#irish history

Webcam Model(Sure_love_1) is live
LIVE

To coincide with Howard Davies’ production of Sean O'Casey’s The Silver Tassie, I produced this short film looking at the playwright’s relationship with the Abbey Theatre which came to an abrupt end with this play.

Seneca Village - New York’s First Free Black Settlement Seneca Village was quietly revolutSeneca Village - New York’s First Free Black Settlement Seneca Village was quietly revolutSeneca Village - New York’s First Free Black Settlement Seneca Village was quietly revolut

Seneca Village - New York’s First Free Black Settlement 

Seneca Village was quietly revolutionary, in being the first known landowning African American settlement in New York. In the 19th century, the now genteel upper west and east sides were an undeveloped expanse of swamp and hilly land, difficult to cultivate and even harder to sell. The city proper, at the time, stopped at about 14th street - the village is located on what is now 82nd-89th, to give some perspective on how far it was. As a result, the land came cheap, and the minority poor - mainly African Americans and Irish/German immigrants - bought up land and made their home here.

The community was founded around 1825. The first known person to buy a plot of land there was Andrew Williams, a shoe-shine who bought three lots of land for $125. The village population expanded with the 1827 abolition of slavery and the 1840s potato famine in Ireland, which brought black and Irish families uptown in search of affordable land. The small community was not particularly prosperous, mostly made up of laborers or small-scale farmers, but flourished with what it had, and created an important societal space for those who lived there - it had a school, a church, and three cemeteries. A census in 1855 indicated that the village had 264 residents.

Unfortunately, within two years, these residents would be forced out of their homes by the New York government, as Seneca Village was razed in order to make way for Central park. The park was championed by the city’s elite, who felt that a park would raise the growing city’s status to match London and Paris. They saw Seneca village as an insignificant shanty-town; despite the protests and appeals of many village residents to save their town, the government ultimately used eminent domain to force the last village inhabitants from their homes. In 2011, an archaeological dig was done on several Seneca village sites, unearthing everyday artifacts that give a clue to the life its residents lived 150 years ago [x].


Post link

This weekend is the pre-Christian Irish holiday of Samhain - celebrated more widely as Halloween! Due to my current circumstances, instead of a recipe this week, I’ll be doing this instead! Pumpkins weren’t present in Ireland until well after the Columbian Exchange, but turnips are an indigenous vegetable here - and were carved for millennia.

In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above! If you like what I do, consider checking out my Patreon!

Ingredients
A Turnip

Method
1 - Cut top off turnip
To begin making a carved turnip, you of course need a turnip! Try and get a large turnip, as it’ll be more sturdy once carved. Cut the top off the root bulb - alternatively you can cut the base off the turnip, using the leaf bundle at the top as a handle!
Either way, be very careful when cutting into this. Turnips are notoriously difficult to cut easily. Plus, if you’re careless - like I was earlier - the turnip will win against you.

2 - Core turnip
When the top of your turnip has been taken off, start scoring the inside of your turnip with a knife. Leave about a finger’s width of a wall of the turnip. This will make it easier to carve a face out of later, and will also give the whole thing a bit of structure when it’s done.
You may find it easier to use a metal spoon when scraping the inside of your carved turnip - use whatever is easiest for you! But try and not scrape more than your spoon can handle, as it can and will bend to the will of the turnip.

3 - Carve Face
When your turnip is suitably hollow, you can now get to grips with gouging out it’s eyes and mouth. Traditionally, turnips were carved in the image of scowling faces - in an attempt to dissuade evil spirits present at Samhain. But of course, you can carve whatever you want these days! Try and carve some teeth if you want!

When the whole thing has been carved to your liking, place a lit candle inside it, and set it out somewhere for you to enjoy!

