Mac Giolla Research Articles

The Fitzpatricks of Ballagharahin, County Laois

The Fitzpatricks of Ballagharahin were a family of Rathdowney parish, Co. Laois, considered notable enough by the Fitzpatrick historian Rev. John Shearman to provide their pedigree in Loca Patriciana. Perhaps such status was due to what Shearman considered their close kinship with the well-known Thady Fitzpatrick MD of Dublin (d.1674), whose descendants became the so-called ‘Fitzpatricks of Ballyboodin’. The great Ossory scholar, Rev. William Carrigan, wrote about the Fitzpatricks of Ballagharahin severally in his research notes and considered them unrelated to the Ballyboodin Fitzpatricks, although he did not qualify why he held his belief. Yet, much evidence from seventeenth and eighteenth-century rent books, deeds of indenture, and wills point to the correctness of Carrigan’s position. The father of John Fitzpatrick, the first of the Ballagharahin line, is proven to be Joseph Fitzpatrick who married Catherine Carroll of Aghnameadle, Co. Tipperary, not Dr Joseph Fitzpatrick of Carlow town, who died without issue. Unproven, but intriguing, is a potential familial relationship between John Fitzpatrick of Ballagharahin and the Lords Gowran. Hence, while the ‘Fitzpatricks of Ballyboodin’ descend from the Mac Fynen line of the Mac Giolla Phádraig, the ‘Fitzpatricks of Ballagharahin probably descend from Brian ‘na Luireach’ Mac Giolla Phádraig.

Decolonising an Irish Surname by Working the Hyphen of Gene-Ealogy

The surname Fitzpatrick is readily identified as Irish. Until recently, the traditional Fitzpatrick surname narrative was of a medieval super-progenitor named Giolla Phádraig. His offspring, the eponymous Mac Giolla Phádraig, it was said, somehow came to dwell in every Irish province; yet this is an Irish surname myth that works to erase the history of ancient ‘Fitzpatrick’ clans. This article demonstrates how deconstructing the surname Fitzpatrick, through working the hyphen of gene-eaology, is a practice of decolonisation. Via genetic data and archival records, dominant clan identities are disrupted, while connections with lost clans are re/membered. Critical analysis dismantles the dominant narrative imposed by colonial strategies and reconnects people with kinship groups and forgotten forebears. Questions arise from the deconstruction of an Irish surname. How might new clan identities be imagined, and how is losing a dominant surname narrative negotiated?

The Carrigan Manuscripts: The Pedigrees of the First Baron of Upper Ossory

The pedigrees of Brian Mac Giolla Phádraig (ca. 1478-1575), who was created the First Baron of Upper Ossory in 1541 and from whom emerged the line of later barons, feature prominently in several important publications relating to the Mac Giolla Phádraig Lords of Ossory. Pride of place among the pedigree authors goes to the renowned Ossory historian, Rev. William Carrigan (1860-1924), who he published his magnum opus, The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, in 1905. Early in his research career, Carrigan adopted the position of two scholars who had gone before him, viz., Dr John O’Donovan and Rev. John Shearman, notably, that Brian’s father was Brian na Luireach (i.e., ‘of the coats of mail’) Mac Giolla Phádraig. However, by 1922, toward the end of his life, Carrigan’s opinion had changed, and he came to the position that the father of the first baron was not Brian na Luireach, but Seaán Mac Giolla Phádraig. Here, a review of Carrigan’s Manuscripts reveals his research journey to uncover the true identity of Brian’s father.

A trifling matter? Names in Irish on carts: the Dublin Castle files

At the beginning of the twentieth century, as the Irish language revival movement gathered pace, Conradh na Gaeilge encouraged those who were keen to promote the language to use the Irish version of their names as much as possible, including painting their name and address in Irish on carts, and a number of prosecutions were taken under the Summary Jurisdiction (Ireland) Act 1851. Most famously, Patrick Pearse represented Niall Mac Giolla Bhrighde in 1905 in a case stated to the court of King’s Bench. Pearse went on to represent Domhnall Ua Buachalla in a similar but less well-known case the following year. Drawing on files from the Chief Secretary’s Office in Dublin Castle and digitised contemporaneous newspaper reports, this article provides an overview of the names in Irish on carts cases, which began in 1893, peaked in 1905 and died off after 1906, and finds that, post-partition, there were at least three similar prosecutions in Northern Ireland.

