then said that he would run the bayonet into me if I did not tell ... The same officer then said to me that if I persisted in my attitude he would turn me out to the men in the barrack square, and he supposed I knew what that meant with the men in their present temper. I said nothing. He ordered the sergeants to put me face down on the floor and twist my arm ... When I lay on the floor, one of the sergeants knelt on my back, the other two placed one foot each on my back and left shoulder, and the man who knelt on me twisted my right arm, holding it by the wrist with one hand, while he held my hair with the other to pull back my head. The arm was twisted from the elbow joint. This continued, to the best of my judgment, for five minutes. It was very painful ... I still persisted in refusing to answer these questions... A civilian came in and repeated the questions, with the same result. He informed me that if I gave all the information I knew I could get off.
    On 28 October, the Irish Bulletin (organised by Dick McKee, the IRA Commandant of the Dublin Brigade), a news-sheet produced by Dáil Éireann's Department of Publicity,published Barry's statement alleging torture. The headline read: English Military Government Torture a Prisoner of War and are about to Hang him. The Irish Bulletin declared Barry to be a prisoner of war, suggesting a conflict of principles was at the heart of the conflict. The English did not recognise a war and treated all killings by the IRA as murder. Irish republicans claimed that they were at war and it was being fought between two opposing nations and therefore demanded prisoner of war status. Historian John Ainsworth, author of Kevin Barry, the Incident at Monk's bakery and the Making of an Irish Republican Legend, pointed out that Barry had been captured by the British not as a uniformed soldier but disguised as a civilian and in possession of flat-nosed "Dum-dum" bullets, which expand upon impact, maximising the amount of damage done to the "unfortunate individual" targeted, in contravention of the Hague Convention of 1899. Erskine Childers addressed the question of political status in a letter to the press on 29 October, which was published the day after Barry's execution.
    This lad Barry was doing precisely what Englishmen would be doing under the same circumstances and with the same bitter and intolerable provocation — the suppression by military force of their country's liberty.
    To hang him for murder is an insulting outrage, and it is more: it is an abuse of power: an unworthy act of vengeance. contrasting ill with the forbearance and humanity invariably shown by the Irish Volunteers towards the prisoners captured by them when they have been successful in encounters similar to this one. These guerrilla combats with soldiers and constables — both classes do the same work with the same weapons; the work of military repression — are typical episodes in Ireland.
    Murder of individual constables, miscalled ‘police’, have been comparatively rare. The Government figure is 38, and it will not, to my knowledge, bear examination. I charge against the British Government 80 murders by soldiers and constables: murders of unarmed people, and for the most part wholly innocent people, including old men, women and boys.
    To hang Barry is to push to its logical extreme the hypocritical pretense that the national movement in Ireland unflinchingly supported by the great mass of the Irish people, is the squalid conspiracy of a ‘murder gang’.
    That is false; it is a natural uprising: a collision between two Governments, one resting on consent, the other on force. The Irish are struggling against overwhelming odds to defend their own elected institutions against extinction.
    In a letter addressed to "the civilised nations of the world", Arthur Griffith — then acting President of the Republic wrote:
    Under similar circumstances a body of Irish Volunteers captured on June 1 of the present year a party of 25 English military who were on duty at the King's Inns, Dublin. Having disarmed the party the Volunteers immediately released their prisoners. This was in strict accordance with the conduct of the Volunteers in all such encounters. Hundreds of members of the armed forces have been from time to time captured by the Volunteers and in no case was any prisoner maltreated even though Volunteers had been killed and wounded in the fighting, as in the case of Cloyne, Co. Cork, when, after a conflict in which one Volunteer was killed and two wounded, the whole of the opposing forces were captured, disarmed, and set at liberty.
    Ainsworth notes that "Griffith was deliberately using examples relating to IRA engagements with British military forces rather than the police, for he knew that engagements involving the police in particular were usually of an uncivilized nature, characterized by violence and brutality, albeit on both sides by this stage."

    Trial

    The War Office ordered that Kevin Barry be tried by court-martial under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act, which received Royal Assent on 9 August 1920. General Sir Nevil Macready, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in Ireland then nominated a court of nine officers under a Brigadier-General Onslow.
    Kevin Barry Commemorative Plaque close to the spot where he was captured on Church Street, Dublin
    On 20 October, at 10 o’clock, the nine officers of the court — ranging in rank from Brigadier to Lieutenant — took their places at an elevated table. At 10.25, Kevin Barry was brought into the room by a military escort. Then Seán Ó hUadhaigh sought a short adjournment to consult his client. The court granted this request. After the short adjournment Barry announced "As a soldier of the Irish Republic, I refuse to recognise the court." Brigadier Onslow explained the prisoner's "perilous situation" and that he was being tried on a capital charge. He did not reply. Ó hUadhaigh then rose to tell the court that since his client did not recognise the authority of the court he himself could take no further part in the proceedings. Barry was charged on three counts of the murder of Private Marshall Whitehead. One of the bullets taken from Whitehead's body was of .45 calibre, while all witnesses stated that Barry was armed with a .38 Mauser Parabellum. The Judge Advocate General informed the court that the Crown had only to prove that the accused was one of the party that killed three British soldiers, and every member of the party was technically guilty of murder. In accordance with military procedure the verdict was not announced in court. He was returned to Mountjoy, and at about 8 o’clock that night, the district court-martial officer entered his cell and read out the sentence: death by hanging. The public learned on 28 October that the date of execution had been fixed for 1 November.

    Execution

    Barry spent the last day of his life preparing for death. His ordeal focused world attention on Ireland. According to Sean Cronin, author of a biography of Barry (Kevin Barry), he hoped for a firing squad rather than the gallows, as he had been condemned by a military court. A friend who visited him in Mountjoy prison after he received confirmation of the death sentence, said:
    He is meeting death as he met life with courage but with nothing of the braggart. He does not believe that he is doing anything wonderfully heroic. Again and again he has begged that no fuss be made about him.
    He reported Barry as saying "It is nothing, to give one's life for Ireland. I'm not the first and maybe I won't be the last. What's my life compared with the cause?" Barry joked about his death with his sister Kathy. "Well, they are not going to let me like a soldier fall… But I must say they are going to hang me like a gentleman." This was, according to Cronin, a reference to George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, the last play Kevin and his sister had seen together. On 31 October, he was allowed three visits of three people each, the last of which was taken by his mother, brother and sisters. In addition to the two Auxiliaries with him, there were five or six warders in the boardroom. As his family were leaving, they met Canon John Waters, on the way in, who said, "This boy does not seem to realise he is going to die in the morning." Mrs Barry asked him what he meant. He said: "He is so gay and light-hearted all the time. If he fully realised it, he would be overwhelmed." Mrs Barry replied, "Canon Waters, I know you are not a Republican. But is it impossible for you to understand that my son is actually proud to die for the Republic?" Canon Waters became somewhat flustered as they parted. The Barry family recorded that they were upset by this encounter because they considered the chief chaplain "the nearest thing to a friend that Kevin would see before his death, and he seemed so alien."
    Plaque placed by the Irish Government on the graves of the Volunteers
    Kevin Barry was hanged on 1 November, after hearing two Masses in his cell. Canon Waters, who walked with him to the scaffold, wrote to Barry's mother later, "You are the mother, my dear Mrs Barry, of one of the bravest and best boys I have ever known. His death was one of the most holy, and your dear boy is waiting for you now, beyond the reach of sorrow or trial." Dublin Corporation met on the Monday, and passed a vote of sympathy with the Barry family, and adjourned the meeting as a mark of respect. The Chief Secretary's office in Dublin Castle, on the Monday night, released the following communiqué:
    The sentence of death by hanging passed by court-martial upon Kevin Barry, or Berry, medical student, aged 18½ years, for the murder of Private Whitehead in Dublin on September 20, was duly executed this morning at Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. At a military court of inquiry, held subsequently in lieu of an inquest, medical evidence was given to the effect that death was instantaneous. The court found that the sentence had been carried out in accordance with law.
    Barry's body was buried at 1.30 p.m, in a plot near the women's prison. His comrade and fellow-student Frank Flood was buried alongside him four months later. A plain cross marked their graves and those of Patrick Moran, Thomas Whelan, Thomas Traynor, Patrick Doyle, Thomas Bryan, Bernard Ryan, Edmond Foley and Patrick Maher who were hanged in the same prison before the Anglo-Irish Treaty of July 1921 which ended hostilities between Irish republicans and the British.The men had been buried in unconsecrated ground on the jail property and their graves went unidentified until 1934.They became known as The Forgotten Ten by republicans campaigning for the bodies to be reburied with honour and proper rites.On 14 October 2001, the remains of these ten men were given a state funeral and moved from Mountjoy Prison to be re-interred at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

    Aftermath

    Kevin Barry monument in Rathvilly, County Carlow
    On 14 October 2001 the remains of Kevin Barry and nine other volunteers from the War of Independence were given a state funeral and moved from Mountjoy Prison to be re-interred at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. Barry's grave is the first on the left.
    The only full-length biography of Kevin Barry was written by his nephew, journalist Donal O'Donovan, published in 1989 as Kevin Barry and his Time. In 1965, Sean Cronin wrote a short biography, simply entitled "Kevin Barry"; this was published by The National Publications Committee, Cork, to which Tom Barry provided a foreword. Barry is remembered in a well-known song about his imprisonment and execution, written shortly after his death and still sung today. The tune to "Kevin Barry" was taken from the sea-shanty "Rolling Home".[17] The execution reportedly inspired Thomas MacGreevy's surrealist poem, "Homage to Hieronymus Bosch". MacGreevy had unsuccessfully petitioned the Provost of Trinity College Dublin, John Henry Bernard, to make representations on Barry's behalf.

    Legacy[edit]

    A commemorative stamp was issued by An Post to mark the 50th anniversary of Barry's death in 1970.[18] The University College Dublin and National University of Ireland, Galway branches of Ógra Fianna Fáil are named after him.[19] Derrylaughan Kevin Barry's GAA club was founded in Clonoe, County Tyrone. In 1930, Irish immigrants in Hartford, Connecticut, created a hurling club and named it after Barry. The club later disappeared for decades, but was revived in 2011 by more recently arrived Irish immigrants and local Irish-Americans in the area.[20] In 1934, a large stained-glass window commemorating Barry was unveiled in Earlsfort Terrace, then the principal campus of University College Dublin. It was designed by Richard King of the Harry Clarke Studio. In 2007, UCD completed its relocation to the Belfield campus some four miles away and a fund was collected by graduates to defray the cost (estimated at close to €250,000) of restoring and moving the window to this new location.[21] A grandnephew of Kevin Barry is Irish historian Eunan O'Halpin.[22] There is an Irish republican flute band named after him, the "Volunteer Kevin Barry Republican Flute Band", which operates out of the Calton area of the city.[citation needed] Barry's execution is mentioned in the folk song "Rifles of the I.R.A." written by Dominic Behan in 1968. A ballad bearing Barry's name, relating the story of his execution, has been sung by artists as diverse as Paul Robeson,[23] Leonard Cohen,[24] Lonnie Donegan, and The Dubliners. At the place where Kevin Barry was captured (North King Street/Church Street, Dublin), there are two blocks of flats named after him.
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  • Dan Breen’s Appeal Framed Poster 1922

    €70.00

    Daniel Breen (11 August 1894 – 27 December 1969) was a volunteer in the Irish Republican Armyduring the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. In later years he was a Fianna Fáil politician.

    Background

    Dan Breen was born in Grange, Donohill parish, County Tipperary. His father died when Breen was six, leaving the family very poor. He was educated locally, before becoming a plasterer and later a linesman on the Great Southern Railways.

