28‭ March 1957: The death of the Artist Jack B. Yeats on this day. He was born in London in 1871 the son of John Butler Yeats. His younger brother was W. B. Yeats. His early years were spent chiefly in County Sligo and later in London where he studied at the Westminster School of Art. He initially settled in Devon with his wife and his first one-man exhibition was at the Clifford Gallery, Haymarket, London in 1897, showing chiefly Devon paintings. He moved to the USA in 1905 and had several one-man shows at the Clausen Gallery, New York in this period.

He returned to Ireland in‭ 1910, living first at Greystones, then in Dublin. He had earned a living from sketch work for various publications as well as Exhibitions of his paintings. He took up Oils in 1913 and while schooled in traditionalist painting he was drawn to more abstract and impressionist works that soon became his forte. He applied his love of this kind of work to scenes of life in the West of Ireland, travellers and social events both rural and urban. From early youth he was fascinated by the Circus and worked that into his paintings too. A solitary figure he took no pupils and allowed no one watch him work, so his method remains a mystery. In later life he used colour to the full and cut down on distinctive outlines in his works that gave them a blurred but visually strong impact on the viewer.

While he was a successful artist in his own day,‭ not just with the brush but also as an illustrator, playwright and novelist. Prior to his death in 1957, he began to be recognized as one of the foremost Irish painters and illustrators in the 20th century. But  it is only in the last 25 years that his genius has been accorded the status of a Great Artist and he is now acknowledged as a figure of the considerable importance on the International stage in 20th Century Modern Art.

Amongst his most well known works are:‭ Bachelor’s Walk; In Memory; The Funeral of Harry Boland ; Communicating with Prisoners; The Singing Clown and the Face in the Shadow.

Towards the end he described his Life as follows:

I have travelled all my life without a ticket,‭ and therefore I was never to be seen when Inspectors came round because then I was under the seats. It was rather dusty but I used to get the Sun on the floor sometimes.

He was‭ 85 years old when he died and still active until a few days beforehand. His funeral was held at St Stephens Church, Upper Mount Street and afterwards to the burial plot at Mount Jerome Cemetery. There were no bunches of flowers, only a single one on the coffin.

Painting: Left -Left, We left our name, on the road, on the road, On the famous road, On the famous road, On the famous road, Of fame. 1948 Jack B Yeats.

Portrait  of Yeats by James Sinton Sleator (1943)

 

27‭ ‬March 1174 AD: Gilla Mic Liac, the Archbishop of Armagh, died on this day the Wednesday after Easter. He was the first Archbishop of Armagh to be described as a Primaith [Primate] and he was granted - presumably by papal sanction - the right to wear the pallium garment  reserved for the Pope and the archbishops, but the latter may not use it until on petition they have received the permission of the Holy See.

Gilla Mae Liac‭ [Gelasius], son of Ruaidhri, successor of Patrick, archbishop and primate of Ard-Macha and of all Ireland, son of chastity, full of purity of heart and of peace, died piously after choice old age, on the 6th of the Kalends of April [March 27], the Wednesday after Easter, in the 87th year of his age, the 37th of his episcopacy. That noble man was sixteen years full honourably in the abbacy of Columcille in Daire[Derry] before [receiving] the succession of Patrick. [Armagh].

Annals of Ulster

Gelasius [Gilla Meic Liac mac Diarmata] was a reforming Archbishop who had been picked for the job by the great Saint Maol Maodhog [Malachy] himself to help bring the Church into line with the ecclesiastical Reform movement that was taking hold across western Europe. Before he gained the highest position in the Gaelic Church he was the Abbot of Derry for sixteen years. In 1152 he organised the Synods of Kells & Mellifont (County Meath) that reformed the Irish Church on Diocesan lines in common with general European practise for the further Reform of the Church. 

A further synod at Clane co Kildare in 1162 was attended by 26 bishops and instituted  the practise of riaghail agus soibheas ‘good rules and conduct’  that further emphasised the overrule of Armagh as the source and authority of all teaching on matters ecclesiastical throughout Ireland. His death notice in the Martyrology of Gorman was noted with the description - geam amhra ceann banba - a notable gem, Ireland’s Head.

