St Brendan’s Feast Day May 16th

Ancient Order of Hibernians St Brendan the Navigator Division Mecklenburg County Division # 2 ISSUE #1 MONTHLY NEWSLETTER VOLUME# 4 January 2012 Our next business meeting is on Thursday, January 12th at 7:30 PM

Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Denver, NC

2012 Officers

Chaplain Father David Miller President Ray FitzGerald Vice President Shane Lis Secretary Tom Vaccaro Treasurer Chris O’Keefe Financial Secretary Ron Haley Standing Committee Ted Leahy Marshall Brian Bourque Sentinel Scott Stephan Chaplain Emeritus Father Pat Hoare Past President Joseph Dougherty www.aohmeck2.org

Tis A Blessing to be Irish Use your Irish gift of gab and tell a story. Not only does a good yarn charm the listener, but it also captures the history and wisdom of the age for posterity. And, by the way, if the tale gets embroidered with a bit o’ blarney— all the better!

THE PRESIDENT’S REPORT Brothers, As I assume the Presidency of our Division, I am humbled that you have the confidence to allow me to lead the Division. I will surely need your assistance and support to carry on the torch for 2012

I first want to thank our Past President Joe Dougherty for his efforts and contributions in organizing our Division, planting the seeds to get it off the ground, nurturing it and spreading the news about who we are. At the recent St. Mark’s Christmas Midnight Mass when Msgr. Bellow acknowledged just a few of the ministries within the parish, he mentioned the Hibernians; an enormous accomplishment to be recognized in less than three years of existence. There are a number of undertakings that Joe has done, both in front and behind the scenes, for which we are truly grateful.

It is a common practice for an incoming President to list his goals in his inaugural comments. My view is that the Division is comprised of all its members, so I would like the opportunity to solicit from our members what they think our goals should be. We are in this together, and together our Division will grow, both in membership and in accomplishments. Don’t hesitate to contact me with your ideas for our Division.

As we enter 2012, there are a few events where the planning is already underway, primarily our Installation of Officers Dinner, our annual St. Patrick’s Day Mass at old St. Joseph’s, the parade in Charlotte, our annual Hibernian Dinner and Show and the raffle for a trip to Ireland.

If you haven’t been able to make our meetings in the past, try and come to one. We are Irish and we have to show our support for our heritage. This would be an excellent way of doing so. If you’ve been to a meeting and it wasn’t up to your satisfaction, try coming again or better still, give me some input what we should do to get your attention. Our next meeting is at 7:30pm on Thursday, Jan. 12th at Holy Spirit Parish Center. Hope to see you there.

As we enter 2012 let’s continue to recruit more members. Whenever you meet someone who has an Irish surname, the first question you should simply ask them is “With a name like _____, why aren’t you a member of the Hibernians?” We meet in two of the surrounding parishes, St. Mark and Holy Spirit. It would be great to include St. Therese as well. There has to be hundreds of Catholic men of Irish heritage in the Lake Norman area that should be a source of our membership. All it takes is a little effort and some nudging.

May 2012 bring abundant blessings to you and your families.

St. Brendan the Navigator, pray for us. Ray FitzGerald

ALL OFFICERS, PLEASE BRING YOUR JEWEL TO THE MEETING THURSDAY, JAN 9th. January Birthdays

Valorie Sheehan Wife of Brother Jim January 4th Andrew Smith Son of Brother Ray January 5th Mary Frances Haley Daughter of Brother Ron January 9th Kelly O’Brian Daughter of Brother Bob January 12th Kathleen Dougherty Daughter of Brother Joe January 15th Michaela Martin Daughter of Brother Martin January 16th

January Anniversaries

Ted & Bev Leahy January 30th 1965

The Limerick Lakers basketball team at Dandelion Market Restaurant. on December 30th, 2011. The St Brendan division was asked to host the team for dinner which we were able to do through the generosity of two division brothers. The two gentlemen on the right and the one on the left in blue shirts are the coaches. Our thanks goes out to the owner of Dandelion Markets, Kevin Devin for arranging this for us.

