Gaelic Athletic Association
The Gaelic Athletic Association is an Irish international amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, Gaelic football, Gaelic handball and rounders. The association promotes Irish music and dance, the Irish language; as of 2014, the organisation had over 500,000 members worldwide, declared total revenues of €65.6 million in 2017. Gaelic football and hurling are the most popular activities promoted by the organisation, the most popular sports in the Republic of Ireland in terms of attendances. Gaelic football is the second most popular participation sport in Northern Ireland; the women's version of these games, ladies' Gaelic football and camogie, are organised by the independent but linked Ladies' Gaelic Football Association and the Camogie Association of Ireland respectively. GAA Handball is the Irish governing body for the sport of handball, while the other Gaelic sport, rounders, is managed by the GAA Rounders National Council.
Since its foundation in 1884, the association has grown to become a major influence in Irish sporting and cultural life with considerable reach into communities throughout Ireland and among the Irish diaspora. On 1 November 1884, a group of Irishmen gathered in the Hayes' Hotel billiard room to formulate a plan and establish an organisation to foster and preserve Ireland's unique games and athletic pastimes, and so, the Gaelic Athletic Association was founded. The architects and founding members were Michael Cusack of County Clare, Maurice Davin, Joseph K. Bracken, Thomas St George McCarthy, a District Inspector in the Royal Irish Constabulary, P. J. Ryan of Tipperary, John Wise-Power, John McKay. Maurice Davin was elected President, Wyse-Power and McKay were elected Secretaries and it was agreed that Archbishop Croke, Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt would be asked to become Patrons. In 1922 it passed over the job of promoting athletics to the National Athletic and Cycling Association.
The association has had a long history of promoting Irish culture. Through a division of the association known as Scór, the association promotes Irish cultural activities, running competitions in music, singing and storytelling. Rule 4 of the GAA's official guide states: The Association shall support the Irish language, traditional Irish dancing, music and other aspects of Irish culture, it shall foster an awareness and love of the national ideals in the people of Ireland, assist in promoting a community spirit through its clubs. The group was formally founded in 1969, is promoted through various Association clubs throughout Ireland; the association has many stadiums scattered throughout Ireland and beyond. Every county, nearly all clubs, have grounds on which to play their home games, with varying capacities and utilities; the hierarchical structure of the GAA is applied to the use of grounds. Clubs play at their own grounds for the early rounds of the club championship, while the latter rounds from quarter-finals to finals are held at a county ground, i.e. the ground where inter-county games take place or where the county board is based.
The provincial championship finals are played at the same venue every year. However, there have been exceptions, such as in Ulster, where in 2004 and 2005 the Ulster Football Finals were played in Croke Park, as the anticipated attendance was to far exceed the capacity of the traditional venue of St Tiernach's Park, Clones. Croke Park is the association's flagship venue and is known colloquially as Croker or Headquarters, since the venue doubles as the association's base. With a capacity of 82,300, it ranks among the top five stadiums in Europe by capacity, having undergone extensive renovations for most of the 1990s and early 21st century; every September, Croke Park hosts the All-Ireland inter-county Hurling and Football Finals as the conclusion to the summer championships. Croke Park holds the All-Ireland club football and hurling finals on every St. Patrick's Day. Croke Park is named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, elected as a patron of the GAA during the formation of the GAA in 1884; the next three biggest grounds are all in Munster: Semple Stadium in Thurles, County Tipperary, with a capacity of 53,000, the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick, which holds 50,000, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, County Cork, which can accommodate 45,000.
