Archive News
Following a new passion in life
Date Published: 05-Jul-2012
We may be going through tough times at present in Ireland, with young people being forced to emigrate to find work, but at least these people have some chance to follow their dreams when it comes to education.
Back in the 1970s when Des Kilbane left secondary school on Achill Island, he’d have given as much thought to flying to the moon as he would have had to studying film and television.
He loved watching films but pursuing a career in this area just wasn’t an option for the 16-year-old. Five decades on, after working in jobs from construction to computers, Galway-based Des embarked on a new life when he took redundancy in 2004.
He is now taking part in this year’s Arts Festival with a documentary on the artist Jennifer Cunningham, which will accompany her exhibition, Just Add Water. This is a homage to Ireland’s decaying Art Deco seaside villages, including Salthill and both exhibition and documentary will be shown in NUI Galway Art Gallery.
Des is also working on a documentary on a subject very close to his heart, which will be broadcast on TG4 later this year.
A Fighting Heart, which is being produced by Dublin’s Midas Productions is a film about US boxer, Johnny Kilbane, who held the World Featherweight title for 11 years from 1911 to 1923. On St Patrick’s Day 1912, when he came back to Cleveland with the title, 200,000 people came out to greet him – a reception that has never been given to anybody else in that state since.
Johnny Kilbane, boxer, dancer, fiddle player and poet, was born in Cleveland to a father from Achill and a mother who came from Achill stock, explains Des.
Des first heard about Johnny Kilbane from his father as a youngster growing up on Achill. The famous boxer had visited the Mayo island in 1922 and when he returned to America, he had wanted to take Des’s uncle Peter with him.
“He probably saw something of himself in Peter, who was a great fighter,” says Des.
Peter didn’t go with him, but life on Achill was tough. Des’s father left at 12 to work in the potato fields of England and spent decades travelling between Achill and the UK. Des himself left the island after doing his Leaving Cert in the early 1970s, like his brothers and sisters before him. In his case, he wanted to leave.
His older brothers had emigrated to England and every summer they’d come home with tales of dances, bringing the latest records and fashion with them. Des was intrigued.
“All I wanted was to do the Leaving Cert and get out. Every one of us knew we were going to go.”
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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