ARTHUR GUINNESS, THE MOST FAMOUS IRISH BREWER

Arthur Guinness

Today, The Grandma is preparing New Year's Eve. She has invited her closest friends Claire Fontaine, Joseph de Ca'th Lon, Tonyi Tamaki, Jordi Santanyí and Tina Picotes to her home to say goodbye to 2019 and welcome 2020.

She has prepared a big dinner with local products and their favourite beer, Guinness. This Irish beer takes its name of its founder, Arthur Guinness, an Irish brewer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. On a day like today in 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum and started brewing Guinness. It was the beginning of a successful business that has become in one of the most important beer trademarks around the world.

More information: Guinness

Arthur Guinness (24 September 1725-23 January 1803) was an Irish brewer and the founder of the Guinness brewery business and family. He was also an entrepreneur and philanthropist.

At 27, in 1752, Guinness's godfather Arthur Price, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Cashel, bequeathed him £100 in his will. Guinness invested the money and in 1755 had a brewery at Leixlip, just 17 km from Dublin. In 1759, Guinness went to the city and set up his own business. He took a 9,000-year lease on the 16,000 m2 brewery at St. James's Gate from the descendants of Sir Mark Rainsford for an annual rent of £45.

Guinness's flowery red signature is still copied on every label of bottled Guinness.

Arthur Guinness's parents Richard and Elizabeth were both the children of Catholic tenant farmers in Dublin and Kildare. Richard's family were descendants of the McCartan Lords Of Kinelarty and Iveagh plus Gaelic Kings see McCartan family of County Down. Recent DNA evidence however suggests descent from the McCartans, another County Down clan, whose spiritual home of Kinelarty included the townland of Guiness near Ballynahinch, County Down.

Guinness's place and date of birth are the subject of speculation. His gravestone in Oughterard, County Kildare states clearly that he died on 23 January 1803, aged 78 years, indicating that he was born in 1724 or very early in 1725. There is no proof of the date of 28 September 1725 chosen by the Guinness company in 1991, apparently to end speculation about his birthdate. The place of birth was perhaps his mother's home at Read homestead at Ardclough, County Kildare. 

Guinness beer & brewery, St. James's Gate

In 2009 it was claimed he was born in nearby Celbridge where his parents lived in 1725 and where his father worked as an agent for the cleric Dr. Arthur Price, and may -or may not- have brewed ale for the household. In his will, Dr. Price left £100 each to his servant Arthur and his father in 1752. Starting his first brewery in Leixlip in 1755, Arthur then bought a long lease of an adjacent site from George Bryan of Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania in 1756, that was developed as investment property.

In 1761 he married Olivia Whitmore in St. Mary's Church, Dublin, and they had 21 children, 10 of whom lived to adulthood. Olivia's father was William Whitmore, a grocer in Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin, and her mother was Mary Grattan from Drummin House, Carbury, County Kildare. Olivia also brought a dowry of £1,000.

From 1764 they lived at Beaumont House, which he had built on a 21 ha farm, which is now a part of Beaumont Convalescent Home, behind the main part of Beaumont Hospital, between Artane, Santry and Coolock in north County Dublin. His landlord was Charles Gardiner. The townland name of Kilmore was renamed by Arthur as Beaumont, meaning beautiful hill, and the later Beaumont parish copied the name.

From March 1798 he lived at Mountjoy Square in Dublin, which was then in the process of being built in the style of elegant Georgian architecture, where his landlord was Gardiner's son Luke. Three of his sons were also brewers, and his other descendants eventually included missionaries, politicians, and authors.

Guinness was a protestant Christian and pro-British Unionist. He died in Dublin and was buried in his mother's family plot at Oughterard, County Kildare in January 1803.

More information: Irish Central I & II

Guinness was a committed Unionist and strongly opposed Irish nationalism. Guinness supported Henry Grattan in the 1780s and 1790s, not least because Grattan wanted to reduce the tax on beer. He was one of the four brewers' guild representatives on Dublin Corporation from the 1760s until his death. Like Grattan, Guinness was publicly in favour of Catholic Emancipation from 1793, but he was not a supporter of the United Irishmen during the 1798 rebellion and was against Irish home-rule, leading to accusations he was spying for the British. In general, the Guinness family became Irish Unionists and Arthur Guinness accepted the system, with Arthur directly opposed to any movement toward Irish independence and wanting Ireland to remain under British control.