Other grounds with capacities above 25,000 include: Fitzgerald Stadium, in Killarney, a capacity of 43,180 MacHale Park in Castlebar, the largest stadium in Connacht, a capacity of 42,000 St Tiernach's Park in Clones, County Monaghan, hosts most Ulster finals, a capacity of 36,000 Kingspan Breffni Park, in Cavan Town, County Cavan, which hosted International rules football series games in 2013, a capacity of 32,000 Casement Park, in Belfast, a capacity of 32,600 O'Moore Park, in Portlaoise, County Laois, a capacity of 27,000 Healy Park, in Omagh, County Tyrone, a capacity of 26,500 Pearse Stadium in Galway, which has hosted International rules football series games, a capacity of 26,197Research by former Fermanagh county footballer Niall Cunningham led to the publication in 2016 by his website, gaapitchlocator.net, of a map of 1,748 GAA grounds in Ireland, ranging from 24 grounds in his own county to 171 in Cork. The association has, since its inception, been associated with Irish nationalism, this has continued to the present in relation to Northern Ireland, where the sports are played exclusively by members of the ma
Irish nationalism
Irish nationalism is a nationalist ideology which asserts that the Irish people are a nation and espouses the creation of a sovereign Irish nation-state on the island of Ireland. It grew more potent during the period in which the whole of Ireland was part of United Kingdom, which lead to most of the island seceding from the UK in 1921. Politically, Irish nationalism gave way to many factions which created conflict violent, throughout the island; the chief division affecting nationalism in Ireland was religious. The majority of the island's population was Roman Catholic, the part that seceded, but a portion of the northern part has a Protestant majority that elected to stay a part of the United Kingdom. Since the partition of Ireland, the term Irish nationalism refers to support for the island's unification. Irish nationalists assert. Irish nationalism speaks to celebration of the culture of Ireland the Irish language, literature and sports. Irish nationalism is regarded as having emerged following the Renaissance revival of the concept of the patria and the religious struggle between the ideology of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
At this early stage in the 16th century, Irish nationalism represented an ideal of the native Gaelic Irish and the Old English banding together in common cause, under the banner of Catholicism and Irish civic identity, hoping to protect their land and interests from the New English Protestant forces sponsored by England. This vision sought to overcome the old ethnic divide between Gaeil and Gaill, a feature of Irish life since the 12th century. Protestantism in England introduced a religious element to the 16th century Tudor conquest of Ireland, as many of the native Gaels and Hiberno-Normans remained Catholic; the Plantations of Ireland dispossessed many native Catholic landowners in favour of Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. In addition, the Plantation of Ulster, begun in 1609, "planted" a sizeable population of English and Scottish Protestant settlers into the north of Ireland. Irish aristocrats waged many campaigns against the English presence. A prime example is the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill which became known as the Nine Years War of 1594–1603, which aimed to expel the English and make Ireland a Spanish protectorate.
A more significant movement came in the 1640s, after the Irish Rebellion of 1641, when a coalition of Gaelic Irish and Old English Catholics set up a de facto independent Irish state to fight in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The Confederate Catholics of Ireland known as the Confederation of Kilkenny, emphasised the idea of Ireland as a Kingdom independent from England, albeit under the same monarch, they demanded autonomy for the Irish Parliament, full rights for Catholics and an end to the confiscation of Catholic-owned land. The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland destroyed the Confederate cause and resulted in the permanent dispossession of the old Catholic landowning class. A similar Irish Catholic monarchist movement emerged in the 1680s and 1690s, when Irish Catholic Jacobites supported James II after his deposition in England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689; the Jacobites demanded that Irish Catholics have a majority in an autonomous Irish Parliament, the restoration of confiscated Catholic land, an Irish-born Lord Deputy of Ireland.
To the Confederates of the 1640s, the Jacobites were conscious of representing the "Irish nation", but were not separatists and represented the interests of the landed class as opposed to all the Irish people. Like the Confederates, they suffered defeat, in the Williamite War in Ireland. Thereafter, the English Protestant Ascendancy dominated Irish government and landholding; the Penal Laws discriminated against non-Anglicans. This coupling of religious and ethnic identity – principally Roman Catholic and Gaelic – as well as a consciousness of dispossession and defeat at the hands of British and Protestant forces, became enduring features of Irish nationalism. However, the Irish Catholic movements of the 16th century were invariably led by a small landed and clerical elite. Professor Kevin Whelan has traced the emergence of the modern Catholic-nationalist identity that formed in 1760–1830. Irish historian Marc Caball, on the other hand, claims that "early modern Irish nationalism" began to be established after the Flight of the Earls, based on the concepts of "the indivisibility of Gaelic cultural integrity, territorial sovereignty, the interlinking of Gaelic identity with profession of the Roman Catholic faith".
