Colm O'Regan: The Virtual Treasury is a miracle for Irish history

Columnist, broadcaster, comedian and author Colm O'Regan pictured in the Maryborough Hotel. Picture Chani Anderson

If you know me, you’ll know I have my hobby horses and peeves. 

I like: Nice pens, getting the wear out of something, finding forgotten chocolate. 

I dislike: people not standing in from the aisle when stowing their luggage, the eating noises of ‘influencers’ doing chipper review videos, people who write “could of”.

But there is one dark horse that gets me right in the soul. I will get a distant look and think about the time we burnt a massive chunk of our documented history in the Four Courts in the Civil War. 

The burning of the records office was probably an accident. Although an act of fecking eejitry both to hole up right next to it, and position a giant gun at point blank range and fire at it.

But let’s not get into the wrongs and wrongs of it now.

It happened. Both sides blame each other. There was a grey, fluttery paper rain of history on Dublin for hours afterwards.

The result is a dull pain that many Irish people feel. Our records are gone.

There is often a poignant moment in the Irish version of Who Do You Think You Are. 

While the English one sails merrily back through the centuries to link Danny Dyer to royalty or tells a flabbergasted Zayk from Love Island that he’s the heir to the Earldom of Scrottingham, the Irish one often tails off at some point because of the Burning. 

“That’s all we have, I’m afraid, ” says the researcher ruefully, “but we know they must have been born at some stage.”

But all is not lost. Historians, technologists, archivists, and a whole Captain Planet of heroes have been painstakingly reassembling bits and bobs from the records.

And now on a gorgeously titled website, virtualtreasury.ie there are a quarter of a billion words to look through. More is being added all the time.

They’ve assembled what they can from duplicates and hidden collections from all over Ireland and the world.

Maybe it will uncover a hornet’s nest. Maybe documents will show your neighbours’ ancestors writing to Cromwell, telling him that he should definitely send your ancestors to Connacht.

I haven’t found anything like that yet. I’m only playing around on the site. I don’t know what I’m doing. But even a gom can find something interesting by accident.

The first thing you do is search for your own name — nothing of that. Colm wasn’t really a given name until the late 19th century. 

Then you go looking for your village. There’s an old map of Dripsey from 1842, so I’ve been poring over that. Turns out, we’re ALL blow-ins.

The Central Bank records have at least three volumes of imports and exports from the 18th century. You know, we used to be a proper country.

We used to sell stockings to the Danes, soap to the Baltic, human hair to England, and the French couldn’t get enough of our tongues. I presume those were cow tongues. 

And the stereotypes are true — we imported onions from France. We bought whalebone, wine, wood, wire and yarn from Holland. (The exports are listed helpfully in alphabetical order). 

Port from Madeira — no surprise there. Furs from Russia, 51 horses from Scotland. The SHEER AMOUNT of historical sailing novels that are going to be written in Ireland from now on.

But it makes a casual observer like me feel good. All is not lost. Our fire was an accident, but elsewhere in the world, destroying a country’s memory is big business. 

Russia is systematically targeting Ukrainian publishing houses. The IDF rejoice in demolishing universities in Gaza.

We are making records every day. Most are stored in data centres. If the Civil War here taught us anything, it’s good to have a few copies printed out.

• Have a snoop for yourself at virtualtreasury.ie