Thanks to four DNA testers, who have West Cork O’NEILL connections, we have now confirmed (or genetically proven prefer) the outline story for the origins of some of the O’NEILLs in West Cork. The latest piece of the puzzle landed the day before St Patrick’s Day. All four have taken the male DNA test known as ‘Big Y’.

‘Big Y’ is a male line DNA test provided by FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) and is currently the most detailed test of its kind. For the last 500 years or so, this essentially ties all unbroken male lines to family names. All four O’NEILL testers show that their male lines are genetically connected and unbroken.

The most recent result is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, it identifies a single C16th male (MRCA: Most Recent Common Ancestor) who was the father of two sons, whose lineages became O’MAHONY and O’NEILL. This confirms the detailed genetic work done by the O’NEILL project at FTDNA and matches the various annals of Irish history that document the split into both family names known today.

Two additional testers surnamed MAHONEY and MAHANEY connect with the four O’NEILLs at this historical period, estimated to be around 1550 from DNA alone. (Please refer to my previous articles regarding the deeper historical connection.) The tested MAHONEY traces his origins to Maryland in the US at about 1760.

As previously reported, a letter written by a member of the O’NEILL family from Knocks, outlined the basic story of a young boy arriving in West Cork following the Siege of Limerick (1690) and settling in Garranes and Ballinard. While it has been a challenge to match all the detail from the letter, it has been possible using standard atDNA tests to connect O’NEILLs from Knocks with those from Derrimilleen, Reenroe & Cashelisky, and to some overseas branches.

The young lad, Sean O’NEILL, married and was reported to have had five sons. These children were likely born in the 1720-1730 period. This is now confirmed by the Y-DNA tree. All four O’NEILL testers with West Cork origins connect at a single male MRCA, estimated from just DNA alone, to about 1650. This is likely to be Sean or his father. The testers then split into two pairs.

The two testers from Derrimilleen and Knocks share the same natural genetic mutation. The two other testers, who’s surnamed became O’NEIL (with one ’l,’ due to emigration to the UK and US) share an additional natural genetic mutation downstream of this, which supports their family narrative. The latter pair share origins from a man born around 1720 who settled in Drimoleague, before his descendants moved and settled at Cashelisky adjacent to their cousins at Reenroe. This indicates that their ancestor was most likely a son of Sean. The other pair are known to descend from the man known as Felim or Filem Mor (‘Big Felix’) of Ballinard.

A genetic framework now exists for anyone wishing to investigate their West Cork male lines (O’NEILL or O’MAHONY) to check whether they tie in or not using Y-DNA, specifically the Big Y test. Normal customer atDNA tests (as provided by FTDNA, Ancestry and MyHeritage, and so on) can help tie lineages together in the post-1800 period.

I am grateful, through my previous articles, that O’NEILL descendants have shared their family stories. They remain of interest but ideally would be supported by both atDNA and Y-DNA tests at some time in the future. Hopefully, the success of this project will encourage others to DNA test.

One of the main features of ‘collecting’ O’NEILL lineages in West Cork is that most seem to have a Felix in them. My current total is around 40 people of that name. Most of these lineages cannot be connected on paper to the main framework and it is noted that three of Seans sons are yet to be accounted for, so highly suggestive many O’NEILLs in the region may actually be genetically part of the same family. Of course, there will also be those families of the name that have different origins (not from Sean) but may find themselves connecting a little further back.

As a final comment, I would like to mention the ‘rule of three’. For both of the established O’NEILL branches, and the pair of MAHONEYs, there are currently only two tests for each. Once a third tester on any of the branches comes in then the Y-DNA project will provide even more detailed mapping downstream of the already established ancestors. This opens up more rigorous genetic support for any paper trail undergoing research.

If anyone wishes advice on how best to join the project(s) and test for their genetic origins, please contact me.

Questions for future articles can be emailed to DNAmatchingprojects@gmail.com. Private client services available. Follow the West Cork DNA blog on Facebook ‘My Irish Genealogy and DNA’.

Jessie Buckley has recently entered the hallowed pantheon of great Irish actors. Victory in the 2026 Oscars, in one of the blue ribbon events that is best leading actress, was achieved by her empathetic performance as Shakespeare’s wife, in the movie ‘Hamnet’. She is now occupying that rarefied place, up amongst the greats of Irish entertainers such as Cillian Murphy, Brenda Fricker, Daniel Day-Lewis, Neil Jordan, George Bernard Shaw, and Cedric Gibbons who, incidentally, is also credited with conceiving the design of the Oscar statute. 

Aside from being just old-fashioned good entertainment, are movies and books that have a historical backdrop, a help or a hindrance? Jessie Buckley’s victory has drawn even greater attention to the book ‘Hamnet’, written by Maggie O’Farrell in 2020. It has already made its way onto the English Leaving Cert curriculum, which of course is a tribute to the work’s literary value and popularity. But how true to life is it and should that matter? In this article, I want to explore a number of texts that are grounded in historical events or based upon a historical person and explore the positive and negative aspects upon their readerships. 

Let’s start with the novel ‘Hamnet’. Little is known about Shakespeare’s family life aside from a few basic facts. He got married at 18 to an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had a number of children, including twins, one which was christened Hamnet. Shakespeare was the son of a glover who struggled financially and his son Hamnet did die during the time of the plague. A few years later he wrote, ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.’ It may surprise you that, in terms of biographical accuracy, we don’t know much more about his family life. O’Farrell is particularly effective in how she fuses her understanding of Elizabethan society to enrich the backdrop of the book, enabling the reader to form a picture of how people lived and toiled in daily life. Her understanding of the horrors of the plague are well-researched and no doubt one of her main attributes was leaning into some Shakespeare’s very own narratives. O’Farrell imagines that William and Anne planned to get pregnant to force their marriage against the will of their unsupportive parents, which mirrors the storyline of a courting couple in a Shakespearean play called ‘Measure for Measure’. O’ Farrell also reimagines their youthful courtship along the lines of another of his better known plays, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. The difficulty now, is that many readers/viewers are already forming the idea that this is how it actually happened.

On a positive note, any ‘historical’ book (or movie) that inspires someone to read, can only be a good thing. Perhaps many a generation, who were scarred from studying Shakespeare to simply pass an exam, may feel inspired to pick up Hamlet. Outside the cauldron of an exam, it remains a most wondrous and beautifully-penned play. Those who only watched the movie Hamnet, may well decide to take a chance with O’Farrell’s book, and enjoy engaging with the novel. The problem for some historians arises when fiction is conflated with truth. A good friend of mine was surprised that during a discussion of ‘Hamnet’ at her book club, some readers took umbrage with how horrid Shakespeare’s father was and wondered how on earth he went on to become a writer, forgetting that the depiction of his father is purely fictional. I have heard others profess the theory that the death of his son, Hamnet, inspired the great bard to write the play Hamlet – beautifully romantic, but a wholly invented narrative. It illustrates how the fiction can obscure the fact. We know nothing of their relationship and, by the time Shakespeare was writing Hamlet, his star had risen and he was writing commercially successful plays for the Globe Theatre. The novel/movie hinges greatly on a romantic ideal, of a grieving Shakespeare using his pain to exercise his own loss, by exploring the father-son relationship in his play Hamlet (and also the fact that the names are so similar has added fuel to the speculative fire). It’s a frivolous theory but, will probably seep into people’s take on Hamlet. To further puncture this romantic bubble (sorry), King Hamlet and father of prince Hamlet is a self-confessed sinner who, when appearing to his son as a ghost, briefly recounts the horrors he endures in purgatory, paying for the horrid sins he committed in his life, before weighing down his intellectual but ill-equipped son, with the burden of revenging his murder.  For all that we admire about young Prince Hamlet, he also shows himself to be a heartless brute to his ex-girlfriend Ophelia and mother, a coward, a procrastinator, and ultimately a murderer of innocent men. Is all this inspired by the memory of his eleven-year-old son? Closer to the truth is that Shakespeare – buoyed by the success of plays like ‘Romeo and Juliet’ – knew how to conjure up a great tragedy and was astute enough to give Elizabethan audiences what they held dearly: a good old supernatural plot, that would draw audiences into the Globe theatre and money into his pocket. He repeated the trick with more zest in the play ‘Macbeth’, not just with ghosts, but adding witches, continuing a winning formula. What O’Farrell has shown is how research and imaginative writing can transport people back to a bygone world. 

