All Regions, Wren Boys and the Earl Grey Scheme

Mary Keane cut the tape to officially open Craftshop na Méar yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIw8e_UVmMg&feature=youtu.be

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Remember when there was one of these in every house?

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Martin Chute was putting the finishing touches to the All Regions computer shop sign. Another lovely Listowel paint job.

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3 generations of the Murphy family joined the gang in Craftshop na Méar last week.

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This is an old photo of Kilocrim Wren Boys from Vincent Carmody's North Kerry Camera. I'm including it here to introduce a request. A student from UL has contacted me to look for an account of winners of the Wren Boy competition at The Harvest Festival down through the years. She is doing a project on the Brosna Ceilí Band. Apparently this band was formed originally to take part in the Wren Boy Competition.

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A picture paints a thousand words

In 1903 this Bengali woman carried a British merchant literally on her back. Look at her thin little frame, her bare feet and the pannier tied around her head. Both people in this photo accepted the situation as their lot in life.

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Kay Caball points out an inscription on a headstone to Julie Evans a descendant of one of the "orphan girls. The photo was taken during the filming of the recently aired episode of Tar Abhaile"


Kay Caball, formerly Kay Moloney of Listowel has announced some great news on her blog:

"I am delighted to tell you that I finally finished my book on the 117 Kerry Girls who went to Australia in 1849/1850 and it will be published by The History Press Ireland in Spring 2014.

The Kerry Girls: Between the Famine & The Crown

The Story of 117 Kerry Girls sent to Australia on the Earl Grey Scheme

This is the true story of 117 Kerry girls sent out to Australia in 1849/1850 from Workhouses in Dingle (20), Kenmare (25), Killarney (35) and Listowel (37), under the auspices of the Earl Grey ‘Orphan’ scheme.  The majority of these Kerry teenage girls were not in fact ‘Orphans’ as many had one parent alive.   Their emigration has become known as the ‘Earl Grey scheme’ after its principal architect, Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord John Russell’s Whig government at the time of the Great Irish Famine

The Imperial government saw it as an opportunity on the one hand to clear out some of the overcrowded Irish workhouses and on the other, to provide much needed female labour and potential marriage partners for colonial settlers.  In the two years that the scheme was in place, over 4000 Irish girls were sent to the other side of the world.

This book seeks to bring to the notice of the public both here and in Australia, the circumstances that lead initially to the Kerry girls confinement   in the workhouses, their ‘selection’ and shipping to New South Wales and Adelaide, their subsequent apprenticeship, marriage and life in the colony.   While it is not a ‘Famine’ book, it sets out the terrible circumstances that they left behind in Kerry and the mixed reception afforded to these ‘useless trollops’ following their arrival.  We ask if their emigration was an opportunity or a tragedy?  Did they become pawns in a political struggle between Imperial and Colonial interests?

It is estimated in Australia that there are 277,173 descendants of these 117 girls.  The Chapters are interspersed with remarkable pen pictures of a number of the girls, provided by their descendants.   These pen pictures show the human side, the different personalities and their reaction to the changed conditions of their lives.   If you haven't seen the story of Bridget Ryan, one of these girls,  on the recent TAR ABHAILE documentary, you can access it on TG4 Player.  It is highlighted on the boxes on right and Bridget's story is on Episode 3. Link

My research into the project over the past two years, included identifying the girls from the four workhouses and matching these with shipping and baptismal records.   Further research took place through the individual Minutes of the Boards of Guardians of the workhouses, Tralee/Kerry 1848/1850  newspapers, Australian 1848- 1851 newspapers, British Parliamentary Records  etc., etc."

September 1 2013

What is it about Dublin versus Kerry?

The answer is  here

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Seamus Heaney R.I.P.

Writers' Week shared this photo of Seamus Heaney on the occasion of his death on Friday August 30 2013. It shows the poet with Michael Lynch, Máire Logue, Eilís Wren and Joanne Keane-O'Flynn.

One of my favourite Heaney poems is Scaffolding. It is appropriate here for many reasons.

SCAFFOLDING

Masons, when they start upon a building,


Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,


Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done


Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be


Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall


Confident that we have built our wall.

Seamus Heaney


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Maidhc Dainín ÓSé  R.I.P.

When I was a teacher of Gaeilge in Pres. Listowel a high point of the year was always our trip to The Seanchaí during Seachtain na Gaeilge to hear Maidhc Dainín read from his autobiography and to play a few tunes for us. Here is my photo from 2008 of the great man with Mary Moylan, Ciara Dineen, Aoife Kelliher, Angelina Cox, Catherine Lyons and Elaine O'Connell.

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Meanwhile down under....

This picture was sent to me by Julie Evans. Some of you will remember Julie, descendant of Famine orphan, Bridget Ryan. That is Julie on the right of Minister Deenihan and her cousin Barbara is second next to her. They were with other descendants in Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney for the Famine commemoration last month, August 2013. I'll be telling you lots more about Julie and the story of her ancestor and the other Famine girls anon. Meanwhile Kay Moloney has a very succinct account of the Sydney commemoration on her blog

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This is a new second hand shop on Church St.
There have been lots of comings and goings since I last posted here. I'll try to bring you news of some of them over the next few days and I'll fill you in on where I've been as well.

