74cm x 38cm
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
45cm x 60cm
Anticipation is an Irish advertisement launched by Guinness plc in 1994 to promote Guinness-brand draughtstout. The advert, which appeared in print, posters, and cinema and television spots, was conceived by Irish advertising agency Arks, and starred relatively unknown Irish actor Joe McKinney as the 'Dancing Man' and Gordon Winter as the barman. It was the final part of the "Guinness Time" advertising campaign, which had been running in Ireland since the late 1980s.
The advert was credited with increasing Guinness' sales, market share and brand awareness figures. However, controversy arose following claims of plagiarism raised by British director Mehdi Norowzian, who launched an unsuccessful lawsuit in 1998 seeking remuneration for the use of techniques and style from his 1992 short film Joy.
Sequence
The low-budget ad featured only two characters: a patron of a pub and the barman serving him. The patron (McKinney) orders a pint of Guinness stout and, while waiting for the pint to be poured, carries out a series of quirky dancing movements with the settling pint in the foreground, to the amusement of the barman (Winter). The piece ends with the patron taking his first sip of the freshly poured pint overlaid by the Guinness advertising slogan "No time like Guinness Time". The advert is set to Guaglione by Pérez Prado, and makes heavy use of jump cutting from a static camera to allow the dancer to make a series of movements that could not be achieved in reality.
Reception
The distinctive jump cut editing techniques of Anticipation won the commercial critical acclaim and several awards from within the advertising industry, including the 1995 Institute of Creative Advertising & Design craft award for editing as well as a Gold Medal for editing and a Golden Shark award at the Kinsale International Advertising Festival.
The success of the campaign led Guinness to re-broadcast it in the United Kingdom in 1995, as a transition between the campaign "The Man With the Guinness"/"Pure Genius", which had just concluded with Chain, and its new "Black and White" campaign, still in development.Though Chain was to be the last in the Pure Genius campaign, Anticipationwas tagged with the Pure Genius slogan in the UK instead of There's No Time Like Guinness Time.
As a result of its featuring in the spot, Pérez Prado's Guaglione reached the Number 1 spot in the Irish music charts,and Number 2 in the British Top 40.
Lawsuit
In 1992, British director Mehdi Norowzian submitted a show reel containing a number of short examples of his work to several prospective employers, including the Irish advertising agency Arks Ltd., in the hopes of being taken on to direct one or more of their commercials. Included on the reel was a short piece entitled Joy, which was shot using a static camera on a London rooftop and comprised a jump cut sequence of a man performing an extended dance of exuberance against a plain canvas background.
Arks Ltd. were contracted by Guinness to produce an advertisement to run in Ireland. Among the ideas proposed was one based on a scene from the cinematic version of Roddy Doyle's novel, The Snapper, where a man rushes into a pub to celebrate the birth of his grandson with a pint of Guinness. The artistic director at Arks, thinking of possible ways to build on the concept, recalled Norowzian's submitted reel and came up with a script and storyboard based on Joy to present to Guinness. The idea was accepted, and Arks approached Norowzian to direct the commercial. Norowzian refused, as he was unwilling to simply "commercialise" an old idea, and wanted to create something new. The agency then took on Richie Smyth as director, urging him to create something "with an atmosphere broadly similar to that portrayed in Joy". Feeling that the original storyboard was too close to Joy, a new one was prepared. The result was Anticipation.
Following the broadcast of the television spot in 1994, Norowzian lodged a complaint and ultimately a lawsuit against Arks Ltd. and Guinness, claiming that Anticipation breached his copyrights and accusing the agency of passing off. The plaintiff's claim for copyright infringement were based on a passage in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988defining a dramatic work as including "recordings of a work of dance or mime", and that Anticipation was, or included, a copy of a substantial part of Joy. The case reached the High Court in 1997, where the claim of passing off was dropped. On 17 July 1998, Justice Rattee rendered his judgment that the jump cutting techniques used in Joy produced something qualitatively different from a recording of a dance or mime routine and that, as such, Joy was not in itself a dramatic work. It was therefore defined as an entrepreneurial work, a status which confers protection over only the physical recording of a work rather than the work itself. He also ruled that Anticipation did not reproduce either the whole or part of Joy.
The decision was appealed, but while the Court of Appeal unanimously held that the content of a film (including the use of film and editing techniques) could enjoy copyright protection as a dramatic work, the presiding Justices ruled that Anticipation did not significantly copy any portion of Joy and dismissed the case. Ultimately, Norowzian was ordered to pay £200,000 in legal costs.As a result of the case, the Institute of Contemporary Arts called for reform of copyright law in the United Kingdom.
Legacy
Actor Joe McKinney spent 1994–6 making personal appearances around Europe publicising Guinness. The lifestyle became too hectic and he gave up alcohol in 1997.He found it difficult to secure other roles due to typecasting as "the Guinness man", spending time in the US where the ad had not been broadcast.
A comparison of two frames from Anticipation with their respective versions in Eskimo.
As one of the most recognisable Guinness advertisements of the 1990s, Anticipation has been mimicked or parodied in a number of more recent Guinness campaigns, including the Irish Waiting spot in 2004 promoting cans of Guinness draught beer,and director JJ Keith's British Eskimo commercial, which was part of an extended campaign promoting Guinness Extra Cold in summer 2004 and 2005.
In March 2009, Guinness announced that Anticipation would be aired again as part of a "Classic Ads" campaign to mark the brewery's 250th anniversary.
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
51cm x 51cm
Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
Nice Carling Black Label Mirror
50cm x 42cm Sneem Co Kerry
Even though Carling originated in Canada,it’s popularity spread widely throughout the Commonwealth including Ireland .A famous advertising campaign “I bet he drinks Carling” contributed hugely to the brands market share .
Carling Black Label is a Canadian brand of lagerdistributed by Carling Brewing Company. In several countries, it is also known as Carling Black Label, and in Sweden, it is known as Carling Premier. In the United Kingdom it is now known as just Carling.
History
Although its original focus was on ale, Carling has been brewing lager-style beers since the 1870s. In 1927, as part of an overall corporate re-branding effort under new president J. Innes Carling, the company renamed its already popular Black & White Lager to Black Label.
Three years later, Carling was purchased by Toronto business tycoon E. P. Taylor, who merged the company into his Canadian Breweries Limited (CBL), which grew to be the world's largest brewing company, at least for a time. Under Taylor, Black Label was promoted as CBL's flagship brand and went on to become the world's first beer to be brewed on a mass international scale,becoming particularly popular in Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Canada
In response to a shift in popular taste away from ale, Carling added a three-storey lager plant to their main London, Ontario, brewery in 1877. Carling's Lager (later renamed Carling's Bavarian Stock Lager, and then Carling's Imperial Club Lager) was the company's first lager brand. Carling's Black & White Lager was introduced in the 1920s and later renamed Black Label Lager, in contrast to their recently launched Red Cap Ale.
Due to its strength and price, the brand quickly became popular with the country's working class, perhaps most famously among the loggers and miners of Northern Ontario, where the brand gained a tough, blue-collar image.
Around 1990, Black Label had an advertising campaign in Canada, which used the phrase "The Legend is Black."
United States
Brewing Corporation of America of Cleveland, Ohio in 1965. Home of Carling Black Label lager and Carling Red Cap Ale and former site the Peerless Motor Car Company
After the repeal of prohibition in 1933, the Peerless Motor Car Company, looking for a way to diversify in the poor car market of the depression, purchased the American rights to Carling's formulas, identifying labels, and trademarks. Technicians and brewmasters were sent from Canada to convert a Peerless plant in Cleveland, Ohio, into the Brewing Corporation of America. They first tried just brewing Carling's Red Cap Ale, but sales were too slow to maintain the brewery, and sales didn't climb until the introduction of Black Label lager. The philosophy behind Black Label was to have a high quality lager that was available nationwide but with a locally brewed budget price. The strategy worked, and the next several decades led to rapid growth and expansion for the brewery and the Carling Black Label brand.
When Carling stopped producing Black Label to focus on a more profitable lager, they found their sales plummeting. Carling re-introduced Black Label with a beautiful blonde named Mabel, portrayed by Jeanne Goodspeed, with the slogan "Hey Mabel, Black Label!". The twenty-year marketing campaign cemented the name in the popular culture of America.
In 1979, after several years of intense pressure from the larger American Brewers Miller and Anheuser-Busch, Carling-National was bought out by the Heileman Brewing Co. of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Carling and the Black Label brand are currently owned by the Molson Coors Brewing Company. Though no longer widely distributed in the U.S., Black Label remains the official beer of Beer Frisbee.
United Kingdom
Black Label was introduced to the United Kingdom in 1952. Originally, it was only available in bottles, but in 1965, The Hill Top in Sheffield became the first pub to pour Carling Black Label draughts.
In the 1970s and 80s, Carling Black Label sales were driven to great heights, due partly to increased advertising support, in particular the classic "I bet he drinks" series of advertisements, and partly with the launch of Carling Black Label in cans. Cans were important to Carling's success as they helped open up the "take home" market.[3]
The "I bet he drinks" series of ads showed someone doing something cool, clever or difficult, and having a bystander say "I bet he drinks Carling Black Label". With the help of this advertising campaign, it became Britain's best-selling brand of beer in 1971. In the 1980s, many of the adverts featured comedians Mark Arden and Stephen Frost, also known as The Oblivion Boys, delivering the classic punchline. One of the advertisements in the series, Dambusters from 1989, was a parody of the 1955 film of the same name, and was ranked at number 12 on ITV's list of the "Best Ever Ads" in 2005, and at number 17 on Channel 4's list of the "100 Greatest TV Ads" in 2000.Campaign Live also ranked it at number 5 in their list of the "Top 10 Funniest TV Ads of All Time" in 2008.
Carling has remained Britain's best selling beer since 1985. 'Black Label' has been dropped from the brand name and logo in Britain since 1997.
South Africa
In South Africa, Black Label began to take on a different tone with the anti-apartheid movement. This was partly due to the fact that, at 5.5%, it had more alcohol than the other brands of beer that generally had 5.0%, as noted in the popular advertising catch phrase "only hard working students deserve an extra 0.5 percent."
Furthermore, the connotation of black to the racial issue became a point of pride to the native Africans. It used to be sold with the motto, "America's Lusty, Lively Beer", perhaps in reference to Canada, though it is seldom seen in the United States. The motto came from an older advertising campaign in the United States. Another famous Afrikaans slogan for Black Label in South Africa is, "Black Label sê die bybel", which means "The Bible says (one should drink) Black Label."
Interesting old display print on a wooden background depicting the historical,cultural and sporting highlights of the Emerald Isle.Although the frame is showing signs of age related wear,this piece will make a wonderful addition to your collection or decorative item for your wall .
Kilkee Co Clare 60cm x 55cm
A very interesting Royal Munster Fusiliers Regiment WW1 Recruitment Poster exhorting the young men of Kerry,Cork,Clare & Limerick to enlist and join the War effort.
Origins:Glin Co Limerick. Dimensions : 40cm x 35cm Glazed
The Royal Munster Fusiliers was a line infantryregiment of the British Army from 1881 to 1922. It traced its origins to the East India Company's Bengal European Regiment raised in 1652, which later became the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers). The Royal Munster Fusiliers were formed in 1881 by the merger of the 101st Regiment of Foot and the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers). One of eight Irish regiments raised largely in Ireland, it had its home depot in Tralee and served as the county regiment for Cork, Clare, Limerick and Kerry. At its formation the regiment comprised two regular and two militia battalions.
The Royal Munster Fusiliers served in India before the regiment fought in the Second Boer War. Prior to the First World War, the regiment's three militia battalions were converted into reserve battalions, and a further six battalions were added to the regiment's establishment during the war. The regiment fought with distinction throughout the Great War and won three Victoria Crosses by the conflict's conclusion in 1918.Following establishment of the independent Irish Free State in 1922, the five regiments that had their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new state were disbanded and the Royal Munster Fusiliers ceased to be as a regiment on 31 July 1922.
Before the regiment was reformed as part of a reorganization of the British Army in 1881, the Royal Munster Fusilier's historic background went back as far as 1652 with the formation of the Bengal European Regiment by the Honourable East India Company.This regiment would eventually become the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers), or the 1st Bengal European Fusiliers. The East India Company formed the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers), or 2nd Bengal European Fusiliers, from this regiment in 1765. Both regiments, which were composed exclusively of white soldiers, not Indian sepoys, played pivotal roles in the British conquest of India throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
As well as the Royal Munster Fusilier's origins as part of the East India Company, the regiment's reserve battalions also traced their lineage to the Militia of Munster (namely the South Cork Light Infantry Militia, the Kerry Militia and the Royal Limerick County Militia, which became the 3rd, 4th and 5th Battalions, respectively). While both the fusilier regiments had originated and served as "European" regiments of the East India Company, they were transferred to the British Army in 1861 when the British Crown took control of the company's private army after the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
Formation
The second half of the 19th Century saw the beginning of widespread reforms in the British Army which would eventually result in the formation of the Royal Munster Fusiliers. The first of these reforms saw the localisation of recruiting districts in Britain and Ireland between 1873 and 1874 under the Cardwell Reforms. Five of the historic East India Company's European infantry battalions were given Irish territorial titles under the Childers Reforms of 1881. The former Bengal Fusilier regiments were merged into a single regiment to become the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers and the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, while the 3rd, 4th and 5th Royal Munster Fusilier battalions were the militia units. The Reforms linked regiments to recruiting areas – which in case of the Royal Munster Fusiliers were the counties of Clare, Cork, Kerry, and Limerick. Militarily, the whole of Ireland was administered as a separate command with Command Headquarters at Parkgate (Phoenix Park) Dublin, directly under the War Office in London. The regimental depot was located at Ballymullen Barracks, Tralee, Co. Kerry.
Second Boer War
The 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers in South Africa during the Second Boer War, 1901.
Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War in South Africa in October 1899, a number of regiments from areas containing large centres of population formed additional regular battalions. The Royal Munster Fusiliers were announced to be among those regiments set to form 3rd and 4th regular battalions in February 1900, but they do not appear to have done so.The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers embarked for South Africa in 1899, and would serve there throughout the entire Second Boer War. Initially, the battalion took part in Lord Robert's advance into the Orange Free State. Following this, the battalion was attached to the 20th Brigade and fought at the Battle of Belmont. With the beginning of the war's guerrilla warfare phase, the battalion took part in numerous pacification campaigns against the Boers in Pretoria and Western Transvaal. The 3rd (Militia) Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, formerly the South Cork Light Infantry, was embodied in early December 1899, and 435 officers and men embarked the SS Sumatra for South Africa on 23 February 1900. The 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, arrived in South Africa from India in December 1901 and served during the closing stages of the campaign, garrisoning blockhouses in the northeast of the Orange River Colony.
Following the end of the war in 1902 the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers were sent to India. More than 520 officers and men left Cape Town on the SS Lake Manitoba in September 1902, arriving at Bombay the following month and were then stationed at Multan in Punjab. They would later take part in actions against the tribes of the North-West Frontier in 1908. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers left South Africa soon after their sister battalion, and 450 officers and men returned to Cork Harbour on the SS Orient in early November 1902.
First World War
Prior to the First World War, the Royal Munster Fusiliers were an established strength of two regular service and three reserve battalions. With the outbreak of war in August 1914, the need for further divisions resulted in the creation of a New Army made up of volunteers who would serve for the duration of the war. This rapid expansion of the British Army would significantly increase the size of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who between their regular, reserve and volunteer battalions would have a combined strength of 11 raised battalions throughout the war.
At the outbreak of war the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was acting as a regular garrison in Rangoon, Burma, having being based in the Far East since they had left Fermoy in 1899 to fight in the Second Boer War. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were based at Aldershot, England as part of the 1st Army Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division at the outbreak of war.At the outbreak of war the Royal Munster Fusiliers three reserve battalions were all mobilised on 4 August 1914 and the regimental colours were sent to Tralee for safekeeping there until after the Armistice
Regular Army
1914: Arrival in France and the Great Retreat
Men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers in Aldershot just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, 1914.
At the outbreak of war, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was under strength, and reservists were called up from the regimental depots at Tralee and Fermoyamid much local cheering, to join the battalion at Aldershot which brought the battalion up to a strength of 27 officers and 971 other ranks before its departure to France on 13 August 1914. As part of the British Expeditionary Force, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers took part in the Battle of Mons and on 27 August were given the arduous task of forming the rearguard to cover the retreat of the 1st Division in the face of the German advance, with instructions to retreat only if ordered. The Munster's made an epic stand in a renowned rearguard action during the defence of Etreux, losing 9 officers and 87 other ranks killed while holding out,with most of the rest of the battalion being surrounded and taken prisoner after running out of ammunition. The Munster's had stemmed the Germans, who were five or six times their strength, for over a day, allowing their division to escape. The loss on an entire battalion so early in the war was a disaster for the regiment. When the scattered battalion reassembled on 29 August it was down to a mere 5 officers and 196 other ranks. The remnants of the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were withdrawn to be recuperated before returning to battle, seeing action most notably at Langemarck, Belgium on 22 October. By 5 November, recruits from home brought its strength up to over 800 men. The battalion next saw action near Zillebeke, Belgium on 12 November and helped to defend against the last great German effort in the First Battle of Ypres. From 15 November, as snows began, they drove off further attacks, with trench warfare now becoming dominant. In early December they aided in the evacuation of the Ypres Benedictine Convent, whose occupants subsequently established Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland.
The battalion was moved south to the Festubert sector in France, after a 36-hour march were ordered on 22 December to fill a gap by taking two lines of trenches. There were 200 casualties in the first 10 minutes of heavy fire. Withdrawing in total exhaustion on the next day, many wounded drowned in water-filled shell holes. Throughout Christmas and New Year they were fully occupied maintaining the trenches. On 25 January, the Kaiser's birthday the Germans tried unsuccessfully to break through with terrific shellfire. There then followed three months of rebuilding and training the battalion when it numbered 28 officers and 700 other ranks in May. Only four of the officers were pre-war.
The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, who had been stationed in Burma, arrived back at Avonmouth, UK in January 1915, and were entrained for Coventrywhere it was assigned to the 86th Brigade of the 29th Division (United Kingdom). In March it sailed for the Dardanelles, Turkey, when it numbered 28 officers and 1,002 other ranks. Turkey had joined the Central Powers's side in November 1914, the object of the landing on the Dardanelles peninsula was to open the Dardanelles Strait in the Battle of Gallipoli to enable Allied relief convoys reach Russia. Aboard the SS River Clyde, a converted collier with a capacity for over 2,000 men, they arrived on 25 April together with the 1st Battalion The Royal Dublin Fusiliers and some companies of the Royal Hampshires.
The SS River Clyde ran gently ashore, its exit bows facing the beach, for what was to be the troubled British landing at Cape Helles. Small boats first carried companies of Dubliners to the beach, however four hidden Turkish machine gun posts opened fire and decimated them. Lighters to the shore were roped together and two companies of Munsters poured out on to the bow's gangway but were also hit by machine gun fire, with one survivor saying they were 'literally slaughtered like rats in a trap'. Many of the Munsters jumped from the gangway in the face of the withering fire and some drowned under their heavy equipment. Those men who continued down the gangway were mown down until all the boats and lighters were filled with dead and wounded. The ship's commanding officer, Captain Edward Unwin, on being informed that they were not succeeding, replied "in British military tradition, offensives once begun are never called off". Unwin was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions that day. At daybreak the next day, just three companies of Munsters, two companies of Hampshires and one company of Dubliners had made it to the shelter of some dunes. On 26 April they took fort Sedd-el-Bahr overlooking the bay, charging and taking the village behind and held off several Turkish counterattacks. It was in this attack that the heroic actions of William Cosgrove won the regiment's first Victoria Cross. The 28 April saw a renewed attack in the Battle for Krithia village, but the survivors of the landing were withdrawn by 29 April due to heavy losses and amalgamated with the surviving Dublin Fusiliers, to form the "Dubsters" battalion of 8 officers and 770 men.
The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois administered
by their chaplain Father Francis Gleeson
The Turks launched a renewed attack on the night of 1 May, with one Royal Munster Fusilier saying "they crept up in the dark into our trenches bayoneting our men before we knew it had begun. Bayoneting on both sides was terrible. At dawn the Turks were mowed down, and heaps of bodies and streams of blood remaining everywhere."The battalion was reduced to 4 officers and 430 men, with the Turks attempting further attacks the following days only to be driven off once again, but the combined force of Munster and Dublin Fusiliers were down to 372 men by 11 April. Both the Munsters and Dubliners received new drafts on 29 May and became separate units again. By 4 June, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers numbered 40 officers and 500 other ranks, but many the new recruits were young and inexperienced. The Munsters withheld a further Turkish attack on 17 June, killing over 300 Turks. The arrival of further new drafts replenished the battalion to 23 officers and other 588 ranks. The Munsters took part in the Division's assault on 28 June which secured five trench lines. This provoked a general attack by the Turkish side along the Cape Helles front on 5 July, but the Turks were repulsed after suffering heavy losses.
The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers participated in limited actions into the middle of July. A month's rest was promised on 15 July, but by 22 July the battalion were back in action, their strength around 500 of whom only 3 officers and 314 men remained from those who first landed on 25 April. The climax of the Gallipoli came with the Suvla attack on 21 August in the Battle of Scimitar Hill, the Turks inflicted severe casualties. The unsuccessful attack cost the Munsters 3 officers and 79 men that day alone. There was little further action other than holding front lines from September through to November, when the weather worsened. Late in November, gales swept over the peninsula, hundreds were drowned in the flooded trenches or from exposure and frostbite. Faced with defeat, the British decided to withdraw from the peninsula and the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was evacuated as it arrived, on the River Clyde, sailing on 2 January 1916 for Alexandria. From there it sailed with the rest of the 29th Division and arrived in France on 22 March. 3 years of warfare still remained for the battalion on the Western Front, but the battalion had already suffered 45% of its total losses for the entire war at Gallipoli, and numbered just 24 officers and 287 men when disembarking in France.
While their sister battalion had been fighting on the shores of Gallipoli, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers had continued to serve on the Western Front and faced their first major action of 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres, during which they fought at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. The day before the attack was to be launched on 9 May, the battalion received Absolution from their chaplain, Father Francis Gleeson,an event which would become depicted in the famous "Rue du Bois" painting by Fortunino Matania.The British bombardment began at 5 a.m. and the Munsters then pressed forward with extraordinary bravery, with German fire sweeping no-mans-land. Some of the Munsters audaciously charging ahead through the German lines, briefly waving a green flag on its breastwork, then moved beyond until cut off by the British artillery bombardment that followed, which killed many men sheltering in shell craters. By 11 a.m. the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was withdrawn with only 3 officers and 200 men remaining, having lost 19 officers and 370 men killed, wounded or captured. The Munsters was one of only two British battalions to reach the German lines but they had suffered the regiment's highest loss of any one day of the war, with 11 officers and 140 men killed in action. It was an unsuccessful day for the British forces overall, with casualties exceeding 11,000, the devastating losses exposing the British forces weakness in artillery.
The summer was relatively quiet for the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers after the battalion moved to the Loos sector in June, with casualties in July and August occurring from shelling. With other forces being withdrawn to reinforce the Gallipoli Campaign, no reinforcements or recruits arrived during the summer, keeping the battalion weak as the Loos offensive began on 25 September 1915. The Munsters were held in reserve at first but they were soon tasked with holding the line and suffered over 200 casualties, leaving the battalion with around 350 soldiers all ranks, which further reduced to 250 by the time the battle died down on 13 October. John Redmond M.P., the Irish leader, visited the battalion a month later on 15 November and promised to fill the depleted 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers with Irish recruits. There followed three months of bitter winter weather in appalling trench conditions. New recruits began arriving over the winter, but in the relative inactivity, 65 men were hit by harassing random fire while 40 men went down with frostbite and trench fever in the Arctic weather before the winter had ended.