Perhaps the queen of this style of historical fiction was Hilary Mantel with her ‘Wolf Hall’ trilogy, also based in Tudor times. Her novels revolve around the relationship between King Henry VIII, and his chief minister Thomas Cromwell [not to be confused with Ireland’s nemesis Oliver Cromwell], during that tenacious reign where Henry moved heaven and hell to get his way and remarry, brutally disposing of wives like confetti, all in pursuit of an heir. This novel also leans into imagined fictions and invented conversations that bring the work alive. However, Mantel’s history is a lot more solid, as she works within the court politics, religious animosity between Catholicism and the emerging Protestantism and the well-documented annulments, executions and deaths that the helpless queens had to endure at Henry’s hands. Mantel [who almost bought a house in Ardfield, now occupied by a friend of mine, who never tires of telling me this] was of course a master of historical fiction and, in my opinion, a more nuanced and able writer than O’Farrell. Although she has a lot more material to work with than O’Farrell had, boy does she weave a most believable world of Tudor sexual morasses, politics and power plays. Like any historical fiction, no doubt people will quote her book, saying Thomas Cromwell said ‘this’ or ‘that’, without considering the dialogue is a figment of her well-researched imagination. 

Irish great, Colm Tóbín, is famously known for his historical fiction which he would claim is ‘inspired’ by the writings of those he depicts, such as the great German writer Thomas Mann in the novel ‘The Magician’ and American writer Henry James in ‘The Master’. Similar to Mantel, his research is extensive and he ‘finds’ the voice of both protagonists in his stories, sticking closely to real life narratives of events in their lives but finding that Midas touch, that breathes life into his characters and narrates them in a way that invites us to become a voyeur into their private world. That’s the real power of historic fiction and, in this case, Tóbín may well lead his reader to the actual novels written by Mann and James, once their interest is tickled by the power of his storytelling.

Another novel that has the perfect pitch between historic fact and imagination is the novel ‘HHhH’  by Laurent Binet, who brilliantly captures the days running up to the assassination of SS commander, Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague, in 1942. That for me is the closest anyone has gotten to the perfect blend of history and narrative, capturing real events, the real time line and real people into a storytelling thrilling novel style, as opposed to a standard biography or history. I would totally recommend it for those interested in the mind-set of the Nazi regime and how it was controlling many parts of Europe. 

Closer to home and more problematic in my opinion is the Michael Collins movie directed by Neil Jordan. We are used to movies taking some liberties but the Collins movie goes to town. If it was just any movie, one might just accept that’s part of Hollywood playbook, but given that Collins is such an important historical figure and studied in schools, the movie has led to misleading information in the public discourse. There are more holes in it than Swiss cheese and, perhaps the most dangerous one connects De Valera’s appearance in Béal na Bláth with giving the order to assassinate Collins. For the record, while Dev was in West Cork on that day, it was Liam Lynch who was in charge of the anti- treaty IRA and their military strategy, as well as local commanders on the ground. Dev was not consulted or listened to on military matters, most certainly not at Béal na Bláth. The 1970s-style car bombs blowing up agents at Dublin Castle, while cinematically spectacular, was historically cringe worthy nor was Collins in the GPO during the 1916 Rising. The movie has had such a misleading impact that recently, while on a school tour of Glasnevin Cemetery, the tour guide, standing at Collins’ grave, told us that an American woman had recently arrived with flowers for the grave of Liam Neeson. I carefully reminded the group not to include that in their Leaving Cert answers! 

Ultimately anything that gets you reading fiction or interested in history is a good thing in my opinion, as long as you do a little bit of your own research and discover what is real and what is entertainment.

An archaeological survey at Cape Evans, Antartica, has uncovered a ski pole belonging to explorer and Courtmacsherry native Patrick Keohane. As reported in The Explorer Newsletter, the remarkable discovery was made by archaeologist Emma St Pierre. The ski pole has Keohane’s hand-carved initials on them.

Born at Barry’s Point just south of the village of Courtmacsherry, Patrick Keohane was a Petty Officer on Scott’s Antarctic ‘Terra Nova’ expedition between 1910 and 1913.

St Pierre told The Explorer that “Finding this ski pole was the highlight of my season on the ice. It is rare to uncover an item that can be directly linked to an individual, so this felt incredibly special. To find it amongst all the bamboo scattered around the site was a real moment. Thinking that this pole may have been used during Scott’s journey to the Pole is both exciting and deeply meaningful.”

Keohane was one of 15 men chosen to set out with Scott from their Cape Evans base on the 900-mile journey to the South Pole.

Keohane initially assisted with the ponies before moving into the man hauling sled teams once the ponies had been put down. Although disappointed to be turned back 350 miles short of the Pole, this decision ultimately saved his life, as the small polar party that continued sadly never returned. Keohane later joined the search party that found the bodies of Scott, Dr Edward Wilson and Lieutenant Henry Bowers in their tent.

Keohane’s ski pole has been stabilised for interim storage and will be scheduled for conservation work in the upcoming season.

A statue of Keohane erected between Broad and Blind Strand in Courtmacsherry, shows him looking across the water at the place of his birth.

In the past the marriage banns were read from the altar by the priest on three consecutive Sundays. These called on the faithful to come forward and declare if they knew of any impediments to the proposed marriage.

The bride never saw her groom after midnight on the wedding day. In weddings of the distant past, the bride left for the church mounted behind her father on a horse. She returned on her husband’s mount. Young men who had been invited to the wedding joined in ‘res na mbuidéal’ (the bottle race). They galloped through the fields and the first one at the church received a bottle of whiskey or poitín. With the advent of horse-drawn vehicles, the bride and her father left their home in the family trap. Their relatives followed and friends along the route joined the cavalcade. The groom, in his family’s trap, came last. Sometimes, musicians played in traps or even led the processions.

The wedding feast took place in the bride’s home. As the bride entered the home, her mother broke a light cake over her daughter’s head to ensure a life of plenty. The wedding feast lasted all evening and night; often the guests didn’t leave until the following morning.

In less affluent times, many households could only afford to invite close relatives, so mischievous, adventurous youths hid their features under long conical straw hats and gate-crashed the celebrations. The tradition developed and these ‘straw-boys’ became a feature of weddings. They wove ornamentations in their hats and tucked straw into their waist belts before grabbing musical instruments and arriving with great hilarity into the home. They were tolerated for the entertainment they provided. The group always included a seanbhean gáiritheach (laughing old woman) and a seanfhear saibhir (wealthy old man) and, at the height of the celebrations they would, respectively, dance with the groom and the bride. This would pass on to the couple long life, with a fair share of wealth and happiness. In some parts of Munster, the entertainment provided by the straw boys was called ‘bococking’ because a bacach (lame person) in the cast provided most of the fun. If the hosts did not treat the straw boys well, they climbed on to the roof and covered the chimney with sacks to smoke out the wedding party.

One old tradition states ‘marry in May and rue the day’ while another states ‘marry in April if you can, joy for maiden and for man’. Another custom was called ‘aitin (eating) the gander’ where the groom was invited to the bride’s house the day before the wedding and a goose was cooked in his honour. This is where we get the expression ‘his goose is cooked’! it was considered unlucky to marry on a Saturday and those who married in harvest would spend their time gathering. It was thought to be lucky to get married during a ‘glowing moon or a flowing tide’.

‘Would you like to be buried with my people?’ was an unromantic form of proposal, but if a young bride died, it was the custom to bury her with her own people. This may have happened to avoid embarrassment in the event of her husband remarrying and burying another wife.

Brides often carried a real horseshoe for luck, turned up so the luck would not run out. In olden days, couples ate oatmeal and salt at the start of the wedding reception when each would eat three spoonfuls as protection against the ‘evil eye’.

Mead was one of the oldest drinks in Ireland and it was traditionally drunk at weddings to promote virility. It was also drunk from special goblets a month after the wedding – ‘mí na meala’ (honeymoon). Traditionally this was to offer protection from the fairies coming to spirit the bride away and is where we get today’s ‘honeymoon’ from.