Irish Myths

Aengus

In Irish mythology, Óengus (Old Irish), Áengus (Middle Irish), or Aengus or Aonghus (Modern Irish), is a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann and probably a god of love, youth and poetic inspiration. He is also called Aengus Óg ("Aengus the young"), Mac ind Óg ("son of the young"), Mac Óg ("young son") or Maccan. His parents were the Dagda and Boann. He was said to have lived at Newgrange by the river Boyne. The Dagda had an affair with Boann, wife of Nechtan. In order to hide their affair, the Dagda made the sun stand still for nine months; therefore, Aengus was conceived, gestated and born in one day. Midir was his foster-father.[1] When he came of age Aengus dispossessed the Dagda of his home, the Brú na Bóinne (an area of the Boyne River Valley that contains the Passage tombs Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth). He arrived after the Dagda had shared out his land among his children, and there was nothing left for Aengus, so Aengus asked his father if he could live in the Brú for a day and a night, and the Dagda agreed. But Irish has no indefinite article, so "a day and a night" is the same as "day and night", which covers all time, and so Aengus took possession of the Brú permanently. In a different version of this story, appearing in "The Wooing of Étaín", Aengus uses the same ploy to trick Elcmar out of Brú na Bóinne, with the Dagda's connivance. In this version, Midir is Aengus's foster-father, while Elcmar is the husband of Boann cuckolded by the Dagda.[2] According to the Death Tales of the Tuatha de Danaan, Aengus killed his step father Elcmar for killing Midir. Aengus also slew the poet of Lugh Lamfada for lying about his brother Ogma an Cermait. The poet claimed that Ogma was having an affair with one of Lugh's wives. Aenghus killed the poet in front of Midir. In the Wooing of Etain, Aengus was able to partially lift Fuamnach's spell against Etain, the horse goddess he had won for his brother Midir. Fuamnach in a jealous rage had turned the girl into a butterfly. Turning her into a woman at night, Aengus made her his lover until Fuamnach found out about it and drove her away. Aengus killed his foster mother for her treachery. In the Tale of the Two Pails, a sidhe woman and foster daughter of Aengus gets lost and winds up in the company of St. Patrick. The girl converts to Christianity, and Aengus cannot win her back. He leaves, and she dies of grief a few weeks later. In the Battle of Ventry Aengus helped defend the battle weary men of Finn mac Cumaill against Roman invaders] Aengus fell in love with a girl he had seen in his dreams. His mother, Boann, searched Ireland for an entire year. Then his father, the Dagda, did the same. Finally, King Bodb Dearg of Munster found her after a year.[3] Aengus went to the lake of the Dragon's Mouth and found 150 girls chained up in pairs. He found his girl, Caer Ibormeith. On November 1, Caer and the other girls would turn into swans for one year, every second Samhain. Aengus was told he could marry Caer if he could identify her as a swan. Aengus succeeded. He turned himself into a swan and they flew away, singing beautiful music that put all its listeners asleep for three days and nights.[3] Aengus was the foster-father and protector of Diarmuid Ua Duibhne of the Fianna. He rescued Diarmuid and Gráinne from one or two tight spots during their pursuit by the Fianna. He owned a sword named Moralltach, the Great Fury, given to him by Manannan mac Lir. This sword he gave to his foster-son Diarmuid. There was also a sword named the Little Fury and two spears of great power that he gave to Diarmuid. When the young man died, Aengus took his body back to the Brugh where he breathed life into it whenever he wanted to have a chat. There are other legends that he was able to repair broken bodies and return life to them. A Bit of Irish History 432 St. Patrick brings Christianity (Catholicism) to Ireland after having traveled in France and Italy. Monasteries are established as preservers of church doctrine and places of learning. Eventually the monasteries are plundered by Vikings-- but since they cannot read, they do not destroy what we now know as valuable illuminated manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells. Ireland's storytelling tradition begins in this period.

