Typocast

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I can't claim the high moral ground when it comes to proofreading. I'm still finding typos in stuff I wrote many years ago and had proofread more than once since.

Today, with so much stuff just online, you can correct your typos as though they never existed. Hardcopy is another matter. And another matter still is when they are cast in stone, or just plain cast.

The picture above is from the 1964 film "A Home of Your Own" and it shows Bernard Cribbins sculpting an inscription on a monument in a new housing estate to be opened by the mayor the following morning. The unveiling of the monument brings gasps from the crowd as the finished inscription is suddently revealed as "The money for this erection was raised by pubic subscription". Your worst nightmare. I've never forgotten it.

And when you end up doing legislation, where whole new legistlation is required to be passed to correct any typos you've missed, I can tell you that sharpens up your proofreading skills.

Still, no one is perfect, not even in 1850, when this gate for Brian Boru's well at Castle Avenue Clontarf was cast. You'd need to be wide awake to spot it: the H should follow the M in Brian's name. The cló rómhánach here denies us the luxury of the floating buailte (see below)

An author, who is an authority on matters relating to Clontarf, attempted to persuade me that this was a legitimate variation in the name, but when I looked up his own book on the matter I found he had actually corrected it himself in his text.

And in case you think I'm having a go at Dublin and its suburbs, I'll take you as far west as my granny's birthplace in Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo, where BOHOLA has dropped an O in the casting. [Update - 11/2/2015: Carol Maddock has just pointed out that I missed the apostrophe in "area's" and I've now spotted another one in "1950's". Clearly proofreading is a never ending task.]

[Update - 5/4/2016: "Bohola" has now been corrected but it looks as if the other two typos have been reproduced in this new plaque.]

Or to my father's birthplace, Ballyhaunis, in the same county, where the MILLENNIUM has dropped an N in the same process.

Not so nice when your typos are cast and would require a complete recast to remedy them.

There are some fine cast signs which currently suffer from typos but where the typo is not in the casting but in the subsequent tarting up. These are easily remedied. But, of course, you have to spot them first.

The above sign, from the Cornmarket in Wexford town, is perfectly cast. However when it came to tarting it up subsequently there was a problem. Tarting up meant painting the whole thing gray and then painting the surround and the script white. And they did a lovely job. But nobody told them that those little irregularites over the d and the b were in fact part of the script - Irish buailtes or séimhiús which mutate the consonants concerned.

I remember floating buailtes from school. Quite often, given the complexity of Irish grammar, you were not sure whether to apply one or not. So we always made sure there were a few floating ones above each line of script to be pressed into service as required.

And don't get me started on street name signs in Irish where the follies are a compound of typos and plain pig ignorance. My web page on this comes with a health warning - keep the blood pressure pills handy. Enjoy.

Michael Edwards

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Michael Edwards is a photographer and he has a shop in the Donaghmede Shopping Centre in North Dublin. I was in the centre today and happened to see this notice in the window of the shop next door to his.

So, in I went.

There were certainly well over a hundred photos on display and they varied from the fantastic to the banal. I think I had seen some of them before, as some of the clubs have their own exhibitions which travel round the local libraries.

This jumbo exhibition, however, was a mighty venture.

Two photos, in particular appealed to me.

The naturalness of this photo with the lady sharing the newspaper with the street sculpture man in the main street in Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo, really made me smile. It's by Peter Bates from the Howth Photographic Club.

I had seen the statue when I was chasing up my family history in the town in 2007.

This one also made me smile. Reminded me of Beckett, I think. And I used to work across the road from O'Donoghues pub, though I think I was in it only the once. The photo is by Patrick O'Leary from the An Oige Camera Club.

Anyway, full marks to Michael for his exhibition. It's great to see this happening locally. You could spend most of a day looking around this exhibition and, as Dermot Edwards said to me, the great thing is that the subject matter is open, so the variety of topics dealt with and the style of that dealing was enormous.

As you can see below, you still have another five days to get yourself to the Donaghmede Shopping Centre to check it out.

Hanged for Murder

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There were 29 people hanged by the Irish State for (non-political) murders during the period when capital punishment was practiced (1923-1954). And Tim Carey, currently the Heritage Officer for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, has written a book about them, all of them.

My contact with Tim was through his involvement with Dublin's Martello Towers, and in particular No. 7 in Killiney Bay. What, I wondered, was he doing writing a book about murders. Has he not got enough on his plate.

Turned out he was no stranger to prison, having worked in Mountjoy and already written a book about it and another one about the State's hangings for political murders.

So I got an invite to the book launch in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Hall. Launches are always interesting, as much for the people you meet at them as for the launch itself.

This one, however, turned out to be quite spectacular, at least as far as I was concerned. It was clearly stated on the classy invite that came in my letter box a while back, but it didn't really register with me.

Tim had got the State Pathologist, Marie Cassidy, to launch his book. How appropriate and what a coup. Apparently he just wrote to her, enclosing a copy of the book; she was hooked and agreed to launch it.

State Pathologist, Marie Cassidy, launching the book

It was clear from what she said, that she found it a gripping read. I was thinking to myself that the role of pathologist was really redundant in the case of those hanged as the cause of death was quite clearly known. But then there were the victims. And always the mystery to be solved, and it was clearly this aspect that attracted her. She commented that a lot of people would find old mysteries boring or irrelevant and be more interested in the present, whereas solving the mystery is the pathologist's life blood (after a manner of speaking) and when you have that cast of mind, a mystery is a mystery irrespective of its age.

Marie is also Professor of Forensic Medicine at Surgeons and at TCD, and this adds huge variety to her professional life on top of that as State Pathologist. She is not only dealing with the dead, but sometimes the very dead like ancient bog bodies from the midlands. So the mystery to be solved has an appeal and a fascination for her.