There are many proverbs in Irish concerning love and marriage. Here is an interesting one: ‘Is flame, fear teach gan bean’ (empty and cold is a house without a woman). A few other examples include: ‘Nil aon leigheas ar ghrá ach pósadh’ (There is no cure fr love except marriage). ‘Níl lia ná leigheas in aghaid an ghrá (there is no physician or cure for love).

At the wedding feast (bainis) a common toast was: ‘Slíocht sleachta ar shlioch bhur sleachta’ (may you have children and your children have children). Another proverb advises against marrying for money: An té a phósann an t-airgead, pósfaidh sé óinseach; imeoidh an t-airgead agus fanfaigh sn t-óinsaeach (the one who marries money gets a fool for a wife. The money will go but the fool will remain).

We also know that some of his manuscripts were written in Rosscarbery and that he was friendly with the poet, Diarmuid Ó Dálaigh, from that parish. The so-called hedge schools weren’t permanent; often the teacher taught only in the summer months. So it is possible that Ó Coileáin lived for periods in Rosscarbery. However, folklore connects him almost exclusively with Myross, so it was there, almost certainly, he spent most of his life.

He married a Coughlan girl from the area and they had either three or four children. Séan had the reputation of being “a bit of a ‘réice’ (rake)”; he used to be ‘árramhachán’ carousing in Union Hall, Leap, Rosscarbery and Skibbereen, sometimes not returning to his school for weeks. About a half-mile north of Stookeen Church there was a ‘síbín’ (shebeen) called Poll’s Shebeen where he used to drink. His wife, tired of his irresponsible behaviour, left him and returned to her own family. Séan was soon living with his wife’s sister, with whom he had a daughter. This relationship was also unhappy, probably because of Séan’s behaviour; so angry was she that one day, when Séan had gone missing again, she burned down the house, undoubtedly containing Séan’s books and manuscripts.

In 1814, when he was 60, Séan moved to Skibbereen, where he lived with his daughter (by his second wife). She had married an O’Driscoll man and lived in High Street. Séan Máistir (Master John), as he was always called, taught here for a few years and here he died on April 18, 1817. Séan Ó Driscoll, grandson of Séan Máistir, taught a school in Skibbereen for a while. He became involved in the Fenian Movement with O’Donovan Rossa. Apparently, he lost his job and emigrated to the USA, where he died about 1891. This man or his brother told Peadar Ó hAnnrachain that many of his grandfather’s books and manuscripts were stolen the night of his wake.

In all only eleven complete manuscripts of Ó Coileáin survive, nine of which were written between 1773 and 1781, a copy of his famous poem, ‘Macnamh an Duine Dhoilíosaigh’ that he sent to the poet Donncha Ó Floinn in Cork and some notes that are in the British Library in London. We know that he visited other poets, particularly Micheál Óg Ó Longáin (1766-1837), Donncha Ó Floinn and Séan Ó Mulláin, all from the Cork city area. We also know that Ó Longán and Ó Floinn borrowed manuscripts from him. We know that Ó Longáin visited Ó Coileáin in Myross and that he composed a ‘tuireamh or marbhna’ (lament) for him when he died. Another poet who composed a lament was Dónal Ó hIarfhlaighte (Donal Herlihy) who lived in Rosscarbery.

His fame as a poet, teacher, scholar and wit spread all over Carbery during his lifetime and his poems and doings were kept alive in the oral literature (béaloideas) well into the 20th century, as we have seen. It is said that scholars came from all over Carbery to his school; one of them, Donncha Ó Seachnasaigh from Reavouler, parish of Kilmacabea, became a well-known poet himself and he also wrote a lament for Séan Máistir. Daniel Donovan, in ‘Sketches in Carbery’, refers to him as “The Silver Tongue of Munster”. The great scholar John O’Donovan, translator of the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’, described  Ó Coileáin “as the last scholar, poet and historiographer of Carbery”. There were many other poets in West Cork in that era and later but none reached the excellence of Ó’Coileáin’s best work.

He is best known as the authors of two great poems, ‘Macnamh an Duine Dhoilíosaigh’ (The Musing of a Melancholy Man), also known as ‘Caoineadh Tig Molaga’ (Lament for Timoleague Abbey) and ‘An Buachaill Bán’ (The Fair-haired Boy). He translated ‘The Exile of Erin’ by Campbell into Irish and translated ‘Agallamh an othair leis an mBás’ (The Dialogue of the Patient with Death) into English) into English. Among his other writings which survive are: 1. A small Irish grammar, entitled ‘The Elements of the Irish Language’. 2. A dialogue on the invention of letters and the Commencement of the Irish Language. 3. A book on Ogham entitled ‘Of the cryptography or sacred and mysterious writing of the Irish called Ogham’.

He was also interested in history, folklore and genealogy. He wrote an account of the McCarthys of Gleann a Chroim, a branch of the McCarthy Reaghs, whose territory was in the Dunmanway area. He also wrote a history of the genealogy of the O’Donovan clan, particularly the Clan Cahill branch, on whose ancient territory he resided, their main castles being in Castledonovan near Drimoleague, Rahine in Myross and ‘Cloch an tSráid Bhaile’ (Glandore Castle). He entitled this work ‘O’Donovan’s pedigree, from the earliest accounts to the present time, collected from the public records, authentic manuscripts, well-attested pedigrees and personal information. By John Collins, antiquarian.’ He had begun to write a history of Ireland in Irish and had done some work on an English-Irish dictionary.

He also wrote poems of lesser quality than his great poems; among these are ‘O Mo Lao, mo chailín’ (O, my love, my girl) and ‘Bláth na Gréine’ (Myross Wood). In English he wrote ‘The Battle of Ross’ and ‘Sweet Castletownshend Demense’. There are many other short pieces in Irish and English, which the old seanchaithe (storytellers) could relate. These lived on in oral literature. Some were written down, but undoubtedly, many went unrecorded and were forgotten. Much of his work must have been destroyed when his house burnt down.

The ‘Machamh’ influenced the Anglo Irish writers of the 19th century; both James Clarence Mangan and Samuel Ferguson translated it into English.

In the poem he contrasts the former glory of Timoleague Abbey with its ruinous state in his lifetime. His passionate feeling, the clarity and fluency of language with which he describes the fate of the Abbey is very powerful and any translation could not do it justice. In the last three verses he comments on his own life and draws parallels between the Abbey’s decline with his own life. Once he was happy and full of life, but now he is old and poor. This is the final verse, followed by Ferguson’s translation:

Atá duaireas ar mo dhreach, / Atá mo chroí ‘na chrotal cnó. / Dá bhfóireadh orm an bás / Ba dhearbh m’fháilte faoine chomhair.’

Woe is written on my visage. / In a nut my heart would lie / Death’s deliverance were welcome- / Father, let the old man die.

Doubt has been expressed about Ó Coileáin’s authorship of the ‘Macnamh’. He was known to be a traditionalist, but it is in this knowledge that the Lament is found wanting. Ó Coileáin would have known of the history of the Abbey and its connection with the McCarthys. Such learning was native to Irish poetry of that era, but not a word is found in the lyrics about the history of the Abbey. The late Pádraig Ó Maidín wrote an exploratory three-part essay in ‘Agus’ (November and December 1962 and January 1963) win which he explores the arguments for and against Ó Coileáin’s authorship. O Maidín concludes that O Coileáin did write the poem. Fr Matt Horgan, who was a priest in Myross and a friend of O Coileáin, visited Timoleague Abbey for the first time on January 14, 1846 and he wrote a letter to the Cork Examiner the following day under the pen-name ‘Viator’. At the end of the letter he wrote: “Timoleague Abbey has been celebrated in recent years by my old, and alas, I must say it, late friend, John Collins, of Myross, one of the best Irish scholars and poets of late times. His musings in the deserted aisles of this ruined Convent are among the finest verses I am acquainted with; they may be seen in Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy and are to the Irish scholar what Gray’s Elegy is to the English. It is a fine, solemn and affecting piece of reflective poetry.

