Patrick Comerford
I had an invitation to the Barack Obama last night but couldn’t get there.
No, it was not an invitation to meet Barack Obama. But it was invitation to the launch of the latest issue of Under Crimblin Hill, the Historical Journal of the Dunkerrin Parish History Society, edited by my friend and colleague, Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth.
The Barack Obama Plaza is a motorway service area at Junction 23 on the M7 motorway in Co Tipperary, and beside the village of Moneygall, just across the county border in Co Offaly. For the five years I was living in Askeaton, Co Limerick, as priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale Group of Parishes, this had been a regular ‘pit stop’ on the road to and frame Dublin.
The Barack Obama Plaza is named after President Barack Obama, whose great-great-great-grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, lived in Moneygall and emigrated to the US in 1850. The plaza opened in 2014, and includes an Obama museum-visitor centre, a bronze bust of Barack Obama by Mark Rhodes, and life-sized bronze sculptures of Barack and Michelle Obama, also by Mark Rhodes.
When Barack Obama visited Moneygall in 2011, he met distant relatives and drank a pint in Ollie Hayes’s Pub, where Michelle Obama tried her hand at pouring a pint.
The nearby village of Dunkerrin, Co Offaly, is just south of Roscrea and near the Co Tipperary border and junction 23 at Moneygall. Dunkerrin Parish History Society was revived in 2014 after a 25-year lapse, and launched its journal Under Crimblin Hill that year.
So, the Barack Obama Plaza was an appropriate and convenient venue for the launch of the latest edition of Under Crimblin Hill last night, when the guest speaker was local artist Philip Ryan, who launched this latest edition (volume 5, 2026).
Salvador Ryan invited me to contribute to this edition of the journal with a paper on the ‘Comerford Crown’ or ‘Ikerrin Crown’, a long-lost archaeological artefact probably dating from the Bronze Age. It was discovered in the Devil’s Bit, near Ikerrin. Co Tipperary, in 1692 and was taken to France by the Comerford family who owned it for over a century, until the mid-1790s, when it was lost during the ‘Reign of Terror’ in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
Although it has not been seen for almost 2½ centuries – perhaps even 3½ centuries – the ‘Comerford Crown’ or ‘Ikerrin Crown’ remains an object of fascination. Although its function was never ascertained and remains uncertain, it became a symbol of Irish identity in the early 19th century, and is said to informed the design in 1843 of Daniel O’Connell’s green velvet ‘Repeal Cap’.
The crown is sometimes referred to by archaeologists as the ‘Devil’s Bit Mountain gold cap.’ The ‘Milesian Crown’ was a more popular term in the 19th century because of the symbol that was based on this crown or inspired by it. Yet, despite all the speculation about the crown, it remains an enigma.
I was so sorry to miss the launch of the journal last night, but I hope to receive a copy when I meet Salvador at the launch of his latest book, Childhood and the Irish, in Dublin next week.
Meanwhile, more about the journal, the Comerford Crown, and that new book in the days or weeks to come, hopefully.
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