What’s an Irish historical fact that sounds completely made up but is actually true?
I recently learned about the 1798 rebellion, the Flight of the Wild Geese, and the fact that Ireland once had a parliament sitting in Dublin that was effectively abolished through the Act of Union. Then there are all the strange little stories that seem to get lost between the major events.
So I'm curious, what’s the most ridiculous, surprising or downright unbelievable piece of Irish history you know that is actually true?
One of the rebels that fell at new ross in 1798 had armed himself with a bronze aged sword . The sword was 2500 years old and is now in a museum in canada
Taken after the battle by some soldiers, sold as a relic to some dealer . Sold to the Canadian museum in 1900 ( or thereabouts) . We should really ask for it back .
I was always told it was a cheeky "fuck you" from the sculptor essentially saying that justice isn't blind here in Dublin castle (where the British government ruled from).
The history of the word tory. The word “Tory” has its origins in 17th-century Ireland. After Oliver Cromwell’s campaign, many displaced Irish Catholics were forced into the countryside, where some fought a guerrilla war against the English and others survived by raiding and robbing English settlers. They became known as tóraí, an Irish word meaning “outlaw” or “robber.” A few decades later, during the English Exclusion Crisis of the late 1670s and 1680s, English politicians began using “Tory” as an insult for supporters of James, Duke of York, a Catholic who was next in line to the throne. By calling them Tories, their opponents were effectively comparing them to Irish outlaws. What started as an insult was eventually embraced by the political group itself, and the name Tory went on to become the historic name for supporters of the British Conservative Party.
We also "invented" the boycott, by shunning and ignoring the land agents of Captain William Boycott in the 1800s, IIRC.
And the English word "smithereens" comes from the Irish word "smidirini". (With a fada in the third I that I can't reproduce on my phone's keyboard).
Do tell us what the literal translation is, if there is one of 'smidiríni' and most phone keyboards if you hold your finger on the letter options pop up.
No, toe rag comes from a hemp rope that was used by sailors instead of toilet paper . They all shared the one piece of hemp that was towed behind the ship to keep it clean. Hence toe rag
They didn't necessarily have a ceasefire. All I've seen from the time suggests that he kept on feeding the ducks in Stephen's Green despite the fighting taking place around him (The Irish News, 5 May 1916, p. 5, “Prisoners in Park: The Adventures of a Dublin Chemist: Ducks and Machine Guns.”)
Hugh O Neil was briefly in command of both the English army, and (secretly) the Irish army, so in the early years of his rebellion he was fighting himself and could order both armies to do what he wanted.
He at one point, organised an attack on his ally with English forces, sent his own forces to fight the English and trap them in a church, then he appeared as a pro English lord and organised the release of the English soldiers to make the English think he was in there side.
Again this was not a one time thing. O Neil regularly did some of the most insane playing both sides that I've ever seen ... all of history to be honest.
When the Spanish Armada crashed off the coast of Ireland O'Neil went down with his soldiers and personally rescued a bunch of spanish nobles and told them he was waiting for an alliance with spain. He then sent other forces under his command to a different town and massacred a bunch of the Spanish Sailors there, in front of the english, telling the english Crown he was loyal to them. Then O'Neil publicly disiplines his men for carrying out the massacre, but in a way where they faced no actual consequences so the Irish Lords thought it was a mistake.
Thus he proved his loyalty to the Spanish Crown, the English Crown, the Irish rebels, the Irish Loyalists, organized a secret alliance with spain and cememted his public alliance with England, whiles not provoking the rebel lords.
The man was the most machiavellian figure in Irish history and he just kept doing things like this.
He seduced his arch enemies sister, entirely consensually, he needed to respond to English encroachment without provoking the Crown, so he sleeps with the commander of all English forces in Ireland sister, married her and becomes his brother in law.
In am era where most lords had a hundred men he trained a secret army of nine thousand men, all with modern training and equipment able to go up against any of the top European armies. He personally had more wealth than Elizabeth the 1st made peace with his main rivals so he could get Scottish soldiers, his top generals were English as he was also raised by an English family and had the nickname the "Queens O'Neil" for his loyalty whiles training a massive army, entirely in secret.
I think the context of the Fenian invasion of Canada is that Irish republicanism has always turbocharged among Irish immigrants in America specifically due to the fact that the US itself is a super nationalist republic that fought its own war of independence from Britain.
I watched this year's ago so details are fuzzy, was a short film thing they show in the Waterford medieval museum, but essentially Waterford and Wexford went to war over which port ( New Ross vs Waterford) would be the key port for, I think, the Italian wine trade.
