'Paddy and Paddy'

This is my first Blog post, so I'll start with an introduction, and future blogs will just be about the episodes and individuals

Nation of Storytellers Podcast

I have started a podcast that aims to capture the stories and storytellers of Ireland, in the hope that it…

Ever wonder who started the tradition of welcoming in the new year in Times Square? Well, it was a Famine Irish immigrant, Galway man Patrick Gilmore who was the most well-known Irish immigrant of his day and a famous person, but today sadly, Gilmore and his contributions to American music are…

I took this photograph in Galway around 1982. 

The two, twin, cozy cottages always caught my eye, when I was headed out after…

(We would ordinarily would not reprint an entire article from another publication, but I'm sure our friends at the Irish American News won't object to us doing it in this case. Please if you can, help this cause. These ancestors call out for the support of every Irishman and Irish-American from across the…

I know that many of you have been to Galway (or intend visiting) and I…

National Pilgrim Paths Day is a new Easter Festival based on Ireland’s dense network of medieval pilgrim walking routes. This new heritage themed event is organised by the local communities adjacent to each of our principal penitential routes and is aimed at raising…

The Gods were smiling on us that day, long ago when we travelled out to the windswept island of Sceilg Mhichíl (or Skellig Michael), eleven kilometres off the coast of Kerry.  What a special place!  Sacred. Unique. Awesome.

It is not known when the monks first arrived on the…

I would love all of you to see a very recent film piece about my Aunt Winifred.  Here she is for a posed photograph with her mother (Sarah Cassidy Carney) and her two sisters, Mabel and Maud, who later become nuns.  She is standing between her two sisters.  Winnie also had four brothers:  Alfred, Ernest,…

My aunt Winifred Carney was present with James Connolly on Moore Street.

I live in the United States and I am now able to purchase a Bond to help purchase Moore Street.  The following video…

(HOW WE CAN HELP: http://www.1916moorestreetbond.com/eventsandgatherings)

I began to write about Saving Dublin's Moore Street and found I could not write it any better than Robin Mary Heany has, taken from this site:…

If you're reading this, you're probably proud of your Irish Heritage and rightly so. Honoring your family's roots is nothing to laugh at. There are several ways to do this, of course. Varying from studying the Irish language, playing Irish music, listening to Irish music, and other creative…

While in Ireland during what laughingly passed as a summer in 2015 I spent time doing maintenance at a graveyard. Three of us spent a few hours mowing and strimming Rath Graveyard near Ballyvaughan in County Clare. Well, I did the mowing and my companions hogged the strimmers. There was only a limited area where mowing…

I found this website a while back and was able to note the location of several interesting monuments and find them while I was in Ireland in June. This is by no means all the war memorials in Ireland, far from it, but it's an attempt to catalog them.

The site…

“The Bog Road” as it is know is a three mile stretch of road between Athlone and the village of Clonown. The village has the unusual distinction of not having a pub - for Ireland this is quite an anomaly!…

The Fadden More Psalter, a book of psalms as old as the Book of Kells, was found by turf cutters in a Tipperary bog in 2006.  It is written in Latin and includes illuminated letters and other decoration.  Dr. Eamonn Kelly and his team at The National Museum of Ireland dated the book to around 800 AD, and spent five years restoring it. 

The find was very exciting to Irish…

Ancient Ireland had many forested areas and when felled the roots remained.  Those sites are mainly the boglands of today.

The bogwood was easiest detected in these bogs in the early morning as it was known that the morning dew didn’t rest on the section of the…

On Wednesday, May 6th 2015, we were joined by two special guests: World renowned archaeologist and "bog bodies" specialist Dr. Eamon…

Turf cutters have unearthed more than home heating fuel from Ireland's bogs.  Bog bodies - naturally preserved human remains - are a fascinating study.  The chemical composition of the bog has antibiotic properties which kill the bacteria that would normally break down the flesh.  The…