1014 Viking rule is destroyed in the Battle of Clontarf by High King Brian Boru.

1100s Norman adventurers come seeking land. One Norman called Strongbow--really named Richard, second Earl of Pembroke--responded to a request for help from local chieftain Dermot MacMurrough. (MacMurrough had caused trouble by stealing another prince's wife--see Yeats' "The Dreaming of the Bones.") When the Normans began to establish themselves in Ireland, the English king, Henry II, became alarmed and sent in settlers.

1200s-1400s Normans intermarry with native Irish and expanded their influence. Meanwhile English authority dwindles to the area around Dublin, called "the Pale" (as in the expression, "beyond the Pale").

1500s English King Henry VIII declares himself "King of this land of Ireland as united, annexed and knit for ever to the Imperial Crown of the Realm of England." He asserts control of all land ownership; landowners are asked to turn over their lands to him, in exchange for which he re-grants them limited rights to use the land. Those who refuse pay for it by having their lands seized--new settlers from England and Scotland take their place.

Henry VIII's daughter, Elizabeth I, fights a series of wars in Ireland. The two main objectives are to change the culture from Catholic to Reformation Protestant, and to enhance England's position against nearby Catholic Spain, England's main political enemy. James I, following Elizabeth, establishes more Protestant settlements.

1649 James' son and successor, Charles I, is beheaded as a result of English civil war; a non-monarchical Protectorate is established, with Oliver Cromwell as its head. The new Puritan Parliament takes severe measures to suppress Catholicism. A revolt began among the Irish, but Cromwell's 20,000 soldiers devastated the land. By 1652, about one-third of the Catholics in Ireland were killed; their land fell mostly to the Protestants.

1660 The British monarchy is restored with Charles II, followed by James II. Irish Catholics hoped for better treatment under James II, because he was Catholic. But James II was defeated in 1690 in the Battle of the Boyne, near Dublin, by William of Orange, who had been appealed to by the English to intervene against James II's "Popish ways." As a result, Catholics underwent more harsh treatment. New legislation, the "penal laws," barred them from public life; further, they were not allowed to buy land or even to rent it for reasonable profit. (By mid-18th century, only seven percent of the land was owned by Catholics.) The Irish were not allowed to trade their goods with England; they could only live off the land. Even that was difficult because the English landlords kept the rent exorbitantly high. Trouble was the inevitable result of all this. Violent groups of Irish men began to take to the roads at night, working vengeance on the British. Secret societies such as the Whiteboys and the Ribbon-men expended their energy in such acts as maiming their landlords' cattle and burning the barns, rather than taking straightforward constructive political action. One exception was Jonathan Swift, who vocally called for a separate parliament for Ireland, though still under British rule. Eventually pressure mounts for the separate parliament, and such a thing was established. But: Catholics--three-fourths of the population--are barred from participation. The fact of political oppression is not really changed.

1790s The French Revolution fuels the nationalist movement. The first Society of United Irishmen (consisting mostly of Protestant Irish nationalists) is established in Belfast, followed by one in Dublin; it was suppressed by British prime minister William Pitt, who was justifiably concerned about an alliance between the Irish and the French (another enemy of England). The United Irishmen go underground. Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone persuades the French to help the nationalist cause by sending forces over by ship. They send 43 ships, but bad weather makes their landing almost impossible; and the few Frenchmen who do land on the rugged coast of southwest Ireland receive an unwelcome greeting from the Irish, who mistake the French for northern Protestants out to get them. The United Irishmen are eventually defeated again, in Ulster, by a British Protestant group called the Orangemen (after William of Orange). 1798 The Irish nationalists stage a major rebellion, although so many United Irishmen had been arrested that the effort was badly organized. And the native yeomanry (landowners) turned on their countrymen. In six weeks some 50,000 of them died, leading to many ballads and stories of their heroism. At Wolfe Tone's urging, Napoleon agrees to send another expedition that August. (This is the incident that Yeats' "Cathleen ni Houlihan" involves.) When one crew lands at Killala, expecting Irish reinforcements in great numbers, they found hardly a dismal few. Tone, meanwhile, lands with another ship at Donegal, was captured, and died in prison after he tried to kill himself.

