Laois

From miracle-working saints and shape-shifting witches to silent ghosts and wailing banshees, County Laois is teeming with folk tales and a selection of the best, drawn from historical sources and interviews, have been brought to life here by storyteller by Nuala Hayes. This book will take you on a journey through the county's varied landscape, from the rugged Slieve Bloom Mountains to its fertile plains, with tales of talking cats, bewitched butter, fairy changelings and holy fish. On the way you will meet characters like the great warrior Conall Cearnach, from whom the people of Laois are said to be descended; Moll Anthony, the wisewoman of the Red Hills; and the White Lady said to haunt Durrow Castle. Richly illustrated by internationally renowned artist Rita Duffy, these enchanting stories can be enjoyed and shared time and again.

This book details the archaeology of burnt mounds (fulachtaí fia) in Ireland, one of the most frequent and under researched prehistoric site types in the country. It presents a re-evaluation of the pyrolithic phenomenon in light of some 1000 excavated burnt mounds.

This book is the second in the series Sources for the Study of Irish Politics, which is produced by the Political Studies Association of Ireland (PSAI). The aim of the PSAI is to promote the professional study of politics in and of Ireland, and the aim of the series is to make more widely available material that is at present difficult to obtain. Building on its predecessor Irish Elections 1922-44: Results and Analysis (1993), this volume assembles the full results of all elections to Dáil Éireann from 1948 to 1977. The book also contains analysis of each election, summaries of votes, percentages and seats for each election, lists of TDs (members of parliament) elected at each election, information on defeated TDs and women TDs, analysis of tranfer patterns, members of govenrment appointed after each election, and the full results of all by-elections held in the period. It also provides summary results of the nine general elections of the period 1981-2007, along with a comprehensive list of TDs 1922-2008. Elections to Dáil Éireann are held under the PR-STV (single tranferable vote) electoral system, and this volume provides a fascinating account of PR-STV in operation as well as constituting an indispensble record of Irish political history over the middle years of the independent state.

Laois is officially known as county Leix.

In late March 1922, a group of armed men forcibly evicted two protestant farmers from their homes at Luggacurran, Queen's County. The evictions marked the beginning of a month long campaign of violence targeting local protestant farmers, which was only brought to an end through the intervention of the provisional government. The events at Luggacurran are often seen as an example of the disorder and sectarian violence that characterised the Irish civil war, yet communal tensions had existed in the region for decades prior to the revolutionary period. This study considers the experiences of the Luggacurran protestants from their arrival in the area to the creation of the Irish Free State, focusing in particular on the issues of land and religion. As this study reveals, the relationship that existed between the protestants and the rest of the community was complex, and the violence that occurred at Luggacurran in the spring of 1922 was motivated by more than religious differences.