Prevented by old age and infirmity according to Gerald of Wales [Giraldus Cambrenis] from attending the Synod of Cashel in 1172, he subsequently confirmed its statutes in Dublin. Again according to Giraldus, the ‘common people’ thought of Giolla mic Liag [who by then allegedly depended on a white cow for sustenance] as a saint.

A Dictionary of Irish Saints

Padraig O Riain

'Gilla meic Liac's concerns for matters academic and spiritual were almost certainly matched by exigencies relating to the physical settlement at Armagh. While the only explicit reference to him in connection with building projects is the notice in 1145 of his construction of a lime kiln between the ecclesiastical site and Emain Macha, it was certainly the case that on three occasions during his episcopate Armagh was extensively damaged by fire and required reconstruction. This happened in 1137 (the year of his appointment), in 1164, and again two years later when, alone of the churches within the enclosure, the abbey of Saints Paul and Peter survived the conflagration. Armagh had long enjoyed the patronage of the Cenél nÉogain kings, and Gilla meic Liac could apparently count on the support of the high-king Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn. Muirchertach intervened in 1152, when Gilla meic Liac was physically attacked and wounded by supporters of the king of Airgialla, Donnchad Ua Cerbaill (qv), and had the latter deposed for a time.'

Dictionary of Irish Biography 

Dictionary of Irish Biography | Dictionary of Irish Biography (dib.ie)

 

26‭ March 1931:  Timothy Healy, ex Governor General of the Irish Free State died on this day. Healy had been active in Irish politics for over 40 years when he was appointed to this controversial position. Born in Bantry, Co Cork he moved at an early age to Waterford and was a Nationalist MP for various constituencies from 1880 until 1918. He started his political career in England, pressing for Irish Home Rule. Parnell admired Healy's intelligence and energy after Healy had established himself as part of Parnell's broader political circle. He became Parnell's secretary, but was denied contact to Parnell's small inner circle of political colleagues. He famously fell out with Parnell following the exposure of his affair with Kitty O’Shea. Parnell felt that Healy had politically stabbed him in the back and indeed there were many who thought the same.

In the years following the Split he drifted in and out of Irish Politics but was considered something of a loose cannon and never really regained his place at the centre of Irish political life and remained on the fringes.‭ He spent many years building up his legal practise to compensate for this. When the Great War broke out he supported the Allied War aims and had a son at Gallipoli. But the events of Easter 1916 shook him and he slowly drifted towards supporting the idea of full Independence if it could be achieved without bloodshed. He acted for Thomas Ashe at his trail and represented Republican prisoners held by the British but confined his activities within the legal sphere. He resigned his seat in Cork North east in advance of the 1918 General Election to allow SF a clear run and did not seek re election elsewhere.

However he came to prominence once again when in October‭ 1922 when he was proposed as the Governor General of the Irish Free State. Healy accepted the post after some consideration. His name was suggested to the British by the head of the newly emerging State W.T. Cosgrave. Healy thus took up occupancy of the old Vice-regal Lodge as the official representative of King George V and his Government to the Irish Free State. There is no doubt that he enjoyed the role tremendously and did his best to make the role a viable part of public life in the State. Technically he had the power to dissolve the Free State Parliament and call elections but this scenario never arose during his tenure. He acted as a liaison between the British Government and the Free State and gave advice whether wanted or not as to how matters should proceed between the two.

Cosgrave had a difficult time with him and had to remind the Governor of the limits of his powers until Healy got the message. Though to be fair his notions as to what exactly his role should be was an open question. Basically his misconceptions were due more to feeling his way than to any deliberate intent to supersede his authority. Overall he was adept enough to steer his way through any difficulties that arose and avoided outright political controversy – an unusual state of affairs for him! 

