The Old Athlone Society

Sheraton Hotel, Athlone – 8.15pm, Wednesday, 8 March, 2017

Talk by Dr Aengus Finnegan

Map drawn by former Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald, detailing rates of pre-famine Irish speaking

Summary – The Irish language survived as a natively spoken language in the Athlone area as recently as the 1960s – something which will no doubt surprise many. And yet the story of the Irish language in Athlone, and the midlands in general, is very much a neglected one. This lecture will trace the changing fortunes of the Irish and English languages in and around Athlone from the early 17th century to the present day.

Speaker – Aengus Finnegan, a native of Glassan, is a lecturer in Irish at the University of Limerick. He completed a PhD on townland names in Co. Westmeath at the Department of Modern Irish, NUI Galway, in 2012. From 2013 to 2015 he was employed in Fiontar, the Irish-language unit of Dublin City University. While there, he worked as a Research Editor on a number of Irish-language digitisation projects, including over a year as Project Coordinator of Logainm.ie, The Placenames Database of Ireland. His interests include: Irish placenames, surnames, and personal names; Modern and Early Modern Irish-language literature; folklore; and the historical dialectology and sociolinguistic heritage of the Irish language in central Ireland.

Lough Ree Yacht Club, on Wednesday, 7^th December, 2016, at 8.00 pm

– Talk by Prof. Elizabeth Fitzpatrick, NUI Galway

Summary – Professor Fitzpatrick’s lecture for the Old Athlone Society on ‘The Hill of Gathering’ is about the places chosen to hold seasonal assemblies, royal meetings and inauguration ceremonies of Gaelic kings and lords in medieval Ireland. Some important gathering places in Westmeath are included.

Tulach Mac Amhalghaidh, the gathering place of the Magawleys of Calary, near Moate, County Westmeath (History Ireland)

Speaker – Elizabeth FitzPatrick is a personal professor of historical archaeology at the School of Geography and Archaeology, NUI Galway, a director of the Discovery Programme and a fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. Her research and publications address landscape and settlement among Gaelic peoples of Ireland and Scotland from the 7th to the 17th century, with a focus on social organisation and cultural practice, topographies of power and territorial boundaries in medieval Ireland. She has published widely on assembly places and inauguration sites including a book on the subject Royal inauguration in Gaelic Ireland c.1100–1600: a cultural landscape study. She is currently completing a book on the landscapes and settlements of Gaelic learned families in Ireland 1200-160AD. She also leads cross-disciplinary publication projects important to Irish identity and cultural life among them Food and drink in Ireland and Domestic life in Ireland published by the Royal Irish Academy.

Officers’ Mess, Custume Barracks, on Tuesday, 22 November 2016, at 8pm

– Talk by Maurice Manning, D.Litt MRIA, Chancellor of the National University of Ireland

Eoin O’Duffy in 1922

Summary – The key force in shaping the Garda Siochana, a founder member and first leader of Fine Gael and the youngest army general in Europe at the time, O’Duffy’s achievements were considerable. But today, if one thinks of him at all, it is in connection with his latter-day flirtation with fascism. The man who was one of the most respected figureheads of the fledgling Irish Free State saw his successes being eclipsed by a decade of failures before he died in 1944.

Speaker – Maurice Manning (D.Litt MRIA) is Chancellor of the National University of Ireland and currently chairs the Government’s Expert Advisory Group on the Decade of Centenaries. He has written extensively on modern Irish history and politics.