One Irish Rover

Northern Ireland, bringing history to life

Jottings

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The old word for a country paper’s odds and ends — bits, pieces, and whatever the parish was saying that week.

Below is my filing system, such as it is. Each tag hopefully gathers up every piece I’ve written on that subject — in no particular order, which would imply I’d had a plan. Considerably tidier than my actual desk, at any rate.

advertisements ahoghill america ballymacpeake ballymena band bann belfast bellaghy churches clady coleraine cullybackey derry dreenan eden emigration famous locals farming garvagh ghosts grange greenlough harvest innisrush kilrea letter maghera miscellaneous moneymore mulholland murder music poetry portglenone preachers quinn randalstown requests school sport tamlaght tamlaght lower the port war wedding yeats

If the tags are my filing system, the comments below are the marginal notes other people keep adding when I’m not looking — quietly pointing out everything that fell down the back of it. Names I missed, dates I muddled, a whole family I’d somehow overlooked, the occasional “you’ve got that quite wrong, but here’s the truth of it” — all of it kindly meant, and all of it improving the place. What follows are the twenty most recent dispatches from the readership, set down here in the order they arrived. Add yours — the record’s the better for it.

Yours in the long trudge home,
Trudger

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Latest News
Quarter 1, 2021

I have been, in recent times, researching and assembling articles on each of the Given brothers, from Cullybackey. An old Thomas Given photo has been enlarged, cleaned up and colourised. That reminds me. Does anyone have a copy of the 1900 book ‘Poems from College and Country by Three Brothers’, written by Thomas Given of Cullybackey. I’d especially love to read more of Patrick Given’s poetry in this book, and see the book’s photos/sketches of Patrick and his brothers. What a talent Patrick Given was! If anyone has the book, it would be wonderful to get a few scans of relevant pages.

Other ongoing research/articles, to name but a few, include: William Allingham’s poetry; new information on Esther Mulholland (my great-great grandfather Thompson Mulholland’s sister); been cleaning up several wonderful old William Bartlett sketches of Ulster from the 1840’s; an article in production on Tommy Mulholland’s uncle abducting the local Judge’s daughter (not his smartest ever move); the ‘ghost ship’ spotted off Ulster’s coast in the late 1930s; Innisrush’s new sheriff’s war on the Eden potine industry (mid 1920s), cleaned up what’s probably the earliest photograph of Portglenone i.e. an old 1870s photo of Knox’s Commercial Hotel in the village (still researching the topic); an almost completed article on James Haddock’s ghost; and ongoing work on Reverend Townsend of the Craigs (recently cleaned up and colourised his photo, transcribed old media articles); an article from the 1940s on the US Army platoon stationed in Portglenone Forest (and Tommy Mulholland’s subsequent purchase of one of the military huts).

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