    Irish Revolutionary Period

    War of Independence

    Breen was sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1912 and the Irish Volunteers in 1914. On 21 January 1919, the day the First Dáil met in Dublin, Breen—who described himself as "a soldier first and foremost"—took part in the Soloheadbeg Ambush.The ambush party of eight men, nominally led by Séumas Robinson, attacked two Royal Irish Constabulary men who were escorting explosives to a quarry. The two policemen, James McDonnell and Patrick O’Connell, were fatally shot during the incident. The ambush is considered to be the first incident of the Irish War of Independence. Breen later recalled:
    "...we took the action deliberately, having thought over the matter and talked it over between us. [Seán] Treacyhad stated to me that the only way of starting a war was to kill someone, and we wanted to start a war, so we intended to kill some of the police whom we looked upon as the foremost and most important branch of the enemy forces ... The only regret that we had following the ambush was that there were only two policemen in it, instead of the six we had expected..."
    During the conflict, the British put a £1,000 price on Breen's head, which was later raised to £10,000.He quickly established himself as a leader within the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He was known for his courage. On 13 May 1919, he helped rescue his comrade Seán Hogan at gunpoint from a heavily guarded train at Knocklong station in County Limerick. Breen, who was wounded, remembered how the battalion was "vehemently denounced as a cold-blooded assassins" and roundly condemned by the Catholic Church. After the fight, Seán Treacy, Séumas Robinson and Breen met Michael Collins in Dublin, where they were told to escape from the area. They agreed they would "fight it out, of course". Breen and Treacy shot their way out through a British military cordon in the northern suburb of Drumcondra (Fernside). They escaped, only for Treacy to be killed the next day. Breen was shot at least four times, twice in the lung. The British reaction was to make Tipperary a 'Special Military Area', with curfews and travel permits. Volunteer GHQ authorised enterprising attacks on barracks. Richard Mulcahy noted that British policy had "pushed rather turbulent spirits such as Breen and Treacy into the Dublin area". The inculcation of the principles of guerrilla warfare was to become an essential part of all training. They joined Collins' Squad of assassins, later known as the Dublin Guard, when Tipperary became "too hot for them". and Dublin was the centre of the war. Breen was present in December 1919 at the ambush in Ashtown beside Phoenix Park in Dublin where Martin Savage was killed while trying to assassinate the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Viscount French. The IRA men hid behind hedges and a dungheap as the convoy of vehicles came past. They had been instructed to ignore the first car, but this contained their target, Lord French. Their roadblock failed as a policeman removed the horse and cart intended to stop the car. Breen rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which made him, like many others, angry and embittered:
    I would never have handled a gun or fired a shot… to obtain this Treaty… writing on the second anniversary of Martin Savage's death, do you suppose that he sacrificed his life in attempting to kill one British Governor-General to make room for another British Governor-General?
    Regarding the continued existence of Northern Ireland from 1922, and an inevitable further war to conquer it to create a united Ireland, Breen commented:
    "To me, a united Ireland of two million people would be preferable to an Ireland of four and a half million divided into three or four factions".
    In the June 1922 general election, Breen was nominated as a candidate by both the pro- and anti-Treaty sides, in the Waterford–Tipperary East constituency, but was not elected.

    Irish Civil War

    Breen was elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1923 general election as a Republican anti-Treaty Teachta Dála (TD) for the Tipperary constituency.Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Breen joined the Anti-Treaty IRA in the Civil War, fighting against those of his former comrades in arms who supported the Treaty. He was arrested by the National Army of the Irish Free State and interned at Limerick Prison. He spent two months there before going on hunger strike for six days, followed by a thirst strike of six days. Breen was released after he signed a document pleading to desist from attacking the Free State. Breen wrote a best-selling account of his guerrilla days, My Fight for Irish Freedom, in 1924, later republished by Rena Dardis and Anvil Press.

    Politics

    Fianna Fáil TD

    Breen represented Tipperary from the Fourth Dáil in 1923 as a Republican with Éamon de Valera and Frank Aiken.He was the first anti-Treaty TD to take his seat, in 1927. Standing as an Independent Republican he was defeated in the June 1927 general election. Thereafter Breen travelled to the United States, where he opened a speakeasy. He returned to Ireland in 1932 following the death of his mother,and regained his seat as a member of Fianna Fáil in the Dáil at that year's general election. He represented his Tipperary constituency without a break until his retirement at the 1965 election.

    Political views

    Breen supported the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, he was said to hold largely pro-Axis views, with admiration for Erwin Rommel.When the fascist political party Ailtirí na hAiséirghe failed to win any seats in the 1944 Irish general election, he remarked that he was sorry that the party had not done better, as he had studied their programme and found a lot to commend. In 1946, Breen became secretary of the Save the German Children Society. He attended the funeral of Nazi spy Hermann Gortz on 27 May 1947.Irish-American John S. Monagan visited Breen in 1948, and was surprised to see two pictures of Adolf Hitler, a medallion of Napoleon and a Telefunken radio. Breen told him "the revolution didn't work out," and "to get the government they have now, I wouldn't have lost a night's sleep." He also said that he fought for freedom, but not for democracy.In 1943, Breen sent his "congratulations to the Führer. May he live long to lead Europe on the road to peace, security and happiness". After the end of World War II in Europe, the German Legation in Dublin was taken over by diplomats from the USA in May 1945, and ".. they found a recent letter from Breen asking the German minister to forward his birthday wishes to the Führer, just days before Hitler committed suicide." Breen was co-chairman of the anti-Vietnam War organisation "Irish Voice on Vietnam".

    Personal life

    Dan Breen and Brigid Malone's wedding
    Breen was married on 12 June 1921, during the War of Independence, to Brigid Malone, a Dublin Cumann na mBan woman and sister of Lieutenant Michael Malone who was killed in action at the Battle of Mount Street Bridge during the 1916 Rising. They had met in Dublin when she helped to nurse him while he was recovering from a bullet wound. Seán Hogan was best man, and the bride's sister Aine Malone was the bridesmaid. Photographs of the wedding celebrations taken by 5th Battalion intelligence officer Séan Sharkey are published in The Tipperary Third Brigade a photographic record. Breen was, at the time, one of the most wanted men in Ireland, and South Tipperary was under martial law, yet a large celebration was held. The wedding took place at Purcell's, "Glenagat House", New Inn, County Tipperary. Many of the key members of the Third Tipperary Brigade attended, including flying column leaders Dinny Lacey and Hogan. Breen was the brother in-law of Commandant Theobald Wolfe Tone FitzGerald, the painter of the Irish Republic Flag that flew over the GPO during the Easter Rising in 1916. The Breens had two children, Donal and Granya. Breen was an atheist.

    Death

    Breen died in Dublin in 1969, aged 75, and was buried in Donohill, near his birthplace. His funeral was the largest seen in west Tipperary since that of his close friend and comrade-in-arms, Seán Treacy, at Kilfeacle in October 1920. An estimated attendance of 10,000 mourners assembled in the tiny hamlet, giving ample testimony to the esteem in which he was held. Breen was the subject of a 2007 biography, Dan Breen and the IRA by Joe Ambrose.

    In popular culture

    Breen is mentioned in the Irish folk ballad "The Galtee Mountain Boy", along with Seán Moylan, Dinny Lacey, and Seán Hogan. The song, written by Patsy Halloran, recalls some of the travels of a "Flying column" from Tipperary as they fought during the Irish War of Independence, and later against the pro-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War. The trophy for the Tipperary Senior Hurling Championship is named after him.
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  • Daniel O’Connell Framed Print (after R.M Hodgetts)

    €70.00
    Pair of tastefully framed portraits  (after the paintings by R.M Hodgetts)  of one of the greatest  statesmen, orators and wits in Irish  history -Daniel O'Connell   28cm x 25cm Daniel O'Connell (18th August 1775 – 15 May 1847), often referred to as The Liberator or The Emancipator,was an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century. He campaigned for Catholic emancipation—including the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament, denied for over 100 years—and repeal of the Acts of Union which combined Great Britain and Ireland. Throughout his career in Irish politics, O'Connell was able to gain a large following among the Irish masses in support of him and his Catholic Association. O'Connell's main strategy was one of political reformism, working within the parliamentary structures of the British state in Ireland and forming an alliance of convenience with the Whigs. More radical elements broke with O'Connell to found the Young Ireland movement. O'Connell was born at Carhan near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, to the O'Connells of Derrynane, a once-wealthy Roman Catholic family that had been dispossessed of its lands. His parents were Morgan O'Connell and Catherine O'Mullane. Among his uncles was Daniel Charles, Count O'Connell, an officer in the Irish Brigades of the French Army. A famous aunt was Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, while Sir James O'Connell, 1st Baronet, was his younger brother. Under the patronage of his wealthy bachelor uncle Maurice "Hunting Cap" O'Connell. O'Connell was first sent with his brother Maurice to Reddington Academy at Long Island, near Queenstown (Cobh) They both studied at Douai in France from 1790 and O'Connell was admitted as a barrister to Lincoln's Inn in 1794, transferring to Dublin's King's Inns two years later. In his early years, he became acquainted with the pro-democracy radicals of the time and committed himself to bringing equal rights and religious tolerance to his own country.
    O'Connell's home at Derrynane Co Kerry 
    While in Dublin studying for the law, O'Connell was under his Uncle Maurice's instructions not to become involved in any militia activity. When Wolfe Tone's French invasion fleet entered Bantry Bay in December 1796, O'Connell found himself in a quandary. Politics was the cause of his unsettlement. Dennis Gwynn in his Daniel O'Connell: The Irish Liberator suggests that the unsettlement was because he was enrolled as a volunteer in defence of Government, yet the Government was intensifying its persecution of the Catholic people—of which he was one.He desired to enter Parliament, yet every allowance that the Catholics had been led to anticipate, two years previously, was now flatly vetoed. As a law student, O'Connell was aware of his own talents, but the higher ranks of the Bar were closed to him. He read the Jockey Club as a picture of the governing class in England and was persuaded by it that, "vice reigns triumphant in the English court at this day. The spirit of liberty shrinks to protect property from the attacks of French innovators. The corrupt higher orders tremble for their vicious enjoyments." O'Connell's studies at the time had concentrated upon the legal and political history of Ireland, and the debates of the Historical Society concerned the records of governments, and from this he was to conclude, according to one of his biographers, "in Ireland the whole policy of the Government was to repress the people and to maintain the ascendancy of a privileged and corrupt minority". On 3 January 1797, in an atmosphere of alarm over the French invasion fleet in Bantry Bay, he wrote to his uncle saying that he was the last of his colleagues to join a volunteer corps and "being young, active, healthy and single" he could offer no plausible excuse.Later that month, for the sake of expediency, he joined the Lawyers' Artillery Corps. On 19 May 1798, O'Connell was called to the Irish Bar and became a barrister. Four days later, the United Irishmen staged their rebellion which was put down by the British with great bloodshed. O'Connell did not support the rebellion; he believed that the Irish would have to assert themselves politically rather than by force. He went on the Munster circuit, and for over a decade, he went into a fairly quiet period of private law practice in the South of Ireland.He was reputed to have the largest income of any Irish barrister but, due to natural extravagance and a growing family, was usually in debt; his brother remarked caustically that Daniel was in debt all his life from the age of seventeen. Although he was ultimately to inherit Derrynane from his uncle Maurice, the old man lived to be almost 100 and in the event Daniel's inheritance did not cover his debts. He also condemned Robert Emmet's Rebellion of 1803. Of Emmet, a Protestant, he wrote: "A man who could coolly prepare so much bloodshed, so many murders—and such horrors of every kind has ceased to be an object of compassion." Despite his opposition to the use of violence, he was willing to defend those accused of political crimes, particularly if he suspected that they had been falsely accused, as in the Doneraile conspiracy trials of 1829, his last notable court appearance. He was noted for his fearlessness in court: if he thought poorly of a judge (as was very often the case) he had no hesitation in making this clear. Most famous perhaps was his retort to Baron McClelland, who had said that as a barrister he would never have taken the course O'Connell had adopted: O'Connell said that McClelland had never been his model as a barrister, neither would he take directions from him as a judge. He did not lack the ambition to become a judge himself: in particular he was attracted by the position of Master of the Rolls in Ireland, yet although he was offered it more than once, finally refused.