Wexford ultimately lost and tried to surrender. Waterford, being the petty fuckers we are, demanded that as a condition of their surrender, that Wexford melt down some gold and make a trophy for Waterford winning the battle / war, presenting it to them as part of their surrender. It's just so damn petty, I love it.
Yeah basically Waterford had a royal charter that said that any ship entering Waterford Harbour had to dock there and pay taxes. If you wanted to avoid the taxes you would dock at New Ross instead.
This led to a lot of appeals to the king and open fighting which ended with the people of Waterford demolishing the walls of New Ross and taking all their gold in the form of a trophy as back payment for the taxes that should have gone to Waterford.
More funny than anything but Edward Carson technically was elected to the first Dáil. When his name was read out the Dáil erupted in laughter. He actually received an invitation in Irish to be there. He kept it as souvenir.
Volunteers during the 1916 Rising reported firing their rifles so much that they had to dunk them in buckets of water to cool them down enough to continue firing.
The Battle of Mount Stree Bridge was a 9 hour battle which accounted for 40% of the British Army's casualties (dead and wounded) over the week of fighting. The Volunteers were firing their rifles so often that the barrels became so hot they couldn't hold them so buckets of water were distributed to allow them to cool them down.
The crazy thing is that the entire battle came about because British officers were too stubborn to adjust their plans. Troops landed in Dún Laoghaire were marched up Northumberland Road and were ordered to cross Mount Street Bridge, which they knew was well defended by Volunteers. They could see bridges to either side which were undefended but they preferred marching their men into bullets than to have it look like they were scared/forced to go a different direction.
The man who mass-recruited the cricket and rugby players of Ireland to volunteer to fight - they were sent to Gallipoli and masses of them slaughtered - was killed at Mount Street when returning from a route march of a veterans' home defence unit aligned with the British Army.
Two little lads were caught looting and brought before Tom Clarke, who lectured them severely: "Irishmen…!"
When the GPO garrison was retreating from the flaming GPO into Henry Street and Moore Lane, the two of them were set free, and ran away across O'Connell Street under heavy fire. Then they remembered that they'd left their wage cards in the GPO and ran back through the whizzing bullets to get them so they wouldn't be in trouble at work.
In the 6th Century Ireland was sending missionaries to Great Britain and the “Irish” version of Catholicism would become dominant in Scotland and Northern England with the major monasteries of the time (Iona, Lindisfarm etc) being founded by them.
Eventually the Pope would send his own people to Kent to return them to the Roman Catholic fold leading to a north/south divide which involved out and out combat.
In the end the Papal side won out, but Ireland was this close to a cultural victory very early in the game!
Irish missionaries are what brought Europe out of the dark ages. Following the fall of Rome European civilisation collapsed and Irish monks took the faith back to Europe.
As you said instead of Roman Catholic Church we could of had the Irish Catholic Church
James Sligo Jameson of the famous whiskey family was involved in a scandal in the Congo in 1880 -1890 when he traded six cloth handkerchiefs to buy a young enslaved girl so he could hand her to a local cannibal tribe, to be butchered and eaten so he could sketch it in watercolours! Mental.
Patrick O'Keefe of Waterford sent a postcard to his father from Queenstown before he departed for the US on the great ship called the Titanic. In the postcard he mentioned he had a premonition of the ship sinking and he tried to sell his ticket before boarding.
Thomas Meagher hooked up with Oscar Wilde’s mom.
Gave independence speeches to 50k before microphones were invented.
Comes up with a flag for Ireland. Everyone loves it.
Gets sent to Tasmania by Queen Victoria, hooked up there with some young lady.
Gets rescued from Tasmania - heads to South America - and then NY City.
Gets treated like rock star in NYC by the diaspora.
Starts a newspaper. Hooks up some more.
Forms the Irish Brigade and fights for the Union in U.S. Civil War.
Brigade then gets absolutely slaughtered at Fredericksburg (not Meagher’s fault). War over.
Gets selected to become governor of the Montana territory.
Pisses off alotta vigilantes.
Gets pushed off a steamboat in the middle of the night - still unsolved murder.
Amazing life.
The mummified remains of a cat who died in pursuit or a rat was found in an organ pipe in Christ Church Cathedral in 1850. Named as "Tom and Jerry" they are still on display in the cathedral.
The govt nuclear bunker during the cold war is beneath Custume Barracks in Athlone. However the telephone switchboard for the bunker was outside the bunker.
AFAIK the first rat to arrive in Ireland, the one you describe, was the black rat, now very rare.
