The History of The Irish...Worldwide
Brian Nolan's Blog (31)
The Cracked Plate
Added by Brian Nolan on May 25, 2020 at 7:30am — No Comments
Be It Ever So Humble, There's No Place Like Home
I took this photograph in Galway around 1982.
The two, twin, cozy cottages always caught my eye, when I was headed out after…
ContinueAdded by Brian Nolan on April 6, 2020 at 1:30pm — No Comments
I Just Love a Good Mystery!
Those pictured above -- more likely both of them -- had witnessed and survived another pandemic, the Irish Famine, where generations of whole families were swept away by starvation, typhoid and influenza. Their weather-beaten lined faces tell a story of resilience, and perhaps…
ContinueAdded by Brian Nolan on March 16, 2020 at 8:00am — 9 Comments
Everything Changed for Ireland After King Charles I's Execution
This poem was penned after the death of King Charles I, who was beheaded outside Whitehall Palace in London on the afternoon of January 30th, 1649, exactly 368 years ago, today.
"He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene:
But with his keener eye
The axe’s…
Added by Brian Nolan on January 30, 2018 at 10:30am — 1 Comment
Prayer of St. Brendan the Navigator
When St. Brendan got back from his travels discovering America in a small wooden and leather boat around 564 AD, he wrote a book in Latin, 'Navigatio Brendani' or 'The Voyage of Brendan', which, some 900 years later (1477) convinced Christopher Columbus that there might just be something out there beyond the western…
Added by Brian Nolan on January 25, 2017 at 6:30am — 6 Comments
Unpacking 'The Wreck of the Hesperus'
'You look like the wreck of the Hesperus' was a much-used phrase in our house in Loughrea, 20 miles from the sea at Galway Bay. Boys, well you know boys, they never comb their hair, never wash their hands, wear the same clothes forever. . . . You know the type, and obstinately oblivious of their appearance. In Ireland,…
ContinueAdded by Brian Nolan on January 7, 2017 at 8:30am — 6 Comments
Quo Vadis? (Who Are the Irish and Where Are They Going?)
Boy, we had us a whopping week of celebrations. There isn't a child in the country who can't now recite the Proclamation, nor an adult that cannot name everyone who fought in the GPO in 1916. We can all quote Yeats and Pearse, Connolly and Casement. We can sing songs that weren't sung in a century, and we can recite thumping…
Added by Brian Nolan on April 3, 2016 at 7:00pm — 2 Comments
A 'New' Thatched Cottage in the Claddagh, Galway
I know that many of you have been to Galway (or intend visiting) and I…
Added by Brian Nolan on March 10, 2016 at 8:30am — 4 Comments
Now Comes the Spring -- 'Anois Teacht An Earraigh'
Once St. Brigid's Day has passed, our thoughts turn to the arrival of Spring . . .
I was reminded of what little credit I give sometimes Ireland's forgotten writers and poets, especially those who wrote in Irish, 'as Gaeilge'. This struck home when I read again Galway's blind…
ContinueAdded by Brian Nolan on February 1, 2016 at 5:00am — 4 Comments
Poem for Christmas: Cuireadh do Mhuire / An Invitation to Mary
Cuireadh do Mhuire was composed by Máirtín Ó Direáin (1910 – 1988), the great Irish language poet from the village of Sruthán, on Inis Mór (Inishmore), the largest of the Aran Islands, in Galway Bay.
Ó Direáin penned this beautiful and delicate verse at Christmas 1942, when the whole world was at war and his…
ContinueAdded by Brian Nolan on December 31, 2015 at 12:00pm — 1 Comment
'Famine Folios' -- Ireland's Great Irish Famine Revisited
Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, has just published four new folios of research into the period of The Irish Famine under the collective title Famine Folios.
These compelling essays take a fresh and…
ContinueAdded by Brian Nolan on November 9, 2015 at 6:00am — 3 Comments
Recalling Fair Days in Ireland
O! farmer, strong farmer!
You can spend at the fair
But your face you must turn
To your crops and your care.
And the crowds at the fair,
The herds loosened and blind,
Loud words and dark…
Added by Brian Nolan on October 18, 2015 at 6:30pm — 7 Comments
'We Built This City': How the Irish Constructed Today's London
The huge Irish contribution to building today's London has been marked by a short video, 'We Built This City,' a project completed by the Irish Architecture Foundation as part of Irish Design 2015. It is a lovely piece, something we can all be justifiably proud of. So many of us either emigrated ourselves, or had family or friends…
ContinueAdded by Brian Nolan on August 24, 2015 at 12:00pm — 4 Comments
The Way They Went -- How the Irish Got About In 1850
The Irish, while extremely fond of their horses, tended to walk everywhere, most of them not having the means nor the land to support a horse. Public transport was inefficient, to say the least. The railways had only just arrived in Ireland but were confined to short…
Added by Brian Nolan on August 14, 2015 at 7:30pm — 7 Comments
The Knife Sharpener
Every couple of years this man would come to Loughrea, County Galway and set up shop on the footpath outside Molloy's Harp Bar on Main Street. He was an itinerant blade grinder, or knife sharpener.
Folks would get wind he was in town and quickly a queue would…
ContinueAdded by Brian Nolan on June 2, 2015 at 6:30am — 6 Comments
ANZAC Day Centenary - 25th April, 2015
The centenary of ANZAC Day is approaching, (ANZAC Australian and New Zealand Armed Corps), which commemorates the anniversary of the first engagement of those southern hemisphere troops, at Gallipoli, Turkey in April…
Added by Brian Nolan on April 21, 2015 at 3:30pm — 1 Comment
Irish Famine-Era 'Farthing' Sells for $102.50
This farthing coin was recently sold on eBay for $102.50. When it was minted in 1842, as a trading token by James O'Flynn it was worth only a quarter of one penny. James O'Flyn(n) was listed under 'Linen and Woollen Drapers…
ContinueAdded by Brian Nolan on January 27, 2015 at 9:30am — 1 Comment
Ath-Bhlian Faoi Mhaise Daoibh! (Happy New Year to You!)
Count your blessings instead of your crosses.
Count your gains instead of your losses.
Count your joys instead of your woes.
Count your friends instead of your foes.
Count your smiles instead of your tears.
Count your courage instead of your fears.…
Added by Brian Nolan on December 31, 2014 at 5:30pm — 2 Comments
Burying Baby Jesus: A Galway Christmas Story
My dad, Guard John Murphy (Killimor, Ballinasloe) died in Our Lady’s Hospice (Harold’s Cross, Dublin) aged forty-four, leaving my mother, aged thirty-nine, with ten children aged two and a half to eighteen years old.
On Christmas Eve of 1945, we spent most…
ContinueAdded by Brian Nolan on December 24, 2014 at 4:00am — 5 Comments
Gold in Them There Hills - Tynagh, County Galway, Ireland
On a sunny afternoon in the early 1960s, a Canadian sea-plane touched down on the silvery-grey waters of Loughrea lake, taxied to a jetty and tied off. The children swimming at Long Point were distracted for a while but quickly returned to doggy-paddle and soccer on that…
Added by Brian Nolan on September 25, 2014 at 8:00am — 1 Comment
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