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Jesuit priest, Fr Michael Bergin, William Maurice Armstrong, Sir Sackville Hamilton Carden KCMG , are just some of the Tipperary men, numbered among the many, whose heroics, Australians celebrated yesterday in their Anzac Day commemorations.
The acronym ‘ANZAC‘ stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, whose soldiers were known as Anzacs. Anzac Day still remains one of the most important national occasions for both Australia and New Zealand, who remember the thousands of soldiers from all countries who lost their lives in the Gallipoli campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign, which took place between 25th April 1915 and the 9th January 1916, during the First World War.
This eight month campaign during the First World War, which was an attempt to seize obvious strategic advantage and was authorised by the British, with an attack on the Turkish peninsula, aiming to capture Constantinople.
Continue reading Lest Tipperary Forgets Anzac Day
 Sir W.Churchill RTE documentary film makers are presently investigating whether Sir Winston Churchill‘s right hand man, Tipperary born Brendan Bracken, was really his illegitimate son.
This follows some 80 years of gossip and rumour that the Tipperary native and possibly one of the most powerful Irishmen and spin doctor of the 20th century, was long suspected, by even Churchill’s own family, as their father’s illegitimate child.
The documentary possibly to be entitled “Churchill’s Secret Son” is expected to be broadcast as part of RTE1’s winter schedule, in November next.
Who Was Brendan Bracken ?
Brendan Bracken was born in 1901 in Templemore, County Tipperary. He was the son of Joseph Kevin (J.K.) Bracken and Hannah Agnes Ryan.
J.K. Bracken was a successful builder, a member of the Fenian Brotherhood that had committed itself to winning Ireland’s independence from Britain by force and a founder member of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) established in 1884 here in the Haye’s Hotel in Thurles.
His father died when Brendan was just three years old. His mother remarried one Patrick Laffan, whose ideals leaned to armed rebellion, and they moved with Brendan, his three full siblings and his two step sisters, to Dublin city.
Continue reading Did Churchill Secretly Father A Tipperary Son?
 Faddan More Psalter The National Museum of Ireland has announced that an eighth century religious manuscript, found at Faddan More, near Riverstown in north Co Tipperary will go on public display, for the first time, next year.
The Faddan More Psalter
The psalter was found in Faddan More bog, on the North Tipperary border on the afternoon of July 20th, 2006, by Mr Eddie Fogarty, a workman who was operating a mechanical digger. Mr Fogarty spotted the object in the bucket of his digger and contacted the bog’s owners, Mr Kevin and Mr Patrick Leonard, who gathered up the fragments and covered them with wet peat, before notifying the staff of the National Museum.
Trinity College manuscript’s expert Mr Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in over two centuries.
A specialist team from the museum, which later arrived at the scene, discovered that the psalter had fallen open, showing lines from Psalm 83 written in latin and clearly visible, “Quam dilecta tabernacula tua Domine exercituum,” (Translated “How amiable are thy tabernacles, O LORD of hosts! “) It should be noted that Psalm 83 then, is now Psalm 84 today.
 The Derrynaflan Hoard The 1,200 year old manuscript, now appropriately named the “Faddan More Psalter” will form the centrepiece of a permanent exhibition at the National Museum’s Kildare Street gallery, following completion of its restoration work by senior conservator, Mr John Gillis .
The “Faddan More Psalter” is expected to go on display to the public in the early Summer of 2011 .
This is not the first priceless treasure found in North Tipperary. An 8th or 9th century chalice, was found as part of five liturgical vessels, known as the Derrynaflan Hoard, on the 17th February 1980 near Killenaule in County Tipperary Ireland.
According to art historian Michael Ryan this hoard “represents the most complex and sumptuous expression of the ecclesiastical art style of early medieval Ireland as we know it, in its eighth and ninth century maturity.”
The chalice was found with a composite silver Paten, a hoop, which may have been a stand for the Paten, a liturgical strainer and a bronze basin inverted over the other objects.
These latter historical and priceless items are currently on display in Dublin, in the National Museum of Ireland.
It is the currently held view amongst many historians that both of these objects, or at the very least replicas of same, should now be housed in their native County Tipperary, where they would attract much needed tourism to the area. Call it a kind of decentralisation or what you will.
Renowned Poet and member of Aosdána, Teo Dorgan , sets off on a journey down memory lane, on road he’s travelled many times before, from his home town of Cork to Dublin. Now the N8 has changed and improved a lot in the last 30 years. However, instead of towns, all we see are bypasses that are the legacy of the Celtic Tiger era.
 Theo visits these towns now once again, taking the same routes he did fadó (long ago) on Bus Éireann. This week Theo stops in The Horse and Jockey, Thurles Co. Tipperary. It was always a halfway station to stop off and get a bit of grub and you on the way to a match, in the mecca of hurling, over the road in Thurles. Theo learns more about the founding of the GAA, in the place it all started, in the Haye’s Hotel. He also visits the famous Holycross Abbey, the St Mary’s Famine Museum and yes he does remember the Trip to Tipp.
‘Ar Bhóithrín na Smaointe‘ is an eight part series which airs each Wednesday at 7.30 on TG4 and this week (03/02/10) will feature the Tipperary Towns of Horse and Jockey, Holycross and our own Thurles Town.