Guinness leased a brewery in Leixlip in 1755, brewing ale. Five years later he left his younger brother Richard in charge of that enterprise and moved on to another in St. James' Gate, Dublin, at the end of 1759.

The 9,000-year lease he signed for the brewery is presently displayed in the floor at St. James' Gate, effective from 31 December 1759.

By 1767 he was elected Master of the Dublin Corporation of Brewers. His first actual sales of porter were listed on tax (excise) data from 1778, and it seems that other Dublin brewers had experimented in brewing porter beer from the 1760s. From the 1780s his second son Arthur (1768–1855) worked at his side and eventually became the senior partner in the brewery from 1803. He commented on this in a letter of 1790:

...one of my sons is grown up to be able to assist me in this Business, or I wd not have attempted it, tho' prompted by a demand of providing for Ten Children now living out of one & twenty born to us, & more likely yet to come...

His major achievement was in expanding his brewery in 1797–99. Thereafter he brewed only porter and employed members of the Purser family, Moravians from Tewkesbury who had brewed porter in London until 1776. The Pursers became partners in the brewery for most of the 19th century.

By his death in 1803 the annual brewery output was over 20,000 barrels. Subsequently, Arthur and/or his beer was nicknamed Uncle Arthur in Dublin.

More information: Connolly Cove

I'm an early riser. I work out really hard.

I push myself; I get my job done, and at the end of the day,

there's a Guinness waiting for me.

Jason Momoa

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN BY J. JOYCE

James Joyce

Today, The Grandma has received a present. Claire Fontaine has offered her one of the oldest editions of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which was issued on a day like today in 1916.  

The Grandma is a big fan of Irish literature in general and James Joyce in particular. Joyce lived in a convulsed age for Ireland and his novels are a clear reflex of those years.

A writer is not only a person who creates new realities, but also a person who can explain the current history using the tools that literature offers. Before Claire arrived, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 57).

More information: Adjectives

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce. A Künstlerroman in a modernist style, it traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to Daedalus, the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology. Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his self-exile from Ireland to Europe. The work uses techniques that Joyce developed more fully in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

A Portrait began life in 1904 as Stephen Hero -a projected 63-chapter autobiographical novel in a realistic style. After 25 chapters, Joyce abandoned Stephen Hero in 1907 and set to reworking its themes and protagonist into a condensed five-chapter novel, dispensing with strict realism and making extensive use of free indirect speech that allows the reader to peer into Stephen's developing consciousness.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

American modernist poet Ezra Pound had the novel serialised in the English literary magazine The Egoist in 1914 and 1915, and published as a book in 1916 by B. W. Huebsch of New York. The publication of A Portrait and the short story collection Dubliners (1914) earned Joyce a place at the forefront of literary modernism.

Born into a middle-class family in Dublin, Ireland, James Joyce (1882–1941) excelled as a student, graduating from University College, Dublin, in 1902. He moved to Paris to study medicine, but soon gave it up.

He returned to Ireland at his family's request as his mother was dying of cancer. Despite her pleas, the impious Joyce and his brother Stanislaus refused to make confession or take communion, and when she passed into a coma they refused to kneel and pray for her. After a stretch of failed attempts to get published and launch his own newspaper, Joyce then took jobs teaching, singing and reviewing books.

Joyce made his first attempt at a novel, Stephen Hero, in early 1904. That June he saw Nora Barnacle for the first time walking along Nassau Street. Their first date was on June 16, the same date that his novel Ulysses takes place. Almost immediately, Joyce and Nora were infatuated with each other and they bonded over their shared disapproval of Ireland and the Church.

More information: James Joyce. From Dubliners to Ulysses

Nora and Joyce went to continental Europe, first staying in Zürich before settling for ten years in Trieste, then in Austria-Hungary, where he taught English.

In March 1905, Joyce was transferred to the Berlitz School In Trieste, presumably because of threats of spies in Austria. There Nora gave birth to their children, George in 1905 and Lucia in 1907, and Joyce wrote fiction, signing some of his early essays and stories Stephen Daedalus. The short stories he wrote made up the collection Dubliners (1914), which took about eight years to be published due to its controversial nature.

James Joyce & Nora Barnacle

While waiting on Dubliners to be published, Joyce reworked the core themes of the novel Stephen Hero he had begun in Ireland in 1904 and abandoned in 1907 into A Portrait, published in 1916, a year after he had moved back to Zürich in the midst of the First World War.