1916: The Battle of the Somme
An illustration depicting men of the Royal Munster Fusiliers returning victoriously from their capture of Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme.
The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the front lines in France for the first time on 23 April 1916 at the Somme sector, where they slowly built up strength to 26 officers and 476 men. On 29 May, the battalion was assigned to the 48th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division at Béthune and they were reinforced by members from the disbanded 9th Royal Munster Fusiliers, bringing the Battalion up to full strength. The Munsters remained in the area of the Loos salient into August with only intermittent casualties.When the 16th Irish Division was ordered south of the Somme battlefield, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the line facing the strategic town of Ginchy on 5 September, having suffered over 200 casualties by gas-shelling on the way. The Munsters took part in the ensuing attack and triumphant capture of Ginchy by the 16th Division but at a high cost for the battalion which was reduced to 5 officers and 305 other ranks. A London newspaper headlined How the Irish took Ginchy – Splendid daring of the Irish troops
In May, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers received many of the personnel from the disbanded 9th Royal Munster Fusiliers, bringing it up to strength for the summer campaign. The battalions' first noteworthy operation was the carefully planned Liévin raid on 25 June. It was during this action that Lieutenant Arthur Batten-Pooll would win the regiment's second Victoria Cross, although losses were heavy for the battalion with 5 officers and 60 other ranks killed or wounded. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were transferred with its division down to the Somme sector in July for the opening of the Battle of the Somme, entering the lines on 14 July and capturing its objectives two days later. The battalion repulsed the German counterattack on 18 July, with an officer and 26 men killed, 127 wounded and 50 gassed. The Munsters were in reserve until 20 August, when they entered the lines once again for steady fighting but ran into heavy off-target and ineffective British artillery bombardment, killing 4 officers and 29 other ranks. A continual toll of casualties made September a costly month for the battalion. After a month's break in October, the 2 Royal Munster Fusiliers returned to the Somme for maintenance duties, then went into the mud filled front-line trenches from 27 November onwards, with a steady stream of casualties from frostbite and raids continuing to the end of December. Throughout the Somme campaign the 2RMF retained its local and Irish character.
Following the end of their involvement in the Battle of the Somme, 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was moved northwards to Ypres in Belgium and also absorbed the remnants of the 8th Royal Munster Fusiliers on 23 November to bring it up to a strength of 48 officers and 1,069 men by 1 December. The Munsters spent Christmas 1916 in the trenches, but as the New Year arrived, an official report relates "as if by mutual consent both sides ceased fire a minute or two before the close of the old year. On the stroke of midnight the pipers tuned up and gave us The Old Year out and the New Year in, A Nation Once Again ,God Save Ireland, and a few more songs of the old country, N.C.O.s and men joining lustily in the choruses".
1917: The Battle of Messines and Passchendaele
Old Royal Munster Fusiliers insignia
The Kaiser knows each Munster, by the Shamrock on his cap,
and the famous Bengal Tiger, ever ready for a scrap.
With all his big battalions, Prussian guards and grenadiers,
he feared to face the bayonets of the Munster Fusiliers.
— Verse from a song published during the Great War
Following a period of rest in January 1917, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were returned the front trenches again in February at Barleux, with the thawing weather resulting in extremely muddy conditions in the trenches. In March, the first major event was the German withdrawal from the old Somme battlefield to the newly constructed Hindenburg Line. The battalion followed across the Somme, but was held up into May removing mines and booby-traps and repairing communications. The Munsters then moved to near Nieuwpoort in Flanders for an intended amphibious landing, with an impressive strength of 43 officers and 1,070 men, which was aborted following a surprise German attack on 10 July. The Munsters were then moved with their division to Dunkirk for another amphibious attempt near Zeebrugge to link with a land offensive through Passchendaele, but this was also cancelled when the land offensive did not gain enough footing.
For the men of the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, rotating routine trench duties continued up to the middle of March with light casualties (2 officers and 20 men killed). The battalion rehearsed special training during April and May for the assault on the strategic Messines Ridge. The Flanders offensive began at 3.10am on 7 June 1917 with the detonation of nineteen huge mines previously burrowed under the German lines. This was followed by the advance of the 16th Irish Division opposite the village of Wytschaete, to the right the 36th (Ulster) Division opposite the village of Messines, the largest ever concentration of Irish soldiers on a battlefield. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers took all its objectives on schedule despite the loss of nearly all of its supporting tanks. The subsequent battle was a complete success militarily for the British, with the two Irish divisions showing great fortitude, advancing over two miles in a few days with minimal losses, which was exceptional by Western Front standards. The battalion was then relieved, and returned to the Ypres salient front section in August. Continuous rain turned the battlefront into a sea of mud causing a multitude of casualties and failure to take specific positions, reducing the battalion to 37 officers and 701 men. The Munsters were moved with its Division back south into France where it built up to 1,089 all ranks.
The 16th (Irish) Division, and with it the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, took up positions north of the main attack during the first Battle of Cambrai which opened on 21 November with the use of over 450 British tanks. The Munsters advanced with such speed that only one enemy machine gun post was manned in time to open fire, which was taken with one loss. Considering the success of capturing a difficult objective without tank support and taking 170 prisoners, losses were light, and followed previously unsuccessful attempts by other units during the summer. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers final front tour of 1917 ended on 2 December when the Division was moved south to take over a French section.
By 6 November 1917, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers now numbered 20 officers and 630 other ranks when it arrived at "Irish Farm" in the Ypres salient. The ground was a quagmire full of water-logged shell-holes following four months of battle. It was to be the last British effort of the Passchendaele campaign. The Munsters were to be one of two battalions leading the 1st Division's attack at 6 a.m. on 10 November. Weighed down with equipment, they waded waist deep through mud and water, initially taking all objectives within 45 minutes. Seeing the progress by the Canadians on the right, the men of the Munsters pressed on. However, the South Wales Borders advance had left a gap the Germans made use of to cut off most of the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers who then had to fight their way back to the British lines. A roll call took three hours later saw only 7 officers and 240 other ranks present with 12 officers and 393 other ranks having become casualties. The battalion was moved out to Brieulles for reforming for the rest of the year.
1918: The German Spring Offensive and Final Victory
Two officers of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers man a machine gun on the Western Front.
From January through to March, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was involved in various engagements in snow, frost and mud. By St. Patrick's Day 1918, it became clear that the Germans were gaining the initiative and their forecast "Big Move" was awaited. By the end of January 1918 the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers numbered 44 officers and 823 other ranks, and was then transferred to the 48th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division on 3 February near Peronnewhere it entered the lines a week later. The division was now under the command of General Hubert Gough.
The British front was at its lengthiest when the German Spring Offensive opened with a devastating bombardment early on 21 March 1918, after which a fierce attack by fresh troops was launched. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers suffered badly from the shelling but held the Germans up all night, before they broke through and overwhelmed the Munsters who dashed to retreat, with some making it to a high ridge trench where they were driven out and retired to Epehy by dark, fog having allowed the Germans to infiltrate easily. The next day the battalion was withdrawn to Tincourt where the depleted 16th (Irish) Division was concentrated, with the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers now numbering only 290 other ranks, from 629 the day before. On 22 March, the battalion crossed back over the Somme at Péronne.By 25 March, the battalion had lost 27 officers and 550 men, as the rest tried to reform, holding off several attacks and near encirclements. The Munsters formed a 400-man column and attempted a night retreat, half reaching friendly positions next morning at Hamel. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was fortunate to be in reserve as the Germans opened the offensive with a gas-bombardment. By the next day, the battalion was heavily engaged, the enemy using a new zigzag attack strategy. The battalion retaliated but was forced to withdraw and were quickly down to 7 officers and 450 men. There was then a general withdrawal across the Somme at Peronne, by which time the battalion was reduced to just 290 men.
The German offensive had decimated the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers to a shadow of its previous strength. The 16th (Irish) Division was reduced to cadre, having suffered the heaviest losses of any British division during the March retreat. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was transferred to the 57th (2nd W.Lancs) Division which had not seen action since its arrival in February 1917.The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was largely destroyed by the German offensive, losing 36 officers and 796 other ranks since 21 March. The battalion moved northwards to amalgamate with the equally hard hit 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers at Inghem on 14 April, with the resulting unit numbering 28 officers and 896 other ranks. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was then reduced to a training cadre of 11 officers, who left the 16th (Irish) Division to provide instruction for newly arrived American Expeditionary Force.
In May, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the lines again at Gommecourt, a quiet sector during the summer. On 27 August, the battalion again entered the line for an attack near Croisilles, taking enemy support trenches on the Hindenburg Line in half an hour with minimal losses. This was followed by the assault of 2 September when Martin Doyle won the battalion's third Victoria Cross on the Drocourt–Queant Line south of the river Scarpe, with the battalion suffering 350 casualties. The battalion was then relieved and received replacements and trained in preparation for the assault on the Cambrai to St. Quentin line. With a 3,000-yard advance on 27 September, Graincourt was captured by the Munsters. The Germans counter-attacked, recapturing many positions. The battalion remained under shellfire even behind the lines and was reduced to 7 officers and 261 men by 3 October.The battalion supported the final attack of the Battle of Cambrai on 8 October, which was found to be evacuated the following day as the Germans were in disorganised retreat. The 57th Division was then sent north to Armentières, with the Munsters entering the line on 17 October, with no resistance. Lille was captured the following day and the battalion provided a guard of honour for the French President's visit to the city on 21 October. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was billeted in Lille until the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers began reconstruction on 7 June 1918 when most of the 6th Royal Munster Fusiliers who had returned from Palestine were transferred to the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers. The battalion made its last transfer to the 150th Brigade of the 50th Division at Arras for the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive. On 1 October, the battalion was transported to Épehy, which had been the scene of its Spring Offensive experiences back in March, and it was again ordered into the lines on 4 October, to capture Le Catelet. The Munsters largely gaining their objective, however, they had to retire after encountering heavy counterattacks and failures elsewhere on the line, losing many 6st Royal Munster Fusiliers pre-war veterans who had survived Gallipoli. The 50th Division's advance was resumed on 10 October, and the battalion was reduced to 13 officers and 411 men by 16 October. The Battle of Épehy began on 18 October to drive the Germans behind the river, with the Munsters going in next day in fog surprising the Germans and taking many prisoner as well the objectives. The Munsters overran their objectives and were caught in another Division's barrage, with heavy losses experienced. They were then withdrawn and reorganised for what to be their final operation of the war, successfully taking a large area around Haute Noyelles on 4 November, the number of prisoners taken indicative of the low state of German morale. After a counter-bombardment on 7 November the battalion was withdrawn for the remaining days up until the Armistice.
New Army
With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 the immediate need for a considerable expansion of the British Army resulted in the formation of the New Army under Lord Kitchener. The war target was seventy divisions in all, the New Army to have thirty volunteer divisions separate and under Army Order 324, as additional from the Regular Army, with a planned period of service of at least three years. On 7 August a general United Kingdom-wide call for 100,000 volunteers aged 19–30 was issued. The battalions were to be distinguished by the word 'Service' after their number.
The first new battalions were raised as units of Kitchener's new K1 Army Group, which led to the formation of the 6th and 7th (Service) Battalions, Royal Munster Fusiliers which were a part of the 30th Brigade of the 10th (Irish) Division, under the command of General Bryan Mahon. The 8th and 9th (Service) Battalions, Royal Munster Fusiliers followed as units of the 16th (Irish) Division's 47th and 48th Brigades, part of Kitchener's second new K2 Army Group. The 16th Division was placed under the command of Major GeneralWilliam Hickie.In the course of the war heavy losses suffered by the two Regular Royal Munster Fusilier Battalions caused the new service battalions to be disbanded and absorbed in turn by the regular battalions, the last on 2 June 1918 when the 8th (Service) Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers was amalgamated with the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers.
Rian na gCos (Gaelic for in the footsteps of a giant)Dingle legend Paddy Bán Brosnan,who captained Kerry in 1944 gives the 1985 Kerry captain Paidí O'Sé from Ventry some priceless advice on the beach at Dún Chaoin
Iconic B&W photo taken by Colman Doyle of 2 of the all time Kerry football greats - Paidí O'Sé & Paddy Bawn Brosnan.This atmospheric image was captured as the 2 men walked along a stormy Atlantic shoreline on the beautiful Dingle Peninsula,.where both of these legends hailed from.Although from different eras both players encapsulated the essence of the Kerry Footballer-teak tough,ferocious,skillful and also well able to enjoy themselves when the opportunity presented itself !
Indeed Paddy Bawn had a very interesting family background as we discovered while researching his bio for this product description as you can now read.
Paddy Bawn Brosnan & the American Civil War: The Famed Gaelic Footballer’s Links to Kerry’s Greatest Conflict
September 1947, New York witnessed a unique sporting occasion. In front of more than 30,000 people at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, the Gaelic footballers of Kerry and Cavan did battle in what remains the only All-Ireland Football Championship Final ever to be held outside of Ireland. Among the men who donned the green and gold of Kerry that day was Paddy Bawn Brosnan of Dingle. Even in the annals of Ireland’s most famed footballing county, Paddy Bawn Brosnan remains special. Paddy had captained Kerry in 1944 when they lost the All-Ireland to Roscommon, and had taken home winner’s medals in 1940, 1941 and 1946. The New York match of 1947 was aimed at bringing this major event to the huge Irish-American community in the United States, 100 years after the Famine which had led so many to emigrate. But Paddy Bawn Brosnan had a special connection to New York and America. Indeed, had it not been for events that had taken place in a Prisoner of War camp in Georgia more than 80 years previously, it is unlikely that he would have ever had an opportunity to pull on the Kingdom’s colours.Footage of Cavan v Kerry from the Polo Grounds, Manhattan in 1947. You can access an RTE Radio 1 documentary on the background to the historic game by clicking here.
Over recent years I have given many lectures around the country highlighting the extent of Irish involvement in the American Civil War. Many take the form of county-focused talks, using specific local individuals to illustrate just how major an event this was in Irish history. Interestingly, it is common for at least one attendee to have a known link to an ancestor who served in the Civil War– indicative both of the impact this conflict had on Irish people, and of the fact that not all 19th century emigration was permanent. Last July I gave just such a talk to Dingle Historical Society in Co. Kerry, and was fortunate to be contacted by local man Mossy Donegan. Mossy not only knew his own connections to the conflict, but through extensive research by both he and his sister Maeve had obtained copies of many of the historical files associated with those links. It is a familial story they share with Paddy Bawn Brosnan, and it is as a result of Mossy and Maeve’s endeavours that it can be related here.
What then was Paddy Bawn Brosnan’s connection to the American Civil War? It is a narrative that directly involves his Grandmother, but can be traced back even further, to the marriage of Paddy Bawn’s Great-Grandparents (Mossy and Maeve’s Great-Great-Grandparents) Daniel Dowd and Mary Murphy. A few years shy of a century before Paddy Bawn took the field at the Polo Grounds, Father Eugene O’Sullivan married Daniel and Mary in Dingle Roman Catholic Church on 29th October 1853, A year later, on 8th October 1854, they celebrated the birth of their first child, Edward. At some point shortly after that, the Dowds decided their future lay across the Atlantic, and became just three of the more than 54,000 people who emigrated from Kerry between 1851 and 1860. (1)
Denny Lyne, Paddy Bawn Brosnan, J J Nerney and Eddie Boland in action during the 1946 All Ireland Final between Kerry and Roscommon (The Kerryman)
Denny Lyne, Paddy Bawn Brosnan, J J Nerney and Eddie Boland in action during the 1946 All Ireland Final between Kerry and Roscommon (The Kerryman)
The favoured destination for Irish emigrants was New York, and that is where the young Dowd family arrived in the mid-1850s. A second child– a daughter Bridget– was born there about 1856. Bridget, or Biddy as she became known, came into the world on Long Island, and was Paddy Bawn Brosnan’s grandmother. If the Dowd family story had followed that of the majority of Irish immigrants to the United States in this period, Biddy Dowd would never have seen Ireland again, and Paddy Bawn Brosnan would never have been born. But seismic events intervened. By the 1860s the family had settled in Buffalo, where Daniel made the decision that changed all their lives forever, when on 6th September 1862 he enlisted in the Union army. (2)
In 1862 Daniel Dowd became one of the c. 200,000 Irish-born men who would serve during the American Civil War. He was joined in the ranks by thousands of Kerrymen; there is little doubt that it was this conflict that saw more Kerrymen fight, and more Kerrymen die, than any other war in history. The Dingle native had decided not to join just any unit. Instead he enlisted in the 155th New York Infantry, one of the regiments that would form part of Corcoran’s Irish Legion. Its leader Brigadier-General Michael Corcoran from Carrowkeel, Co. Sligo was a noted Fenian, and many supporters of the cause of Ireland specifically chose to join his brigade. Whether Daniel was one of them, or simply wanted to serve close to his fellow Irishmen, remains unknown. (3)
Soldiers of the 170th New York Infantry, one of the other regiments of Corcoran’s Irish Legion, during the Civil War (Library of Congress)
Daniel was mustered in as a private in Company I of the 155th New York at Newport News, Virginia on 19th November 1862. He was recorded as a 29 year old laborer who was 5 feet 5 inches in height, with a fair complexion, gray eyes and light hair. His surname was one that caused considerable confusion for recorders at the time. Sometimes recorded as Doud or Doody, Daniel was placed on the regimental roster as ‘Daniel Dout.’ It wasn’t long before he got his first taste of action in the Civil War, as in January his regiment was engaged the Battle of Deserted House, Virginia. Though only a mere skirmish in comparison to what the Legion would endure in 1864, it nonetheless must have had quite an impact on Daniel and the men of the 155th. (4)
Private Daniel Dowd spent the next year in Virginia with his unit. On 17th December 1863 he found himself guarding a railroad bridge, part of a detachment of some 50 men of the Legion that were protecting the Orange & Alexandria line at Sangster’s Station. At a little after 6pm that evening they were set upon by a body of Confederate cavalry, who threatened to overrun them as they sought to burn the bridge. The Rebels attacked on a number of occasions, eventually getting around the flanks and rear of the Irishmen, succeeding in setting fire to their tents and forcing them into a retreat. Cut off, the detachment would normally have looked to their telegraph operator to call for reinforcements, but he was apparently so drunk he was unable to use his equipment. General Corcoran and the remainder of the Legion only learned of the attack around 8.30pm, when a local Unionist came to inform them of events. The relief force eventually re-established a connection with the detachment, but although the bridge was saved, a number of men had been captured. Among them was Dingle-native Daniel Dowd. (5)
We have scant details of Daniel’s life as a prisoner-of-war, but initially he was likely held near Richmond. At some point in the spring or early summer of 1864 he was moved to the recently opened– and soon to be notorious– Camp Sumter, Georgia. Better known as Andersonville, between February 1864 and the close of the war almost 13,000 prisoners lost their lives in the unsheltered compound. Disease, much of it caused by malnutrition, was rife. On 3rd July 1864 Daniel was admitted to the camp hospital suffering from Chronic Diarrhoea. He must have been in an extremely severe state at the time, as he did not live through the day. Following the conflict his grave was identified, and today forms part of Andersonville National Cemetery, where he rests in Grave 2809. (6)
Andersonville as it appeared on 17th August 1864, a little over a month after Daniel died (Library of Congress)
Shorn of her main support, the now widowed Mary decided to leave America behind and retrace her steps to Dingle, presumably to be close to family who could provide assistance. She returned to her home town with Edward and Biddy in tow; Edward must have had little or no-memory of Kerry, while Biddy was experiencing Ireland for the very first time. In 1869 Mary, now 45-years-old, went in search of a U.S. widow’s pension based on Daniel’s service to help support the children. Now living on the Strand, Dingle, she compiled information about her marriage and her children’s birth to send to Washington D.C. as part of her application. Unfortunately, the variant spellings of her husband’s name came back to haunt her. In the marriage record, Daniel’s surname had been written as ‘Doody’, sufficiently different from the ‘Dout’ recorded on the regimental roster to raise suspicions that this was not the same man. To compound matters there was also no available documentation relating to Biddy’s birth. Although the Commissioner of Emigration had written to every Catholic parish in Long Island in order to locate it, he met with no success. The combination of these two issues, together with the difficulty in dealing with the Washington authorities at such a remove, meant that Mary’s pension wasn’t granted. Her failure to provide the additional evidence requested meant that her claim was classified as ‘abandoned.’ Mary never fully gave up fully on the process; the last entry in her file is a letter she had written in the 1890s. Addressed from Waterside, Dingle on 4th July 1892, it was sent to the Secretary of the Claim Agent Office at the White House in Washington D.C.:
Sir,
I beg to state that I Mary Dowd now living here and aged about 65 am the widow of Daniel Dowd who served as a soldier in the late American war of 1863, and died a Prisoner of War in Richmond Prison Virginia [actually in Andersonville, Georgia]. Said Daniel Dowd served in the Army of the North. After his death, I deposited the necessary documents to prove my title to pension, in the hands of a Mr. Daniel McGillycuddy Solicitor Tralee, with the view to place them before the authorities in Washington , and he on 27th December 1873, forwarded the same to a Mr. Walsh a Claim Agent, for the purpose of lodging same. Since, I have not received a reply to my solicitor’s letters or received any pay nor pension or acknowledgement of claim.
I also learn that my husband at his death had in his possession £100, which he left to Father Mc Coiney who prepared him for death, in trust for me, and which sum never reached me.
I know no other course better, than apply to you, resting assured that you will cause my just claim to be sifted out, when justice will be measured to a poor Irish widow who is now working hard to maintain a long family. (7)
Daniel and Mary’s American born daughter Biddy in later life in Dingle (Mossy Donegan)
As was common at the time, Mary was illiterate– the letter was written for her by her solicitor McGillycuddy, and she made her mark with an ‘X’. It seems unlikely she ever received any monies as a result of it. Her American-born daughter Biddy grew to adulthood in Ireland. Her home had become Dingle, Co. Kerry rather than Buffalo, New York entirely as a result of her father’s death in a Prisoner of War camp more than 6,000 km from Ireland. Daniel’s fateful Civil War service also meant his daughter married and started a family in Ireland rather than America. Biddy’s husband was a fisherman, Patrick Johnson, and together the couple had seven children. One of them, Ellie, was Paddy Bawn Brosnan’s mother. Biddy died in 1945 and is buried in St. James’s Church in Dingle. Unlike her father’s resting place in Andersonville, it is not marked with a headstone. (8)
The American Civil War had a long-lasting, inter-generational impact on tens of thousands of Irish people, both in Ireland and the United States. Had it not been for the Confederate decision to launch an attack at Sangster’s Station in Virginia in 1863, or Daniel’s incarceration in Georgia in 1864, it is unlikely that Paddy Bawn Brosnan would ever have been born. The story of the footballing legend’s family is evidence of the often unrecognised impact of what was the largest conflict in Kerry people’s history. One wonders did Paddy Bawn reflect on his own grandmother’s New York story as he made his own journey across the Atlantic to take part in that historic sporting occasion only two years after her death in 1947.
Another image of Biddy, taken with some of the younger generations of her family. Without the events of the American Civil War, she would likely have never returned to Dingle, and Paddy Bawn Brosnan would never have been born (Mossy Donegan)
*This post would not have been possible without the extensive research of Mossy and Maeve Donegan. They not only ordered his Great-Great-Grandmother’s unsuccessful pension application from Washington D.C. but also obtained Daniel’s service record. All the family history relating to the Brosnans in Dingle and Paddy Bawn’s connection to Biddy was provided by them, and I am grateful they shared their story with us.**Thanks to Donal Nolan and The Kerryman for permission to use the image of the 1946 Final, which originally appeared on the Terrace Talk website here. Also thanks to Kay Caball for Donal’s contact details. ***Thanks to Conn Crowley for a clarification with respect to the attendance at the Polo Grounds Final.
