There is another history of Ireland. Through their work, one group of historians has set a challenge to every parish in the land to honour Ireland’s forgotten women.

I mentioned last week that women account for only 20% of the entries in the Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB), which has just been made available free online, and I remarked that the work of Cahir history group Daughters of Dún Iascaigh should be at the top of the DIB’s inbox.

When I tweeted that statistic, the DIB replied: “Women comprised only 10% of all subjects in the original DIB! This proportion has more than doubled among the DIB’s post-2009 publications and will continue to rise, thanks to the ongoing growth in scholarship on women’s history.”

To be fair, I had made those exact points myself, and I had praised the DIB as an invaluable resource for anyone with even a passing interest in Irish history. It’s also a bit of a rabbit-hole, and as historian, journalist, and anchor of RTÉ’s Six One News, David McCullagh, says, “In theory it should increase productivity in the History Nerd Community, but I suspect it will decrease it, because once you open it up, you just can’t stop looking at different stories”.

On foot of my mentioning Daughters of Dún Iascaigh here last week, I was delighted to receive in the post the book Daughters of Dún Iascaigh: A Light on the History of Cahir Women. It’s a beautifully designed hardback, published by the Cahir Women’s History........

© The Avondhu