At the request of its editors, Joyce submitted a work of philosophical fiction entitled A Portrait of the Artist to the Irish literary magazine Dana on 7 January 1904. Dana's editor, W. K. Magee, rejected it, telling Joyce, I can't print what I can't understand.

On his 22nd birthday, 2 February 1904, Joyce began a realist autobiographical novel, Stephen Hero, which incorporated aspects of the aesthetic philosophy expounded in A Portrait. He worked on the book until mid-1905 and brought the manuscript with him when he moved to Trieste that year. Though his main attention turned to the stories that made up Dubliners, Joyce continued work on Stephen Hero. At 914 manuscript pages, Joyce considered the book about half-finished, having completed 25 of its 63 intended chapters.

In September 1907, however, he abandoned this work, and began a complete revision of the text and its structure, producing what became A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. By 1909 the work had taken shape and Joyce showed some of the draft chapters to Ettore Schmitz, one of his language students, as an exercise. Schmitz, himself a respected writer, was impressed and with his encouragement Joyce continued work on the book.

More information: Joyce Museo Trieste

In 1911 Joyce flew into a fit of rage over the continued refusals by publishers to print Dubliners and threw the manuscript of Portrait into the fire. It was saved by a family fire brigade including his sister Eileen. Chamber Music, a book of Joyce's poems, was published in 1907.

Joyce showed, in his own words, a scrupulous meanness in his use of materials for the novel. He recycled the two earlier attempts at explaining his aesthetics and youth, A Portrait of the Artist and Stephen Hero, as well as his notebooks from Trieste concerning the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas; they all came together in five carefully paced chapters.

James Joyce

Stephen Hero is written from the point of view of an omniscient third-person narrator, but in Portrait Joyce adopts the free indirect style, a change that reflects the moving of the narrative centre of consciousness firmly and uniquely onto Stephen. Persons and events take their significance from Stephen, and are perceived from his point of view. Characters and places are no longer mentioned simply because the young Joyce had known them. Salient details are carefully chosen and fitted into the aesthetic pattern of the novel.

In 1913 the Irish poet W. B. Yeats recommended Joyce's work to the avant-garde American poet Ezra Pound, who was assembling an anthology of verse. Pound wrote to Joyce, and in 1914 Joyce submitted the first chapter of the unfinished Portrait to Pound, who was so taken with it that he pressed to have the work serialised in the London literary magazine The Egoist. Joyce hurried to complete the novel, and it appeared in The Egoist in twenty-five installments from 2 February 1914 to 1 September 1915.

There was difficulty finding a British publisher for the finished novel, so Pound arranged for its publication by an American publishing house, B. W. Huebsch, which issued it on 29 December 1916. The Egoist Press republished it in the United Kingdom on 12 February 1917 and Jonathan Cape took over its publication in 1924. In 1964 Viking Press issued a corrected version overseen by Chester Anderson. Garland released a copy text edition by Hans Walter Gabler in 1993.

More information: The James Joyce Centre

The novel mixes third-person narrative with free indirect speech, which allows both identification with and distance from Stephen. The narrator refrains from judgement. The omniscient narrator of the earlier Stephen Hero informs the reader as Stephen sets out to write some pages of sorry verse, while Portrait gives only Stephen's attempts, leaving the evaluation to the reader.

The novel is written primarily as a third-person narrative with minimal dialogue until the final chapter. This chapter includes dialogue-intensive scenes alternately involving Stephen, Davin and Cranly. An example of such a scene is the one in which Stephen posits his complex Thomist aesthetic theory in an extended dialogue. Joyce employs first-person narration for Stephen's diary entries in the concluding pages of the novel, perhaps to suggest that Stephen has finally found his own voice and no longer needs to absorb the stories of others.

James Joyce

Joyce fully employs the free indirect style to demonstrate Stephen's intellectual development from his childhood, through his education, to his increasing independence and ultimate exile from Ireland as a young man.

The style of the work progresses through each of its five chapters, as the complexity of language and Stephen's ability to comprehend the world around him both gradually increase. The book's opening pages communicate Stephen's first stirrings of consciousness when he is a child. Throughout the work language is used to describe indirectly the state of mind of the protagonist and the subjective effect of the events of his life.

The writing style is notable also for Joyce's omission of quotation marks: he indicates dialogue by beginning a paragraph with a dash, as is commonly used in French, Spanish or Russian publications.