    O'Connell returned to politics in the 1810s. In 1811, he established the Catholic Board, which campaigned for Catholic emancipation, that is, the opportunity for Irish Catholics to become members of parliament. In 1823, he set up the Catholic Association which embraced other aims to better Irish Catholics, such as: electoral reform, reform of the Church of Ireland, tenants' rights, and economic development. The Association was funded by membership dues of one penny per month, a minimal amount designed to attract Catholic peasants. The subscription was highly successful, and the Association raised a large sum of money in its first year. The money was used to campaign for Catholic emancipation, specifically funding pro-emancipation members of parliament (MPs) standing for the British House of Commons.
    Statue of Daniel O'Connell outside St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne
    Members of the Association were liable to prosecution under an eighteenth-century statute, and the Crown moved to suppress the Association by a series of prosecutions, with mixed success. O'Connell was often briefed for the defence, and showed extraordinary vigour in pleading the rights of Catholics to argue for emancipation. He clashed repeatedly with William Saurin, the Attorney General for Ireland and most influential figure in the Dublin administration, and political differences between the two men were fuelled by a bitter personal antipathy. In 1815 a serious event in his life occurred. Dublin Corporation was considered a stronghold of the Protestant Ascendancy and O'Connell, in an 1815 speech, referred to it as a "beggarly corporation".Its members and leaders were outraged and because O'Connell would not apologise, one of their number, the noted duellist John D'Esterre, challenged him. The duel had filled Dublin Castle (from where the British Government administered Ireland) with tense excitement at the prospect that O'Connell would be killed. They regarded O'Connell as "worse than a public nuisance", and would have welcomed any prospect of seeing him removed at this time. O'Connell met D'Esterre and mortally wounded him (he was shot in the hip, the bullet then lodging in his stomach), in a duel at Oughterard, County Kildare. His conscience was bitterly sore by the fact that, not only had he killed a man, but he had left his family almost destitute. O'Connell offered to "share his income" with D'Esterre's widow, but she declined; however, she consented to accept an allowance for her daughter, which O'Connell regularly paid for more than thirty years until his death. The memory of the duel haunted him for the remainder of his life, and he refused ever to fight another, being prepared to risk accusations of cowardice rather than kill again. As part of his campaign for Catholic emancipation, O'Connell created the Catholic Association in 1823; this organisation acted as a pressure group against the British government so as to achieve emancipation. The Catholic Rent, which was established in 1824 by O'Connell and the Catholic Church raised funds from which O'Connell was able to help finance the Catholic Association in its push for emancipation. Official opinion was gradually swinging towards emancipation, as shown by the summary dismissal of William Saurin, the Attorney General and a leading opponent of religious toleration, whom O'Connell called "our mortal foe". O'Connell stood in a by-election to the British House of Commons in 1828 for County Clare against William Vesey Fitzgerald, who had just joined the British Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. By law at the time, Cabinet office was deemed to be "an office of profit" under the Crown, requiring the promoted man to obtain the endorsement of his constituents by standing for re-election. After O'Connell won election, he was unable to take his seat as members of parliament had to take the Oath of Supremacy, which was incompatible with Catholicism. The Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, and the Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, even though they opposed Catholic participation in Parliament, saw that denying O'Connell his seat would cause outrage and could lead to another rebellion or uprising in Ireland, which was about 85% Catholic. Peel and Wellington managed to convince King George IV that Catholic emancipation and the right of Catholics and Presbyterians and members of all Christian faiths other than the established Church of Ireland to sit in Parliament needed to be established; with the help of the Whigs, it became law in 1829. However, the Emancipation Act was not made retroactive, meaning that O'Connell had either to seek re-election or to attempt to take the oath of supremacy. When O'Connell attempted on 15 May to take his seat without taking the oath of supremacy, Solicitor-General Nicholas Conyngham Tindal moved that his seat be declared vacant and another election ordered; O'Connell was elected unopposed on 30 July 1829. He took his seat when Parliament resumed in February 1830, by which time Henry Charles Howard, 13th Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Surrey, had already become the first Roman Catholic to have taken advantage of the Emancipation Act and sit in Parliament. "Wellington is the King of England", King George IV once complained, "O'Connell is King of Ireland, and I am only the dean of Windsor." The regal jest expressed the general admiration for O'Connell at the height of his career. The Catholic emancipation campaign led by O'Connell served as the precedent and model for the emancipation of British Jews, the subsequent Jews Relief Act 1858 allowing Jewish MPs to omit the words in the Oath of Allegiance "and I make this Declaration upon the true Faith of a Christian".

    Ironically, considering O'Connell's dedication to peaceful methods of political agitation, his greatest political achievement ushered in a period of violence in Ireland. There was an obligation for those working the land to support the established Church (i.e., the United Church of England and Ireland) by payments known as tithes. The fact that the vast majority of those working the land in Ireland were Catholic or Presbyterian tenant farmers, supporting what was a minority religion within that island (but not the United Kingdom as a whole), had been causing tension for some time. In December 1830, he and several others were tried for holding a meeting as an association or assemblage in violation of the orders of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but the statute expired in course of judgment and the prosecution was terminated by the judiciary. An initially peaceful campaign of non-payment turned violent in 1831 when the newly founded Irish Constabulary were used to seize property in lieu of payment resulting in the Tithe War of 1831–1836. Although opposed to the use of force, O'Connell successfully defended participants in the Battle of Carrickshock and all the defendants were acquitted. Nonetheless O'Connell rejected William Sharman Crawford's call for the complete abolition of tithes in 1838, as he felt he could not embarrass the Whigs (the Lichfield House Compact secured an alliance between Whigs, radicals and Irish MPs in 1835). In 1841, Daniel O'Connell became the first Roman Catholic Lord Mayor of Dublin since the reign of James II, who had been the last Roman Catholic monarch of England, Ireland and Scotland.

    The Monster Meeting at Clifden in 1843 by Joseph Patrick Haverty. O'Connell is depicted in the center addressing the gathered masses.
    Once Catholic emancipation was achieved, O'Connell campaigned for repeal of the Act of Union, which in 1801 had merged the Parliaments of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. To campaign for repeal, O'Connell set up the Repeal Association. He argued for the re-creation of an independent Kingdom of Ireland to govern itself, with Queen Victoria as the Queen of Ireland. To push for this, he held a series of "Monster Meetings" throughout much of Ireland outside the Protestant and Unionist-dominated province of Ulster. They were so called because each was attended by around 100,000 people. These rallies concerned the British Government and the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, banned one such proposed monster meeting at Clontarf, County Dublin, just outside Dublin city in 1843. This move was made after the biggest monster meeting was held at Tara.
    O'Connell Monument on O'Connell Street in Dublin
    Tara held great significance to the Irish population as it was the historic seat of the High Kings of Ireland. Clontarf was symbolic because of its association with the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, when the Irish King Brian Boru defeated his rival Maelmordha, although Brian himself died during the battle. Despite appeals from his supporters, O'Connell refused to defy the authorities and he called off the meeting, as he was unwilling to risk bloodshed and had no others. He was arrested, charged with conspiracy and sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of £2,000, although he was released after three months by the House of Lords, which quashed the conviction and severely criticised the unfairness of the trial. Having deprived himself of his most potent weapon, the monster meeting, O'Connell with his health failing had no plan and dissension broke out in the Repeal Association.

    Daniel O'Connell is honoured on the first commemorative stamps of Ireland, issued in 1929.
    The round tower marking O'Connell's mausoleum
    Mausoleum of Daniel O'Connell in Glasnevin Cemetery
    O'Connell died of softening of the brain (cerebral softening) in 1847 in Genoa, Italy, while on a pilgrimage to Rome at the age of 71; his term in prison had seriously weakened him, and the appallingly cold weather he had to endure on his journey was probably the final blow. According to his dying wish, his heart was buried in Rome (at Sant'Agata dei Goti, then the chapel of the Irish College), and the remainder of his body in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, beneath a round tower. His sons are buried in his crypt. On 6 August 1875, Charles Herbert Mackintosh won the gold and silver medals offered by the St. Patrick's Society during the O'Connell centenary at Major's Hill Park in Ottawa, Ontario for a prize poem entitled The Irish Liberator. O'Connell's philosophy and career have inspired leaders all over the world, including Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) and Martin Luther King (1929–1968). He was told by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) "you have done more for your nation than any man since Washington ever did". William Gladstone (1809–1898) described him as "the greatest popular leader the world has ever seen". Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) wrote that "Napoleon and O'Connell were the only great men the 19th century had ever seen." Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné (1794–1872) wrote that "the only man like Luther, in the power he wielded was O'Connell". William Grenville (1759–1834) wrote that "history will speak of him as one of the most remarkable men that ever lived". O'Connell met, befriended, and became a great inspiration to Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) a former American slave who became a highly influential leader of the abolitionist movement, social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. O'Connell's attacks on slavery were made with his usual vigour, and often gave great offence, especially in the United States: he called George Washington a hypocrite, and was challenged to a duel by Andrew Stevenson, the American minister, whom he was reported to have called a slave breeder. Notwithstanding his pronounced opposition to slavery, however, O'Connell, in the words of Lee M. Jenkins in her 1999 Irish Review article "Beyond the Pale: Frederick Douglass in Cork", "accepted money for his Repeal cause from Southern slaveholders". The founder of the Irish Labour Party and executed Easter Rising leader James Connolly, devoted a chapter in his 1910 book "Labour in Irish History" entitled "A chapter of horrors: Daniel O'Connell and the working class" in which he criticised O'Connell's parliamentary record, accusing him of siding consistently with the interests of the propertied classes of the United Kingdom. And Patrick Pearse, Connolly's fellow leader of the Easter Rising, wrote: "The leaders in Ireland have nearly always left the people at the critical moment. ... O'Connell recoiled before the cannon at Clontarf" though adding "I do not blame these men; you or I might have done the same. It is a terrible responsibility to be cast on a man, that of bidding the cannon speak and the grapeshot pour". In O'Connell's lifetime, the aims of his Repeal Association—an independent Kingdom of Ireland governing itself but keeping the British monarch as its Head of State—proved too radical for the British government of the time to accept, and brought upon O'Connell persecution and suppression. O'Connell is known in Ireland as "The Liberator" or "The Great Emancipator" for his success in achieving Catholic Emancipation. O'Connell admired Latin American liberator Simón Bolívar, and one of his sons, Morgan O'Connell, was a volunteer officer in Bolívar's army in 1820, aged 15. The principal street in the centre of Dublin, previously called Sackville Street, was renamed O'Connell Street in his honour in the early 20th century after the Irish Free Statecame into being.His statue (made by the sculptor John Henry Foley, who also designed the sculptures of the Albert Memorial in London) stands at one end of the street, with a statue of Charles Stewart Parnell at the other end. The main street of Limerick is also named after O'Connell, also with a statue at the end (in the centre of the Crescent). O'Connell Streets also exist in Ennis, Sligo, Athlone, Kilkee, Clonmel. Dungarvan and Waterford. The Daniel O'Connell Bridge was built over the Ophir River, Central Otago, New Zealand in 1880. There is a statue honouring O'Connell outside St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, Australia.There is a museum commemorating him in Derrynane House, near the village of Derrynane, County Kerry, which was once owned by his family.He was a member of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland as well.

    1834 portrait of Daniel O'Connell by George Hayter
    In 1802 O'Connell married his third cousin, Mary O'Connell. It was a love marriage, and to persist in it was an act of considerable courage, since Daniel's uncle Maurice was outraged (as Mary had no fortune) and for a time threatened to disinherit them. They had four daughters (three surviving), Ellen(1805–1883), Catherine (1808), Elizabeth (1810), and Rickarda (1815) and four sons. The sons—Maurice (1803), Morgan (1804), John (1810), and Daniel(1816)—all sat in Parliament. The marriage was happy and Mary's death in 1837 was a blow from which her husband never fully recovered. He was a devoted father; O'Faoláin suggests that despite his wide acquaintance he had few close friends and therefore the family circle meant a great deal to him.

