Despite all those influences that tend to disrupt local communities and attachments in Ireland, the parish and the townland still command unique loyalty in rural areas. As the editors of Irish Townlands (Four Courts Press, £25) point out in their introduction, " `townlands' because of their size, their association with family and with home place, remain the most intimate and enduring of our land divisions".
Thanks to numerous land surveys and their choice as the basic administrative units for the purpose of land valuation and census returns, townlands and their statistics also constitute ready-made subjects for detailed study and analysis. There have been many such studies of individual townlands over the years; in this collection, sub-titled "Studies in Local History", Brian O Dalaigh, Denis A. Cronin and Paul Connell have chosen nine townlands (in Counties Cork, Kildare, Galway, Clare, Westmeath, Roscommon, Donegal, Dublin and Wicklow) from essays completed by graduates of the M.A. course in Local History at Maynooth.
While some experiences are common to most of the townlands - the Famine, land division, landlord intervention - their geographical distribution ensures that each townland has its own individual history. The townland, primarily, constitutes a social unit and thus these studies focus on the story of their communities rather than on their origin or their significance as territorial units. For people, then, who hail from Drumcavan (Clare), Dysart (Westmeath), Ballynahalisk and Sweet Rockmills (Cork), Kilmacud (Dublin), Cloonfush (Galway), Eskerbaun (Roscommon), Clon curry (Kildare), Lacken (Wicklow) and Kildoney (Donegal), this book should prove irresistible. The promise that it may be the first of a number of such local history studies calls for quick fulfilment.
As mentioned, the Famine was a shared experience of many townlands throughout the coun try, indiscriminate in its ravaging of all creeds and classes. Thus we find that part of Co. Roscommon which holds Eskerbaun included in The Destitution Survey - Reflections on the Famine in the Diocese of Elphin, edited by Rev. Raymond Browne (published by the author, £5). Whereas many local studies of the Famine and its effects draw on statistics in minute-books of workhouses and Boards of Guardians, the "Destitution Survey" of the title of this booklet was published in the Free- man's Journal in 1847 and extracted from reports from the clergy in the parishes of the Diocese of Elphin at the instigation of the bishop, George Browne.
Bishop Browne was acutely aware of the devastation inflicted on his diocese by the Famine - Elphin, in fact, suffered the greatest depopulation of any diocese in Ireland during the Great Hunger - and tried to impress on the government the dire reality of the situation by having the survey carried out in the parishes in October 1847. The parish reports constitute a primary source of evidence of the situation at the time. The booklet also contains reports on commemorations of the Famine in Elphin last year and is liberally illustrated with excellent drawings by Leonora Neary.
Another Famine study, Lowthers town Workhouse, by Breege McCusker (Necarne Press, £4.99 in UK), depends on workhouse registers for much of its data, augmented by oral traditions collected by the author and others. Nothing remains of this workhouse, in Irvinestown, Co Fermanagh, except its inscription stone (1841), part of its boundary wall and its Famine graveyard, but local educationalist and historian Breege McCusker brings its grim story to life in this attractive booklet.
Just two years after Black '47, the first of Ulster's fourteen Model Schools was built in Newry. The history of these schools is told in Ulster Model Schools, by Robin Wylie (Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, £7.60 in UK). Incidentally, the Society's Ulster embraces all nine counties of the province. The book is primarily an architectural study of the schools, which were intended as role-models for the newly created system of National Education in the mid-19th century, and is lavishly illustrated with photographs, plans and maps.
Ulster's fourteen Model Schools, to Leinster's seven (including Dublin Central Model), Munster's five and Connacht's two, apparently derive from Catholic opposition (keeping in mind the project's "Enlightenment" roots) and vociferous demands for such establishments in Ulster. A declared objective of the "Model" system, even at that time, was the promotion of "united" (i.e. integrated) education.
While most of the twenty-eight Model Schools originally built have survived (in one shape or another), the same cannot be said of the 45 or so whiskey distilleries which once proliferated in many parts of Ireland but which have all closed down since the merging of the Big Four, Jameson, Powers, Cork Distillers and Bushmills, in 1966 and 1972.
The Lost Distilleries of Ireland, by Brian Townsend (Neil Wilson Publishing, £17.50 in UK) is a fascinating study (and not just to whiskey-lovers), which takes the reader on a jaunt throughout what was once the greatest whiskey-producing country in the world but which now can boast of distilling activity only at the three places - Midleton, Co Cork), Bushmills, Co Antrim) and Cooley (Co Louth). This will be a nostalgic journey for many who savoured the taste of local spirits such as Old Comber, Coleraine 34, Locke's or Tullamore Dew.
Among the many intriguing stories in the book is that about the Locke scandal of 1947, in which a man named Maximoe (wanted by Scotland Yard), Oliver Flanagan TD and even Taoiseach Eamon de Valera were involved. Two distilleries, Nun's Island in Galway and Bishop's Water in Wexford, had piquant names "with strong religious connotations", though the author points out that both were named after the sites on which they stood and which had been named centuries before the distilleries were built. The book has many archive and contemporary photographs and is a treasure-house of information about the making of "uisce beatha" in Ireland - a book, in short, to be sipped at or swallowed at a sitting.
We may blame El Nino or global warming for recent bizarre weather patterns, but not even the worst cold snaps could compare with the Great Frost of 1740 and its subsequent "bliain an air", the year of slaughter, in 1741. Arctic Ireland, by David Dickson (The White Row Press, £4.95), tells the amazing story of Ireland's miniIce Age and first modern-era famine. On the last day of 1739, the entire country was hit by an east wind that brought piercing cold and temperatures that froze rivers and lakes. Most of Europe was similarly affected, yet the history books devote only a few lines to the catastrophe. Ireland and Norway had the highest death rate in Europe - people froze to death in their homes, ice seized up the mills, the countryside was denuded of trees and hedges as people fought for firewood. Famine and disease followed.
This is a timely, eye-opening book on an episode in Irish history that had almost been forgotten.
Richard Roche is a writer and historian