DAY OF TALKS AND LECTURES TO MARK THE GALLIPOLI CENTENARY- Gallipoli100

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Myles Dungan

As part of the Gallipoli centenary commemorations in Kells, Co.Meath – co-sponsored by the Hay/Kells Festival and RTE Radio 1’s The History Show – a day of talks and lectures for the general public on Sunday 26 April will focus on the Irish involvement in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign.

Dr. Conor Mulvagh of University College, Dublin will discuss the ‘biographer’ of the 10^th Irish Division, Major Bryan Cooper, Dr. Tomás Irish, Associate Director of the Centre for War Studies in Trinity College, Dublin will examine the role of TCD students in the campaign. RTE cameraman Michael Lee will focus on the terrain of the Gallipoli peninsula itself, historian Philp Lecane will preview his new book on the Dublin Fusiliers and Gallipoli with a talk on the 1^st Dublins and 1^st Munsters at the ‘V’ Beach landings of 25 April 1915, Dr. John Borgonovo of University College, Cork will analyse the Cork street song Salonika which is indelibly associated with the 10^th (Irish) Division, Dr. Jennifer Wellington of UCD will assess the impact of the campaign on her native Australia, Murat Balandi, CEO of Turkish Airlines in Ireland will discuss the effect of the events of 1915 on his native Turkey and Donal McAnallen, Ulster GAA historian will look at the roles played by members of the Gaelic Athletic Association during the war.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONSULT THE RTE RADIO 1 HISTORY SHOW WEBSITE – http://www.rte.ie/radio1/the-history-show/

FOR TICKETS CALL 046-9240055

On This Day – 3.4.1846 – Death of Michael Moran, aka Zozimus

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Myles Dungan

The city of Dublin is supposed to be full of ‘characters’ – people you would go out of your way to meet and who will hold forth and entertain you at the drop of a wallet.

Whether the city deserves such a reputation is a moot point, but most will concede that one Michael Moran, probably born in 1794, was indeed a ‘character’. Better known to us as Zozimus, he was a street balladeer who earned his living from writing and reciting his own poetry and ballads. He did so at a time when the street balladeer was a familiar sight in the city.

Moran, who became blind shortly after birth, had a phenomenal memory and took his stage or ‘street’ name from a 5^th century holy man Zozimus of Palestine. He was born in the wonderfully named Faddle Alley near Blackpitts in the Liberties. He travelled the city in ‘a long frieze coat, a greasy brown beaver hat, corduroy trousers’[1] and a good pair of brogues. He was also rarely seen without a large blackthorn stick. While he ranged wide over the city his favourite haunt, where he would deliver his rhymes and recitations near was what was then Carlisle Bridge, now O’Connell St. bridge.

One of his most celebrated verses is his song of praise for poteen ..

O long life to the man who invented potheen –

Sure the Pope ought to make him a martyr –

If myself was this moment Victoria, the Queen,

I’d drink nothing but whiskey and wather.

Even in the first half of the 18^th century street performers were constantly being ‘moved on’ or hassled by the constabulary. One Dublin Metropolitan policeman in particular, we only know his number – 184B, had a particular set against Zozimus. The guardian of the law however went too far when he also began harrassing a journalist named Dunphy. To this day sane citizens know that you don’t mess with journalists by the name of Dunphy. The Freeman’s Journal writer and the street poet conspired to make the policeman’s life a misery. Zozimus wrote and regularly recited a verse which went …

How proud Robert Peel must be of such a chap

He stands about five feet nothing in his cap

And his name’s immortalised by me friend Mr.D

A statue must be riz to 184B

Constable 184B subsequently became such an object of scorn on the streets of Dublin that he was forced to resign and, legend has it, his number was retired by the DMP as no one else would take it on.

Zozimus was obsessed with grave robbers and before his death at around the age of 55 asked that he be buried in the well-protected Glasnevin cemetery. He wrote this verse to his friend Stoney Pockets.

Oh Stony, Stony

Don’t let the Sack-’em-Ups get me

Send round the hat

And buy me a grave.

He got his wish, albeit unmarked in a pauper’s plot not far from Daniel O’Connell’s rather more elaborate resting place in the shadow of a round tower. Since the 1960s a memorial marks his final resting place.

Michael Moran, better known as Zozimus, died 169 years ago, on this day.

[1] Frank Hopkins – Hidden Dublin: Deadbeats, dossers and decent skins.

DECLAN O’ROURKE TO PERFORM SELF-PENNED MATERIAL AT GALLIPOLI 100 CONCERT IN KELLS, ON 25 APRIL.

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Myles Dungan

The Hay/Kells Festival and RTE Radio 1’s The History Show – co-sponsors of Gallipoli100 – are pleased to announce that singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke will be performing new material on the subject of the Great War at his Gallipoli100 concert in St.Columba’s Church of Ireland in Kells, Co. Meath on Saturday 25 April.

Declan’s evening concert (which kicks off at 8.00 pm) will be the centerpiece of a weekend of events to mark the centenary of the start of the Gallipoli campaign – one of the most tragic episodes of the Great War, particularly from an Irish point of view.