Towards the beginning of the novel, Joyce depicts the young Stephen's growing consciousness, which is said to be a condensed version of the arc of Dedalus' entire life, as he continues to grow and form his identity. Stephen's growth as an individual character is important because through him Joyce laments Irish society's tendency to force individuals to conform to types, which some say marks Stephen as a modernist character. Themes that run through Joyce's later novels find expression there.

More information: The British Library

As Stephen transitions into adulthood, he leaves behind his Catholic religious identity, which is closely tied to the national identity of Ireland. His rejection of this dual identity is also a rejection of constraint and an embrace of freedom in identity. Furthermore, the references to Dr Faustus throughout the novel conjure up something demonic in Stephen renouncing his Catholic faith. When Stephen stoutly refuses to serve his Easter duty later in the novel, his tone mirrors characters like Faust and Lucifer in its rebelliousness.

The myth of Daedalus and Icarus has parallels in the structure of the novel, and gives Stephen his surname, as well as the epigraph containing a quote from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Stephen's surname being connected to Daedalus may also call to mind the theme of going against the status quo, as Daedalus defies the King of Crete.

Stephen’s struggle to find identity in the novel parallels the Irish struggle for independence during the early twentieth century. He rejects any outright nationalism, and is often prejudiced toward those that use Hiberno-English, which was the marked speech patterns of the Irish rural and lower-class. However, he is also heavily concerned with his country’s future and understands himself as an Irishman, which then leads him to question how much of his identity is tied up in said nationalism.

Download A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture 

ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. 

The English reading public explains the reason why. 

James Joyce

BRIAN O'DRISCOLL: IRISH COURAGE IN RUGBY

Brian O'Driscoll

Brian Gerard O'Driscoll (1979) is an Irish former professional rugby union player. Registered at University College Dublin R.F.C., he played at outside centre for the Irish provincial team Leinster and for Ireland. O'Driscoll was born in Dublin from a family steeped in rugby. His father, Frank, played two games for Ireland and an uncle, Barry, won four caps. 

O'Driscoll is the second most-capped player in rugby union history. He's the highest try scorer of all time in Irish Rugby, the 8th-highest try scorer in international rugby union history, and the highest scoring centre of all time.

He holds the Six Nations record for most tries scored with 26. He has scored the most Heineken Cup tries (30) for an Irishman. O'Driscoll was chosen as Player of the Tournament in the 2006, 2007 and 2009 Six Nations Championships. He made his Ireland under-21 debut in February 1999, and eventually gained four caps.

In 1999, O'Driscoll was selected for the senior squad and was on the bench for a match against Italy, although he did not play. He won his first Test cap at age 20 on 12 June 1999 in a 46–10 loss to Australia in Brisbane as part of the tour of Australia. O'Driscoll played for Ireland before he played for the senior Leinster team.

In 2000, O'Driscoll scored a Hat-trick of tries in a Six Nations Championship victory against France in Paris, propelling Ireland to their first win in Paris since 1972. His popularity in Ireland was expressed by supporters wearing T-shirts bearing the motto In BOD We Trust.

In 2002, O'Driscoll was handed the captaincy for the first time in Ireland's 18–9 win over Australia, the first Irish victory over the Wallabies since 1979. In 2003, following the international retirement of long-time Ireland captain Keith Wood, O'Driscoll was awarded the captaincy on a permanent basis. In that year, he led Ireland to second place in the Six Nations Championship. This was followed by Triple Crowns in 2004, Ireland's first crown since 1985, 2006 and 2007. In 2004, O'Driscoll captained Ireland to a 17–12 victory over South Africa, the first Irish win over the Springboks since 1965.

More information: Brian O'Driscoll Official Website

In 2009, he was again selected as captain, leading Ireland to win the Triple Crown, Six Nations Championship and their first Grand Slam in 61 years. He scored a try in every match except one, culminating in a 17–15 victory in Cardiff in which he again scored a try and was the RBS man of the match. On 27 March 2009, he was named as player of the 2009 Six Nations Championship, winning the fans' online poll. In May 2009, he was named the Bord Gáis Energy IRUPA Players' Player of the Year for the past season.

In the 2011 Six Nations Championship, O'Driscoll's 47th minute try against England, took him past Ian Smith's 78-year-old record of 24 tries to become the leading Championship try scorer of all time with 25 Tries. The same day, he tied John Smit's International Captaincy caps record of 75.

In his last international match, the finale of the 2014 Six Nations Championship on 15 March 2014, he and the Irish team beat France in Paris for only the second time in 42 years, crowning Ireland the 2014 Six Nations Championship champions. In the post-match interview, an emotional O'Driscoll remarked he could not have wished to finish his career in a better way.

