UCD Archives

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We curate private paper collections documenting the modern Irish State; UCD; and many elements of the Franciscan manuscript patrimony. www.ucd.ie/archives

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Irishman and soldier with the French Foreign Legion, Michael MacWhite, writes from the Front #OTD 1916. #WWI

"Six days in this mud and slush. Six nights on the parapet searching for the sleep that never comes. ..."

Transcription in next post.

Oct 11 – 16 Six days in this mud and slush. Six nights on the parapet searching for the sleep that never comes. With aching bones and clattering teeth we lay there in our sodden garments waiting – waiting for the message from beyond. And yet we curse the skulking moon as she laughs at us through those ragged clouds. We curse the sun and stars. We curse ourselves and God for keeping alive the ebbing embers of hope in our bosoms. And yet that hope, that longing, that faith that keeps us still when movements would bring solace is but as molten ashes in our arid brains. Death alone lives in our midst. He presides at every motion of our body. He sits in every watching post and with his thrilling chant accompanies every shell. From out of the trench wall his fleshless skull is protruding and his alienated fingers point as it were to the whistling bell like a horrid nightmare. We feel him pushing into the abyss where Satan reigns. The hand of dawn is in the eastern sky and now the shells fall thick and fast. Pandemonium is let loose and in anticipation of the day we enter our dugouts where we anchor in a metre of mud. And now the buzz of the telephone is heard. Faces brutalised by fatigue and misery light up a little while the corporal cries out that we are relieved but as I repeat the commandant’s orders on the wire there is an agony of silence. “Preparez-pour-l’assaut-á-midi-cinq” – and the artillery thunders until we can no longer hear our own voices. Death claims another hostage and yet another. The end of the trench has been blown up. The cook who sat there need[s] no gravedigger’s tools to make him a home. Who shall be the next? Who has a cigarette for after as the [] diminishes hope fan the smouldering embers in the next. (PART 2 NEXT POST)
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We congratulate poet Paul Muldoon on receiving UCD's highest honour - the UCD Ulysses Medal.🏅 Muldoon has read his poetry for the UCD Irish Poetry Reading Archive, & in 2022 was commissioned to write a poem for the Poetry as Commemoration project. Here is "The Belfast Pogrom: Some Observations".

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From 28 Sept - 19 Oct, Level 2 of the James Joyce Library will be temporarily closed, and collections held on Level 2 (400-999) will be available through a retrieval service only.

For more information please visit the Library Capital Development Project webpage: www.ucd.ie/library/cont...

Three students sitting at a wooden table with laptops and books.
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15 Sept 1607: At sea, the #Ulster earls and their party encounter bad weather on the west coast which would last for 13 days (The Ó Cianáin eyewitness diary
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Really proud of this volume of Analecta Hibernica, periodical of the Irish Manuscripts Commission. As editor I have encouraged more Irish language texts and more women as editors - thinking about the sources for Irish history in their wonderful diversity

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The Annals of Innisfallen, which chronicle life in Ireland from before the arrival of St Patrick until the 15th century, will go on public display in this country for the first time 40 years today, in an exhibition that will open at UCC

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What's happening in the James Joyce Library? We have updated our Capital Development Plan project page on the UCD Library website.

All current details of Phase 2 stages of building works are at www.ucd.ie/library/cont...

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Next year the NFC will relocate from the Newman Building, where the collection has been held since the 1970s, to a new Cultural Heritage Centre.

To ensure safe transfer of the collection, in-person services will be reduced starting in Sept 2026. See www.ucd.ie/irishfolklor... for full details.

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