(1) Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application, Miller 1988: 570; (2) Daniel Dowd Service Record; (3) Daniel Dowd Service Record, 155th New York Roster; (4) Ibid., New York Civil War Muster Roll; (5) Official Records: 982-984, Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application, Daniel Dowd Service Record, U.S. Register of Deaths of Volunteers, Records of Federal POWs Confined at Andersonville; (7) Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application; (8) Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application;
References & Further Reading
Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application 180,808.
Daniel Dowd Service Record.
Roster of the 155th New York Infantry.
Daniel Dowd Find A Grave Entry.
New York State Archives, Cultural Education Center, Albany, New York; New York Civil War Muster Roll Abstracts, 1861-1900; Archive Collection #: 13775-83; Box #: 607; Roll #: 263 [Original scan, accessed via ancestry.com].
Selected Records of the War Department Commissary General of Prisoners Relating to Federal Prisoners of War Confined at Andersonville, GA, 1864-65; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1303, 6 rolls); Records of the Commissary General of Prisoners, Record Group 249; National Archives, Washington, D.C. [Original scan, accessed via ancestry.com].
Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, compiled 1861–1865. ARC ID: 656639. Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s–1917. Record Group 94. National Archives at Washington, D.C. [Original scan, accessed via ancestry.com].
Official Records of the War of the Rebellion Series 1, Volume 29, Part 1. December 17, 183 – Skirmish at Sangster’s Station, Va. Reports.
Miller, Kerby A. 1988. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America
Beautifully framed print portraying page 287 of the 1st Edition of James Joyce seminal work Ulysses.This piece formerly hunh in the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.
Origins ; Dublin. Dimensions: 59cm x 45cm. Glazed
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernistavant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, most famously stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, his published letters and occasional journalism.
Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. A brilliant student, he briefly attended the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School before excelling at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances. He went on to attend University College Dublin.
In 1904, in his early twenties, Joyce emigrated to continental Europe with his partner (and later wife) Nora Barnacle. They lived in Trieste, Paris, and Zürich. Although most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe centres on Dublin and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there. Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses, he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."
Early life
Joyce's birth and baptismal certificate
On 2 February 1882, Joyce was born at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland. Joyce's father was John Stanislaus Joyce and his mother was Mary Jane "May" Murray. He was the eldest of ten surviving siblings; two died of typhoid. James was baptised according to the Rites of the Catholic Church in the nearby St Joseph's Church in Terenure on 5 February 1882 by Rev. John O'Mulloy. Joyce's godparents were Philip and Ellen McCann.
John Stanislaus Joyce's family came from Fermoy in County Cork, and had owned a small salt and lime works. Joyce's paternal grandfather, James Augustine Joyce, married Ellen O'Connell, daughter of John O'Connell, a Cork Alderman who owned a drapery business and other properties in Cork City. Ellen's family claimed kinship with Daniel O'Connell, "The Liberator".The Joyce family's purported ancestor, Seán Mór Seoighe (fl. 1680) was a stonemason from Connemara.
Joyce aged six, 1888
In 1887, his father was appointed rate collector by Dublin Corporation; the family subsequently moved to the fashionable adjacent small town of Bray, 12 miles (19 km) from Dublin. Around this time Joyce was attacked by a dog, leading to his lifelong cynophobia. He suffered from astraphobia; a superstitious aunt had described thunderstorms as a sign of God's wrath.
In 1891 Joyce wrote a poem on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell. His father was angry at the treatment of Parnell by the Catholic Church, the Irish Home Rule Party and the British Liberal Party and the resulting collaborative failure to secure Home Rule for Ireland. The Irish Party had dropped Parnell from leadership. But the Vatican's role in allying with the British Conservative Party to prevent Home Rule left a lasting impression on the young Joyce. The elder Joyce had the poem printed and even sent a part to the Vatican Library. In November, John Joyce was entered in Stubbs' Gazette (a publisher of bankruptcies) and suspended from work. In 1893, John Joyce was dismissed with a pension, beginning the family's slide into poverty caused mainly by his drinking and financial mismanagement.
Joyce had begun his education at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare, in 1888 but had to leave in 1892 when his father could no longer pay the fees. Joyce then studied at home and briefly at the Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street, Dublin, before he was offered a place in the Jesuits' Dublin school, Belvedere College, in 1893. This came about because of a chance meeting his father had with a Jesuit priest called John Conmee who knew the family and Joyce was given a reduction in fees to attend Belvedere. In 1895, Joyce, now aged 13, was elected to join the Sodality of Our Lady by his peers at Belvedere. The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas continued to have a strong influence on him for most of his life.
Joyce enrolled at the recently established University College Dublin (UCD) in 1898, studying English, French and Italian. He became active in theatrical and literary circles in the city. In 1900 his laudatory review of Henrik Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken was published in The Fortnightly Review; it was his first publication and, after learning basic Norwegian to send a fan letter to Ibsen, he received a letter of thanks from the dramatist. Joyce wrote a number of other articles and at least two plays (since lost) during this period. Many of the friends he made at University College Dublin appeared as characters in Joyce's works. His closest colleagues included leading figures of the generation, most notably, Tom Kettle, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and Oliver St. John Gogarty. Joyce was first introduced to the Irish public by Arthur Griffith in his newspaper, United Irishman, in November 1901. Joyce had written an article on the Irish Literary Theatre and his college magazine refused to print it. Joyce had it printed and distributed locally. Griffith himself wrote a piece decrying the censorship of the student James Joyce. In 1901, the National Census of Ireland lists James Joyce (19) as an English- and Irish-speaking scholar living with his mother and father, six sisters and three brothers at Royal Terrace (now Inverness Road), Clontarf, Dublin.
After graduating from UCD in 1902, Joyce left for Paris to study medicine, but he soon abandoned this. Richard Ellmann suggests that this may have been because he found the technical lectures in French too difficult. Joyce had already failed to pass chemistry in English in Dublin. But Joyce claimed ill health as the problem and wrote home that he was unwell and complained about the cold weather. He stayed on for a few months, appealing for finance his family could ill-afford and reading late in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. When his mother was diagnosed with cancer, his father sent a telegram which read, "NOTHER [sic] DYING COME HOME FATHER".Joyce returned to Ireland. Fearing for her son's impiety, his mother tried unsuccessfully to get Joyce to make his confession and to take communion. She finally passed into a coma and died on 13 August, James and his brother Stanislaus having refused to kneel with other members of the family praying at her bedside.After her death he continued to drink heavily, and conditions at home grew quite appalling. He scraped together a living reviewing books, teaching, and singing—he was an accomplished tenor, and won the bronze medal in the 1904 Feis Ceoil.
Career
On 7 January 1904, Joyce attempted to publish A Portrait of the Artist, an essay-story dealing with aesthetics, only to have it rejected by the free-thinking magazine Dana. He decided, on his twenty-second birthday, to revise the story into a novel he called Stephen Hero. It was a fictional rendering of Joyce's youth, but he eventually grew frustrated with its direction and abandoned this work. It was never published in this form, but years later, in Trieste, Joyce completely rewrote it as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The unfinished Stephen Hero was published after his death.
Also in 1904, he met Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Galway city who was working as a chambermaid. On 16 June 1904 they had their first outing together, walking to the Dublin suburb of Ringsend, where Nora masturbated him. This event was commemorated by providing the date for the action of Ulysses (as "Bloomsday").
Joyce remained in Dublin for some time longer, drinking heavily. After one of his drinking binges, he got into a fight over a misunderstanding with a man in St Stephen's Green; he was picked up and dusted off by a minor acquaintance of his father, Alfred H. Hunter, who took him into his home to tend to his injuries. Hunter was rumoured to be a Jew and to have an unfaithful wife and would serve as one of the models for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses. He took up with the medical student Oliver St. John Gogarty, who informed the character for Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. After six nights in the Martello Tower that Gogarty was renting in Sandycove, he left in the middle of the night following an altercation which involved another student he lived with, the unstable Dermot Chenevix Trench (Haines in Ulysses), who fired a pistol at some pans hanging directly over Joyce's bed. Joyce walked the 8 miles (13 km) back to Dublin to stay with relatives for the night, and sent a friend to the tower the next day to pack his trunk. Shortly after, the couple left Ireland to live on the continent.
1904–20: Trieste and Zürich
Joyce in Zürich, in 1915
Joyce and Nora went into self-imposed exile, moving first to Zürich in Switzerland, where he ostensibly taught English at the Berlitz Language School through an agent in England. It later became evident that the agent had been swindled; the director of the school sent Joyce on to Trieste, which was then part of Austria-Hungary (until the First World War), and is today part of Italy. Once again, he found there was no position for him, but with the help of Almidano Artifoni, director of the Trieste Berlitz School, he finally secured a teaching position in Pola, then also part of Austria-Hungary (today part of Croatia). He stayed there, teaching English mainly to Austro-Hungarian naval officers stationed at the Pola base, from October 1904 until March 1905, when the Austrians—having discovered an espionage ring in the city—expelled all aliens. With Artifoni's help, he moved back to Trieste and began teaching English there. He remained in Trieste for most of the next ten years.
Later that year Nora gave birth to their first child, George (known as Giorgio). Joyce persuaded his brother, Stanislaus, to join him in Trieste, and secured a teaching position for him at the school. Joyce sought to augment his family's meagre income with his brother's earnings. Stanislaus and Joyce had strained relations while they lived together in Trieste, arguing about Joyce's drinking habits and frivolity with money.
Joyce became frustrated with life in Trieste and moved to Rome in late 1906, taking employment as a clerk in a bank. He disliked Rome and returned to Trieste in early 1907. His daughter Lucia was born later that year.
Joyce returned to Dublin in mid-1909 with George, to visit his father and work on getting Dubliners published. He visited Nora's family in Galway and liked Nora's mother very much.While preparing to return to Trieste he decided to take one of his sisters, Eva, back with him to help Nora run the home. He spent a month in Trieste before returning to Dublin, this time as a representative of some cinema owners and businessmen from Trieste. With their backing he launched Ireland's first cinema, the Volta Cinematograph, which was well-received, but fell apart after Joyce left. He returned to Trieste in January 1910 with another sister, Eileen, in tow.Eva became homesick for Dublin and returned there a few years later, but Eileen spent the rest of her life on the continent, eventually marrying the Czech bank cashier Frantisek Schaurek.
Joyce returned to Dublin again briefly in mid-1912 during his years-long fight with Dublin publisher George Roberts over the publication of Dubliners. His trip was once again fruitless, and on his return he wrote the poem "Gas from a Burner", an invective against Roberts. After this trip, he never again came closer to Dublin than London, despite many pleas from his father and invitations from his fellow Irish writer William Butler Yeats.
One of his students in Trieste was Ettore Schmitz, better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo. They met in 1907 and became lasting friends and mutual critics. Schmitz was a Catholic of Jewish origin and became a primary model for Leopold Bloom; most of the details about the Jewish faith in Ulysses came from Schmitz's responses to queries from Joyce. While living in Trieste, Joyce was first beset with eye problems that ultimately required over a dozen surgical operations.
Joyce concocted a number of money-making schemes during this period, including an attempt to become a cinema magnate in Dublin. He frequently discussed but ultimately abandoned a plan to import Irish tweed to Trieste. Correspondence relating to that venture with the Irish Woollen Mills were for a long time displayed in the windows of their premises in Dublin. Joyce's skill at borrowing money saved him from indigence. What income he had came partially from his position at the Berlitz school and partially from teaching private students.
In 1915, after most of his students in Trieste were conscripted to fight in the Great War, Joyce moved to Zürich. Two influential private students, Baron Ambrogio Ralli and Count Francesco Sordina, petitioned officials for an exit permit for the Joyces, who in turn agreed not to take any action against the emperor of Austria-Hungary during the war.
During this period Joyce took an active interest in socialism.He had attended socialist meetings when he was still in Dublin and 1905, while in Trieste, he described his politics as "those of a socialist artist." Although his practical engagement waned after 1907 due to the "endless internecine warfare" he observed in socialist organizations, many Joyce scholars such as Richard Ellmann, Dominic Manganiello, Robert Scholes, and George J. Watson agree that Joyce's interest in socialism and pacifistic anarchism continued for much of his life, and that both the form and content of Joyce's work reflect a sympathy for democratic and socialist ideas. In 1918 he declared himself "against every state" and found much succor in the individualist philosophies of Benjamin Tucker and Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Later in the 1930s, Joyce rated his experiences with the defeated multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire as: "They called the Empire a ramshackle empire, I wish to God there were more such empires."
Joyce set himself to finishing Ulysses in Paris, delighted to find that he was gradually gaining fame as an avant-garde writer. A further grant from Harriet Shaw Weaver meant he could devote himself full-time to writing again, as well as consort with other literary figures in the city. During this time, Joyce's eyes began to give him more and more problems and he often wore an eyepatch. He was treated by Louis Borsch in Paris, undergoing nine operations before Borsch's death in 1929.Throughout the 1930s he travelled frequently to Switzerland for eye surgeries and for treatments for his daughter Lucia, who, according to the Joyces, suffered from schizophrenia. Lucia was analysed by Carl Jung at the time, who after reading Ulysses is said to have concluded that her father had schizophrenia. Jung said that she and her father were two people heading to the bottom of a river, except that Joyce was diving and Lucia was sinking.
In Paris, Maria and Eugene Jolas nursed Joyce during his long years of writing Finnegans Wake. Were it not for their support (along with Harriet Shaw Weaver's constant financial support), there is a good possibility that his books might never have been finished or published. In their literary magazine transition, the Jolases published serially various sections of Finnegans Wake under the title Work in Progress. Joyce returned to Zürich in late 1940, fleeing the Nazi occupation of France. Joyce used his contacts to help some sixteen Jews escape Nazi persecution.
Joyce and religion
The issue of Joyce's relationship with religion is somewhat controversial. Early in life, he lapsed from Catholicism, according to first-hand testimonies coming from himself, his brother Stanislaus Joyce, and his wife:
My mind rejects the whole present social order and Christianity—home, the recognised virtues, classes of life and religious doctrines. ... Six years ago I left the Catholic church, hating it most fervently. I found it impossible for me to remain in it on account of the impulses of my nature. I made secret war upon it when I was a student and declined to accept the positions it offered me. By doing this I made myself a beggar but I retained my pride. Now I make open war upon it by what I write and say and do.
When the arrangements for Joyce's burial were being made, a Catholic priest offered a religious service, which Joyce's wife, Nora, declined, saying, "I couldn't do that to him."Leonard Strong, William T. Noon, Robert Boyle and others have argued that Joyce, later in life, reconciled with the faith he rejected earlier in life and that his parting with the faith was succeeded by a not so obvious reunion, and that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are essentially Catholic expressions. Likewise, Hugh Kenner and T. S. Eliot believed they saw between the lines of Joyce's work the outlook of a serious Christian and that beneath the veneer of the work lies a remnant of Catholic belief and attitude. Kevin Sullivan maintains that, rather than reconciling with the faith, Joyce never left it.Critics holding this view insist that Stephen, the protagonist of the semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well as Ulysses, is not Joyce. Somewhat cryptically, in an interview after completing Ulysses, in response to the question "When did you leave the Catholic Church", Joyce answered, "That's for the Church to say." Eamonn Hughes maintains that Joyce takes a dialectic approach, both affirming and denying, saying that Stephen's much noted non-serviam is qualified—"I will not serve that which I no longer believe...", and that the non-serviam will always be balanced by Stephen's "I am a servant..." and Molly's "yes".He attended Catholic Mass and Orthodox Divine Liturgy, especially during Holy Week, purportedly for aesthetic reasons. His sisters noted his Holy Week attendance and that he did not seek to dissuade them. One friend reported that Joyce cried "secret tears" upon hearing Jesus' words on the cross and another suggested that he was a "believer at heart" because of his frequent attendance at church.Umberto Eco compares Joyce to the ancient episcopi vagantes (wandering bishops) in the Middle Ages. They left a discipline, not a cultural heritage or a way of thinking. Like them, the writer retains the sense of blasphemy held as a liturgical ritual.
Some critics and biographers have opined along the lines of Andrew Gibson: "The modern James Joyce may have vigorously resisted the oppressive power of Catholic tradition. But there was another Joyce who asserted his allegiance to that tradition, and never left it, or wanted to leave it, behind him." Gibson argues that Joyce "remained a Catholic intellectual if not a believer" since his thinking remained influenced by his cultural background, even though he lived apart from that culture.His relationship with religion was complex and not easily understood, even perhaps by himself. He acknowledged the debt he owed to his early Jesuit training. Joyce told the sculptor August Suter, that from his Jesuit education, he had 'learnt to arrange things in such a way that they become easy to survey and to judge.'
On 11 January 1941, Joyce underwent surgery in Zürich for a perforated duodenal ulcer. He fell into a coma the following day. He awoke at 2 a.m. on 13 January 1941, and asked a nurse to call his wife and son, before losing consciousness again. They were en route when he died 15 minutes later. Joyce was less than a month short of his 59th birthday.
His body was buried in the Fluntern Cemetery, Zürich. The Swiss tenor Max Meili sang Addio terra, addio cielo from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the burial service.Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce's funeral, and the Irish government later declined Nora's offer to permit the repatriation of Joyce's remains. When Joseph Walshe, secretary at the Department of External Affairs in Dublin, was informed of Joyce's death by Frank Cremins, chargé d'affaires at Bern, Walshe responded "Please wire details of Joyce's death. If possible find out did he die a Catholic? Express sympathy with Mrs Joyce and explain inability to attend funeral". Buried originally in an ordinary grave, Joyce was moved in 1966 to a more prominent "honour grave," with a seated portrait statue by American artist Milton Hebald nearby. Nora, whom he had married in 1931, survived him by 10 years. She is buried by his side, as is their son Giorgio, who died in 1976.
In October 2019 a motion was put to Dublin City Council to plan and budget for the costs of the exhumations and reburials of Joyce and his family somewhere in Dublin, subject to his family's wishes. The proposal immediately became controversial, with the Irish Times commenting: "...it is hard not to suspect that there is a calculating, even mercantile, aspect to contemporary Ireland's relationship to its great writers, whom we are often more keen to 'celebrate', and if possible monetise, than read".
Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.
The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by converging ideas and influences. The stories centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment when a character experiences a life-changing self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses. The initial stories in the collection are narrated by child protagonists. Subsequent stories deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This aligns with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence and maturity.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a nearly complete rewrite of the abandoned novel Stephen Hero. Joyce attempted to burn the original manuscript in a fit of rage during an argument with Nora, though to his subsequent relief it was rescued by his sister. A Künstlerroman, Portrait is a heavily autobiographical coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood and adolescence of the protagonist Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings are evident throughout this novel.
Exiles and poetry
Despite early interest in the theatre, Joyce published only one play, Exiles, begun shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and published in 1918. A study of a husband-and-wife relationship, the play looks back to The Dead (the final story in Dubliners) and forward to Ulysses, which Joyce began around the time of the play's composition.
Joyce published a number of books of poetry. His first mature published work was the satirical broadside "The Holy Office" (1904), in which he proclaimed himself to be the superior of many prominent members of the Celtic Revival. His first full-length poetry collection, Chamber Music (1907; referring, Joyce joked, to the sound of urine hitting the side of a chamber pot), consisted of 36 short lyrics. This publication led to his inclusion in the Imagist Anthology, edited by Ezra Pound, who was a champion of Joyce's work. Other poetry Joyce published in his lifetime include "Gas from a Burner" (1912), Pomes Penyeach (1927) and "Ecce Puer" (written in 1932 to mark the birth of his grandson and the recent death of his father). It was published by the Black Sun Press in Collected Poems (1936).
Ulysses
Announcement of the initial publication of Ulysses.
As he was completing work on Dubliners in 1906, Joyce considered adding another story featuring a Jewish advertising canvasser called Leopold Bloom under the title Ulysses. Although he did not pursue the idea further at the time, he eventually commenced work on a novel using both the title and basic premise in 1914. The writing was completed in October 1921. Three more months were devoted to working on the proofs of the book before Joyce halted work shortly before his self-imposed deadline, his 40th birthday (2 February 1922).
Thanks to Ezra Pound, serial publication of the novel in the magazine The Little Review began in March 1918. This magazine was edited by Margaret C. Andersonand Jane Heap, with the intermittent financial backing of John Quinn, a successful New York commercial lawyer with an interest in contemporary experimental art and literature.
This provoked the first accusations of obscenity with which the book would be identified for so long. Its amorphous structure with frank, intimate musings (‘stream of consciousness’) were seen to offend both church and state. The publication encountered problems with New York Postal Authorities; serialisation ground to a halt in December 1920; the editors were convicted of publishing obscenity in February 1921. Although the conviction was based on the "Nausicaä" episode of Ulysses, The Little Review had fuelled the fires of controversy with dada poet Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven's defence of Ulysses in an essay "The Modest Woman."Joyce's novel was not published in the United States until 1934.
Partly because of this controversy, Joyce found it difficult to get a publisher to accept the book, but it was published in 1922 by Sylvia Beach from her well-known Rive Gauche bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. An English edition published the same year by Joyce's patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, ran into further difficulties with the United States authorities, and 500 copies that were shipped to the States were seized and possibly destroyed. The following year, John Rodker produced a print run of 500 more intended to replace the missing copies, but these were burned by English customs at Folkestone. A further consequence of the novel's ambiguous legal status as a banned book was that "bootleg" versions appeared, including pirate versions from the publisher Samuel Roth. In 1928, a court injunction against Roth was obtained and he ceased publication.
With the appearance of Ulysses, and T.S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land, 1922 was a key year in the history of English-language literary modernism. In Ulysses, Joyce employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, and almost every other literary technique to present his characters. The action of the novel, which takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904, sets the characters and incidents of the Odyssey of Homer in modern Dublin and represents Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, parodically contrasted with their lofty models. The book explores various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Nevertheless, the book is also an affectionately detailed study of the city, and Joyce claimed that if Dublin were to be destroyed in some catastrophe it could be rebuilt, brick by brick, using his work as a model.In order to achieve this level of accuracy, Joyce used the 1904 edition of Thom's Directory—a work that listed the owners and/or tenants of every residential and commercial property in the city. He also bombarded friends still living there with requests for information and clarification.
The book consists of 18 chapters, each covering roughly one hour of the day, beginning around about 8 a.m. and ending sometime after 2 a.m. the following morning. Each of the 18 chapters of the novel employs its own literary style. Each chapter also refers to a specific episode in Homer's Odyssey and has a specific colour, art or science and bodily organ associated with it. This combination of kaleidoscopic writing with an extreme formal, schematic structure represents one of the book's major contributions to the development of 20th century modernist literature.Other contributions include the use of classical mythology as a framework for his book and the near-obsessive focus on external detail in a book in which much of the significant action is happening inside the minds of the characters. Nevertheless, Joyce complained that, "I may have oversystematised Ulysses," and played down the mythic correspondences by eliminating the chapter titles that had been taken from Homer. Joyce was reluctant to publish the chapter titles because he wanted his work to stand separately from the Greek form. It was only when Stuart Gilbert published his critical work on Ulysses in 1930 that the schema was supplied by Joyce to Gilbert. But as Terrence Killeen points out this schema was developed after the novel had been written and was not something that Joyce consulted as he wrote the novel.
Finnegans Wake
Having completed work on Ulysses, Joyce was so exhausted that he did not write a line of prose for a year.On 10 March 1923 he informed his patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver: "Yesterday I wrote two pages—the first I have since the final Yes of Ulysses. Having found a pen, with some difficulty I copied them out in a large handwriting on a double sheet of foolscap so that I could read them. Il lupo perde il pelo ma non il vizio, the Italians say. 'The wolf may lose his skin but not his vice' or 'the leopard cannot change his spots.'" Thus was born a text that became known, first, as Work in Progress and later Finnegans Wake.
