How often do we take the time to consider the words we use to communicate? What do they reveal about our own history, and cultural heritage? Can one dialectical nuance yield all our secrets? There is a little-known collection within the National Folklore Collection UCD that seeks to shed some light on these complex questions. … Continue reading What’s in a word?
UCD Library Cultural Heritage Collections blog has been long listed in the Blog Awards Ireland 2018. Yippee!!! With over 2,000 entries we were nominated in two categories; Best Arts & Culture Blog and Best Education & Science Blog. To read all the amazing blogs that were nominated in 29 hugely diverse categories click here. So … Continue reading We’ve been Nominated!!
Theobald Wolfe Tone Dillon was born in 1898 and was known as Theo. He was the second son of John Dillon (1851–1927), land agitator and nationalist politician, and grandson of James Blake Dillon (1816–66), founder of The Nation in 1842. His mother, Elizabeth Mathew, was a grand-niece of Fr Theobald Mathew of the temperance movement. … Continue reading For the Love of Letters
'The cabin generally of the most miserable description, the furniture corresponding. The bed, a small quantity of straw and an indifferent blanket; sheets none.’ Thus James Kirwan Esq. J.P. describes the housing, furnishings and bedding in the parish of Tuam, Co Galway in 1836 in answer to a questionnaire sent out by the Royal Commission … Continue reading The Poor Law Commission
It is often that we come across noteworthy cases and anecdotes of unknown origin here in the National Folklore Collection. They demonstrate the unique character of the collection as well as the extensive and often surprising work undertaken by it’s predecessors. If you wander into the Tierney building on the UCD campus, from the corner … Continue reading Ring My Bell!
What do these three areas of expertise have in common? Well, a gentleman called Sir Christopher John Nixon for starters. Christopher Nixon was born in Dublin on 29 June 1849. He was educated at Terenure College, where he was amongst the first fifty pupils enrolled after the school opened in 1860. He subsequently studied at … Continue reading Anatomist, Surgeon….Vet?
Irish Bogs contain an abundance of a particular type of moss known as sphagnum which has antiseptic and absorbent qualities. During WWI, this moss was gathered by female volunteers across the country and then sewn into cloth dressings which were sent to hospitals on the continent for the war wounded. UCD Special Collections holds the … Continue reading Sphagnum Moss to the Rescue
