Local History:Those who may have felt that Henry Glassie, noted American folklorist (he is college professor of folklore at Indiana University), had drained the wellspring of Co Fermanagh lore in four of his previous works will undoubtedly be delighted with his concluding volume, The Stars of Ballymenone, recently published by Indiana University Press.
Glassie chose Ballymenone, beside Lough Erne, for his exhaustive study of a rural community in the troubled years between 1972 and 1983, and it acts as an epitaph for the many characters he met at that time. It was, as he writes, "a time of deprivation, when the technologies of the modern, long a comfort in other places, were only beginning to come to Ballymenone". All that was soon to be changed and this huge book, accompanied by a CD of songs and stories of south Fermanagh, records those changes in beautiful prose, dipping into the past to set the historical background scene and capturing the stories and legends in the tellers' own words. This volume has rightly been described as a masterpiece. Can one say more?
There is a wealth of history, mostly maritime, in Aidan Power's detailed book about Rock Island, on the Crookhaven inlet, a lovely place that will be familiar to many holidaymakers and yachts-folk. It is a coastal townland rather than an island but its history is redolent of the sea, of coastguards and smugglers, of lighthouses and lightkeepers and of epic events such as the disastrous Fastnet race of 1979 when 15 men were lost. The author gives potted histories of the lights on Rock Island (established in the early 1840s), at Crookhaven and Mizen, and, most importantly, on the Fastnet Rock. Among many colourful anecdotes is the record of a husband and wife, keepers on Fastnet and Rock Island respectively, semaphoring news and family letters to each other in fair weather and using Morse lamps in winter. A list of medicines sent out to workers on Fastnet in 1903 included large quantities of "antibilious pills", castor oil, Friar's Balsam, carbolic acid, vaseline, embrocation, linseed meal, bandages and lint. It must have been perilous work. Perhaps limited in its appeal to a wider readership, this worthy publication is nevertheless a valuable addition to the sea-lore of west Cork.
"His image is so bad," writes Nicholas Furlong of Diarmait Mac Murchada (Dermot MacMurrough to many) in his new book, "that there is a challenge to reverse the colour . . . However, there is no black, no white . . . instead the many subtle shadings of motivation and circumstance." In the case of MacMurrough there is no better challenger than Furlong in this new edition of his original 1973 ground-breaking work on the Leinster king. Commonly condemned as the ultimate Irish traitor since he invited the foreigner to our shores in 1169 (that is, the Norman invasion), Diarmait was a much more complex character than popular opinion would suggest. He was, as Nicholas Furlong reveals, a cultured man who possessed a considerable library; a masterful leader who maintained the loyalty of family and followers in peace as in war; a man capable of extreme brutality but who also endowed abbeys and monasteries in his kingdom in accordance with the religious reforms of his times. His fate was that his story was recorded chiefly by his enemies who ultimately prevailed and handed on the image with which so many have become familiar - vae victis. Historian Furlong has again put matters to right and his revised, augmented and newly illustrated study (with original Irish names restored) is arguably the best to date on the fateful king of Leinster.
The 2006 edition of Ríocht na Mídhe, the journal of the Meath Archaeological and Historical Society, is noteworthy (as indeed were all previous issues) for a well-deserved tribute, in the form of an interview with editor Séamus Mac Gabhann, to the eminent local historian Patrick Fagan, author of many books and articles of wide historical interest. In addition Dr Fagan himself contributes a study of Thomas Dease, Bishop of Meath (1622-1651), which is one of just 15 equally learned articles in this 380-page journal. There are particularly relevant essays on the Tara-Skyrne or Gabhra Valley in early Irish literature by Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin (essential reading for our planners) and an oral history of Gibbstown Gaeltacht in Co Meath, by Cecily Murray (a first instalment).
Recognising that Westmeath was once part of the Kingdom of Meath, Tom Hunt writes about the opening of Cusack Park in Mullingar when, for the opening game between Cavan and Kildare, the ball was thrown in by dropping it from an aeroplane. This, by the way, was in 1933.
Published by the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society (whose 2005 Journal arrived too late for notice), the Kerry Magazine 2006, edited by Tom Finn, is a brightly produced periodical of 55 pages, with colour, which includes 14 short articles of Kerry interest but which may appeal to outsiders, especially those on the Night of the Big Wind(by Ciarán Dalton) and on Roger Casement in Co Kerry (by Seán Seosamh Concubhair). Also included is an astonishing list of Kerry publications in 2005 and 2006 (so far) - 68 in all. Can any other Irish county beat that?
• Richard Roche is an author and a local historian
The Stars of Ballymenone By Henry Glassie Indiana
University Press, $35
Rock Island, Crookhaven: A Coastal Townland's History since
1800 By Aidan Power Self-published, Goleen, €15
Diarmait King of Leinster By Nicholas Furlong Mercier Press,
€14.99
Ríocht na Mídhe, Vol XV11 2006 Edited by
Séamus Mac Gabhann MAHS, Nobber, Co Meath, €20
The Kerry Magazine Edited by Tom Finn Kerry Archaeological
and Historical Society, c/o County Library, Tralee,
€6