GEOGRAPHY

Ireland is an island on the western fringe of Europe between latitude 51 1/2 and 55 1/2 degrees north, and longitude 5 1/2 to 10 1/2 degrees west. Its greatest length, from Malin Head in the north to Mizen Head in the south, is 486 km and its greatest width from east to west is approximately 275 km. Since 1921 the island has been divided politically into two parts. The independent twenty-six county area, comprising 70,282 sq. km, has a population of 3,523,401 (1991). Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom and contains six of the nine counties of the ancient province of Ulster, has a population of 1,569,971 (1991). In 1973 Ireland became a member of the European Union (EU).

Physical Landscape

The two great mountain systems of Europe, north of the Alps, converge westwards to meet and mingle in Ireland. The older (Caledonian) extends from Scandinavia through Scotland to the north and west of Ireland, where it gives rise to the rugged and mountainous landscapes of Counties Donegal, Mayo and Galway. The higher mountains are of quartzite which weathers into bare, cone-shaped peaks such as Errigal (752 m) in Donegal, Croagh Patrick (765m) in Mayo and the Twelve Bens in Galway. Structures of similar age are responsible for the Wicklow and Blackstairs mountains which extend south-westwards from Dublin Bay for a distance of more than 100 km. In these, long-continued denudation of a great anticlinal structure has exposed a granite core which now forms rounded peat-covered uplands, the crests being notched in places by glacial cirques. The mountains are penetrated by deep glacially modified valleys of which the best known is Glendalough in County Wicklow.

The younger structures (Armorican) extend from central Europe through Brittany to southern Ireland, where they reappear as a series of east-west anticlinal sandstone ridges separated by limestone or shale-floored valleys. The hills rise in height westwards culminating in Carrantouhill (1041 m) in the Magillycuddy Reeks, the highest mountain in the country. The famous Upper Lake of Killarney nestles in the eastern slopes of this range. The valleys separating the western extension of these mountains have been flooded by the sea, giving rise to a number of long deep inlets. o6q15qs
In north-eastern Ireland basaltic lavas spread widely over the existing rocks in Eocene times and now form the bleak plateau of east Antrim. Westwards the basalt is downwarped and the resultant drift-covered lowland is occupied in part by Lough Neagh, the largest lake in Ireland.
The heart of the country is a limestone- floored lowland bounded on the south by the Armorican ridges and on the north and west by the Caledonian mountains. This lowland is open to the Irish Sea for a distance of 90 km between the Wicklow Mountains and the Carlingford peninsula, giving easy access to the country from the east. It also extends westwards to reach the Atlantic Ocean along the Shannon Estuary, in Galway Bay, in Clew Bay and again in Donegal Bay. Numerous hills break the monotony of the lowland which rises westward towards the coast in County Clare where it terminates in the cliffs of Moher, one of the finest lines of cliff scenery in Western Europe.

Much of Ireland was covered by ice during the Pleistocene period. This ice finally melted away about twelve thousand years ago, leaving behind evidence of its former presence in most of the minor physical features of the landscape. Throughout the greater part of the lowland the bedrock is hidden by glacial deposits which, in the north central part of the country, form a broad belt of small hills (drumlins). The glacial cover also modified the early drainage pattern and in places created groundwater conditions which facilitated the growth of peat bogs.
Tourism
There has been major growth in Irish tourism since the Second World War, related mainly to increased affluence, improved transport facilities and greater promotion and organisation of the industry. A severe setback occurred in the years 1969-72, principally as a result of violence in Northern Ireland, and subsequent recovery has been slower in the north. Tourism plays an important role in the balance of payments, with over three million people visiting the country annually. Visitors come mainly from Great Britain but also from continental Europe, North America and other areas. There is also substantial tourist traffic within the country.
The tourist attractions of Ireland include the relaxed atmosphere and friendliness of the people, the clean rural environment, the varied and attractive scenery, the important historical and literary associations and the opportunities to participate in recreational activities. There is also a major ethnic factor, with emigrants returning home on holiday and people of Irish descent visiting relatives and places of ancestral connection. Tourism is strongly oriented towards the coastal zone, which offers the attractions of the sea, scenic landscapes and the major cities and towns. Dublin is the single most important centre but the western seaboard is the part of the country having the greatest tourist appeal.
Climate
Ireland's mild and equable climate is a reflection of the fact that its shores are bathed by the relatively warm ocean waters of the North Atlantic Drift. Valencia, in the extreme south-west, has an average January temperature of 7?C and a July temperature of 1 5?C, a range of only eight degrees. The figures for Dublin are 4.5?C in January and 1 5.5?C in July, a range of eleven degrees. Extremely high or low temperatures are virtually unknown.
Rainfall is heaviest on the westward facing slopes of the hills where it may exceed 3,000 mm in Kerry, Mayo and Donegal. The east is much drier and Dublin records on average only 785 mm annually.
The outstanding feature of the Irish weather is its changeability, a characteristic which it shares with all the countries that lie in the path of the temperate depressions. However more stable atmospheric conditions may arise in winter with the extension of the continental high pressure system bringing clear skies and cool conditions, especially to the eastern part of the country. In summer an extension of the Azores high pressure system may bring periods of light easterly winds and bright sunny weather.

