The Press and the Vote - 2018 NPHFI conference, 9-10 Nov. 2018

The 2018 Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland (NPHFI) conference will take place in  NUI, Galway, Ireland on Friday and Saturday 9 & 10 November 2018. This year's conference theme is 'The Press and the Vote'.

Speakers from all over Ireland, the UK and further afield will discuss how the Fourth Estate and democracy and elections have cross paths over the last 100 years. The keynote speech will be given by Professor Louise Ryan of the University of Sheffield - 'The Irish Citizen as an archive of feminist history - reading the past through a newspaper'.

Keep up to date - A conference programme will be available on the Forum's website in due course and updates will be posted on the Forum's Twitter and Facebook accounts. If you have any questions, or would like to register for the conference, contact the Forum's Secretary, Dr James O'Donnell at nphficonference@gmail.com

2018 Conference Poster. Designed by Joe Breen.

Coming Home: Art and the Great Hunger - art exhibition, Skibbereen, Cork, Ireland.

'Coming Home: Art and the Great Hunger' is an exhibition of contemporary and historical art work depicting scenes from the Irish Famine and its aftermath. The exhibition is comprised of paintings and sculpture from Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University, Connecticut, USA. This museum has the world's largest collection of Irish famine related art.

SKIBBEREEN
I attended the opening of the 'Coming Home' exhibition in Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen, West Cork, Ireland on Thursday 19 July 2018. It will run at Uillinn from 20 July until 13 October 2018. Learn more about 'Coming Home' by following this link to the exhibition's webpage.

Skibbereen is a town that had seen its fair share of death and immigration before, during and after the Famine. The Skibbereen Union area lost over a third of its people during the Great Famine. See here for more on how the town was affected by the Famine.

Following its run in Skibbereen, the 'Coming Home' exhibition will then open in An tSeaneaglais (Glassworks), Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin, Derry from January to March 2019. See here for more information: https://www.artandthegreathunger.org/

Some of visitors in Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre on the opening night, 19 July 2018.

The 'Coming Home' exhibition is a truly unique collection of art works. I was particularly struck by the breath of artists, painting styles and the mixture of old and new art works. They have work from the time of the Famine right up to the present day. Below are two paintings that caught my eye.

The first is by Grace Henry (1868-1953). Scottish-born Grace Henry and her Belfast-born painter husband, Paul Henry, were drawn to the West of Ireland. They were especially well known for their landscapes showing the hills, lakes and maritime scenes from Kerry, Galway and Mayo.

'Lady of the West', by Grace Henry (c. 1912-1919).

The second painting that drew my attention is by Henry Allan (1865-1912). Allan was born in Dundalk. Initially, he trained at Belfast and Dublin. Then, in summer 1884, like many of his contemporaries, he studied at the Académie Royale in Antwerp. Vincent van Gogh also studied at the Académie for a short period around this time. 

It was the style of the painting that stuck out. It was painted in 1900, but for a variety of reasons, not least the broad brush strokes, it looks like a much more modern style. According to the museum label, it shows rag pickers at a paper mill, somewhere in Dublin. The subject is obviously very sad, but I love the bright colours of the greens and browns in the foreground. 

'The Rag Pickers', by Henry Allan (1900).

The 'Coming Home' exhibition is well worth a visit. I hope you get to see it as it makes it way around the island of Ireland. A accompanying learning resource has also been developed for primary and secondary schools. It too is well worth a look. This is a link to it on the Scoilnet website. Well done to all involved with these projects that do so much to help us better understand this important time in Irish and world history.

An Irishman's Diary on the SS Sirius.

The SS Sirius was the first steamship to travel all the way from Europe to North America using continual steam power. The Dublin-registered ship was built in 1837 in Leith, Scotland by Robert Menzies and Sons. Other steamships had made the trip across the Atlantic Ocean before, but they had relied mainly on their sails and had had not used steam power alone.

I have just written an Irishman's Diary in the Irish Times newspaper about the SS Sirius. Read it here.

Painting of the Sirius by Samuel Walters. Image source

The Sirius carried forty passengers on her trip to New York in April 1838. In first class, there were 5 ladies and 6 gentlemen, they paid 25 guineas each. In second class, there were 5 ladies and 3 gentlemen, they paid 20 guineas each. In steerage, there was 1 lady and 20 gentlemen, they each paid 8 guineas.

The Sirius was a true trailblazer. Her voyage across the Atlantic opened up the possibility of regular transatlantic trade and was greeted with great welcome on both sides. In time, larger ships would connect the Old World and New World.

If the Sirius had a wildly auspicious start, she had an ignominious end. Due to fog, she was wrecked in Ballycotton Bay in Cork in January 1847. Below is a photograph of the paddle shaft that was recovered from the Sirius. It was brought to Templemichael Mills in Cork. In recent years, it was put on display in Passage West.

The paddle shaft from the Sirius, on display in Passage West, Cork.

Carl Marstrander - article in 'Ireland's Own' magazine.

Carl Marstrander was born in Kristiania (Oslo), Norway in November 1883. He studied Old and Middle Irish as an undergraduate in Oslo. Marstrander then visited the Blasket Islands in August 1907 to learn modern Irish. His teachers were the islanders themselves, whose mother tongue was Irish.

The Blasket Islands lie just off the coast of County Kerry in the west of Ireland. They were inhabited until November 1953, when the Irish government decided to move the population to the mainland, due to declining population and the hard living conditions there. I have just written an article in the magazine, Ireland's Own, about the celebrated Norwegian linguist, Carl Marstrander, and his connection to the Irish language and to the Blasket Islands. Read it here.

Cartoon of Carl Marstrander (1883-1965). Image source

Marstrander and the other Celtic scholars and linguists (Robin Flower, Kenneth Jackson, and Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, to name but a few) who visited the Blaskets in the early 20th century had a big impact on the Irish language and on the Blasket islanders.

Following on from the interest shown in their language and culture and heritage by all these outsiders, the islanders gained a new found sense of self-confidence. This can clearly be seen in the many of the books that the islanders produced in subsequent years about their unique way of life. These are a couple of the books Fiche Blian ag Fás [Twenty Years A-Growing] (1933) by Muiris Ó Súilléabháin and An t-Oiléanach [The Islandman] (1934) by Tomás Ó Criomhthain.

When Marstrander died in 1965, the historian Daniel Binchy said "almost everything written by Marstrander on Celtic matters is of lasting significance". A student of Marstrander's in Oslo, David Greene (who became Professor of Irish at Trinity College Dublin), praised Marstrander's approach to research saying that he was an expert "without becoming a narrow specialist" and that he "was never worried that he might make a mistake". But perhaps the best praise came from islander who taught him Irish, Tomás Ó Criomhthain, who said "Ni fear go dtí é" [He is without equal].