Search Results for 'Italy'

The Six Nations is underway and by their own admissions things are not going according to plan for the Irish team. In 2018 they were riding high after becoming the Grand Slam winners so sitting in third place is not entirely cutting it. Freetips.com looks at their game so far.

UNDER ORDERS from, and directed by, a mysterious maniac, a group of madcap policemen stage and re-stage the cover-up of the scandalous death of an anarchist during an interrogation.

Well I’m only coming together now after a very packed weekend. On Saturday, I had been invited to speak at the 30th Colmcille Winter School. The man in charge of it, Martin Egan, had emailed me in early December asking would I speak, and I agreed long before I knew the date of the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis which was also last Saturday. Anyway, I had given my confirmation that I would be there, so of course I couldn’t break that.

Maybe not a meteoric rise, but something of a slow and determined slog, Jack Carty, now 26, seems to have been around Connacht Rugby for a long time.

Well, what do we make of the weather? Last week it was completely spring-like, mild temperatures, lots of sunshine, and one would really think that spring had arrived. In contrast, this week started off with cold, showery, shivery type of weather and low temperatures. So it is the old story; we think spring has come but really it hasn’t. And yet, the daffodils are out, not quite in abundance yet but they are out with their yellow blooms. In my back garden I have a small magnolia tree. Now, it is called a dwarf magnolia, but because of political correctness you are not allowed any more to say that word with regard to anything, and so it is a small magnolia. The buds are already on all of the branches of that magnolia tree, which would indicate that it is soon going to flower. But somehow I don’t think so if this weather continues. Be that as it may, well at least so far we’ve been spared the snow and wild winds which were very much the climate of 12 months ago. So let’s hope the benign days continue – and more daffodils please, and more buds turning to flower please, in everyone’s garden!

An Taibhdhearc, Ireland’s only Irish language theatre, situated in Middle Street, the very heart of Galway, grew out of a conversation between two remarkable men, Professor Liam Ó Briain and Dr Séamus Ó Beirn.* Both men, passionate Irish speakers, believed that a lively Irish language theatre would promote Irish in an imaginative way.

All eyes will be on Ireland this weekend as they travel to Murrayfield for a clash with Scotland. Ireland will hope to raise the psychological as well as physical standards required to return to winning ways following loss to England.

IN HIS poem 'The Allansford Pursuit', based on witches’ chants, Robert Graves wrote: "Oh, I shall go into the hare/With sorrow and sighing and mickle care/And I shall go in the Devil’s nam/Aye, till I be fetchèd hame."

Liam Ó Briain, professor of romance languages UCG, was arrested by the Black and Tans on November 21 1920. He was taken to the RIC barracks, at that time in Dominick Street, and then up to the army barracks at Earls island, where he was identified. Other men arrested stood in line. They were watched by ‘pompous young officers’ who, with ‘a hand on their guns’ ‘sniggered’ at the standing prisoners. They went up and down pulling hands out of their pockets. Ó Briain, in his recently published essays on his experiences,* did not sound too concerned. He was well known to the police authorities. Because of the murder and mayhem during the week of his arrest, he must have been expecting to be picked up.

THE SOUNDS of Italy will fill St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church, when the ConTempo Quartet performs works by Scarlatti, Donizetti, and Puccini, at the next From Europe With Love concert.