Since the ‘Macnamh’ is so unlike the rest of Ó Coileáin’s writings, it has been suggested that it was a once-off effort, prompted by Ó Coileáin’s reading of Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, which he probably got from the same Fr. Horgan, who challenged him to write something similar in Irish. “If this is so, the Macnamh is just as Irish as Gray’s is English,” writes Daniel Corkery.

The faded glory of Timoleague Abbey described in the Macnamh aptly symbolises the decay of language and culture all over Carbery, indeed over the whole country. The poets that followed Ó’Coileáin, with no patronage, little or no education and a dying language, strove to keep alive the tradition of poetry but they never reached the perfection of Ó Coileáin’s best work. One can only reflect regretfully on the vast wealth of song, folklore and oral literature that disappeared in the rapid retreat of Irish, particularly after the Famine. We must be grateful to people like Peadar Ó hAnnracháin and Micheál Ó Cuileanáin, to name but two, who gathered as much as they could.

to be continued…

Pauline Murphy shares the story of West Cork man Patrick Joseph Sullivan who, from modest beginnings on the Sheep’s Head peninsula, went on to emigrate to the United States where he became a successful sheep rancher and later a US senator. It’s also claimed that he was friends with wild west outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid!

Patrick Joseph Sullivan was born on St Patrick’s Day 1865 to John Sullivan and Margaret (née McCarthy) Sullivan on a small farm in Kilcrohane on the Sheep’s Head peninsula.

At the age of 23, Patrick left West Cork for America. His journey began with a difficult Atlantic crossing. After arriving in New York City, he travelled onwards to Wyoming, where he found work as a sheep herder in Rawlins.

Within four years, Patrick had established his own sheep ranch. He later moved to Casper, Wyoming, where he expanded his business interests and became involved in oil. Over time, he became a wealthy and respected member of the community.

Patrick also entered public life. In 1894, he was elected as a Republican to Wyoming’s House of Representatives, serving until 1896. He later served as Mayor of Casper from 1898 to 1900 and returned again to the state House of Representatives. He was known as an approachable and good-humoured man, retaining the charm and wit of his West Cork upbringing. His circle of friends included people from many different backgrounds.

Among those said to have been on friendly terms with Patrick were members of The Wild Bunch, also known as the Hole in the Wall gang. The most well-known of the group, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, reportedly counted the Kilcrohane man as a friend and enjoyed his hospitality.

In 1893, Patrick married Hanora Mahoney, known as Nan, who was also from West Cork. The couple had five daughters: Margaret, Patricia, Eileen, Catherine and Evangeline. In 1909, Patrick built a large red-brick home for his family on the corner of 10th and Centre Street in Casper. The house still stands today and is now a registered historic home in Wyoming.

Despite his success, Patrick also experienced personal loss. In 1914, his youngest daughter, Evangeline, died at the family home in Casper at the age of 12, having been ill for some time with heart trouble. The National County Tribune of June 18, 1914 reported on her funeral, noting the many floral tributes and the large number of friends who attended to offer their sympathy to the family.

Patrick remained active in political life. He was Wyoming’s delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1912 and again served as state delegate in 1916. From 1924, he was appointed as a member of the Republican National Committee representing Wyoming.

In December 1929, he was appointed to the United States Senate to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Senator Francis Warren. He served until November 1930, when Robert Carey succeeded him. Time Magazine of December 16, 1929 described him as a wealthy sheep rancher who had prospered through oil and noted his Cork origins and straightforward manner.

After leaving the Senate, Patrick returned to his business interests. In April 1935, while on a Spring visit to Santa Barbara, California, he suffered a heart attack and died on April 8 at the age of 70. The body of the popular West Cork man was returned to Wyoming, where he was laid to rest in Highland Cemetery in Casper following a large funeral.

What binds all the great philosophers from Aristotle to Peter Singer is a voyage of self-discovery. Despite the many centuries and cultural nuances that separate them, time and time again, a common theme that emerges from so many of them, is to be virtuous and selfless. Aristotle believed that happiness comes from service to the community. Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas, said the key energiser is love and thus acts of love towards humankind. The great fifth century Chinese philosopher Confucius preached that a person becomes whole when they fulfil responsible roles in society in a selfless way. Twenty-first century sage Peter Singer puts it that basically one wants to feel there is more to life than just consuming products and generating garbage. He asks what greater motivation can there be than doing whatever one possibly can to reduce suffering and pain?

The recent pairing of the Republic of Ireland soccer team and Israel in the same group has, once again, highlighted the tensions between the two nations that has developed since Israel’s military incursions into Gaza. It’s probably not a bad thing, since it has turned the spotlight back on the conflict that a UN report has called genocide, seeing that it has dropped out of the media cycle. Yet there have been 600 deaths and counting since Israel agreed to stop the bombing and a ceasefire. So what’s this got to do with a bunch of philosophers?

Prior to the draw, League of Ireland clubs such as Saint Patrick’s Athletic have bravely brought a case to UEFA against Israel’s continued participation in both international and club football. The case is black and white. In summary, the argument revolves around the fact that Israel’s continued participation is a direct breach of article three and four of UEFA’s statutes. By allowing Israeli clubs in occupied Palestinian territory, to participate in European competitions, UEFA are in breach of these statutes and indeed international law. By coincidence the recent draw has escalated this case further but so far both the Irish Government and the FAI have decided not to take a stand. Supporters of the boycott favour UEFA taking the lead on this with a ban – like they did previously with Russia and Yugoslavia – but Israel seems exempt from these rules. So what happens next? The Irish woman’s basketball team, when faced with this uncomfortable fixture, fulfilled it, in spite of many of the young women speaking out against it. Basketball Ireland said it would “damage the sport” and thus the game went ahead.  Will our government take action?  Mary Lou has said we should give Israel “the red card”, whereas Simon Harris said, “Ireland would miss out” The FAI likewise have said they “have no choice”. Will individual players take it upon themselves to take a stand? It’s difficult on one level given many may feel it could damage their career, but should we listen to the great men and women who believe that virtue and selflessness will lead to a fulfilled life above everything else? 

This article will look at some sportspeople who made the decision to do what they felt was right, even if it could have led to their own personal ruin. History has been kind to them for their brave actions and, in times of great moral ambiguity, we need more of our heroes to stand up. 

Muhammad Ali 

By 1967 there were almost half a million soldiers fighting in Vietnam. Black people were drafted in disproportionate numbers, something that Martin Luther King Jr highlighted in a famous speech he gave at the Riverside church in New York in April 1967. Always conscious of keeping the white political elite on board, he risked sanction with his direct confrontation; “We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”

Muhammad Ali would take it further, which ultimately led to the loss of his boxing world title and his arrest and deny this brilliant and charismatic athlete from performing in a boxing arena for a further three-and-a-half years. Just a few short weeks after King’s speech, he refused to be drafted, as it went against his religious beliefs and, like King, his moral outlook. On April 28, he declared to the world “The real enemy of my people is right here (USA). I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.”

Tommie Smith and John Carlos

Mexico City 1968. America marvels at the performances of their 200-metre sprint team. Carlos claims the bronze and Smith the gold, breaking the world record in the process. Since then there have been thousands of American medal winners that most people have forgotten, but these two athletes will be remembered forever for their brave stance. They walked into the area, shoeless, as a symbol of the poverty that had engulfed their communities. (Vietnam was costing the state 30 billion dollars a year and LBL’s ‘great society’ project was bankrupt). Carlos wore a necklace to symbolise lynching. More symbolically, they raised their clenched fists in the manner of the civil rights group, the Black Panthers, after they received their medals and during the national anthem. Afterwards they were sent home in disgrace, received death threats and endured financial hardship. When Smith was asked if he regretted that salute, he replied, “The only regret was that it had to be done.”

Tony Ward 

In 2026, Irish rugby has been obsessing about who should be the Irish number 10 for the national team – Jack Crowley or Sam Prendergast. There was a similar conversation in the early eighties, when Tony Ward and Ollie Campbell were the darlings of that era. They were both so good that they were selected for the Lions tour to apartheid South Africa in 1980. Both men jumped at the highest accolade in rugby, but it would have a negative effect on Ward. The reality of the situation appalled the young man: “When we arrived in Johannesburg airport I came face to face with the reality of apartheid when I went to the toilet and saw the sign ‘Whites only toilet – No Blacks’.” The following year, trade unions, the government and the Catholic church called on the IRFU not to tour South Africa. It fell on deaf ears and unbelievably they still went. Not Tony Ward (and a dozen others). After what he had seen firsthand, he refused to travel and his international rugby career was never the same again after. 

