Frank McNally

6 days ago | irishtimes.com | Frank McNally

Faced with a deluge of unfamiliarity from almost all corners of Ireland, I was beginning to doubt that the sentence-ending superlative “it took out!” (Diary, April 17th) was a recognised phrase anywhere other than my own head. Then came reassurance from reader Catherine McVerry, a native of south Armagh now exiled in Warrenpoint. She hadn’t heard it since the 1980s, when she left home for Guernsey, then England, and later Dublin.

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Frank McNally

The fact had somehow escaped me until an email responding to Wednesday’s column about Emily Dickinson. And I’m not sure if I wasn’t better off without the information. But as I now know, for good or bad, most if not all of Dickinson’s poems can be sung to the tune of a traditional American ballad, The Yellow Rose of Texas. For this, I’m indebted to reader Seán Lyons, who tells me he first learned it from a lecture by an American professor at Listowel Writers’ Week a few years back.

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Frank McNally

A small phrase I used here recently attracted the curiosity of at least one reader who hadn’t heard it before. The context was a country wedding that involved an Irish dancing competition for several guests chosen at random. All were good, I said, but the performance of one woman “took out”. This was in specific reference to her having done several high-kicking laps of the hotel diningroom, thereby turning the dance-off into a sort-of Irish Olympian event: Riverdance and the 400m hurdles combined.

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Frank McNally

Walking northwards along Dublin’s Dorset Street on Monday evening, I was struck by a succession of dramatic sunset views framed by the narrow, red-bricked roads to my left. None of these quite translated into good iPhone pictures, somehow. But then I reached the Royal Canal where the spectacle stopped me in my tracks.

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Frank McNally

Peter C Yorke (1864 – 1925), who was born in Galway but died in San Francisco 100 years ago this month, was the proverbial turbulent priest of whom many people wished themselves rid. Those may have included for a time his own ecclesiastical superiors. As a young priest in 1890s California, Yorke used his editorship of the archdiocesan newspaper to wage war against the American Protective Association (APA), an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant movement of the period, and other enemies.