1801 William Pitt, the British prime minister, decides it would be better to get rid of the Irish Parliament and instead to give the Irish (and Welsh and Scottish) certain numbers of seats in the Imperial Parliament in London. But this new solution doesn't really solve anything. The peasants still have no land rights, no new employment opportunities.

1803 Another rebellion is instigated, this one by Robert Emmett. He tries to seize Dublin Castle, Britain's administrative headquarters in Ireland. But this one is such a well-kept secret that it fails for lack of momentum. Emmett is captured and executed. For his last words, Emmett said, "Let no man write my epitaph." Later, Padraic Pearse, a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising that led to the establishment of the Irish Free State, said of his death, "It is the memory of a sacrifice Christ- like in its perfection."

1828 Thanks to the effort of Daniel O'Connell, the British government is pressured into passing a Catholic Emancipation Bill, which gave Catholics the right to vote and sit in Parliament.

1845 The great "potato famine" strikes. With the potato crop failing disastrously, the Irish peasants suffered starvation conditions. They had no ability to trade other goods, as the English did, and they had little money to afford anything but the potato. Moreover, the population of the country was doubling to eight million. A million people died, and over a million set out in ships (often dangerously overcrowded) for America.

1848 Another attempted rising, in Kilkenny, is put down. Various other wild plans are afoot, such as one to kidnap Queen Victoria during an Irish visit--there is an element of theatricality in these plans. As one discouraged person is supposed to have said, "God knows, if eloquence could free or save a people, we ought to be the freest and safest people on the face of the globe."

1858 On St. Patrick's Day, James Stephens founds a radical society that became the Irish Republican Brotherhood, later the Irish Republican Army (it included an American branch, called the Fenians). A couple of attempted risings fail.

1868 A new British prime minister, William Gladstone, sets a more liberal tone by doing such things as making it harder for Irish landlord to evict their tenants and abolishing the Church of Ireland's position as the "established" church of Ireland (which had not been a very meaningful position for most of the Irish people, anyway). Gladstone's match in Parliament is the Irish statesman Charles Stewart Parnell.

1885 Parnell has control of 85 of the 103 Irish seats in the House of Commons; Irish Home Rule becomes a major legitimate political issue. (Home Rule would mean that Ireland had some self-governing privileges but still would be part of the United Kingdom, like Wales and Scotland.) But this solution is not appealing to the Irish who live in the Ulster area, in the North. These people are Protestants, mostly Presbyterian; if they were to be absorbed within an Irish government, they would be in a distinct minority. Meanwhile a literary revival is happening, leading to a new appreciation of Celtic culture and stories and a new interest in Gaelic, the Irish language that had been all but eradicated by British expansion. W. B. Yeats participates in this revival by publishing collections of folk tales such as The Celtic Twilight. The Gaelic League is formed to preserve and foster this literature and this new national self-image.

1889 Parnell loses his power base when a scandal occurs over his affair with Kitty O'Shea, a married woman. Two years later, he dies (after catching an illness during the pouring rain at a political rally in Galway).

1893 Gladstone retires, without having passed his second attempt at a Home Rule bill for Ireland. The next phase of British government is more conservative, less promising for Irish independence. 1913 In further efforts toward Home Rule, the counties around Ulster (those Presbyterians with British sympathies) are granted "temporary" exclusion from any settlement--a state of affairs that became permanent.

1914 A bigger issue than Irish statehood asserts itself--World War I. Distracted by events in Europe, the British government quickly passes a Home Rule Act and then immediately suspends its operation for the duration of the war. Many Irishmen, particularly from the North (the Ulster area), volunteer and die in the war, thus strengthening the feeling among the Irish that the British government owes them something. The Ulstermen want to be taken in as part of Britain-- the nationalists to the south have a different goal. At this point, the nationalist movement called Sinn Fein (pronounced "shin fayne," meaning "We Ourselves") begins. James Connolly, a labor organizer, establishes the Irish Citizens Army to defend striking workers against police brutality. Padraic Pearse develops a mystical belief that the shedding of blood is necessary to "cleanse" Ireland, as Christ had shed his blood to redeem humankind.