Declan, who was a special guest in one of the five History Show Great War commemorative programmes in the summer of 2014 will perform some of the iconic anti-war works of Eric Bogle as well as a new version of The Foggy Dew and his own unique interpretation of Cormac McConnell’s epic song on the Christmas 1914 truce on the Western Front – as well as much additional material – as part of the evening event Poems of War, Songs of Peace. A number of WW1 poems will be read by Kells-based award-winning Welsh poet Nerys Williams.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONSULT THE RTE RADIO 1 HISTORY SHOW WEBSITE – http://www.rte.ie/radio1/the-history-show/

FOR TICKETS CALL 046-9240055

On This Day – 27.3.1839 Birth of Antrim-born John Balance – PM of New Zealand

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Myles Dungan

If I told you that an Irish Prime Minister was born in 1839 you would doubtless respond, correctly, by pointing out that a) we don’t have a Prime Minister we have a Taoiseach and b) that anyone born in Ireland in 1839 would have spent his entire working life as a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland of which there nearest thing to an Irish Prime Minister was the Duke of Wellington in the early 19^th century.

Except, of course, that John Balance, born in Co.Antrim in 1839 went on to become 14^th Prime Minister of New Zealand. Born into farming stock Balance wanted to do anything but farm and left for Belfast at the age of 18. From there he migrated to Britain, working in the ironmongery business in Birmingham. At the age of 24 he married Miss Frances Taylor and migrated to New Zealand in 1866 for the betterment of her health. The move had little effect as, tragically, she died two years later.

An educated and bookish man he indulged his literary side by establishing a newspaper, the Herald, in the town of Wanganui, where the couple settled. He was man of independent views. For example, while participating in a military campaign in 1867 against a local Maori uprising he criticized the conduct of the same campaign in his newspaper.

From campaigning journalism he moved inexorably into politics – elected for Wanganui from 1879 as an Independent he quickly entered the New Zealand cabinet as Minister for Customs and then Minister for Education. Balance had witnessed religious riots in Belfast. The spectacle turned him into a life-long secularist. He inherited his politics from his mother, a Quaker, and went on to found the New Zealand Liberal party – the first organized political party in that country.

In 1881 he lost his seat by four votes after a carriage containing 7 of his supporters broke down and they were unable to vote. Re-elected in 1884 he held three further ministerial positions until the government he supported fell. In 1889 he became leader of the opposition and in 1890, after a successful election campaign he became Prime Minister at the head of a Liberal Party government.

Ballance was responsible for introducing highly progressive systems of income and property tax and under his leadership the New Zealand economy expanded. He also cultivated good relations with the country’s Maori population, settling a lot of their nagging land issues. He was also responsible for the introduction of female suffrage. New Zealand was the first country in the world to allow women to vote.

He was at the height of his powers and popularity in 1893 when, tragically, he died after an operation for an intestinal ailment at the age of 54.

Balance has been described as ‘unassuming and unpretentious’ in style and personality, quiet, polite, tolerant and patient. How he ended up as a politician, therefore, is a complete mystery.

John Balance, the Antrim-born 14^th Prime Minister of New Zealand, was born, 176 years ago, on this day.

On This Day – 20.3.1919 The birth of Cairbre, the MGM lion, in Dublin Zoo

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Myles Dungan

They used to boast that they had ‘more stars than there are in the heavens’ though their official motto was the lofty ‘Ars gratia artis’ – which translates from bog Latin as ‘art for art’s sake’. Their first mascot was re-named Slats and was succeeded by, among others, Jackie, Tanner, George and Leo.

What am I talking about? This! [roar of a lion]

The boastful organisation told not a word of a lie – MGM in the 1930s and 40s had some of the biggest names in Hollywood under contract, stars like Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire – need I go on? As regards the motto, don’t believe a word of it – it was art all right, but it was purely for the sake of money.

The logo was a different matter entirely. When Samuel Goldwyn’s old studio, Goldwyn Pictures merged with the exhibition business Metro and Louis B. Mayer pictures in 1924, the company had already started using a lion in their pre-credit sequence. MGM decided to continue the practice and the first occasion on which the MGM lion appeared before one of the studio’s movies was in the utterly forgettable and accordingly utterly forgotten He who gets slapped a silent movie starring Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer. Perhaps it’s a 1920s version of Fifty shades of grey who knows.

And what has all this got to do with us, I hear you say?

Well, its because of the identity of the very first MGM lion. The studio called him Slats but that wasn’t his real name. It was Cairbre. And he wasn’t African or even Californian, he was a genuine Dub. Cairbre was born in Dublin Zoo in 1919 and was named after Cuchulainn’s charioteer, or a High King of Ireland, or a rebellious pretender to the High Kingship, or whatever you’re having yourself.

Cairbre had, apparently, been introduced to Sam Goldwyn, and the silver screen, by fellow Dub, Cedric Gibbons, the designer and art director. This means that Gibbons is personally responsible for two enduring Hollywood icons, neither of them human. He also designed the statuette to be presented to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at their annual award ceremony, we know them more familiarly today as, the Oscars. Gibbons apparently modelled the statuette on his wife, the statuesque film star Dolores del Rio.

But back to Cairbre. There is a famous photograph of two men filming him for the MGM logo. Health and Safety considerations don’t seem to have been paramount (no pun intended – though, ironically, that’s where the shoot took place – Paramount studios). Camera crew and big cat are separated, not by a hefty iron grille, but by a few feet of clear air. Were Cairbre of malevolent disposition he could have had a snack of cinematographer sushi any time he wanted.

Cairbre’s image continued to be used on all the old black and white, silent MGM movies until 1928. As no one had recorded his heavily Dublin-accented roar, when the talkies began he was replaced by the more garrulous Jackie. He died at the age of 17 and although his hide is on display in a museum in Kansas he should not be confused with the cowardly lion of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz.

When the comedian Mary Tyler Moore formed her own production company MTM in the 1960s – she mimicked the MGM logo, but replaced Cairbre with a little pussycat – it’s highly unlikely the kitty is also Irish.

Cairbre, the big cat who tossed his mane from side to side for MGM, was born 96 years ago, on this day.