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ucdarchives.bsky.social
UCD Archives
@ucdarchives.bsky.social
2.6K followers 490 following 270 posts
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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ucdarchives.bsky.social
Always a pleasure! Best of luck with your paper!
October 22, 2025 at 1:48 PM
ucdarchives.bsky.social
Farmer not happy about the introduction of the Daylight Saving Act (Summer Time) 1916: "the farmers will lose with the new time as the fields won’t be dry enough to start at 7...”’

Transcription in ALT text.
Clare O’Rourke, County Monaghan to Bernard O’Rourke imprisoned in Richmond Barracks, [May 1916]: ‘Peter and Pat Carny came in last night at half ten on our clock. Pat is always a later visitor and does not believe at all in the new time—so when we are ready to go to bed Pat strolls in and says it’s only half nine. He thinks “that the farmers will lose with the new time as the fields won’t be dry enough to start at 7...”’.
October 22, 2025 at 1:05 PM
ucdarchives.bsky.social
Irishman and soldier with the French Foreign Legion, Michael MacWhite, writes from the Front #OTD 1916.
5/5
Will that be the end of all my strivings, of all my [theories], of all my ambitions and ideals? Shall no one dear to me ever hear how I fell. Shall no one tell my thoughts? Is immortality a fraud? Ah, no, the flesh, the blood, the thought, the soul rebels against the idea. We do not live for today alone. We are part of the universe and we live as long as it lasts. On the left hand margin on page 2: How I strove against fate and suffered and was battered and thwarted but never beaten. How a remorseless destiny pushed me on without realising my cherished hopes & pet desires.
October 11, 2025 at 11:41 AM
ucdarchives.bsky.social
Irishman and soldier with the French Foreign Legion, Michael MacWhite, writes from the Front #OTD 1916.
4/5
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.
October 11, 2025 at 11:41 AM
ucdarchives.bsky.social
Irishman and soldier with the French Foreign Legion, Michael MacWhite, writes from the Front #OTD 1916.
3/5
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.
October 11, 2025 at 11:41 AM
ucdarchives.bsky.social
Irishman and soldier with the French Foreign Legion, Michael MacWhite, writes from the Front #OTD 1916.
2/5
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.
October 11, 2025 at 11:41 AM