However in the latter part of his time in Office his influence was diminished as his role was redefined to one of the King’s Representative only and not that of the British Government per se.‭ ‬Though he appeared to think that being Governor General was his for life this was not the view of the Free State Executive and James McNeill took up this role on his retirement in January 1928. His wife had died the year before and he retired to the family home at Chapelizod, Co. Dublin. He the published his extensive two volume memoirs called Letters and Leaders of my Day.

He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery Dublin.

Caricature: National Portrait Gallery.

 

25‭ ‬March 1738: The death of the Harpist Turlough O'Carolan/ Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin on this day. He was the most famous Irish musician and player of his day who plied his trade throughout Ireland. He was born in 1670 at Nobber, Co Meath and from an early age trained to become a player of the harp. However at the age of 18 he caught the smallpox and was left Blind. Nevertheless he continued his love of the instrument and mastered his disability. Due to the generosity of a patron, Mrs. MacDermott, he was able to equip himself for the road with a harp, a horse, a guide, and the money to launch a career as an itinerant harper, playing for patrons throughout the Irish countryside.

Various sources say that he was cheerful and gregarious,‭ ‬enjoyed ludicrous stories, practical jokes and he was an excellent backgammon player. As with many harpers of the time, he also drank a great deal, and he had a temper to be avoided. He developed his natural musical talent and turned his hand to composition, penning over 220 works of Irish music many of which are still recorded and played today. In his travels around the Country he stayed at the Houses of various Patrons, both native and planter and his influences were drawn not just from Ireland but also further afield.

He eventually married a woman called Mary Maguire,‭ they lived on a farm near Mohill, Co. Leitrim and had seven children. Mary died in 1733 and just five years later, feeling ill, Carolan returned to the home of his original Patron Mrs. MacDermott Roe. After several days, he called for a drink and repeated these lines to his first patron:

Mary Fitzgerald,‭ dear heart, Tusk

Love of my breast and my friend,

Alas that I am parting from you,

O lady who succoured me at every stage.

His final composition was to the butler,‭ ‬Flinn, who brought him his last drink. And, in a final fitting salute, his wake lasted four days.

When he died his passing was recalled a famous man of letters of the time:

Saturday,‭ the 25th day of March 1738. Turlough O'Carolan, the wise master and chief musician of the whole of Ireland, died today and was buried in the O'Duignan's church of Kilronan, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. May his soul find mercy, for he was a moral and religious man.‬

Charles O'Conor

 

24 March 1922: The McMahon Murders in Belfast OTD. Owen McMahon, together with four of his sons (aged between 15 and 26 years) and a barman who was present during the attack at the family’s home in north Belfast were shot dead in the early hours of 24 March 1922.  He was a prosperous pub owner from north Belfast, his sons Bernard, Frank, Patrick and Gerard and a barman Edward McKinney were all shot dead in an incident which caused international outrage and forced the intervention of the British prime minister David Lloyd-George.

The culprits were almost certainly members of the state-sponsored ‘Ulster Special Constabulary’, the most notorious section of which was the B-Specials. There had already been a number of concerted attacks on republicans and Catholics generally, much of it directed in Belfast by Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) District Inspector John Nixon, whose men operated out of police barracks at Brown Square, near the city centre. It is generally accepted that it was this unit that planned and executed the McMahon attack.

McMahon was one of the wealthiest Catholics in Belfast, where he had business and leisure ties with middle-class Protestants. His home was situated in the predominantly Protestant neighbourhood of Thorndale, an affluent section of the city. The deliberate executions of these respectable members of the Catholic business class were carried out to send a chilling message to others from the same background - none of you are safe.

Joe Devlin, the leader of the northern Nationalists at that time was angered and outraged by these brutal murders.

Speaking in the House of Commons on 28 March, two days after the burial of most of the victims, Devlin felt it appropriate to declare that the assassinations had ‘shocked almost the entire world’. He even read from a leading unionist paper, the Belfast Telegraph, which described the deed as ‘the most terrible assassination that has yet stained the name of Belfast’.