    O'Connell assisted his younger son, Daniel junior, to acquire the Phoenix Brewery in James's Street, Dublin in 1831. The brewery produced a brand known as "O'Connell's Ale" and enjoyed some popularity. By 1832, O'Connell was forced to state that he would not be a political patron of the brewing trade or his son's company, until he was no longer a member of parliament, particularly because O'Connell and Arthur Guinness were political enemies. Guinness was the "moderate" liberal candidate, O'Connell was the "radical" liberal candidate. The rivalry caused dozens of Irish firms to boycott Guinness during the 1841 Repeal election. It was at this time that Guinness was accused of supporting the "Orange system", and its beer was known as "Protestant porter". When the O'Connell family left brewing, the rights to "O'Connell Dublin Ale" was sold to John D'Arcy. The brewing business proved to be unsuccessful though, and after a few years was taken over by the manager, John Brennan, while Daniel junior embraced a political career. Brennan changed the name back to the Phoenix Brewery but continued to brew and sell O'Connell's Ale. When the Phoenix Brewery was effectively closed after being absorbed into the Guinness complex in 1909, the brewing of O'Connell's Ale was carried out by John D'Arcy and Son Ltd at the Anchor Brewery in Usher Street. In 1926, D'Arcy's ceased trading and the firm of Watkins, Jameson and Pim carried on the brewing until they too succumbed to the pressures of trying to compete with Guinness. Daniel junior was the committee chairman of the licensed trade association of the period and gave considerable and valuable support to Daniel O'Connell in his public life. Some time later a quarrel arose and O'Connell turned his back on the association and became a strong advocate of temperance. During the period of Fr. Mathew's total abstinence crusades many temperance rallies were held, the most notable being a huge rally held on St. Patrick's Day in 1841. Daniel O'Connell was a guest of honour at another such rally held at the Rotunda Hospital.

    O'Connell is on the left edge in this painting which is of the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention.
    Michael Doheny, in his The Felon's Track, says that the very character of emancipation has assumed an "exaggerated and false guise" and that it is an error to call it emancipation. He went on, that it was neither the first nor the last nor even the most important in the concessions, which are entitled to the name of emancipation, and that no one remembered the men whose exertions "wrung from the reluctant spirit of a far darker time the right of living, of worship, of enjoying property, and exercising the franchise".Doheny's opinion was, that the penalties of the "Penal Laws" had been long abolished, and that barbarous code had been compressed into cold and stolid exclusiveness and yet Mr. O'Connell monopolised its entire renown. The view put forward by John Mitchel, also one of the leading members of the Young Ireland movement, in his "Jail Journal" was that there were two distinct movements in Ireland during this period, which were rousing the people, one was the Catholic Relief Agitation (led by O'Connell), which was both open and legal, the other was the secret societies known as the Ribbon and White—boy movements. The first proposed the admission of professional and genteel Catholics to Parliament and to the honours of the professions, all under British law—the other, originating in an utter horror and defiance of British law, contemplated nothing less than a social, and ultimately, a political revolution. According to Mitchel, for fear of the latter, Great Britain with a "very ill grace yielded to the first". Mitchel agrees that Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington said they brought in this measure, to avert civil war; but says that "no British statesman ever officially tells the truth, or assigns to any act its real motive." Their real motive was, according to Mitchel, to buy into the British interests, the landed and educated Catholics, these "Respectable Catholics" would then be contented, and "become West Britons" from that day.

    "Daniel O'Connell: The Champion of Liberty" poster published in Pennsylvania, 1847
    A critic of violent insurrection in Ireland, O'Connell once said that "the altar of liberty totters when it is cemented only with blood", and yet as late as 1841, O'Connell had whipped his MPs into line to keep the (First) Opium War going in China. The Tories at the time had proposed a motion of censure over the war, and O'Connell had to call upon his MPs to support the Whig Government. As a result of this intervention, the Government was saved. Politically, he focused on parliamentary and populist methods to force change and made regular declarations of his loyalty to the British Crown. He often warned the British establishment that if they did not reform the governance of Ireland, Irishmen would start to listen to the "counsels of violent men". Successive British governments continued to ignore this advice, long after his death, although he succeeded in extracting by the sheer force of will and the power of the Catholic peasants and clergy much of what he wanted, i.e., eliminating disabilities on Roman Catholics; ensuring that lawfully elected Roman Catholics could serve their constituencies in the British Parliament (until the Irish Parliament was restored); and amending the Oath of Allegiance so as to remove clauses offensive to Roman Catholics who could then take the Oath in good conscience. Although a native speaker of the Irish language, O'Connell encouraged Irish people to learn English to better themselves.Although he is best known for the campaign for Catholic emancipation; he also supported similar efforts for Irish Jews. At his insistence, in 1846, the British law "De Judaismo", which prescribed a special dress for Jews, was repealed. O'Connell said: "Ireland has claims on your ancient race, it is the only country that I know of unsullied by any one act of persecution of the Jews".In April 1835, misled by inaccurate press reports, O'Connell thought Disraeli had slandered him and launched an outspoken attack upon him: Disraeli sought satisfaction by challenging O'Connell's son Morgan to a duel, Daniel having sworn never to duel again after previously killing a man. Morgan declined, replying that he was not responsible for his father's words.

    O'Connell's grave in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. In accordance with his final words – "My body to Ireland, my heart to Rome, and my soul to heaven" – his embalmed heart was interred in a silver casket and sent to Rome, though it is now lost.
     
    • "The altar of liberty totters when it is cemented only with blood." (Written in his Journal, December 1796, and one of O'Connell's most well-known quotes. Quoted by O'Ferrall, F., Daniel O'Connell, Dublin, 1981, p. 12)
    • "Gentlemen, you may soon have the alternative to live as slaves or die as free men." (speaking in Mallow, County Cork)
    • "Good God, what a brute man becomes when ignorant and oppressed. Oh Liberty! What horrors are committed in thy name! May every virtuous revolutionist remember the horrors of Wexford!" (Written in his journal, 2 January 1799, referring to the recent 1798 Rebellion. Quoted from Vol I, p. 205, of O'Neill Daunt, W. J., Personal Recollections of the Late Daniel O'Connell, M.P., 2 Vols, London, 1848.)
    • "My days—the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood—have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land—in the land of my sires—I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast." (July 1812, aged 37, reflecting on the failure to secure equal rights or Catholic Emancipation for Catholics in Ireland. Quoted from Vol I, p. 185, of O'Connell, J. (ed.) The Life and Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, 2 Vols, Dublin, 1846)
    • "How cruel the Penal Laws are which exclude me from a fair trial with men whom I look upon as so much my inferiors ...'. (O'Connell's Correspondence, Letter No 700, Vol II)
    • "I want to make all Europe and America know it—I want to make England feel her weakness if she refuses to give the justice we [the Irish] require—the restoration of our domestic parliament ..." (Speech given at a 'monster' meeting held at Drogheda, June 1843)
    • "There is an utter ignorance of, and indifference to, our sufferings and privations ... What care they for us, provided we be submissive, pay the taxes, furnish recruits for the Army and Navy and bless the masters who either despise or oppress or combine both? The apathy that exists respecting Ireland is worse than the national antipathy they bear us." (Letter to T. M. Ray, 1839, on English attitudes to Ireland (O'Connell, Correspondence, Vol VI, Letter No. 2588))
    • "No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation's heart and leaves to Ireland not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream." (Letter to Bishop Doyle, 1831 (O'Connell Correspondence, Vol IV, Letter No. 1860))
    • "The principle of my political life ... is, that all ameliorations and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave the country worse than they found it.' (Writing in The Nationnewspaper, 18 November 1843)
    • "No man was ever a good soldier but the man who goes into the battle determined to conquer, or not to come back from the battle field (cheers). No other principle makes a good soldier." (O'Connell recalling the spirited conduct of the Irish soldiers in Wellington's army, at the Monster meeting held at Mullaghmast.)
    • "The poor old Duke [of Wellington]! What shall I say of him? To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse." (Shaw's Authenticated Report of the Irish State Trials (1844), p. 93)
    • "Every religion is good—every religion is true to him who in his good caution and conscience believes it." (As defence counsel in R. v Magee (1813), pleading for religious tolerance.)
    • "Ireland is too poor for a poor law." (In response to the Poor Relief Act of 1839 that set up the workhouses.
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  • De Valera B&W Portrait

    €120.00
    e Valera was a near demagogue type politician who dominated Irish Political life from 1917 to 1973,whether as Prime Minister or President or as leader of the Opposition.Known as the Long Fella,Irish people either loved or hated him-there was simply no ambivalent feelings about this most polarising of politicians.This fine, original portrait of De Valera catches him perfectly and would make a superb addition to any Irish Pub ,both at home or abroad with a Fianna Fail or Republican bias or anyone from Clare,a county where he was always at his most popular. Eamon de Valera, first registered as George de Valero; changed some time before 1901 to Edward de Valera;14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) was a prominent statesman and political leader in 20th-century Ireland. His political career spanned over half a century, from 1917 to 1973; he served several terms as head of government and head of state. He also led the introduction of the Constitution of Ireland. Prior to de Valera's political career, he was a Commandant at Boland's Mill during the 1916 Easter Rising, an Irish revolution that would eventually contribute to Irish independence. He was arrested, sentenced to death but released for a variety of reasons, including the public response to the British execution of Rising leaders. He returned to Ireland after being jailed in England and became one of the leading political figures of the War of Independence. After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, de Valera served as the political leader of Anti-Treaty Sinn Fein until 1926, when he, along with many supporters, left the party to set up Fianna Fáil, a new political party which abandoned the policy of abstentionism from Dáil Éireann. From there, de Valera would go on to be at the forefront of Irish politics until the turn of the 1960s. He took over as President of the Executive Councilfrom W. T. Cosgrave and later Taoiseach, with the passing of Bunreacht Na hEireann (Irish constitution) in 1937. He would serve as Taoiseach on 3 occasions; from 1937 to 1948, from 1951 to 1954 and finally from 1957 to 1959. He remains the longest serving Taoiseach by total days served in the post. He resigned in 1959 upon his election as President of Ireland. By then, he had been Leader of Fianna Fáil for 33 years, and he, along with older founding members, began to take a less prominent role relative to newer ministers such as Jack Lynch, Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney. He would serve as President from 1959 to 1973, two full terms in office. De Valera's political beliefs evolved from militant Irish republicanism to strong social, cultural and economic conservatism.He has been characterised by a stern, unbending, devious demeanor. His roles in the Civil War have also portrayed him as a divisive figure in Irish history. Biographer Tim Pat Coogan sees his time in power as being characterised by economic and cultural stagnation, while Diarmaid Ferriter argues that the stereotype of de Valera as an austere, cold and even backward figure was largely manufactured in the 1960s and is misguided. Origins:Co Laois Dimensions :48cm x 35cm
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  • De Valera in Killaloe Co Clare 1917

    €80.00
    35cm x 40cm
    EFORE THE ADVENT of opinion polls, by-elections were the most reliable means of gauging the mood of the electorate.
    For decades before the 1916 Rising, Irish nationalists represented by the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) sought Irish home rule – a subordinate parliament and government in Dublin.
    But the emergence of Sinn Féin, which championed an independent Irish republic, transformed the political landscape. In 1917 Sinn Féin won four by-elections on the bounce in North Roscommon, South Longford, East Clare and South Kilkenny.
    No victory was more emphatic than East Clare and no winning candidate more central to the future history of Ireland.
    A political novice
    The victor was a political novice with little experience of public speaking outside the classroom. The senior surviving Volunteer from 1916, he was largely unknown before the East Clare by-election.
    But after it he was catapulted to national prominence, became president of Sinn Féin and represented East Clare for the next four decades. That soldier turned politician was De Valera .
    The East Clare by-election on July 10 was precipitated by the death on the Western Front of the sitting MP: Major Willie Redmond, brother of the leader of the IPP.
    Patrick Lynch KC, a barrister, contested the seat for the IPP under the banner: “Clare for a Clareman – Lynch is the Man”. His supporters, who were strongest in Ennis, contended that an Irish republic was a political fantasy. For several reasons, few expected anything other than a Sinn Féin victory.
    One of the most rebellious counties in Ireland
    First, Clare was one of the most rebellious counties in Ireland and during the by-election the county inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary had to obtain a draft of 150 soldiers. Eight months after the by-election Clare became the first county to be placed under military rule since the 1916 Rising.
    Second, no election had been contested in East Clare since 1895 and the IPP’s constituency machine was decrepit and almost bankrupt. By contrast, the Sinn Féin campaign was highly organised and backboned by the revamped Irish Volunteers who were unafraid to defy the authorities and acted as a private police force.
    De Valera, who had only been released from prison on 16 June, campaigned in his Volunteer uniform and told the electors that, “every vote you give now is as good as the crack of a rifle in proclaiming your desire for freedom”.
    Third, buoyed up by its earlier electoral successes Sinn Féin attracted not just the support of the young but that of the Clare Champion (the county newspaper) and, more significantly, the endorsement of Bishop Michael Fogarty of Killaloe and the majority of younger clergy. The Catholic card was played astutely and reassuringly by de Valera.
    Although everyone expected a victory for de Valera, no one expected so stunning a winning margin. When the result of the election was announced on July 11 de Valera had secured 5,010 votes to Lynch’s 2,035.
    A game changer
    The rural vote had turned against the IPP. The Freeman’s Journal, the newspaper of the IPP, lamented that, “East Clare has declared for revolution by an overwhelming majority”. Lynch was not the man after all.
    The East Clare by-election was a milestone for Sinn Féin because it secured a striking popular mandate which helped the organisation to continue its rapid growth ahead of the 1918 general election.
    For de Valera his victory was a pivotal episode in his progression from militant to political republican. More than any other factor, the scale of his success propelled him to the presidency of Sinn Féin in October 1917 and launched his long political career. For a man who in the early months of 1917 wished to have no truck with politics this was quite a turn of events.
     