More information: Irish Rugby

 Team sports are very important for shaping personalities. 

It's important that kids understand the mentality behind playing team sports and playing for one another and playing with friends. 

Brian O'Driscoll

FIONNGHUALA MANON FLANAGAN: IRISH PERSONALITY

Fionnghuala Manon "Fionnula" Flanagan

Fionnghuala Manon "Fionnula" Flanagan (1941) is an Irish actress and political activist. Flanagan was born and raised in Dublin, the daughter of Rosanna, née McGuirk, and Terence Niall Flanagan. Her father was an Irish Army officer and Communist who had fought in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. Although her parents were not Irish speakers, they wanted Fionnula and her four siblings to learn the Irish language, thus she grew up speaking English and Irish fluently. She was educated in Switzerland and England. She trained extensively at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and travelled throughout Europe before settling in Los Angeles, California in early 1968.

Flanagan came to prominence in Ireland in 1965 as a result of her role as Máire in the Telefís Éireann production of the Irish language play An Triail, for which she received the Jacob's Award in Dublin for her outstanding performance. With her portrayal of Gerty McDowell in the 1967 film version of Ulysses, Flanagan established herself as one of the foremost interpreters of James Joyce. She made her Broadway debut in 1968 in Brian Friel's Lovers, then appeared in The Incomparable Max (1971) and such Joycean theatrical projects as Ulysses in Nighttown, as Molly Bloom, and James Joyce's Women (1977). It was subsequently filmed in 1983, with Flanagan both producing and playing all six main female roles (Joyce's wife, Nora Barnacle, as well as fictional characters Molly Bloom and Gerty McDowell).

More information: Irish America

A familiar presence in American television, Flanagan has appeared in several made-for-TV movies and she made guest appearances in three of the Star Trek spin-offs.

She appeared in such films as The Others opposite Nicole Kidman and with Helen Mirren in Some Mother's Son, written and directed by Terry George, as the militantly supportive mother of a Provisional Irish Republican Army hunger striker in 1981. Subsequently, she spoke at a memorial hosted by Sinn Féin at the Citywest Building in Dublin for Irish republicans and their kin who were killed during the latest installment of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Flanagan and her husband, since 1972, Dr. Garrett O'Connor, an Irish nationalist from Dublin, are known to host parties at their Hollywood Hills home for people in the Irish community. In July 2009, she joined Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams for a series of lectures across the USA supporting Irish unity. In October 2011, she announced her support for Sinn Féin politician Martin McGuinness in his unsuccessful bid in Ireland's 2011 presidential election.

I'm Irish and always will be, but America has taught me so much. 

Maybe it's here in the U.S. that we find a healing, for in the broader melting pot we get to look at some of these self-destructive attributes that we bring to bear upon our own quarrels and begin to solve them 

in ways other than just splitting apart. 

Fionnula Flanagan

ERNEST T. S. WALTON, AN IRISH NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS

Ernest Walton

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton (1903-1995) was an Irish physicist and Nobel laureate for his work with John Cockcroft with atom-smashing experiments done at Cambridge University in the early 1930s, and so became the first person in history to artificially split the atom. 

He was born in Abbeyside, Dungarvan, County Waterford to a Methodist minister father, Rev John Walton and Anna Sinton. In those days a general clergyman's family moved once every three years, and this practice carried Ernest and his family, while he was a small child, to Rathkeale, County Limerick, where his mother died, and to County Monaghan. 

 

He attended day schools in counties Down and Tyrone, and at Wesley College Dublin before becoming a boarder at Methodist College Belfast in 1915, where he excelled in science and mathematics.

More information: Nobel Prize

In 1922 Walton won scholarships to Trinity College, Dublin for the study of mathematics and science. He was awarded bachelor's and master's degrees from Trinity in 1926 and 1927, respectively. During these years at college, Walton received numerous prizes for excellence in physics and mathematics, seven prizes in all, including the Foundation Scholarship in 1924. Following graduation he was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and was accepted as a research student at Trinity College, Cambridge, under the supervision of Sir Ernest Rutherford, Director of Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory. At the time there were four Nobel Prize laureates on the staff at the Cavendish lab and a further five were to emerge, including Walton and John Cockcroft. Walton was awarded his PhD in 1931 and remained at Cambridge as a researcher until 1934.