Tim Carey's few words

Tim gave us a bit of his own background and told us how the book had come about. The guts of it were in work he did for a TG4 series on the subject a while back but there was still a lot of blood, sweat and tears to go into getting the book itself into shape.

The longest entry in the book is the Harry Gleeson case (Tipperary - 1941). Many believe that Harry was innocent and there is a current campaign to prove this. Many of the campaigners had come up specially from Tipperary to attend the book launch. And from reading the book it is clear that Tim's sympathies lie with them.

Marie Cassidy signing copies of Tim's book

I'm not sure why, but I was surprised to see Marie Cassidy acceding to requests to sign copies of the book. Needless to say I took advantage and now have a copy signed by the author and the State Pathologist.

I actually have another interest in the subject matter, but my murderer cheated the hangman. He had brutally murdered his bitch of a mother with a hatchet and disposed of her body in the sea off Shankill. His daddy, who was a medical consultant, organised some medical opinion for the trial stating that he was insane and that was how the verdict turned out, "Guilty but Insane". So he spent a, not too taxing, 14 years in Dundrum Criminal Asylum and, because he was not found simply guilty, he could still inherit the mother's estate, which helped to finance his European tour on his release. He was as sane as I am, though that may not be saying much. And my interest? He was born in the same house as I was but some 18 years earlier.

I also met an Irishman with a Polish name whose people, some of them, hail from Kiltimagh.

Small world.

An American Wake

It's amazing, when you start following up your family history, how many world events which you might have learned about in your school history suddenly become personal.

The First World War is a typical one of these. Almost everybody in Ireland who starts out tracing their family history, from rabid Republicans to West Brits, will find some relation somewhere who went to war. Some families will come up with a clatter of them. WWI had an insatiable hunger for cannon fodder.

Another event, whose 100th anniversary is coming up, is the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912. You can see the impact of this event on a sample local community, the Mayo village of Lahardane, on that community's commemorative website.


These were times of large families and high emigration, much of it to America (USA and Canada). Emigrants tended to cluster. That is to say, those from a particular parish would emigrate together as a group. When tragedy occurred it then had a disproportionate effect on certain communities. A good example in the case of the Titanic was the village of Lahardane in the parish of Addergoole, from where a group of 14 went on the Titanic; only 3 survived.

While none of those who left might ever have come back anyway, hence the "American Wake", the emigrant was never completely lost to the local community. There were always letters from America, which would be passed around all those mentioned in them. There were food and clothes parcels, which kept many a family going in times of hardship. And, of course, the remittances: money sent home when the emigrants got established in their new country. In Ireland's case there was even a special line in the national accounts for emigrants' remittances, and it was a significant line even in macro economic terms.


When it came to crossing the Atlantic, my family was more fortunate than some of those in Addergoole. My aunt Jane sailed from Cobh in 1908 on the White Star Line's then flagship the Baltic. At the time, this was the largest ship afloat, just as the Titanic was to be 4 years later.

Unlike the Titanic, the Baltic made it, and was one of the ships which radioed the Titanic an ice warning on the day the latter sank.

Jane was accompanied by a group from Ballyhaunis, her home town, and not a thousand miles from Lahardane. She settled in New York and had family, some of whom did come back to Ireland and visit. She was one of the lucky ones.

Street Sculpture

At this stage people have become very familiar with what is referred to as street sculpture. These are not statues on pedestals. Rather are they life size figures, usually in bronze, depicting historical or symbolic persons, and designed to fit into the context of the street where they appear.

In Dublin, for example, we have James Joyce outside the Kylemore Bakery/Café in Tablbot Street, Molly Malone with her barrow at the bottom of Grafton Street, or Patrick Kavanagh resting on a bench along the banks of his beloved canal.

There are some interesting examples ouside the capital, however, and I thought you might like to see a few of these which I came across in recent times.

Click on the images for larger versions.

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Galway

Although they never actually met, Oscar and Eduard Wilde are depicted relaxing and conversing in Galway's Shop Street.

Eduard was an Estonian writer who was a contemporary of Wilde's. He lived 1865-1933, while Oscar lived 1854-1900.


These sculptures are more stylised than lifelike.

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Ballyhaunis

Much more lifelike are these characters from the Square in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo.

I took some shots from close up and almost found myself apologising to the guy in the cap for being in his face.

This group, and particularly the man with the cap, had a real presence.

It is entitled Lá an Aonaigh or Market Day. The sculptor is Rory Breslin and the project is connected with the Mayo Millennium Sculpture Initiative.

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Kiltimagh

The West of Ireland has been decimated by emigration from the famine times onwards. It was particularly heavy during the 1950s. While the rest of Europe was basking in a post-war resurgence, Ireland was experiencing a prolonged depressing recession.

Emigration during this time, and in previous decades, had been so heavy that a significant income inflow in the national accounts came under the heading "Emigrants' Remittances".

This very striking sculpture, entiltled "I'll Send You The Fare" is in Kiltimagh's main street and is dedicated to the young men and women who emigrated from Kiltimagh, Bohola, and the surrounding areas during the 1950s.

The sculptor is Sally McKenna.

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Kiltimagh has a strong literary tradition and it is very hard to escape the presence of Raftery the Poet in the town. From the Raftery Rooms, now sadly closed, to Raftery Square, the town resonates to the poet's words.

This street sculpture of a man reading his newspaper testifies to the town's literacy.

Unfortunately it is somewhat contradicted by the grammatical mistakes in the cast dedication plaque for the emigrant street sculpture and by the sign over Sparky's Variety Store in the main street.

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Some more street sculpture here and here.