Category: Ita’s World

St. Mary’s College near Aberdeen, known as Blairs, was opened in 1829 as a school to educate boys from across every social class in Scotland who might later enter the priesthood. There had been district seminaries in Loch Morar opened in 1714 for seven students and three years later a seminary at Scalan in upper Banffshire was begun. Another seminary was started at Aquhorties near Inverurie in 1799 before John Menzies of Pitfodels donated his mansion, with its one…

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‘Songs of Freedom’* celebrates the life and work of James Connolly, Irish socialist theorist and revolutionary martyred by the British government for his role in the Easter Rising, the centenary of which will be commemorated in 2016. A self-declared “agitator” he believed in the necessity for “joyous, defiant and singing of revolutionary songs” without which there could be no revolutionary movement worthy of the name.   Born in Edinburgh of Irish parents, he left school at the age of…

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