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Kilrush/Miltown Malbay,County Clare. http://www.setdancingnews.net/wcss/wcsst.htm Two towns in West Clare steeped in Traditional Irish (More) http://www.setdancingnews.net/wcss/wcsst.htm Two towns in West Clare steeped in Traditional Irish Music. Pre-famine Clare - Society in Crisis by Flan Enright Introduction Widespread poverty usually causes social tension, crime and sometimes violence. There is no scarcity of evidence about the extent or severity of poverty in pre-famine Clare. Outbreaks of distress, lawlessness and violence at that time indicate particularly severe periods in what turned out to be a long era of misery. Some of the causes of this hardship are easy to see while some are quite complex. For example, too many people were over-dependent on the potato as a staple food. When it failed, famine quickly followed. Cause and effect are obvious in this case. What is not so clear is how so many people came to be permanently in such dire need and why society seemed incapable of helping them. This essay looks at some of the evidence connected with poverty and violence in pre-famine Clare and attempts to discuss underlying causes. The need for Employment The population of Clare doubled in the fifty years before the famine. It stood at 286,394 in 1841, almost four times the current total. These were divided into 48,981 families, and apart from a small number of professional people and craftsmen, all of them earned a livelihood from the land. The great challenge of that time was the provision of food and work for such a teeming population. As in contemporary society, people at that time may be divided into employers and employees. Most of the big employers before the famine were the landlords. They employed a permanent male and female staff for indoor and outdoor work on their estates. For example, there was a permanent staff of 34 at Butlers of Castlecrine in this period, but many additional people were needed during busy times of the year. One of Clare's problems was a scarcity of these very magnates who were able to generate so much wealth. William Smith O'Brien, an M.P. for Ennis for a time, drew up a list of Clare landlords. He counted 90 resident gentlemen and 63 non-residents. Of particular significance was his discovery that the non-residents owned about half the land of the county. Most of these absentees employed agents to collect their rents, but the money was generally spent elsewhere. This was a big loss to Clare. The resident gentlemen were more than just landlords. They actually carried on the work of local government and industrial development. They were people of capital who spent most of their wealth locally. They built roads and bridges, and even towns and villages. Sixmilebridge, Newmarket-on-Fergus and Kilrush are examples of places developed by the initiative of local resident landlords in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Clare had scarcely half the resident landlords it could have had and that meant less development and less permanent employment. The 1841 Census further revealed that the county had only 1052 farms of more than 30 acres. The large tillage farms had considerable employment potential, especially at sowing and harvest time. However, many large holdings belonged to graziers who needed only a few herdsmen. 80% of all farms were between one and fifteen acres in size, and even with the most intense cultivation could hardly be expected to employ more than a family or two throughout the year. The real hardship cases were among the 22,000 families that had no land of their own. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that half the people of Clare, the landless labourers, subsisted under a spectre of poverty that was a direct result of a gross shortage of work. This situation arose from developments in the Irish economy outside their control. (Less)
Granuaile http://www.tarawatch.org:80/
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Sung by Rita Connolly
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Sung by Rita Connolly
Granuaile: With Lucy Lawless
She is known by many names: Grainne Mhaol (Bald Grace), Grainne Ui Mhaille (Grace of the Umhalls), Grania, the Dark Lady of Doona, Grace O'Malley, and Granuaile (Gran-oo-ale). She was a contemporary of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Edmund Spencer, Walter Raleigh, and Francis Drake. She was a mother, a pirate, and one of the many great women of Ireland.
Born c. 1530 into the O'Malley family, the hereditary lords of Umhall which included Clare Island, Inishturk, Inishbofin, Inishark and Caher, Grace married into two of the powerful families of Western Ireland, the O'Flaherty of West Connacht and the Burke of Clew Bay. Tradition has it that she is buried (1603) on Clare Island at the Abbey which bears the O'Malley coat-of-arms; Terra-Marique-Potens. Indeed a fitting family motto, for Grace was powerful on land and especially on the sea.