By 1926 Joyce had completed the first two parts of the book. In that year, he met Eugene and Maria Jolas who offered to serialise the book in their magazine transition. For the next few years, Joyce worked rapidly on the new book, but in the 1930s, progress slowed considerably. This was due to a number of factors, including the death of his father in 1931, concern over the mental health of his daughter Lucia, and his own health problems, including failing eyesight. Much of the work was done with the assistance of younger admirers, including Samuel Beckett. For some years, Joyce nursed the eccentric plan of turning over the book to his friend James Stephens to complete, on the grounds that Stephens was born in the same hospital as Joyce exactly one week later, and shared the first name of both Joyce and of Joyce's fictional alter-ego, an example of Joyce's superstitions.
Reaction to the work was mixed, including negative comment from early supporters of Joyce's work, such as Pound and the author's brother, Stanislaus Joyce. To counteract this hostile reception, a book of essays by supporters of the new work, including Beckett, William Carlos Williams and others was organised and published in 1929 under the title
Beautifully atmospheric Raymond Campbell still life print depicting a familiar scene of an Irish Bar shelf or kitchen dresser.You can almost reach out and touch the bottles of Powers & Jameson Whiskey plus assorted items such as an old hurling sliotar,a sea shell, postcards etc
Origins :Bray Co Wicklow. Dimensions : 68cm x 55cm. Unglazed
Raymond Campbell has long been known as one of the modern masters of still life oil paintings. Instantly recognisable, his artwork is often characterised by arrangements of dusty vintage wine bottles, glasses and selections of fruit and cheeses.
What isn’t so known about Raymond is how he began his working life as a refuse collector and laying carpets. Indeed it was the former which allowed him to salvage many of the vintage bottles which he uses for his subject matter to this day.
Born in 1956 in Surrey, Raymond Campbell is now considered by many as the United Kingdom’s pre-eminent still life artist. His works “Second Home”, “The Gamble” and “The Lost Shoe” are among pieces which have been exhibited at The Summer Exhibition at The Royal Academy, London. He has had many sell-out one man exhibitions and has also exhibited several times at The Mall Galleries, London and numerous other galleries worldwide. His work can be found in many international private collections, particularly in the USA, Australia and across Europe.
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)
Although Dessie had no Irish connection whatsoever ,we love a good horse in Ireland and by God Desert Orchid was some horse.Its said his appearance in Fairhouse when he own the Irish Grand National was akin to JFK or the Pope arriving !
Trim Co Meath. 62cm x 50cm
Desert Orchid (11 April 1979 – 13 November 2006), known as Dessie, was an English racehorse. The grey achieved a revered and esteemed status within National Hunt racing, where he was much loved by supporters for his front-running attacking style, iron will and extreme versatility. He was rated the fifth best National Hunt horse of all time by Timeform. During his racing career he was partnered by five different jump jockeys: Colin Brown, Richard Linley, Simon Sherwood, Graham Bradley and Richard Dunwoody.
Early career
Desert Orchid's first race occurred in 1983 and during his early career his regular rider was Colin Brown, who partnered him 42 times in all, winning 17. He fell heavily at the last in a Kempton novice hurdle and took such a long time to get to his feet that it seemed his first race might be his last. Desert Orchid had a successful novice hurdle career in the 1983/84 season winning several races in a row including the Kingwell Pattern Hurdle, a long established Champion Hurdle trial, at Wincanton. Desert Orchid started favourite for the 1984 Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham, the race was won by Dawn Run.
David Elsworth's grey was no longer eligible for novice hurdles in 1984/85 and struggled to recapture his early form. He won one of his eight starts this season, in February at Sandown Park. He was pulled up in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham Racecourse, the Welsh Champion Hurdle, and on his final outing of the season fell at Ascot.
Steeplechase career
Desert Orchid was then switched to steeplechasing, still partnered by his regular hurdles jockey Colin Brown, and ran up a sequence of four wins in a row at Devon and Exeter, Sandown and Ascot (twice) before unseating at Ascot. He did not win again that season despite three further placed efforts. He was well clear in his final race of the season at Ascot only to make a very serious mistake which stopped his momentum. He eventually finished fifth.
Back at Ascot, he won over 2 miles before returning to Kempton Park for the King George VI Chase, where he ran out a 15 length winner over Door Latch, easily defeating stars such as Wayward Lad, Forgive n'Forget, Combs Ditch and Bolands Cross. The quality of the field can be indicated by Desert Orchid's starting price of 16/1—though the price was also influenced by fears that this speedy front runner would not stay the 3 mile trip. This was jockey Simon Sherwood's first ride on Desert Orchid, the start of a partnership that was successful nine times in their ten races together. Colin Brown, who rode Desert Orchid in more than half his races, partnered his better-fancied stablemate Combs Ditch instead.
Desert Orchid followed up with wins at Sandown and Wincanton, before finishing third in the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham, three lengths behind Pearlyman. He returned to win over 2½ miles at Ascot before being pulled up in the Whitbread Gold Cup on his final outing of the 1986/87 season.
A string of places followed in 1987, second at Sandown (2 miles), second in the King George, and places at Sandown, Wincanton and Cheltenham. Desert Orchid got his head in front on his last two starts of the 1987/88 season taking the Martell Cup at Aintree, which was his first win on a left-handed track, and the Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown.
One of Desert Orchid's greatest efforts took place in the 1989 Victor Chandler Handicap Chase, where he took on four rivals, including the top-class Panto Prince and Vodkatini, who fell badly on the back straight. He gave the former 22 pounds and the latter 23 pounds. Desert Orchid just got back up after being headed to beat Panto Prince by a head.
Desert Orchid was then stepped up to 3 miles and 2 furlongs (5.23 km) for the Cheltenham Gold Cup—he had previously been considered a two-miler. The rain and snow which had fallen relentlessly at Cheltenham made the racecourse going heavy. These were conditions hardly suited to Desert Orchid, especially at this left-handed course which he never particularly favoured.
A crowd of over 58,000 witnessed Desert Orchid's effort to overhaul the mud-loving Yahoo in the final stages of the race. After his one and a half length victory, Desert Orchid's rider, Simon Sherwood said: "I've never known a horse so brave. He hated every step of the way in the ground and dug as deep as he could possibly go". Three cheers were called as Desert Orchid was unsaddled, surrounded by thousands of fans. The race was voted best horse race ever by readers of the Racing Post.
After eight consecutive wins, Desert Orchid then fell in the Martell Cup, which he had won the previous year (and which on this occasion was won by the Gold Cup runner-up, Yahoo). This was the first time Desert Orchid had run and failed to win since the 1988 Queen Mother Champion Chase over a year earlier.
In 1989, Desert Orchid again won at Wincanton, this time with a new jockey, Richard Dunwoody. After a second in the Tingle Creek Chase, he headed for Kempton, where he took his third King George, this time as the 4/6 favourite. He followed up with a win at Wincanton and then took the Racing Post Chase at Kempton. The Racing Post Chase of that year included many top-class handicappers and graded horses but Desert Orchid, carrying the huge weight of 12 stone & 3 pounds (77.6 kg), beat the opposition, led by the top-class Delius - a feat the official handicapper said could not be done on ratings. A third in the Cheltenham Gold Cup preceded Desert Orchid's convincing win in the Irish Grand National at Fairyhouse. He was given top weight of 12 stone (76.2 kg), but was even money favourite and won by twelve lengths. This was despite an uncharacteristic bad jump at the final fence.
Desert Orchid did not reappear until November 1990, finishing second in the Haldon Gold Cup. A fourth in the Tingle Creek followed before the King George VI Chase, which he won for the fourth time.
Desert Orchid had three more races in the 1990/91 season, his last ever victory coming in the Agfa Diamond Chase at Sandown on 2 February 1991. His final start of the season was a 15-length third to Garrison Savannah in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
In his last season, he was beaten in his first outing at Wincanton, the race he had made his own and which now bears his name. He finished third in the Peterborough Chase at Huntingdon before falling in his last race, the 1991 King George at Kempton, where he was attempting his fifth win.
His record at right-handed tracks such as Kempton was always substantially better than his record at left-handed tracks such as Cheltenham. He had a tendency to jump to his right especially when tired. This meant that at tracks such as Cheltenham he would lose lengths by drifting to the outside. This tendency can be seen by his runs in the 1987 and 1988 Queen Mother Champion Chase and 1989 and 1990 Cheltenham Gold Cup. On each occasion he entered the home straight wide of his rivals. He only raced left-handed on thirteen occasions. However, all were either early in his career or in top-class races. He raced more times at both Sandown (19) and Ascot (15) than he did left-handed.
His part-owner Richard Burridge has stated that it was for this reason that Desert Orchid would have struggled in the Grand National: connections felt he could do himself serious injury at the ninety-degree Canal Turn especially on the second circuit (ref. Richard Burridge: The Grey Horse: The True Story of Desert Orchid).
The official handicapper gave Desert Orchid a rating of 187. Whilst a very high rating, it could have been much higher had his performances on left-handed tracks matched those on right. His performances on left-handed tracks like Cheltenham, where, despite this aversion, he never finished out of the first three in a chase, are recognised as generally below par.
No horse since Desert Orchid has repeatedly and successfully conceded weight to his rivals at the highest level.
Desert Orchid won 34 of his 70 starts, amassing £654,066 in prize money.
Retirement
Desert Orchid retired in December 1991 and survived a life-threatening operation for colic a year later. He took his summer holidays with the Burridge family at Ab Kettleby, and spent the winter with David Elsworth leading out the 2 year olds and getting ready for his many public appearances. He returned every year to Kempton to lead out the parade of runners for the King George VI Chase.
During his retirement, he raised thousands of pounds for charity, and his presence at charity events attracted large crowds. His fan club was run by part owner Midge Burridge and family friend John Hippesley. In the 17 years that the fan club ran, they raised over £40,000 for charity through sales of Desert Orchid merchandise, especially his racing calendar.
When David Elsworth left Whitsbury after 25 years, Desert Orchid packed up and went with him to Egerton House Stables in Newmarket, Suffolk. But the home of champions and stallions welcomed the old gelding and his trainer with open arms and Newmarket racecourses held their annual press day in 2006 on Desert Orchid's 27th birthday at his stable. He also paraded at the course to the delight of his fans.
Desert Orchid was no longer ridden due to his age, and David announced that his appearances would be fewer, and nearer to home, as he was now such a senior citizen. Desert Orchid's last public appearance was on 1 October at his fan club open day, which was held at the National Stud in conjunction with stallion parades.
It was clear that Desert Orchid was now frail. In the week of 6 November, he began to have trouble with coordination and those close to him were summoned to say goodbye. A vet was on standby should his assistance be needed. Last seen by those who loved him best at Egerton, he was lying down but nibbling his hay. One hour later at 6:05am, Monday 13 November, Desert Orchid died.
Desert Orchid's ashes were buried in a private ceremony at Kempton Park Racecourse near his statue the week prior to the King George. The inaugural running of the Desert Orchid Chase on the 27th was preceded by the unveiling of the headstone for his grave, videos of his finest hours at the track, and a moment's silence in his honour. The race was won by Voy Por Ustedes, trained by Alan King and owned by Sir Robert Ogden.
60cm x 80cm. Castlegregory Co Kerry
.These unique artefacts of old Irish commercial life will make superb decorative item for any discerning Irish pub or home bar with a distinctive Irish theme.What makes these items of even more historical value and interest is the fact that the majority of them date from the World War 2 Era or what was known as the Emergency in Ireland as its remained somewhat controversially neutral under DeValera's leadership.We can see vividly through these unique items how ordinary people and both small and large businesses alike were presented with an unprecedented set of challenges -rationing,increaseed regulation and of decreased supply and increased demand created by a world in turmoil.
Presented in antique frames, these are the real deal after a number were found in an old suitcase bought at auction. If interested in buying a number of these charming pieces of Irish commercial ephemera, please contact us directly at irishpubemporiu@gmail.com for a special deal !
Dingle Co Kerry 27 cm x 23cm
A short history of Ireland during the Second World War, by John Dorney.
The Second World War was the defining event of the twentieth century. It saw, as well as the deaths of tens of millions and devastation of two continents, the defeat of Hitler and Nazism, the decline of the once dominant European empires and the rise to superpower status of the United State and the Soviet Union.
In the Irish state, popularly known throughout the war years as ‘Eire’ it was also a crucial event, though more for what did not happen than what did.
Ireland did not join the war, but declared neutrality. Indeed the world war, in Ireland, was not referred to as a war at all, but as ‘The Emergency’.
In staying neutral, despite British and latterly American pleas to join the war, Ireland, under Eamon de Valera, successfully asserted the independence of the new state.
However, Irish neutrality was a fraught affair – a delicate balancing act between neutrality and secretly aiding the Allied powers.
Background, incomplete independence
Eamon de Valera.
The independence struggle of 1916-1921 had not resulted, as Irish Republicans had dreamed, in a fully independent all-Ireland Republic.
Instead, the Treaty settlement of 1921 left two states in Ireland. One, the Irish Free State, in 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. The other 6 counties, Northern Ireland, was a unionist dominated autonomous region of the United Kingdom.
While the Free State was much more independent than Northern Ireland, it was not completely so. As well as symbolic ties to Britain – an oath of fidelity members of parliament had to take to the British monarch and Governor General who represented the King as head of state in Ireland, the British retained three naval bases around the Irish coast, at Cobh, Bearhaven and Lough Swilly.
The acceptance of this settlement tore the unity of the Irish nationalist movement apart, in a bitter Civil War in 1922-23, won by the pro-Treaty faction.
The Irish state stayed neutral during the War to assert its independence from Britain.
The anti-Treaty Republicans never fully accepted their defeat however. What was left of the guerrilla army that had fought British and the Civil War, the IRA, never accepted the Free State. In 1932, the major political party that emerged from the anti-Treaty movement, Fianna Fail, came to power by election.
Under Eamon de Valera, they set about dismantling the Treaty, abolishing the oath to the British monarchy, the Governor General and the Senate and introducing a new constitution in 1937. They also initiated a tariff war with Britain by refusing to pay back the Land Annuities that Britain had granted to subsidise land reform in Ireland in the early twentieth century.
While this satisfied many of de Valera’s supporters, the IRA continued to oppose anything short of a fully independent Irish Republic. De Valera had legalised the organisation in 1933, but he banned them again in 1936, as they would not give up their arms or illegal methods.
De Valera’s new constitution removed the name Irish Free State and stated that the country’s name was ‘Eire, or in the English language Ireland’. The name ‘Eire’ stuck abroad to distinguish the former Free State from Northern Ireland.
By 1938, however, both de Valera and the British government of Neville Chamberlain, were eager to normalise relations with each other. De Valera agreed to pay a lump sum towards the land annuities and in return, Chamberlain lift the onerous tariffs on Irish agricultural imports.
Most importantly though, the British agreed to return to Ireland the three ‘Treaty ports’ on the Atlantic Coast.
The British analysis was that the ports had not been well-maintained, required investment and would be difficult to defend in wartime should the Irish ever try to take them back. But the British thought they were being returned to Ireland on the implicit understanding that British naval forces would be allowed to use them in the event of a European war.
De Valera, on the other hand, had insisted that the return of the ports be unconditional and when war broke out, refused the British request to use the ports as anti-submarine bases.
The Treaty ports and Irish unity
The location of the Treaty Ports.
Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, causing Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Ireland immediately declared neutrality.
By the summer of 1940, however the situation had changed dramatically and to the peril of neutral Ireland.
German forces had rolled over most of western Europe, occupying Denmark, Norway the Netherlands, Belgium and most importantly, France. The British Army had only barely escaped annihilation at Dunkirk.
Britain now faced a fight for its life, with the Atlantic Ocean and trade with America as it last lifeline. Now it again desperately needed the use of Atlantic Ports that it had returned to Ireland in 1938, to safeguard the convoys of merchant ships that crossed the Atlantic with food and arms.
Winston Churchill had to be persuaded not to invade Ireland to take Ireland’s Atlantic ports.
At this point Neville Chamberlain was replaced as British Prime Minister by Winston Churchill, who took a far less conciliatory position on Irish neutrality than his predecessor.
Churchill was one of the architects of the Anglo-Irish Treaty back in 1921 and considered that the Irish state only existed as agreed under the Treaty, ‘under the [British] Crown’. He therefore considered Irish neutrality as a breach of the Treaty and that Britain would be within its rights to re-occupy the territory of the Irish Free State.
On numerous occasions he had to be talked out of unilaterally taking back the ‘Treaty Ports’ in Ireland by military action by his cabinet
Churchill however also attempted to lure de Valera into the war by offering him the prospect of Irish unity in return for an end to the policy of neutrality. In popular consciousness this is often held to have been confined to a late night note Churchill fired off to de Valera in which he wrote ‘now or never, a nation once again’.
In reality however, the British offer of a united Ireland was far more concrete than is widely understood. Irish and British teams negotiated for months, and the British under Neville Chamberlian offered de Valera of formal offer of unity on June 28 1940, in return for British troops, planes and ships being allowed to garrison the Treaty Ports.
What decided de Valera against accepting the offer, apart from the innate fears of entering the war, was that a prospective united Ireland would have to be approved in the Northern Ireland Parliament. As long as this was dominated by unionists, this meant that no British offer of unity was likely to come to pass. Ireland and her ports stayed out of the war.
Northern unionists, meanwhile, were outraged at the prospect of a united Ireland negotiated behind their backs between London and Dublin.
Neutral?
The Irish Army in 1930s German style helmets. They were re-kitted with British pattern gear during the War.
Because of Ireland’s stance, many in Britain claimed that Ireland was secretly pro-Axis and rumours, mostly unfounded, abounded of German u-boats docking on Ireland’s west coast.
Pressure increased on Ireland to join the war after the entry of the United State in 1941. The American consul in Dublin David Gray, was extremely hostile to Irish neutrality and consistently reported, erroneously, that Irish neutrality was pro-Axis.
This meant that Ireland had to aid the Allies in order placate Britain, avoid a possible British invasion and to avoid American hostility. At the start of the war, De Valera secretly agreed with the British to share naval and marine intelligence with them.
Dan Bryan, the head of Irish military intelligence, developed particularly close relations with his British counterparts during the war.
The standard practice for neutral countries was to intern any belligerent personnel who landed there. At the start of the war, Ireland followed this practice and detained both Allied and German airmen who crash landed in Ireland.
Despite its neutrality, in practice Ireland aided the Allies in many ways.
However, in 1943, Ireland quietly released all its 33 Allied internees while keeping the Germans incarcerated. About 260 German military, air force and naval personnel, who had mostly crashed landed in Ireland, were interned in Ireland during the war
From this point onwards, when allied airplanes crashed in Irish territory, their surviving crews were secretly escorted across the border, back into British territory. And where possible, their machines were also repaired and returned. The official justification for this was that all allied planes over Ireland were on training missions, whereas the Germans were on combat missions.
From 1941 onwards, Ireland also permitted allied planes to fly over Irish air space in an ‘air corridor’ over County Donegal into Northern Ireland. In 1944, in the run up to the Normandy Landings in France, Irish weather stations provided the allies with secret weather reports that helped the invasion of Europe to go ahead
Northern Ireland, meanwhile, became a major staging post for the United State military, with a naval and Marine Corps base in Derry and thousands of American military personal, including five Army divisions, garrisoned there ahead of the invasion of Europe.
The role of the IRA
The aftermath of an IRA bomb in Coventry in August 1939 that killed 5 civilians.
One of the major headaches for those trying to safeguard Irish neutrality was the IRA, which was determined to get German military aid to overthrow both states in Ireland, north and south.
As well as defying Irish law, the IRA’s actions threatened to undermine Ireland’s neutrality in the war and bring about a confrontation with Britain.
IRA Chief of Staff Sean Russell tried to make contact with the Germans as early as 1936 and IRA leader Tom Barry was brought to Germany as a guest of German intelligence in 1937 and asked about the possibility of the IRA carrying out sabotage against Britain in the event of war.
The IRA sought German aid during the War but was harshly repressed on both sides of the border.
In 1939, starting before war broke out between Britain and Germany, Russell launched a bombing campaign in England, targeting power stations and factories but also cinemas and post offices. The logic of Russell’s campaign was that while Britain was engaged in a world war it might be forced to leave Northern Ireland in order to stop the bombing campaign at home.
Seven English civilians were killed in the bombing campaign. The most dramatic event was a bomb in attack in Coventry that killed five people, for which two IRA members were later hanged.
In Ireland the IRA was also involved in intermittent anti-state activities. In December 1939 they stole one million rounds of ammunition from the Irish Army’s depot at the Magazine Fort in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. They also bombed Garda (police) headquarters at Dublin Castle and shot a number of Garda detectives in various incidents, killing five detectives over the course of the war
In response, the de Valera government interned over 500 IRA members at the Curragh and jailed another 100 for the duration of the war. The Irish government also executed six IRA members between 1940 and 1944 for shooting Gardai or soldiers.
In Northern Ireland, the IRA carried out some attacks from 1942 onwards, killing over the course of the war, six RUC policemen. There too, internment was introduced, 300 IRA men were imprisoned and one IRA man, Tom Williams, was hanged by the Northern government for the killing of an RUC constable in 1942.
German and IRA collaboration
Hermann Goertz, the German agent sent to Ireland to liaise with the IRA.
There was an on-off partnership between the IRA and German military intelligence during the war.
Essentially the Germans wanted two things from Ireland during the Second World War. The first and most important was that Eire would remain neutral and deny the British use of the Treaty Ports on Ireland’s western coast.
Because of this they discouraged the IRA from attacks south of the border.
Their secondary objective and reason for cooperating with the IRA, was to foment a rebellion by nationalists in Northern Ireland to divert British resources from war fronts elsewhere.
In 1940 the Germans also considered invading the south coast of Ireland, in plan known as Operation Green. This would have been intended as a diversionary attack during an invasion of Britain itself. However this never got beyond the planning stage.
Alternatively if the British invaded Eire in order to take the Atlantic ports, Hitler thought that de Valera might ask for German assistance, in which case Germany would invade in support of Irish forces. In fact, while de Valera rebuffed the offers of military aid from the German ambassador Hempel, he did make a working agreement to invite British troops into Ireland in the event of a German invasion.
The Germans wanted to use the IRA to launch an insurrection in Northern Ireland.
Sean Russell, the IRA leader who had pioneered cooperation with Nazi Germany, died of a burst ulcer aboard a u-boat on his way back to Ireland in August 1940. However this was far from the end of the IRA‘s contacts with German intelligence.
The Germans landed over dozen agents in Ireland during the war, the most important of whom was Hermann Goertz, a military intelligence officer, whose job it was to liaise with the IRA.
Stephen Hayes, the IRA Chief of Staff, had a plan drawn up ‘Plan Kathleen’ for a German invasion of Northern Ireland, involving a landing in Derry, which the IRA would have supported through an attack over the border from County Leitrim.
Goertz discussed the plan with Stephen Hayes but was not impressed either with Hayes, the IRA’s capabilities or with the details of the plan.
In fact, the German agent concluded that the IRA was all but useless to German war aims and instead began trying to create a network of informants based on far-right wing sympathisers such as Niall MacNeill, an Irish Army intelligence officer and former Blueshirt leader Eoin O’Duffy
After 18 months in Ireland, Goertz was arrested in November 1941, more or less ending the overt collaboration of the IRA with Nazi Germany.
Despite the Germans’ on-off dealings with the IRA, the Eamon de Valera and the Irish government generally had a cordial relationship with the German ambassador, Eduard Hempel, who was regarded as dealing more respectfully with neutral Ireland than did the British or American representatives in Dublin.
For this reason de Valera consistently refused Allied demands that the German ambassador be expelled.
Bombing
The aftermath of the North Strand bombing.
