ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 10, 18 March 1925, Page 34

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

R.P.S. —Our illustration was taken from a picture post-card published from the Orphans' Press, Rochdale, England. S.M.M. —For the information of our correspondent and others interested, we reprint the syllabus for this year's examination in Irish History:—The period to be studied will be the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the opening of the nineteenth century to the time of the passing of the Act of Union. Thus, the period covers roughly two hundred years. It embraces many of the most important events in the story of Ireland. Pupils will learn of the appalling persecutions under the Penal Laws, and of the inhuman massacres of Catholics, during the regime of Cromwell, at Drogheda and Wexford. The gallant figures of Owen Roe O'Neill and Patrick Sarsfield march across the pages. How Ireland kept faith with England at Limerick, and how England broke the treaty "''ere the ink wherewith 'twas writ was dry," will sink into tho memories of the young. They will follow the fate of the, Wild Geese, whose narrow graves were' made by the hands of strangers on , tWv, "far, foreign fields from Dunkirk to Bel- J grade,',' where they fell in battle. The S immortal story, of Grattan's victory, and the shameful records of the treachery by which England secured the Union will ter- ' minate the period, and in between these .

events will come the terrible records of the Rising of '9B, when the Presbyterians of Ulster proved that they loved their country and hated oppression just as much as did the Catholics of Wexford who broke the English ranks again and again, at Wexford, Enniscorthy, New Boss, Tubberneering, and Oulart. All these pages in the long struggle against the oppressor ought never be forgotten; for almost from first to last, they were lights for the rights of Catholics to keep the Faith of their Fathers. Finally, we recommend teachers and pupils to use for this period Sullivan's Story of Ireland. There is no better book on the subject for children. And those who have not already got a copy ought to order it in good time through our office. The date of the next examination will be some time in November, 1925.