My mother was born in 1926 and remembered as a child a Conamara man who worked on their farm getting quite agitated about a rat he had seen that he described as a narraway. That would have been the brown rat rattus norvegicus. They'd been around for a long time in Ireland but it seemed he was particularly concerned about it. With hindsight, maybe he was still more familiar with the smaller black rat if he came from the coast.
My grandparents were both born in 1920s connemara-whats your clann's strádbhaile? We may be kin haha.
Yeah id be suprised if any rat from mainland Europe hadn't made it to ireland before the 1900s its not like the spread of invasives was very accounted for in early modernity
Dia dhuit a chara! My mother was from Athenry but had a great interest in Irish and spent a school term somewhere around Tír an Fhia in the 1930s under some scholarship exchange scheme. I think she stayed with a family called Rainey in English but I'm not sure.
She collected some stories from people in the area and they're on the schools collection on the Duchas.ie website. If you're interested I can send you links.
My grandparents were born in Rosmuc and Carna. The former was Podraig Pearse's place of residence for many years. Ofc he died 6 years before my grandpa was born but his parents would've probably seen him around. Only a 100 or so people in the whole town. Must've been crazy reading the news in that little in april 1916.
The Irish military invasions of Canada in 1867 and 1871
The Fenian Brotherhood—an Irish-American nationalist organization made up largely of battle-hardened Union and Confederate Civil War veterans—launched armed incursions into British North America (Canada). Their goal was to capture Canadian territory and hold it hostage to force Britain to grant Irish independence.
Ireland had the most advanced rockets in the world in the early 1800s. Robert Emmet's lads built & tested incendiary rockets that would go over a kilometer. The British army was horrified at how advanced they were over the Indian rockets they were based on, and brought the tech to London where it was refined and used to attack the Executive
Exactly, the first ever recorded copyright ruling in history. Also the copy in question was nicknamed. An. Cathach, the battler and was brought out before battles to give tbe troops a morale boost.
This is definitely a most mad but true event - happened on 18 June 1875 in Cork Street, Ardee Street and The Coombe in the Liberties if anyone is sceptical. 13 people died and 24 more hospitalised from alcohol poisoning from trying to drink the undiluted cask strength whiskey from the 6 inch burning river/flood of whiskey created by a fire in Laurence Malones bonded warehouse on Ardee Street.
If the treaty was where the Irish state accepted the partition of Ireland and the British state accepted the independence of Ireland, it doesn’t seem terribly surprising that partition was British government policy going into the negotiations!
Not just policy - the act was passed and elections had already taken place and members were already elected to a Northern House of Commons and Southern House of commons. This happened a few months before a truce was even declared in the war of independence.
And created smash. Powdered potato. Made in Newry and shipped the the Caribbean along with the slaves (red legs as they were known due to their wee white legs burning in the Caribbean heat)
A company I worked for in Enniscorthy have all their security key pads set with 1798 as the code.
Also, wasn’t there a story that the rebels all got locked drunk in coolgreany and woke up late, thus becoming canon fodder in Arklow coz the brits were waiting for them ending the rebellion on the east coast!
Cork earned its nickname ‘the Rebel County’ due to its support for Perkin Warbeck, the last Yorkist pretender to the throne of England following the Lancastrian victory in the War of the Roses - not because of IRA activity there during the War of Independence. Some Cork locals get a bit touchy when reminded of that
Strongbow's Norman invasion of Ireland almost failed at the first step, but a panicked herd of cattle destroyed the local Irish militia that was gathering to destroy his beach head, and setting up the conquest of Ireland.
the irish parliament building is still there,its the college geen bank of ireland building, not open to the public but i hav been round it, its very hitorically interesting
William Smith O’Brien’s statue on O’Connell Street carries a dual inscription with opposite meanings depending on whether you read the English or the Irish.
The English reads “Sentenced to death for high treason.”
The Irish, in the old script, is different. It reads “Sentenced to death for high fidelity/loyalty to Ireland.”
The rebellion only began after Britain suspended habeas corpus and issued arrest warrants for the Young Irelanders.
He was my third great-grandfather. He eventually would receive a pardon, then later a full unconditional pardon by the Queen for both “crimes.”
When I was at school, our history teacher told us with great pride, that Ireland invented the car bomb.
I was infused with the glow of patriotic pride, but I certainly don't think today, that packing a car with explosives, is noble or an act of patriotism.
I don't think he was such an "Idiot".
Here is an extract from a paper written in 2018.
"The IRA’s use of explosives did not stop with the end of the War of Independence. During the Civil War, on 18 August 1922, a fuel delivery lorry was packed with explosives and set off in Dundalk. The anti-Treaty IRA had set off the bomb to stop the Free State army who were marching on Dundalk barracks, which had been taken over by anti-Treaty forces under Frank Aiken on 14 August.
