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"Carlow: History and Society" Book Launch
11th December 2008
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Carlow: History and Society – Speech by Dr Thomas Mc Grath, Editor, at the Launch in Carlow College.
A dhaoine uaisle. Thank you very much Fr Kevin for launching this book. How appropriate to have this great book on Carlow launched by the first Freeman of Carlow Town and County who is also a contributor, as Gaeilge, to the book!
Yes. This is the biggest and certainly the weightiest book ever published on Carlow. We are offering a prize to the first person who can prove he or she has read it all. If you buy several copies you may have to get a trolley to carry them away. Nothing like this book has ever been seen for Carlow before. There is nothing to measure it against. The story of Carlow is here. This is a most comprehensive account in a very readable and accessible history. Every school in Carlow and every historian and every person interested in the history of their county will want to have a copy of this book. This immediately becomes the great reference work on Carlow history. There is an amount of information in each article and much further information in the references to each article. It takes Carlow through the ages. As the book grows the story of Carlow grows. The evolutionary continuity of Carlow’s history is here; there is a pattern to it and a plan. This book, as it were, defeats time and establishes memory. From now on no-one will be able to speak or write on the history of Carlow without consulting this book.
This is the 19th volume to be completed in the Irish County: History and Society series published by a man with the familiar Carlow name of William Nolan and his wife Teresa Nolan of Geography Publications. The series began with County Tipperary in 1985. If we look at the neighbouring counties: the volume on Co Wexford was 564 pages long, Kilkenny was 715 pages; Laois was 748 pages long, Kildare was only 807 pages; Wicklow a mere 1,023 pages. But Carlow is a grand total of 1,096 pages. So we can declare a Carlow victory: it’s a Carlow triumph over all these counties. This clearly proves that Carlow has more history than all its neighbouring counties.
In the words of the series editor – this is ‘one of the best of the counties we have done’. He says ‘I can feel Carlow’ from this book. A feature of the series and this book is the attention given to illustrations, drawings, maps, photographs, figures and tables by Willie Nolan.
Our first debt is to the contributors who have made this book. Without the contributors there would be no book. All contributors are experts in their respective fields. They had something to say and they were given the space to say it sometimes fifty and more pages. It is quite rare for writers to get this sort of space in a scholarly publication but that is the publishers’ philosophy and they are to be congratulated for it. The book has five major themes which are often overlapping; these are Land, Politics, Religion, the built environment and specialist studies which relate to more than one of the foregoing.
Land is a great theme of this book. Dr Michael Conry anchors the book in the rock and soil of County Carlow and he explains how these have influenced the occupations and personality of Carlow people. Dr Gillian Barrett takes to the air to examine the earliest human habitation in a study of the archaeology of the county from aerial photographs. Dr Kevin Down considers agriculture and the manorial economy in the late thirteenth century from the Bigod accounts. The Hon Sec of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, Dr Linda Doran assesses the importance of the Carlow Corridor down the Barrow Valley in the middle ages. Willie Nolan himself looks at land transfer patterns in the mid seventeenth century during the Confederate and Cromwellian periods. County Librarian Thomas King takes a close view from the Registry of Deeds at landownership in Carlow town in the eighteenth century. Timothy Campbell and Stephen Royle from Queen’s University Belfast examine Carlow’s great country houses and their demesnes while Carlow’s own Jimmy O’Toole takes up this theme in his essay on the county’s landed gentry in decline over the last century.
The political and administrative history of Carlow is here from the formation of the county treated by Dr Adrian Empey who recently retired as principal of the Church of Ireland Theological College. Carlow as the administrative capital of Ireland is considered by the late Dr Philomena Connolly of the National Archives. The Dublin connection has always been important in the history of Carlow but here is a case where Carlow became more important than Dublin. Carlow Town was an outpost of the Pale; a medieval frontier between the king and his Irish enemies. There are frequent references in the medieval period to the burning of the town of Carlow in attacks by the Irish. Professor Colum Kenny talks about Diarmuid Mac Murrough and the severed heads of Leighlin in his article on New Leighlin. It is true that a lot of people die in this book. There is a heavy mortality rate through the centuries. Indeed as Martin Nevin said to me about the weight of this book – if it fell off a shelf it could kill you! Killed by a book - It would be a scholarly end.
Dr Emmett O’Byrne considers the role of the principal trouble makers, that most important Carlow family the Mac Murroughs. Two Carlow College women - the medieval historian, Dr Margaret Murphy accounts for the emergence of Tullow from medieval manor to market town – and Catherine Anne Power explains the origins and development of Bagenalstown.