The Protestant Parliament of Ireland of the eighteenth century called for more autonomy from the British Parliament – the repeal of Poynings' Law, which allowed the latter to legislate for Ireland. They were supported by popular sentiment that came from the various publications of William Molyneux about Irish constitutional independence. Parliamentarians who wanted more self-government formed the Irish Patriot Party, led by Henry Grattan, who achieved substantial legislative independence in 1782–83. Grattan and radical elements of the'Irish Whig' party campaigned in the 1790s for Catholic political equality and a reform of electoral rights, he wanted useful links with Britain to remain, best understood by his comment:'The channel forbids union. Grattan's movement was notable for being both inclusive and nationalist as
1925 Irish Seanad election
An election for 19 of the 60 seats in Seanad Éireann, the Senate of the Irish Free State, was held on 17 September 1925. The election was by single transferable vote, with the entire state forming a single 19-seat electoral district. There were 76 candidates on the ballot paper. Of the two main political parties, the larger did not formally endorse any candidates, while the other boycotted the election. Voter turnout was low and the outcome was considered unsatisfactory. Subsequently, senators were selected by the Oireachtas rather than the electorate. Under the provisions of the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State, Senators were to be elected for twelve-year terms, with the 60 Senators divided into four cohorts of 15, an election every three years for one of the cohorts; as part of the initial transitional measures, 30 of the original 60 Senators in 1922 were selected by the Dáil, of whom the last 15 to secure election formed the cohort whose term would end after the first triennial period.
As well as this cohort, four further Senators were required to vacate their seats: these had been temporarily co-opted to fill casual vacancies which had arisen in previous years. There were three methods of being included on the ballot. Outgoing Senators could nominate themselves for re-election, all 19 did so; the Seanad could nominate an equal number of candidates, the Dáil could nominate twice the number of vacancies. Both Dáil and Seanad selections were by secret ballot; the minimum age for Senators was 35 years. The Seanad resolved on 30 April to form a committee to decide procedure for its nominations. 29 applicants contested the Seanad nominations on 1 July. Apart from two Labour Party members, the candidates were Independents. 47 of the 60 Senators voted, including 18 of the 19. Donal O'Sullivan, clerk of the Seanad throughout its existence, suggests that these 18 had an incentive to vote for less popular candidates since the nominees would be rivals in the ensuing election. O'Sullivan describes the results as "a great disappointment... the list could not compare with the list of the ten rejected."
Oliver St. John Gogarty made a similar remark in the Seanad itself; the rejected ten were: general manager of the British and Irish Steam Packet Company. Law. J. Stafford, a County Wexford businessman. Cumann na nGaedheal, the party which backed the incumbent government, decided not to formally support any candidates as a result of internal divisions. There was tension between ministers and grassroots members, between factions of Kevin O'Higgins and W. T. Cosgrave; the 1924 Army Mutiny had shaken the year-old party, the appointment of public servants to lead the new state's institutions created resentment among those passed over. The parliamentary party held two selection conventions, on 2 and 6 July 1925, when the leadership's candidates did badly a free vote was offered in the Dáil with all candidates nominally endorsed by the party; the Dáil nominations were decided on 8 July. 57 candidates contested. 52 TDs did not vote, including all 44 abstentionist Sinn Féin TDs, who were ineligible to vote as they had not taken the Oath of Allegiance.
TDs supported candidates on party lines. Of the 38 successful nominees, O'Sullivan classifies 21 as supporters of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, 9 as Independent, 5 as in the Farmers' Party, 3 as in the Labour Party. Four of the ten candidates rejected by the Seanad were among the Dáil candidates, with John J. Horgan securing a nomination at the second attempt. While the Farmers' Party and Labour produced newspaper advertisements for their respective slates of candidates, Cumann na nGaedheal did not at a national level formally endorse candidates those its TDs had nominated, it presented the election as nonpartisan. It published a booklet, Who's who in the 1925 Senate Election, did not oppose candidates "put forward by any of the elements that accept the State and Constitution", i.e. other than republicans opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Numerous interest groups produced lists of approved candidates, including doctors, motorists, ex-servicemen's associations, the livestock trade. Candidates endorsed by temperance groups fared badly.
The Catholic Truth Society circulated, to little effect, a list of outgoing Senators it condemned for not having opposed a controversial motion pertaining to divorce. Sinn Féin, under the leadership of Éamon de Valera, called for a boycott of the election. Sinn Féin had not boycotted the 1923 Dáil election, but rather contested it on an abstentionist platform. De Valera would lead his Fianna Fáil party, founded in 1926, into the Oireachtas after the June 1927 Dáil election; the election was by single transferable vote, with the entire Irish Free State forming a single, 19-seat constituency. All citizens over 30 had a vote. Since the voting age for Dáil and local elections was 21, a separate electoral roll was maintained for the Seanad election; the 76 candidates were arranged alphabetically on a ballot paper 22 inches long and 16 inches wide. The Electoral Act, 1925 was passed to
Augusta, Lady Gregory
Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory was an Irish dramatist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified with British rule, she turned against it, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime. Lady Gregory is remembered for her work behind the Irish Literary Revival, her home at Coole Park in County Galway served as an important meeting place for leading Revival figures, her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important as her creative writings for that theatre's development. Lady Gregory's motto was taken from Aristotle: "To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people.". Gregory was born at Roxborough, County Galway, the youngest daughter of the Anglo-Irish gentry family Persse.