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  • DeValera in America

    €80.00

    struggle for independence, this month marks the 100-year anniversary of an important moment in Irish-US relations.

    In June 1919, Éamon de Valera arrived in the United States for what was to be an 18-month visit. He had recently escaped from Lincoln jail in England in sensational fashion, after a duplicate key was smuggled into the jail in a cake and he escaped dressed as a woman.

    A few months later he was a stowaway aboard the SS Lapland from Liverpool bound for America.

    De Valera’s plan was to secure recognition for the emerging Irish nation, tap into the huge Irish-American community for funds, and to pressurise the US government to take a stance on Irish independence. Playing on his mind was the upcoming Versailles conference where the nascent League of Nations was preparing to guarantee “existing international borders” – a provision that would imply Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom.

    De Valera also had a challenge in winning over President Woodrow Wilson, who was less than sympathetic to Ireland’s cause.

    De Valera’s interest in America was of course personal. He was born in New York in 1882 and his US citizenship was one of the reasons he was spared execution after the 1916 rising.

    Public speeches

    At first Dev kept a low profile in America. Though he was greeted by Harry Boland and others when he docked in New York, he first went to Philadelphia and stayed with Joseph McGarrity, the Tyrone-born leader of Clan na Gael and a well-known figure in Irish America. He also quietly paid a visit to his mother in Rochester, upstate New York.

    De Valera’s first major engagement was on June 23rd when he was unveiled to the American public at a press conference in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York. Crowds thronged the streets around the hotel, and De Valera proclaimed: “I am in America as the official head of the Republic established by the will of the Irish people in accordance with the principle of self-determination.”

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  • Ferrars History of Limerick Antique Print – St Marys Cathedral

    €90.00
    St Marys Cathedral from Ferrars History of Limerick, first published in 1787.There are very few copies still in existence and these 5 prints were generously taken from 16 original engravings in the first edition 35cm x 40cm  Limerick Limerick Cathedral (Saint Mary's) is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and was founded in 1168 and is the oldest building in Limerick which is in use. It has the only complete set of misericords left in Ireland. In 1111, the Synod of Ráth Breasail decided that "Saint Mary's church" would become the cathedral church of the Diocese of Limerick. According to tradition, Domnall Mór Ua Briain, the last King of Munster, founded the present cathedral on the site of his palace on King's Island in 1168.[3] The palace had been built on the site of the Viking meeting place, or "Thingmote" – the Vikings' most westerly European stronghold.[1] This had been the centre of government in the early medieval Viking city. Parts of the palace may be incorporated into the present structure of the cathedral, most prominently the great west door, which is claimed to have been the original main entrance to the royal palace.The west door is now only used on ceremonial occasions. The bishops of Limerick have for centuries knocked on this door and entered by it as part of their installation ceremony. According to tradition, during the many sieges of Limerick the defenders of the city used the stones around the west door to sharpen their swords and arrows, and the marks they made in the stonework can be seen there today. The tower of Saint Mary's Cathedral was added in the 14th century. It rises to 120 feet (36.58 meters), containing a peal of 8 bells, of which 6 were cast by John Taylor & Co, Loughborough, and 2 cast in Whitechapel, London. The tower also contains a stationary service bell, which can be rung from the ground floor.

    Notable burials

    • Bishop Charles Graves The cathedral graveyard contains many graves and tombs of notable people. The physician Samuel Crumpe is buried in the graveyard near the great west door. Prince Milo of Montenegro, Frances Condell (first woman Mayor of Limerick) and Bishop Charles Graves are also interred in the grounds. The last High King of Munster, Domnall was purportedly buried in the cathedral, with the remnants of his stone coffin still visible in the Cathedral chancel. Bishop Cornelius O'Dea is buried alongside several other Bishops of Limerick in what is believed to be an Episcopal vault underneath the chancel itself. Also notable are the Sexton, Barrington, Boyd and Vanderkiste tombs along the south entrance pathway.

    From the Irish Reformation to the 19th century

    Altar of the cathedral
    There are five chandeliers which hang from the ceiling. These are only lit on special occasions. The larger three of the five were made in Dublin and presented in 1759 by the Limerick Corporation. The belfry holds a peal of eight bells, six of which were presented by William Yorke, mayor of Limerick, in 1673. An active team of bell ringers travels the country to compete with other campanologists.Saint Mary's received its organ in 1624, when Bishop Bernard Adams donated one. It has been rebuilt over the centuries and was most recently renovated in 1968 and 2005. In 1620 the English-born judge Luke Gernon, a resident of Limerick, wrote a flattering description of the cathedral: "not large, but lightsome, and by the providence of the Bishop fairly beautified within, and as gloriously served with singing and organs". During the Irish Confederacy wars, the cathedral was briefly transferred to Roman Catholic hands. The bishop of Limerick, Richard Arthur, was buried in the cathedral in 1646.
    Choir misericords
    In 1651, after Oliver Cromwell's forces captured Limerick, the cathedral was used as a stable by the parliamentary army. This misuse was short lived, but was a similar fate to that suffered by some of the other great cathedrals during the Cromwellian campaign in Ireland. The troops also removed the cathedral's original 13 ft Pre-Reformation high altar from the cathedral. The altar was only reinstated in the 1960s. It is the largest such altar in Ireland and the UK, carved from a single limestone block. The altar is used for communion services at major festivals and remains in its historic location in what is now the chapel of the Virgin Mary or Lady Chapel. In 1691, the cathedral suffered considerable damage, particularly on the east end, during the Williamite Siege of Limerick.After the Treaty of Limerick, William granted £1,000 towards repairs. There are cannonball from 1691 in the Glentworth Chapel/Saint George's Chapel inside.

    From the 19th century to the 20th century

    Postage Stamp from 1968
    In 1968, the Irish Government commissioned two postage stamps to commemorate the cathedral's 800 year anniversary. A picture of one of the stamps is displayed on this page. In 1991, there was a large £2.5 million restoration programme which was completed in 1996 with the excavation and re-laying of the floors as well as the installation of underfloor central heating. Restoration continues today to a lesser degree.

    From the 20th century to the 21st century

    Today the cathedral is still used for its original purpose as a place of worship and prayer for everybody. It is also the 3rd biggest tourist attraction in Limerick. It is open to the public every day from 9:00 am to 4:45 pm. For Tourists there is a €5 admission charge upon entry. This money is essential for the upkeep of the building, and without it, the cathedral simply could not function. Following the retirement of the Very Rev'd Maurice Sirr on 24 June 2012, Bishop Trevor Williams announced the appointment of the Reverend Sandra Ann Pragnell as Dean of Limerick and Rector of Limerick City Parish. She was the first female dean of the cathedral and rector of Limerick City Parish, and retired in January 2017. It was announced on 27 August 2017, that the Reverend Canon Niall James Sloane was to become the 63rd Dean of Limerick and the new rector of Limerick City Parish; with his installation and institution taking place on 21 October 2017 in the cathedral. The cathedral grounds holds United Nations Memorial Plaque with the names of all the Irish men who died while serving in the United Nations Peacekeepers.  
    The History of Limerick by James Ferrar published in 1787 is a history of Limerick city from ancient times until the late 18th century. Limerick was an important medieval stronghold, became an important port and trading centre, was subject to a series of sieges in the 17th century and finally experienced a brief golden age of prosperity during the Georgian period of the late 18th century. Limerick or Luimneach was an ancient settlement long before the Vikings captured it and established their own town there in the 9th century. They used it as a base for trade and also to launch raids up the River Shannon against monastic sites like Clonmacnoise and other wealthy Christian centres. However in the 11th century the last Viking king of Limerick was defeated by King Brian Boru. In 1174, the Norman conquerors who had already seized Dublin , Leinster and Munster captured the city of Limerick . It was given its city charter by King Richard I in 1197 and a castle fortress was built by King John about 1200. The medieval city featured a walled town known as Englishtown on the north side of the River Shannon. Irishtown was inhabited by the Irish and Vikings was on the south side of the river. Both were eventually walled and linked by bridges over the Shannon . Limerick would retain formidable defenses until the 17th century when it experienced four separate sieges during the period of the English Civil War and the Williamite Wars. Catholic rebels forced the English garrison to surrender in 1642 and a Parliamentarian Army in turn forced a Catholic and Royalist garrison to surrender in 1651. It was twice besieged in 1690 and 1691 by the forces of William III of Orange who forced Jacobins fighting on the sides of the Catholic James II to surrender and go into exile. From the late 17th to the 19th centuries an Anglo-Irish Protestant elite controlled Ireland . In Limerick in the late 1700s Limerick merchants prospered and Edmund Pery, 1st Viscount Pery had much of the south side of the city redesigned with a grid of Georgian brick terraces and neo-classical stone buildings. The Georgian area still survives in the 21st century and Prey Square is named in Edmund Prey's honour. Unfortunately the Irish economy declined in the early 19th century as the Irish Parliament was switched from College Green, Dublin to the House of Commons in London and Ireland remained a near feudal agricultural society as Britain rapidly industrialised. Like Dublin , Limerick 's best days were behind it as slums flourished and in the 1840s the city population swelled as the poor fled from the land after the failure of the potato crop.  
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    Ferrars History of Limerick Antique Print- Castleconnell

