OMAGH - August 15, 1998 Across the border for the first time, on a Thursday, the Senior Citizens travelled by coach to Omagh. Driving over tidy roads, past the red postal boxes and well-tilled fields, they soaked in the Northern landscape. The following Saturday, television pictures showed crumbled buildings, ambulance men carrying broken bodies, many covered in burns and caked blood, and every age group standing about in shock. On Sunday the TV announcers gave them the news: twenty-eight dead, two hundred injured, most of them young. Confused and frightened, the Senior Citizens now need courage to cross the border, be among people they know want peace. -- Mary Guckian, "The Road to Gowel" (2000) Omagh is in Co. Tyrone

THE LAMENTATION OF THE OLD PENSIONER Although I shelter from the rain Under a broken tree, My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me. Though lads are making pikes again For some conspiracy, And crazy rascals rage their fill At human tyranny; My contemplantions are of Time That has transfigured me. There's not a woman turns her face Upon a broken tree, And yet the beauties that I loved Are in my memory; I spit into the face of Time That has transfigured me. -- William Butler Yeats (1893)

NEAR BALLYCONNEELY, CO. GALWAY I A stony stretch. Grey boulders Half-buried in furze and heather, Purple and gold -- Connemara's Old bones dressed in colours Out of a royal past. Inshore the sea is marbled And veined with foam. The Twelve Pins Like thunderclouds hewn from rock Or gods in a cloudy fable Loom through an overcast. The roofless dwellings have grown Back to the earth they were raised from, And tune with those primordial Outcrops of grey stone Among the furze and the heather. Where man is dispossessed Silence fills up his place Fast as a racing tide. Little survivors of our West But stone and the moody weather. II Taciturn rocks, the whisht of the Atlantic The sea-thrift mute above a corpse-white strand Pray silence for those vanished generations Who toiled on a hard sea, a harsher land. Not all the bards harping on ancient wrong Were half as eloquent as the silence here Which amplifies the ghostly lamentations And draws a hundred-year-old footfall near. Preyed on by gombeen men, expropriated By absentee landlords, driven overseas Or to mass-burial pits in the great famines, They left a waste which tourists may call peace. The living plod to Mass, or gather seaweed For pigmy fields hacked out from heath and furze -- No eye to spare for the charmed tourist's view, No ear to heed the plaint of ancestors. Winds have rubbed salt into the ruinous homes Where turf-fires glowed once; waves and seagulls keen Those mortal wounds. The landscape's an heroic Skeleton time's beaked agents have picked clean. -- Cecil Day-Lewis, late Anglo-Irish Poet of England (born Co. Laois, IR)

I have added the following tithe applotments to the County Tipperary section of my website: Ballybacon Civil Parish, South Riding, 1827 Ballycahill Civil Parish, North Riding, 1834 Ballyclerahan Civil Parish, South Riding, 1831 The Tithe Applotments are much like the Griffith Valuation, in that they only list only the head of household. But they help to see if your family was living in the area at the time. -- Pat Connors, Sacramento CA http://www.connorsgenealogy.com

