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SEAN LYSAGHT, Tim Dwyer, and Gráinne McHale are the featured readers at the Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library on Thursday March 26 at 6.30pm.

The continued unrest, murders, and large-scale protests as the Land War careered dangerously through the Irish countryside, led at last to some reform. William Gladstone’s Second Land Act of 1881 proposed broad concessions to the tenant farmer. But Parnell, the very effective leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, was not satisfied. He said that tenants were still vulnerable to rent arrears and poverty resulting from poor harvests. He urged that the Act either accommodate these concerns, or be rejected.

GALWAY SAW some of the highest levels of incidents during The Land War, including murders, woundings, arson, boycotting, and intimidation.

THREE GALWAY based writers, Alvy Carragher, Kate Ennals, and Michael Farry, will read at Over The Edge in the Galway City Library on Thursday February 27 at 6.30pm.

Friday March 13 1846 turned out to be a very unlucky day for the 447 tenants on the Gerrard estate in the townland of Ballinlass, near Mount Bellew Co Galway. Shortly after dawn the sheriff, accompanied by a large force of the 49th Regiment under the command of Captain Browne, and an equally large detachment of police, arrived at ‘the place marked out for destruction.’ Despite the vehement protestations of the people, and their insistence that they had their rent money ready for payment, and that their repeated efforts to pay their rent was refused, the soldiers and police began systematically to demolish their homes, 67 in number. *

GEOFFREY CHAUCER’S immortal Canterbury Tales is the subject of a major new book of essays, including contributions from NUI Galway academics.

This month marks the 321st anniversary of the Battle of Aughrim, one of the major engagements of the Williamite Wars, and possibly the largest and most significant battle fought in County Galway.

Week III

In the 1880s the Land War was at its height. It was a prolonged period of bitter civic unrest which pitted an unprotected peasantry against some ruthless landlords, who had the law and power of eviction at their disposal. Following the Great Famine a weakened tenant peasantry was easily removed from the land. It began a pitiful trail to the workhouse, and the emigrant ships. But as the century progressed the situation changed. The highly organised Irish National Land League supported evicted farmers; while members of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Westminster fought for legislation which would eventually see a redistribution of land to tenants.

Between 1869 and 1909 a revolution took place in land ownership in Ireland. A succession of Land Acts gradually reduced the powers of the landlord, and gave their former tenants the means and the opportunity to buy out their tenancy, and to own their own farms. Generous terms were given to tenants by the Wyndham Act of 1903. £100 million was advanced for land purchase, which was immediately availed of by the great majority of tenants. Tenants were advanced the whole purchase price of their holding, at a little over three per cent to be repaid over 68 years. Most landlords were pleased to accept the ready cash, and a whole new social structure emerged throughout the island. However, initially landlords were not compelled to sell, and the independently wealthy marquis of Clanricarde of east Galway refused to cooperate. But his days of evictions, disparaging remarks about his tenants, his bully boy land agent Edward Shaw Tener and his henchmen, were numbered.