    €90.00
    35cm x 40cm   Limerick City The definitive Ferrars History of Limerick was first published in 1787 There are very few copies still in existence and these 5 prints were generously taken from 16 original engravings in the first edition . Castleconnell, picturesquely situated on a rock overlooking the Shannon, about six miles north of Limerick, became the principal castle of the Bourkes in West Clanwilliam. This was the ancient seat of the O'Conaings, and took their name Caislean-ui-Chonaine. It subsequently fell into the possession of the O'Briens of Thomond. King John made a grant of Castleconnell, with five knights' fees, to William de Burgh, who erected a strong castle there. Walter De Burgh, about the end of the thirteenth century, considerably enlarged and strengthened this castle, which was the chief stronghold of his descendants at the end of the sixteenth century.  
    The History of Limerick by James Ferrar published in 1787 is a history of Limerick city from ancient times until the late 18th century. Limerick was an important medieval stronghold, became an important port and trading centre, was subject to a series of sieges in the 17th century and finally experienced a brief golden age of prosperity during the Georgian period of the late 18th century. Limerick or Luimneach was an ancient settlement long before the Vikings captured it and established their own town there in the 9th century. They used it as a base for trade and also to launch raids up the River Shannon against monastic sites like Clonmacnoise and other wealthy Christian centres. However in the 11th century the last Viking king of Limerick was defeated by King Brian Boru. In 1174, the Norman conquerors who had already seized Dublin , Leinster and Munster captured the city of Limerick . It was given its city charter by King Richard I in 1197 and a castle fortress was built by King John about 1200. The medieval city featured a walled town known as Englishtown on the north side of the River Shannon. Irishtown was inhabited by the Irish and Vikings was on the south side of the river. Both were eventually walled and linked by bridges over the Shannon . Limerick would retain formidable defenses until the 17th century when it experienced four separate sieges during the period of the English Civil War and the Williamite Wars. Catholic rebels forced the English garrison to surrender in 1642 and a Parliamentarian Army in turn forced a Catholic and Royalist garrison to surrender in 1651. It was twice besieged in 1690 and 1691 by the forces of William III of Orange who forced Jacobins fighting on the sides of the Catholic James II to surrender and go into exile. From the late 17th to the 19th centuries an Anglo-Irish Protestant elite controlled Ireland . In Limerick in the late 1700s Limerick merchants prospered and Edmund Pery, 1st Viscount Pery had much of the south side of the city redesigned with a grid of Georgian brick terraces and neo-classical stone buildings. The Georgian area still survives in the 21st century and Prey Square is named in Edmund Prey's honour. Unfortunately the Irish economy declined in the early 19th century as the Irish Parliament was switched from College Green, Dublin to the House of Commons in London and Ireland remained a near feudal agricultural society as Britain rapidly industrialised. Like Dublin , Limerick 's best days were behind it as slums flourished and in the 1840s the city population swelled as the poor fled from the land after the failure of the potato crop.  
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    Ferrars History of Limerick Antique Print-Introduction

    €90.00
    Ferrars History of Limerick was first published in 1787.There are very few copies still in existence and these 5 prints were generously taken from 16 original engravings in the first edition .They depict the Siege of Limerick in 1691,St Marys Cathedral,De Burgos Castle in Castleconnell,The Exchange building and the first page of the book. 35cm x 40cm  Limerick  
    The History of Limerick by James Ferrar published in 1787 is a history of Limerick city from ancient times until the late 18th century. Limerick was an important medieval stronghold, became an important port and trading centre, was subject to a series of sieges in the 17th century and finally experienced a brief golden age of prosperity during the Georgian period of the late 18th century. Limerick or Luimneach was an ancient settlement long before the Vikings captured it and established their own town there in the 9th century. They used it as a base for trade and also to launch raids up the River Shannon against monastic sites like Clonmacnoise and other wealthy Christian centres. However in the 11th century the last Viking king of Limerick was defeated by King Brian Boru. In 1174, the Norman conquerors who had already seized Dublin , Leinster and Munster captured the city of Limerick . It was given its city charter by King Richard I in 1197 and a castle fortress was built by King John about 1200. The medieval city featured a walled town known as Englishtown on the north side of the River Shannon. Irishtown was inhabited by the Irish and Vikings was on the south side of the river. Both were eventually walled and linked by bridges over the Shannon . Limerick would retain formidable defenses until the 17th century when it experienced four separate sieges during the period of the English Civil War and the Williamite Wars. Catholic rebels forced the English garrison to surrender in 1642 and a Parliamentarian Army in turn forced a Catholic and Royalist garrison to surrender in 1651. It was twice besieged in 1690 and 1691 by the forces of William III of Orange who forced Jacobins fighting on the sides of the Catholic James II to surrender and go into exile. From the late 17th to the 19th centuries an Anglo-Irish Protestant elite controlled Ireland . In Limerick in the late 1700s Limerick merchants prospered and Edmund Pery, 1st Viscount Pery had much of the south side of the city redesigned with a grid of Georgian brick terraces and neo-classical stone buildings. The Georgian area still survives in the 21st century and Prey Square is named in Edmund Prey's honour. Unfortunately the Irish economy declined in the early 19th century as the Irish Parliament was switched from College Green, Dublin to the House of Commons in London and Ireland remained a near feudal agricultural society as Britain rapidly industrialised. Like Dublin , Limerick 's best days were behind it as slums flourished and in the 1840s the city population swelled as the poor fled from the land after the failure of the potato crop.  
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    Ferrars History of Limerick Antique Print-Siege of Limerick 1691

    €90.00
    The Siege of Limerick 1691 from the definitive Ferrars History of Limerick was first published in 1787 There are very few copies still in existence and these 5 prints were generously taken from 16 original engravings in the first edition . 35cm x 40cm  Limerick The Siege of Limerick in western Ireland was a second siege of the town during the Williamite War in Ireland (1689–1691). The city, held by Jacobite forces was able to beat off a Williamite assault in 1690. However, after a second siege in August–October 1691, it surrendered on favourable terms. By the time of the second siege, the military situation had turned against the Jacobites; their main force had been badly defeated at the Battle of Aughrim in July, with over 4,000 killed, including their commander, the Marquis de St Ruth, and thousands more either taken prisoner or deserted. The town of Galway capitulated in July 1691; its Jacobite garrison was accorded 'all the honours of war,' which allowed them to retain their weapons and receive a free pass to Limerick.
    Siege of Limerick 1691, map.
    However, although its defences had been considerably strengthened since 1690, morale was now much lower after a series of defeats and retreats. By now, siege warfare was an exact art, the rules of which were so well understood wagering on their outcome and duration had become a popular craze; the then enormous sum of £200,000 was alleged to have been bet on the siege. The Williamite general Godert de Ginkell surrounded the city and bombarded it, tearing a breach in the walls of English town. A surprise Williamite attack drove the Irish defenders from the earthworks defending Thomond bridge, sending its Irish defenders reeling back towards Limerick. The French defenders of the main gate of the city refused to open it for the fleeing Irish and about 800 of them were cut down or drowned in the river Shannon.

    Capitulation and treaty

    After this point, Patrick Sarsfield ousted the Chevalier de Tessé and the Marquis d'Usson, the French commanders in Limerick, and began negotiations to surrender. He and Ginkel concluded a treaty that promised to respect the civilian population of Limerick, tolerate the Catholic religion in Ireland, guarantee against the confiscation of Catholic-owned land and allow Sarsfield and the fully-armed Jacobite army to withdraw to France. Limerick capitulated under those favourable terms in October 1691. Sarsfield left Ireland with 10,000 soldiers and 4,000 women and children to enter the French service, a journey that has become known as the Flight of the Wild Geese. The terms of the Treaty of Limerick were not honoured by the 1697 Protestant-dominated Irish Parliament, and Catholics were subjected to the continuous oppression of the Penal Laws, which discriminated against them until the early 19th century   The History of Limerick by James Ferrar published in 1787 is a history of Limerick city from ancient times until the late 18th century. Limerick was an important medieval stronghold, became an important port and trading centre, was subject to a series of sieges in the 17th century and finally experienced a brief golden age of prosperity during the Georgian period of the late 18th century. Limerick or Luimneach was an ancient settlement long before the Vikings captured it and established their own town there in the 9th century. They used it as a base for trade and also to launch raids up the River Shannon against monastic sites like Clonmacnoise and other wealthy Christian centres. However in the 11th century the last Viking king of Limerick was defeated by King Brian Boru. In 1174, the Norman conquerors who had already seized Dublin , Leinster and Munster captured the city of Limerick . It was given its city charter by King Richard I in 1197 and a castle fortress was built by King John about 1200. The medieval city featured a walled town known as Englishtown on the north side of the River Shannon. Irishtown was inhabited by the Irish and Vikings was on the south side of the river. Both were eventually walled and linked by bridges over the Shannon . Limerick would retain formidable defenses until the 17th century when it experienced four separate sieges during the period of the English Civil War and the Williamite Wars. Catholic rebels forced the English garrison to surrender in 1642 and a Parliamentarian Army in turn forced a Catholic and Royalist garrison to surrender in 1651. It was twice besieged in 1690 and 1691 by the forces of William III of Orange who forced Jacobins fighting on the sides of the Catholic James II to surrender and go into exile. From the late 17th to the 19th centuries an Anglo-Irish Protestant elite controlled Ireland . In Limerick in the late 1700s Limerick merchants prospered and Edmund Pery, 1st Viscount Pery had much of the south side of the city redesigned with a grid of Georgian brick terraces and neo-classical stone buildings. The Georgian area still survives in the 21st century and Prey Square is named in Edmund Prey's honour. Unfortunately the Irish economy declined in the early 19th century as the Irish Parliament was switched from College Green, Dublin to the House of Commons in London and Ireland remained a near feudal agricultural society as Britain rapidly industrialised. Like Dublin , Limerick 's best days were behind it as slums flourished and in the 1840s the city population swelled as the poor fled from the land after the failure of the potato crop.  
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    Ferrars History of Limerick Antique Print-The Exchange Limerick

    €90.00
    Superb print of The Exchange Limerick from Ferrars History of Limerick,first published in 1787.There are very few copies still in existence and these 5 prints were generously taken from 16 original engravings in the first edition . 35cm x 40cm  Limerick  
    rcaded six-bay single-storey limestone exterior wall forming the remains of the former Exchange, originally built in 1673, rebuilt in 1702 and again in between 1777-78. Forms part of the wall which surrounds Saint Mary's Cathedral graveyard and faces onto Nicholas Street. Historically in use as an evening national school. Now much obscured by vegetative growth. The blind arcade of seven arches is formed by half-engaged Tuscan columns standing on limestone base, breaking to centre arch and end bay to west. Profiled archivolts unseen. Entablature to parapet obscured. Roughly squared and coursed rubble limestone infill between arches. At either end is an ashlar limestone pier engaged with end columns, giving strength of composition to the broad intercolumniation. Plaque to Cathedral wall reads: This Exchange Was Rebuilt At Expense Of The Corporation Of Limerick The First Year Of The Reign Of Queen Anne Anno Dom 1702 William Davis Esquire Mayor Rawley Colroys Robert Wilkinson Sheriffs'.

    Appraisal

    What remains of this impressive architectural composition is an important and enriching palimpsest to the site and complex of Saint Mary's Cathedral. The secular use of which shows the economic importance of the building given its proximity to the cathedral. Henry Denmead was responsible for the reworking in 1777-78. James Pain was paid £432.17s 5d for repairs and alterations in April 1815, while George Richard Pain carried out further repairs in June 1819 to the cost of £182.1s 2½ d. On the 1872 Ordnance Survey the building was in use as a national school, and the floor plan represented was of a single unified space opening onto Nicholas Street and three small secondary rooms to the rear. A passage or corridor to the west appears to have given access to the Church grounds, and the building to the rear looked onto a walled graveyard. A lane, now gone, called Grid Iron Lane, ran along the east side elevation of the structure, returning at right angles to meet Bridge Street.