SNIPPET: Like the potato, the fungus that destroyed it came from the Americas. In 1843 the potato crops in the eastern United States were largely ruined by a mysterious blight. In June of 1845 the blight was reported in the Low Countries. In Mid-September an English journal announced "with very great regret" that the blight had "unequivocally declared itself" in Ireland, then posed the question that anyone even passingly acquainted with the country knew must be faced: "Where will Ireland be, in the event of a universal potato rot?" The speed of the blight bewildered observers. Over and over they expressed amazement at how fields lush with potato plants could the next day be putrid wastelands. It was a generation before the agent of destruction was fingered as a spore-spreading fungus, Phytophthora infestans, and a generation after that before an antidote was devised. In 1845 there was a 4-stage sketch showing the progress of the fungus as it turns a healthy potato into putrid rot. Even so, the enormity of the disaster was still hard to grasp when an 1845 broadside from Derryluskan, Co. Tipperary, dated the 1st December, 1845, printed in Clonmel, offered hopeless advice: "SUGGESTIONS to COTTAGERS in COOKING their POTATOES" Commence with your Diseased Potatoes, by washing them well, then peel or scrape off the skins, carefully cutting out such parts as are discoloured; cut the large Potatoes to the size of the smaller ones, and steep them for a short time in water in salt and water. Provide a few cabbage leaves (the white kind is the most suitable;) steep them in cold water, then line the bottom and sides of a common metal or oven pot, with the wet leaves; pack in it, the peeled Potatoes in layers, shaking salt and pepper over each layer until the vessel is nearly full; spread more wet cabbage leaves over them, cover all close down with a lid, and set them on a hot-hearth, or a moderate fire, as too hot a fire might be attended with risk. The object of the above-mentioned method is, that the Potatoes should be cooked through the medium of their own moisture, instead of the usual mode of steaming or boiling them in water. The following additions may be made by those who can afford to improve upon the above, by introducing sliced Onions, salt Herring, salt Butter, salt Pork, Lard, or Bacon cut in slices, or small piece, or Rice, previously boiled. It would be found more economical, instead of peeling, to scrape off the skins of such Potatoes as are only slightly discoloured, or altogether free from taint. Those who have a Cow or Pigs to feed should collect the peelings and rejected portions of the Potatoes, steep them for some time in salt and water, then pack them in a metal pot, in layers, with cabbage leaves, sprinkling salt over each layer, and cook them as above directed; if found necessary, a little Bran or Oatmeal may be added." WOODS, Printer, Clonmel.

Hi Listers I'm trying to find information on my gggrandmother's second husband Hugh McNeish. His death cert says born Ireland 1824 and that he was a resident in N.S.W. Australia for 20 years , he died at Grafton N.S.W. Australia 3rd Dec. 1892. He married my gggrandmother ,Ellen McGowan(nee Murphy) 25th May 1872 at Grafton N.S.W. Australia. I have not been able to find his entry into Australia so don't know anything about his immigration. Hoping someone can help. Thank you. Jan Australia

Hi Jan in Australia - McNeish is a Scottish surname, apparently. There is a McGowan Family Tree at Ancestry.com with notation of Ellen Murphy and date of 1818 Clare, Ireland; Death NSW, Australia, Spouse Hugh McNeish. Is that a submission of yours? Someone else's? I don't have a subscription to Ancestry, so can't find out more. Jean ----- Original Message ----- From: "janice morrissey" <janmorr@tadaust.org.au> To: <IRELAND@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 5:08 PM Subject: [IRELAND] McNEISH > Hi Listers > I'm trying to find information on my gggrandmother's second husband Hugh > McNeish. His death cert says born Ireland 1824 and that he was a resident > in N.S.W. Australia for 20 years , he died at Grafton N.S.W. Australia 3rd > Dec. 1892. He married my gggrandmother ,Ellen McGowan(nee Murphy) 25th May > 1872 at Grafton N.S.W. Australia. I have not been able to find his entry > into Australia so don't know anything about his immigration. Hoping > someone can help. Thank you. > Jan > Australia

Many libraries have it or you can buy it on amazon on tape or cd. http://www.amazon.com/ANGELAS-ASHES-audio-FRANK-McCOURT/dp/B001CDD2K4/ ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237865074&sr=8-15 http://www.amazon.com/Angelas-Ashes-memoir-Frank-McCourt/dp/ B000PHHJ7A/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237865165&sr=8-24 On Mar 22, 2009, at 6:04 AM, Dot Robertson wrote: > where do we get the tape? > Dot Robertson > ----- Original Message ----- > From: CMARYPATC@aol.com > To: ireland@rootsweb.com > Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 6:35 AM > Subject: Re: [IRELAND] Accounts - Famine Ship Voyages to Canada & > Americafrom Ireland > > > > > > If anyone has not read Angela's Ashes, do get it on tape and > listen to Frank > Mc Court read it. > With his brogue and added remarks it is just wonderful. > MaryPat > > "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt (NY>Limerick>NY) is one of my > very favorite > > > > > > **************Great Deals on Dell 15" Laptops - Starting at $479 > (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1220029050x1201385914/ > aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.doub > leclick.net%2Fclk%3B212974460%3B34272906%3Bh) > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRELAND- > request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRELAND- > request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message