This show is a must for anyone who travelled down this road over the years, as it features film archive of the area going back some 30 years or more.
The show is produced and directed by Brighid Breathnach on behalf of Independent Pictures for RTE for TG4.
Amongst those taking part in this programme, is retired Monsignor Maurice Dooley DD, former professor of Canon Law at St. Patrick’s College,Thurles and former parish priest of Loughmore, Thurles, Co.Tipperary.
Theo Dorgan is originally from Blackpool in Cork City, he is a poet, prose writer, editor, translator and member of Ireland’s most exclusive Arts Club, An Aosdána.
Over the past 25 years he has presented innumerable books and poetry programmes on RTÉ Radio 1, as well as the long-running interview series ‘The Inbisible Thread’ for Lyric FM. He was presenter on RTE 1’s books programme ‘Imprint’, and he wrote the scripts for and presented the RTÉ/BBC series ‘Hidden Treasures’, like ‘Imprint’ a Loopline Films production.
His more recent book, ‘Sailing For Home’ has been praised by Nobel laureate Doris Lessing as “a book for everyone.”
Dorgan’s next collection of poems, ‘Greek‘, will be published on 1st February next, and his prose account of a journey under sail from Cape Horn to Cape Town, ‘Time On the Ocean‘, will be published next October.
Reflecting on the ‘Ar Bhóithrín na Smaointe’ Tg4 series to www.thurles.info, Theo stated:-
“There is an unexpected advantage to be gained from the transformation of the Cork-Dublin road into a motorway: the traveller who turns off to explore the bypassed towns will find that life has resumed a civilised pace there. For the most part he or she will also find a distinct improvement in the quality of life in these vibrant towns. Much remains the same, of course, but as is the case with the development of St Mary’s Famine Museum, we do seem to have got a little better at preserving what is left of our heritage. There is a new sense of pride and enterprise about each town we visited, a sense, perhaps, that the past remains the past but the future is there to be made in whatever image we wish. I found also, it must be said, a profound unease about the implications of the present economic debacle — so many people we spoke to, expressed fears that what has been hard fought for, especially in terms of employment and civic life, may soon be lost again, if a new generation is forced into unemployment and foreign exile.”
This show is a must for Tipperary viewers, so get the kettle on early and switch to TG4 next Wednesday – Time 7.30 pm.
It happened 150 years ago this year and of the seventeen men publicly executed outside North Tipperary’s County Gaol in Nenagh, between 1842 and 1858, the true story of William and Daniel Cormack is one of the few that still remains fresh in folk memory, not just only here in County Tipperary and on the island of Ireland, but also in the USA, Australia, England and Canada.
I first heard about the Cormack Brothers as a small boy living in Co. Wexford and when I arrived here, to reside in Co.Tipperary in 1975, over the next 23 years, I listened intently to the constant and various arguments and debates, with regard as to their true guilt or innocent.
 "Guilty or Innocent?" Reprinted Then in 1998, a marvelous book, entitled appropriately ‘Guilty or Innocent? by author and Tipperary historian Nancy Murphy, appeared on our book shelves. Now for the first time, lovers of history and Tipperary folklore, had compiled together and easily accessible to them, the full factual details of the Cormack Brothers trial, their execution and their exhumation.
The book was the outcome of years of extensive research, carried out painstakingly by the author, into newspapers, official and private correspondence, the Trant Papers, the Petitions for Reprieve, Parish Registers, Poor Law Rate Books and other land records. The book put together, accurately and for the very first time, the known truth, without bias. Not surprisingly the book was sold out within weeks of its original publication date and up until this week was commanding figures of in excess of €64 to €130 in just secondhand condition.
Now, due to popular demand Relay Books, Tyone, Nenagh, Co.Tipperary have agreed to republished ‘Guilty or Innocent?‘ in a limited edition, to meet the renewed interest in the Cormack Brother’s fate this year, being the 150th anniversary of their death.
The Cormack Brother’s murder trial is too complex to discuss in this blog, but Chapter 18, of this well researched book, examines aspects of the Cormack Brother’s case to be questioned, under the following headings :
Were the members of the Grand Jury correct in sending the Cormack Brothers for trial?
The conduct of the investigation as revealed in the trials;
The conduct of the trials by prosecution, defence and presiding Judge;
The quality of the evidence and consequently whether the second Trial Jury was justified in their verdict;
Were there grounds for appeal, for a case stated by the judge for judgement by the Superior Court, and ultimately for mercy by the Lord Lieutenant?
Finally, and leaving the law aside, has the widespread belief in the Cormack Brother’s innocence been justified? The author quotes the indirect evidence for this and leaves a conclusion to the reader.
Within the last few months, the tiny village of Loughmore,Co.Tipperary, native parish to William and Daniel Cormack, have marked the anniversary of their execution and exhumation, by an impressive and evocative recreation of the 1910 funeral of the brothers exhumed remains. They also staged a play, “The Cormack Brothers”, in the parish centre over seven nights, playing to full houses and standing room only.
The limited republished edition of ‘Guilty or Innocent?‘ in paperback, retails at just €12.90 plus €2.00 for postage and packing.
This book is an excellent read for factual history lovers, especially if you enjoy a story where ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’ Take it from me this book is one hell of good read.
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