HISTORY OF IRELAND
I. Early Christian Period
Christianity was introduced in the 5th century. This is traditionally associated with St Patrick (d. 461) although there were some Christians in the country before his arrival. The first written documents date from this period. A distinctive feature of the development of early Irish Christianity was the important role played by monasticism. The great monasteries such as Glendalough, founded by St Kevin, and Clonmacnoise, founded by St Ciaran, were famous centres of culture and learning and the illuminated manuscripts which they produced were among the glories of Irish monasticism.
It was through the monasteries that Irish influence on Britain and Europe was exerted from the 6th century onwards. Setting out first as pilgrims, Irish monks preached the Gospel and established new communities across the continent. Ireland, unlike most of the rest of Europe, did not suffer barbarian invasion and so acted as a repository of Christian civilization at a time when it was almost extinguished elsewhere. Irish monks are associated with a number of continental centres - St Fursey at Peronne in France, St Kilian at Wurzburg in Germany, St Vergil at Salzburg in Austria, St Columbanus at Bobbio in Italy. They brought Christianity to pagan peoples, established centres of learning and paved the way for the intellectual flowering in 9th century France known as the Carolingian Renaissance. One of the most notable of these monks was the philosopher and theologian Johannes Scotus Eriugena.
The successful missionary efforts of the Irish abroad were matched by rich cultural achievements at home. Elaborate chalices, croziers and ornamental jewellery were fashioned while the scribes committed the rich classical tradition to their magnificently illuminated manuscripts. This period from the 6th to the 9th century has been seen by many as the Golden Age of Irish history.
II. The Middle Ages
From around 800 onwards Ireland was attacked by bands of Viking marauders. The raids continued right through the 9th century and a second major wave began early in the 10th century. The monasteries, as the major centres of population and wealth, were the main target of the Vikings. They were despoiled of their books and valuables and many of them were burned. These attacks, and attacks by the Irish themselves, contributed to the decline of the great monastic tradition at this period.
The Vikings were great traders and did much to develop commerce in medieval Ireland. They founded most of the major towns such as Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford.The lack of any political unity made it difficult to resist the Viking attacks. However, the strength of the Ui Néill kings in the northern half of the country prevented the Vikings from establishing themselves there.
Towards the end of the 10th century a new dynasty emerged in Munster in the south and, under the kingship of Brian Boru, was able to match the Ui Néill. Brian Boru defeated the Vikings in 999 and in 1002 he won recognition as king of all Ireland. The Vikings intervened regularly in the disputes between the Irish kings. Their support for a Leinster revolt against Brian Boru led to their defeat at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, after which they were confined to a subsidiary role in Irish political history.
The 11th and 12th centuries were an age of renaissance and progress in Ireland. Cultural activity and the arts prospered. It was a great era of religious reform and a powerful effort was made to bring the church more fully into line with Roman orthodoxy. Two of the principal figures of this movement were St Malachy of Armagh (d. 1148) and St Laurence O’Toole of Dublin (d. 1180). In politics, others sought to follow Brian Boru’s example and establish themselves as kings of all Ireland. At various times between 1014 and 1169 the kings of Munster, Ulster, Connacht and Leinster succeeded in doing so. The general trend was towards the development of a strong centralised monarchy on the European model.
This trend was interrupted by the arrival of the Normans in 1167-69. The first Normans came to Ireland from south Wales at the invitation of Diarmait Mac Murchada, king of Leinster, to support his ambition to become king of all Ireland. Mac Murchada was succeeded as King of Leinster by the leader of the Normans, Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow. In 1171 the Normans’ overlord, Henry II, King of England, came to Ireland and was recognised as overlord of the country by both Irish and Normans. Thus began the political involvement of England in Ireland which was to dominate the country’s history in succeeding centuries.
The Normans quickly came to control three-quarters of the land. In time, they assimilated with the local population until they became, it was said, more Irish than the Irish themselves. The Normans had a major impact on the country. Throughout the 13th century they developed the same type of parliament, law and system of administration as in England.
However, the native, or Gaelic, Irish exerted pressure on the Norman colony. Outside the colony attempts were made to re-establish the native kingship. Edward Bruce, brother of the Scottish king Robert, failed in his attempt in 1315, the last serious effort to overthrow Norman rule. By the end of the 15th century, due to the depredations of the Irish and the Gaelicisation of the leading Norman families, the area of English rule in Ireland had shrunk to a small enclave around Dublin known as the Pale.
III. Early Modern Period
Early Modern Period In the 16th century the Tudor monarchs began a reconquest of Ireland. Henry VIII declared himself king of Ireland in 1541, the first English monarch to do so. The Tudors introduced new English settlers and embarked on a series of military campaigns against the Gaelic Irish and the great Anglo-Norman lords who had fallen away in their allegiance to the Crown. When the army of Elizabeth defeated the Irish at the battle of Kinsale in 1601, it marked the beginning of a new order. The native political system was overthrown and for the first time the entire country was run by a strong English central Government.
From the 16th century onwards the English Government made strenuous efforts to impose Protestantism. The reformed religion did not really take root, however, partly due to its close association with the repressive policies of the English administration. The main exception was in Ulster where the Government promoted a successful colonization by new settlers, mostly Scottish Presbyterians.
Religion added complexity to the political situation. The new colonists were Protestant and formed a distinct group from the Old English, the remnants of the Anglo-Irish colony who were still Catholic and increasingly disaffected from the Government. To a large extent political power and office were now in the hands of the colonists, the New English. When the Gaelic Irish of Ulster rebelled against the Government in 1641 they were soon joined by their Old English co-religionists. In 1642 a rebel assembly, the Confederation of Kilkenny, met, but divisions soon appeared as Ireland became enmeshed in the English civil war between King and Parliament. The rebellion was ruthlessly crushed by Oliver Cromwell and his parliamentary army.
Further Protestant colonization took place under Cromwell. This time the large-scale confiscation of land and the banishment of its former owners to the poorer areas of the country ensured that property and political power passed to the new colonists. The accession of the Catholic King James II in 1685 changed the situation only temporarily. His pro-Catholic stance was unpopular in England and Scotland and among the Ulster Scots. When William of Orange challenged James II for the throne the entire country except Ulster backed James. The two kings contested their throne in Ireland and William emerged victorious after a series of battles, the most famous being William’s defeat of James at the Boyne in 1690. William’s victory left the Irish Catholics politically helpless and made possible the Protestant ascendancy that followed. Many leading Catholics like Patrick Sarsfield (James’ commander-in-chief) went abroad to serve in continental armies.
IV. 18-th Century
Throughout the 18th century Catholics were seen as a threat who might rally in support of a Stuart attempt to regain the English throne. The Government enforced a severe code of penal legislation against them. The Presbyterians also suffered religious disabilities but on a much lesser scale. Power was concentrated in the hands of the small Protestant ascendancy.
The American War of Independence had an important influence on Irish politics. The American example encouraged the Protestant ascendancy to press for a measure of colonial self-government. In 1782 the Irish parliament, hitherto subservient to London, was granted independence. Ireland was now effectively a separate kingdom sharing a monarch with England, but the Dublin administration was still appointed by the King. One of the leading figures in this parliament was Henry Grattan. From 1778 onwards the penal legislation against Catholics was gradually repealed. The parliament made moves to improve and liberalise trade. The French Revolution, with its ideas of equality and liberty, had a major impact on Ireland. The Society of the United Irishmen was founded in 1791 to press for radical reform.
Its members were mainly Presbyterians from the north. The leading figures were Wolfe Tone, Napper Tandy and Lord Edward Fitzgerald. The war with France led to severe military repression in Ireland. The United Irishmen rebelled in 1798, aiming to unite Catholics and Protestants, including Presbyterians, and to break Ireland’s link with England. In spite of French help the rebellion was badly organised and easily suppressed.After the defeat of the rebellion, the London Government decided to unite the British and Irish parliaments. The Irish parliament, an unrepresentative assembly, was induced to vote itself out of existence in 1800.
V. Modern Ireland