Bridget Ryan, Tar Abhaile and Pilgrim Hill

Lovely photo from my friend in Ballybunion Sea Angling. This one was taken last week.

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It all started with a Google search in 2008

In a suburb of Sydney, Australia in 2008 a part-time teacher named Julie Evans was researching her family tree. She knew that her great great grandmother, Bridget Ryan had left Ireland in Famine times as part of the Earl Grey Scheme. Bridget was one of the “Famine Orphans” who were sent from the workhouse in Listowel to settle in the other side of the world.

The Earl Grey Scheme was devised by the British Government to solve twin problems at opposite ends of The Empire. Workhouses in Ireland were massively overcrowed and struggling to cope with the numbers of  starving people arriving daily. Meanwhile far away in Australia, colonists were decrying the lack of suitable (white) female house servants. Earl Grey decided to identify suitable girls in Irish workhouses, to kit them out and send them to Australia. The Australian people were to foot the bill for the scheme. The definition of orphan was very loose. Some girls had one living parent and some even had two. Bridget Ryan, it would appear, fell into the second category.

Julie knew all this when she Googled Listowel Co. Kerry, Ireland and she found this website http://www.iol.ie/~coganj/ maintained by Jim and Mary Cogan.  She sent off an email and thus began an adventure whose latest twist was a TG4 project called Tar Abhaile (Come Home).

When I received Julie’s email in 2008, I knew little of the workhouse and nothing at all of The Earl Grey Scheme. A correspondence began and we emailed to and fro, filling in more and more of the story until 2011. North Kerry Reaching Out was set up and I began this blog. One of the  aims of NKRO was to help the diaspora with research into their family trees. Julie was one of this diaspora whose story we took on board. We soon discovered that Bridget Ryan was no ordinary orphan and her story began to take on many aspects of a soap opera. There was crime and punishment, poverty and wealth but with a little smattering of social grace and ladylike accomplishments.

Through this blog I made contact with an avid historian and genealogist, Kay Caball. Kay grew up in Listowel . She is writing a history of all the Famine Orphans who left from Kerry workhouses. She and Julie formed a partnership to advance research into Bridget’s background.

Fast forward to 2013 the year of The Gathering and RTE is commissioning some TV programmes about descendants of emigrants.  

So, Julie Evans, her husband Glyn, her third cousin, Jeanette Greenway from California and Jeanette’s daughter, Peta arrive in Ireland; Julie to participate in the making of the TV documentary and her cousins to learn more about their ancestor, Bridget Ryan.

Over two days last week we filmed hours of footage which will be distilled  into 12 minutes of a Tar Abhaile programme to be aired on TG4 in September or October. Don’t worry, I'll keep you posted.

I can't spoil the programme by telling you the story but I can tease you by telling you that it is an interesting tale with a few elements to illustrate the adage that truth is often stranger then fiction.

As they say in the worst journals, "Watch this space".

Julie and Glyn

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Date for the diary:  Pilgrim Hill is coming shortly to a cinema near you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLT9o5uG3rc

In cinemas April 12th 2013. Pilgrim Hill is the debut film from Gerard Barrett, winner of the 2013 Irish Film and Television Academy Rising Star Award.

Jimmy Walsh is a farmer in rural Ireland. Like the landscape he inhabits, his life is bleak and hard. Looking after an ageing sick father, life is passing him by as he comes to terms with his changing circumstances. Loneliness and isolation are his continual companions, along with his modest herd of cattle.

A young twenty something neighbour is one of the only links Jimmy has to the real world. In him, Jimmy sees what he could have been, as he realizes what he is, a middle aged bachelor farmer with vanishing opportunities and on the verge of living the rest of his life alone on the side of a cold un-nourishing hill.

A final blow is dealt to Jimmy when it seems that life can't get any worse. He is barely able to articulate his situation, yet his honesty and vulnerability speak to the loneliness that haunts the human condition in all of us.

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Local Heroes

These are some of the volunteers who cleaned up the approach roads to the town on Saturday. This is what the Tidy Towns Committee posted on their Facebook page:

"An old bike, a baby seat and nearly 80 bags of rubbish collected on KWD County Clean-up on approach roads into the town. Thanks to everyone who helped out, we had 30 volunteers out early in the morning."

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Good news announced on Radio Kerry

"A proposed respite centre in Kerry is to receive funding from the GAA. The centre, which will be the first of its kind in the country,  will provide respite for children affected by rare diseases and their families.

‘Liam’s Lodge’ is named after 4-year-old Kerry boy Liam Heffernan who suffers from Battens disease. His sister Saoirse died from the disease at the age of five in 2011. Their parents, Mary and Tony Heffernan from Keel/Castlemaine, actively raised funds for the treatment of their children and are now behind the respite project. When it opens in 2015, Liam’s Lodge will initially cater for 520 families each year and is planning to provide help for over 1,500 families a year when all phases of the project are complete.  The GAA is contributing €20,000 to the centre in Blennerville. Tony Heffernan says the GAA’s funding is a huge boost to their efforts."

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On this day, April 15 1912 this magnificent ship, Titanic with the loss of 1517 lives