Mac Giolla Phádraig Dál gCais: an ancient clan rediscovered

Y-DNA analysis of Fitzpatricks has turned traditional historical narratives of how the surname was taken on its head. The attachment of the surname Fitzpatrick to the Barons of Upper Ossory, who were supposedly the descendants of Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí and, in turn, of an ancient Laighin (Leinster) lineage, is no longer sustainable. DNA insights and critical assessment of historical records have demonstrated that those who claim to descend from the barons have a Y-haplotype consistent with them emerging from a line of clerics out of a Norman-Irish origin ca. 1200 AD. Questions arise, therefore, regarding the origins of other large Fitzpatrick groups who, based on Y-DNA, can be shown to descend from ancient Irish. Could any of these lines descend from the Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí of old, those of Annalistic fame? For the first time, this article introduces the Mac Giolla Phádraig Dál gCais in a scholarly narrative. Mac Giolla Phádraig Dál gCais are, unquestionably, an ancient Pátraic surname clan. But are they also a Mac Giolla Phádraig lineage that arose in Osraí in ancient times? Such a question radically disrupts traditional narratives, yet the answer is ‘maybe’ – sound historical, genealogical, and name occurrence evidence supports the view that there is no need to adhere to a singular patrimony for the Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí and that a Dál gCais line was well positioned to have territory in Osraí and adopt Mac Giolla Phádraig as a surname. With certainty, the Mac Giolla Phádraig who are the subject of this article are Dál gCais on a genetic basis since, via their paternal haplotype, they share common ancestry with Brian Bóruma, High King of Ireland. The descendants of those Mac Giolla Phádraig Dál gCais feature through ancient records for An Clár (Clare) are still found in the County, yet many derive from lines that were dispersed from their ancient An Clár homelands in the seventeenth-century. From An Clár to Oileáin Árann (Arann Islands), and Gaillimh (Galway), and – one way or another – on to Maigh Eo (Mayo), and Ros Comáin (Roscommon), they are a great and ancient Mac Giolla Phádraig Clan, who at times held much wealth, power, and influence. And some were smugglers!

The Mac Costigan of Ossory: dismantling an assumed genealogy

There is nothing new about the narratives of some Irish clans being sometimes inaccurate. But there is a world of difference between slight exaggerations of deeds, or misdeeds, or colourful embellishments of a character’s prowess, or a clan’s conquering status, and an entirely false clan narrative. Yet, a critical review of Clan Mac Costigan of Ossory reveals a origin narrative far from the traditional. The dominant narrative of Clan Mac Costigan of Ossory over the past 140 or so years arrived in 1878 via Rev. John Shearman’s ‘Loca Patriciana’, in which he stated the Mac Costigan stemmed from ‘Oistegan’, a son of Seaffraid (Geoffrey) Mac Giolla Phádraig (d. 1269), who died in 1289. Sherman also stated that Oistegan’s son, Mac Oistegan, slew Thomas Butler, the First Baron Dunboyne, and 100 followers at Muileann gCearr, larmhí (Mullingar, Westmeath) in 1329. And so, the modern Mac Costigan narrative was born – yet it is an ‘assumed genealogy’, likely part inspired by Roger O’Farrells’s ‘Linea Antiqua’ (1709), and then encouraged along by the ever-unreliable John O’Hart. But the attribution of Butler’s death to a Mac Costigan is hopelessly wrong. In addition, not a single ancient Mac Costigan pedigree exists. Rather, the Mac Costigan of Ossory arose in the mid-fifteenth century, as a Killaloe clerical lineage. And it is John Mac Costigan, who later took the alias Mac Giolla Phádraig, who takes centre stage in this article’s early stanzas. The co-use of the surnames Mac Costigan and Mac Giolla Phádraig in fifteenth century Ossory is also captured in the current era because some Costigans and Fitzpatricks (formerly Mac Giolla Phádraig) share a common ancestry under haplotype R-A1488, and the Time to the Most Common Ancestor (TMRCA) of R-A1488 is ca. 1420. The TMRCA speaks to the very obvious, and it is impossible, based on either historical records or DNA analysis, to determine whether R-A1488 Fitzpatricks descend from a line of Mac Costigan, or vice versa. It is little wonder then, that throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ossory land possessions of the Costigan, Fitzpatrick, and other kindred clans who had also adopted obscure aliases, such as the Mac Fynen (also known as Mac Kynen), notably in the Parish of Offerlane, were adjacent, interchanged, and shared. Here we dismantle the ‘assumed genealogy’ of the Mac Costigan of Ossory and posit an alternative based on robust genealogical research and twenty-first-century science.