From 1801 onwards Ireland had no Parliament of its own; Irish MPs (drawn from the ascendancy) sat in the Westminster parliament in London where they were a small minority. Westminster was unwilling to grant major concessions to Catholics, despite persistent agitation. In 1823 a Catholic barrister, Daniel O’Connell, established the Catholic Association to press for full liberty for Catholics and rapidly converted it into a political mass-movement. O’Connell’s success forced the London parliament to grant Catholic Emancipation in 1829, removing virtually all the disabilities against Catholics.
O’Connell, the most popular figure in the country, now sought repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 and the restoration of the Irish parliament. He set up the Repeal Association and modelled his campaign on that for emancipation. The agitation was characterised by mass meetings, some attracting hundreds of thousands of people. The London Government resisted and when a Dublin rally was banned in 1843, O’Connell acquiesced. This marked the effective end of the repeal campaign.
In the 1840’s the Young Ireland movement was formed. The most influential of its leaders was Thomas Davis who, like the United Irishmen, expressed a concept of nationality embracing all who lived in Ireland, regardless of creed or origin. An attempt by the Young Irelanders to stage an insurrection failed in 1848, but their ideas strongly influenced later generations.
The end of war in Europe in 1815 had a drastic impact on the economy. The war had led to a huge growth in tillage farming to supply the armies, and a dependence on the potato as a staple food. When war ended there was a change from tillage to pasture, causing agrarian unemployment. Population increased rapidly and reached 8 million by 1841, two- thirds of whom depended on agriculture. In this precarious agrarian economy the failure of the potato crop in 1845, due to blight, proved disastrous. The crop failed again in 1846, 1847 and 1848 and, coupled with severe weather, resulted in famine. By 1851 the population had been reduced by at least 2 million due to starvation, disease and emigration to Britain and North America.
The latter half of the 19th century was characterised by campaigns for national independence and land reform. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), also known as the Fenians, was founded in 1858. The Fenians, a secret society, rejected constitutional attempts to gain independence as futile. Among the leaders of the Fenians were James Stephens and John O’Leary. The Fenians staged an armed uprising in 1867. The rising was no more than a token gesture and was easily put down. The IRB continued in existence, however.
However, the years after Parnell’s death saw the growing emergence of a cultural nationalism. The Gaelic Athletic
Association, founded in 1884, promoted the national games while the Gaelic League, founded in 1893 by Douglas Hyde and Eoin MacNeill, tried to revive the Irish language and culture on a nationwide basis. At the same time Arthur Griffith developed a new political party in the period 1905-08 known as Sinn Féin - ‘we ourselves’. The Sinn Féin policy was that Irish MPs should withdraw from Westminster and establish an independent parliament. Sinn Féin had close links with the IRB. The Dublin labour dispute of 1913 produced another group, the Irish Citizen Army, which was socialist but also separatist.
The Sinn Féin representatives now constituted themselves as the first Dail, or independent Parliament, in Dublin. The Dail was headed by Éamon de Valera. The British attempt to smash Sinn Féin led to the War of Independence of 1919-21. The Irish forces were led by Michael Collins. After more than two years of guerilla struggle a truce was agreed. In December 1921 an Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed and 26 counties gained independence as the Irish Free State. Six Ulster counties had been granted their own parliament in Belfast in 1920 and remained within the United Kingdom.