1916 On Easter Monday (April 24), a major uprising occurs at the General Post Office in Dublin; this is famously known as the Easter Rising (see Yeats' "Easter 1916"). Pearse, with about 150 others armed with agricultural tools as well as rifles, takes over the Post Office and read out (to rather apathetic bystanders) a proclamation of a new Irish Republic. The total showing of revolutionaries is about 800, a far cry from the 3,000 they had hoped for. (And even many Irish can't figure out what the fuss was about, what with a quarter million Irishmen fighting in France, with the British forces in World War I, at the time.) Nevertheless, they hold the Post Office until Saturday, when the British set fire to the area around the GPO and drive the rebels out. By then some 64 rebels, 134 police and soldiers, and 220 civilians are dead. The city's center is laid waste; martial law is imposed and 4,000 people jailed. If most of the Irish people are not behind this revolt, things change after the British get through with the rebels. One by one, they execute the leaders of the rising, including Pearse and Connolly. This turns the tide of public opinion in Ireland from skeptical derision to sympathetic support. As Yeats writes, things were "changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born" ("Easter 1916").

1918 The war in Europe isn't going so great for Britain, so they decide to draft soldiers from Ireland. As a concession to this dramatic move, Britain offers a new Home Rule legislation based on a plan of partitioning the island so that the North part is separate. The Catholic Church in Ireland condemns the draft, and the Irish Party walks out of the House of Commons in London. This event opens the door for the radical Sinn Fein party to get its own candidates elected--which they do, in great numbers, in the postwar general election of December 1918. The newly elected politicians boycott the House of Commons and formed their own parliament in Dublin. They elect Eamon de Valera, one of the principals of the Rising, as their president (he was in jail, at the time). This is the time when the Irish Republican Army takes to the countryside with violence that looks as much like a civil war as a war against England. Anyone who is thought to have consorted with the British police, for example, is likely to be attacked, even if they are Irish. The reaction of the British government is to proclaim the Irish nation "illegal." Things get really ugly after this.

1920 "Bloody Sunday," November 21. Irish leader Michael Collins has 12 British soldiers shot dead, mostly in their beds. Later the same day at a Gaelic football game in Dublin, police shoot 12 civilians. Guerilla warfare spreads out of control.

1921 Britain decides to hold two elections for Irish parliaments, one in the north and one in the south. Predictably, Sinn Fein takes the South and the Unionists the North. On December 5, rather than going to war against each other, the Irish and the British sit down and work out a settlement. The treaty gives the nationalists more than just Home Rule--Ireland becomes the Irish Free State, on dominion status similar to what Canada had at the time. The six counties of Ulster were kept within the British union, a point that rankled with some of the Irish nationalists who had hoped to unite all of Ireland as separate from England.

1922 More fighting breaks out in Dublin and elsewhere over the final drawing of the boundary of the Irish Free State. What had by this point become an Irish civil war ends in 1923, when de Valera, an advocate of total Irish union, surrenders.

1927 De Valera is elected to the Irish parliament as a party leader and makes the bold move of proposing to reinstate the old Gaelic language. In a famous St. Patrick's Day address, he said, Ireland should become "a land whose countryside would be bright with cozy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the rompings of sturdy children, the contests of athletic youths and the laughter of comely maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age." But alas, this noble vision came a bit late--by the time Ireland was ready to embrace the industrial revolution, the rest of the developed world was already moving on to other things. By this point, many of the best and brightest were setting off for England and America to live their lives. Even the once well-off Anglo- Irish (the Protestant "Ascendancy," of which Yeats and Lady Gregory were a part) fell on hard times, and the "big houses," such as Lissadell--home of Con Markiewicz and Eva Gore-Booth, political friends of Yeats--began to crumble.