During the early 1930s Walton and John Cockcroft collaborated to build an apparatus that split the nuclei of lithium atoms by bombarding them with a stream of protons accelerated inside a high-voltage tube  of 700 kilovolts. The splitting of the lithium nuclei produced helium nuclei. This was experimental verification of theories about atomic structure that had been proposed earlier by Rutherford, George Gamow, and others. The successful apparatus, a type of particle accelerator now called the Cockcroft-Walton generator, helped to usher in an era of particle-accelerator-based experimental nuclear physics. It was this research at Cambridge in the early 1930s that won Walton and Cockcroft the Nobel Prize in physics in 1951.

Walton was associated with the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies for over 40 years, serving long periods on the board of the School of Cosmic Physics and on the Council of the Institute. Following the 1952 death of John J. Nolan, the inaugural chairman of the School of Cosmic Physics, Walton assumed the role, and served in that position until 1960, when he was succeeded by John H. Poole.

More information: Irish Central

A linear accelerator has the advantage that no magnet is required 

and that its cost should not rise much more steeply than 

with the energy of the particles required. 

Ernest Walton

WHY IS 1916 AN IMPORTANT DATE IN IRISH HISTORY?

Easter Monday, 1916

For hundreds of years the Irish people had suffered greatly under English rule. There had been many unsuccessful attempts to defeat the English. 

On Easter Monday 1916, a few hundred men and woman took over key buildings in Dublin City. A proclamation was read outside the General Post Office in O’Connell Street, declaring Ireland’s right to freedom. 

It was like a Greek tragedy. The leaders were mostly poets, thinkers, men of culture. They hoped for a miracle but they must have known before they marched out that they couldn’t win. Padraig Pearse, one of the leaders, forecast his own death in his poem A Vision. He drew his strength to go on partly from a religious belief in the power of blood sacrifice such as that of Jesus Christ on Calvary. Events proved him right. 

More information: Easter 1916

The majority of the people in 1916 were no longer oppressed. They didn’t want the trauma of a war. They knew that Home Rule, regional Government such as Wales and Scotland have, was a certainly as soon as the First World War was over. Farmers had won the right to own their land, there was religious freedom and the Irish language and culture were experiencing a tremendous revival. 

At first the Easter Rising, as it is now called, was as unsuccessful as all previous risings. Within a week the leaders had surrendered and it all seemed to be over. Then the executions began. As fifteen leaders were executed in ones and twos at intervals of days, the people grew shocked and angry. Nationalist feeling was awakened where it had been dormant. There was no looking back until Independence was achieved in 1921.

 Source: Why do the Irish? by Fiana Griffin

I am come of the seed of the people, the people that sorrow;
Who have no treasure but hope,
No riches laid up but a memory of an ancient glory,
My mother bore me in bondage, in bondage my mother was born,
I am of the blood of serfs;
The children with whom I have played, 

the men and women with whom I have eaten
Have had masters over them, have been under the lash of masters,
and though gentle, have served churls.

Padraig Pearse

WHY ARE THE IRISH SO HAPPY?

Irish folk, Irish happiness

The Bonds have returned to Dublin to continue their English exam preparation. Eli Bond continues reading her beautiful Fiana Griffin's book Why do the Irish?

The Irish are the happiest people in the EC, according to a survey carried out a few years ago.

The happiness of the Irish often puzzles visitors who can’t see many objective reasons for great happiness in the State of the nation.

Both the troubled past of the Irish and their religious beliefs have taught them not to look for happiness in material success or possessions although they have begun to do so.

The majority of the population are Catholics and they have been taught that the main purpose of this life is to qualify for a good place in the next life and as a poor oppressed people they learnt to find most pleasure in the entertainment provided by each other’s company.

The Irish have a philosophical, humorous acceptance of the misfortunes of life, summed up by the familiar phrase ah "sure, it could be worse".

Source: Why do the Irish? by Fiana Griffin

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face
and rains fall soft upon your fields

and until we meet again.
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

Irish blessing

THE BONDS IN DROICHEAD ÁTHA, CONTAE LÚ

The Bonds in Proleek Dolmen, Contae Lú

The Bonds are still in Ireland. They arrived last month and they are preparing their Cambridge Exams in the Irish capital. Ireland is a catholic nation and this week is Easter, a very important festivity for the Catholic community. This is the reason because of the family has decided to take some free days and enjoy this festivity visiting some of the most beautiful places of the green island. They are going to enjoy holidays during four days and after they are going to continue their exams preparations. Today, they are visiting Contae Lú. 

