County Clare, probably because of its many unusual natural and man-made features, has attracted the attention of countless commentators down the years - there have been numerous books on the Burren alone. Most of the commentators of the 19th and 20th centuries owed an inestimable debt to two men who had a special attachment to the county - Eugene Curry and John O'Donovan, authors of the Ordnance Survey Letters, compiled in 1839. Their affinity with Clare arose from strong links - Curry was a native of Kilbaha and both were married to sisters from Broadford. O'Donovan, a native of County Kilkenny, said he was always happiest in Clare, a stronghold of the Irish language and whose people were less touched by plantation.
Their records of the county, based on a typescript of their original manuscripts prepared in 1928 by Rev. Michael O'Flanagan, have now been newly published as The Antiquities of County Clare (CLASP Press, £25). The production is a credit to the Clare Local Studies Project which was set up by four members of Clare County Library staff in co-operation with FAS. There are numerous original maps and several illustrations in colour of architectural features and ruins. Dr Willie Nolan of UCD provides a scholarly introduction, and his comment that "this collection breathes life into the landscape and serves as a measure of both loss and survival" is a description that befits the book beautifully.
The same publishers, with financial assistance from Kilkee Town Commissioners, have also produced a facsimile reprint of a little book first published in 1836: Two Months at Kilkee (£11.95), by Mary John Knott, extolling the virtues of the Clare village as a holiday resort. At that time board and lodgings could be had for £1/ 5s a week but it was a great advantage to have a local servant, as most transactions were conducted in the Irish language. With her Quaker outlook, the writer noted that, at the end of nearly two months in Kilkee, she had not seen one woman under the influence of drink and only two men. This is a fascinating glimpse of another era.
A memoir from about the same period, The Sligo-Leitrim World of Kate Cullen 1832-1913, by Hilary Pyle (Woodfield Press, £9.99) is more that its title conveys, for the memorialist ranges further afield than Sligo and Leitrim and also visits Maryborough, Dublin and Donegal. These largely "pleasing recollections" of life as lived then by comfortably-off, middle-class Protestants were dictated by Kate Cullen to her daughter, the poet Susan L. Mitchell, and came to light when Hilary Pyle began researching Mitchell for a forthcoming biography.
While the book is rich in family detail, there is scarcely a mention of the great national events of the period - the Famine, the Land War and the Parnell crisis. Seemingly the Mitchell family remained untouched by these happenings. Hilary Pyle supplies the necessary historical linkages to make this a readable narrative. There are numerous illustrations also.
Genealogical information is found in the most unusual places, as Jim Herlihy, a member of the Garda Siochana, discovered when he started to compile a genealogical guide to the Royal Irish Constabulary. The project developed into a short history of the RIC, of policing in Ireland and of the last years of the force before its disbandment in 1922. Now published under the title The Royal Irish Constabulary (Four Courts Press, £39.50/ £14.95), the book's core is really the chapter on tracing ancestors in the RIC and a long appendix containing the names of RIC men who were casualties between 1916 and 1922 in Ireland and in the 1914-18 war, men who were given medals and those who joined the Garda Siochana.
As Professor Kevin B. Nowlan points out in his foreword, the RIC was essentially a semi-military police force under the direct control of the British Government. As the eyes and ears of the "the enemy", the force became the target of militant nationalist movements, starting with the land agitation of the late 19th century and finally succumbing during the era of the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries with its numerous resignations from the force. This is a valuable source of information about the later years of the RIC and is likely to be regarded as essential reading by researchers and historians. The book is attractively printed and is profusely illustrated.
The 1997 issue of the Tipperary Historical Journal (Co Tipperary Historical Society, Thurles, £10) is remarkable for the variety of its contents, all edited, with his usual skill, by Marcus Bourke. There is a special section on the Famine but the highlight of the journal is Denis Marnane's lengthy article on Tipperary's histories and historians, a specially commissioned piece to mark the Journal's tenth anniversary. Other county historical journals, please copy.
Richard Roche is a writer and historian