Pátraic surnames in the Fiants and Patent Rolls of Ireland, Part II: The Mac Fynen of Upper Ossory

The Fiants and the Patent Rolls of Ireland are an extraordinary and largely untapped source of information. Part I of this series, which interrogates Pátraic-surnames in the fiants and patents, answered questions about the Mac Caisín of Osraí (Ossory), who were unquestionably the close associates of the Fitzpatrick barons of Upper Ossory. Traditionally considered a hereditary medical family, the Mac Caisín of Upper Ossory sprang from a hereditary clerical family or, more broadly, a hereditary learnèd family, whose origins were in the diocese of Cill Dalua (Killaloe). It is not implausible that the Mac Caisín were patrilineally connected with the Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí but there is no evidence of such can be provided by either conventual genealogy or Y-DNA analysis. In Part II, the spotlight falls on the Mac Fynen of Upper Ossory, and the approach follows that of Part I, i.e., securing a temporal frame of reference via which associations, familial and otherwise, can be understood, which affords some ability to distinguish name occurrences in the fiants and patents as either surnames or patronymics. And via the fiants, patents, and other records of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is possible to uncover, for the first time, that in many cases, Mac Fynen was, indeed, a surname that came to be used by those who had patrilineal origins with the Mac Giolla Phádraig of Ossory. The discovery of a second surname, not instantly recognisable as related to Mac Fynen but sharing the exact same patrilineal origins, further confirms the value the Fiants and Patents of Ireland have as source material for Pátraic surname research.

Pátraic surnames in the Fiants and Patent Rolls of Ireland Part 1: a method of approach to mega-data, and a Mac Caisín case study

The fiants and patent rolls of Ireland are an extraordinary and largely untapped source of information. This article taps into this valuable source with a focus on interrogating Pátraic-surnames, i.e., Patrick, Fitzpatrick, Kilpatrick, Mac Giolla Phádraig and Ó Maol Phádraig, which document grants, leases, and pardons, etc., issued under the Great Seal of Ireland. The extant records of fiants are for the period 1521-1603, and the patent rolls 1514-1575 and 1603-1633, i.e., much of the reign of Henry VIII of England to the eighth year of Charles I of England. Ireland's fiants and patent rolls provide mega-data on names, places, occupations, relationships, and more, and Pátraic-surname records uncover rich narratives from all over Éire. Yet, there is a tendency for the vastness of the records to overwhelm, so a systematic approach is required to extract the maximum value. This article provides a method for 'eating an elephant', and one key is having a secure temporal frame of reference via which associations, familial and otherwise, can be understood. By way of example, the surname Mac Caisín begins this series of articles on Pátraic surnames in the Fiants and Patent Rolls of Ireland. The choice of Mac Caisín may appear strange at first, since it is not obviously a Pátraic surname. However, this article argues the case study of Mac Caisín provides a clear example of how an interrogation of the fiants, and patents reveal many instances where members of Pátraic families are recorded by other names, such as Mac William, Mac Edmund, Mac Flynn and, maybe, Mac Caisín. Understanding such names in the fiants and patents requires a sound knowledge of context so they can be distinguished as surnames or patronymics. Still, even then, there is evidence that members of Pátraic families sometimes took other surnames due to, for example, fosterage or to 'mask' a clerical lineage. This article seeks to answer questions about the Mac Caisín of Osraí (Ossory), who were unquestionably the close associates of the Fitzpatrick barons of Upper Ossory. Were the Mac Caisín either a lineage from an individual called Caisín (a name meaning curly-haired) Mac Giolla Phádraig, or a line out of fosterage, or of a ‘surname-masked’ clerical lineage; or, was there even any kinship bond?

Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD: Part I

Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD is a three-part series, which provides an account of all known individual Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics in the late medieval era and details their temporalities, occupations, familial associations, and broader networks. The ultimate goal of the series is the full contextualisation of all available historical records relating to Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics alongside the genealogical record that can be extracted by twenty-first century science – that being the science of Y-DNA. The Papal Registers, in particular, record numerous occurrences of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics, predominantly in the dioceses of Cill Dalua (Killaloe) and Osraí (Ossory), from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. Yet, no small intrigue surrounds their emergence. Part I of Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD examines the context surrounding the earliest appointments of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics, which is in neither Cill Dalua nor Osraí but the diocese of Luimneach (Limerick). Once that context is understood, a pattern of associations emerges. A ‘coincidental’ twenty-first century surname match from the Fitzpatrick Y-DNA project leads to a review of the relationship between the FitzMaurice of Ciarraí (Kerry) clerics and Jordan Purcell, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne (1429-1472). The ‘coincidence’ then leads to an examination of a close Y-DNA match between men of the surnames Purcell and Hennessey. That match, coupled with the understanding that Nicholas Ó hAonghusa (O’Hennessey), elected Bishop of Lismore and Waterford (1480-1483) but with opposition, is considered a member of Purcell’s household, transforms the ‘coincidence’ into a curiosity. Part I morphs into a conversation, likely uncomfortable for some, relating to clerical concubinage, illegitimacy, and the ‘lubricity’ of the prioress and her nuns at the Augustinian nunnery of St Catherine's O’Conyll. The nunnery was located at Mainistir na gCailleach Dubh (Monasternagalliaghduff), which lay just a stone’s throw from where Bishop Jordan Purcell and Matthew Mac Giolla Phádraig, the first Mac Giolla Phádraig cleric recorded in the Papal Registers, emerged. Part I makes no judgments and draws no firm conclusions but prepares the reader for Part II by ending with some questions. Do the Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics of Osraí, who rose to prominence in the late-fifteenth century, have their origins in Deasmhumhain (Desmond)? Could the paternal lineages of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics be, at least from the mid-fourteenth century, with the house of the Geraldine FitzMaurice clerics of Ciarraí? And, could some of the modern-day descendants of the Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics be those Costigans, FitzGeralds, and Fitzpatricks who are found under haplotype R-A1488?

Reply to Mac Giolla and Ly (2019): On the reporting of Bayes factors in deception research

Bayes factors provide a continuous measure of evidence for one hypothesis (e.g., the null, H0) relative to another (e.g., the alternative, H1). Warmelink et al. (2019, Legal Criminol Psychol, 24, 258) reported Bayes factors alongside p‐values to draw inferences about whether the order of expected versus unexpected questions influenced the amount of details interviewees provided during an interview. Mac Giolla & Ly (2019) provided several recommendations to improve the reporting of Bayesian analyses and used Warmelink et al. (2019) as a concrete example. These included (I) not to over‐rely on cut‐offs when interpreting Bayes factors; (II) to rely less on Bayes factors, and switch to ‘nominal support’; and (III) to report the posterior distribution. This paper elaborates on their recommendations and provides two further suggestions for improvement. First, we recommend deception researchers report Robustness Regions to demonstrate the sensitivity of their conclusions to the model of H1 used. Second, we demonstrate a method that deception researchers can use to estimate, a priori, the sample size likely to be required to provide conclusive evidence.

Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí 1384-1534 AD: Part II

The starting place for Part II of Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí: 1384-1534 is Feartach, Cill Chainnigh (Fertagh, Co. Kilkenny) where a previously little known Mac Giolla Phádraig cleric, and unrecognised clann chieftain, was appointed Prior in 1506. There are many mysterious elements of Kilpatrick’s tomb at Gráinseach Feartach (Grangefeartach), which is said to be the final resting place of Brian na luireach and his son Seán, and a critical examination of the tomb cannot fail to lead to the inevitable question – is it not they, but others, who are buried there? In addition to the mysteries of Gráinseach Feartach, this article synthesises numerous entries in the Papal Registers, which provide clear evidence for a Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí clerical lineage that enjoyed power, wealth, and influence, both within and without the clann. The exploits of the clerics, their relationship to other clann members, and their associations with their neighbours, are presented against the backdrop of the political landscape around Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí country during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The key players from the House of Ormond, and the House of Kildare, and their networks with Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí of the era provide new insights into the clann’s leadership and lineages, which are more complex and extensive than previously understood.

Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí 1384-1534 AD: Part I

The first part of this review of Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí history (1384-1534) covers the period 1384, from the conquest of Richard II, to 1454, by which time the clan had entered into an alliance with their mortal enemies, the Butlers of Ormond. Twelve years after the commencement of this era the Lordship of Ossory had fallen to Finghin Óg; these were days of increasing formation of alliances between Gaelic chieftains. That changed around the time of Finghin Óg’s death in ca. 1417; the power struggle between Sir John Talbot and Sir James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond, altered the face of Irish politics for the next 30 or so years, and Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí had to choose one side or the other. It was a time when Donnchadh Mór, a previously unrecognised Lord of Ossory, was chieftain. His life and times are recounted from entries in the Annals of the Four Masters and other familiar texts, but three largely overlooked sources of Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí history – Liber Ruber, the Ormond Deeds and the Kildare Rental – significantly add to our understand of both he and Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí lineages, which to date have been muddled. New characters are uncovered, such as Morena ny Giolla Phádraig and her husband, John the Blind Butler, and the previously ignored branch, Clann Maeleachlainn Ruadh. An account of the early stages of the Ormond-Mac Giolla Phádraig Osraí alliance, which would ultimately fragment the clan, is provided.

Subject positions in Old and Middle Irish

I argue that Old and Middle Irish (spoken: 7th-12th c.) had two subject positions: subject-1 and subject-2, as well as the post-posed position, identified by Mac Giolla Easpaig (1980). I use the presence of demarcating adverbs (e.g. danó ‘also’, íarum ‘then’, trá ‘so’, didiu ‘moreover’, etc.) to distinguish these two positions. It is shown that all types of subjects can occupy both positions, however, there are certain semantic restrictions on indefinites. Indefinites and quantifiers in subject-1 (pre-adverbial) have wide scope interpretations, while those in subject-2 (post-adverbial) have narrow scope interpretations. I show that this is especially true of indefinites/quantifiers/NPIs in the scope of negation, which must occupy subject-2. This can be understood as the effects of the Mapping Principle (Diesing, 1992). However, the presence of definites in both positions suggests that it is information structure that plays a major role in regulating the placement of subjects, since definites are not amenable to a Mapping Principle account. I show that subject-1 is reserved for old information and subject-2 is reserved for new information.

Irish/ness Is All Around Us. Language Revivalism and the Culture of Ethnic Identity in Northern Ireland by Olaf Zenker. New York & Oxford: Berghahn, 2013. pp. 310.

Journal of Linguistic AnthropologyVolume 24, Issue 1 p. 106-108 Book Review Irish/ness Is All Around Us. Language Revivalism and the Culture of Ethnic Identity in Northern Ireland by Olaf Zenker. New York & Oxford: Berghahn, 2013. pp. 310. Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost macgiollachriostd@cardiff.ac.uk School of Welsh, Cardiff UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost macgiollachriostd@cardiff.ac.uk School of Welsh, Cardiff UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 22 May 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12043Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume24, Issue1May 2014Pages 106-108 RelatedInformation

Welling's Wyeth

Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith reviews the early assessment of James Welling as part of the Pictures Generation, arguing that his work over the past thirty years shows a fascination with a variety of modes of representation as much as with representation itself.

The Irish language in Ireland: From Goídel to globalisation. Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost (2005)

The Irish language in Ireland: From Goídel to globalisation. Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost (2005) Routledge xvi 259pp. ISBN 0-415-32046-1

Smoking ban--made in Ireland, for home use and for export.

On March 29, 2004, the Irish government implemented a law banning smoking in the workplace. This was the first law of its kind in Europe and represented the culmination of many decades of antismoking legislation and campaigning.(Figure)As early as the 16th century, people in Ireland recognized the problems with tobacco consumption. One of the earliest references to these problems was by the priest and poet Brian Mac Giolla Phadraig, who, lamenting the decline of his native country, attributed it at least in part to “a stoc tobac `na clab da lantseideadh” (tobacco pipe in jaw, at full . . .