THE BANSHEE Green, in the wizard arms Of the foam-bearded Atlantic, An isle of old enchantment, A melancholy isle, Enchanted and dreaming lies; And there, by Shannon's flowing, In the moonlight, spectre-thin, The spectre Erin sits. An aged desolation, She sits by old Shannon's flowing, A mother of many children, Of children exiled and dead, In her home, with bent head, homeless, Clasping her knees she sits, Keening, keening! And at her knee the fairy-grass Trembles on dun and barrow; Around the foot of her ancient crosses The grave-grass shakes and the nettle swings; In haunted glens the meadow-sweet Flings to the night wind Her mystic mournful perfume; The sad spearmint by holy wells Breathes melancholy balm. Sometimes she lifts her head, With blue eyes tearless, And gazes athwart the reek of night Upon things long past, Upon things to come. And sometimes, when the moon Brings tempest upon the deep, And roused Atlantic thunders from his caverns in the west, The wolfhound at her feet Springs up with a mighty bay, And chords of mystery sound from the wild harp at her side, Strung from the heart of poets; And she flies on the wings of tempest With grey hair streaming: A meteor of evil omen, The spectre of hope forlorn, Keening, keening! She keens, and the strings of her wild harp shiver On the gusts of night: O'er the four waters she keens -- over Moyle she keens, O'er the Sea of Milith, and the Strait of Strongbow, And the Ocean of Columbus. And the Fianna hear, and the ghosts of her cloudy hovering heroes; And the swan, Fianoula, wails o'er the waters of Inisfail, Chanting her song of destiny, The rune of the weaving Fates. And the nations hear in the void and quaking time of night, Sad unto dawning, dirges, Solem dirges, And snatches of bardic song; Their souls quake in the void and quaking time of night, And they dream of the weird of kings, And tyrannies moulting, sick In the dreadful wind of change. Wail no more, lonely one, mother of exiles, wail no more, Banshee of the world -- no more! Thy sorrows are the world's, thou art no more alone; Thy wrongs, the world's. -- John Todhunter (1839-1916)

DISPOSSESSED POET I am from Ireland, The sad country, Born, as can be proved, In her chief city. When I was a child, I heard much slander Touching her, from goose And hissing gander. When I was a youth, A war sent me Two seas off from her, In longing twenty. It was there I found A taste for roaming, As in summers hot Bees do for swarming. No land sees me now Five moons or longer, Even she who reared Proves little stronger. I have lost her speech; Her men would count me Stranger if I spoke, Not of their country. I have lost her ways, Her thought, her murmur; I have lost all But my love for her. -- W. Monk GIBBON (born 1896) His father (also William Monk GIBBON) was a Church of Ireland clergyman, from 1900 vicar of the parish of Taney, Dundrum. GIBBON and poet William Butler YEATS were related.

I have just added the tithes for Ballintober civil parish to the County Mayo section of my website. Included within the tithes were two old maps of the townland hand drawn in 1834. There is a link to the maps on the Ballintober (called Ballintubber in the tithes) tithes webpage. There are two maps on the map page, but when you click on the map page it looks like there is only one, so scroll down to see the 2nd map, it is neat. -- Pat Connors, Sacramento CA http://www.connorsgenealogy.com

No .I have vever heard Cooper as a first name except in the US. IT MAY BE THE MOTHERS MAIDEN SURNAME . ----- Original Message ----- From: "Donna Marstrander" <donna@marstrander.com> To: <ireland@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, March 22, 2009 3:13 PM Subject: [IRELAND] Cornelius Cooper Sullivan > Is Cooper a regular middle name for an Irishman? > -- > > Donna > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > IRELAND-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >

Mary Heaphy has just finished transcribing Irish Deaths Abroad from the Nation Newspaper, 1864-65. These give the Irish home place for the deceased. To view go to: http://www.igp-web.com/IGPArchives/ These can be found under Ireland General - Newspaper. Enjoy, Christina Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives

where do we get the tape? Dot Robertson ----- Original Message ----- From: CMARYPATC@aol.com To: ireland@rootsweb.com Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 6:35 AM Subject: Re: [IRELAND] Accounts - Famine Ship Voyages to Canada & Americafrom Ireland If anyone has not read Angela's Ashes, do get it on tape and listen to Frank Mc Court read it. With his brogue and added remarks it is just wonderful. MaryPat "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt (NY>Limerick>NY) is one of my very favorite **************Great Deals on Dell 15" Laptops - Starting at $479 (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1220029050x1201385914/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.doub leclick.net%2Fclk%3B212974460%3B34272906%3Bh) ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRELAND-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

