Hornpipe Magazine, Irish Culture abstracts, Vol. 6.

One of the most prolific writers of Irish dance history is John Patrick Cullinane. His history books and archives are often referenced, as he is the authority on the topic.

The Cullinane Archive Collection, a private collection, is believed to be the only Irish dance material archive in the world. The acquisition consists of some 4,000 items all computer catalogued. Cullinane collects, photocopies, catalogues and stores the 4,000 objects and admits the costly business is a labor of love.

The cherished collection includes sixty plus tape recordings with the great dance teachers, many of whom are deceased (including Aine Tuohy of Limerick, Cormac O'Keeffe of Cork, Essie Comnnolly of Dublin, etc). The photograph collection consists of some 800 or so photos dating from 1890, many of which were featured in his book on the history of Irish Dancing Costumes. Rare items in the archives include: an early minute book of the Irish Dancing Commission, original documentation of the Commission's TCRG and ADCRG qualifications set up, minutes of the very first Commission meeting seventy years ago, Tailteann Games certificates from 1924, 1928, and 1932, the original All-Ireland Oireachtas hand cut medal, programs for feiseannas as the 1908 London Feis, and several thousand other items.

Genealogy: Search for Irish ancestors offers surprises, revelations and lots of satisfaction

A successful search to find your Irish ancestral roots starts at home. Your beginning and your conclusion will be best helped if you have an outline of the information you can get about your family working back from your immediate relations. If you have access to a computer, keeping up with records and discoveries is made easier. There is available software for genealogical research.

For many of Irish ancestry, the available information from immediate family members may be comprehensive. For others it will be hard work gleaning rudimentary information because so many multi-generational Irish families have migrated, normally from the east, to every other region of the nation.

Manus Duggan Mine Disaster
Heroic Irish miner died for his co-workers and sparked a strike for safety laws

While the new Americans from Ireland tried to set up stable and prosperous lives in the east, thousands of others went west in search of gold or silver. Many wound up on the business end of a pick in Butte, Montana's rich copper deposits. The affect of this was to make Butte a city dominated by the Irish and also to be the cradle of the unionized drive to make mining safer.

Many lost their lives in mine accidents. The worst loss was 184 men, mostly Irish, who died in the Speculator Mine fire of 1917. Another 25 escaped certain death because one young Irishman was willing to give his life to save theirs.

On the night of June 8th, 1917, twenty-five-year-old Manus Duggan said goodbye to his wife and three children and left Butte's "Dublin Gulch" to join hundreds of other miners on the night shift at the Speculator Mine in Granite Mountain.

The mine worked two shifts and more than two thousand men mining copper for World War I. Dugan could not know that engineers had earlier been lowering a large insulated cable to run ventilation fans on lower levels. An assistant foremen accidentally touched the cable with his carbide light and it caught fire.

The Molly Maguires
Organized labor in US owes much of its progress to these fearless secret societies

Separating the history of the organized labor movement in the United States from that of the history of Irish immigration is not possible. And while much of the preface to the unionization of US industry in the late 19th and 20th century is written in the blood and tears of immigrants back to the Revolutionary War, organizing a labor force to bring industrial giants to their knees could only have been brought about by a group as bloodied and unbowed as the Irish of the eastern states 150 years ago.

The Molly Maguires offer the most prominent tale of how the Irish built the American labor movement on their backs and is also a chilling story of greed, murder, corruption and the sort of abuses of power that invariably incur the wrath of honest Americans. The Mollie Maguires were a secret society of Irish immigrants and coal miners in 1876 Shcuylkill County, Pennsylvania, who used violence against mine owners and officials who oppressed their attempts to improve working conditions in the mines.

At the behest of mine owners, the Pinkerton Detective Agency hired James McParland to infiltrate the Mollies, resulting in the arrest of 20 leaders, who were tried, convicted, and executed. McParland's testimony at the trials, and Allen Pinkerton's book on The Molly Maguires and the Detectives have shaped historical interpretations to the present day, painting the Irish as evil terrorists and the Pinkertons as responsible enforcers of law and order. The Mollies themselves left no evidence or writings, and remain mysterious. Not until J. Walter Coleman's 1936 book The Molly Maguire Riots did historical interpretation become more balanced.

There are a myriad of ways to establish or foster this cultural connection. This article offers some suggestions but is by no means a comprehensive look at all the available avenues of interest.