Naomi Osaka 2020

Osaka is one of the highest profile players in the women’s tennis circuit, winning four grand slam titles. During the US open of 2020, she wore seven masks bearing the name of black victims shot dead by police, to shine a light on the continued police violence in the USA that has been particularly hard on immigrants and the black community. In an interview she said, “For me it’s just spreading awareness. I feel like the more people know the story, then the more interesting or interested they’ll become in it. It’s quite sad that seven masks aren’t enough for the amount of names.” That was the same year the high profile case of George Floyd was choked by police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020 on the streets of Minneapolis, where this last month Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good were killed by federal agents. Has anything changed? Thankfully Osaka’s career was not negatively affected for her brave stance.

Vladyslav Heraskevych 2026

Heraskevych, a Ukrainian Winter Olympic athlete engaged in a similar protest as Osaka’s. On his helmet, he wore what he called a ‘helmet of remembrance’ depicting twenty-four of his friends that have been killed by Russia in the war on Ukraine. He was disqualified from the competition on the grounds that the Olympic committee does not allow signs of political, religious or racial propaganda to be displayed. Heraskevych said it was to honour his dead friends and refused to back down. The IOC disagreed and he lost his Olympic dream because of his moral stance. 

It’s an eternal question that never goes away. Should sport and politics mix? Perhaps instead we should ask the question: Is every platform a legitimate one to voice concerns, raise awareness and shed light on injustice? Sadly, for many who have used their fame for such things – be it writers, sports people or musicians – the consequences have been negative. One thing is for sure, the aforementioned examples have lived up to the ideology of some of the greatest philosophers. What is it all about – love, selflessness, the service of your community and the betterment of all our lives. That is true happiness.

Rather than relying on local lore or well-worn narratives, D’Alton interrogates the available evidence – archaeological, geological, historical and anecdotal – to construct a grounded and nuanced account of The Mizen’s past. The result is a study that not only corrects common misconceptions but also uncovers overlooked aspects of the region’s cultural and physical history, from prehistoric structures and medieval trade to famine-era injustices and modern misinterpretations.D’Alton, also a published photographer, has filled the book with beautiful and unique views of The Mizen. ‘This Is The Mizen’ is a comprehensive and accessible exploration of a rugged landscape often seen but never before examined in depth.

A must-have history and guide for residents and visitors alike, it is available in selected bookshops and online at buythebook.ie. Softcover €30, hardback €60.

An extract (condensed) from the book telling the story of how Europe got to learn of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, featuring Crookhaven, County Cork.

When an attempt was made on Donald Trump’s life during the 2024 US election the news went around the world in seconds. This is the world we live in. Consequently it is impossible today to believe that the news of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 took almost twelve days to reach the first place in Europe to learn of it: tiny Crookhaven in far West Cork.

Why Crookhaven? Julius Reuter, of the eponymous news agency, by 1863, was in a fight for survival with his customers to be the first with the news from the United States of America. He had a contract with the Associated Press (AP) in New York for the exchange of news. The American news was dropped off from Cunard liners at Roche’s Point, Cork, conveyed to Reuter’s office there and telegraphed to his subscribers throughout the United Kingdom. His news supply chain began in New York where the AP put newspapers and other dispatches onto Cunard ships departing for Southampton or Liverpool. Anything newsworthy that occurred during the following four days was telegraphed to Cape Race on the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, and transferred to the trans-Atlantic liners which passed close by. This was the fastest method to get the latest news from America after the failure of the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable in 1858, the Atlantic Ocean having proved a more formidable obstacle to the spread of the telegraph than the English Channel and the Irish Sea.

The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 threw the cotton industry in England into turmoil. Before the war, America’s southern slave states were the source of eighty per-cent of cotton used by the British textile industry. By August 1861 that figure had dropped to zero. As one-sixth of the English population was dependant on cotton for its livelihood, this caused widespread unemployment and enormous hardship, particularly in Lancashire. It also increased the British demand for up-to-the minute news from America to fever pitch.

It was a British inventor, Frederic Gisborne, who first identified the potential of Newfoundland as a suitable location for the exchange of news between the Old World and the New. Westbound news, deposited at Newfoundland, could be forwarded telegraphically to New York. Likewise, eastbound news, having left New York could be updated at Newfoundland. Newspapers and news-agencies would pay handsomely for this four-day advantage. When Gisborne realised that ships were not going to put into port he came up with a novel solution: intercept them at sea. He proposed that the telegrams be put in a barrel for the ship’s crew to throw overboard as they passed Cape Race eastward. Once the barrel was retrieved, its contents would be transmitted to New York. Although not implemented by Gisborne, this transfer method became operational when the AP became aware of the telegraph at Cape Race, and in 1859 stationed a ‘news boat’ – a small steamer – there and a boatman to operate it, one John Murphy. Updates to news already on the ship, were telegraphed to Cape Race, placed in a watertight metal container (much like a marker buoy) and then conveyed by the ‘news boat’ out to sea. According to a Reuter employee in Crookhaven, the watertight containers were about two feet six inches in height, conical in shape and ballasted with lead. Reuter contracted with the shipping companies, principally, Cunard, for the transport of the canisters between Cape Race and Cork. The canister arrangement suited the shipping lines who were on tight schedules: the fees were welcome; the ships did not have to put in to a port to collect the telegraphed dispatches any more; they didn’t even have to slow down as they collected and dropped off the news. From 1859, “Via Cape Race” began appearing in the headings of news stories in the Irish, English, and American newspapers.

Reuter’s business model was based on being first with news, which he sold primarily to the mercantile and banking communities. The invention and widespread adoption of the electric telegraph had created a new industry, the news agency, and Reuter’s, established in London, was one of the first. The scramble at Roche’s point presented his business with the greatest challenge yet encountered. With the war raging, and the outcome far from certain, Roche’s Point was no longer feasible as a telegraph terminus for Reuter.

The rapidly expanding telegraph industry in the UK was first regulated by the 1863 Telegraph Act, which allowed any incorporated company to construct telegraph circuits “…under any Street or public Road and over, along, or across any Street or public Road…”. For Reuter the timing was perfect. If he was to be first with the news he would have to intercept the liners further west, as close to the shipping lane as possible. He commissioned the Siemens brothers of London to construct a private telegraph line from South Mall, Cork to Crookhaven, which was operational by December, 1863 where he established an office, stationed a small steamer and employed four men. His staff used the Brow Head Napoleonic-era signal tower to sight liners which were signalled using rockets. He would have to intercept the liners south of the Fastnet but he would now have a three to five hour advantage over his customers and competitors. Once again he would be first with the news.

Good Friday, April 14, 1865 had all the signs of being a slow news night for New York’s journalists until the news that President Abraham Lincoln had been shot in Washington arrived at AP’s New York office at 11pm. The brief message read: ‘President Lincoln Shot.’

Pandemonium ensued. The scramble was on to find the next, fastest available steamer heading east which, it transpired, wouldn’t leave New York until 5pm the following day. However, further east, the Nova Scotian was preparing to depart from Portland, Maine, at noon on the 15th, five hours earlier and one day closer to Ireland. The AP had a private telegraph line to Portland and immediately telegraphed the news about Lincoln to be put aboard the Nova Scotian which would drop off the news at Greencastle, County Donegal.

Meanwhile, across the river in New Jersey, at midnight on Friday, April 14, an hour after the news of the shooting had reached the AP’s office, the Teutonia had cast off from Hoboken dock bound for Hamburg via Southampton. Reuter’s representative in New York, James Heckscher, one of his most trusted journalists, acting independently of AP, chartered a fast tug to chase down the Teutonia as she steamed out of New York harbour. Against the odds, the tug caught up with the Teutonia and Heckscher threw aboard his news that Lincoln had been shot (not killed, the president was still alive by the time Heckscher caught up with the Teutonia).

The terrible and important news that Lincoln had died from his wound Saturday morning at 7:22am, was in time to be telegraphed to Portland. The headline now changed from: President Shot to: President Assassinated.