BELOVED, IT IS MORN Beloved, it is morn! A redder berry on the thorn, A deep yellow on the corn, for this good day new-born. Pray, Sweet, for me That I may be Faithful to God and thee. Beloved, it is day! And lovers work, as children play, With heart and brain untired always: Dear love, look up and pray. Pray, Sweet, for me That I may be Faithful to God and thee. Beloved, it is night! Thy heart and mine are full of light, Thy spirit shineth clear and white, God keep thee in His sight! Pray, Sweet, for me That I may be Faithful to God and thee. -- Emily Henrietta Hickey (1845-1924)

Is Cooper a regular middle name for an Irishman? -- Donna

Hi Donna -- Wondering if Cooper might be mother's maiden ("nee") surname or some other surname important to the family. Did you find that name on a document or is it part of family lore? Was he born in America? From the Internet: "Records indicate that at least 29,342 boys have been named Cooper since 1880 in the United States." Irish children with both a first and middle name were generally found in better-off, well-educated families. In the Irish countryside, a person might have a nickname connected with his line of work to distinguish himself from others in the family or his neighbors will similiar names - i.e., "cooper," a barrel maker. I believe variations include Cooperman and Cowper and the origins are English, but you can check this out on the Internet. For the number and distribution of SULLIVAN and COOPER households in Ireland during the Primary Valuation (1848-64), check out www.ireland.com/ancestor/ Lots of Sullivans in County Cork, I know. . ***As I recall, the given name Cornelius is most often found in particular provinces in Ireland, too, which you might be able to discover on the Internet. (Right off the top of my head, I am thinking Cork, but that isn't written in stone.) While families often lived in the same locale for generations, some members would have been forced to leave, ultimately, to try to find work in in larger cities, such as Dublin, or to go abroad. . J. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Donna Marstrander" <donna@marstrander.com> To: <ireland@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, March 22, 2009 8:13 AM Subject: [IRELAND] Cornelius Cooper Sullivan > Is Cooper a regular middle name for an Irishman? > -- > > Donna

FROSTY MORNING Plants stiff with the frost, One solitary rose Edged with delicate lace, The night air has tightened The earth, Prevented birth, But the heat of the sun Starts to melt The shimmering specs Of delicacy away. All is peaceful on the grass, The ice is cracking on the river, Ducks swim out to stretch Their feathery bodies After the cold night On the side of the river's bank. Winter time reminds me of Wet coats in the hall, Smoky kitchen to heat us, Large logs sizzling as they exert Their wetness on the hearth stone, Cut fresh from the garden, They fill the flagged floor With warmth. -- Mary Guckian, born Kiltoghert, Co. Leitrim. She has had poems published in various magazines in Ireland and abroad and her own volumes are "Perfume of the Soil" and "Road to Gowel" (Swan Press/Dublin). She has lived and worked in Sydney, Tasmania, the Channel Islands and Oxford.

I just added two tithe applotments to the County Limerick section of my website one for the civil parish of Ballybrood (Clanwilliam Barony) and the other for Ballycahane (Small County & Pubblebrien Baronies) civil parish. Ballybrood's is dated 1827 and Ballycahane's was done in 1825. The tithe applotments are much like the Griffith's Valuation, in that they only list head of households but they do give you an idea of the families living in the parishes at the time. -- Pat Connors, Sacramento CA http://www.connorsgenealogy.com

