A date with history

What happened on this day...

Saturday, May 13:

1842 -–Birth of Arthur Sullivan, the son of an Irish musician. Along with William Gilbert he invents the English operetta. Sullivan’s last work was entitled The Emerald Isle.

Sunday, May 14:

1660 – Charles II is proclaimed king in Dublin, six days after London, thus ending Cromwell’s reign as Lord Protector and beginning a brief and limited Catholic Restoration

1784 – The Irish Post Office, distinct from English and Scottish services, is established by statute

1927 – The first greyhound track opens in the Republic, at Shelbourne Park, Dublin.

Monday, May 15:

1808 – Birth of composer Michael

William Balfe in Dublin.

1847 – Death of Daniel O’Connell in Italy.

1971 – Death of actor and theatre producer Tyrone Guthrie, at Newbliss, Co. Monaghan.

1980 – Geno by Dexy’s Midnight Runners reaches no. 1 in the British charts. Johnny Logan fills the no. 2 with What’s Another Year

Tuesday, May 16: squad, but the only soldier squad, but the only soldier whose capital sentence was carried out was Private James Joseph Daly. He was regarded as the ring leader of the mutiny. leader of the mutiny. Rangers mutiny was a pendence movement and ment. It highlighted the growing

587 – St Brendan the Navigator, early transatlantic voyager, dies. In the liturgical calendar, today is St Brendan’s Feast Day. Brendan, at the end of the 5th or beginning of the 6th century, is believed to have made it to America – some three centuries before Erik, and nine centuries before Columbus.

1926 – The founders of Fianna Fáil, including their leader Éamon de Valera, meet for the first time.

The Connaught Rangers mutiny was a significant event in the history of the Indian independence movement and the Irish independence movement. It highlighted the growing dissatisfaction among British soldiers stationed in India, as well as the links between Irish nationalism and Indian nationalism. The mutiny also contributed to a shift in British policy towards Ireland, with the government eventually granting independence to the country in 1922.

The Connaught Rangers’ mutiny continued to resonate in 20th century Ireland and indeed into the 21st. It has been the subject of books, radio and television programmes, plays and ballads, and the mutineers have been commemorated as Irish republican heroes.

The legacy of the 1920 mutiny was a resonance between an independent Ireland and an independent India, and a joint solidarity against imperialism and colonialism.

Wednesday, May 17:

1974 – Three car bombs explode in Dublin and Monaghan, killing 33 people.

No one is ever charged withthe killings.

STANDISH O’GRADY

MAY 18 is the 95th anniversary of the death in 1928 on the Isle of Wight of the writer Standish O’Grady.

Born in Castletownbere, Co. Cork, O’Grady’s literary works were an influence on WB Yeats and George Russell leading to him being called the “Father of the Celtic Revival”.

In the Coming of Cuculain he revisits the ancient sagas of Ireland. In an explanatory note he says: “I have endeavoured so to tell the story as to give a general idea of the cycle, and of primitive heroic Irish life as reflected in that literature, laying the cycle, so far as accessible, under contribution to furnish forth the tale. Within a short compass I would bring before swift modern readers

Thursday, May 18: the more striking aspects of a literature so vast and archaic as to repel all but students.”

1939 – The first aircraft landed at the newly opened Rineanna Airfield, later to become Shannon International Airport.

1928 – Death of Standish O’Grady.

In this extract, the heroes of

Friday, May 19: the Ulster cycle are feasting at Emain Macha (modern day Armagh):

1798 – Lord Edward Fitzgerald, one of the leaders of the ’98 Uprising, is arrested in Dublin. He dies on June 4 from injuries received during the violent struggle.

The Red Branch feasted one night in their great hall at Emain Macha. So vast was the hall that a man, such as men are now, standing in the centre and shouting his loudest, would not be heard at the circumference, yet the low laughter of the King sitting at one end was clearly audible to those who sat around the Champion at the other. . . At the noise of them running to battle all Ireland shook, and the illimitable Lir trembled in his watery halls; the roar of their brazen chariots reverberated from the solid canopy of heaven, and their war-steeds drank rivers dry.

The book, and other works by O’Grady, are available online for free at www.gutenberg.org

Eight days of music and culture as Columbanus Community Folk Festival returns with some new additions Page 18