Her mother, Frances Barry, was related to Viscount Guillamore, her family home, was a 6,000-acre estate located between Gort and Loughrea, the main house of, burnt down during the Irish Civil War. She was educated at home, her future career was influenced by the family nurse, Mary Sheridan, a Catholic and a native Irish speaker, who introduced the young Augusta to the history and legends of the local area, she married Sir William Henry Gregory, a widower with an estate at Coole Park, near Gort, on 4 March 1880 in St Matthias' Church, Dublin. Sir William, 35 years her elder, had just retired from his position as Governor of Ceylon, having served several terms as Member of Parliament for County Galway, he was a well-educated man with many literary and artistic interests, the house at Coole Park housed a large library and extensive art collection, both of which Lady Gregory was eager to explore. He had a house in London, where the couple spent a considerable amount of time, holding weekly salons frequented by many leading literary and artistic figures of the day, including Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, John Everett Millais and Henry James.
Their only child, Robert Gregory, was born in 1881. He was killed during the First World War while serving as a pilot, an event which inspired W. B. Yeats's poems "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death", "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory" and "Shepherd and Goatherd"; the Gregorys travelled in Ceylon, Spain and Egypt. While in Egypt, Lady Gregory had an affair with the English poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, during which she wrote a series of love poems, A Woman's Sonnets, her earliest work to appear under her own name was Arabi and His Household, a pamphlet—originally a letter to The Times—in support of Ahmed Orabi Pasha, leader of what has come to be known as the Urabi Revolt, an 1879 Egyptian nationalist revolt against the oppressive regime of the Khedive and the European domination of Egypt. She said of this booklet, "whatever political indignation or energy was born with me may have run its course in that Egyptian year and worn itself out". Despite this, in 1893 she published A Phantom's Pilgrimage, or Home Ruin, an anti-Nationalist pamphlet against William Ewart Gladstone's proposed second Home Rule Act.
She continued to write prose during the period of her marriage. During the winter of 1883, whilst her husband was in Ceylon, she worked on a series of memoirs of her childhood home, with a view to publishing them under the title An Emigrant's Notebook, but this plan was abandoned, she wrote a series of pamphlets in 1887 called Over the River, in which she appealed for funds for the parish of St. Stephens in Southwark, south London, she wrote a number of short stories in the years 1890 and 1891, although these never appeared in print. A number of unpublished poems from this period have survived; when Sir William Gregory died in March 1892, Lady Gregory went into mourning and returned to Coole Park. She was to write "If I had not married I should not have learned the quick enrichment of sentences that one gets in conversation. Loneliness made me rich—'full', as Bacon says.". A trip to Inisheer in the Aran Islands in 1893 re-awoke for Lady Gregory an interest in the Irish language and in the folklore of the area in which she lived.
She organised Irish lessons at the school at Coole, began collecting tales from the area around her home from the residents of Gort workhouse. One of the tutors she employed was Norma Borthwick; this activity led to the publication of a number of volumes of folk material, including A Book of Saints and Wonders, The Kiltartan History Book and The Kiltartan Wonder Book. She produced a number of collections of "Kiltartanese" versions of Irish myths, including Cuchulain of Muirthemne and Gods and Fighting Men. In his introduction to the former, Yeats wrote "I think this book is the best that has come out of Ireland in my time.". James Joyce was to parody this claim in the Scylla and Charybdis chapter of his novel Ulysses. Towards the end of 1894, encouraged by the positive reception of the editing of her husband's autobiography, Lady Gregory turned her attention to another
Irish republicanism
Irish republicanism is an ideology based on the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic. The development of nationalist and democratic sentiment throughout Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was reflected in Ireland in the emergence of republicanism, in opposition to British rule; this followed hundreds of years of Irish resistance through rebellion. Discrimination against Catholics and nonconformists, attempts by the British administration to suppress Irish culture, the belief that Ireland was economically disadvantaged as a result of the Act of Union were among the specific factors leading to such opposition; the Society of United Irishmen, formed in the 1780s and led by liberal Protestants, evolved into a revolutionary republican organisation, inspired by the American Revolution and allied with Revolutionary France. It launched the 1798 Rebellion with the help of French troops; the rebellion had some success in County Wexford, before it was suppressed. A second rising in 1803, led by Robert Emmet, was put down, Emmet was hanged.