Do get the cassette of Frank Mc Court reading this book, It is amazing, comes to life with his additions and brogue. MaryPat SNIPPET: "Frank McCOURT's life and his searing telling of it, reveals all we need to know about being human," wrote the 'Detroit Free Press when his award-winning memoir, 'Angela's Ashes' was published in 1996. Frank taught English for many years at Stuyvesant High School in NYC after he returned to the States from Ireland as a young man. Here are some excerpts: "My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four, my brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, and my sister, Margaret dead and gone." In the lanes of Limerick the family tried to survive on what amounted to fried bread and tea. Father had problems finding and then keeping a job. "The lice are disgusting, worse than rats. They're in our heads and ears and they sit in the hollows of our collarbones. They dig into our skin. They get into the seams of our clothes and they're everywhere in the coats we use as blankets. We have to search every inch of Alphie's body because he's a baby and helpless. The lice are worse than fleas ..... The shirt I wore to bed is the shirt I wear to school. I wear it day in day out. It's the shirt for football, for climbing walls, for robbing orchards I go to Mass and the Confraternity in that shirt and people sniff the air and move away. If Mam gets a docket for a new one at the St. Vincent de Paul the old shirt is promoted to towel and hangs damp on the chair for months or Mam might use bits of it to patch other shirts. She might even cut it up and let Alphie wear it a while before it winds up on the floor pushed against the bottom of the door to block the rain from the lane. ... We go to school through lanes and back streets so that we won't meet the respectable boys who go to the Christian Brothers' School or the rich ones who go to the Jesuit school, Crescent College. The Christian Brothers' boys wear tweed jackets, warm woolen sweaters, shirts, ties and shiny new boots. We know they're the ones who will get jobs in the civil service and help the people who run the world. The Crescent College boys wear blazers and school scarves tossed around their necks and over their shoulders to show they're cock o' the walk. They have long hair which falls across their foreheads and over their eyes so that they can toss their quiffs like Englishmen. We know they're the ones who will go to university, take over the family business, run the government, run the world. We'll be the messenger boys on bicycles who deliver their groceries or we'll go off to England to work on the building sites. Our sisters will mind their children and scrub their floors unless they go off to England, too. We're ashamed of the way we look and if boys from the rich schools pass remarks we'll get into fights and wind up with bloody noses or torn clothes... Grandma's next-door neighbor, Mrs. Purcell, has the only wireless in her lane. The government gave it to her because she's old and blind. I want a radio. My grandmother is old but she's not blind and what's the use of having a grandmother who won't go blind and get a government radio? Sunday nights I sit outside on the pavement under Mrs. Purcell's window listening to plays on the BBC and Radio Eireann, the Irish station You can hear plays by O'Casey, Shaw, Ibsen and Shakespeare himself, the best of all, even if he is English .... And you can hear strange plays about Greeks plucking out their eyes because they married their mothers by mistake. One night I am sitting under Mrs. Purcell's window listening to 'Macbeth.' Her daughter, Kathleen, sticks her head out the door. Come in, Frankie. My mother says you'll catch the consumption sitting on the ground in this weather. Ah no Kathleen. It's all right. No. Come in They give me tea and a grand cut of bread slathered with blackberry jam. Mrs. Purcell says, Do you like the Shakespeare, Frankie? I love the Shakespeare, Mrs. Purcell. Oh, he's music, Frankie, and he has the best stories in the world. I don't know what I'd do with meself of a Sunday night if I didn't have the Shakespeare. When the play finished she lets me fiddle with the knob on the radio and I roam the dial for distant sounds on the shortwave band, strange whispering and hissing, the whoosh of the ocean coming and going and Morse Code dit dit dit dot. I hear mandolins, guitars, Spanish bagpipes, the drums of Africa ... here is the great boom of Big Ben, this is the BBC Overseas Service and here is the news. Mrs. Purcell says, Leave that on, Frankie, so we'll know the state of the world. After the news there is the American Armed Forces Network and it's lovely to hear the American voices easy and cool and here is the music, oh man, the music of Duke Ellington himself telling me take the A train to where Billie Holiday sings only to me, 'I can't give you anything but love, baby. That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby.' Oh, Billie, Billie, I want to be in America with you and all that music, where no one has bad teeth, people leave food on their plates, every family has a lavatory, and everyone lives happily ever after. And Mrs. Purcell's says, Do you know what, Frankie? What, Mrs. Purcell? That Shakespeare is that good he must have been an Irishman." **************A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1219619459x1201345309/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fwww.freecreditreport.com%2Fpm%2Fdefault.aspx%3Fsc%3D668072%26hmpgID %3D62%26bcd%3DMarchfooterNO62)