The establishment of the Free State was followed by a civil war between the new Government and those who opposed the Treaty. Éamon de Valera led those who opposed the treaty. A truce was negotiated in May 1923 but the Civil War claimed the lives of many who had been prominent in the struggle for independence, among them Michael Collins and Cathal Brugha.
VI. The Irish State -; History of the State
The first Government of the new State was headed by William T. Cosgrave of the Cumann na nGaedheal (later Fine Gael) party. Cosgrave set about establishing an administration which would enable the country to recover from the ravages of war. The Government’s founding of the Electricity Supply Board in 1927 and the opening of the Shannon hydro-electric scheme marked an important stage in the country’s economic development.
Éamon de Valera led the Fianna Fail party which drew support from those who had opposed the treaty. Fianna Fail came to power in 1932 with de Valera as head of Government. A dispute over continuous land payments to the British Government led to the ‘economic war’ of 1932-38. Trade with Britain was restricted and considerable hardship resulted. In 1937 de Valera introduced a new constitution declaring Ireland to be a sovereign, independent, democratic state.
Ireland remained neutral during the Second World War, 1939-45. Although the wartime years were a period of shortages and difficulties, the country was spared the worst effects of the conflict.Fianna Fail lost office in the 1948 election after sixteen continuous years in power. The new administration, headed by John A. Costello, was an inter-party Government formed by Fine Gael, Labour and other parties. In 1948 the Republic of Ireland Act was passed, severing the last constitutional links with Britain.
Costello’s Government fell in 1951 after a controversy over the future direction of social policy. De Valera led another Fianna Fail administration for the next three years and Costello returned to Government in 1954.Ireland was admitted to the United Nations in 1955. Irish delegations have played an active role in UN affairs over the years and from 1958 onwards Irish troops have been involved in a large number of UN peacekeeping operations. Fianna Fail regained power in the 1957 election and Éamon de Valera resigned the leadership of the party in 1959 to serve as President of Ireland. He was succeeded by Sean Lemass under whose premiership the country began a period of rapid economic expansion.
The signing of the Anglo-Irish free-trade agreement in 1965 led to significant developments in trading patterns and to industrial expansion. Even more importantly, Ireland became a member of the European Community in 1973.In the years since 1969 the crisis in Northern Ireland has affected the Irish State. Successive Governments have sought to develop a solution to the problem which will provide lasting peace and stability. Profound change has affected the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country in the intervening quarter century.