The Young Ireland movement, formed in the 1830s, was a part of the Repeal Association of Daniel O'Connell, but broke with O'Connell on the issue of the legitimacy of the use of violence. A political and cultural organisation, some members of Young Ireland staged an abortive rising, the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, its leaders were transported to Van Diemen's Land. Some of these escaped to the United States, where they linked up with other Irish exiles to form the Fenian Brotherhood. Together with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, founded in Ireland by James Stephens and others in 1858, they made up a movement known as "Fenians", dedicated to the overthrow of British imperial rule in Ireland, they staged another rising, the Fenian Rising, in 1867, a dynamite campaign in England in the 1880s. In the early 20th century IRB members, in particular Tom Clarke and Seán MacDermott, began planning another rising; the Easter Rising took place from 24 to 30 April 1916, when members of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army seized the centre of Dublin, proclaimed a republic and held off British forces for a week.
The execution of the Rising's leaders, including Clarke, MacDermott, Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, led to a surge of support for republicanism in Ireland. In 1917 the Sinn Féin party stated as its aim the "securing the international recognition of Ireland as an independent Irish Republic", in the general election of 1918 Sinn Féin took 73 of the 105 Irish seats in the British House of Commons; the elected members did not take their seats but instead set up the First Dáil. Between 1919 and 1921 the Irish Republican Army, who were loyal to the Dáil, fought the British Army and Royal Irish Constabulary, a predominantly Roman Catholic force, in the Irish War of Independence. Talks between the British and Irish in late 1921 led to a treaty by which the British conceded, not a 32-county Irish Republic, but a 26-county Irish Free State with Dominion status; this led to the Irish Civil War. The Free State became an independent constitutional monarchy following the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the Statute of Westminster 1931 and formally became a republic with the passage of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948.
That same year, the republican movement took the decision to focus on Northern Ireland thereafter. The Border Campaign, which lasted from 1956 to 1962, involved bombings and attacks on Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks; the failure of this campaign led the republican leadership to concentrate on political action, to move to the left. Following the outbreak of The Troubles in 1968-9, the movement split between Officials and Provisionals at the beginning of 1970. Both sides were involved in an armed campaign against the British state, but the Officials moved into mainstream politics after the Official IRA ceasefire of 1972; the Provisional IRA, except during brief ceasefires in 1972 and 1975, kept up a campaign of violence for nearly thirty years, directed against security forces and civilian targets. While the Social Democratic and Labour Party represented the nationalists of Northern Ireland in initiatives such as the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement, republicans took no part in these, believing that a withdrawal of British troops and a commitment to a united Ireland was a necessary precondition of any settlement.
This began to change with a landmark speech by Danny Morrison in 1981, advocating what became known as the Armalite and ballot box strategy. Under the leadership of Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin began to focus on the search for a political settlement; when the party voted in 1986 to take seats in legislative bodies within Ireland, there was a walk-out of die-hard republicans, who set up Republican Sinn Féin and the Continuity IRA. Following the Hume–Adams dialogue, Sinn Féin took part in the Northern Ireland peace process which led to the IRA ceasefires of 1994 and 1997 and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. After elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, republicans sat in government in Northern Ireland for the first time when Martin McGuinness and Bairbre de Brún were elected to the Northern Ireland Executive. However, another split occurred, with anti-Agreement republicans setting up the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and the Real IRA. Today, Irish republicanism is divided between those who support the institutions set up under the Good Friday Agreement and the St Andrews Agreement, those who oppose them.
The latter a
County Roscommon
County Roscommon is a county in Ireland. In the western region, it is part of the province of Connacht, it is the 11th largest Irish county by 27th most populous. Its county town and largest town is Roscommon. Roscommon County Council is the local authority for the county; the population of the county was 64,544 according to the 2016 census. County Roscommon is named after the county town of Roscommon. Roscommon comes from the Irish Ros meaning a wooded, gentle height and Comán, the first abbot and bishop of Roscommon who founded the first monastery there in 550 AD. Roscommon is the eleventh largest of the 32 counties of Ireland by area and the fifth least-populous county in Ireland, it has an area of 984 square miles. Lough Key in north Roscommon is noted for having thirty-two islands; the geographical centre of Ireland is located on the western shore of Lough Ree in the south of the county. Roscommon is the third largest of Connacht's five counties by size and fourth largest in terms of population.
