A pamphlet on the event, titled “The wonderful discovery of witches in the county of Lancaster” became a best seller
Almost 4000 years ago the High King of Ireland, King Luaghaidh Lamhfada, founded An Aonach Tailteann. The festival was to honour and celebrate his deceased mother, Queen of Tailte, and as a tribute to the dead. On the 1st of August, kings, queens, and noblemen travelled from all over the country to watch the games […]
Brutality
“Ireland has wronged no man, has injured no land, has sought no dominion over others. Ireland is treated today among other nations of the world as if she was a convicted criminal. If it be treason to fight against such an unnatural fate as this, then I am proud to be a rebel and shall […]
Have you ever heard the phrase “lose the battle but win the war”? The opposite happened to the Roman triumvir Mark Antony on this day in 30BC. Having been defeated at the Battle of Actium, Anthony and Cleopatra retreated to Alexandria, which was soon besieged by the forces of Octavian. For the whole month of […]
The British statesman, Thomas Cromwell, was beheaded on this day in 1540. It was a messy affair – the executioner was drunk (some say, because Cromwell’s enemies spiked his drink to make the execution worse) and it took three swings of the axe to remove Cromwell’s head. It was a spectacular fall from grace: Cromwell […]
By July 29th, 1848, most of Ireland had been truly devastated by the Great starvation. Outside of Ireland, Europe was being convulsed with revolutions. In France, King Louis-Philippe was overthrown, to make way for the second republic. Revolutions seeking the vote, and liberalisation, broke out in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, and elsewhere. Inspired by these […]
Born in 1550, Aodh Mór Ó Néill (Hugh O’Neill) came from a line of the and the successors to the Chief’s of the O’Neills. He was the second son of Feardorcha Ó Néill and grandson of Conn O’Neill, the first Earl of Tyrne. At the age of nine he became a ward of Giles Hovenden, […]
Peter O’Neill was born in Coona, Cork, a descendant of the O’Neil clan of Co. Tyrone. He attended a hedge school in Inch, studied classics at Kilworth, and then began ecclesiastical studies at the Irish College in Paris, eventually teaching Celtic language and literature there. An exceedingly popular curate, he was appointed Parish Priest of […]
Ó Néill (1585 – 6 November 1649) was a Gaelic Irish soldier and one of the most famous of the O’Neill dynasty of Ulster in Ireland. O’Neill left Ireland at a young age and began the formal continental military career serving in the Spanish army. He was a brilliant military strategist and tactician. With the […]
ON THIS DAY: 30th May, Feast day of Joan Of Arc “You Englishmen, who have no right in this Kingdom of France, the King of Heaven sends you word and warning, by me Jehanne the Maid, to abandon your forts and depart into your own country, or I will raise such a war-cry against you as […]
A Marist priest and Irish historian, he is known for his writings and his rejection of revisionist Irish history and historians. He relayed in an interview with History Ireland that he felt stifled in UCD and ironically, it was in Cambridge, which was originally the origin of revisionism, that he found the data and evidence […]