CULTURE AND RELIGION

Patrick , Patron of Ireland
The work of a missionary from somewhere in the west of Britain was crucial to the conversion of Ireland to the Christian faith in the 5th centuryAD. He was a Romanised Celt called Patricius, son of a deacon and grandson of a priest. At the age of sixteen he was seized by an Irish raiding party near his home and brought across the sea to this country, where he was sold as a slave. After several years herding animals in lonely places, he managed to escape, and made his way to the Continent, where he studied for the priesthood. One night in his sleep he dreamed that a voice called to him to return to Ireland and to 'walk once more amongst us'. The compassionate and determined way in which he answered that mystical request has caused him to be known and loved ever since as Naomh Padraig, or Saint Patrick, patron of Ireland.

We know this much of his life-story from one of the few documents written by Patrick himself, his Confessio. But, unfortunately, we know little else of the precise details of his actual mission, for he gives but very scant detail of either time or place. To him his work was principally a spiritual task, the gaining of souls for God, and thus he wrote in a private rather than an annalistic mode. Traditionally the dates 432 AD to 461 AD have been given for his mission in Ireland, and there is little doubt but that his feast-day, March 17, was the date of his death. Although there were some scattered Christian communities in Ireland before his arrival, it is clear that the impetus for the general change to Christianity throughout the land was due to him personally and to his work.

Almost two hundred years after his time, two biographies of him were written, by monks called Muirchú and Tireachan. Both of these were acquainted with the writings of the saint himself and also with some traditions concerning him. But they invented much, and borrowed material from the Bible and other early Christian literature in order to portray him as a special prophet sent by God to the Irish people. As a result, modern scholars regard these and later mediaeval biographies of the saint as having no historical value, except for the study of how legends develop around the name of a famous person.

These fanciful texts do, however, have some curious accounts which seem to echo the preaching of Patrick himself. For instance, in the Confessio he contrasted the idols of the pagan Irish to the true 'light' of Christianity. He criticised in particular the belief in the divinity of the sun, claiming that 'its brilliance will not endure', and that those who worship it will be punished; and insisted instead on the worship of Christ, 'the true sun who will never perish, nor will anyone who does His will'. It is interesting to note that both Muirchú and Tireachan tell a story of a fire-ordeal by which the saint showed the superior power of Christianity over that of a pagan druid. According to the story, a servant of Patrick emerged unscathed from the ordeal, being untouched by the fires of paganism, whereas his opponent was totally consumed by the fire of the Christian faith.

