On The Town: An exhibition of the bodies of four Iron Age men discovered in bogs around the country provides new insights into life and death in ancient Ireland.
"This is a landmark exhibition. With the decline of the peatlands and increasing mechanisation, discoveries of bog bodies anywhere in Europe are increasingly rare occurrences," said John O'Donoghue, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, when he opened Kingship and Sacrifice at the National Musuem on Kildare Street in Dublin last Tuesday.
A team of 35 specialists from across Europe linked up with experts at the National Museum to analyse the bog bodies using a range of tests including CT and MRI scanning, fingerprinting and pathological analysis.
"You get quite attached to them and then you have to stand back and take into account that these were young men in their prime," said Isabella Mulhall, co-ordinator of the Bog Bodies Research Project. "We learned about their diet, their age, the traumas that they received and how . . . the murder and trauma meted out (to them) were very, very severe," she said.
The theory that these men of high status were murdered and sacrificed to a god of fertility as part of a king's inauguration ceremony is proposed by Ned Kelly, the museum's keeper of Irish antiquities. "The bodies have a story to tell. If we succeed in telling that story we give added meaning to those that were brutally buried in the past," he said. The exhibition includes related material, including regalia, weapons and textiles.
Among those at the opening was singer Finbar Furey and his family, actors Kate O'Toole and Eleanor Methvan, documentary film-maker Patrick Cooney, former director of the National Museum Dr Breandán Ó Riordáin and Prof Tim O'Neill, formerly of UCD.
Viewing the bog bodies "is a rare experience," said Dr John O'Mahony SC, chair of the National Museum. He drew attention to "the grace and dignity which they still present to us . . . down to the finger prints of those bodies".
Admission to Kingship & Sacrifice and related finds at the National Museum, Kildare Street is free
Summer takes flight at Farmleigh
The wind blew and the rain came in gusts but Éan Mór, the great bronze bird created by Breon O'Casey, stood still and tall in the grounds of Farmleigh.
On seeing the eight metre (26ft) sculpture for the first time, Seamus Heaney said: "It reminded me of Anglo-Saxon poetry: the boat is always compared to a bird breasting the waves, the foamy-throated one. They have that same buoyant quality."
"It's very quiet and very strong," said artist Tanya Elliott Nyegaard, the foundry worker at Dublin Art Foundry who was responsible for casting the bird. "There's a serenity about the work and a quiet power," she said.
"It's a sculpture based roughly on the form of a bird. It's also based on the prow of a ship, like a Viking ship," said O'Casey, son of the playwright, Sean O'Casey. He was joined by his family for the ribbon cutting, which was then followed by the launch of a summer-long cultural programme at Farmleigh and the opening of an art exhibition. All three jobs were carried out on Tuesday by Tom Parlon, the Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works. The cultural programme is a series of free "al fresco" events at Farmleigh. The art exhibition showcases some of the best works acquired by the OPW over the past 10 years.
Among those who attended Farmleigh on Tuesday were artists Adrian Kelly, curator of Glebe House in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, and John Cunningham, director of the Letterkenny Arts Centre; celebrity chef Neven Maguire; artists Carolyn Mulholland and Makiko Nakamura; sculptor Brian King; Yvonne Scott, director of the Irish Art Research Centre in TCD; and gallery owner Kevin Kavanagh with his daughter, Laura Delaney (15).
Visit www.farmleigh.ie for further information.
All the blarney on 'Barley'
From Cuil Aodha to Cannes and back to Cork again, it's been an extraordinary 12 months for the cast and crew of Ken Loach's Palme d'Or award-winning film The Wind that Shakes the Barley, so it's hardly surprising there was such obvious delight at the Irish premiere on Leeside this week.
Hundreds turned up at the Omniplex in Mahon Point on Tuesday night just to catch a glimpse of the stars and they weren't disappointed with local hero Cillian Murphy, from nearby Ballintemple, signing autographs and chatting easily.
Did he think, lying in fields in Cuil Aodha last summer that, a year later, he'd be part of a Palme d'Or-winning film? "You never think of it like that - you just do the best work you can, you don't do it for accolades but obviously it's thrilling to be given that award." Co-star Orla Fitzgerald from Model Farm Road in Cork said that working with Ken Loach was "phenomenal".
"I had always been impressed with his work," she said.
Actor Martin Lucey from Mallow, who plays explosives expert Congo, admitted he wasn't sure where his character got his name, while Denis Conway from Blarney revealed that playing a pro-treaty priest made a change from playing an anti-treaty IRA man in Michael Collins.
Fresh from a highly succcessful book signing session with Ken Loach and scriptwriter Paul Laverty in Liam O'Ruiseal's was Dominic Carroll of Galley Head Books in west Cork, who spent the past few weeks frantically producing the impressively designed screenplay of the film.
Wexford actor Pádraic Delaney summed up the mood well. "There was a fantastic vibe in Cannes but this is a real homecoming here - it's about Cork, made with a lot of Cork actors and a lot of Cork crew so I'm delighted to be here tonight."
But the last word must go to the most remarkable figure to attend the premiere, the last surviving Republican veteran of the War of Independence and the Civil War, 104-year-old Dan Keating from Castlemaine, Co Kerry. "It was very good, very factual," he said. - Barry Roche
Healthy doses of Polish medicine
Writers, poets, historians, doctors, researchers and teachers gathered at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on Monday to hear the inaugural lecture marking the beginning of the newly established Ireland Poland Cultural Foundation.
The guest speaker, Prof Andrzej Szczeklik, who spoke about the art and science of medicine, is professor and chair of the department of medicine at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland and author of Catharsis: On the Art of Medicine, which was recently published in an English translation.
He was described by Nobel Laureate and poet Seamus Heaney, the foundation's patron as a man "to whom myth and metaphor are supplementary to scientific knowledge rather than superfluous".
"Medicine and art are descended from the same roots. They both originated in magic," said Szczeklik.
Among those in the audience was poet Dennis O'Driscoll, who is currently editing The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations, which will be published in October; the outgoing president of the RCSI, Prof Niall O'Higgins and his daughter, medical student Amy O'Higgins; historical researcher Ann Downey with her friend, national tour guide Úna Sheehan; and Patrick Quigley, chair of the Irish Polish Society.
According to Cathal McCabe, director of the Irish Writers' Centre and chair of the new foundation, it "will work towards the establishment and enhancement of meaningful co-operation in the cultural and educational spheres" between the two countries.
With close to 200,000 Polish people living in the Republic, "exposure to and engagement with this community represents a new and exciting opportunity" in the new Ireland, he said.
Others present included Noreen Clarke from Moylett in Co Cavan and her son, Dr Ciarán Clarke; Peter Flanagan of Flanagan Furniture and his sister, teacher Joan Leech, of Coláiste Pobail Rath Cairn; and Maureen Daly of the Airfield Writers' Group.