One of the main reasons for Irish neutrality, apart from the demonstration of independence from Britain it allowed, was that the country would be defenceless against aerial bombing.
And certainly the southern state was spared the fate of Northern Ireland during the war. Belfast in particular was systematically targeted by German bombers in April and May 1941 due to its possession of shipyards and war industries.
During the ‘Belfast Blitz’ – consisting of three large air raids – over 1,000 people were killed and thousands more injured and made homeless.
Dublin was bombed accidentally but Belfast was systematically bombed and over 1,000 civilians were killed.
Southern fire engines were sent north to aid the Northern authorities in the aftermath of the bombings.
While it did not see concerted bombing of that kind, on a number of occasions, the 26 county Irish state was indeed bombed by the Germans, most notably the North Strand area of Dublin in May 1941, in which 28 people were killed. The Germans later apologised for the bombing and paid compensation
While it has been speculated that such bombings were a veiled threat from the Germans as to what would happen if Ireland abandoned neutrality, historian Michael Kennedy judges that they were in fact the result of German bombers dumping their bombs on return flights from unsuccessful mission in Northern Ireland
End of the War
Destruction in Belfast after the Blitz there in 1941.
Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 8 1945 after Adolf Hitler’s suicide. Very controversially, Eamon de Valera paid a courtesy visit to the German ambassador Hempel’s residence to offer his condolences on the death of the Nazi leader.
De Valera maintained that he was merely observing the standard diplomatic protocols on the death of a foreign head of state.
Ireland survived the war more or less unscathed. Strict rationing had to be applied and there were severe shortages of items such as coal and petrol during the war years. Still, this was insignificant compared to the devastation that had been wrought in much of the rest of Europe.
However its neutral stance during the war left it somewhat isolated in the immediate postwar years.
For instance, while other western European countries received free American aid under the Marshall Plan in the 1940s, the Americans queried why neutral Ireland either deserved or needed such aid. In the end Ireland got a loan of £36 million
The sharp contrast between the experience of the war north and south of the border also tended to reinforce the partition of Ireland in the coming decades.
65cm x 50cm Limerick
Vintage advertising poster advertising a car racing in Limerick in 1929 to be held around the city and organised by the Irish Motor Racing Club Ltd ,based in Foster Place Dublin.
People, like this writer, who do not even have a driving licence find it very difficult to understand the extraordinary interest in motor racing which has mushroomed over the last few years.
This newspaper and others have expanded coverage of the sport in a big way and that can only be partly explained by the fact that a young Irishman, Eddie Irvine, has made significant progress in the drivers' championship and that Dubliner Eddie Jordan has a team competing in the constructors' championship.
There is a very long and distinguished history of motor racing in Ireland, going back to the turn of the century and before. Irish motorists have contributed profoundly to the popularity of motor racing history. In this context, names like Dunlop and Ferguson immediately spring to mind.
The Belfast businessman John Boyd Dunlop first hit upon the idea of a pneumatic tyre when he was trying to entice his son to continue what he considered to be a healthy bicycling pursuit. When Dunlop's tyres helped to wipe out all competition in a Belfast sports meeting in Easter 1889, the invention sparked an idea in the mind of a Dublin businessman called Harvey du Cros - a Huguenot who had fled Roman Catholic persecution in his native France to flee to, of all places, Dublin.
The Huguenot refugee had several distinctions. He was a boxing and fencing champion in his day and a founder member of Bective Rangers rugby club. Whether he would have been proud of the latter achievement today cannot be assessed. (Just a joke lads.)
He set up a factory for the manufacture of tyres in Stephen Street in Dublin just before the turn of the century and, in doing so, made an enormous contribution to the revolution of transport in the world.
The name of Dunlop remains synonymous with tyres, but, sadly, the name du Cros is seldom mentioned. Nevertheless he holds the major French decoration of Legion d'honneur.
The Shannon Development Company of 1900 was the first organisation to promote a motor race in Ireland. The company had built a hotel in Killaloe and organised a motor trip from Dublin to that lovely Clare town, via Nenagh. A De Dion brand car, driven by L Fleming, was first to enter Killaloe in July of 1900.
James Gordon Bennett, the American millionaire who had sent Stanley in pursuit of Livingston, offered the first major trophy for motor racing. There was a reluctance to allow this very dangerous sport to be held in Britain and the matter was referred to the House of Commons when an extraordinary alliance involving John Redmond, Tim Healy and Sir Edward Carson all supported the idea that speed limits should be set aside for that day.
The Northern Whig said: "We see a wonderful blending of the Orange and Green. There is, about this matter, a unanimity of which some people considered Irishmen to be incapable."
Could we, perhaps, arrange a Drumcree Grand Prix!
With the blessing of the Bishop of Kildare, a circuit centred on Athy was agreed for Ireland's first serious motor road race which took place on July 2nd, a public holiday, in 1903. The race started just north of Athy and on a figure of eight circuit, the competitors drove 327 miles, going through such exotic places as Kilcullen, Castledermot, Carlow, Monasterevin, Stradbally and Windy Gap.
In the build up to the race, James Joyce earned a few badly needed shillings by interviewing the top French driver of the day, Henri Fournier, in The Irish Times.
Drivers from all over Europe and the United States took part and prices went through the ceiling as foreign drivers, mechanics, and spectators descended on Athy and its environs. There was one report of £50 being charged for two rooms in Kilcullen for one night, a charge which might, even today, be regarded as a little pricey.
Mineral waters, normally costing tuppence, were offered at sixpence, but then what else is new! Local farmers' wives also made "a killing" by releasing their hens onto the practice roads and then demanding compensation when they were killed by the speeding cars.
Readers may ask how come this writer has taken so much interest in this matter without ever having driven anything faster than a tractor. The reason is that, by chance, I came across a book some time ago called Green Dust, by Brendan Lynch, and was immediately captivated, not only by the tales he told and the manner of the telling, but by the picture of Ireland which Lynch painted.
What I see of motor racing on television nowadays bores me to tears, but Brendan Lynch's book is in a different category altogether.
As far as I know it is out of print. Could I humbly suggest that he and the publishers, Portobello Publishing, reprint this sporting treasure.
This painting of Clare piper Pádraig Ó Briain by the artist Joseph Haverty was hugely popular in 19th-century Ireland.
82cm x 58cm. Limerick
An oil painting of a street musician who played regularly in Limerick city, was painted in oil on canvas. The subject, uileann piper Pádraig Ó Briain (there are several variant spellings of his name on record), occupied a space on the corner of the Crescent and Hartstonge Street in Limerick and presumably Haverty noticed him there. Pipers were esteemed in Ireland and were a popular subject. Haverty had a sound instinct for what would appeal to an audience. He transposed the piper from an urban to a woodland setting, which is theatrical but effective, and the painting seems to have been known under several different titles, including The Father and Daughter (O’Brien had two daughters but opinions differ as to whether the girl depicted was one of them), The Blind Piper and The Irish Piper.
Reproduced as a print under the title The Limerick Piper, it sold widely throughout the country and became extremely well-known. Haverty made another quite different painting of the piper, now in the University of Limerick collection, but he also made copies of his own work.
To complicate things slightly: The Blind Piper was exhibited by the RHA in 1845, when it was praised in the Nation. It was perhaps this version that Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth bought and exhibited at the Cork exhibition in 1852. But there were other versions in circulation. Young Irelander William Smith O’Brien reputedly commissioned a copy from Haverty, and bequeathed it to the National Gallery of Ireland in 1864.
The Blind Piper is included in the exhibition Oidhreacht: Transforming Tradition at the Highlanes Gallery, Laurence Street, Drogheda, Co Louth (July 13th – September 14th), timed to coincide with Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann which takes place July 10th-18th in Drogheda.
The annual week-long festival, a lively mix of summer school, competition and a packed programme of traditional music concerts attracts up to 500,000 people from throughout Ireland North and South, the UK and internationally. The exhibition of art and artefacts is drawn from Drogheda’s Municipal Art Collection as well as those of major public museums, including the National Gallery of Ireland and Imma. It aims to explore “the rich social, political and aesthetic contexts in which the traditional arts have been expressed”.
60cm x 50cm Limerick
The Dubliners were quite simply one of the most famous Irish folk bands of all time.Founded in 1962,they enjoyed a 50 year career with the success of the band centred on their two lead singers,Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew.They garnered massive international acclaim with their lively Irish folk songs,traditional street ballads and instrumentals eventually crossing over to mainstream culture by appearing on Top of the Pops in 1967 with "Seven Drunken Nights" which sold over 250000 singles in the UK alone.Later a number of collaborations with the Pogues saw them enter the UK singles charts again on another 2 occasions.Instrumental in popularising Irish folk music abroad ,they influenced many generations of Irish bands and covers of Irish ballads such as Raglan Road and the Auld Triangle by Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew tend to be regarded as definitive versions.They also enjoyed a hard drinking and partying image as can be seen by many collaborations with alcohol advertising campaigns etc
Much of the last century, and indeed for well over half of the present one, Limerick's importance was directly attributed to her three well-known bacon factories, namely, J. Matterson & Sons, Roches Street, established in 1816 by Mr. John Russell, a Cumberland man in con-junction with Mr. Matterson, using the method of curing then current in Berwick-on-Tweed.
W.J. Shaw & Sons, founded in the year 1831 at Mulgrave Street by William John Shaw, a descendant of a County Down family, and O'Mara's bacon factory, Roches Street, which had its origin in Mungret Street some few years before 1839, when James O'Mara from Toomevara started curing bacon in the basement of his house there. Apparently, this basement business flourished, for in 1839 he moved to Roches Street to the premises it last occupied .
About the middle of the last century, for some reason now difficult to fathom, Limerick bacon and especially Limerick hams, became well-known for their excellent flavour throughout the English-speaking world. It is on record that Glasgow curers in an effort to produce hams equal in excellence to those of Limerick, imported Limerick workmen who were supposed to know all about the way in which the meat was turned out at home. Apparently, they did not bring secrets with them for their efforts were unsuccessful.
There were also much larger bacon factories in parts of the British Isles; for instance, Belfast is reputed to have exported four times the number of hams produced in Limerick, and places like Glasgow and Liverpool had several factories producing very large quantities of bacon as well. None of them, however, quite matched' those produced in the three local factories for flavour and quality.
O’MARA’S, MATTERSON’S, SHAW’S and Denny’s were the names that made Limerick famous for its bacon produce for 180 years – earning it the nickname ‘Pigstown’.
The reputation of Limerick ham, the food culture that arose from a plentiful supply of cheap products, the story of the pork butchers, the pig buyers, the sounds of the city with factory horns signalling the call to work – all of these still resonate in Limerick in the memories of its citizens and former workers.
A definitive account of this industry that operated at the centre of the city, supplied by the farms of rural county Limerick for over 180 years will be documented in a new book called Pigtown – A History of Limerick’s Bacon Industry.
Ruth Guiry was commissioned to undertake the research under the guidance of Dr Maura Cronin from Mary Immaculate College and one of the 27 people she interviewed to understand the role the bacon factories had in Limerick was Joe Hayes.
O'Mara's bacon factory, Roches Street, Limerick.Source: Courtesy of Tony Punch
Joe Hayes started working in a bacon factory in 1962, aged 16 years old. He worked with his dad, and later on with his two sons until the factory closed in 1986.
“When the factory closed, a group of us got our own little unit, we rented it, and produced our own sausages, puddings and things.”
It was a huge part of Limerick’s social scene: four generations of Joe’s family worked in bacon factories, with uncles, sisters, brothers, sons and cousins all working in the factory at one time or another:
“If one factory was caic, you wouldn’t have a problem getting a job in the other one.
Leaving Mattersons at dinner hour.Source: Limerick Diocesan Archives
And he doesn’t mince his word when talking about the work they did.
“They brought the pigs in, we killed the pigs, and prepared the bacon: that’s the way it was in the bacon factories.” When asked about if there were ever animal cruelty protests, he laughs at the idea.
People still eat sausages and bacon – where do they think they come from?
They started at 8am and finished at 5.30 working a 40 hour week when the factory closed in 1986, but despite their work, the people who worked in factories often couldn’t afford to buy the expensive cuts of meat.
Matterson's advertisement for cuts of meat.Source: Limerick Archives
After the expensive cuts were prepared, the offal, the spare ribs, the pigs’ heads would go to the poorer people. “The blood was used to make the pudding, the packet, the tripe was made off the belly. Everything was used off the pig, and it fed Limerick city.”
It was a way of life down in Limerick, so when the factories closed, thousands of people working in a bacon factories were out of jobs, and thousands of families were affected.
But it wasn’t the competition from big supermarkets that did it – it was free trade. The Danes, the French, the Dutch all started exporting their products here, and Limerick factories didn’t have the money to export to compete.
Source: National Library of Ireland
“Michael O’Mara’s funeral was this week – he was the last of the bacon factory managers.” says Joe. “After the Limerick factory closed, he tried doing different bits and pieces, but nothing worked out for him, so he worked in a factory for a couple of years before retiring.”
Joe Hayes himself is retired now, and when he buys his meat he gets it in a supermarket.
“Meat is meat,” he says.”But if I see the tricolour flag, I’ll still buy it even if it’s dearer.”
Pigtown - A History of Limerick’s Bacon Industryby Ruth Guiry is co-edited by Dr Maura Cronin and Jacqui Hayes.
Real retro,very long banner type Guinness Hurling advert from the 90s.
Dromkeen Co Limerick
Dimensions : 30cm x 95cm
" It was not until 1994 that the GAA decided that the football championship would benefit from bringing on a title sponsor in Bank of Ireland. Although an equivalent offer had been on the table for the hurling championship, Central Council pushed the plate away.Though the name of the potential sponsor wasn’t explicitly made public, everyone knew it was Guinness. More to the point, everyone knew why Central Council wouldn’t bite.
As Mulvihill himself noted in his report to Congress, the offer was declined on the basis that “Central Council did not want an alcoholic drinks company associated with a major GAA competition”.
As it turned out, Central Council had been deadlocked on the issue and it was the casting vote of then president Peter Quinn that put the kibosh on a deal with Guinness. Mulvihill’s disappointment was far from hidden, since he saw the wider damage caused by turning up the GAA nose at Guinness’s advances.
“The unfortunate aspect of the situation,” he wrote, “is that hurling needs support on the promotion of the game much more than football.”
Though it took the point of a bayonet to make them go for it, the GAA submitted in the end and on the day after the league final in 1995 , a three-year partnership with Guinness was announced. The deal would be worth £1 million a year, with half going to the sport and half going to the competition in the shape of marketing.
That last bit was key. Guinness came up with a marketing campaign that fairly scorched across the general consciousness. Billboards screeched out slogans that feel almost corny at this remove but made a huge impact at the same time .
This man can level whole counties in one second flat.
This man can reach speeds of 100mph.
This man can break hearts at 70 yards
Its been Hell for Leather.
Of course, all the marketing in the world can only do so much. Without a story to go alongside, the Guinness campaign might be forgotten now – or worse, remembered as an overblown blast of hot air dreamed up in some modish ad agency above in Dublin.Until the Clare hurlers came along and changed everything."
Malachy Clerkin Irish Times GAA Correspondent
Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.”
Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading.
The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test.
By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world.
Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.”
Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981.Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter.
Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid.
In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo.
The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.
The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin.
Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant.
On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development.
On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with TánaisteMary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997.
In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now.
Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered.
Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians.
Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible.
Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste.
Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby.
The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.”
Origins : Dublin
Dimensions : 43cm x 35cm
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.
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 bronzestatue 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.
The biggest cliché in the collecting world is the “discovery” of a previously unknown cache of stuff that’s been hidden away for years until one day, much to everyone’s amazement, the treasure trove is unearthed and the collecting landscape is changed forever. As a corollary to this hoary trope, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get in on the action before the word gets out.
“Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”
Cliché or not, that’s roughly what happened in 2008 when hundreds of artist John Gilroy’s oil-on-canvas paintings started to appear on the market. The canvases had been painted by Gilroy as final proofs for his iconic Guinness beer posters, the most recognized alcoholic-beverage advertisements of the mid-20th century. Before most collectors of advertising art and breweriana knew what had happened, most of the best pieces had been snapped up by a handful of savvy collectors. In fact, the distribution of the canvases into the hands of private collectors was so swift and stealthy that one prominent member of the Guinness family was forced to get their favorite Gilroys on the secondary market.
One of those early collectors, who wishes to remain anonymous, recalls seeing several canvases for the first time at an antiques show. At first, he thought they were posters since that’s what Guinness collectors have come to expect. But after looking at them more closely, and realizing they were all original paintings, he purchased the lot on the spot. “It was quite exciting to stumble upon what appeared to be the unknown original advertising studies for one of the world’s great brands,” he says. But the casualness of that first encounter would not last, as competition for the newly found canvases ramped up among collectors. Today, the collector describes the scramble for these heretofore-unknown pieces as “a Gilroy art scrum.”
Among those who were particularly interested in the news of the Gilroy cache was David Hughes, who was a brewer at Guinness for 15 years and has written three books on Guinness advertising art and collectibles, the most recent being “Gilroy Was Good for Guinness,” which reproduces more than 150 of the recently “discovered” paintings. Despite being an expert on the cheery ephemera that was created to sell the dark, bitter stout, Hughes, like a lot of people, only learned of the newly uncovered Gilroy canvases as tantalizing examples from the cache (created for markets as diverse as Russia, Israel, France, and the United States) started to surface in 2008.
“Within the Guinness archives itself,” Hughes says of the materials kept at the company’s Dublin headquarters, “they’ve got lots of advertising art, watercolors, and sketches of workups towards the final version of the posters. But they never had a single oil painting. Until the paintings started turning up in the United States, where Guinness memorabilia is quite collectible, it wasn’t fully understood that the posters were based on oils. All of the canvases will be in collections within a year,” Hughes adds. For would-be Gilroy collectors, that means the clock is ticking.
As it turns out, Gilroy’s entire artistic process was a prelude to the oils. “The first thing he’d usually do was a pencil sketch,” says Hughes. “Then he’d paint a watercolor over the top of the pencil sketch to get the color balance right. Once that was settled and all the approvals were in, he’d sit down and paint the oil. The proof version that went to Guinness for approval, it seems, was always an oil painting.”
Based on what we know of John Gilroy’s work as an artist, that makes sense. For almost half a century, Gilroy was regarded not only as one of England’s premier commercial illustrators, but also as one of its best portraitists. “He painted the Queen three times,” says Hughes, “Lord Mountbatten about four times. In 1942, he did a pencil-and-crayon sketch of Churchill in a London bunker.” According to Hughes, Churchill gave that portrait to Russian leader Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which may mean that somewhere in the bowels of the Kremlin, there’s a portrait of Winnie by the same guy who made a living drawing cartoons of flying toucans balancing pints of Guinness on their beaks.
For those who collect advertising art and breweriana, Gilroy is revered for the numerous campaigns he conceived as an illustrator for S.H. Benson, the venerable British ad agency, which was founded in 1893. Though most famous for the Guinness toucan, which has been the internationally recognized mascot of Guinness since 1935, Gilroy’s first campaign with S.H. Benson was for a yeast extract called Bovril. “Do you have Bovril in the U.S.?” Hughes asks. “It’s a rather dark, pungent, savory spread that goes on toast or bread. It’s full of vitamins, quite a traditional product. He also did a lot of work on campaigns for Colman’s mustard and Macleans toothpaste.”
pparently Gilroy’s work caught the eye of Guinness, which wanted something distinctive for its stout. “A black beer is a unique product,” says Hughes. “There weren’t many on the market then, and there are even fewer now. So they wanted their advertising to be well thought of and agreeable to the public.” For example, in the early 1930s, Benson already had an ad featuring a glass of Guinness with a nice foamy head on top. “Gilroy put a smiling face in the foam,” says Hughes. Collectors often refer to this charming drawing as the “anthropomorphic glass.”
That made the black beer friendly. To ensure that it would be appealing to the common man, Benson launched its “Guinness for Strength” campaign, whose most famous image is the 1934 Gilroy illustration of a muscular workman effortlessly balancing an enormous steel girder on one arm and his head.
Another early campaign put Guinness beer in the world of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” “Guinness and oysters were a big thing,” says Hughes. In one ad, “Gilroy drew all the oysters from the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ sipping glasses of Guinness.”
nd then there were the animals, of which the toucan is only the most recognized, and not even the first (that honor goes to a seal). “He had the lion and the ostrich and the bear up the pole,” Hughes says. “There was a whole menagerie of them. The animals kept going for 30 years. It’s probably the longest running campaign in advertising history.”
Most of Gilroy’s animals lived in a zoo, so a central character of the animal advertisements was a zookeeper, who was a caricature of the artist himself. “That’s what Gilroy looked like,” says Hughes. “Gilroy was a chubby, little man with a little moustache. As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”
Gilroy’s animals good-naturedly tormented their zookeeper by stealing his precious Guinness: An ostrich swallows his glass pint whole, whose bulging outline can be seen in its slender throat; a seal balances a pint on its nose; a kangaroo swaps her “joey” for the zookeeper’s brown bottle. Often the zookeeper is so taken aback by these circumstances his hat has popped off his head.
In fact, Gilroy spent a lot of time at the London Zoo to make sure he captured the essence of his animals accurately. “In the archives at Guinness,” says Hughes, “there are a lot of sketches of tortoises, emus, ostriches, and the rest. He perfected the drawing of the animals by going to the zoo, then he adapted them for the adverts.” As a result, a Gilroy bear really looked like a bear, albeit one with a smile on its face.
During World War II, Gilroy’s Guinness ads managed to keep their sense of humor (eg: two sailors painting the hull of an aircraft carrier, each wishing the other was a Guinness), and in the 1950s and early ’60s, Gilroy’s famous pint-toting toucans flew all over the world for Guinness, in front of the Kremlin as well as Mt. Rushmore, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Statue of Liberty, although some of these paintings never made it to the campaign stage.
Gilroy’s work on the Guinness account ended in 1962, and in 1971, Benson was gobbled up by the Madison Avenue advertising firm of Ogilvy & Mather. By then, says Hughes, Gilroy’s work for Guinness was considered the pinnacle of poster design in the U.K., and quite collectible. “The posters were made by a lithographic process. In the 1930s, the canvases were re-created on stone by a print maker, but eventually the paintings were transferred via photolithography onto metal sheets. Some of the biggest posters were made for billboards. Those used 64 different sheets that you’d give to the guy with the bucket of wheat paste and a mop to put up in the right order to create the completed picture.”
In terms of single-sheet posters, Hughes says the biggest ones were probably 4 by 3 feet. Benson’s had an archive of it all, but “when Benson’s shut down in ’71, when they were taken over, they cleaned out their stockroom of hundreds of posters and gave them to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Today, both have collections of the original posters, including the 64-sheets piled into these packets, which were wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. They’re extremely difficult to handle; you can’t display them, really.”
At least the paper got a good home. As for the canvases? Well, their history can only be pieced together based on conjecture, but here’s what Hughes thinks he knows.
Sometime in the 1970s, a single collector whose name remains a mystery appears to have purchased as many as 700 to 900 Gilroy paintings that had been in the archives. “The guy who bought the whole archive was an American millionaire,” Hughes says. “He’s a secretive character who doesn’t want to be identified. I don’t blame him. He doesn’t want any publicity about how he bought the collection or its subsequent sale.”
air enough. What we do know for sure is that the years were not kind to Gilroy’s canvases while in storage at Benson’s. In fact, it’s believed that more than half of the cache did not survive the decades and were probably destroyed by the mystery collector who bought them because of their extremely deteriorated condition (torn canvases, images blackened by mildew, etc.). After all, when Gilroy’s canvases were put away, no one at Benson’s thought they’d be regarded in the future as masterpieces.
