Growing up, Cathal Armstrong learned that a man’s place was in the kitchen. From an early age, Cathal Armstrong understood the importance of time spent together at the dinner table, as well as the effort required to get food on the plate. A professional tour operator, Cathal’s father traveled and brought unusual foods from places like Spain, Greece, and Algeria back home to … [Read more...] about His Irish Table
Issues
Sláinte! Love Mór
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, Edythe Preet gives us the story of Áine, the goddess of love, and star-crossed lovers – the warrior Diarmuid Ua and Gráinne, daughter of the High King Cormac mac Airt. Love. It makes the world go round, conquers all, and warps the mind. We are star-crossed by it, swept away by it, fall into it, and become fools for it. It can’t be … [Read more...] about Sláinte! Love Mór
Review of Books
FICTION Nora Webster By Colm Tóibín Colm Tóibín’s latest novel Nora Webster finds the gifted Irish author writing one of his most personal novels since Brooklyn. Throughout Nora Webster, Tóibín taps into his early childhood growing up in Wexford, the death of his father, and the perseverance of his mother. His penchant for character-driven plot and psychological insight is … [Read more...] about Review of Books
Roots: The Macs
This issue’s Roots column is slightly different from the traditional format. Instead of looking at a single surname, or different but etymologically related surnames, I examine three unique but phonetically and geographically related family names. This is in part practical – the names are relatively uncommon compared to our usual surnames, so information on them is scarcer – … [Read more...] about Roots: The Macs
Photo Album: John Harrington
My great-great-grandfather John Harrington’s family had probably been in the Beara peninsula of southwest Ireland for many generations before he emigrated in 1848, during the Great Hunger. In Irish, the ancestral name was probably Ó hIongardail (anglicized to Harrington for ease of entry into tenant logs after the land seizures of the 17th century), a name associated with an … [Read more...] about Photo Album: John Harrington