Carving vegetables or fruit is found worldwide, throughout various cultures and time periods. While the art of carving turnips for Halloween has fallen out of style due to the ease and hardiness of the pumpkin, turnips are still used around Samhain in rural areas of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales!
The term Jack-o-Lantern is an 18th century name for these decorations, and we are unsure of what they were referred to in antiquity - in Irish it was likely called a carved turnip. A simple name, but it does the job well enough!

english-history-trip:

finnlongman:

finnlongman:

girderednerve:

finnlongman:

finnlongman:

“may this great plague pass by me and my friends, and restore us once more to joy and gladness”

Feeling a powerful kinship with this scribe from 1350 today.

OTD (Christmas Eve), 670 years ago

[For example, a note on p. 36 gives the text a definite fourteenth-century date and a Mac Aodhagain provenance to this manuscript:

It is one thousand three hundred and fifty years tonight since Jesus Christ was born, and in the second year of the coming of the plague to Ireland was this written and I myself am full twenty one years old….and let every reader in pity recite a ‘pater’ for my soul. It is Christmas Eve tonight, and under the protection of the King of Heaven and earth I am on this Eve tonight. May the end of my life be holy and may this great plague pass by me and my friends, and restore us once more to joy and gladness. Amen. Pater Noster. Aed, Mac Concubair mac Gilla na Naem, Mic Duinnslebe Mic Aodhagain wrote this on his father’s book the year of the great plague.

The following year he wrote at the top of the same page:

It is just a year tonight since I wrote the lines on the margin below; and, if it be God’s will, may I reach the anniversary of this night many times. Amen. Pater Noster.

Translation by R.I. Best.]

Thank you for transcribing the image! I always forget to do that.

It is just a year tonight since I shared this… may we reach the anniversary of this night many times.

From MS 1316, Trinity College Dublin:

You can see Aodh Mac Aodhagáin’s notes at the top and bottom of the page.

wildandwhirlingwords:

~Pangur Bán - A white cat belonging to a monk in the famous 9th century poem of the same name. 

~ Breone - “Little Flame”, acc. Kelly. Murray suggests that it’s closer to “Meone”, possibly representing the purring of the cat. Responsible for “purring and protecting”. 

~ Glas Nenta - “Nettle-Green” 

~ Meone - “Little Meow”. Called in the text, “A mighty cat that mews.” Pantry cat. 

~ Crúibne - “Little paws” (Alt. “Little Claws”). A cat that guarded the barn, mill, and drying-kiln.

~ Rincne - POSSIBLY “Spear”, Kelly wasn’t sure on that one. Murray suggests it might come from “tears, mangles.” It referred to a child’s cat. Both kittens and dogs are referenced among common children’s playthings.

~ Folum - A cat who herded cattle. 

~ Íach - Suggested by Murray to have something to do with mousing. 

~Baircne - Kelly suggests it’s a basket for women’s cats, Murray believes that it’s a type of cat, specifically those used for women, that were, to quote the original texts, “On a pillow beside women always.”

With the exception of “Pangur Bán”, all names refer to specific types or classifications of cat that would have been found in the medieval Irish world, but, at the same time, I personally think that they would make excellent names. All references taken from Fergus Kelly’s “Early Irish Farming” and Kevin Murray’s article, “Catṡlechta and Other Medieval Legal Material Relating to Cats”. Alternative spellings exist across the various texts, when in doubt, I used the ones that seemed most standard. 

Bless the ground so the snakes stop biting people.

apenitentialprayer:

Our God is the God of all men,
the God of heaven and earth,
of the sea and the rivers,
God of the sun and the moon and all the stars,
the God of high mountains and low valleys;

God above heaven and in heaven and below heaven,
He has His dwelling in heaven and earth and sea
and in everything that is in them.
He breathes in all things, makes all things live,
surpasses all things, supports all things;
He illumines the light of the sun,
He consolidates the light of the night and the stars,
He has made wells in dry earth and dry islands in the sea
and stars for the service of major lights.

He has a Son, coeternal with Him, similar to Him;
the Son is not younger than the Father,
nor is the Father older than the Son,
and the Holy Spirit breathes in them;
the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are not separate.