The Teutonia was the first of the two ships to make landfall when she appeared off the Fastnet eleven-and-a-half days later at 8am, Wednesday, April 26. Her news was transferred to Reuter’s steamer and telegraphed to London from his Crookhaven office. The Nova Scotian, delayed by fog, but because she had departed after the Teutonia, carried the critical news that Lincoln was dead, which was conveyed ashore to Greencastle at 9:45am and telegraphed to London.

Reuter simultaneously distributed the first news dispatch to his business clients. This subsequently leaked to the wider public from a client, Peabody & Company, an American bank. This initially led to the news being thought a hoax perpetrated by market speculators. The arrival, two hours later, of the news that Lincoln had expired, carried by the Nova Scotian, as well as an official report from the American Legation, confirmed the accuracy of the dispatch telegraphed via the Teutonia from Crookhaven.

As for Heckscher: his valiant effort to provide Reuter with a news-scoop lost all significance once the Nova Scotian made landfall: President Lincoln had not only been shot, he had been shot dead.

At least it’s one less despot in the world I hear some of you say! What’s the problem if it makes life better for Venezuela? If their reasoning was simply to rid the world of despots, why not take out Putin of Russia, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, Khamenei of Iran, Netanyahu of Israel, Museveni of Uganda, Bashar al Assad of Syria? Well, we know their motivation because Trump told us… He wants their oil. It was brazen, bold, typical American imperialism, serving only American interest and not that of the country it supposedly ‘rescued’ from Maduro. In the meantime, María Corina Machado, the primary leader of the democratic opposition in Venezuela, has been side-lined by the Trump administration. This is the same woman who was recognised by the international community with the Nobel Peace Prize. Ignoring her pleas, Trump has declared he will now rule Venezuela; he brazenly posted a doctored map of the world on social media showing Venezuela, Canada and Greenland emblazoned with the ‘stars and stripes’. 

The current en vogue phrase coming out of the Oval office is ‘spheres of influence’, but this has been how the United States has conducted its foreign policy for centuries. The US, overtly and covertly, interfered and agitated within other countries for their own imperialist desires, despite the image of being anti-colonial. As far back as 1823, when the US was barely out of new nationhood nappies, the so-called Monroe Doctrine – named after President James Monroe – became the backbone of future US foreign policy. On balance, it was a way to protect itself, given that European countries still occupied large parts of the continent of America, the Caribbean and Canada. The crux of it explicitly stated that the US maintained a right to interfere in Latin America for its own purpose. However, this mentality was not confined to Latin America. When Britain and France were at their zenith at the turn of the 19th century, Spain was long in decline as a world power. During the Spanish-American war of 1898, President McKinley annexed the Philippines. After defeating the Spanish, America stayed for a while – almost fifty years – before granting independence to the Philippines in 1946.

Enter Theodore Roosevelt, a racist imperialist and someone who would make even Trump blush. He believed in racial supremacy and displaced thousands of native Americans, reportedly declaring “I wouldn’t go as far to say that only good Indians are dead Indians but…”. He is infamous for his role in the Panama Canal, which was then a province of Colombia. It remains one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century, albeit its construction came at a great cost to human life. Colombia refused to allow the Americans to complete the canal that the French had started but failed to finish. The United States did what it has often done: it supported an insurgency in Panama in 1903 to break the territory away from Colombia, enabling it to negotiate directly with the new Panamanian government and secure a highly favourable deal – an approach not entirely dissimilar to how Trump leveraged Ukraine’s urgent need for US military support to extract a major mineral agreement. This amounted to Panama granting the US “in perpetuity” the rights, power, and authority over a 10-mile-wide canal zone. They held it until Jimmy Carter, an anomalous and genuine president, halted drilling in Alaska through a land preservation act, installed solar panels on the White House, and returned control of the Panama Canal to its host nation in 1977, much to the disbelief of the hawks in Washington. During the Panama fiasco in 1903, Roosevelt’s administration also expelled the Spanish from Cuba, but compelled the Cubans to include a provision in their constitution that would allow the US to maintain a base at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely – unless both countries agree to change it, which, of course, has never happened. (Are you watching Greenland?!) It wasn’t the only Caribbean island to be bullied. The United States occupied both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, governing them through a military administration for nearly a decade, from 1916 to 1924. Ironically much of this happened under the watchful presidency of Woodrow Wilson who, speaking out both sides of his mouth, told the Europeans at Versailles in 1919, that they needed to dissolve their colonies and allow self-determination.

After World War II and the advent of the Cold War, President Truman, in 1947, created the CIA, with the objective to ‘conduct covert action abroad, as directed by the President’, as stated on their website (no joke). Covert is a key word here and probably the main difference between Trump and his predecessors. A country that for so long sold the world the line that they were the world’s policeman, had no one policing them! Countries that elected left-leaning governments became prime targets. The most famous example occurred during President Kennedy’s tenure – the Cuban Missile Crisis. Its roots were planted a year earlier, in 1961, when Kennedy attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro using CIA-trained Cuban exiles. That went disastrously wrong and undermined his reputation. He recovered somewhat in 1962, getting the Soviets to publicly withdraw missile bases in Cuba, while while secretly arranging for the United States to dismantle its nuclear bases in Turkey, which were within striking range of the USSR.

Chile elected their socialist leader, Salvador Allende, in 1970, in an open and fair election. He wanted to drag his population out of poverty and his programme of nationalisation went on to hurt capital interests in the USA. His rule was also an inspiration to other poor Latin American countries to follow suit. It was incredible that he won the election at all given that the US spent tens of millions of dollars on undermining the Chilean elections from 1964 on under the watchful eyes of President Johnson and then President Nixon. (I hope by now you see that whether the president is a Democrat or Republican, it amounts to just different shades of the same thing). When that failed, the CIA orchestrated a military coup in 1973, allowing general Pinochet to take over and begin his bloody regime including implementing torture and death camps. It also prompted the period of the ‘Disappearances’, during which any opponents were arrested and never seen again. This was also happening in Argentina under Jorge Videla and the military junta who, from 1976, got the green light from president Ford to, at all costs, go ahead with his violent repression of left wing opponents. President Ronald Reagan sanctioned the CIA to train the Contras, a group set up to dispose of leftist Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. In this instance he failed, instead crippling the country with economic weapons and creating an improvised nation that has forced hundreds of thousands to flee illegally to the USA for a better life. A generation on and they now have to face ICE.

America’s best-known international geopolitical bullying is what the Vietnamese call ‘the fight between the elephant and the grasshopper’. This escalated into an all-out war between the military might of the US ‘elephant’ and the tiny Viet Cong ‘grasshopper’. While the Vietnam War was not strictly a covert operation, President Johnson downplayed its escalating costs even as many American cities faced deepening poverty and racial unrest. Even countries with little military or political power, like the mineral-rich Congo, became targets of US foreign policy. Patrice Lumumba was elected in 1960 as the first democratic leader of the Congo, a former Belgian colony. He leaned towards the communist ideal of nationalisation and socialist policies. President Dwight Eisenhower, a military hero who fought against the dictatorial power of the Nazis, had the CIA support a coup, after which Lumumba was tortured and executed in 1961. Another famous example of a socialist-leaning African leader whose administration was undermined by the US in the same era is Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, who was overthrown abroad, in a 1966 coup orchestrated by the CIA.

Each of these events deserves an article in their own right and each makes a fascinating study of American foreign policy. In our own time, we have seen presidents Bush, Clinton, Obama and Biden conduct wars of ‘liberation’ in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, and for what? To destabilised countries, a move that ultimately enriches the US. Presenting these events together in this article (and this is far from a comprehensive list) illustrates the far-reaching and often harmful influence of US foreign policy around the world.

Political commentators have said that Trump and his policy makers are destabilising the world. While this statement is correct, you would be mistaken in thinking that Trump is an aberration. American presidents have been destabilising the world for over two centuries. The key difference today is that Trump makes no effort to conceal his actions or maintain the pretence that the United States acts as the world’s benevolent policeman – it never truly did.