The vastness of Irish and Irish American contributions to the arts is immeasurable yet an interested individual who chooses an author, actor, director or artist of the Irish to study will find rewards abounding and connects to other Irish, Irish American, and American artists.

Famed Irish authors such as Oscar Wilde found adventure and peril while touring the wild west of the 19th century and were influenced by those travels in later writing. American poet Ezra Pound was a great friend and supporter of James Joyce who in turn influenced works by his fellow exiles such as T. S. Elliot.

The empty dance hall at the feis competition was sparsely illuminated. The silence broken by an occasional volunteer making last minute adjustments to the make-shift number stand that hails throngs of dancers to position. A stately looking man with silver hair, jacket and tie walked across the dance floor with a brisk cadence toward the musicians' area. Moments later, a one-handed light melody from the keyboard turned my eye again to the curious man. He stopped, picked up his accordion and adjusted the straps. He treated his instrument as if it were a child, and for one to walk by without acknowledgement would seem discourteous. Gordon Shaffer was that accordion player.

The theories of the origin of the black Irish type are as numerous as there are nations to which the Irish have journeyed, or been sent, in the past 1200 years.

Of all these theories, the most popular, and most maligned by pseudo-experts, is that a significant number of the Spanish sailors and soldiers of the final Armada assault on England survived the sinking of their fleet and made it ashore in the west of Ireland where, being Catholics, they were hidden from English officials and married into the community of Irish, believed to be largely red, or fair haired, people.

Critics of this theory claim that there would not have been enough Spaniards coming ashore from that epic sea battle to make a genetic imprint on an ethnic group such as the Celts of western Ireland. On the other end of the tale, is a similar story that runs through Spanish society that the numerous red-haired, green-eyed people in that population can trace their roots back to the many times, starting with the ninth century Flight of the Earls, Irish leaders and their families were welcomed in Spain because of their shared Catholic religion and mutual hatred of the English. In fact, the Chief of the Name for a branch of the O'Donnell clan is a Spanish monsignor named Leopoldo. The priest can trace his lineage back to an Irish rebel who fled the British and rose to be the prime minister of Spain at the time Columbus sailed for the New World.

Volume 6, Issue 3

Go along to get along: an important lesson in life

It was deep summer and hotter than hubs of hell even in the normally cool, mountain environs of the swimming hole that we inhabited like a group of overdressed otters. If a bunch of country kids could have gang-like turf, the swimming hole and the four-foot deep stretch of Spitzer Creek a quarter mile above and below the hole was ours.

Our gang, all pre-teen and teenaged boys and girls from a couple of miles around, never considered that our sanctuary could become an attraction for people that we'd never brush up against - town kids.

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Freedom rings in Philadelphia

The hollowness of any metropolis on an early Sunday morning is eerie if not haunting. The smell of humanity, yet the streets vacant of dissonance, leaves one wondering - is this Twilight Zone?

The same could be said of Center City Philadelphia on this 4th of July dawn, except for the street cleaners. Civil servants tidied the boulevards - every paper and cigarette butt plucked in preparation for the incoming melee and ceremonies. Wet sidewalks glistened from high powered street sweepers swishing through the dingy vestibules of a city two hundred and twenty-two years old. Of all American cities, this city is the birthplace of a nation, nay a democracy that has defined our modern world.

William Penn, an English Quaker, established Philadelphia. His "holy experiment" of religious toleration (1682) in his colony of Pennsylvania was a refuge for persecuted Catholics, as well as other religions. King Charles II granted Penn 1280 acres between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. The original city grid contained five public squares that remain intact. Due to its excellent location and port facilities on the Atlantic coast, it soon became the second largest English speaking city in the 18th century world. Philadelphia's history from 1774 to 1800 is also linked to the American Revolution.

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July in Northern Ireland is always 1690

July, for most of Europe and the US is a month of vacations or the continental holiday. For the north of Ireland it is the "marching" season, that time when centuries old hatreds are brought to the riot barricades and rekindled in violence and eternal enmity. And the rest of the world looks on and wonders, "What the hell is the matter with those people?"

The actual basis for "The Troubles, violence from which has plagued Northern Ireland, and especially Belfast and Londonderry, for most of the past 35 years was a battle July 12th battle 314 years ago that was the final blow, hammering largely Roman Catholic Ireland down on the anvil of England's Protestant monarchy.

