Little Ireland: An Irish Emigrant Family’s Life in Nineteenth Century Edinburgh

Little Ireland tells the story of one family from County Monaghan in Ireland, who emigrated to Edinburgh in the early nineteenth century and settled in the Old Town, in the Irish ghetto of ’Little Ireland’. It is also the story of the Irish diaspora who settled there, both before and after the ’Great Famine’, whose lives revolved around the church of St. Patrick in the Cowgate and it’s charismatic priest, Canon Edward Hannan, who founded Hibernian Football Club. It tells of the exiled Irish community’s involvement in the politics of their homeland and their fight for Independence for Ireland through their achievement in having the Freedom of Edinburgh awarded to Charles Stewart Parnell. It also tells of the part played by ’Little Ireland’ born James Connolly, one of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising in Dublin, which led, in time, to the formation of the Irish Free State. But most of all, it tells of the joys and sorrows of one family who emigrated to Edinburgh seeking a new life, of their achievements, the tragedies that befell them and how some of them were forced into onward emigration to Canada and America.