     
    The History of Limerick by James Ferrar published in 1787 is a history of Limerick city from ancient times until the late 18th century. Limerick was an important medieval stronghold, became an important port and trading centre, was subject to a series of sieges in the 17th century and finally experienced a brief golden age of prosperity during the Georgian period of the late 18th century. Limerick or Luimneach was an ancient settlement long before the Vikings captured it and established their own town there in the 9th century. They used it as a base for trade and also to launch raids up the River Shannon against monastic sites like Clonmacnoise and other wealthy Christian centres. However in the 11th century the last Viking king of Limerick was defeated by King Brian Boru. In 1174, the Norman conquerors who had already seized Dublin , Leinster and Munster captured the city of Limerick . It was given its city charter by King Richard I in 1197 and a castle fortress was built by King John about 1200. The medieval city featured a walled town known as Englishtown on the north side of the River Shannon. Irishtown was inhabited by the Irish and Vikings was on the south side of the river. Both were eventually walled and linked by bridges over the Shannon . Limerick would retain formidable defenses until the 17th century when it experienced four separate sieges during the period of the English Civil War and the Williamite Wars. Catholic rebels forced the English garrison to surrender in 1642 and a Parliamentarian Army in turn forced a Catholic and Royalist garrison to surrender in 1651. It was twice besieged in 1690 and 1691 by the forces of William III of Orange who forced Jacobins fighting on the sides of the Catholic James II to surrender and go into exile. From the late 17th to the 19th centuries an Anglo-Irish Protestant elite controlled Ireland . In Limerick in the late 1700s Limerick merchants prospered and Edmund Pery, 1st Viscount Pery had much of the south side of the city redesigned with a grid of Georgian brick terraces and neo-classical stone buildings. The Georgian area still survives in the 21st century and Prey Square is named in Edmund Prey's honour. Unfortunately the Irish economy declined in the early 19th century as the Irish Parliament was switched from College Green, Dublin to the House of Commons in London and Ireland remained a near feudal agricultural society as Britain rapidly industrialised. Like Dublin , Limerick 's best days were behind it as slums flourished and in the 1840s the city population swelled as the poor fled from the land after the failure of the potato crop.  
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  • Framed 1916 Proclamation of Independence (Poblacht nahEireann)

    €120.00
    60cm x 50cm  Limerick City   The Proclamation of the Republic (Irish: Forógra na Poblachta), also known as the 1916 Proclamation or the Easter Proclamation, was a document issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising in Ireland, which began on 24 April 1916. In it, the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, styling itself the ’Provisional Government of the Irish Republic’, proclaimed Ireland's independence from the United Kingdom. The reading of the proclamation by Patrick Pearse outside the General Post Office (GPO) on Sackville Street (now called O'Connell Street), Dublin's main thoroughfare, marked the beginning of the Rising. The proclamation was modelled on a similar independence proclamation issued during the 1803 rebellion by Robert Emmet.

    Principles of the proclamation

    Though the Rising failed in military terms, the principles of the Proclamation to varying degrees influenced the thinking of later generations of Irish politicians. The document consisted of a number of assertions:
    • that the Rising's leaders spoke for Ireland (a claim historically made by Irish insurrectionary movements);
    • that the Rising marked another wave of attempts to achieve independence through force of arms;
    • that the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were central to the Rising;
    • "the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland"
    • that the form of government was to be a republic;
    • a guarantee of "religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens", the first mention of gender equality, given that Irish women under British law were not allowed to vote;
    • a commitment to universal suffrage, a phenomenon limited at the time to only a handful of countries, not including the UK;
    • a promise of "cherishing all the children of the nation equally". Although these words have been quoted since the 1990s by children's rights advocates, "children of the nation" refers to all Irish people;
    • disputes between nationalists and unionists are attributed to "differences carefully fostered by an alien government", a rejection of what was later dubbed two-nations theory.

    The printing and distribution of the text

    The proclamation had been printed secretly prior to the Rising on a Summit Wharfedale Stop Cylinder Press, located in Liberty Hall, Eden Quay (HQ of the Irish Citizen Army). Because of its secret printing, problems arose which affected the layout and design. In particular, because of a shortage of type, the document was printed in two halves, printing first the top, then the bottom on the same piece of paper. The typesetters were Willie O'Brien, Michael Molloy and Christopher Brady.They lacked a sufficient supply of type in the same size and font, and as a result, some parts of the document use es from a different font, which are smaller and do not quite match. The language suggested that the original copy of the proclamation had actually been signed by the Rising's leaders. However no evidence has ever been found, nor do any contemporary records mention, the existence of an actually signed copy, though had such a copy existed, it could easily have been destroyed in the aftermath of the Rising by someone (in the British military, a member of the public or a Rising participant trying to destroy potentially incriminating evidence) who did not appreciate its historic importance. Molloy claimed in later life to have set the document from a handwritten copy, with signatures on a separate piece of paper which he destroyed by chewing while in prison, but this was disputed by other participants. Molloy also recalled that Connolly had asked for the document to resemble an auctioneer's notice in general design. There are about 30 original copies still remaining, one of which can be viewed in the National Print Museum.Reproductions were later made, which have sometimes been misattributed as originals.When the British soldiers recaptured Liberty Hall, they found the press with the type of the bottom of the proclamation still fully set up, and reportedly ran off some copies as souvenirs, leading to a proliferation of these 'half-copies'.James Mosley notes that complete originals rapidly became rare in the chaos, and that over a month later the Dublin police had failed to find one for their files.

    The signatories

    The signatories (as their names appeared on the Proclamation): One question sometimes raised is why the first name among the 'signatories' was not Pearse but Tom Clarke, a veteran republican. Had the arrangement of names been alphabetical, Éamonn Ceannt would have appeared on top. Clarke's widow maintained that it was because the plan had been for Clarke, as a famed veteran, to become the President of the Provisional Republic. Such an explanation would certainly explain his premier position. However, others associated with the Rising dismissed her claims, which she made in her memoirs. Later documents issued by the rebels gave Pearse pride of place, though as 'Commanding in Chief the Forces of the Irish Republic, and President of the Provisional Government,not 'President of the Republic'. Whether the plan had ever been to have Clarke as a symbolic head of state and Pearse as head of government or was simply that Pearse was always to be central but with statements ambiguously describing his title, remains a mystery about which historians still speculate. All seven signatories of the proclamation were executed by the British military (James Connolly who had been wounded in the fighting was executed sitting down in a chair) in the aftermath of the Rising, being viewed as having committed treason in wartime (i.e. the First World War). British political leaders regarded the executions initially as unwise, later as a catastrophe, with the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and later prime minister David Lloyd George stating that they regretted allowing the British military to treat the matter as a matter of military law in wartime, rather than insisting that the leaders were treated under civilian criminal law. Though initially deeply unsympathetic to the Rising (the leading Irish nationalist newspaper, the Irish Independent called for their execution), Irish public opinion switched and became more sympathetic due to the manner of their treatment and executions.Eventually Asquith's government ordered a halt to the executions and insisted that those not already executed be dealt with through civilian, not military, law. By that stage, all the signatories and a number of others had been executed.

    The document today

    Full copies of the Easter Proclamation are now treated as a revered Irish national icon, and a copy was sold at auction for €390,000 in December 2004.A copy owned (and later signed as a memento) by Rising participant Seán T. O'Kelly was presented by him to the Irish parliament buildings, Leinster House, during his tenure as President of Ireland. It is currently on permanent display in the main foyer. Other copies are on display in the GPO (headquarters of the Rising and the place where the Proclamation was first read), the National Museum of Ireland, the Trinity College Library's Long Room and other museums worldwide. Facsimile copies are sold as souvenirs in Ireland, and copies of the text are often displayed in Irish schools and in Irish pubs throughout the world. The proclamation is read aloud by an Officer of the Irish Defence Forces outside the GPO during the Easter Rising commemorations on Easter Sunday of each year.

    Text

    POBLACHT NA hÉIREANN THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom. Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory. We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations. The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past. Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people. We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.
    Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:
    THOMAS J. CLARKE
    SEAN Mac DIARMADA
    P. H. PEARSE
    JAMES CONNOLLY
    THOMAS MacDONAGH
    EAMONN CEANNT
    JOSEPH PLUNKETT
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  • GPO Easter Rising 1916 Painting

    €150.00
    40cm x 50cm  Dublin The Easter Rising (Irish: Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the aim of establishing an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was fighting the First World War. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798 and the first armed conflict of the Irish revolutionary period. Sixteen of the Rising's leaders were executed from May 1916. The nature of the executions, and subsequent political developments, ultimately contributed to an increase in popular support for Irish independence. Organised by a seven-man Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916 and lasted for six days. Members of the Irish Volunteers, led by schoolmaster and Irish language activist Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly and 200 women of Cumann na mBan, seized strategically important buildings in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic. The British Army brought in thousands of reinforcements as well as artillery and a gunboat. There was street fighting on the routes into the city centre, where the rebels slowed the British advance and inflicted many casualties. Elsewhere in Dublin, the fighting mainly consisted of sniping and long-range gun battles. The main rebel positions were gradually surrounded and bombarded with artillery. There were isolated actions in other parts of Ireland; Volunteer leader Eoin MacNeill had issued a countermand in a bid to halt the Rising, which greatly reduced the number of rebels who mobilised. With much greater numbers and heavier weapons, the British Army suppressed the Rising. Pearse agreed to an unconditional surrender on Saturday 29 April, although sporadic fighting continued briefly. After the surrender, the country remained under martial law. About 3,500 people were taken prisoner by the British and 1,800 of them were sent to internment camps or prisons in Britain. Most of the leaders of the Rising were executed following courts-martial. The Rising brought physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics, which for nearly fifty years had been dominated by constitutional nationalism. Opposition to the British reaction to the Rising contributed to changes in public opinion and the move toward independence, as shown in the December 1918 election in Ireland which was won by the Sinn Féin party, which convened the First Dáil and declared independence. Of the 485 people killed, 260 were civilians, 143 were British military and police personnel, and 82 were Irish rebels, including 16 rebels executed for their roles in the Rising. More than 2,600 people were wounded. Many of the civilians were killed or wounded by British artillery fire or were mistaken for rebels. Others were caught in the crossfire during firefights between the British and the rebels. The shelling and resulting fires left parts of central Dublin in ruins.
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  • GPO Easter Rising 1916 Painting

    €100.00
    48cm x 38cm  Dublin The Easter Rising (Irish: Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the aim of establishing an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was fighting the First World War. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798 and the first armed conflict of the Irish revolutionary period. Sixteen of the Rising's leaders were executed from May 1916. The nature of the executions, and subsequent political developments, ultimately contributed to an increase in popular support for Irish independence. Organised by a seven-man Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916 and lasted for six days.Members of the Irish Volunteers, led by schoolmaster and Irish language activist Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly and 200 women of Cumann na mBan, seized strategically important buildings in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic. The British Army brought in thousands of reinforcements as well as artillery and a gunboat. There was street fighting on the routes into the city centre, where the rebels slowed the British advance and inflicted many casualties. Elsewhere in Dublin, the fighting mainly consisted of sniping and long-range gun battles. The main rebel positions were gradually surrounded and bombarded with artillery. There were isolated actions in other parts of Ireland; Volunteer leader Eoin MacNeill had issued a countermand in a bid to halt the Rising, which greatly reduced the number of rebels who mobilised. With much greater numbers and heavier weapons, the British Army suppressed the Rising. Pearse agreed to an unconditional surrender on Saturday 29 April, although sporadic fighting continued briefly. After the surrender, the country remained under martial law. About 3,500 people were taken prisoner by the British and 1,800 of them were sent to internment camps or prisons in Britain. Most of the leaders of the Rising were executed following courts-martial. The Rising brought physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics, which for nearly fifty years had been dominated by constitutional nationalism. Opposition to the British reaction to the Rising contributed to changes in public opinion and the move toward independence, as shown in the December 1918 election in Ireland which was won by the Sinn Féin party, which convened the First Dáil and declared independence. Of the 485 people killed, 260 were civilians, 143 were British military and police personnel, and 82 were Irish rebels, including 16 rebels executed for their roles in the Rising. More than 2,600 people were wounded. Many of the civilians were killed or wounded by British artillery fire or were mistaken for rebels. Others were caught in the crossfire during firefights between the British and the rebels. The shelling and resulting fires left parts of central Dublin in ruins.
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  • Guinness meets Pulp Fiction

    €60.00
    55cm x 45cm Luke Kelly (17 November 1940 – 30 January 1984) was an Irish singer, folk musician and actor from Dublin, Ireland. Born into a working-class household in Dublin city, Kelly moved to England in his late teens and by his early 20s had become involved in a folk music revival. Returning to Dublin in the 1960s, he is noted as a founding member of the band The Dubliners in 1962. Becoming known for his distinctive singing style, and sometimes political messages, the Irish Postand other commentators have regarded Kelly as one of Ireland's greatest folk singers. Early life Luke Kelly was born into a working-class family in Lattimore Cottages at 1 Sheriff Street.His maternal grandmother, who was a MacDonald from Scotland, lived with the family until her death in 1953. His father who was Irish- also named Luke- was shot and severely wounded as a child by British soldiers from the King's Own Scottish Borderers during the 1914 Bachelor's Walk massacre.His father worked all his life in Jacob's biscuit factory and enjoyed playing football. The elder Luke was a keen singer: Luke junior's brother Paddy later recalled that "he had this talent... to sing negro spirituals by people like Paul Robeson, we used to sit around and join in — that was our entertainment". After Dublin Corporation demolished Lattimore Cottages in 1942, the Kellys became the first family to move into the St. Laurence O’Toole flats, where Luke spent the bulk of his childhood, although the family were forced to move by a fire in 1953 and settled in the Whitehall area. Both Luke and Paddy played club Gaelic football and soccer as children. Kelly left school at thirteen and after a number of years of odd-jobbing, he went to England in 1958.[6] Working at steel fixing with his brother Paddy on a building site in Wolverhampton, he was apparently sacked after asking for higher pay. He worked a number of odd jobs, including a period as a vacuum cleaner salesman.Describing himself as a beatnik, he travelled Northern England in search of work, summarising his life in this period as "cleaning lavatories, cleaning windows, cleaning railways, but very rarely cleaning my face".