“A lot of the rolled-up canvases were stuck together,” says Hughes. “Oil takes a long while to dry. Gilroy diluted his oils with what’s called Japan drier, which is a sort of oil thinner that allows you to put the oil on the canvas in a much thinner texture, and then roll them up afterwards. The painted canvas becomes reasonably flexible. The problem is that even with a drier, they still took a long time to dry. And if someone had packed them tightly together and put weight on them, which is what must have happened while the Gilroy paintings were in storage at Benson’s, they’d just stick together. Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”
For diehard Guinness-advertising fans, though, it’s not all bad news. After all, almost half of the cache was saved, “and it’s beautiful,” says Hughes. “I’ve just come back from Boston to look at a lot of these canvases out there, and they are superb. The guy who’s selling the canvases I saw had about 40 or 50 with him. They’re absolutely fabulous.”
Although he has no proof, Hughes believes the person who bought the cache in the 1970s also oversaw its preservation. Importantly to many collectors, all of the Gilroy canvases are in their found condition, stabilized but essentially unchanged. Even areas in the paint that show evidence of rubbing from adjacent canvases remain as they were found. “I think the preservation has been done by the owner,” Hughes says. “I don’t think the dealers did it. It’s my understanding that they were supplied with fully stabilized canvases from the original buyer. It appears that they were shipped from the U.K., so that’s interesting in itself.” Which suggests they never left the United Kingdom after being purchased by the mysterious American millionaire.
collectors of the approval process at Benson. Gilroy painted his canvases on stretchers, and in the bottom corner of each canvas was a small tag identifying the artist, account code, and action to be taken (“Re-draw,” “Revise,” “Hold,” “Print,” and, during World War II, “Submit to censor”). “They would’ve been shown to Guinness on a wooden stretcher,” Hughes says. “Before they went into storage, somebody removed the stretchers and either laid them flat or rolled them up.”
“As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”
Without exception, the canvases Hughes has seen, which were photographed exclusively for his book, are in fine shape and retain their mounting holes for the stretchers and Benson agency tags. “The colors are good,” he says. “They haven’t been in sunlight. They’ll keep for years and years and years.” One collector notes that you can even see the ruby highlights in Gilroy’s paintings of glasses of the stout. “When a pint of Guinness is backlit by a very strong light, the liquid has a deep ruby color,” this collector says. “Gilroy was very careful to include this effect when he painted beer in clear pint glasses.”
Finally, for Guinness, breweriana, and advertising-art collectors, the Gilroy canvases also offer a peek of what might have been. “I would say about half the images were never commercially used, so they are absolutely brand new, never been seen before,” says Hughes. “They’re going to blow people away.” Of particular interest to collectors in the United States are the Gilroy paintings of classic cars that were created for an aborted, early 1950s campaign to coincide with the brewing of Guinness on Long Island.
Still, it’s the medium that continues to amaze Hughes. “The idea of the canvases, none of us expected that,” he says. “As a Guinness collector, I’ve always collected their adverts, but they’re prints. They never touched Gilroy, he was never anywhere near the printing process. I had acquired a pencil drawing, which I was delighted with. Then these oils started turning up,” he Naturally, Hughes the Guinness scholar has seen a few oils that Hughes the Guinness collector would very much like to own. “If I had a magic wand? Well, I saw one this weekend that I really liked. It’s one of the animal ones. But it’s an animal that was not used commercially. It’s of a rhinoceros sitting on the ground with the zookeeper’s Guinness between his legs. The rhinoceros is looking at the zookeeper, and the zookeeper’s looking around the corner holding his broom. It’s just a great image, and it’s probably the only one of that advert that exists. So if I could wave my magic wand, I think that’s what I’d get. But I’d need $10,000
With those kinds of prices and that kind of buzz, you might think that whoever is handling the Guinness advertising account today might be tempted to just re-run the campaign. But Hughes is realistic about the likelihood of that. “Advertising moves on,” he says. “Gilroy’s jokey, humorous, cartoon-like poster design is quintessentially 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. It is a bit quaint, maybe even a little juvenile for today’s audiences. But it’s still amusing. The other day I showed the draft of my book to my mother, who’s 84. She sat in the kitchen, just giggling at the pictures.”
That sums up Gilroy to Hughes; not that it’s only appealing to people in their 80s, but that his work is ultimately about making people happy, which is why his advertising images connected so honestly with viewers. “Gilroy had a tremendous sense of humor,” Hughes says. “He always saw the funny side of things. He was apparently a chap who, if you were feeling a little down and out, you’d spend a couple of hours with him and he’d just lift your spirits.” You know, in much the same way as a lot of us feel after a nice pint of Guinness.
62cm x 42cm
John Patrick Healy (9 March 1931 – 5 December 2014), known as Jackie Healy-Rae, was an Irish Independent politician who served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Kerry South constituency from 1997 to 2011.
Early and private life
Healy-Rae was the first of six children born to Daniel and Mary Healy, and grew up on his family's farm at the foot of Mangerton Mountain, near Kilgarvan in County Kerry. The Rae part of his surname came from the name of the Healys' farm, Reacashlagh. He was educated at the local National School in Kilgarvan. He emigrated to the United States in 1953 but soon returned to Ireland. He played for the local hurling and Gaelic football teams in Kilgarvan, where he won two senior county hurling titles with the club in 1956 and 1958.
Healy-Rae was also a saxophone player with the Kilgarvan Dance Band. By the 1960s, he was well established in the plant hire business in south Kerry. In 1969, he became a publican when he purchased an old premises that had been closed for some time in Kilgarvan. The family pub is now run by his son, Danny.
Healy-Rae was married to Julie Healy, but the couple separated in 1977.Two sons, Danny and Michael were members of Kerry County Council for the Killarney and Killorglin local electoral areas respectively before becoming TDs. His eldest daughter Joan (Mrs. Larkin) teaches in a Catholic Schoolin New York. His other daughter, Rosemary, is a barrister-at-law. She was appointed to a paid position on the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal in 2007. She was re-appointed, for three further years, by Justice Minister Dermot Ahern on 11 November 2010.A son, Denis, runs his own business, and another son, John Healy (he does not use Rae), is a full-time official with and former President of the Garda Representative Association.
Political career
Early involvement
Healy-Rae first became involved in politics in the 1960s. He headed several Fianna Fáil by-election campaigns, most notably the election of John O'Leary to the Dáil in 1966. O'Leary retained the seat for thirty-one years. Healy-Rae later lent his services to several other Fianna Fáil election campaigns in County Limerick, County Cork and County Galway. In 1973, Healy-Rae was first co-opted to Kerry County Council as a Fianna Fáil member, following the death of sitting Kerry County Councillor Michael Doherty. He was elected to the council in his own right in 1974 and re-elected in every subsequent election. Healy-Rae served on the council for 30 years, until he had to resign his seat because of the abolition of the dual mandate in 2003.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Healy-Rae served three times as Fianna Fáil's director of elections in Kerry South. In this capacity he was given the task of delivering two of the three seats for the Fianna Fáil Party.
Election to Dáil Éireann Healy-Rae broke from Fianna Fáil in controversial circumstances prior to the 1997 general election. When the party refused to nominate him as a candidate in Kerry South, he decided to run as an Independent candidate. This move surprised the party, with many commentators giving him little chance of getting elected. However, Healy-Rae took a seat and denied Fianna Fáil the chance of taking a second seat in the constituency.
After the election, the Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats prospective government was still short of an overall majority. Healy-Rae was one of four Independent TDs (the others were Harry Blaney, Tom Gildea and Mildred Fox) who supported the government throughout its five-year term and rejected the opposition Fine Gael. In return for this support he secured funding for projects in his constituency and chairmanship of the Environment committee. His policy approach could be defined as populist, primarily driven by his rural background and constituency, and he frequently demanded upgrades to public services such as schools and roads in his constituency as the price of his support for the government.
Healy-Rae contested the 2002 general election and although his seat looked in doubt at some stages of the campaign and he received only the fourth-highest number of first-preference votes, he was narrowly re-elected, winning the third seat. He sat through fewer than half the meetings of an Oireachtas committee tasked with dealing with social welfare he received €20,000 a year to chair. He got up and left during 25pc of the meetings of the committee leaving the vice-chairman, Charlie O'Connor, to oversee the meetings and absented himself entirely from a further 25pc of meetings, despite a convention that chairmen appointed by the government should fully chair all meetings.
External support for Fianna Fáil
He was again re-elected to the Dáil at the 2007 general election and signed a confidence and supply deal with Fianna Fáil. Promising to support the government in return for investment in the Kerry South constituency. The details of this deal were not made public. Healy-Rae has been criticised for not making the details of the deal public and for supporting the government over highly controversial cutbacks (in contrast to Finian McGrath who made the details public by entering his deal into the Dáil record and who withdrew his support from the government in 2008, over cutbacks in the health sector). He was confronted publicly by members of the Kerry Public Sector Workers Alliance about his continual support for cutbacks and for the Irish bank bailout. Healy-Rae said he was powerless as he had only one vote and that they "should talk to the Green Party that are making the big changes".
Retirement
On 26 June 2008, Healy-Rae announced that he intended to retire at the next general election. His son Michael Healy-Rae was selected as a candidate by the Healy-Rae organisation on 28 October 2010,and was elected at the 2011 general election.
The biggest cliché in the collecting world is the “discovery” of a previously unknown cache of stuff that’s been hidden away for years until one day, much to everyone’s amazement, the treasure trove is unearthed and the collecting landscape is changed forever. As a corollary to this hoary trope, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get in on the action before the word gets out.
“Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”
Cliché or not, that’s roughly what happened in 2008 when hundreds of artist John Gilroy’s oil-on-canvas paintings started to appear on the market. The canvases had been painted by Gilroy as final proofs for his iconic Guinness beer posters, the most recognized alcoholic-beverage advertisements of the mid-20th century. Before most collectors of advertising art and breweriana knew what had happened, most of the best pieces had been snapped up by a handful of savvy collectors. In fact, the distribution of the canvases into the hands of private collectors was so swift and stealthy that one prominent member of the Guinness family was forced to get their favorite Gilroys on the secondary market.
One of those early collectors, who wishes to remain anonymous, recalls seeing several canvases for the first time at an antiques show. At first, he thought they were posters since that’s what Guinness collectors have come to expect. But after looking at them more closely, and realizing they were all original paintings, he purchased the lot on the spot. “It was quite exciting to stumble upon what appeared to be the unknown original advertising studies for one of the world’s great brands,” he says. But the casualness of that first encounter would not last, as competition for the newly found canvases ramped up among collectors. Today, the collector describes the scramble for these heretofore-unknown pieces as “a Gilroy art scrum.”
Among those who were particularly interested in the news of the Gilroy cache was David Hughes, who was a brewer at Guinness for 15 years and has written three books on Guinness advertising art and collectibles, the most recent being “Gilroy Was Good for Guinness,” which reproduces more than 150 of the recently “discovered” paintings. Despite being an expert on the cheery ephemera that was created to sell the dark, bitter stout, Hughes, like a lot of people, only learned of the newly uncovered Gilroy canvases as tantalizing examples from the cache (created for markets as diverse as Russia, Israel, France, and the United States) started to surface in 2008.
“Within the Guinness archives itself,” Hughes says of the materials kept at the company’s Dublin headquarters, “they’ve got lots of advertising art, watercolors, and sketches of workups towards the final version of the posters. But they never had a single oil painting. Until the paintings started turning up in the United States, where Guinness memorabilia is quite collectible, it wasn’t fully understood that the posters were based on oils. All of the canvases will be in collections within a year,” Hughes adds. For would-be Gilroy collectors, that means the clock is ticking.
As it turns out, Gilroy’s entire artistic process was a prelude to the oils. “The first thing he’d usually do was a pencil sketch,” says Hughes. “Then he’d paint a watercolor over the top of the pencil sketch to get the color balance right. Once that was settled and all the approvals were in, he’d sit down and paint the oil. The proof version that went to Guinness for approval, it seems, was always an oil painting.”
Based on what we know of John Gilroy’s work as an artist, that makes sense. For almost half a century, Gilroy was regarded not only as one of England’s premier commercial illustrators, but also as one of its best portraitists. “He painted the Queen three times,” says Hughes, “Lord Mountbatten about four times. In 1942, he did a pencil-and-crayon sketch of Churchill in a London bunker.” According to Hughes, Churchill gave that portrait to Russian leader Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which may mean that somewhere in the bowels of the Kremlin, there’s a portrait of Winnie by the same guy who made a living drawing cartoons of flying toucans balancing pints of Guinness on their beaks.
For those who collect advertising art and breweriana, Gilroy is revered for the numerous campaigns he conceived as an illustrator for S.H. Benson, the venerable British ad agency, which was founded in 1893. Though most famous for the Guinness toucan, which has been the internationally recognized mascot of Guinness since 1935, Gilroy’s first campaign with S.H. Benson was for a yeast extract called Bovril. “Do you have Bovril in the U.S.?” Hughes asks. “It’s a rather dark, pungent, savory spread that goes on toast or bread. It’s full of vitamins, quite a traditional product. He also did a lot of work on campaigns for Colman’s mustard and Macleans toothpaste.”
pparently Gilroy’s work caught the eye of Guinness, which wanted something distinctive for its stout. “A black beer is a unique product,” says Hughes. “There weren’t many on the market then, and there are even fewer now. So they wanted their advertising to be well thought of and agreeable to the public.” For example, in the early 1930s, Benson already had an ad featuring a glass of Guinness with a nice foamy head on top. “Gilroy put a smiling face in the foam,” says Hughes. Collectors often refer to this charming drawing as the “anthropomorphic glass.”
That made the black beer friendly. To ensure that it would be appealing to the common man, Benson launched its “Guinness for Strength” campaign, whose most famous image is the 1934 Gilroy illustration of a muscular workman effortlessly balancing an enormous steel girder on one arm and his head.
Another early campaign put Guinness beer in the world of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” “Guinness and oysters were a big thing,” says Hughes. In one ad, “Gilroy drew all the oysters from the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ sipping glasses of Guinness.”
nd then there were the animals, of which the toucan is only the most recognized, and not even the first (that honor goes to a seal). “He had the lion and the ostrich and the bear up the pole,” Hughes says. “There was a whole menagerie of them. The animals kept going for 30 years. It’s probably the longest running campaign in advertising history.”
Most of Gilroy’s animals lived in a zoo, so a central character of the animal advertisements was a zookeeper, who was a caricature of the artist himself. “That’s what Gilroy looked like,” says Hughes. “Gilroy was a chubby, little man with a little moustache. As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”
Gilroy’s animals good-naturedly tormented their zookeeper by stealing his precious Guinness: An ostrich swallows his glass pint whole, whose bulging outline can be seen in its slender throat; a seal balances a pint on its nose; a kangaroo swaps her “joey” for the zookeeper’s brown bottle. Often the zookeeper is so taken aback by these circumstances his hat has popped off his head.
In fact, Gilroy spent a lot of time at the London Zoo to make sure he captured the essence of his animals accurately. “In the archives at Guinness,” says Hughes, “there are a lot of sketches of tortoises, emus, ostriches, and the rest. He perfected the drawing of the animals by going to the zoo, then he adapted them for the adverts.” As a result, a Gilroy bear really looked like a bear, albeit one with a smile on its face.
During World War II, Gilroy’s Guinness ads managed to keep their sense of humor (eg: two sailors painting the hull of an aircraft carrier, each wishing the other was a Guinness), and in the 1950s and early ’60s, Gilroy’s famous pint-toting toucans flew all over the world for Guinness, in front of the Kremlin as well as Mt. Rushmore, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Statue of Liberty, although some of these paintings never made it to the campaign stage.
Gilroy’s work on the Guinness account ended in 1962, and in 1971, Benson was gobbled up by the Madison Avenue advertising firm of Ogilvy & Mather. By then, says Hughes, Gilroy’s work for Guinness was considered the pinnacle of poster design in the U.K., and quite collectible. “The posters were made by a lithographic process. In the 1930s, the canvases were re-created on stone by a print maker, but eventually the paintings were transferred via photolithography onto metal sheets. Some of the biggest posters were made for billboards. Those used 64 different sheets that you’d give to the guy with the bucket of wheat paste and a mop to put up in the right order to create the completed picture.”
In terms of single-sheet posters, Hughes says the biggest ones were probably 4 by 3 feet. Benson’s had an archive of it all, but “when Benson’s shut down in ’71, when they were taken over, they cleaned out their stockroom of hundreds of posters and gave them to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Today, both have collections of the original posters, including the 64-sheets piled into these packets, which were wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. They’re extremely difficult to handle; you can’t display them, really.”
At least the paper got a good home. As for the canvases? Well, their history can only be pieced together based on conjecture, but here’s what Hughes thinks he knows.
Sometime in the 1970s, a single collector whose name remains a mystery appears to have purchased as many as 700 to 900 Gilroy paintings that had been in the archives. “The guy who bought the whole archive was an American millionaire,” Hughes says. “He’s a secretive character who doesn’t want to be identified. I don’t blame him. He doesn’t want any publicity about how he bought the collection or its subsequent sale.”
air enough. What we do know for sure is that the years were not kind to Gilroy’s canvases while in storage at Benson’s. In fact, it’s believed that more than half of the cache did not survive the decades and were probably destroyed by the mystery collector who bought them because of their extremely deteriorated condition (torn canvases, images blackened by mildew, etc.). After all, when Gilroy’s canvases were put away, no one at Benson’s thought they’d be regarded in the future as masterpieces.
“A lot of the rolled-up canvases were stuck together,” says Hughes. “Oil takes a long while to dry. Gilroy diluted his oils with what’s called Japan drier, which is a sort of oil thinner that allows you to put the oil on the canvas in a much thinner texture, and then roll them up afterwards. The painted canvas becomes reasonably flexible. The problem is that even with a drier, they still took a long time to dry. And if someone had packed them tightly together and put weight on them, which is what must have happened while the Gilroy paintings were in storage at Benson’s, they’d just stick together. Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”
For diehard Guinness-advertising fans, though, it’s not all bad news. After all, almost half of the cache was saved, “and it’s beautiful,” says Hughes. “I’ve just come back from Boston to look at a lot of these canvases out there, and they are superb. The guy who’s selling the canvases I saw had about 40 or 50 with him. They’re absolutely fabulous.”
Although he has no proof, Hughes believes the person who bought the cache in the 1970s also oversaw its preservation. Importantly to many collectors, all of the Gilroy canvases are in their found condition, stabilized but essentially unchanged. Even areas in the paint that show evidence of rubbing from adjacent canvases remain as they were found. “I think the preservation has been done by the owner,” Hughes says. “I don’t think the dealers did it. It’s my understanding that they were supplied with fully stabilized canvases from the original buyer. It appears that they were shipped from the U.K., so that’s interesting in itself.” Which suggests they never left the United Kingdom after being purchased by the mysterious American millionaire.
collectors of the approval process at Benson. Gilroy painted his canvases on stretchers, and in the bottom corner of each canvas was a small tag identifying the artist, account code, and action to be taken (“Re-draw,” “Revise,” “Hold,” “Print,” and, during World War II, “Submit to censor”). “They would’ve been shown to Guinness on a wooden stretcher,” Hughes says. “Before they went into storage, somebody removed the stretchers and either laid them flat or rolled them up.”
“As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”
Without exception, the canvases Hughes has seen, which were photographed exclusively for his book, are in fine shape and retain their mounting holes for the stretchers and Benson agency tags. “The colors are good,” he says. “They haven’t been in sunlight. They’ll keep for years and years and years.” One collector notes that you can even see the ruby highlights in Gilroy’s paintings of glasses of the stout. “When a pint of Guinness is backlit by a very strong light, the liquid has a deep ruby color,” this collector says. “Gilroy was very careful to include this effect when he painted beer in clear pint glasses.”
Finally, for Guinness, breweriana, and advertising-art collectors, the Gilroy canvases also offer a peek of what might have been. “I would say about half the images were never commercially used, so they are absolutely brand new, never been seen before,” says Hughes. “They’re going to blow people away.” Of particular interest to collectors in the United States are the Gilroy paintings of classic cars that were created for an aborted, early 1950s campaign to coincide with the brewing of Guinness on Long Island.
Still, it’s the medium that continues to amaze Hughes. “The idea of the canvases, none of us expected that,” he says. “As a Guinness collector, I’ve always collected their adverts, but they’re prints. They never touched Gilroy, he was never anywhere near the printing process. I had acquired a pencil drawing, which I was delighted with. Then these oils started turning up,” he Naturally, Hughes the Guinness scholar has seen a few oils that Hughes the Guinness collector would very much like to own. “If I had a magic wand? Well, I saw one this weekend that I really liked. It’s one of the animal ones. But it’s an animal that was not used commercially. It’s of a rhinoceros sitting on the ground with the zookeeper’s Guinness between his legs. The rhinoceros is looking at the zookeeper, and the zookeeper’s looking around the corner holding his broom. It’s just a great image, and it’s probably the only one of that advert that exists. So if I could wave my magic wand, I think that’s what I’d get. But I’d need $10,000
With those kinds of prices and that kind of buzz, you might think that whoever is handling the Guinness advertising account today might be tempted to just re-run the campaign. But Hughes is realistic about the likelihood of that. “Advertising moves on,” he says. “Gilroy’s jokey, humorous, cartoon-like poster design is quintessentially 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. It is a bit quaint, maybe even a little juvenile for today’s audiences. But it’s still amusing. The other day I showed the draft of my book to my mother, who’s 84. She sat in the kitchen, just giggling at the pictures.”
That sums up Gilroy to Hughes; not that it’s only appealing to people in their 80s, but that his work is ultimately about making people happy, which is why his advertising images connected so honestly with viewers. “Gilroy had a tremendous sense of humor,” Hughes says. “He always saw the funny side of things. He was apparently a chap who, if you were feeling a little down and out, you’d spend a couple of hours with him and he’d just lift your spirits.” You know, in much the same way as a lot of us feel after a nice pint of Guinness.
63cm x 29cm
A very popular Pipe Tobacco from the P.Carrolls Tobacco Company in Dundalk Co Louth was Mick McQuaids.But who was this legendary, smiling character the product was inspired by ???
The tales of Mick McQuaid were first written by William Francis Lynam – a soldier, writer and editor who was born in Galway in 1833 and died in Dublin in 1894. Little is known about his background (or his military career), but by the 1860s he was living in Dublin and was – it appears – the owner and editor of the Shamrock story paper. One of the earliest Irish story papers, it was established in 1866 as a penny weekly ‘companion’ paper to the Irishman newspaper. The Irishman, a very advanced nationalist paper, was established in 1859 by Richard Pigott – a very colourful character in Irish journalism who would acquire infamy as the forger of the damning letters supposedly written by Parnell in the 1880s. The exact editorial and proprietorial relationship between the Irishman and the Shamrock is rather murky – some sources imply Pigott owned them both, while others insist that Lynam owned the Shamrock, in which case the precise nature of their connection is unknown. Pigott and Lynam may have been actual business partners, or simply had an informal alliance.
The 1860s was of course the era of the Fenian movement in Ireland and abroad, and under Pigott’s editorship the Irishmanwas a very popular voice for Fenianism. If the Irishman was aimed at an adult readership seeking radical political news and commentary, the Shamrock was its more entertaining younger sibling, intended to instil a sense of national pride and identity in its boy (and occasional girl) readers. To do this, it specialised in exciting Irish historical fiction serials, set at key moments of Irish nationalist history such as the 1798 Rebellion or the Jacobite Wars, and usually centred around an ordinary Irish boy who readers could identify with as he became swept into political and military excitements and encountered historical figures such as Wolfe Tone or Redmond O’Hanlon. But as well as historical fiction, the Shamrock also published romances and vernacular tales of Irish life.