The county borders every other Connacht county – Galway, Mayo and Leitrim, as well as three Leinster counties – Longford and Offaly. In 2008, a news report said that statistically, Roscommon has the longest life expectancy of any county on the island of Ireland. Seltannasaggart, located along the northern border with County Leitrim is the tallest point in County Roscommon measuring to a height of 428 m. There are nine historical baronies in County Roscommon. North Roscommon Boyle. Frenchpark. Roscommon. Castlereagh. Ballintober North. South Roscommon Ballymoe shared with County Galway includes Ballymoe and Glenamaddy. Ballintober South. Athlone. Moycarn. Rathcroghan, near Tulsk, a complex of archaeological sites, the home of Queen Medb, was the seat of Kings of Connacht and to the High Kings of Ireland; this was the starting point of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, or Cattle Raid of Cooley, an epic tale in Irish mythology. The county is home to many prehistoric and British Iron Age ringforts like, Carnagh West Ringfort and Drummin fort.
County Roscommon as an administrative division has its origins in the medieval period. With the conquest and division of the Kingdom of Connacht, those districts in the east retained by King John as "The King's Cantreds" covered County Roscommon, parts of East Galway; these districts were leased to the native kings of Connacht and became the county. In 1585 during the Tudor re-establishment of counties under the Composition of Connacht, Roscommon was established with the South-west boundary now along the River Suck. A "well defined" and "original" fine metal workshop was active in County Roscommon in the 12th century; the Cross of Cong, the Aghadoe crosier, Shrine of the Book of Dimma and Shrine of Manchan of Mohill' are grouped together as having been created by Mael Isu Bratain Ui Echach et al. at the same Roscommon workshop. The workshop has been linked to St. Assicus of Elphin. John O'Donovan and scholar, visited County Roscommon in 1837, while compiling information for the Ordnance Survey.
Entering St Peter's parish in Athlone in June 1837, he wrote, "I have now entered upon a region different from Longford, am much pleased with the intelligence of the people." However, he had major problems with place-names. He wrote, "I am sick to death's door of lochawns, it pains me to the soul to have to make these remarks, but what can I do when I cannot make the usual progress? Here I am stuck in the mud in the middle of Loughs, Turlaghs and Curraghs, the names of many of which are only known to a few old men in their immediate neighbourhood and I cannot give many of them utterance from the manner in which they are spelled." Roscommon is governed locally by the 26-member Roscommon County Council. For general elections, Roscommon forms part of the three-seat Roscommon–Galway constituency. Iarnród Éireann provides Roscommon with freight rail services. Many passenger services to Dublin use Heuston. Athlone is the interchange between the Dublin -- Dublin -- Westport services. There are trains from Sligo on the Dublin–Sligo railway line serving two County Roscommon stations, at Boyle and Carrick-on-Shannon on the line to Dublin Connolly.
Gaelic football is the dominant sport in Roscommon. Roscommon GAA have won 2 All-Ireland Senior Football Championships in 1943 and 1944 and a National Football League Division 1 in 1979 and Division 2 in 2015 and 2018. Roscommon GAA play home games at Dr. Hyde Park. Roscommon has less success in hurling, their main hurling title was the 2007 Nicky Rackard Cup. In order of birth: Charles O'Conor and antiquarian of the O'Conor Don family Matthew O'Conor Don historian born in Ballinagare, Co. Roscommon Arthur French, 1st Baron de Freyne, Member of Parliament and landlord of Frenchpark House Sir John Scott Lillie CB, decorated Peninsular War veteran and political activist in England William Wilde, surgeon and father of Oscar Wilde, born in Castlerea, Co. Roscommon Michael Dockry, member of the Wisconsin State Assembly Thomas Curley, American Civil War colonel and Wisconsin legislator, born in Tremane, near Athleague, Co. Roscommon Henry Gore-Browne, Victoria Cross recipient, born in Co.. Roscommon Luke O'Connor, first soldier t
Dublin
Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. It is on the east coast of Ireland, in the province of Leinster, at the mouth of the River Liffey, is bordered on the south by the Wicklow Mountains, it has an urban area population of 1,173,179, while the population of the Dublin Region, as of 2016, was 1,347,359, the population of the Greater Dublin area was 1,904,806. There is archaeological debate regarding where Dublin was established by the Gaels in or before the 7th century AD. Expanded as a Viking settlement, the Kingdom of Dublin, the city became Ireland's principal settlement following the Norman invasion; the city expanded from the 17th century and was the second largest city in the British Empire before the Acts of Union in 1800. Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, Dublin became the capital of the Irish Free State renamed Ireland. Dublin is a historical and contemporary centre for education, the arts and industry; as of 2018 the city was listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network as a global city, with a ranking of "Alpha −", which places it amongst the top thirty cities in the world.