Unlike their predecessors, the poets were peasants – labourers or wandering schoolmasters. But, as Corkery observes, they never thought of themselves as peasants; they thought of themselves as poets. They were the sons of learning, carrying on the tradition of the great bardic schools and the later Courts of Poetry. They knew that they were the inheritors of a thousand years of organised bardic poetry. The Cromwellian was not a poet. Poetry he could not understand, nor even the need for it. He was not fit to be named in one breath with the Gael, on whom he trampled. The Gaels were “children of kings, sons of Melesius” and they knew it. The poems of the great writers Aodhagán Ó Rathaille and Eoghan Rua O’Suilleabháin, almost two hundred years after their creation, were found alive in the mouths of farmers and fishermen. The poems of Séan Ó Coileáin were still remembered a century and a half later by old people in Carbery – at least by one – Tadhg Ó Muirthile (1850-1940) of Kilfadeen, Leap.

In one of Eoghan Rua O’Suilleabháin’s poems, the spirit of Ireland recalls her great past when her lot was chieftainship and feasting ‘le seascaireach ceoil’ (with the comfort of music). The comfort of music – the one phrase to denote the excelling charm in his own verse, the exact phrase to describe what it was he gave his down-trodden and hungry people, endearing himself to them despite his wild ways. A reckless genius, the words that flew from his lips were pure music. No wonder he soon became known as ‘Eoghan an Bhéil Bhinn (Eoghan of the sweet mouth).

Séan Ó Coileáin, or Seán Máistir (Master John) as he was called by his contemporaries, had much in common with Eoghan Rua. They were contemporaries but almost certainly never met; they were both reckless and daring, fond of drink and women, but they were loved “for their wit, for the music that flowed from their mouths”. O’Coileáin ‘the Silver Tongue of Munster and Eoghan Run of the ‘Sweet Mouth’. The music of words – that’s what both gave their listeners – the sweet music of words that uplifted burdened minds and hearts, if only for a short while.

Little is known of O’Coileáin’s life or work from his own writing or from that of his contemporaries. However, his poems, stories and anecdotes about his life lived on in West Carbery well into the 20th century. For instance, in 1938, when the National School Folklore was being collected, Tadhg  Ó Muirthile of Kilfadeen, Leap, then 88, could recite many of his poems an tell stories about O’Coileáin’s life to local teachers like Séan O’Donovan of Kilmacabea NS, Leap, James McCarthy of Knockskeagh NS, Leap and Pádraig Ó Conaill, Irish teacher from Myross. He also features strongly in the folklore of the primary schools in Maulatrahane, Union Hall, Castlehaven and Rosscarbery.

The main sources for this article are (a) the folklore collected in the above schools, (b) an essay written by Peadar Ó hAnnracháin in ‘Irisleabhar na Gaeilge’ (The Gaelic Journal) (c) an essay in Scríobhaithe Chorcaí 1700-1850 by Buachalla (James Buckley), now in the National Library of Ireland and used as a source by Ó Conchúir.

Séan Ó Coileáin’s father’s people were from the area between Drimoleague and Dunmanway and his mother’s people, Muintir Anglainn (Anglin) were resident “west of Drimoleague”, probably in Caheragh parish. His father had a farm in Ballygurteen, near Killeen, where Séan was born in 1754. It appears that the family were evicted when Séan was young and that his father died soon afterwards. His mother took Séan back to her own people where she rented a house. According to Peadar Ó hAnnracháin, she also died young, and it was his mother’s family who reared him and gave him whatever education was available.

It is said that he spent some time in a seminary in Spain or France, preparing to be a priest. The only certain fact about this period of his life is found in his manuscripts, where he states that he spent four months in a seminary in Coimbra, Portugal.

He never completed his training for the priesthood  and, after returning from the Continent, he headed south toward the sea and settled in the parish of Myross, “garraí na Mumhain”, as he himself described it. According to one story in folklore, he met some people from Myross at Rosscarbery Fair and they persuaded him to establish a school in Myross. He rented a little house here and set up a school in ‘aice le Séipéal an Stúicín ar bharr na Ceapaí (near Stookeen Church at the height of Cappagh). Cappagh is east of Rineen, overlooking the inlet of Castlehaven harbour between Union Hall and Castletownsend. The ruins of Stuicín church are still to be seen. West of the church on the wooded slope called the Lackareagh (Leaca Riabhach, the grey or striped slope) he had his school. There is a cliff here called ‘Faill an fhiáin dris (the cliff of the wild briar), near the top of which is ‘Leaba Sheáin Uí Choileáin’ (the bed of Seán Ó Coileáin). Here he used to meditate and compose poems as he tells us himself.

‘Is socair, is sámh, is sásta chodlas aréir / I leaba glan árd faoi scáth agus fothain na gcraobh, / Crann crithir agus déil agus craobh glas den chuileann mar dhíon / Agus duilliúir na gcraobh mar éadach leaapan fém cheann.’

(It’s comfortable, cosy and satisfied I slept last night / In a clean high bed beneath the shade and shelter of the branches, / Aspen and deal and green-branched holly my roof / And the trees’ foliage as a pillow under my head).

To be continued….

It is a historical fact that the potato, more than any other crop, dominated the farming system of Ireland in general, and of West Cork in particular, all through the 19th century and indeed well into the 20th. The early variety in those days was either the ‘Red Elephant’ or the ‘Epicure’ and the beautiful yellow-tinted ‘Champion’ was the main crop, a potato of such perfection for table use that its equal has never since appeared despite the obvious attraction of ‘Kerr’s Pinks’ and the ‘Golden Wonder’ in our own time.

The potatoes were usually sown in a sound ‘bán’ (lea) field and the fences cleared of all bushes and briars. Several cartloads of farmyard manure was drawn out and spread over the field, manure that had accumulated during the previous winter when the cattle had been housed at night, their stalls cleaned out each morning and spread over the ‘aiteann Gaelach’ (Irish furze) and ‘raithineach’ (ferns) that had been cut and deposited over part of the farmyard. On Heir Island and the other islands of Roaringwater Bay and along the coast, seaweed was gathered from the strands and cut from the rocks, drawn to the fields in baskets on a donkey’s back. Each landholder had their section of shore marked, where they were allowed cut the ‘feamainn’ (seaweed).

With the manure spread over the surface the ploughing of the ridges began. At that time potatoes were grown exclusively in ridges, as they had been for more than a century before. The idea of sowing them in drills came in some time later. On Heir Island there was a practice of using three donkeys to plough. The next job was an exacting one, the hacking of the ridges, always with a ‘grafán’ – a type of strong hoe, no longer used. It was back-breaking, back-bending work.

The seed potatoes or sciolláns, as they were called, were cut, so that from a single potato you might get two or three seed. I can still clearly remember my parents cutting the ‘sciolláns’. After this was done the potatoes would be set. A pouch was fashioned from a half-sack meal bag in such a way that you had a very serviceable much into which you put the ‘sciolláns’ for planting. The pouch was called a ‘púca’ (pooka) which, of course, is also the Irish for a ghost. The hole for the ‘sciollán’ was made by a spade and the ‘sciolláns’ dropped into it, usually five ‘sciolláns’ across the width of the ridge. Closing the holes was done with a ‘pucadóir’ (also called a fairichín), which was a short block of timber with a handle attached.

Three weeks after came the first ‘earthing’ when earth from the furrows between the ridges was shovelled onto the ridge. Two weeks later the stalks appeared and two weeks after that the second earthing was done. The potatoes were usually sprayed against blight at least three times; this was a solution of blue-stone and washing soda, usually before blossoming, a fortnight after blossoming and a third spray in late July.

Digging the potatoes in ridges was done by a spade. The farmer dug them and they were picked into buckets and all the collected potatoes put in a pit. The pickers had to segregate the white potato from the black rotten ones, the fully developed potato from the ‘criochán’ (small potatoes). The half-criocháns were collected later and boiled for the pigs.

The potato-pit was a source of wonder and admiration for those who could never make one themselves. A well-made pit started as a shallow trench somewhere in the field. The potatoes were neatly traced up into a long narrow ridge-like pile, tapering evenly from ground level to a sharp-edged top. They were carefully covered with straw, or more often with ‘luachair’ rushes that grew in every big in West Cork. Then the real working began, the art of earthing the pit, with shovelful after shovelful of loose earth piled with eight inches deep over the potatoes, the two sides of the pit being built up at the same time until they met at the top in a perfect edge. Then the whole pit was patted smooth with the back of the shovel and the potatoes were safer than they would ever be in a house. The farmer usually took pride in his work – the potato pit had to be made skilfully; the rick of corn, the rick of hay, all were fashioned like works of art.