“When Time Began to Rant and Rage”: Figurative Painting from Twentieth-Century Ireland: A Review Essay

“WHEN TIME BEGAN TO RANT AND RAGE”: FIGURATIVE PAINTING FROM TWENTIETH-CENTURY IRELAND: A REVIEW ESSAY ROBERT TRACY “When Time Began to Rant and Rage”: Figurative Painting from Twentieth -Century Ireland. Exhibit organized by the University of California, Berkeley, Art Museum. Curated by James Christen Steward. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (October 1998 to January 1999); Berkeley Art Museum (February 1999 to May 1999); Grey Art Gallery, New York University (May 1999 to July 1999); University of Michigan Museum of Art (September 1999 to January 2000). “When Time Began to Rant and Rage”: Figurative Painting from Twentieth -Century Ireland. Exh. Cat. Ed. James Christen Steward. London: Merrell Holberton (in association with the University of California, Berkeley, Art Museum), 1998. with seventy-five paintings, this is the largest exhibition of Irish art ever shown in Britain and the United States. James Steward makes no excessive claims about the artistic merit of his selections, though in fact many of them suggest that Irish artists can more than hold their own if art were judged competitively. Steward has given himself a different, indeed a double , mandate: to make us aware that Ireland has produced some impressive painters since 1900, and to suggest how Irish painting interacts with, indeed interdepends on, the political history of Ireland during the century we are about to leave. The exhibition is supplemented by a splendid catalogue, which provides a critical history of Irish painting in the twentieth century, and to some extent a political history of Ireland as well. James Steward has assembled an impressive band of scholars, and together they establish the FIGURATIVE PAINTING FROM TWENTIETH-CENTURY IRELAND 288 theme of the exhibition, “the Irishness of Irish art.” In his own essay, Steward rightly argues that Irish art is intimately connected to Ireland’s political and social development. Few Irish writers or artists have enjoyed the American luxury of feeling free from history. Colm Toíbín, Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, and Aidan Dunne emphasize the art-politics nexus in their searching essays; Bhreathnach-Lynch is particularly good on certain painters’ response to the Rising, the War of Independence, and the Civil War. In “Irish Women Painters and the Introduction of Modernism” Marianne Hartigan rightly stresses the central role of Mainie Jellett, but also comments perceptively on a number of other women not represented in the exhibition. Paula Murphy explores, with wit and tact, the iconography of Ireland-as-woman-as-victim in “Madonna and Maiden, Mistress and Mother: Woman as Symbol of Ireland and Spirit of the Nation.” These essays set the paintings in their political context. The other critics generally confine themselves to aspects of Irish art history. Bruce Arnold, fresh from his monumental study of Jack B. Yeats, gives us an overview of that artist’s long career, analyzing Yeats’s “careful crafting of an Irish identity” and his self-engendered project, to “represent Irish people and the life of the nation.” Kenneth McConkey uses Sir William Orpen’s “Homage to Manet” (1909) to discuss Hugh Lane’s 1904 Impressionist show in Dublin and its part in liberating the Irish visual imagination to create its own “image community.” Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith focuses on two more recent exhibitions, one at Trinity College’s Douglas Hyde Gallery in 1990–1991, the other the Irish entries at the 1995 Venice Biennale, to comment on Irish painting since the end of the 1980s, shrewdly and generously appraising some of the younger painters. Peter Murray looks at the small group of artists who worked in the thirties and forties to develop a modern Irish school, at a time when many established Irish artists were hostile to “modern art,” and the Advisory Committee to the Municipal Gallery twice rejected a proffered gift, Roualt’s “Christ and the Soldiers”; ironically, the Catholic bishops of Ireland, Maynooth’s governing board, accepted it gladly. Long after the exhibition has ended, this catalogue and its essays will continue to be essential for anyone interested in Irish painting. “When Time Began to Rant and Rage” ironically takes its title from a poem in which Yeats declared himself no less an Irish poet than those who chose conspicuously “Irish” themes, specifically defending his interest...