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Volume 6, Issue 3

Ancient Game of Hurling Gaining Foothold with US Athletes

The oldest and fastest field game in the world, Hurling is a sport that was created by the ancient Celts. Historians have proved that this unique sport was a regular pastime in Ireland for thousands of years. The first recorded reference to Hurling dates back to 1272 BC in the Irish county of Mayo.

Through the ages, the sport has blended into Irish folklore and many mythological heroes were depicted as master hurlers. The most famous of them was Cu Culainn. As a young lad named Setanta, he overcame a vicious hound by hitting his sliotar through the mouth of the hound with his hurling stick. As his reward, he earned the name Cu Chulainn, "The Hound of Cooley".

Volume 6, Issue 2

Journalism's attraction is a light to shine on arrogant power

When I'm asked me why I chose journalism as a career, I explain that by the sixth grade I was such a prolific liar that I had to keep notes of what I had told to whom. This became a large volume I had to lug everywhere. I hid the record of my lies in the bottom of my book bag and took it out only when away from prying eyes. My heart stopped when Sister Davidica (one of the biggest of the biker nuns among the Sisters of Harley Davidson, any of who would pull an errant kid's teeth with rusty pliers for the slightest infraction) announced that we would clean our desks and bags that morning.

I hid the notebook under a pile of sorely abused, but rarely used, textbooks stacked on my desk. The robust nun bustled around the room looking for contraband copies of Batman, Superman, Nancy Drew or other works of unquestionably Protestant origins.

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Volume 6, Issue 2

A day of rememberance steeped in tradition

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. Like many indigenous traditions the beginnings are vague and obscure but it is certain there were spontaneous gatherings of people to honor the war dead.

As to Memorial Day's actual beginnings, over two dozen cities and towns lay claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. Officially, Waterloo, NY was declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966. However, it remains difficult to prove a conclusive origin.

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The five Sullivan Brothers joined the Navy after the infamous Pearl Harbor attach that hurled the United States into WWII. They were granted a disastrous request to 'stick together.' All were lost with the sinking of the USS Juneau at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.

By the time World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, Middle America was breadbasket and grocer to an entire nation. Many Americans thought that Hitler was an altogether awful individual but that all that fuss across the Atlantic was not our business. Besides, hadn't we settled things over there in the War To End All Wars in WWI.

With 60 plus hears of hindsight, we now know that had Americans maintained their distance from the needs of free Europe we might have wound up fighting the Nazis on our own soil. Still, it took Pearl Harbor to convince Americans that we were in the greatest peril in our history.

Enjoying down time at Philadelphia Nationals:
Cultural attractions, special interest attractions, historical sites, religious sites

The fact is that some of the best things to do and see are free - or close to it.

For families traveling to the nationals, that's great news. Check out the low-cost or no-cost attractions, including historic Independence Hall, the flavorful Italian Market, the hi-tech production line of Herr's Potato Chip Factory and Fairmount Park's rustic trails. All attractions are free and located in Center City Philadelphia unless otherwise noted. Some of the attractions may request a suggested donation from visitors.

Volume 6 , Issue 1

Raising Children, the Rules?

Child rearing is, at best, a difficult business wherein we often find ourselves contradicting what we told the young one last week in order to let them know that life is not always as straightforward and clear as it should be.

It seems as soon as we've done the best job we can of making them understand that they must obey the rules, go along to get along, respect teachers and other authorities, and be honest, we start having to admit to them that world and its people depart regularly from those concepts. We start conceding, little by little, that many of the principles we have tried to teach them are ignored by the majority of people in daily life.

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Celtic culture adds sparkle to US Scene
by Phil Richardson

The commercial success of Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, and other Irish dance productions has been astounding, and some of the participants (Michael Flatley comes immediately to mind) have become not only world famous, but quite wealthy in the bargain.

There is an adage that says "history repeats itself" and like history so does the commercial success of the Celtic tiger. Undoubtedly the rise in Irish dance was stimulated by commercial productions just like the popularity of Irish traditional music by the Clancy Brothers during the folk era of the '60's. However, the true test of the commercial success of a show is the ability to transcend from the road tours and embed itself in the modern effervescent amusement franchises across the country. Testimony to that success are the numerous Irish dance shows in Las Vegas, Branson, Missouri, Busch Gardens, Virginia and now in Florida.