Patrick Kavanagh, the greatest poet of rural Ireland, mentions the potato-pit in his lovely nostalgic poem ‘A Christmas Childhood’: ‘One side of the potato-pits was white with frost / How wonderful that was, how wonderful!’

In ‘Spraying the Potatoes’, he writes: ‘The barrels of blue potato-spray stood on a headland of July and / The flocks of green potato-stalks / Were blossom spread for sudden flight, / The Kerr’s Pinks in a frilled blue, / The Arran Banners wearing white.

Defendants in the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s.

Within these past few weeks, Trump’s audacious attempt to broker a peace deal in Ukraine, if accepted, could result in a humiliating defeat for Ukraine and a justification that if a bigger country like Russia wants something, then they can go ahead and just take it. The offer on the table would require Ukraine to cede territory that is currently occupied by Russian forces, as well as additional territory that is not. Ukraine would also be required to restrict the size of its army, while Russia would face no such limits. The proposal would give Russia joint control over a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. It would permanently bar Ukraine from joining NATO. Finally, it would allow Russia to rejoin the G8 and reintegrate into the global economy as if nothing had happened.  When I broached the subject with two of my senior Ukrainian students, expecting them to share my disgust at this proposal, I was taken aback by the response: “I just want to go home,” “I just want the bombing to stop.” My armchair political analysis was superseded by the most human of reactions – the lore of home, family life and normality.

It’s almost four years since Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine, which has certain parallels to Stalin’s invasion of Poland in 1939. Both wars have resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. Both conflicts have centred on attacks on civilian towns and infrastructure, resulting in a mass exodus of refugees. And both conflicts have destabilised Europe. Another interesting comparison between then and now is that Western allies did not commit any troops into the theatre of war to defend the invaded territories. Stalin was a dictator ruling the USSR from 1924 to 1953, while Putin is a dictator in all but name, serving five terms as president or prime minister from 1999, doing so by changing the constitution that has allowed him to serve until now. Indeed, further constitutional amendments mean he ‘legally’ can remain in office up to 2036, thus surpassing the ‘Man of Steel’s’ thirty-year grip on the sceptre of power. Who would have thought this could happen again after the USSR was dissolved in 1991? It prompted the now infamous (and erroneous) political belief that the end of communism would now mean that western liberal democracy would become the victorious, final form of human governance – a kind of Darwinian political survival of the fittest. How wrong was Francis Fukuyama, the American political scientist who coined that phrase ‘End of History’ and wrote a book on it in 1992?

Instead we are in the midst of an era where illiberal and intolerant democracies and overzealous nationalist governments have blurred the lines between the independence of their judiciary and the reach of their rule. Perhaps Francis Fukuyama might be tempted to rebrand his as: ‘End of History for Liberal Democracy’. From the USA to Brazil, Hungary to India, Russia to Israel, the once vociferous voice of the free people is turning into a weakened whisper. Governments in these countries conflate criticism with anti-patriotism. We must not take for granted what we still have in Ireland – genuine freedom of our press, debate and our expression. 

What is really a key component for any dictatorship is the control of media and thus public opinion. Putin creates laws that criminalise criticism of Russian military operations in the media and restricts foreign newspapers. In 2024 81 European broadcasters were banned from airing in Russia. His latest battle is to control individuals’ access to information that is not censored and controlled through their state media outlets. SnapChat has been banned, Apple FaceTime blocked, and WhatsApp is next, throwing a blanket further on the sharing of any stories that run counter to the Russian official line. 

Stalin of course didn’t have to worry about digital or broadcasting media. Neither was he too concerned about print media, given that so many of the population of the USSR were illiterate and over 130 different languages were spoken across its landmass that spreads halfway around the globe across eleven time zones. But he was keen to get his message across to the masses. What was the best vehicle to do this? The trials of the 1930s. Invent a crime – one that betrays the state and therefore the people – make the message a simple one and punish mercilessly anyone who opposes you. Do it all in front of a judge and legal system in order to lend an air of legitimacy – even to foreign ears – and you have your magic formula.

There were three major ‘Show Trials’ in USSR during the 1930s. Stalin had seized control after Lenin’s death, though he was not his ‘anointed man’. Stalin had what Putin has: an unshakable belief in his own dogma. He executed 20,000 people in the early years, withstood all contenders, the most notable of whom was Trotsky, who fled to Mexico where he was eventually assassinated by Soviet agents. He was determined that the socialist revolution was to be led via the urban worker, to the detriment of the masses of peasant population who had to feed the urban Soviets. This would lead to collectivisation of their farms, widespread famine and subservience of the more well-off Kulak peasantry. Putin, likewise, has eliminated politically and by force, his political opponents, most notably Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned, an act widely attributed to the Russian state. When Navalny bravely returned home to rally his supporters, Putin had him imprisoned, and after a corrupt trial, he died in jail. Since then, it has become law that any Russian living outside of Russia is prohibited from running for office – a rule that affects many who fled the country to escape censorship for speaking out or to avoid unfair imprisonment.

Alex Navalny in court as part of the Kirovles trial, 2013.

Step back to 1936. The economy is not going well, and Hitler’s rhetoric against the USSR and communism is growing louder and more aggressive. Holding a trial that revealed an internal ‘danger’ would serve as a way to rally support and send an unmistakable message to the population that Stalin maintained complete control. It would also carry enough weight to have a disciplining effect on all the international communist movements that were attempting to foster communism abroad in their host countries. But not just any kind of communism – it had to be Stalin’s kind of Russian communism. The evidence used in the trials were a set of confessions from the accused that corroborated a conspiracy to overthrow the state through the assassination of key leaders. The accused were aware that these confessions would almost certainly result in their execution, yet they were still coerced into giving them. It also closed any debate. If they all agreed to their guilt, then there could be no rousing defiant defences or speeches that might capture the imagination of anti- Stalinists. The trial of course appeared legitimate. This is a task Putin has failed at – persuading international audiences that there is any semblance of fairness. On the other hand, the key prosecutor of the 1930 show trials, Andrei Vyshinsky, carried that air of legitimacy. He had a dress sense that caught the eye of British observers. One commented that he looked “like a stock broker from the city…a reliable kind of chap”. The American ambassador called him sober-minded, capable and wise. Years later, in the 1950s, he visited London, and the young Princess Margaret was eager to meet him because of his notorious prosecutions! Show trials by their nature imply a propagandistic element to the whole proceedings. They suggest a false narrative, a pretence that masks a dictatorial system that controls the judiciary. But Stalin succeeded in convincing his people and, for a while, the international community, of the authenticity of the proceedings

Comparing politics from different eras within a country is not straightforward given the prevailing conditions of any given time. Putin could not possibly get away with mass purges of Stalin. But mass jail sentences ultimately do the same thing. Silence opposition. Both men have a natural fear of the West – perhaps with good reason. Napoleon, Hitler and the collapse of the Soviet Union have all come from western assaults. The Russian Bear does not like to be poked. Throughout its long history, Russia has rarely experienced any form of liberal democracy. Instead, it has progressed from dynastic, feudal Tsars to communism, then dictatorship, followed by a one-party system, a brief experiment with democracy, and now a Putin-style autocracy. But it has been the Russian way. George Orwell, a contemporary of the 1930’s proceedings, observed. “What was frightening about these trials was not the fact that they happened – for obviously such things are necessary in a totalitarian society – but the eagerness of western intellectuals to justify them.” Perhaps that is the difference between then and now. For all our problems across the globe today, thankfully we can say we live in more enlightened times, and are more equipped to challenge the word of leaders who claim to be the voice of the people. This does not magic away all the horrendous conflicts; Sudan, Palestine, Ukraine and the many other regimes that suppress their own people. But there are enough dissenting voices out there that whatever or wherever the next show trial is – we will at least ask questions, look at the sources and view the evidence for ourselves. As long as we do that, there is always a chance.