Contae Lú or County Louth is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Leinster and is part of the Border Region. It is named after the village of Louth. Louth County Council is the local authority for the county.

County Louth is colloquially known as the Wee County as it is Ireland's smallest county by area. It is the 18th-largest in terms of population. It is the smallest of Leinster’s 12 counties by size and the sixth-largest by population.

More information: Comhairle Contae Lú

Despite its fairly average total population, Louth is the second most densely populated county in Ireland behind Dublin, and the fourth on the island of Ireland, due to its small size.

County Louth is named after the village of Louth, which in turn is named after Lugh, a god of the ancient Irish. Historically, the placename has had various spellings; Lugmad, Lughmhaigh, and Lughmhadh. Lú is the modern simplified spelling.

The Bonds in Mellifont Abbey, Contae Lú

The county is steeped in myth, legend and history, and is a setting in the Táin Bó Cúailnge. Later it saw the influence of the Vikings as seen in the name of Carlingford Lough. They also established a longphort at Annagassan in the ninth century. At this time Louth consisted of three sub-kingdoms each subject to separate over-kingdoms: Conaille (Ulaidh); Fir Rois (Airgialla); and, the Fir Arda Ciannachta (Midhe). The whole area became part of the O'Carroll Kingdom of Airgialla (Oriel) early in the 12th century.

A number of historic sites are in the county, including religious sites at Monasterboice, Mellifont Abbey and the St Mary Magdalene Dominican Friary.

More information: Ireland.com

The Normans occupied the Louth area in the 1180s, and it became known as English Oriel, to distinguish it from the remainder, Irish Oriel, which remained in Irish hands. The latter became the McMahon lordship of Oriel of Monaghan.

In the early 14th century, the Scottish army of Edward Bruce was repulsed from Drogheda. Edward was finally defeated, losing his claim to the High Kingship of Ireland along with his life, in the Battle of Faughart near Dundalk, by a chiefly local force led by John de Bermingham.

In 1189 AD, a royal charter was granted to Dundalk after a Norman nobleman named Bertram de Verdun erected a manor house at Castletown Mount. Later in 1412 , a royal charter was granted to Drogheda. This charter unified the towns of Drogheda-in-Meath and Drogheda-in-Uriel, Louth as a County in its own right, styled as the County of the town of Drogheda. 

The Bonds in Round Tower, Dromiskin, Contae Lú

Drogheda continued as a County Borough until the setting up of County Councils, through the enactment of the Local Government, Ireland Act 1898, which saw all of Drogheda, including a large area south of the River Boyne, become part of an extended County Louth.

Until the late 16th century, Louth had been a part of Ulster, before being included as part of Leinster after a conference held at Faughart, in 1596, between the Chiefs of Ulster, O'Nial, O'Niel and O'Donel, McDonnel, on the Irish side, and the Archbishop of Cashel and the Earl of Ormonde on that of the English.

More information: Irish Central

The 16th and 17th centuries featured many skirmishes and battles involving Irish and English forces, as it was on the main route to the Moiry Pass and the Ulster areas often in rebellion and as yet uncolonised. Oliver Cromwell attacked Drogheda in 1649 slaughtering the Royalist garrison and hundreds of the town's citizens. Towards the end of the same century, the armies of the warring Kings, James and William, faced off in South Louth during the build-up to the Battle of the Boyne the battle was fought 3 km west Drogheda. Drogheda held for James II under Lord Iveagh, but surrendered to King William III of Orange the day after the battle of the Boyne.

The area of Omeath was Irish-speaking until the early 20th century. A native dialect of Louth Irish existed there until about 1930, but is now extinct, although recordings have been made. Within the county 1,587 people use Irish on a daily basis outside of the education system.

More information: Wikiwand (Gaelic Version)

 The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish 

contemporaries have helped to imagine.  

Seamus Heaney

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW FAMOUS IRISH ARTISTS?

A Harry Clarke's work in glass

The main necessity for the development of high profile visual art is a society which is wealthy and stable enough to train the artists and buy their works. In pagan and early Christian times, Irish craftsmen produced objects of great beauty in gold, silver, metal and jewels, while the illuminated manuscripts of the Irish monks are among the most beautiful in the world. Under English rule, the native Irish were far too poor, in general, to even think of creating visual works of art.