The political history of County Carlow and its parliamentary representation is treated by Graiguecullen man Professor Donal McCartney in an article that sweeps up from 1297 to 1918. 1798 has an important place in Carlow consciousness and we have two articles on it - one by Sister Maura Duggan, the other, as Gaeilge aris, by that old Carlow hand, Pádraig Ó Snodaigh. Maura Duggan’s lengthy piece on United Irishmen, Orangemen and the 1798 Rebellion in County Carlow is an important study to have on the record for the first time. Among other matters she looks at the strange trial and execution by Crown forces of Sir Edward Crosbie. In his article Dr Robert MacCarthy, describes what happened in Carlow town on 25 May 1798 as a ‘massacre’. As many as 700 rebels may have been killed outside on Tullow Street. The tradition of this college is that many more would have been killed only some students open a doorway that allowed them to escape through the college. Willie Nolan was telling me recently of a schoolteacher in County Clare - this would never happen in Carlow – where the teacher asked his class about the 1798 Rebellion and was told by one student that the 1798 rebellion was led by a group called the Wolfe Tones.
The terrible trial of the Great Famine is covered in Eva O Cathaoir’s extensive article on the poor law in Carlow. Graiguecullen resident, Eileen McGregor discusses the well-known Rathvilly school teacher, nationalist and historian, Edward O’Toole who was once head centre of the IRB in County Carlow, knew the Invincibles personally and ended up in Cumann na nGaedheal. The politics of twentieth century Carlow is covered by Brian Donnelly of the National Archives in his article on local government up to 1970 – I see Councillor Michael Deering’s name featuring there. Francis Devine looks at the fascinating careers of the extraordinary republican socialist Pádraig Mac Gamhna and his protege Paddy Bergin in his study of labour in Carlow. The book comes right up to the year 2008 with Fr Kevin O’Neill’s article on the contemporary resurgence of the Irish language in Carlow. The star of that article, Bride de Roiste, is now a member of staff here. Her style is aptly described in the article as ‘gniomhaiocht seachas rheitric’.
The religious and ecclesiastical history of Carlow is covered in articles by Sr Máire B de Paor of Bagenalstown who unlocks the mind-set of the medieval religious world like a Rubik’s Cube in her study of the poem Gáir na Gairbhe written about Tigh Moling. On the theme of the built church environment Dr Jenifer Ni Ghradaigh of UCC and the architectural historian Dr Michael O Neill examine the medieval churches of Carlow including Agha and Old Leighlin Cathedral. Dr Robert MacCarthy, Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, writes on the Church of Ireland presence in Carlow from 1549-2000. Fr John Mc Evoy, Vice President of Carlow College and PP Tinryland examines the fine achievement of the college in its significant outreach over two centuries from Australasia to the Americas. Fr Thomas McDonnell, a trustee of this college, also studies the built environment in his examination of the architectural legacy of Thomas Cobden who built the Cathedral and most of this college and several landlord houses such as Duckett’s Grove, Ballykealy and Newstown. Cobden’s painting of the Cathedral and College which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1835 features on the cover of the book. Dr Fearghus O Fearghail who also teaches here studies Carlow’s only cardinal the Leighlinbridge born Patrick Francis Moran. In politics, education and religion in the age of revolution, I endeavour to place a former past president here and bishop of the diocese, Patrick Foley, in the context of his times – the period of transition from British to Irish rule in Ireland.
In the last chapter, County Carlow’s Executive Librarian Carmel Flahavan and Thomas King round off the book with a very useful select bibliography to the whole county. Dr Kieran Rankin of UCD compiled the extensive 67 page Index which shows the county wide sweep of this book.
Finally, I want to thank the following: at Geography Publications alongside the series editor Willie Nolan stands his wife Teresa who keeps the show on the road and urges him to hurry up. Paul Doolan at Keystrokes did a great job as chief typesetter and Betaprint printed the book. This book was conceived here in Carlow College – there are no less than seven contributors from the college – and it is great to see it launched here this evening. In a very real sense it is a Carlow College book and a tribute to scholarship and research emanating from here. This is as one would expect in a third level institution. All this is due to Fr Kevin O Neill’s support for the project. Therefore, I want to particularly thank the College for its support – Fr John McEvoy especially and also Fr Tom McDonnell and Fr Fintan Morris. We want to thank the house manager Averil Lawler for arranging tonight’s launch with her customary care, all the kitchen staff and all the Front Office staff for their enthusiastic work towards this launch. Thank you all for coming tonight. And I do urge you to buy now because this special offer lasts only, as is customary, for the night of the launch. The book will be 20% dearer at a minute past midnight. The stock market may be falling but this stock is going up. So now is the moment. And look what you have got – this is the most desirable book present in Carlow this Christmas.
Carlow County Council helped to sponsor this book and as a last word before we all go to the College Dining Hall (which you passed on your way in) for refreshments it now it gives us great pleasure to present copies of the book to Denis Foley, Cathaoirleach of Carlow County Council and to Thomas Barry, Carlow County Manager. Go raibh maith agaibh.
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