The funeral of McMahon and his sons attracted at least ten thousand mourners, among whom were members of the Catholic political and clerical elite. Protestants, particularly from the business community, were also in attendance.¹The event served as a rallying point for a Catholic community that was now more alarmed than ever. The number and the range of mourners bore witness to Owen McMahon’s social status in the community. In his Commons speech, Devlin would protest that this ‘leading merchant in the City of Belfast’ was beyond reproach, ‘the most unoffending citizen’. 

Ireland 1922 edited by Darragh Gannon and Fearghal McGarry

Picture of the Virgin Mary that was in the McMahon home on the night of the murders.

 

24‭ March 1968: The Aer Lingus plane, St Phelim, plunged into the Irish Sea off the Tuskar Rock on this day. Just after noon on a fine spring day the aircraft inexplicably plunged into the Irish Sea off the County Wexford coast from a height of 17,000 ft, killing all 61 passengers and crew on board.

Flight 712 had taken off from Cork airport about 30 minutes beforehand and was due to land at Heathrow, London. The plane was a propeller driven Vickers Viscount 803 with no known structural defects that could explain the sudden loss of this aircraft. ‬Of the 57 passengers, 35 were Irish, nine were Swiss, six were from Belgium, five were British, and two were American.  Of the 61 people on board only 14 bodies were ever recovered.

Its penultimate,‭ garbled message indicated another aircraft was in the area. In its last message, eight seconds later, co-pilot Paul Heffernan, aged 22, said: "12,000 ft descending, spinning rapidly.":

‭Witnesses say Captain Barney O'Beirne,‭ aged 35, managed to level the four-engine plane about 1,000 ft above the water, and flew on for about 15 minutes before it crashed close to Tuskar Rock. There was no black box recorder on the aircraft, which had undergone a major inspection three weeks earlier.

The Guardian‭ 11 January 1999

Speculation over the years has centred around the possibility that the plane was shot down by a rogue British test missile fired from an RAF base in Wales.‭ Still to this day, there are no definite answers as to what happened. The AAIU investigation reported that a structural failure of the port tailplane metal fatigue, corrosion, flutter (vibration in a control surface which may cause control difficulty and lead to a structural failure) or a bird strike may have been the cause. However no set of established facts has ever been able to show what actually caused the plane to crash with such a devastating loss of life.

The St Phelim Disaster is the worst ever recorded in the history of Irish Aviation.

 

22 March 1979: The IRA assassinated the British Ambassador to Holland on this day. In one of their most audacious attacks launched outside of these islands the Provisional IRA targeted Sir Richard Sykes and shot dead him dead. They also gunned down his butler Karel Straub in the mistaken belief he was the Ambassadors bodyguard. Two gunmen opened fire on Sir Richard and his Dutch footman as they left his residence at The Hague to make the short car journey to the British Embassy.

The Ambassador was a noted security expert and there was much initial speculation in the Netherlands and in Britain that other groups under suspicion at the time (including Palestinians and Iraqis) could have targeted him. He was appointed to the job in June 1977 after a two year posting as a Foreign and Commonwealth Office deputy under-secretary in London. He had been a diplomat in Cuba, Peking and Washington. Ironically he was responsible for an internal report on the safety of British diplomats following the Assassination by the IRA in 1976 of the British ambassador to Dublin, Sir Christopher Ewart-Biggs.

Sir Richard, a much-decorated war hero from a strong military background, was assigned to the posting in Holland - sensitive because of Dutch groups sympathetic to the IRA and consequent arms smuggling activities.

There have been recent warnings from the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Mason, that the IRA might launch reprisals because of recent successes by the security forces in Belfast. His latest warning came a fortnight ago when 43 bombs were found in a shed adjoining Belfast's docks.

The biggest coup by British and Netherlands security officials was the interception of a two-ton shipment of second-hand Czech arms at Schipol Airport, bearing false labels and bound for Dublin. It is an open secret that the British Embassy in The Hague has a special monitoring role over the underground operations of IRA sympathisers in Holland. The Provisional IRA is said to have "safe houses" in the countryside where its leaders can lie low.

The Guardian 23 March 1979