The most successful of these vernacular tales were, by a very long way, the Mick McQuaid stories. A series of comic tales (although to be quite honest the modern reader might take some convincing of that description) set in what was then contemporary Ireland, they all featured the adventures of central character Mick McQuaid – a quick-thinking, wise-cracking chancer who nevertheless usually managed to save the day and prevent the more straight-forward villainy of figures such as agents for absentee landlords, or local gombeen men. Each story saw Mick in a new role and setting, such as ‘Mick McQuaid, Money Lender’, ‘Mick McQuaid, Member of Parliament’, ‘Mick McQuaid, Detective’, and ‘Mick McQuaid, Evangelist’. Each story was long, with (overly) complex plots, many characters, comic tangents and multiple narrative threads to be resolved, so they were serialised in short instalments over several months of weekly issues. These kind of serial stories were crucial to story papers, designed to bring readers back week after week and build a loyal and regular readership, and the Mick McQuaid stories were a classic example of their type.
It has to be admitted it would be difficult to that claim the stories deserve to be ‘rediscovered’ by modern readers. They are an interesting window into popular fiction of the era, especially in terms of their representations of Irish life and society – however their plots are unwieldy, their humour has not aged well and they are written in an almost impenetrable ‘Irish’ dialect which was obviously part of their appeal in the 1860s but which is extremely difficult to read now. Instead what is most interesting about the Mick McQuaid stories is their extraordinary popularity across many decades. Lynam reportedly became bored with the stories after just a few years, and indeed replaced them with tales of another very similar ‘charming Irish rogue’ anti-hero, the Darby Durkan series, which in their turn were also fairly popular. But popular demand for continued Mick McQuaid stories forced him to write more of them (a common experience for authors of popular fiction, most famously in the case of Conan Doyle’s reluctant resurrection of Sherlock Holmes). Indeed, the circulation of the Shamrock reportedly dropped sharply when he attempted to end the McQuaid stories, so they had to be revived and reprinted. It is difficult to be sure exactly how many stories there are in total (perhaps ten or so), each one lasting up to 6 months of weekly instalments – but for a youthful audience this was enough to keep printing and reprinting them over years and eventually decades. Rather like the endlessly circulating repeats of television sit-coms in our own era, which happily rewatched by fans and watched for the first time by successive generations (Faulty Towers being the obvious example, with just twelve episodes ever made in the 1970s, but which are still being screened 40 years later) these very popular serials played on an endless loop in the story papers.
Lynam died in 1894, but his serials lived on without him. The Darby Durkan stories appeared in the Shamrock’s rival story paper the Emerald in the early 20thC, and after the two papers merged in 1912 the McQuaid stories also continued in the new paper until its demise in 1919 – and may well have continued to appear in other publications after that although I have yet to find them. Their popularity was such that in 1889 Carroll’s Tobacco company in Dundalk named a new brand of pipe tobacco after Mick McQuaid, who often smoked a pipe in the stories as he held forth with his distinctive folk wisdom. The brand was itself a great success (presumably the tobacco and the stories amplified each other’s standing among readers and smokers in ways that benefitted both), and by the 1920s Carroll’s had commissioned a cartoon version of Mick McQuaid for their packaging and advertising – the photograph accompanying this post is of a tobacco tin from the mid-20thC. So while the stories had not had significant illustrations during their 19thC hey-day, the Mick McQuaid character took visual form years after his author’s death, and in fact became one of mid-20thC Ireland’s most successful brands, only being discontinued in 2016 – a strange afterlife for a fictional character first invented in 1867.
Paddy is a brand of blendedIrish whiskey produced by Irish Distillers, at the Midleton distillery in County Cork, on behalf of Sazerac, a privately held American company. Irish distillers owned the brand until its sale to Sazerac in 2016. As of 2016, Paddy is the fourth largest selling Irish whiskey in the WorldHistory
The Cork Distilleries Company was founded in 1867 to merge four existing distilleries in Cork city (the North Mall, the Green, Watercourse Road, and Daly's) under the control of one group.A fifth distillery, the Midleton distillery, joined the group soon after in 1868.
In 1882, the company hired a young Corkman called Paddy Flaherty as a salesman. Flaherty travelled the pubs of Cork marketing the company's unwieldy named "Cork Distilleries Company Old Irish Whiskey".His sales techniques (which including free rounds of drinks for customers) were so good, that when publicans ran low on stock they would write the distillery to reorder cases of "Paddy Flaherty's whiskey". In 1912, with his name having become synonymous with the whiskey, the distillery officially renamed the whiskey Paddy Irish Whiskey in his honour.
In 1920s and 1930s in Ireland, whiskey was sold in casks from the distillery to wholesalers, who would in turn sell it on to publicans.To prevent fluctuations in quality due to middlemen diluting their casks, Cork Distilleries Company decided to bottle their own whiskey known as Paddy, becoming one of the first to do so.
In 1988, following an unsolicited takeover offer by Grand Metropolitan, Irish Distillers approached Pernod Ricard and subsequently became a subsidiary of the French drinks conglomerate, following a friendly takeover bid.
In 2016, Pernod Ricard sold the Paddy brand to Sazerac, a privately held American firm for an undisclosed fee. Pernod Ricard stated that the sale was in order "simplify" their portfolio, and allow for more targeted investment in their other Irish whiskey brands, such as Jameson and Powers.
At the time of the sale, Paddy was the fourth largest selling Irish whiskey brand in the world, with sales of 200,000 9-litre cases per annum, across 28 countries worldwide.
Paddy whiskey is distilled three times and matured in oak casks for up to seven years.Compared with other Irish whiskeys, Paddy has a comparatively low pot still content and a high malt content in its blend.Jim Murray, author of the Whiskey bible, has rated Paddy as "one of the softest of all Ireland's whiskeys".
The biggest cliché in the collecting world is the “discovery” of a previously unknown cache of stuff that’s been hidden away for years until one day, much to everyone’s amazement, the treasure trove is unearthed and the collecting landscape is changed forever. As a corollary to this hoary trope, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get in on the action before the word gets out.
“Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”
Cliché or not, that’s roughly what happened in 2008 when hundreds of artist John Gilroy’s oil-on-canvas paintings started to appear on the market. The canvases had been painted by Gilroy as final proofs for his iconic Guinness beer posters, the most recognized alcoholic-beverage advertisements of the mid-20th century. Before most collectors of advertising art and breweriana knew what had happened, most of the best pieces had been snapped up by a handful of savvy collectors. In fact, the distribution of the canvases into the hands of private collectors was so swift and stealthy that one prominent member of the Guinness family was forced to get their favorite Gilroys on the secondary market.
One of those early collectors, who wishes to remain anonymous, recalls seeing several canvases for the first time at an antiques show. At first, he thought they were posters since that’s what Guinness collectors have come to expect. But after looking at them more closely, and realizing they were all original paintings, he purchased the lot on the spot. “It was quite exciting to stumble upon what appeared to be the unknown original advertising studies for one of the world’s great brands,” he says. But the casualness of that first encounter would not last, as competition for the newly found canvases ramped up among collectors. Today, the collector describes the scramble for these heretofore-unknown pieces as “a Gilroy art scrum.”
Among those who were particularly interested in the news of the Gilroy cache was David Hughes, who was a brewer at Guinness for 15 years and has written three books on Guinness advertising art and collectibles, the most recent being “Gilroy Was Good for Guinness,” which reproduces more than 150 of the recently “discovered” paintings. Despite being an expert on the cheery ephemera that was created to sell the dark, bitter stout, Hughes, like a lot of people, only learned of the newly uncovered Gilroy canvases as tantalizing examples from the cache (created for markets as diverse as Russia, Israel, France, and the United States) started to surface in 2008.
“Within the Guinness archives itself,” Hughes says of the materials kept at the company’s Dublin headquarters, “they’ve got lots of advertising art, watercolors, and sketches of workups towards the final version of the posters. But they never had a single oil painting. Until the paintings started turning up in the United States, where Guinness memorabilia is quite collectible, it wasn’t fully understood that the posters were based on oils. All of the canvases will be in collections within a year,” Hughes adds. For would-be Gilroy collectors, that means the clock is ticking.
As it turns out, Gilroy’s entire artistic process was a prelude to the oils. “The first thing he’d usually do was a pencil sketch,” says Hughes. “Then he’d paint a watercolor over the top of the pencil sketch to get the color balance right. Once that was settled and all the approvals were in, he’d sit down and paint the oil. The proof version that went to Guinness for approval, it seems, was always an oil painting.”
Based on what we know of John Gilroy’s work as an artist, that makes sense. For almost half a century, Gilroy was regarded not only as one of England’s premier commercial illustrators, but also as one of its best portraitists. “He painted the Queen three times,” says Hughes, “Lord Mountbatten about four times. In 1942, he did a pencil-and-crayon sketch of Churchill in a London bunker.” According to Hughes, Churchill gave that portrait to Russian leader Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which may mean that somewhere in the bowels of the Kremlin, there’s a portrait of Winnie by the same guy who made a living drawing cartoons of flying toucans balancing pints of Guinness on their beaks.
For those who collect advertising art and breweriana, Gilroy is revered for the numerous campaigns he conceived as an illustrator for S.H. Benson, the venerable British ad agency, which was founded in 1893. Though most famous for the Guinness toucan, which has been the internationally recognized mascot of Guinness since 1935, Gilroy’s first campaign with S.H. Benson was for a yeast extract called Bovril. “Do you have Bovril in the U.S.?” Hughes asks. “It’s a rather dark, pungent, savory spread that goes on toast or bread. It’s full of vitamins, quite a traditional product. He also did a lot of work on campaigns for Colman’s mustard and Macleans toothpaste.”
pparently Gilroy’s work caught the eye of Guinness, which wanted something distinctive for its stout. “A black beer is a unique product,” says Hughes. “There weren’t many on the market then, and there are even fewer now. So they wanted their advertising to be well thought of and agreeable to the public.” For example, in the early 1930s, Benson already had an ad featuring a glass of Guinness with a nice foamy head on top. “Gilroy put a smiling face in the foam,” says Hughes. Collectors often refer to this charming drawing as the “anthropomorphic glass.”
That made the black beer friendly. To ensure that it would be appealing to the common man, Benson launched its “Guinness for Strength” campaign, whose most famous image is the 1934 Gilroy illustration of a muscular workman effortlessly balancing an enormous steel girder on one arm and his head.
Another early campaign put Guinness beer in the world of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” “Guinness and oysters were a big thing,” says Hughes. In one ad, “Gilroy drew all the oysters from the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ sipping glasses of Guinness.”
nd then there were the animals, of which the toucan is only the most recognized, and not even the first (that honor goes to a seal). “He had the lion and the ostrich and the bear up the pole,” Hughes says. “There was a whole menagerie of them. The animals kept going for 30 years. It’s probably the longest running campaign in advertising history.”
Most of Gilroy’s animals lived in a zoo, so a central character of the animal advertisements was a zookeeper, who was a caricature of the artist himself. “That’s what Gilroy looked like,” says Hughes. “Gilroy was a chubby, little man with a little moustache. As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”
Gilroy’s animals good-naturedly tormented their zookeeper by stealing his precious Guinness: An ostrich swallows his glass pint whole, whose bulging outline can be seen in its slender throat; a seal balances a pint on its nose; a kangaroo swaps her “joey” for the zookeeper’s brown bottle. Often the zookeeper is so taken aback by these circumstances his hat has popped off his head.
In fact, Gilroy spent a lot of time at the London Zoo to make sure he captured the essence of his animals accurately. “In the archives at Guinness,” says Hughes, “there are a lot of sketches of tortoises, emus, ostriches, and the rest. He perfected the drawing of the animals by going to the zoo, then he adapted them for the adverts.” As a result, a Gilroy bear really looked like a bear, albeit one with a smile on its face.
During World War II, Gilroy’s Guinness ads managed to keep their sense of humor (eg: two sailors painting the hull of an aircraft carrier, each wishing the other was a Guinness), and in the 1950s and early ’60s, Gilroy’s famous pint-toting toucans flew all over the world for Guinness, in front of the Kremlin as well as Mt. Rushmore, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Statue of Liberty, although some of these paintings never made it to the campaign stage.
Gilroy’s work on the Guinness account ended in 1962, and in 1971, Benson was gobbled up by the Madison Avenue advertising firm of Ogilvy & Mather. By then, says Hughes, Gilroy’s work for Guinness was considered the pinnacle of poster design in the U.K., and quite collectible. “The posters were made by a lithographic process. In the 1930s, the canvases were re-created on stone by a print maker, but eventually the paintings were transferred via photolithography onto metal sheets. Some of the biggest posters were made for billboards. Those used 64 different sheets that you’d give to the guy with the bucket of wheat paste and a mop to put up in the right order to create the completed picture.”
In terms of single-sheet posters, Hughes says the biggest ones were probably 4 by 3 feet. Benson’s had an archive of it all, but “when Benson’s shut down in ’71, when they were taken over, they cleaned out their stockroom of hundreds of posters and gave them to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Today, both have collections of the original posters, including the 64-sheets piled into these packets, which were wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. They’re extremely difficult to handle; you can’t display them, really.”
At least the paper got a good home. As for the canvases? Well, their history can only be pieced together based on conjecture, but here’s what Hughes thinks he knows.
Sometime in the 1970s, a single collector whose name remains a mystery appears to have purchased as many as 700 to 900 Gilroy paintings that had been in the archives. “The guy who bought the whole archive was an American millionaire,” Hughes says. “He’s a secretive character who doesn’t want to be identified. I don’t blame him. He doesn’t want any publicity about how he bought the collection or its subsequent sale.”
air enough. What we do know for sure is that the years were not kind to Gilroy’s canvases while in storage at Benson’s. In fact, it’s believed that more than half of the cache did not survive the decades and were probably destroyed by the mystery collector who bought them because of their extremely deteriorated condition (torn canvases, images blackened by mildew, etc.). After all, when Gilroy’s canvases were put away, no one at Benson’s thought they’d be regarded in the future as masterpieces.
“A lot of the rolled-up canvases were stuck together,” says Hughes. “Oil takes a long while to dry. Gilroy diluted his oils with what’s called Japan drier, which is a sort of oil thinner that allows you to put the oil on the canvas in a much thinner texture, and then roll them up afterwards. The painted canvas becomes reasonably flexible. The problem is that even with a drier, they still took a long time to dry. And if someone had packed them tightly together and put weight on them, which is what must have happened while the Gilroy paintings were in storage at Benson’s, they’d just stick together. Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”
For diehard Guinness-advertising fans, though, it’s not all bad news. After all, almost half of the cache was saved, “and it’s beautiful,” says Hughes. “I’ve just come back from Boston to look at a lot of these canvases out there, and they are superb. The guy who’s selling the canvases I saw had about 40 or 50 with him. They’re absolutely fabulous.”
Although he has no proof, Hughes believes the person who bought the cache in the 1970s also oversaw its preservation. Importantly to many collectors, all of the Gilroy canvases are in their found condition, stabilized but essentially unchanged. Even areas in the paint that show evidence of rubbing from adjacent canvases remain as they were found. “I think the preservation has been done by the owner,” Hughes says. “I don’t think the dealers did it. It’s my understanding that they were supplied with fully stabilized canvases from the original buyer. It appears that they were shipped from the U.K., so that’s interesting in itself.” Which suggests they never left the United Kingdom after being purchased by the mysterious American millionaire.
collectors of the approval process at Benson. Gilroy painted his canvases on stretchers, and in the bottom corner of each canvas was a small tag identifying the artist, account code, and action to be taken (“Re-draw,” “Revise,” “Hold,” “Print,” and, during World War II, “Submit to censor”). “They would’ve been shown to Guinness on a wooden stretcher,” Hughes says. “Before they went into storage, somebody removed the stretchers and either laid them flat or rolled them up.”
“As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”
Without exception, the canvases Hughes has seen, which were photographed exclusively for his book, are in fine shape and retain their mounting holes for the stretchers and Benson agency tags. “The colors are good,” he says. “They haven’t been in sunlight. They’ll keep for years and years and years.” One collector notes that you can even see the ruby highlights in Gilroy’s paintings of glasses of the stout. “When a pint of Guinness is backlit by a very strong light, the liquid has a deep ruby color,” this collector says. “Gilroy was very careful to include this effect when he painted beer in clear pint glasses.”
Finally, for Guinness, breweriana, and advertising-art collectors, the Gilroy canvases also offer a peek of what might have been. “I would say about half the images were never commercially used, so they are absolutely brand new, never been seen before,” says Hughes. “They’re going to blow people away.” Of particular interest to collectors in the United States are the Gilroy paintings of classic cars that were created for an aborted, early 1950s campaign to coincide with the brewing of Guinness on Long Island.
Still, it’s the medium that continues to amaze Hughes. “The idea of the canvases, none of us expected that,” he says. “As a Guinness collector, I’ve always collected their adverts, but they’re prints. They never touched Gilroy, he was never anywhere near the printing process. I had acquired a pencil drawing, which I was delighted with. Then these oils started turning up,” he Naturally, Hughes the Guinness scholar has seen a few oils that Hughes the Guinness collector would very much like to own. “If I had a magic wand? Well, I saw one this weekend that I really liked. It’s one of the animal ones. But it’s an animal that was not used commercially. It’s of a rhinoceros sitting on the ground with the zookeeper’s Guinness between his legs. The rhinoceros is looking at the zookeeper, and the zookeeper’s looking around the corner holding his broom. It’s just a great image, and it’s probably the only one of that advert that exists. So if I could wave my magic wand, I think that’s what I’d get. But I’d need $10,000
With those kinds of prices and that kind of buzz, you might think that whoever is handling the Guinness advertising account today might be tempted to just re-run the campaign. But Hughes is realistic about the likelihood of that. “Advertising moves on,” he says. “Gilroy’s jokey, humorous, cartoon-like poster design is quintessentially 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. It is a bit quaint, maybe even a little juvenile for today’s audiences. But it’s still amusing. The other day I showed the draft of my book to my mother, who’s 84. She sat in the kitchen, just giggling at the pictures.”
That sums up Gilroy to Hughes; not that it’s only appealing to people in their 80s, but that his work is ultimately about making people happy, which is why his advertising images connected so honestly with viewers. “Gilroy had a tremendous sense of humor,” Hughes says. “He always saw the funny side of things. He was apparently a chap who, if you were feeling a little down and out, you’d spend a couple of hours with him and he’d just lift your spirits.” You know, in much the same way as a lot of us feel after a nice pint of Guinness.
74cm x 38cm Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
45cm x 60cm Anticipation is an Irish advertisement launched by Guinness plc in 1994 to promote Guinness-brand draught stout. The advert, which appeared in print, posters, and cinema and television spots, was conceived by Irish advertising agency Arks, and starred relatively unknown Irish actor Joe McKinney as the 'Dancing Man' and Gordon Winter as the barman. It was the final part of the "Guinness Time" advertising campaign, which had been running in Ireland since the late 1980s. The advert was credited with increasing Guinness' sales, market share and brand awareness figures. However, controversy arose following claims of plagiarism raised by British director Mehdi Norowzian, who launched an unsuccessful lawsuit in 1998 seeking remuneration for the use of techniques and style from his 1992 short film Joy.
A comparison of two frames from Anticipation with their respective versions in Eskimo.
51cm x 51cm Imagination is something Guinness Advertising has never been short of… From John Gilroy’s hapless zookeeper and his menagerie of creatures to a Polynesian surfer and a herd of white horses; from messages in bottles setting sail across the ocean to a single, heart-stoppingly enormous wave. Guinness have been carving out their own creative path for almost a century with decades of extraordinary and enduring print, TV and digital campaigns to their name, and hopefully they will continue to push boundaries to tell stories to the world. Here’s to original thinking !
Nice Carling Black Label Mirror 50cm x 42cm Sneem Co Kerry Even though Carling originated in Canada,it’s popularity spread widely throughout the Commonwealth including Ireland .A famous advertising campaign “I bet he drinks Carling” contributed hugely to the brands market share . Carling Black Label is a Canadian brand of lagerdistributed by Carling Brewing Company. In several countries, it is also known as Carling Black Label, and in Sweden, it is known as Carling Premier. In the United Kingdom it is now known as just Carling.
Brewing Corporation of America of Cleveland, Ohio in 1965. Home of Carling Black Label lager and Carling Red Cap Ale and former site the Peerless Motor Car Company
Carling Black Label sign on a club in Pontefract, West Yorkshire.
SABMiller variants of Black Label
Interesting old display print on a wooden background depicting the historical,cultural and sporting highlights of the Emerald Isle.Although the frame is showing signs of age related wear,this piece will make a wonderful addition to your collection or decorative item for your wall . Kilkee Co Clare 60cm x 55cm
A very interesting Royal Munster Fusiliers Regiment WW1 Recruitment Poster exhorting the young men of Kerry,Cork,Clare & Limerick to enlist and join the War effort. Origins:Glin Co Limerick. Dimensions : 40cm x 35cm Glazed The Royal Munster Fusiliers was a line infantry regiment of the British Army from 1881 to 1922. It traced its origins to the East India Company's Bengal European Regiment raised in 1652, which later became the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers). The Royal Munster Fusiliers were formed in 1881 by the merger of the 101st Regiment of Foot and the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers). One of eight Irish regiments raised largely in Ireland, it had its home depot in Tralee and served as the county regiment for Cork, Clare, Limerick and Kerry. At its formation the regiment comprised two regular and two militia battalions. The Royal Munster Fusiliers served in India before the regiment fought in the Second Boer War. Prior to the First World War, the regiment's three militia battalions were converted into reserve battalions, and a further six battalions were added to the regiment's establishment during the war. The regiment fought with distinction throughout the Great War and won three Victoria Crosses by the conflict's conclusion in 1918.Following establishment of the independent Irish Free State in 1922, the five regiments that had their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new state were disbanded and the Royal Munster Fusiliers ceased to be as a regiment on 31 July 1922.
A painting depicting the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers), a predecessor regiment of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, marching to Delhi during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
The 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers in South Africa during the Second Boer War, 1901.
Men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers in Aldershot just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, 1914.
The SS River Clyde holds dead of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who were killed while attempting to get ashore at Sedd el Bahr during the Gallipoli Campaign.The Turks launched a renewed attack on the night of 1 May, with one Royal Munster Fusilier saying "they crept up in the dark into our trenches bayoneting our men before we knew it had begun. Bayoneting on both sides was terrible. At dawn the Turks were mowed down, and heaps of bodies and streams of blood remaining everywhere."The battalion was reduced to 4 officers and 430 men, with the Turks attempting further attacks the following days only to be driven off once again, but the combined force of Munster and Dublin Fusiliers were down to 372 men by 11 April. Both the Munsters and Dubliners received new drafts on 29 May and became separate units again. By 4 June, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers numbered 40 officers and 500 other ranks, but many the new recruits were young and inexperienced. The Munsters withheld a further Turkish attack on 17 June, killing over 300 Turks. The arrival of further new drafts replenished the battalion to 23 officers and other 588 ranks. The Munsters took part in the Division's assault on 28 June which secured five trench lines. This provoked a general attack by the Turkish side along the Cape Helles front on 5 July, but the Turks were repulsed after suffering heavy losses. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers participated in limited actions into the middle of July. A month's rest was promised on 15 July, but by 22 July the battalion were back in action, their strength around 500 of whom only 3 officers and 314 men remained from those who first landed on 25 April. The climax of the Gallipoli came with the Suvla attack on 21 August in the Battle of Scimitar Hill, the Turks inflicted severe casualties. The unsuccessful attack cost the Munsters 3 officers and 79 men that day alone. There was little further action other than holding front lines from September through to November, when the weather worsened. Late in November, gales swept over the peninsula, hundreds were drowned in the flooded trenches or from exposure and frostbite. Faced with defeat, the British decided to withdraw from the peninsula and the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was evacuated as it arrived, on the River Clyde, sailing on 2 January 1916 for Alexandria. From there it sailed with the rest of the 29th Division and arrived in France on 22 March. 3 years of warfare still remained for the battalion on the Western Front, but the battalion had already suffered 45% of its total losses for the entire war at Gallipoli, and numbered just 24 officers and 287 men when disembarking in France.