Six Artists in Search of a Landscape

SIX ARTISTS IN SEARCH OF A LANDSCAPE CAOIMHÍN MAC GIOLLA LÉITH “Landscape has always been a dominant theme in Irish art” observes Liam Kelly in Thinking Long, his account of contemporary art in the North of Ireland from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.1 Unlike their predecessors, the generation of artists he considers “are not content to celebrate landscape ” but rather “regard it not as a given but a constructed reality, and, as such, problematic. Their approach is no longer a topographical journey but a subterranean quest.”2 In Kelly’s account, this move from celebration to interrogation appears inextricably linked with a general shift in focus from the rural to the urban landscape, as evidenced by the overwhelming predominance of urban imagery in Language, Mapping and Power, an exhibition he curated in 1996 as part of L’Imaginaire Irlandais, the extensive festival of contemporary Irish art and culture in France.3 Three years later in 1999, as no fewer than four traveling survey shows of Irish art crisscross the United States,4 North America has replaced SIX ARTISTS IN SEARCH OF A LANDSCAPE 266 1 Liam Kelly, Thinking Long: Contemporary Art in the North of Ireland (Kinsale: Gandon Editions, 1996), 19. 2 Ibid. 3 Langage, Cartographie et Pouvoir/Language, Mapping and Power (Derry: Orchard Gallery, 1996). One might argue that to characterize pre-1970s approaches to the landscape in Irish art as uniformly celebratory is misleading, but such an argument lies beyond the scope of this paper. 4 “When Time Began to Rant and Rage”: Figurative Painting from Twentieth-Century Ireland was at Berkeley Art Museum (10 February to 1 May 1999); at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University (25 May to 24 July 1999); and then the University of Michigan Museum of Art (25 September 1999 to 2 January 2000). An independently curated companion show of contemporary Irish drawings, A Measured Quietude, Contemporary Drawings, accompanied this exhibition from Berkeley’s Matrix Gallery (16 January to 25 April 1999) to the Drawing Center, New York (22 June to 30 July 1999); 0044:Contemporary Irish Art in Britain, an exhibition of work by contemporary Irish artists living in London was at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York (20 June to 1 September 1999) France as the locus for another multifaceted presentation of contemporary Irish visual culture. Although the topic of landscape is not explicitly a focus of these exhibitions, it is a sufficiently central preoccupation of many of the works chosen by the various curators for inclusion in these shows to warrant exploration. Rather than attempt the Sisyphean task of providing a comprehensive overview of contemporary Irish approaches to the landscape , I will discuss, in varying detail, the work of just six artists: Elizabeth Magill, Siobhán Hapaska, Kathy Prendergast, Caroline McCarthy, Alanna O’Kelly, and Willie Doherty. Though necessarily limited in scope, this selection provides ample evidence of the diversity of current practice in Irish visual arts. I include artists who work in the media of drawing (Prendergast ); painting (Magill); sculpture (Hapaska); photography (Doherty); performance (O’Kelly); and video and installation (McCarthy, Doherty, and O’Kelly). Artists from both sides of the border are represented. Three live and work in Ireland, and the other three artists reside in Britain. Most of the art considered postdates the early 1990s, the cut-off point of Kelly’s Northern survey, and, more crucially, addresses the problematic but continuing tradition of depicting the rural, rather than the urban, landscape. Yet in their consideration of landscape, these works more often undermine than affirm the canonical images of rural Ireland, whose currency—despite various attempts at devaluation in recent years—remains largely undiminished in the Irish-American diaspora. In a recent collection of essays entitled Landscape and Power, editor W.J.T. Mitchell asserts that there is no doubt that the classical and romantic genres of landscape painting evolved during the great age of European imperialism now seem exhausted , at least for the purposes of serious painting. Traditional eighteenthand nineteenth-century landscape conventions are now part of the repertory of kitsch. . . .5 SIX ARTISTS IN SEARCH OF A LANDSCAPE 267 before traveling to the Albright...

On the consistency of Reynolds stress turbulence closures with hydrodynamic stability theory

The consistency of second-order closure models with results from hydrodynamic stability theory is analyzed for the simplified case of homogeneous turbulence. In a recent study, Speziale, Gatski, and Mac Giolla Mhuiris [Phys. Fluids A 2, 1678 (1990)] showed that second-order closures are capable of yielding results that are consistent with linear stability theory for the case of homogeneous shear flow in a rotating frame. It is demonstrated in this paper that this success is due to the fact that the stability boundaries for rotating homogeneous shear flow are not dependent on the details of the spatial structure of the disturbances. For those instances where they are—such as in the case of elliptical flows where the instability mechanism is more subtle—the results are not so favorable. The origins and extent of this modeling problem are examined in detail along with a possible resolution based on Rapid Distortion Theory (RDT) and its implications for turbulence modeling.