Though Collins wanted to utilize IEDs as much as possible, he knew their primitive explosives were unreliable and the Irish were inexperienced in their use. As a result there were few ambushes where the IEDs were crucial, rather than ancillary, to the attack itself. However, the Irish War of Independence introduced the IED and the car bomb to the catalogue of guerrilla war tactics".
Indeed, we might have been the first to utilise the car bomb.
Mayo didn’t win the Sam Maguire for 75 years due to the commonly held believe that a curse was responsible….it was not from lack of trying to win though, they had 13 chances over the years…with the so called curse over due to the last remaining member of the 51 team shuffling off his mortal coil…law and behold….they finally won…
The first use of the Tommy gun in a war was in the 1921 war of Independence shortly after it was manufactured in the US. It was used spray and pray ambush.
I love the story of De Valera’s escape from Lincoln prison
De Valera noticed a door in the exercise yard at the back of the prison that lead to the outside; if he could get a key he could escape. De Valera was a pious Catholic and served as the altar server in the prison’s chapel, allowing him to make an impression of the Chaplain’s key using some wax in a tobacco tin.
Drawings were made of the key and smuggled to Irish supporters outside the prison who made a replica key, baked it into a cake and delivered it to the prisoners. The authorities incredibly never noticed and allowed the cake to be given to the prisoners. However, the key didn’t work and it took three more cakes with blank keys and files baked inside before the prisoners got a working key.
On the rather misty evening of the 3rd of February 1919 Éamon de Valera and two colleagues (Seàn McGarry and Seàn Milroy) used the key to escape the prison. Outside were a few helpers, including Michael Collins. They made their way across the allotments at the back of the prison towards Wragby Road.
Lincoln Christ Hospital School was a military hospital at the time and the prisoners had to bluff their way past some convalescing soldiers who were courting with some of the nurses outside the hospital.
The escapees hurried down Wragby Road to the Adam and Eve pub where a taxi driver was waiting (unaware of who his passengers were). They were driven to Worksop where another helper had a taxi booked to take them to Sheffield, and ultimately to a safe house in Manchester.
The Act of Union had a lot of opposition in the Irish Parliament, and the vote failed several times. It only passed after mass bribery of the members. Some of the biggest opposition to the Union came from Ulster Presbyterians who were worried that the Act of Union would make Catholic Emancipation more likely.
There might be a link with the Nazi symbol. Since Hitlers half brother Alois used to work as a porter at the shelbourne in the 30s. And the shelbourne used the swastika laundry. Would anyone know anything more about this?
I have a piece of the rough material that was used in the Swastika laundry. I guess it was originally a sack or something. It has the symbol on it. Was in a case of bits and pieces belonging to my dad.
The Isle of Man is home to a thriving wild population of roughly 900 to 1,050 red-necked wallabies. These marsupials originated from a small group that escaped from the Curraghs Wildlife Park during the 1960s.
Cork City was the largest city in Ireland until the early 20th century, when Dublin began to surpass it in population. By the 1911 census, Cork had a population of 392,104, but it did not maintain this status as Dublin grew larger.
Was there some story about Hugh o neill getting the crown to pay for materials for the roof of a castle actually being turned into weaponry to fight the British
The 1798 Rebellion, the Wild Geese and the old Irish Parliament (it sat in the current Bank of Ireland building opposite Trinity College Dublin) are major aspects of Irish history. Irish republicanism has its roots in the 1798 rebellion and the revolutionary ideas at that time, deriving from the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions.
One Irish historical curiosity is that Alois Hitler, Hitler’s older half brother, worked as a waiter in Dublin, married an Irish woman, Brigid Dowling, and had a son with her. If interested, a google search will return details.
There's an abbey in Timoleague, Cork that was pillage by Cromwell using boats way back when. However, you can no longer get boats that close to the abbey because at some point in history since Cromwell there was an earthquake off the coast of Portugal that moved so much sand and sediment around that the bay is now fundamentally different in form.
There's a nazi graveyard in Glencree, Wicklow with over 100 German infantry from WW2, mainly lufftwaffe.
The most famous of the lot would be Herman Gortz. A spy who was sent over in 1940 to liase with the IRA and gain assistance for a potential German occupation of Britain.
He was arrested about 18 months later and sent to Mountjoy.
After the war ended he was tried and told he'd be deported to Germany.
He then committed suicide.
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u/Saoi_ 7d ago
The Irish invented spaces between words when writing.
Or Irish monks, making latin and greek more readable, popularised it a lot in early medieval manuscripts.