Bishop Tírechán, Collectanea(26:8-11)

terpsikeraunos:

who hasn’t fantasized about illuminating manuscripts by candlelight in a medieval scriptorium tbh

eadfrith:Carpet page from The Lindisfarne Gospels introducing the Gospel of Matthew - made for “God

eadfrith:

Carpet page from The Lindisfarne Gospels introducing the Gospel of Matthew - made for “God and St Cuthbert”  folio 26v


Post link

Good morning to hermits, navigators, women raised by cows, runaway swineherds, vigilante beekeepers, white cows with red ears, exiled penitents, and the Loch Ness Monster.

vibiaveritas:

gang, you ever think about becoming a monastic to escape the world?

Chastise your cat for walking all over your manuscript.

Irish Missionary Tells You To Stop Eating People Who Swim In The Loch (You’re Nessie) [ASMR]

“Self-quarantine?” Is that what you kids are calling “being a hermit” these days?

In the South China Sea, crewmen of the amphibious cargo ship USS Durham take Vietnamese refugees aboard a small craft, 4/3/1975. NARA ID 558518.

OTD 1975: Operation “Baby Lift” ends

More than 3,300 Vietnamese orphans rescued

Vietnamese Refugee Children on an Operation Babylift Flight Arriving at San Francisco International Airport, 4/5/1975. Ford Library, NARA ID 12007111.

In April 1975, the North Vietnamese captured Saigon, taking control of South Vietnam and marking the end of the Vietnam War. In the chaotic final days before the fall of Saigon, President Gerald Ford ordered the evacuation of Vietnamese orphans.

The mission, officially named Operation Babylift, began April 3, 1975 and ended #OTD 1975, only 16 days before the fall of Saigon and the end of the war. In all, more than 3,300 children were evacuated to the United States.

President Gerald R. Ford greets and holds Vietnamese refugee babies at San Francisco International Airport Following the Arrival of an Operation Babylift Plane from South Vietnam" 4/5/1975. NARA IDs 7839930and23869153.

Shoes from a Child Transported During Operation Babylift, 1975. Ford Library.

See the National Archives’ Remembering Vietnam online exhibit. Special exhibit tour with curator Alice Kamps below:

#OTD in Irish History | 21 May:

#OTD in Irish History | 21 May:

1639 – Lord Deputy Thomas Wentworth imposes the Black Oath of loyalty to Charles I on all Ulster Scots over the age of 16.
1745 – Count Daniel O’Connell, a soldier in French and British services, is born in Derrynane, Co Kerry.
1799 – Bill of Union (later the Act of Union) introduced in Irish House of Commons.
1862 – Death of actor, John Drew. Born in Templeogue, Co Dublin, his family emigrated…


View On WordPress

#OTD in 1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland for Ireland on the anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s famous flight. She lands near Derry and becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

#OTD in 1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland for Ireland on the anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s famous flight. She lands near Derry and becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

Five years to the day that American aviator Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to accomplish a solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, female aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first pilot to repeat the feat, landing her plane in Ireland after flying across the North Atlantic. Earhart traveled over 2,000 miles from Newfoundland in just under 15 hours.

Unlike Charles Lindbergh,…


View On WordPress

#OTD in 1922 – De Valera and Collins agree to a pact whereby a national coalition panel of candidates will represent the pro- and anti-Treaty wings of Sinn Féin throughout Ireland in the forthcoming general election.

#OTD in 1922 – De Valera and Collins agree to a pact whereby a national coalition panel of candidates will represent the pro- and anti-Treaty wings of Sinn Féin throughout Ireland in the forthcoming general election.

As in the Irish elections, 1921 in the south, Sinn Féin stood one candidate for every seat, except those for the University of Dublin and one other; the treaty had divided the party between 65 pro-treaty candidates, 57 anti-treaty and 1 nominally on both sides. Unlike the elections a year earlier, other parties stood in most constituencies forcing single transferable vote elections, with Sinn…


View On WordPress

loading