What is it about the possession of land that drives some people to murder?
We’re all familiar with Bull McCabe in the play (and film) The Field by John B Keane. And maybe there is a little bit of McCabe in all of us as people can be remarkably possessive about land they own or rent. At a recent auction near here, a man that had been renting a field for years stood up and told everyone not to buy [...]
When I think back over my childhood in terms of farming, it’s my dad who features in most of my memories. Even though I wasn’t the kind of kid who lived for farming (I lived for books to be honest), I spent a lot of time with him – because he was a farmer.
Lots of dads spend more time now with kids than they used to, it’s often dads that bring the children to activities, they bath them, they read [...]
We bought a new pup a couple of months ago. Sam, our hardworking collie, will soon be ten years old and apart from thinking that he probably needs a rest, we’re very conscious that we would be lost without a good dog. Put it this way, I’d need to improve on my fitness! Indeed, when we see him next to an exuberant pup, it really brings home that he’s worked hard his whole life and is starting to slow up [...]
Matchmaking has a long history in Irish courtships and it seems to be making a comeback in the number of matchmaking (not just dating) websites out there. Before I debate whether it should make a comeback or not, let’s have a look at how it worked in the past.
HV Morton reported on his experiences of viewing matchmaking in the 1920s in the West of Ireland (In Search of Ireland, published 1930):
In Ireland, as I noted in Kerry, the separateness of [...]
When feeding calves on Easter Sunday morning and wondering what could I wear to church that was clean and ironed, while also debating why the hourwas going forward on a weekend when church was earlier than normal and sleep was in short supply due to calving, I thought of something my dad had said recently – how his sisters and mother and indeed, probably all his female relations and other female parishioners often got new clothes for Easter Sunday and [...]