Granuaile's life parallels the House of Tudor's efforts to reconquer Ireland. She married Donal O'Flaherty in 1546 while in this same period of time Henry VIII was pressuring prominent Irish chieftains and Anglo-Irish lords to submit to the rule of the King's Lord Debuty. The O'Flaherties and O'Malleys did not submit and, denied access to Galway Bay, they poached on merchant ships bound for Galway. They were so obstreperous that the Mayor and Council of Galway reported them to the English Council. Grace busied herself with her three husband's death in 1567. Before this, another historically important woman, Elizabeth I, assume the throne of England (1558). In time, the paths of these two extraordinary women would cross.
Even as an O'Flaherty, Granuaile had maintained an independent force of 200 O'Malley men on land and sea. Characteristically, Grace treasured the sea and the O'Malley allies: "I would rather have a ship full of Conroy and McAnally clans than a ship full of Gold." Tradition tells us that Grace's forces maintained a series of forts on Clew Bay, Lough Mask and Lough Corrib which helped her through arms and signal fires to defend her castle in Lough Corrib against English soldiers. There, the story goes, she melted a lead roof to pour molten lead on her besiegers. Grania's toughness is also revealed in the story about her sacking of Doona Castle where she punished the supporters on the MacMahons for slaying her lover.
Even after Grace married again, to Richard Burke, she remained active on the seas. If she could not contract for cargo, her ships preyed on vessels off the coast of Mayo. Although Burke was powerful enough to be appointed the Mac William lochtar of Connacht in 1580 and Grace and he had a son Tibbot, Grace and Burke lived rather separate lives. In 1576, the Howth Castle story centering upon an insult to her was set into Irish legend. It seems when Grania sought to rest at Howth Castle from a trip to Dublin, the Castle gates were shut to her. She abducted a son of the lord and ransomed him for a promise to leave the gate open to visitors and to set an extra plate at every meal. These conditions are observed still today.
When Richard Burke died in 1583, Grace's clashes with the English intensified. Sir William Sydney referred to her as "a most notorious woman in all the coasts of Ireland." She was arrested in 1584 as Governor Richard Bingham forcefully brought Connacht into the Tudor line. Her son Tibbot was held hostage to assure her good behavior, a common Elizabethan practice to pacify the chieftains and to Anglicize their sons. When Governor Bingham penetrated Grace's sea domain and impounded her fleet, she went over his head to Queen Elizabeth for "free liberty during her life to invade with sword and fire all your highness' enemies."
Tradition, and some history, says that Granuaile, the Queen of Connacht, met the Queen of England in September 1593, and gained most of her petitions by agreeing, in Elizabeth's words, "to fight in our quarrels with all the world." Sadly, in the great battle of Kinsale (1603) when Hugh O'Neill and Hugh Roe O'Donnell were defeated, Grace's son Tibbot and other Mayo chiefs fought with the Queen's forces.
In a man's world, Granuaile developed her own power base contrary to Gaelic and English law. She was a woman of singular strength of character and for that became, along with Roisin Dubh and Caitleen Ni Houlihan, a poetic symbol for Ireland:
The gowns she wore was stained with gore all by a ruffian band
Her lips so sweet that monarchs kissed are now grown pale and wan
The tears of grief fell from her eyes each tear as large as hail
None could express the deep distress of poor old Granuaile. (Less)
clare large Drums n Sexy Bass.mp3 
2007-10-22 - extension: mp3 - size: 67 MB
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clare large Techno.mp3 2007-10-22 - extension: mp3 - size: 54 MB
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clare large Groovin.mp3 2007-10-22 - extension: mp3 - size: 65 MB
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clare large Deep Funky.mp3 2007-10-22 - extension: mp3 - size: 67 MB
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clare large Mind Down.mp3 2007-10-22 - extension: mp3 - size: 64 MB
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