The Anglo-Irish Protestant community produced many fine artists, sculptors and architects. The best-known were working at the end of the nineteenth century and they included Walter Osborne, Nathaniel Hone, Jack B. Yeats, and the great stained glass artist, Harry Clarke.

The Independent State of Ireland, which emerged after 1922 was neither rich nor aware enough to pay any great attention to visual or other arts. Artists were expected to celebrate the traditional way of life and the landscape, especially of the West of Ireland.

Things began slowly to improve in the 1950's and there is now quite a lively and varied selection of work by contemporary Irish artists to be seen in art galleries in Dublin and around the country.

Source: Why do the Irish? by Fiana Griffin

 I dislike the word art as to painting. 

There is only one art and that is the art of living. 

Painting is an occupation that's in that art, 

and that occupation is the freest of all the occupations of living. 

 Jack B. Yeats

MAUREEN O'HARA IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD

Maureen O'Hara

Maureen O'Hara (born Maureen FitzSimons, 1920-2015) was an Irish actress and singer. The famously red-headed O'Hara was known for her beauty and playing fiercely passionate but sensible heroines, often in westerns and adventure films. She worked on numerous occasions with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne, and was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

O'Hara grew up in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh to an eccentric devout Catholic family, and aspired to become an actress from a very young age. She trained with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of 10 and at the Abbey Theatre from the age of 14. She was given a screen test, which was deemed unsatisfactory, but Charles Laughton saw potential and arranged for her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn in 1939. She moved to Hollywood the same year to appear with him in the production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and was given a contract by RKO Pictures. From there, she went on to enjoy a long and highly successful career, and acquired the nickname The Queen of Technicolor, something which she detested, believing that people saw her only for her beauty rather than talent.

More information: Biography.com

Ireland's first Hollywood superstar, O'Hara paved the way for a future generation of actresses seeking their own voice. With her mahogany hair, her hoydenish ways, and her whip-smart delivery of lines, she created a character prototype that seemed to define her country of origin and much as Ireland defined her. He notes though that O'Hara was loved for her naturalness and her lack of a diva quality. She dismissed method acting as tommyrot, believing that acting should be acting, and placed great emphasis on work ethic and punctuality. Insisting on doing her own stunts, O'Hara became so prone to injuries during her productions that her colleagues remarked that she should have been awarded a Purple Heart. Her closest rival in the 1950s was Rhonda Fleming, the two both being prolific in westerns and action films.

In March 1999, O'Hara was selected to be Grand Marshal of New York City's St. Patrick's Day Parade. In 2004, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Film and Television Academy in her native Dublin. The same year, O'Hara released her autobiography 'Tis Herself, co-authored with Johnny Nicoletti and published by Simon & Schuster. She wrote the foreword for the cookbook At Home in Ireland, and in 2007 she penned the foreword to the biography of her friend and film co-star, the late actress Anna Lee.

On 24 October 2015, Maureen O'Hara died in her sleep at her home in Boise, Idaho from natural causes. She was 95 years old. O'Hara was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia next to her late husband Charles Blair.

 I was born into the most remarkable and eccentric family 

I could possibly have hoped for.

Maureen O'Hara

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS BY JONATHAN SWIFT

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (1667 –1745) was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, first for the Whigs, then for the Tories, poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

Swift is remembered for works such as An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). 

He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms or anonymously. 

He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.

His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed Swiftian.

More information: Biography.com

Gulliver's Travels, whose full title is Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships is a prose satire.

It is uncertain exactly when Swift started writing Gulliver's it is known from Swift's correspondence that the composition proper began in 1720 with the mirror-themed Parts I and II written first, Part IV next in 1723 and Part III written in 1724; but amendments were made even while Swift was writing Drapier's Letters. 

Travels into Several Remote Nations of The World

By August 1725 the book was complete; and as Gulliver's Travels was a transparently anti-Whig satire, it is likely that Swift had the manuscript copied so that his handwriting could not be used as evidence if a prosecution should arise, as had happened in the case of some of his Irish pamphlets, the Drapier's Letters.

The first edition was released in two volumes on 28 October 1726, priced at 8s. 6d.

 
A possible reason for the book's classic status is that it can be seen as many things to many different people. Broadly, the book has three themes: A satirical view of the state of European government, and of petty differences between religions; an inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt or whether they become corrupted and a restatement of the older ancients versus moderns controversy previously addressed by Swift in The Battle of the Books.

 Download Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally 
discover everybody's face but their own. 

Jonathan Swift