Irish folk legend Ronnie Drew – the former frontman of ballad group The Dubliners – has been given an old-fashioned Irish wake by his family. The gravel-voiced singer, who passed away on 16th August, was waked in his Greystones, Co Wicklow home, by hundreds of fans, friends, family members and neighbours before his funeral in […]

(Published in September 08 Celtic Connection)World-Class musicians from around the U.S. and abroad will travel to Huerfano County in south central Colorado for the Spanish Peaks International Celtic Music Festival September 25 -28. They will give concerts, offer music lessons, talk on the music traditions, and partake in impromptu music sessions along the way. The […]

Irish Band Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys have an internet hit on “YouTube” in the works with their song celebrating Barack Obama’s Irish ancestry, “There’s No One as Irish As Barack O’Bama”. The band from Limerick, Ireland, made up of brothers Ger, Brian, and Donnacha Corrigan wrote the song after learning about a study […]

The groundbreaking partnership aims to bring over 2000 volunteers from the”U.S.”and”Ireland”to the Khayelitsha township, located approximately 25 miles outside”Cape Town. Meaning Xhosa for “our new home,” Khayelitsha is one of the youngest and biggest townships in the”Cape”Flats area. The Blitz will take place at the overcrowded Site C, the oldest part of the township with […]

As a school boy he listened as his history teacher talked for two days about the Algonkin Indian tribe of Canada who were constantly at war with the Iroquois Nation of upstate New York. “On the second day I asked, “Can you tell me why these two were not getting along?” and his answer to […]

Fearing for her safety and the safety of her family, Nelson went to the RUC looking for protection. Her cries for help were denied. Nelson then went to many people with reports of threats against her life and her subsequent requests for protection ” including Burke with whom she met in Lurgan at a March […]

Rosemary Nelson, mother of 3 young children, drove from her home in LurgenLurgan, a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, on March 15, 1999. A hundred yards from her home and down the street from her children”s school, a bomb that had been placed under her car detonated. Friends and family rushed to the wreckage […]

Native-American lore preserves an illuminating record of a complex and extensive interaction between indigenous peoples and the Irish on many different levels. On one level, the happy consummation of native and Irish led to the emergence of the M”ti community, a mixed-blood people who trace their ancestry back to the intermarriage of Indian and Irish-speaking […]