The name Dublin comes from the Irish word Dubhlinn, early Classical Irish Dubhlind/Duibhlind, from dubh meaning "black, dark", lind "pool", referring to a dark tidal pool. This tidal pool was located where the River Poddle entered the Liffey, on the site of the castle gardens at the rear of Dublin Castle. In Modern Irish the name is Duibhlinn, Irish rhymes from County Dublin show that in Dublin Leinster Irish it was pronounced Duílinn; the original pronunciation is preserved in the names for the city in other languages such as Old English Difelin, Old Norse Dyflin, modern Icelandic Dyflinn and modern Manx Divlyn as well as Welsh Dulyn. Other localities in Ireland bear the name Duibhlinn, variously anglicized as Devlin and Difflin. Scribes using the Gaelic script wrote bh with a dot over the b, rendering Duḃlinn or Duiḃlinn; those without knowledge of Irish omitted the dot. Variations on the name are found in traditionally Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland, such as An Linne Dhubh, part of Loch Linnhe.
It is now thought that the Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duibhlinn, from which Dyflin took its name. Beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements; the Viking settlement of about 841, a Gaelic settlement, Áth Cliath further up river, at the present day Father Mathew Bridge, at the bottom of Church Street. Baile Átha Cliath, meaning "town of the hurdled ford", is the common name for the city in modern Irish. Áth Cliath is a place name referring to a fording point of the River Liffey near Father Mathew Bridge. Baile Átha Cliath was an early Christian monastery, believed to have been in the area of Aungier Street occupied by Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church. There are other towns of the same name, such as Àth Cliath in East Ayrshire, Anglicised as Hurlford; the area of Dublin Bay has been inhabited by humans since prehistoric times, but the writings of Ptolemy in about AD 140 provide the earliest reference to a settlement there.
He called it Eblana polis. Dublin celebrated its'official' millennium in 1988, meaning the Irish government recognised 988 as the year in which the city was settled and that this first settlement would become the city of Dublin, it is now thought the Viking settlement of about 841 was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duibhlinn, from which Dyflin took its name. Beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements which became the modern Dublin; the subsequent Scandinavian settlement centred on the River Poddle, a tributary of the Liffey in an area now known as Wood Quay. The Dubhlinn was a pool on the lowest stretch of the Poddle, used to moor ships; this pool was fully infilled during the early 18th century, as the city grew. The Dubhlinn lay where the Castle Garden is now located, opposite the Chester Beatty Library within Dublin Castle. Táin Bó Cuailgne refers to Dublind rissa ratter Áth Cliath, meaning "Dublin, called Ath Cliath". Dublin was established as a Viking settlement in the 10th century and, despite a number of attacks by the native Irish, it remained under Viking control until the Norman invasion of Ireland was launched from Wales in 1169.
It was upon the death of Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn in early 1166 that Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, King of Connacht, proceeded to Dublin and was inaugurated King of Ireland without opposition. According to some historians, part of the city's early economic growth is attributed to a trade in slaves. Slavery in Ireland and Dublin reached its pinnacle in the 10th centuries. Prisoners from slave raids and kidnappings, which captured men and children, brought revenue to the Gaelic Irish Sea raiders, as well as to the Vikings who had initiated the practice; the victims came from Wales, England and beyond. The King of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada, after his exile by Ruaidhrí, enlisted the help of Strongbow, the Earl of Pembroke, to conquer Dublin. Following Mac Murrough's death, Strongbow declared himself King of Leinster after gaining control of the city. In response to Strongbow's successful invasion, King Henry II of England affirmed his ultimate sovereignty by mou
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