Coiscéimeanna ar TG4 (Dé Domhnaigh, 1 Bealtaine)

Rebelheart

Here's a heads up for everybody.


I was just listening to Harry McGee, The Irish Times political correspondent, talking to Myles Dungan on Today with Pat Kenny and it looks like he's on to a winner with his new programme on TG4. It starts this coming Sunday, 1 May, at 8.15pm.

It's a great, yet simple, idea. McGee traces famous walks across Ireland. This Sunday the first programme traces the walk made by the French Revolutionary Army across Mayo in the 1790s.

Episode 2 follows the route walked by Mícheál Ó Cléirigh and other Franciscan monks who wrote the Annals of the Four Masters in the early seventeenth century.

Oddly enough there doesn't seem to be anything about Coiscéimeanna on the TG4 website but a google produces this. According to McGee himself in The Irish Times today there'll be six episodes, Walking through the centuries:

SMALL PRINT: LAST SUMMER, I made six journeys around Ireland for a new TG4 series called Coisceimeanna (Footsteps). It combined a number of my big interests (walking and mountaineering, history and politics, and the Irish language) as I followed the routes of six famous journeys in Irish political, social and cultural history.

The journeys coincided with the most spectacular and rugged scenery of Counties Mayo, Donegal and Kerry. But there are also more pastoral settings in Counties Kildare and Cork.

It was the idea of director Blaithín Ní Chathain and mmost of the journeys are well known. The first was the famine walk where hundreds perished as they sought food in the achingly beautiful Delphi Valley in south Mayo; the second Mayo one was General Humbert’s 1798 march from Lacken in north Mayo through Killala and to Castlebar. In Donegal we followed the different routes that the Franciscan monk Micheál O Cléirigh and his fellow Four Masters took after their monastery in Donegal town was ransacked. It led us into BarnesMore, the Bluestacks and finally down to north Leitrim. In Cork, we followed the most recent event, the 30-mile march and retreat taken by the volunteers involved in the Kilmichael ambush during the war of independence. In Kerry, the journey was more ethereal – following the paths that were taken by the famous Dingle Peninsula poet and soldier Piaras Feirtéar.

The final journey took us into Kildare, where we followed the route taken by several hundred thousand people to hear Daniel O’Connell’s last monster rally held on a rath (fairy fort) near Moone.

The star of the series is undoubtedly the landscape. What’s amazing is that the imprint of man in many places is not as heavy as one might think. In many places, the shape of the land has hardly changed despite the passage of centuries.

– HARRY McGEE

Coiscéimeanna starts on TG4 on Sunday at 8.15pm

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