“Although we all have tongues, we are surprisingly bad at knowing precisely what they're doing or conveying that to others,” says UC Santa Cruz professor of linguistics Jaye Padgett.

Tongue motion, it turns out, is crucial to the documentation of endangered…

The Annual Connemara Pony Festival takes place in Clifden, County Galway from Sunday the 27th through Sunday the 24th of August. The highlight of the festival is the Connemara Pony Show on Thursday and Friday. To mark this important annual event, I'd like to offer this brief primer…

In the 1560s, Queen Elizabeth I began to see the value in becoming familiar with the Irish language.  The Queen was already well versed in the French, Italian, Latin and Greek languages.  There can be little doubt that her interest in the Irish language was brought on by her desire…

Ireland in the 1650s lay in ruins. Twelve years of calamitous warfare had destroyed the country's infrastructure and resulted in the death of over 20% of the Irish population.

In August 1649 the New Model Army, led by Oliver Cromwell, went to Ireland to re-occupy the country following the Irish Rebellion of…

Maps ... I love them.  My grandfather instilled a tremendous appreciation for the art / science of cartography, and the essentiality of being proficient in geography.  He was neither a professional cartographer nor an expert geographer, but he studied maps on a regular basis.  I…

A priceless film archive which includes extensive footage of the Easter Rising and its aftermath has been released online by British Pathé.

The multimedia resource has made its entire archive, consisting of 3,500 hours of coverage on 85,000 films, available on YouTube. For…

I recently came across the lovely and nostalgic promotional poster from Ireland's Midland Great Western Railway shown above.  Although I live one of the areas formerly served by this grand old railroad, I didn't know much about the history thereof.  I've shared the information…

Seachtain na Gaeilge (Irish Language Week) is an international Irish language festival and one of the biggest celebrations of our native language and culture that takes place each year in Ireland and in many other countries. 

This year’s festival is running from 1 –…

The Desmond Fitzgerald Photographs, a stunning collection of 179 photos is now available to view on the University College Dublin Digital Library website.  This collection of photographic prints forms part of the papers of Desmond FitzGerald. The majority of these photographs arise out of the…

Fifty years ago today (21 January, 1964), the Irish Language Commission released a report stating that Galway should be made an Irish-speaking city.  RTÉ News spoke to some of Galway's citizens to get their opinions of the plans.  …

The traditions on the 26th of December in Ireland have not largely carried over to most sectors of the worldwide Irish diaspora.  Known as St. Stephen's Day or Wren Day in Ireland, this is a brief crash course on the traditions of this day for those outside Ireland who are…

Lebor na gCeart, the "Book of Rights", details the rents and taxes paid by the King of Cashel to various others in Ireland.  The original manuscripts date to the 11th or 12th century, and it contains a treasure trove of references to the customs and practices of Irish nobility in the Middle Ages.  This collection of manuscripts was…

The Doegen Records Web Project (Tionscadal Gréasáin Cheirníní Doegen) has made available a treasure trove of audio recordings from the 17 counties of Ireland, mostly concentrated in the northwest.  This multi-media archive is a project of the Royal Irish Academy Library in collaboration with the Digital Humanities Observatory, and…

The image above on the left is a detail from Richard Bartlett's A.D. 1602 map of Ulster showing the inauguration of the O'Neill chief/king at Tullyhogue, County Tyrone. Bartlett has been called, "…