Search Results for 'Augusta Gregory'

Guided heritage walks and fun art and heritage activities for children are among the free events taking place in Coole this August.

Described as “one of the most imaginative literary novelists writing in the English language today,” John Banville will open The Lady Gregory - Yeats Autumn Gathering in September.

The sinking of the Lusitania on May 7 1915, off the Cork coast, by a German submarine electrified Ireland, Britain and America. In Ireland, the fact that German submarines were lurking so close to the Irish shore, added fuel to the propaganda that Germany was planning to invade the country. It spurred recruitment into the armed forces. In Britain, the shameful practice of using passenger liners to carry munitions across the Atlantic without telling the passengers they were in effect travelling on a British war ship, was to come to an end.

THE LEGACY of Lady Augusta Gregory will be celebrated in the Lough Cutra Castle and estate, outside Gort in south Galway, next month.

Even though the 20th successive Autumn Gathering centred on the talented Lady Augusta Gregory and her influence on the Celtic cultural revival at the beginning of the last century, it was her prodigy, WB Yeats, who stole the show.

The highly successful Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering celebrates its 20th birthday in Coole Park, Gort, from Friday to Sunday, September 26 to 28.

Heritage Week, the national celebration of our history and heritage, starts on August 23 and some 60 events will take place throughout Galway city and county during the week. Below is a selection of the many free events taking place around County Galway during the week, for a full list of events see www.heritageweek.ie.

The efforts by a group of local people to have the famous Yeats' Tower (Thoor Ballylee), near Gort, south Galway, reopened is to be welcomed and supported.

Until recent times there was widespread belief in fairies; both the malignant and the more innocent kind. Many people believed that the fairies would steal away certain children, or an adult, and replace them with a changeling. These beliefs were mostly found in rural communities; and were often an attempt to explain, or to invite compassion or ‘kindness’ for a handicapped child, or someone who was temporarily ‘not themselves.’ The phrases used to describe this transformation are various; but locally included the words ‘touched’, or ‘swept’, or ‘taken’.

How many famous people lifted that heavy brass knocker on the door of Lady Augusta Gregory’s home at Coole, Co Galway, and gave it a resounding rat- a -tat -tat? It resounded again last weekend with all the authority of a grumpy judge’s gavel. The writer and broadcaster John Quinn, chairman of the 19th Autumn Gathering, used it to great effect to keep speakers to their time, and to summon people to the next event.