The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois administered by their chaplain Father Francis GleesonWhile their sister battalion had been fighting on the shores of Gallipoli, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers had continued to serve on the Western Front and faced their first major action of 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres, during which they fought at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. The day before the attack was to be launched on 9 May, the battalion received Absolution from their chaplain, Father Francis Gleeson,an event which would become depicted in the famous "Rue du Bois" painting by Fortunino Matania.The British bombardment began at 5 a.m. and the Munsters then pressed forward with extraordinary bravery, with German fire sweeping no-mans-land. Some of the Munsters audaciously charging ahead through the German lines, briefly waving a green flag on its breastwork, then moved beyond until cut off by the British artillery bombardment that followed, which killed many men sheltering in shell craters. By 11 a.m. the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was withdrawn with only 3 officers and 200 men remaining, having lost 19 officers and 370 men killed, wounded or captured. The Munsters was one of only two British battalions to reach the German lines but they had suffered the regiment's highest loss of any one day of the war, with 11 officers and 140 men killed in action. It was an unsuccessful day for the British forces overall, with casualties exceeding 11,000, the devastating losses exposing the British forces weakness in artillery. The summer was relatively quiet for the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers after the battalion moved to the Loos sector in June, with casualties in July and August occurring from shelling. With other forces being withdrawn to reinforce the Gallipoli Campaign, no reinforcements or recruits arrived during the summer, keeping the battalion weak as the Loos offensive began on 25 September 1915. The Munsters were held in reserve at first but they were soon tasked with holding the line and suffered over 200 casualties, leaving the battalion with around 350 soldiers all ranks, which further reduced to 250 by the time the battle died down on 13 October. John Redmond M.P., the Irish leader, visited the battalion a month later on 15 November and promised to fill the depleted 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers with Irish recruits. There followed three months of bitter winter weather in appalling trench conditions. New recruits began arriving over the winter, but in the relative inactivity, 65 men were hit by harassing random fire while 40 men went down with frostbite and trench fever in the Arctic weather before the winter had ended.
Certifying attendance at Father Gleeson's Mission, 1915.
An illustration depicting men of the Royal Munster Fusiliers returning victoriously from their capture of Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme.
Old Royal Munster Fusiliers insignia
Two officers of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers man a machine gun on the Western Front.
Rian na gCos (Gaelic for in the footsteps of a giant)Dingle legend Paddy Bán Brosnan,who captained Kerry in 1944 gives the 1985 Kerry captain Paidí O'Sé from Ventry some priceless advice on the beach at Dún Chaoin Iconic B&W photo taken by Colman Doyle of 2 of the all time Kerry football greats - Paidí O'Sé & Paddy Bawn Brosnan.This atmospheric image was captured as the 2 men walked along a stormy Atlantic shoreline on the beautiful Dingle Peninsula,.where both of these legends hailed from.Although from different eras both players encapsulated the essence of the Kerry Footballer-teak tough,ferocious,skillful and also well able to enjoy themselves when the opportunity presented itself ! Indeed Paddy Bawn had a very interesting family background as we discovered while researching his bio for this product description as you can now read.
Beautifully framed print portraying page 287 of the 1st Edition of James Joyce seminal work Ulysses.This piece formerly hunh in the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. Origins ; Dublin. Dimensions: 59cm x 45cm. Glazed
Joyce in Zürich, c. 1918
On 2 February 1882, Joyce was born at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland. Joyce's father was John Stanislaus Joyce and his mother was Mary Jane "May" Murray. He was the eldest of ten surviving siblings; two died of typhoid. James was baptised according to the Rites of the Catholic Church in the nearby St Joseph's Church in Terenure on 5 February 1882 by Rev. John O'Mulloy. Joyce's godparents were Philip and Ellen McCann. John Stanislaus Joyce's family came from Fermoy in County Cork, and had owned a small salt and lime works. Joyce's paternal grandfather, James Augustine Joyce, married Ellen O'Connell, daughter of John O'Connell, a Cork Alderman who owned a drapery business and other properties in Cork City. Ellen's family claimed kinship with Daniel O'Connell, "The Liberator".The Joyce family's purported ancestor, Seán Mór Seoighe (fl. 1680) was a stonemason from Connemara.
Joyce's birth and baptismal certificateIn 1887, his father was appointed rate collector by Dublin Corporation; the family subsequently moved to the fashionable adjacent small town of Bray, 12 miles (19 km) from Dublin. Around this time Joyce was attacked by a dog, leading to his lifelong cynophobia. He suffered from astraphobia; a superstitious aunt had described thunderstorms as a sign of God's wrath. In 1891 Joyce wrote a poem on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell. His father was angry at the treatment of Parnell by the Catholic Church, the Irish Home Rule Party and the British Liberal Party and the resulting collaborative failure to secure Home Rule for Ireland. The Irish Party had dropped Parnell from leadership. But the Vatican's role in allying with the British Conservative Party to prevent Home Rule left a lasting impression on the young Joyce. The elder Joyce had the poem printed and even sent a part to the Vatican Library. In November, John Joyce was entered in Stubbs' Gazette (a publisher of bankruptcies) and suspended from work. In 1893, John Joyce was dismissed with a pension, beginning the family's slide into poverty caused mainly by his drinking and financial mismanagement. Joyce had begun his education at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare, in 1888 but had to leave in 1892 when his father could no longer pay the fees. Joyce then studied at home and briefly at the Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street, Dublin, before he was offered a place in the Jesuits' Dublin school, Belvedere College, in 1893. This came about because of a chance meeting his father had with a Jesuit priest called John Conmee who knew the family and Joyce was given a reduction in fees to attend Belvedere. In 1895, Joyce, now aged 13, was elected to join the Sodality of Our Lady by his peers at Belvedere. The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas continued to have a strong influence on him for most of his life.
Joyce aged six, 1888
Bust of Joyce on St Stephen's Green, Dublin
Joyce in Zürich, in 1915
In Paris, 1924. Portrait by Patrick Tuohy.
Grave of James Joyce in Zürich-Fluntern
The title page of the first edition of Dubliners
Announcement of the initial publication of Ulysses.
Beautifully atmospheric Raymond Campbell still life print depicting a familiar scene of an Irish Bar shelf or kitchen dresser.You can almost reach out and touch the bottles of Powers & Jameson Whiskey plus assorted items such as an old hurling sliotar,a sea shell, postcards etc Origins :Bray Co Wicklow. Dimensions : 68cm x 55cm. Unglazed Raymond Campbell has long been known as one of the modern masters of still life oil paintings. Instantly recognisable, his artwork is often characterised by arrangements of dusty vintage wine bottles, glasses and selections of fruit and cheeses. What isn’t so known about Raymond is how he began his working life as a refuse collector and laying carpets. Indeed it was the former which allowed him to salvage many of the vintage bottles which he uses for his subject matter to this day. Born in 1956 in Surrey, Raymond Campbell is now considered by many as the United Kingdom’s pre-eminent still life artist. His works “Second Home”, “The Gamble” and “The Lost Shoe” are among pieces which have been exhibited at The Summer Exhibition at The Royal Academy, London. He has had many sell-out one man exhibitions and has also exhibited several times at The Mall Galleries, London and numerous other galleries worldwide. His work can be found in many international private collections, particularly in the USA, Australia and across Europe.
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 63cmWhen, 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)
Although Dessie had no Irish connection whatsoever ,we love a good horse in Ireland and by God Desert Orchid was some horse.Its said his appearance in Fairhouse when he own the Irish Grand National was akin to JFK or the Pope arriving ! Trim Co Meath. 62cm x 50cm
60cm x 80cm. Castlegregory Co Kerry .These unique artefacts of old Irish commercial life will make superb decorative item for any discerning Irish pub or home bar with a distinctive Irish theme.What makes these items of even more historical value and interest is the fact that the majority of them date from the World War 2 Era or what was known as the Emergency in Ireland as its remained somewhat controversially neutral under DeValera's leadership.We can see vividly through these unique items how ordinary people and both small and large businesses alike were presented with an unprecedented set of challenges -rationing,increaseed regulation and of decreased supply and increased demand created by a world in turmoil. Presented in antique frames, these are the real deal after a number were found in an old suitcase bought at auction. If interested in buying a number of these charming pieces of Irish commercial ephemera, please contact us directly at irishpubemporiu@gmail.com for a special deal ! Dingle Co Kerry 27 cm x 23cm
65cm x 50cm Limerick Vintage advertising poster advertising a car racing in Limerick in 1929 to be held around the city and organised by the Irish Motor Racing Club Ltd ,based in Foster Place Dublin. People, like this writer, who do not even have a driving licence find it very difficult to understand the extraordinary interest in motor racing which has mushroomed over the last few years. This newspaper and others have expanded coverage of the sport in a big way and that can only be partly explained by the fact that a young Irishman, Eddie Irvine, has made significant progress in the drivers' championship and that Dubliner Eddie Jordan has a team competing in the constructors' championship. There is a very long and distinguished history of motor racing in Ireland, going back to the turn of the century and before. Irish motorists have contributed profoundly to the popularity of motor racing history. In this context, names like Dunlop and Ferguson immediately spring to mind. The Belfast businessman John Boyd Dunlop first hit upon the idea of a pneumatic tyre when he was trying to entice his son to continue what he considered to be a healthy bicycling pursuit. When Dunlop's tyres helped to wipe out all competition in a Belfast sports meeting in Easter 1889, the invention sparked an idea in the mind of a Dublin businessman called Harvey du Cros - a Huguenot who had fled Roman Catholic persecution in his native France to flee to, of all places, Dublin. The Huguenot refugee had several distinctions. He was a boxing and fencing champion in his day and a founder member of Bective Rangers rugby club. Whether he would have been proud of the latter achievement today cannot be assessed. (Just a joke lads.) He set up a factory for the manufacture of tyres in Stephen Street in Dublin just before the turn of the century and, in doing so, made an enormous contribution to the revolution of transport in the world. The name of Dunlop remains synonymous with tyres, but, sadly, the name du Cros is seldom mentioned. Nevertheless he holds the major French decoration of Legion d'honneur.Mineral waters, normally costing tuppence, were offered at sixpence, but then what else is new! Local farmers' wives also made "a killing" by releasing their hens onto the practice roads and then demanding compensation when they were killed by the speeding cars. Readers may ask how come this writer has taken so much interest in this matter without ever having driven anything faster than a tractor. The reason is that, by chance, I came across a book some time ago called Green Dust, by Brendan Lynch, and was immediately captivated, not only by the tales he told and the manner of the telling, but by the picture of Ireland which Lynch painted. What I see of motor racing on television nowadays bores me to tears, but Brendan Lynch's book is in a different category altogether. As far as I know it is out of print. Could I humbly suggest that he and the publishers, Portobello Publishing, reprint this sporting treasure.The Shannon Development Company of 1900 was the first organisation to promote a motor race in Ireland. The company had built a hotel in Killaloe and organised a motor trip from Dublin to that lovely Clare town, via Nenagh. A De Dion brand car, driven by L Fleming, was first to enter Killaloe in July of 1900. James Gordon Bennett, the American millionaire who had sent Stanley in pursuit of Livingston, offered the first major trophy for motor racing. There was a reluctance to allow this very dangerous sport to be held in Britain and the matter was referred to the House of Commons when an extraordinary alliance involving John Redmond, Tim Healy and Sir Edward Carson all supported the idea that speed limits should be set aside for that day. The Northern Whig said: "We see a wonderful blending of the Orange and Green. There is, about this matter, a unanimity of which some people considered Irishmen to be incapable." Could we, perhaps, arrange a Drumcree Grand Prix! With the blessing of the Bishop of Kildare, a circuit centred on Athy was agreed for Ireland's first serious motor road race which took place on July 2nd, a public holiday, in 1903. The race started just north of Athy and on a figure of eight circuit, the competitors drove 327 miles, going through such exotic places as Kilcullen, Castledermot, Carlow, Monasterevin, Stradbally and Windy Gap. In the build up to the race, James Joyce earned a few badly needed shillings by interviewing the top French driver of the day, Henri Fournier, in The Irish Times. Drivers from all over Europe and the United States took part and prices went through the ceiling as foreign drivers, mechanics, and spectators descended on Athy and its environs. There was one report of £50 being charged for two rooms in Kilcullen for one night, a charge which might, even today, be regarded as a little pricey.
60cm x 50cm Limerick The Dubliners were quite simply one of the most famous Irish folk bands of all time.Founded in 1962,they enjoyed a 50 year career with the success of the band centred on their two lead singers,Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew.They garnered massive international acclaim with their lively Irish folk songs,traditional street ballads and instrumentals eventually crossing over to mainstream culture by appearing on Top of the Pops in 1967 with "Seven Drunken Nights" which sold over 250000 singles in the UK alone.Later a number of collaborations with the Pogues saw them enter the UK singles charts again on another 2 occasions.Instrumental in popularising Irish folk music abroad ,they influenced many generations of Irish bands and covers of Irish ballads such as Raglan Road and the Auld Triangle by Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew tend to be regarded as definitive versions.They also enjoyed a hard drinking and partying image as can be seen by many collaborations with alcohol advertising campaigns etc
40cm x 34cm LimerickMuch of the last century, and indeed for well over half of the present one, Limerick's importance was directly attributed to her three well-known bacon factories, namely, J. Matterson & Sons, Roches Street, established in 1816 by Mr. John Russell, a Cumberland man in con-junction with Mr. Matterson, using the method of curing then current in Berwick-on-Tweed. W.J. Shaw & Sons, founded in the year 1831 at Mulgrave Street by William John Shaw, a descendant of a County Down family, and O'Mara's bacon factory, Roches Street, which had its origin in Mungret Street some few years before 1839, when James O'Mara from Toomevara started curing bacon in the basement of his house there. Apparently, this basement business flourished, for in 1839 he moved to Roches Street to the premises it last occupied .About the middle of the last century, for some reason now difficult to fathom, Limerick bacon and especially Limerick hams, became well-known for their excellent flavour throughout the English-speaking world. It is on record that Glasgow curers in an effort to produce hams equal in excellence to those of Limerick, imported Limerick workmen who were supposed to know all about the way in which the meat was turned out at home. Apparently, they did not bring secrets with them for their efforts were unsuccessful. There were also much larger bacon factories in parts of the British Isles; for instance, Belfast is reputed to have exported four times the number of hams produced in Limerick, and places like Glasgow and Liverpool had several factories producing very large quantities of bacon as well. None of them, however, quite matched' those produced in the three local factories for flavour and quality.O’MARA’S, MATTERSON’S, SHAW’S and Denny’s were the names that made Limerick famous for its bacon produce for 180 years – earning it the nickname ‘Pigstown’. The reputation of Limerick ham, the food culture that arose from a plentiful supply of cheap products, the story of the pork butchers, the pig buyers, the sounds of the city with factory horns signalling the call to work – all of these still resonate in Limerick in the memories of its citizens and former workers. A definitive account of this industry that operated at the centre of the city, supplied by the farms of rural county Limerick for over 180 years will be documented in a new book called Pigtown – A History of Limerick’s Bacon Industry. Ruth Guiry was commissioned to undertake the research under the guidance of Dr Maura Cronin from Mary Immaculate College and one of the 27 people she interviewed to understand the role the bacon factories had in Limerick was Joe Hayes.O'Mara's bacon factory, Roches Street, Limerick.Source: Courtesy of Tony Punch Joe Hayes started working in a bacon factory in 1962, aged 16 years old. He worked with his dad, and later on with his two sons until the factory closed in 1986. “When the factory closed, a group of us got our own little unit, we rented it, and produced our own sausages, puddings and things.” It was a huge part of Limerick’s social scene: four generations of Joe’s family worked in bacon factories, with uncles, sisters, brothers, sons and cousins all working in the factory at one time or another: “If one factory was caic, you wouldn’t have a problem getting a job in the other one.
And he doesn’t mince his word when talking about the work they did. “They brought the pigs in, we killed the pigs, and prepared the bacon: that’s the way it was in the bacon factories.” When asked about if there were ever animal cruelty protests, he laughs at the idea.
Matterson's advertisement for cuts of meat.Source: Limerick Archives After the expensive cuts were prepared, the offal, the spare ribs, the pigs’ heads would go to the poorer people. “The blood was used to make the pudding, the packet, the tripe was made off the belly. Everything was used off the pig, and it fed Limerick city.” It was a way of life down in Limerick, so when the factories closed, thousands of people working in a bacon factories were out of jobs, and thousands of families were affected. But it wasn’t the competition from big supermarkets that did it – it was free trade. The Danes, the French, the Dutch all started exporting their products here, and Limerick factories didn’t have the money to export to compete.
Source: National Library of Ireland “Michael O’Mara’s funeral was this week – he was the last of the bacon factory managers.” says Joe. “After the Limerick factory closed, he tried doing different bits and pieces, but nothing worked out for him, so he worked in a factory for a couple of years before retiring.” Joe Hayes himself is retired now, and when he buys his meat he gets it in a supermarket. “Meat is meat,” he says.”But if I see the tricolour flag, I’ll still buy it even if it’s dearer.” Pigtown - A History of Limerick’s Bacon Industry by Ruth Guiry is co-edited by Dr Maura Cronin and Jacqui Hayes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.” Origins : Dublin Dimensions : 43cm x 35cm
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".
Luke Kelly on stage in 1980
Statue on South King StreetLuke 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.
Sculpture of Luke Kelly on Sheriff Street by Vera Klute. Unveiled in 2019
68cm x 46cmThe biggest cliché in the collecting world is the “discovery” of a previously unknown cache of stuff that’s been hidden away for years until one day, much to everyone’s amazement, the treasure trove is unearthed and the collecting landscape is changed forever. As a corollary to this hoary trope, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get in on the action before the word gets out.
62cm x 42cm John Patrick Healy (9 March 1931 – 5 December 2014), known as Jackie Healy-Rae, was an Irish Independent politician who served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Kerry South constituency from 1997 to 2011.
68cm x 46cmThe biggest cliché in the collecting world is the “discovery” of a previously unknown cache of stuff that’s been hidden away for years until one day, much to everyone’s amazement, the treasure trove is unearthed and the collecting landscape is changed forever. As a corollary to this hoary trope, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get in on the action before the word gets out.
63cm x 29cm A very popular Pipe Tobacco from the P.Carrolls Tobacco Company in Dundalk Co Louth was Mick McQuaids.But who was this legendary, smiling character the product was inspired by ??? The tales of Mick McQuaid were first written by William Francis Lynam – a soldier, writer and editor who was born in Galway in 1833 and died in Dublin in 1894. Little is known about his background (or his military career), but by the 1860s he was living in Dublin and was – it appears – the owner and editor of the Shamrock story paper. One of the earliest Irish story papers, it was established in 1866 as a penny weekly ‘companion’ paper to the Irishman newspaper. The Irishman, a very advanced nationalist paper, was established in 1859 by Richard Pigott – a very colourful character in Irish journalism who would acquire infamy as the forger of the damning letters supposedly written by Parnell in the 1880s. The exact editorial and proprietorial relationship between the Irishman and the Shamrock is rather murky – some sources imply Pigott owned them both, while others insist that Lynam owned the Shamrock, in which case the precise nature of their connection is unknown. Pigott and Lynam may have been actual business partners, or simply had an informal alliance. The 1860s was of course the era of the Fenian movement in Ireland and abroad, and under Pigott’s editorship the Irishmanwas a very popular voice for Fenianism. If the Irishman was aimed at an adult readership seeking radical political news and commentary, the Shamrock was its more entertaining younger sibling, intended to instil a sense of national pride and identity in its boy (and occasional girl) readers. To do this, it specialised in exciting Irish historical fiction serials, set at key moments of Irish nationalist history such as the 1798 Rebellion or the Jacobite Wars, and usually centred around an ordinary Irish boy who readers could identify with as he became swept into political and military excitements and encountered historical figures such as Wolfe Tone or Redmond O’Hanlon. But as well as historical fiction, the Shamrock also published romances and vernacular tales of Irish life. The most successful of these vernacular tales were, by a very long way, the Mick McQuaid stories. A series of comic tales (although to be quite honest the modern reader might take some convincing of that description) set in what was then contemporary Ireland, they all featured the adventures of central character Mick McQuaid – a quick-thinking, wise-cracking chancer who nevertheless usually managed to save the day and prevent the more straight-forward villainy of figures such as agents for absentee landlords, or local gombeen men. Each story saw Mick in a new role and setting, such as ‘Mick McQuaid, Money Lender’, ‘Mick McQuaid, Member of Parliament’, ‘Mick McQuaid, Detective’, and ‘Mick McQuaid, Evangelist’. Each story was long, with (overly) complex plots, many characters, comic tangents and multiple narrative threads to be resolved, so they were serialised in short instalments over several months of weekly issues. These kind of serial stories were crucial to story papers, designed to bring readers back week after week and build a loyal and regular readership, and the Mick McQuaid stories were a classic example of their type. It has to be admitted it would be difficult to that claim the stories deserve to be ‘rediscovered’ by modern readers. They are an interesting window into popular fiction of the era, especially in terms of their representations of Irish life and society – however their plots are unwieldy, their humour has not aged well and they are written in an almost impenetrable ‘Irish’ dialect which was obviously part of their appeal in the 1860s but which is extremely difficult to read now. Instead what is most interesting about the Mick McQuaid stories is their extraordinary popularity across many decades. Lynam reportedly became bored with the stories after just a few years, and indeed replaced them with tales of another very similar ‘charming Irish rogue’ anti-hero, the Darby Durkan series, which in their turn were also fairly popular. But popular demand for continued Mick McQuaid stories forced him to write more of them (a common experience for authors of popular fiction, most famously in the case of Conan Doyle’s reluctant resurrection of Sherlock Holmes). Indeed, the circulation of the Shamrock reportedly dropped sharply when he attempted to end the McQuaid stories, so they had to be revived and reprinted. It is difficult to be sure exactly how many stories there are in total (perhaps ten or so), each one lasting up to 6 months of weekly instalments – but for a youthful audience this was enough to keep printing and reprinting them over years and eventually decades. Rather like the endlessly circulating repeats of television sit-coms in our own era, which happily rewatched by fans and watched for the first time by successive generations (Faulty Towers being the obvious example, with just twelve episodes ever made in the 1970s, but which are still being screened 40 years later) these very popular serials played on an endless loop in the story papers. Lynam died in 1894, but his serials lived on without him. The Darby Durkan stories appeared in the Shamrock’s rival story paper the Emerald in the early 20thC, and after the two papers merged in 1912 the McQuaid stories also continued in the new paper until its demise in 1919 – and may well have continued to appear in other publications after that although I have yet to find them. Their popularity was such that in 1889 Carroll’s Tobacco company in Dundalk named a new brand of pipe tobacco after Mick McQuaid, who often smoked a pipe in the stories as he held forth with his distinctive folk wisdom. The brand was itself a great success (presumably the tobacco and the stories amplified each other’s standing among readers and smokers in ways that benefitted both), and by the 1920s Carroll’s had commissioned a cartoon version of Mick McQuaid for their packaging and advertising – the photograph accompanying this post is of a tobacco tin from the mid-20thC. So while the stories had not had significant illustrations during their 19thC hey-day, the Mick McQuaid character took visual form years after his author’s death, and in fact became one of mid-20thC Ireland’s most successful brands, only being discontinued in 2016 – a strange afterlife for a fictional character first invented in 1867.
60cm x 38cm Limerick
75cm x 65cmThe biggest cliché in the collecting world is the “discovery” of a previously unknown cache of stuff that’s been hidden away for years until one day, much to everyone’s amazement, the treasure trove is unearthed and the collecting landscape is changed forever. As a corollary to this hoary trope, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get in on the action before the word gets out.
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