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Following on from previous years’ successes, Outdoor Sports Mullingar is delighted to announce that it will host another event in its premises in Mullingar Business Park on March 26 at 7.30pm.

Galway was given fascinating insights into the turbulent life of one of Europe’s men of genius last weekend. Music for Galway, which continues to present the very best classical music in innovative and challenging ways, devoted three days exploring the literary and musical passion of the great Ludwig van Beethoven. And, would you believe it? Gave us both an Irish and a Galway connection.

The historian James Hardiman, in describing the Claddagh, said: “It is said that they considered it a kind of reproach either to speak English or to send their children to school, and that a schoolmaster among them would be considered a phenomenon; but of late there are some exceptions to this rule. How far education would make these people happier in themselves, or more useful members of society, is a matter of doubt, but it is certain that the trial has never been made, although a most respectable convent lies at the head of their village, to which they are liberal benefactors.”

There was a fearful incident at Galway railway station on the evening September 8 1920. A larger crowd than usual waited for the Dublin train. The big story of the day was the Terrance McSweeney hunger strike in Brixton prison. The young Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Cork was in his second month without food. The people of Ireland, and the Irish across the world, were totally focused on this drama. McSweeney died on October 25 after 74 days. The Dublin papers that evening would have had the latest health reports.

In April 1980, I interviewed Mrs Sarah Lynskey from Bridge Street, on her 100th birthday, for this column. In the course of our conversation, she told me her earliest memory was of “kneeling on the Salmon Weir Bridge with my mother and a lot of Claddagh women praying. I know they were Claddagh women because I can still see the triangles of shawl as they knelt on the bridge. We were praying for a fellow, they were going to hang him the next day. Joyce was his name”. She was talking about Myles Joyce, an innocent man who was to be hanged along with two others for the Maamtrasna murders.

In 1912, Michael O’ Malley brought his two ponies, Irish Dragoon and Eileen Alannah to Olympia in London. He did this in order to highlight the plight and potential of his beloved Connemaras. This was the first time that Connemaras were seen on the international stage . After another 11 years of Michael's passionate prompting and letter writing, it eventually led to the foundation in December 1923, of the Connemara Pony Breeders’ Society.

I get both embarrassed and amused, in an hysterical sort of a way, reading back over the recent social history of poor Cathleen Ní Houlihan. Particularly when it touches on anything sexual. It is surprising that any of us were born at all, such was the misery caused at the mention that anyone might be enjoying a healthy sexual relationship with a partner. The impression was given that everyone who had sexual contact outside marriage was not only in a state of serious sin, but that they were some kind of social pariah, to be scorned and driven away from normal society. Even sex within marriage could be shaky. It really was a subject that could not be discussed in public at all without inviting legions of self-righteous men and women out on the streets proclaiming well-meaning but ill-informed opinion.

Two members of the British House of Lords are seeking to have the British authorities declare that the hanging of a County Galwayman 130 years ago a miscarriage of justice.

The south Bostonian, James Brendan Connolly, was once described by Joseph Conrad as the ‘best sea-story writer in America’. He wrote 19 novels and short stories about ships and sailors at sea, the US navy, submarine patrols in World War I, and the heroic struggles of the Gloucester fishermen on the treacherous Grand Bank and Nova Scotia regions hunting for cod and halibut.

The August bank Holiday weekend will see Headford host the first Headfest community festival.