Search Results for 'Gregory'

Coláiste Gaeilge Inis Meáin is enrolling Irish language students, both children and adults, this summer.

It is no coincidence that the Regional (now the University College) Hospital and Merlin Park opened almost simultaneously in the mid 1950s. The Old Central Hospital, which had opened in 1922, became unfit for purpose, mainly due to overcrowding, and the difficulty accommodating long stay tuberculosis patients. Tuberculosis, or TB, was, in the early decades of the 20th century, at epidemic proporations. The same year that the Central Hospital opened, the same year as the foundation of our State, there were 4,614 deaths from TB; 611 were children under 15 years.

Éadaoin Ní Mhaiciín, from Claremorris, won the fiddle competition at the recent Oireachtas Festival in Kilarney. The annual Oireachtas Festival is a mecca for lovers and performers of the traditional arts, and this year’s competitions again received a huge number of entrants aged from six years to 68. The range of competitions included storytelling, sean-nós dancing and singing, and the famous lúibíní competition in which two people perform a rhyming story through song.

The Easter Rising of 1916 has been described as an act of theatre; it has been called, more romantically, a poets’ rebellion.

The historic walled garden of Coole Park, and Thoor Ballylee Tower will host the annual Lady Gregory-Yeats autumn gathering.

‘The capital, Galway, is a terrible place. It has of course St Nicholas, one of the few remaining pre-Reformation churches; the frontispiece of a Renaissance town house erected as a gateway to the public park; and a medieval fortified house about which they tell the well-known story of the Lynch who hanged his own son when the sheriff wasn't available. At least once a year while I was director of the Abbey theatre we got a play on that. From Miss Edgeworth's account of her travels to Galway it would appear that as a theme for tragedy it was popular a hundred years ago. But even before that I had a lively hatred of the town....'

One of the great obsessions after the war was how to come to terms with the ‘missing’ - the many thousands of young soldiers who were either vaporised, or blown to pieces, by high explosives; or were drowned and lost in the mud. Last week I tried to tell the heartbreaking search for their missing son Jack, by the Kiplings. For months they haunted hospitals, interviewed soldiers, even dropped leaflets on enemy territory, pleading for information. Even though the Somme still reveals bodies today, Jack Kipling was never found.

A free public performance of George Bernard Shaw's anti-war play O'Flaherty VC is among the highlights on the calendar of events this month at Coole.

In the second half of the 19th century, the overcrowded condition of the graveyards of Galway was an issue which faced the Town Commissioners. At a meeting in mid-April 1873, one person mentioned that in the previous 30 years, almost two and a half thousand burials had taken place in the little cemetery in The Claddagh, largely as a result of the Famine and its aftermath.

The next free guided walk at Coole will be on Sunday May 29. The walk, titled ‘The Story of Coole’, is a general introduction to the history of the estate and Lady Gregory’s life at Coole.