📖 Ancient Restoration

31 Oct 2021 19:07

Early 20th century Halloween.

📖 Ancient Restoration

31 Oct 2021 18:59

Oct 31: #Celtic holiday of Samhain, or "summer's end", is celebrated; a night where the dead are unleashed from the Otherworld to roam ours.

📖 Ancient Restoration

18 Aug 2021 19:32

A two-hour docu-drama on the murders and the trial can be seen on the TG4 Player:
https://bit.ly/3AJMruq

📖 Ancient Restoration

18 Aug 2021 19:25

The murders themselves were horrific, and the true culprits were never found.

On having the verdict translated, Seoighe pleaded "Níl mé ciontach", meaning "I am not guilty".

James Joyce called him a "bewildered old man, left over from a culture which is not ours, a deaf-mute before his judge ... a symbol of the Irish nation at the bar of public opinion."

"Táim ag imeacht." - the last words of Seoighe before his execution by hanging.

17 August 1882 - the brutal shootings and bludgeonings of John, Micheál, Brighid, Mairéad and Peigí Joyce.

📖 Ancient Restoration

18 Aug 2021 19:21

17th August 1882, five members of the Joyce family were murdered in Mám Trasna, Co. Mayo.

The ensuing prosecution of Maolra Seoighe, an innocent man, is infamous in legal history. Seoighe was executed for the murders as he could not defend himself in an English-speaking court.

📖 Ancient Restoration

27 Jun 2021 16:39

1900 photo of Youghal Strand in Cork. Youghal is situated on the estuary of the River Blackwater, in the past, was militarily and economically an important seaport town.

📖 Ancient Restoration

27 Jun 2021 16:27

Fr Browne’s image of a Traveller family in Saggart, South Dublin in 1925.

📖 Ancient Restoration

27 Jun 2021 16:20

Castletownshend, Cork in 1910.

Coloured and restored.

📖 Ancient Restoration

20 Jun 2021 14:23

The Baltimore captives included 33 adult women, 54 boys and girls and 20 adult men. At most three were eventually ransomed years later. The men mostly were consigned to be galley slaves, sometimes never setting foot on land again. The women and female children almost invariably were sold into sexual bondage. Adolescent males were often castrated and sometimes also raped, as is apparently still the fate of males enslaved in Afghanistan and other Islamic countries.

📖 Ancient Restoration

20 Jun 2021 14:10

Most of those abducted were part of an English settlement which had been established in the middle of a region that was part of the Ó Drisceóil clan territory. It was a part of the violent colonisation of that part of Ireland which had resulted in the victory of the English in the Nine Years War that ended with the Battle of Kinsale in 1601.

📖 Ancient Restoration

02 Apr 2021 15:38

April 1st 1914 Cumann na mBan was established in Wynn's Hotel, Dublin. Their chief aims were to:

Advance the cause of Irish liberty
Organise Irish women in the furtherance of that objective

The role they played was vital in achieving Irish independence.

📖 Ancient Restoration

02 Apr 2021 15:31

Tobernalt Holy Well in Sligo - A site of worship since the 5th century, Catholics risked their lives in Penal times to hear Mass said at this blessed well.

📖 Ancient Restoration

27 Feb 2021 17:53

February 1st is the Feast of Saint Brigid of Kildare (Cill Dara, church of the oak), one of Ireland's patron saints.

Known as "the Mary of the Gael", Brigid was born in Faughart/Fochart, north of Dundalk, County Louth to Brocca, a Pictish slave who was baptised by Saint Patrick. Brigid herself was thus born into slavery.

During her childhood, it is said she performed several miracles, such as healing and feeding the poor. One account details how she gave away all of her mother's butter store, only for it to be replaced thanks to Brigid's prayers.

Dubhthach, a chieftain of Leinster, was her father. He grew aggravated with her and took her to the King of Leinster, Crimthann mac Énnai, to sell her. While he was in conversation, Brigid gave away his sword which was adorned with jewelry to a beggar so that he could barter it for food. Crimthann recognised that this was a holy child he had been delivered, and instead convinced Dubhthach to grant her freedom.

📖 Ancient Restoration

14 Feb 2021 21:15

The enjoining of hands around symbols of fertility is impressed deeply in the Irish psyche. Whether it's the modern heart or ancient cord.

