"First published in Irish as Rotha Mor an tSaol, this is his account of the fate dealt to him by 'the Wheel of Life'. From the age of nine he was hired out for six consecutive years from May to September at a hiring fee of 30 shillings. After emigration to Scotland and the drudgery of farmwork, he left for America and worked his way across the USA in steelmills and mines to Montana. He then took part in the Klondike gold-rush and vividly recounts the adventures of himself and his sourdough companions, their privations and hardships in the primitive harsh icy wastes of the Yukon. Home on holiday in 1901 he fell in love and stayed, using the money from the gold to buy some land and the house."--BOOK JACKET.
Micheal MacGowan was born in 1865 in the parish of Cloghaneely in the Donegal gaeltacht. He was the eldest of twelve children in a poverty-stricken family, living in a thatched cottage and speaking no English. He ended his days in a large slate-roofed house in the same place. First published in Irish as Rotha Mór an tSaol, this is his account of the fate dealt to him by 'the Wheel of Life'. From the age of nine he was hired out for six consecutive summers at a hiring fee of 30 shillings. After emigration to Scotland and the drudgery of farmwork, he left for America and worked his way across the USA in steelmills and mines to Montana. He then took part in the Klondike gold-rush and vividly recounts his adventures and hardships in the primitive icy wastes of the Yukon. Home on holiday in 1901, he fell in love and stayed, using the money from the gold to buy land and a house. Told with the certainty and authority of someone who has 'lived' what he describes, this book reflects the author's indomitable spirit and loyalty to his native place and culture. He died in 1948.
The Real Ireland is the first study of Irish documentary film, but more than that, it is a study of Ireland itself--of how the idea of Ireland evolved throughout the twentieth century and how documentary cinema both recorded and participated in the process of change. More than just a film studies work, it is a discussion of history, politics and culture, which also explores the philosophical roots of the documentary idea, and how this idea informs concepts of society, self and nation. It features rare and previously unseen illustrations and a detailed documentary filmography, the first of its kind in print anywhere.
This transnational collection discusses the use of Native American imagery in twentieth and twenty-first-century European culture. With examples ranging from Irish oral myth, through the pop image of Indians promulgated in pornography, to the philosophical appropriations of Ernst Bloch or the European far right, contributors illustrate the legend of "the Indian." Drawing on American Indian literary nationalism, postcolonialism, and transnational theories, essays demonstrate a complex nexus of power relations that seemingly allows European culture to build its own Native images, and ask what effect this has on the current treatment of indigenous peoples.
Music, the Moving Image and Ireland, 1897–2017 constitutes the first comprehensive study of music for screen productions from or relating to the island. It identifies and interprets tendencies over the first 120 years of a field comprising the relatively distinct yet often overlapping areas of Irish-themed and Irish-produced film. Dividing into three parts, the book first explores accompaniments and scores for 20th-century Irish-themed narrative features that resulted in significant contributions by many Hollywood, British, continental European and, to a lesser extent, Irish composers, along with the input of many orchestras and other musicians. Its second part is framed by a consideration of various cultural, political and economic developments in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland from the 1920s (including the Troubles of 1968–1998). Focusing on scoring and other aspects of soundtrack production for domestic newsreel, documentary film and TV programming, it interprets the substantial output of many Irish composers within this milieu, particularly from the 1960s to the 1990s. Also referring to broader cultural and historical themes, the book’s third and final part charts approaches to and developments in music and sound design over various waves of Irish cinema, from its relatively late emergence in the 1970s to an exponential growth and increasingly transnational orientation in the early decades of the 21st century.
Convention has it that Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century confined themselves mainly to industrial cities of the East and Midwest. The truth is that Irish Catholics went everywhere in America and often had as much of a presence in the West as in the East. In Beyond the American Pale, David M. Emmons examines this multifaceted experience of westering Irish and, in doing so, offers a fresh and discerning account of America's westward expansion. "Irish in the West" is not a historical contradiction, but it is — and was — a historical problem. Irish Catholics were not supposed to be in the West—that was where Protestant Americans went to reinvent themselves. For many of the same reasons that the spread of southern slavery was thought to profane the West, a Catholic presence there was thought to contradict it — to contradict America's Protestant individualism and freedom. The Catholic Irish were condemned as the clannish, backward remnants of an old cultural world that Americans self-consciously sought to leave behind. The sons and daughters of Erin were not assimilated, and because they were not assimilable, they should be kept beyond the American pale. As Emmons amply demonstrates, however, western reality was far more complicated. Irish Catholicism may have outraged Protestant-inspired American republicanism, but Irish Catholics were a necessary component of America's equally Protestant-inspired foray into industrial capitalism. They were also necessary to the successive conquests of the "frontier," wherever it might be found. It was the Irish who helped build the railroads, dig the hard rocks, man the army posts, and do the other arduous, dangerous, and unattractive toiling required by an industrializing society. With vigor and panache, Emmons describes how the West was not so much won as continually contested and reshaped. He probes the self-fulfilling mythology of the American West, along with the far different mythology of the Irish pioneers. The product of three decades of research and thought, Beyond the American Pale is a masterful yet accessible recasting of American history, the culminating work of a singular thinker willing to take a wholly new perspective on the past.
From the portage trails snaking their way through the wilderness to superhighways carrying the raw materials and produce of an industrial nation, Canada's roads have had a romantic but long-neglected history. For the first time their development is described in this handsomely illustrated volume by a distinguished Canadian historian. Mr. Guillet has written a book which is often humorous and always human, to be enjoyed by readers of many ages. It contains nearly two hundred sketches, engravings, paintings, and photographs, most of them contemporary, gathered from archives and libraries across the country and well displayed in the specially chosen large format. Few are generally available elsewhere. For school and public libraries, as well as the general reader, this book documents a fascinating aspect of Canada's social history.
