Peter Costello“Ancient Sweet Donoughmore”: Life in an Irish rural parish to 1900
by Gerard O’Rourke
(Redmond Grove Publications, €35.00 including p+p)
This is a long and detailed account, running to well over 400 pages, of a district in mid Cork. In its way it is an epitome of the history of many other places.
Gerard O’Rourke starts his exploration in prehistoric time, assembling the scattered evident for earlier peoples in his district. The next two chapters cover the evolution from paganism down to the late middle ages and the conquest – not, of course, that those misty centuries of prehistory did not involve conquests just as bloody and conflicted. The next chapter deals with the ‘new ascendance’ and how it brought about rural disorder.
The remaining seven chapters deal with the long 19th Century. So in fact the book actually reprises a familiar story, but with the added interest that derives from all the rich local detail.
The book closes in 1900, so doubtless a further volume could expected to follow in due course, where another dozen chapters can be devoted to the emergence of modern Ireland.
Local studies
As John A. Murphy rightly points out there has been an extraordinary effloresce of local studies and local histories in the last three decades. He also rightly points to the digital era having opened up to all previously scattered sources.
The content of this book is the result of a rich harvest in the sources; but for that reason it is very much focussed on the recent centuries when records are abundant (thought not always complete). It is filled with a multitude of very human persona; stories ranging through all levels of local society, making for fascinating reading.
Archive driven research is all very well; but the problem then remains how to tell the complete story which cannot be found in the archives, but as has E. Estyn Evans, R. A. S. Macalister and others point out to be gleaned from the very nature of the land, its climate, and the unwitting changes that man has made in it over the years.
This view represents another kind of history, as does the developing scope of archaeology, which is essentially a study of material things far removed from written archives.
Irony
There is an irony in all scholarship that the more we learn, the more we realise how ignorant we are. A search for completion drives every local historian, of whom Gerard O’Rourke is an excellent example.
They are gathering up the fragments lest any be lost. But there is still more, far more work to be done. His example should surely inspire amateur historians situated in other rural districts.
For information contact Redmond Grove Publications, Gurraneredmond, Donoughmore, Co. Cork; ISBN 978-0-9 933867-1-8; www.donoughmore.com)