Book Five: A New Century, 1895 to 1906

The years, 1895 to 1906

Michael's daughter Delia Gallagher takes up the pen as a young woman, and writes to a cousin of her own generation in New York, Sean Ryan, named for the great-uncle who sailed in 1847.

The Congested Districts Board. Set up to relieve the poorest districts of the west, the Board's work reaches the parish in these years, improving land and housing where the Hunger had cut deepest. Slow, practical change, and welcome.

The Wyndham Land Act, 1903. This was the great one. A generous state scheme that finally, decisively turned Irish tenants into the owners of their farms. What Book Four had begun, Book Five completes: the land is theirs.

Victoria's death and the Gaelic revival. Queen Victoria died in January 1901, an era closing with her. And the Gaelic League spread into ordinary parish life: local branches, Irish classes, and the feis, the festival of music and dancing where a girl like Delia might compete. In December 1904 the Abbey Theatre opened in Dublin, and a cultural revival was under way.

The family in these years

Delia writes with the confidence of a generation that never knew the worst. Her letters carry a feis where she dances, the day the land became her family's own, and the visit home of her American cousin Sean Ryan, the first of the New York branch to walk the townland his great-grandmother wrote from. Two branches of one family, meeting at last on Mayo ground.

Moments from the twelve letters

• April 1895. Delia's first letter, a young woman introducing herself across the water.
• June 1902. A feis in the parish, and Delia competing in an Irish dancing contest.
• August 1903. The Wyndham Act, and the near-disbelief of owning the land outright.
• September 1903. Sean Ryan's first visit home to Ballycastle, the American cousin come to see where it all began.

Your county in Book Five

The O'Donnells are the Mayo edition. Each county's edition carries its own Gaelic League branch, its own feis, and the land change as it reached that county. See how the county personalisation works.