Qualla: Gweesalia https://qualla.com/gweesalia en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/g/gweesalia-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Gweesalia https://qualla.com/gweesalia Gweesalia: Introduction https://qualla.com/gweesalia/ Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. In January 1907, a riot broke out in Dublin's Abbey Theatre. The audience was attending the premiere of a new play by John Millington Synge called The Playboy of the Western World, and they did not like what they were watching. They tore up the seats. They shouted down the actors. They drowned out the dialogue with hisses and stamping. The line that ignited the worst of it - 'a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself' - referenced women's undergarments and was, by the standards of 1907 Catholic Dublin, an outrage. The play's setting was a small unlicensed pub in a remote village in County Mayo, modelled on a real place that Synge had visited on the road to Belmullet. That place was Gweesalia.

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Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/g/gweesalia-wp/gc8g-gweesalia-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Gweesalia: The Real Playboy https://qualla.com/gweesalia/ Photo credit Kiran Madhusudhanan, CC BY-SA 4.0. The plot of Synge's play turns on a young man named Christy Mahon who arrives at a Mayo shebeen - an unlicensed country pub - claiming to have killed his own father with a spade. Far from being horrified, the locals are thrilled; the news spreads through the village, the girls fi...

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Image: Kiran Madhusudhanan | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/g/gweesalia-wp/gc8g-gweesalia-the-real-playboy.mp3 0:06 2 full Gweesalia: Boxers from the Boxing Club https://qualla.com/gweesalia/ Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Gweesalia is the kind of village where you would not necessarily expect to find a serious boxing tradition, but the village community centre includes a boxing club that has, over the years, produced fighters of genuine international standing. Henry Coyle was an Irish Olympic boxe...

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Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/g/gweesalia-wp/gc8g-gweesalia-boxers-from-the-boxing-club.mp3 0:06 3 full Gweesalia: Built Heritage https://qualla.com/gweesalia/ Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before the village had a Synge connection or a boxing club, it had ringforts and crannogs - circular earthen enclosures and lake-dwelling artificial islands that mark the prehistoric and early-medieval settlement of Erris. Several survive in the neighbouring townlands of An Ráith...

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Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/g/gweesalia-wp/gc8g-gweesalia-built-heritage.mp3 0:06 4 full Gweesalia: Saturday Buses and Sunday Football https://qualla.com/gweesalia/ Photo credit Felix O, CC BY-SA 2.0. Gweesalia has a general store, a pub, a community centre with both the boxing club and a café, a post office, a playground, and a hotel. The Geesala National School - the local primary - has built a substantial reputation in Gaelic football, winning multiple county titles at mino...

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Image: Felix O | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/g/gweesalia-wp/gc8g-gweesalia-saturday-buses-and-sunday-football.mp3 0:06 5 full