📖 Ancient Restoration

02 Jan 2021 23:17

The Irish nationalist slogan 'Tiocfaidh ár lá' (Our day will come) is a modern form of the prophetic expectation of Gaelic resistance.

📖 Ancient Restoration

31 Oct 2021 19:06

Akin to the Nazgul, Irish deathbringer fairy (fae) Dullahan is associated with Halloween:

“We ride the horses of Donn. Although we are alive, we are dead”

📖 Ancient Restoration

31 Oct 2021 18:48

Though Samhain, the precursor to Halloween, is considered to be a Celtic festival, the Mound of Hostages at Tara, which aligns with the rising sun at Samhain, is thought to be 5,000 years old, far predating Celtic inhabitation, and hints at more primordial roots.

📖 Ancient Restoration

18 Aug 2021 19:30

'Most vulnerable in this bilingual world was the Irish monoglot, a category that the sceptical state often refused to believe even existed: denying any knowledge of English was seen by many officials as a strategy to subvert the judicial process.'
https://archive.is/FQxzQ

📖 Ancient Restoration

18 Aug 2021 19:23

Seoighe was confused and upset that he was to be hanged, but only spoke Irish. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, John Spencer bribed three eyewitnesses, and the Crown Prosecutor withheld key evidence. The media characterised the suspects as savages, with The Spectator paper describing: "a class of peasants who are scarcely civilised beings, and approach far nearer to savages than any other white men ... and in the discipline of life no higher than Maories or other Polynesians."

Pat Casey and Pat Joyce were also executed. Seoighe was a father of five children.

📖 Ancient Restoration

16 Aug 2021 16:08

A ‘poc’ is an Irish he-goat, & at Puck Fair in Co. Kerry, in early August, a goat is crowned king by a young queen, & then worshipped over 3 days of festivities. Perhaps linked to Lughnasa, it is hoped the goat as a symbol of fertility will bring a good harvest.

📖 Ancient Restoration

27 Jun 2021 16:33

1900 photo featuring pig herding on Friar Street in Youghal, Co. Cork.

📖 Ancient Restoration

27 Jun 2021 16:23

Travellers at Cahirmee horse fair, Cork in 1954.

📖 Ancient Restoration

27 Jun 2021 16:18

A family of survivors from the Lusitania in Cobh, Cork.

RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner that was sunk on 7 May 1915 by a German U-boat 11 miles (18 km) off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 passengers and crew.

📖 Ancient Restoration

20 Jun 2021 14:11

The Sack of Baltimore, as it became known, had a significance beyond Ireland as it was one of a centuries-old series of such raids by north African slavers on coastal towns and sea-going vessels. Those abducted were part of an estimated million or more Europeans who became slaves under the Islamic Ottoman Empire and its north African allies mostly between 1550 and 1750.

📖 Ancient Restoration

20 Jun 2021 14:07

ON THIS DAY: 20 JUNE 1631: A village in Ireland was taken into slavery by north African raiders.

On that date in 1631, north African corsairs, or pirates, raided the village of Baltimore on the west Cork coast and took at least 107 of the villagers captive to be sold as slaves in Algiers.

📖 Ancient Restoration

02 Apr 2021 15:32

The Caves of Kesh, Sligo, Ireland.

The ancient Irish believed this place a gateway to the Otherworld and buried their dead inside to help guide them to the afterlife.

📖 Ancient Restoration

02 Apr 2021 15:30

A pair of horses weather out the cold at Easky, County Sligo.

📖 Ancient Restoration

14 Feb 2021 21:15

'Meeting On The Turret Stairs' - Frederic William Burton, 1864

#ValentinesDay #IrishArt

📖 Ancient Restoration

01 Feb 2021 16:59

1 Feb: Feastday of St Brigid (†524), abbess & founder of Kildare, one of three patron saints of Ireland. Her devotional names - 'lilium inter spinas' (a lily amongst thorns) - Muire na nGael (Mary of the Gaels).

📖 Ancient Restoration

02 Jan 2021 22:42

English expansion into Ireland in the 12th c. encouraged a revival in Irish 'secular paganism'. The Bards predicted the rise of a liberator.