Topics

When we were children in the 1950's, one of the red-letter days was St. John's Day, better known as Bonefire Night. There was much excitement and great competition among we school children as to which group would have the biggest, brightest fire. For several days before the much-awaited night, the whole place would be a hive of activity collecting fuel for the fire. Some people contributed turf, more gave scraps of timber, but the most prized material of all was Bog Deal. Bog deal is the remains of the forests of Ireland that covered the country many years ago. There was an abundance of it in the local bogs close to where we lived, namely Barana, and other townlands around the district. To a child's eye catching a glimpse of these ancient forms bursting through the bog land, would resemble the backdrop of a ghost story. Some had grotesque shapes and were extraordinarily heavy to carry, so the donkey and cart would be brought into service to assist with the collection of the more awkward specimens. Sometimes our group of gatherers would get lemonade and sweets, but always we had a great time heaving and pulling these giant forms from our bog lands. Read more

By Mary Forde (née Goaley), 1925-2018. We hear so much recently about a recession, meltdown, downturn or other various terms but all meaning the same thing. We are warned that it will give us a much lower standard of living than we enjoyed for the last decade. Of course our age group saw and lived through more recessions than that following the recent prosperity of Irish people called the Celtic Tiger, so for us, the older generation, it's going to bring back many mixed memories. I was going to school when World War Two broke out. We knew little or nothing about war just then beyond what we learned from our history lessons and maybe what we read in the Far East magazine about war in the Phillippines. Indeed history was a school lesson some of us felt we had to endure with its pages of battles, dates and leaders. We in Ireland were just recovering from another kind of war - the Economic War as it was called - a period like the present one breaking in on us. Read more

By Mary Forde (née Goaley), 1925-2018. This article describes the destruction of Annaghdown Church by fire in 1936 and subsequent reconstruction work. It first appeared in Anach Cuain 2004. It was on Tuesday night, 1st December 1936 as we were going to bed about 9 o'clock. My father and mother had gone to put some of their children to bed as some of us had measles at the time. As he looked out the window my father saw flames. He enquired if Micil Fahy had a cock of hay in his field as he usually kept a sheep cock in the field at the foot of the hill between the Church and the school (the old school). Read more

The National Folklore Collection, based at University College Dublin, has recently made their Schools’ Collection for Galway freely available online. This is a collection of stories gathered between September 1937 and January 1939 in primary schools throughout Ireland. It includes material collected in all of the schools in the local area: Anach Cuain (R.S. Ó Conaill), Corr an Droma (Breandán Ó Míodhcháin), Scoil an Mhainistir, Carrowbeg (An Br. Coinleith Ó Mainnín), Caisleán hAicéid (S. Ó Floinn), Scoil Bhríge Naofa, An Cheathrú Bheag (Máire Ní Loideáin) and An Bán Mór (Liam Ó Mainnín). Most of the schoolchildren collected stories from their parents, some from their grandparents, and a few also visited neighbours. Many of them give accounts of events which occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Read more

Last summer it was my happy experience to find the home of one of my grandfathers over in the heart of Merry England. I mentioned the circumstances at the time and by way of apology for further personal and family narrative will only say that justice and equity ought to be shown both sides of the house. In England I had no directions or information whatever, while in Ireland I had a letter brought with me from home, written by Patrick Collins to Mary Collins, my mother's mother, thirty-one years ago. The letter heading read Creggduff, Parish of Annahdown, County Galway, Ireland. The village lying seven miles to the northeast of Galway, was easily located on my map. Having reached the latter city on my way from Dublin, I continued on through the bare granite hills and over boggy stretches to the village of Creggduff. Read more

Having recently completed a B.A. in History and English, I would like to outline my experiences in researching and writing an academic history essay. The degree course, completed online, consisted of six modules in both disciplines and was ideal for part-time study. The sixth history module was titled 'Researching Local History: People, Place and Time'. I was required to write an extended essay (10,000 words) on a topic of local history of my own choosing. The topics of interest to me were The Great Hunger of 1845-50 in Galway and the Land Wars in Galway during the 1870s and 1880s, but both of these had recently been covered by local historians. It was during a conversation with Br. Conal that he proposed the idea of writing about the Tuam Sugar Factory that I decided this was worth doing, especially since little had been written on it. I chose the title 'Tuam Sugar Factory: Its impact on the town and farming communities of North Galway 1933-1960'. Read more

The majority of the principal sources for Irish genealogy have been appearing as online databases over the past ten years or so, and it is now possible to conduct much, if not most, genealogical research from the comfort of one's own home. One of the more colourful sets of records to appear has been the Petty Sessions record books, of which the Headford and Galway collections relate to incidents in the Annaghdown area. The Petty Sessions were the lowest rung of the courts system, roughly equivalent to today's district court in some respects, with the Quarter Sessions and Assizes dealing with more serious matters. Most of the Petty Sessions records for Annaghdown relate to incidents of minor significance: road contractors frequently summoned farmers for allowing their stock to wander on the public road, for example. However, there are some more unusual, and some humourous incidents which provide a rich insight into life at the time. The following are a few interesting examples. Read more

The first of our Cavanagh family to arrive in New Zealand was William Cavanagh; he landed at Port Chalmers, Otago, on the 'Gill Blas' in 1856 and came from Melbourne, Australia. How he got to Melbourne and with who else I am yet to discover - I suspect he wouldn't have travelled alone. Although important to our family, William Cavanagh (1835-1873) is of greater importance to all of the Galway early settlers, as he was the first Irish Catholic to land in Otago, according to research carried out by Sean Brosnahan of the Otago Early Settlers Museum. Then, shortly after his arrival, he started an 'immigrant chain' that was to nominate many other Galway Catholics for passage to Otago and Southland. Read more