''Wicklow Jail''

Located in the county town of the county known generically, as 'The Garden of Ireland', this jail built in 1702, is yet another intriquing Irish prison with history, anecdotes, substance brimming from its walls, like a violinist with many strings to his bow!

It has been at the heart of events in Irish history like the 1798 rebellion of the United Irishmen, the 'Great Irish Famine', the 'holding area' for many poor souls about to be transported to Tasmania in the 'New World' for the merest misdemeanour like sheep stealing!

The period 1798/1803, saw many of Wicklow's rebel's spend time there. People like General Holt, Billy Byrne, Napper Tandy and it's also associated with the heroine Anne Devlin (Robert Emmet's noble and selfless servant, who never betrayed him!) and it's this part I'd like to talk about. Possibly two of the cells are haunted - one of which, Anne Devlin frequented when visiting her father, whilst held there after the 1798 rebellion.

It was whilst I was in this cell on a visit that, I had a very strange experience; my hand went numb and I got the feeling something like a needle was being inserted into it! Given the harrowing history of the place, the concomitant sorrow that was imbued in that cell particularly, could I have picked up on something? Perhaps Anne Devlin did knitting or embroidery when visiting the cell in the pre-1803 period?

The Jail is well worth visiting (the yard is an additional interest!) and if nothing else, be intriqued and mindful when visiting the haunted cells. Wicklow Jail is yet another doorway into Ireland's sad and heart rending history and the feature of Wicklow town!

''James Joyce - most revolutionary writer of the 20th century''

The novel, Ulysees, published in 1922, has been claimed to have changed the face of literature and to have revolutionised the novel in the 20th Century. The book is set on the day of June 16, 1904, and chronicles a day in the life of Leopold Bloom - a Jew - as he goes wandering around his native Dublin, much akin to the Greek epic, The Odyssey of Ulysees (Odysseus) from whom the novel takes its name. Joyce through the voice of Bloom, outlines the history of the Irish race, Ireland, Dublin, its streets, its sites, the commercial nexus of the city, its pulse, its epicentre, its veins and arteries; in essence, every component and part of the fabric of Dublin - of its topography - in voluminous detail. James Joyce's research and erudition is truly awesome (he studied the old ‘Thom's Directories' and detailed maps for years, which gave him this colossal knowledge). Herein lies the power and the influence of Ulysees: Joyce changed fundamentally the structure of the novel, he used no punctuation, to give it an uninterrupted flow - known as 'Streams of consciousness'; the wordplay and punning is infinite, done in a totally unique way. To cite but one example, Bloom breaks up the word Castile into cast steel and turns it into a punning joke: What do a Spanish Opera and Gibraltar have in common? Rows of Cast steel (Castile). It's these innovative verbalisings, fusions of linguistic expressions and colloquialisms, its encyclopaedic knowledge, which makes it one of the most influential novels that literature has ever been bequeathed. All that one ever wanted to know about Dublin and indeed Ireland, its history, its people, its culture, its idiosyncracies, its charms, its contradictions, its betrayals, its heartaches, can be found here narrated through the medium of Leopold Bloom in one solitary day. Small wonder that June 16, has been immortalised in the annual calendar as ‘Bloomsday'. Ulysees is totally unique, a pioneering work in English literature produced by an Irish writer in exile, which contains a wealth of information, linguistic flair, a descriptive genius, an intricate awareness of the layout of Dublin, its heartbeats, its resonances, its good and bad, its charm. James Joyce gave the world a modern odyssey of his native Dublin; indeed, Ireland as a whole could claim him as a great exponent of Irish genius! >