Division Calendar of Events for December

January 12th Division Business Meeting Room 9 at Holy Spirit, Denver

January 27th Monthly social and Installation of Officers

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The Top Ten Irish Music CD’s (Their List) 10. Tommy Peoples “High Part of the Road” 09. Kevin Burke “Sweeney’s Dream” 08. The Bothy Band “1975: The First Album” 07. Liz Carroll & John Doyle “In Play” 06. Cherish the Ladies “Woman of the House” 05. Seamus Egan “Traditional Music of Ireland” 04. Lunasa “Redwood” 03. Altan “Harvest Storm” 02. Solas “The Hour Before Dawn” 01. The Chieftains “Water From the Well”

The Top Ten Irish American Singers (My List) 10. Bruce Springsteen 09. Judy Collins 08. Frank Patterson 07. Judy Garland 06. George M. Cohan 05. Andy Cooney 04. Dennis Day 03. The McGuire Sisters 02. Rosemary Clooney 01. Bing Crosby News from Ireland Revenue to target pensioners on higher incomes RTE News

The Minister of State at the Department of Finance has said that in the vast majority of cases no arrears will be due from pensioners who have been judged to own more tax to the Revenue Commissioners this year.

Revenue said that 115,000 pensioners would pay extra tax in 2012, because of other taxable income they have, following a trawl of information supplied by the Department of Social Protection.

Brian Hayes said the tax had not been collected because of a systems failure and a lack of communication between departments, and it would be unfair if people had to pay additional penalties and interest based on previous years.

Age Ireland Ireland and the Senior Citizens Parliament have criticised the move, saying it would put more strain on already hard-pressed pensioners who should have been informed by Revenue if they were liable for tax.

The tax underpayments were discovered after the Department of Social Protection sent the records of 560,000 pensioners to the Revenue Commissioners.

It matched people who receive a private pension with details of individuals claiming the State pension.

Declan Rigney from the Revenue Commissioners said individuals aged over 65 earning more than €18,000 a year - or a couple in receipt of over €36,000 - were liable.

Those in receipt of a small occupational pension of around €100 a week were unlikely to be taxed.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Rigney did not rule out the backdating of the tax. He also said it was not an amnesty for taxes that had not been paid.

Age Action has expressed "frustration" with the news, while the Senior Citizens Parliament has suggested that Revenue should be running public awareness campaigns.

Many of those who contacted Age Action on receipt of letters informing them of the news said they presumed their payments had already been included.

Senior Citizens Parliament Chief Executive Mairead Hayes said Revenue should have been proactive in telling people that they were liable for pensions above a certain limit.

Irish Poetry

A NATION ONCE AGAIN by Thomas Davis

When boyhood's fire was in my blood, It whispered, too, that "freedom's ark I read of ancient freemen, And services high and holy, For Greece and Rome who bravely stood, Would be profaned by feelings dark Three Hundred Men and Three Men. And passions vain and lowly; And then I prayed I yet might see For freedom comes from God's right hand, Out fetters rent in twain, And needs a godly train; And Ireland, long a province, be And righteous men must make our land A Nation once again. A Nation once again."

And, from that time, through wildest woe, So, as I grew from boy to man, That hope has shown, a far light; I bent me to the bidding - Nor could love's brightest summer glow My spirit of each selfish plan Outshine that solemn starlight; And cruel passion ridding; It seemed to watch above my head For, thus I hoped some day to aid - In forum, field, and fane; Oh! can such hope be vain? - Its angel voice sang round my head, When my dear country shall be made "A Nation once again." A Nation once again.

THE ROSE OF TRALEE By William Pembroke Mulchinock

The pale moon was rising above the green mountains, The sun was declining beneath the blue sea, When I stray'd with my love to the pure crystal fountain That stands in the beautiful vale of Tralee.

She was lovely and fair as the rose of the summer, Yet 'twas not her beauty alone that won me, Oh, no, 'twas the truth in her eyes ever beaming That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee. The cool shades of evening their mantle were spreading, And Mary, all smiling, was list'ning to me. The moon through the valley her pale rays was shedding When I won the heart of the Rose of Tralee.

Tho' lovely and fair as the rose of the summer, Yet 'twas not her beauty alone that won me, Oh, no, 'twas the truth in her eyes ever beaming That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.