I’ve been wondering recently what would I have been like if I’d lived during another era, I’m not thinking of too long ago, just the 1960s. I’ve been following the Electric Generations blog and Twitter account as they’ve been working on setting up their exhibition and thinking about the short talk I’m going to be delivering on 16th October. The exhibition shows how many people initially feared this new power – that it might be dangerous [...]
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 [...]
I’m working on my third book (Ideal Farm Husband) at the moment and while doing some research in newspaper archives, I came across some articles on what women in the post considered to be an ideal husband. Partly because they are quite amusing and partly because we’re all depressed between bad milk prices, rain and Brexit, it’s time to have a bit of a laugh, I’ve decided to do a couple of comparisons.
According to the Kilkenny People on 22nd October [...]
I always enjoy the writing of Mervyn Watson and Jonathan Bell: academic yet accessible; informative with lots of interesting nuggets, and it always has a gentle and respectful tone to the time and subjects they have researched. Strange but their writing always brings a certain sense of peacefulness when reading.
This [...]
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 [...]