    Musical beginnings

    Kelly had been interested in music during his teenage years: he regularly attended céilithe with his sister Mona and listened to American vocalists including: Fats Domino, Al Jolson, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. He also had an interest in theatre and musicals, being involved with the staging of plays by Dublin's Marian Arts Society. The first folk club he came across was in the Bridge Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne in early 1960.Having already acquired the use of a banjo, he started memorising songs. In Leeds he brought his banjo to sessions in McReady's pub. The folk revival was under way in England: at the centre of it was Ewan MacColl who scripted a radio programme called Ballads and Blues. A revival in the skiffle genre also injected a certain energy into folk singing at the time. Kelly started busking. On a trip home he went to a fleadh cheoil in Milltown Malbay on the advice of Johnny Moynihan. He listened to recordings of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He also developed his political convictions which, as Ronnie Drew pointed out after his death, he stuck to throughout his life. As Drew also pointed out, he "learned to sing with perfect diction". Kelly befriended Sean Mulready in Birmingham and lived in his home for a period.Mulready was a teacher who was forced from his job in Dublin because of his communist beliefs. Mulready had strong music links; a sister, Kathleen Moynihan was a founder member of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, and he was related by marriage to Festy Conlon, the County Galway whistle player. Mulready's brother-in-law, Ned Stapleton, taught Kelly "The Rocky Road to Dublin".During this period he studied literature and politics under the tutelage of Mulready, his wife Mollie, and Marxist classicist George Derwent Thomson: Kelly later stated that his interest in music grew parallel to his interest in politics. Kelly bought his first banjo, which had five strings and a long neck, and played it in the style of Pete Seeger and Tommy Makem. At the same time, Kelly began a habit of reading, and also began playing golf on one of Birmingham's municipal courses. He got involved in the Jug O'Punch folk club run by Ian Campbell. He befriended Dominic Behan and they performed in folk clubs and Irish pubs from London to Glasgow. In London pubs, like "The Favourite", he would hear street singer Margaret Barry and musicians in exile like Roger Sherlock, Seamus Ennis, Bobby Casey and Mairtín Byrnes. Luke Kelly was by now active in the Connolly Association, a left-wing grouping strongest among the emigres in England, and he also joined the Young Communist League: he toured Irish pubs playing his set and selling the Connolly Association's newspaper The Irish Democrat. By 1962 George Derwent Thomson had offered him the opportunity to further his educational and political development by attending university in Prague. However, Kelly turned down the offer in favour of pursuing his career in folk music. He was also to start frequenting Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's Singer Club in London.

    The Dubliners

    In 1961 there was a folk music revival or "ballad boom", as it was later termed, in waiting in Ireland.The Abbey Tavern sessions in Howth were the forerunner to sessions in the Hollybrook, Clontarf, the International Bar and the Grafton Cinema. Luke Kelly returned to Dublin in 1962. O'Donoghue's Pub was already established as a session house and soon Kelly was singing with, among others, Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna. Other early people playing at O'Donoghues included The Fureys, father and sons, John Keenan and Sean Og McKenna, Johnny Moynihan, Andy Irvine, Seamus Ennis, Willy Clancy and Mairtin Byrnes. A concert John Molloy organised in the Hibernian Hotel led to his "Ballad Tour of Ireland" with the Ronnie Drew Ballad Group (billed in one town as the Ronnie Drew Ballet Group). This tour led to the Abbey Tavern and the Royal Marine Hotel and then to jam-packed sessions in the Embankment, Tallaght. Ciarán Bourke joined the group, followed later by John Sheahan. They renamed themselves The Dubliners at Kelly's suggestion, as he was reading James Joyce's book of short stories, entitled Dubliners, at the time.Kelly was the leading vocalist for the group's eponymous debut album in 1964, which included his rendition of "The Rocky Road to Dublin". Barney McKenna later noted that Kelly was the only singer he'd heard sing it to the rhythm it was played on the fiddle. In 1964 Luke Kelly left the group for nearly two years and was replaced by Bobby Lynch and John Sheahan. Kelly went with Deirdre O'Connell, founder of the Focus Theatre, whom he was to marry the following year, back to London and became involved in Ewan MacColl's "gathering". The Critics, as it was called, was formed to explore folk traditions and help young singers. During this period he retained his political commitments, becoming increasingly active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Kelly also met and befriended Michael O'Riordan, the General Secretary of the Irish Workers' Party, and the two developed a "personal-political friendship". Kelly endorsed O'Riordan for election, and held a rally in his name during campaigning in 1965.In 1965, he sang 'The Rocky Road to Dublin' with Liam Clancy on his first, self-titled solo album. Bobby Lynch left The Dubliners, John Sheahan and Kelly rejoined. They recorded an album in the Gate Theatre, Dublin, played the Cambridge Folk Festival and recorded Irish Night Out, a live album with, among others, exiles Margaret Barry, Michael Gorman and Jimmy Powers. They also played a concert in the National Stadium in Dublin with Pete Seeger as special guest. They were on the road to success: Top Twenty hits with "Seven Drunken Nights" and "The Black Velvet Band", The Ed Sullivan Show in 1968 and a tour of New Zealand and Australia. The ballad boom in Ireland was becoming increasingly commercialised with bar and pub owners building ever larger venues for pay-in performances. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger on a visit to Dublin expressed concern to Kelly about his drinking.[citation needed] Christy Moore and Kelly became acquainted in the 1960s.During his Planxty days, Moore got to know Kelly well. In 1972 The Dubliners themselves performed in Richard's Cork Leg, based on the "incomplete works" of Brendan Behan. In 1973, Kelly took to the stage performing as King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar. The arrival of a new manager for The Dubliners, Derry composer Phil Coulter, resulted in a collaboration that produced three of Kelly's most notable performances: “The Town I Loved So Well”, "Hand me Down my Bible", and “Scorn Not His Simplicity”, a song about Phil's son who had Down Syndrome.Kelly had such respect for the latter song that he only performed it once for a television recording and rarely, if ever, sang it at the Dubliners' often boisterous events. His interpretations of “On Raglan Road” and "Scorn Not His Simplicity" became significant points of reference in Irish folk music.His version of "Raglan Road" came about when the poem's author, Patrick Kavanagh, heard him singing in a Dublin pub, and approached Kelly to say that he should sing the poem (which is set to the tune of “The Dawning of the Day”). Kelly remained a politically engaged musician, becoming a supporter of the movement against South African apartheid and performing at benefit concerts for the Irish Traveller community,and many of the songs he recorded dealt with social issues, the arms race and the Cold War, trade unionism and Irish republicanism, ("The Springhill Disaster", "Joe Hill", "The Button Pusher", "Alabama 1958" and "God Save Ireland" all being examples of his concerns).
    Luke Kelly on stage in 1980

    Personal life

    Luke Kelly married Deirdre O'Connell in 1965, but they separated in the early 1970s.Kelly spent the last eight years of his life living with his partner Madeleine Seiler, who is from Germany.

    Final years

    Kelly's health deteriorated in the 1970s. Kelly himself spoke about his problems with alcohol. On 30 June 1980 during a concert in the Cork Opera House he collapsed on the stage. He had already suffered for some time from migraines and forgetfulness - including forgetting what country he was in whilst visiting Iceland - which had been ascribed to his intense schedule, alcohol consumption, and "party lifestyle". A brain tumour was diagnosed.Although Kelly toured with the Dubliners after enduring an operation, his health deteriorated further. He forgot lyrics and had to take longer breaks in concerts as he felt weak. In addition following his emergency surgery after his collapse in Cork, he became more withdrawn, preferring the company of Madeleine at home to performing.On his European tour he managed to perform with the band for most of the show in Carre for their Live in Carre album. However, in autumn 1983 he had to leave the stage in Traun, Austria and again in Mannheim, Germany. Shortly after this, he had to cancel the tour of southern Germany, and after a short stay in hospital in Heidelberg he was flown back to Dublin. After another operation he spent Christmas with his family but was taken into hospital again in the New Year, where he died on 30 January 1984.Kelly's funeral in Whitehall attracted thousands of mourners from across Ireland.His gravestone in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, bears the inscription: Luke Kelly – Dubliner. Sean Cannon took Kelly's place in The Dubliners. He had been performing with the Dubliners since 1982,due to the deterioration of Kelly's health.

    Legacy

    Statue on South King Street
    Sculpture of Luke Kelly on Sheriff Street by Vera Klute. Unveiled in 2019
    Luke Kelly's legacy and contributions to Irish music and culture have been described as "iconic" and have been captured in a number of documentaries and anthologies. The influence of his Scottish grandmother was influential in Kelly's help in preserving important traditional Scottish songs such as "Mormond Braes", the Canadian folk song "Peggy Gordon", "Robert Burns", "Parcel of Rogues", "Tibbie Dunbar", Hamish Henderson's "Freedom Come-All-Ye", and Thurso Berwick's "Scottish Breakaway". The Ballybough Bridge in the north inner city of Dublin was renamed the Luke Kelly Bridge, and in November 2004 Dublin City Council voted unanimously to erect a bronze statue of Luke Kelly. However, the Dublin Docklands Authority subsequently stated that it could no longer afford to fund the statue. In 2010, councillor Christy Burke of Dublin City Council appealed to members of the music community including Bono, Phil Coulter and Enya to help build it. Paddy Reilly recorded a tribute to Kelly entitled "The Dublin Minstrel". It featured on his Gold And Silver Years, Celtic Collections and the Essential Paddy Reilly CD's. The Dubliners recorded the song on their Live at Vicar Street DVD/CD. The song was composed by Declan O'Donoghue, the Racing Correspondent of The Irish Sun. At Christmas 2005 writer-director Michael Feeney Callan's documentary, Luke Kelly: The Performer, was released and outsold U2's latest DVD during the festive season and into 2006, acquiring platinum sales status. The documentary told Kelly's story through the words of the Dubliners, Donovan, Ralph McTell and others and featured full versions of rarely seen performances such as the early sixties' Ed Sullivan Show. A later documentary, Luke Kelly: Prince of the City, was also well received. Two statues of Kelly were unveiled in Dublin in January 2019, to mark the 35th anniversary of his death.One, a life-size seated bronze by John Coll, is on South King Street. The second sculpture, a marble portrait head by Vera Klute, is on Sheriff Street. The Klute sculpture was vandalised on several occasions in 2019 and 2020, in each case being restored by graffiti-removal specialists.
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  • Historical Map of County Limerick from 1825

    €150.00
    Very interesting map of Co Limerick from the 1825 surveys by the well known cartographer James Coffey.From the Latest Surveys. By James Coffey. 1825. Engraved by Sidney Hall, Bury Street, Bloomsbury. Published and sold by George McKern, 106, George Street, Limerick. Scale in Irish and English Miles. Framed and glazed. Bruree Co Limerick 45cm x 60cm  
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Irish Pub at Home & Abroad

The Pub has been at the forefront and epicentre of Irish life for hundreds of years. Often humble but always unpretentious, it has served many and varied functions.  A place where strangers become friends and friendships are solidified. A refuge from the stresses of everyday life, the headquarters of local life.

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