In the Confessio, Patrick repeatedly refers to the great 'gift' he has received - meaning the conversion of the Irish people - and remarks that 'whether I receive good or ill, I return thanks equally to God'. Curiously, Muirchú relates a story of how a powerful pagan called Daire sent a cauldron to Patrick as a gift, but the saint uttered no more than a single word of thanks. The pagan was incensed at this, and had the cauldron taken back, but Patrick expressed the same word of gratitude again. This caused the pagan to reconsider his position, and he gave the cauldron to Patrick to keep, as well as a site on which to build a church at Armagh. It is interesting to note that Daire was an alternate name for the Celtic father-deity who was more usually referred to as the 'Daghdha', the bountiful god who gave to all from his great cauldron. Since Patrick preached that the Christian God was the true giver of good fortune, it may well be that this story sprang from a confused memory of such teaching.

The most striking story from these early biographies describes Patrick as lighting the first Paschal fire in Ireland. As an account, it is full of high drama. We are told that the High-King Laoghaire had the custom of lighting a fire at the royal centre of Tara on a certain night and that nobody else should kindle theirs before he did so. Patrick had come to the hill of Slane nearby, however, and when Laoghaire saw a fire lighting there he was outraged and ordered that the transgressor appear before him. Then Patrick came to Tara as a great Christian hero, and the High-King and all the royal forces were confounded by his miraculous power.

Several great contests between Patrick and the pagan druids are described, contests in which dramatic changes of climate and environment are brought about by magic and miracles. The saint, of course, triumphs in all of these tussles, which occur in the presence of the High-King at Tara and of all the royal court. The substance of these narratives was borrowed from passages in Christian literature, and it is clear that Patrick was being portrayed as a kind of new Moses triumphing over the Irish potentates, who have all the marks of the Pharaoh and other Biblical tyrants. Indeed, just as Moses caused water to spring from rock at a stroke of his staff, so Patrick is said to have caused holy wells to spring up at different places so as to facilitate the baptism of his converts.

The earliest biographies described the mission of Patrick as taking place in the northern half of the country, but around the 9th century a third account of him was written which extended his mission to the south. As well as the bishopric at Armagh, it was further claimed that he founded the bishopric at Cashel, which rivalled the former in prestige. There is little doubt but that all such accounts of his activities were closely connected with the claims and counter-claims of the two leading power-groups of the period, the Ui Néill dynasty in the north and the Eoghanacht dynasty in the south.

In the 9th century literature we also find the beginning of a celebrated tradition concerning St Patrick. This claims that he spent forty days and nights fasting on top of the mountain of Croagh Patrick in Co. Mayo, and that God became worried lest he might die and thereby leave his mission unaccomplished. The Supreme Being therefore asked him to abandon his fast, but Patrick would only do so on three conditions - that the Irish people would not live permanently under oppression, that the country would be submerged seven years before the end of the world and so be spared the final devastation, and that Patrick himself would be allowed to judge all the Irish people on the Last Day. This tradition, which has Patrick as the special champion of the Irish, persisted down through the centuries and gave consolation to the people in times of misery and distress.

The best-known of all traditions concerning the saint seems not to have originated until the 11th century, when it first appears in biographies of him. This is the belief that he banished the snakes from Ireland. The indications are that this idea was suggested by the many accounts of how the saint banished the 'demons of paganism', and that it was borrowed specifically from a similar motif in the biography of St Honoratus, founder of the island-monastery of Lérins in France where Patrick is said to have studied. The fact that there were no snakes in Ireland was well known from antiquity, and indeed was referred to by the Graeco- Roman writer Solinus two hundred years before Patrick was born.

Later still is the association of the shamrock with him. It was customary in Ireland to use the shamrock as an aperitif, and the placing of some sprigs of it in a toast was no doubt the origin of 'drowning the shamrock on the feast day' of the saint. The actual wearing of the shamrock as a badge on St Patrick's Day is hardly more than a few centuries old, but old enough for some creative mind to notice that its trefoil stem offered a neat parallel to the Christian mystery of the Trinity. Thus we are told that Patrick, being exasperated in his efforts to impress this doctrine on his Irish audience, stooped down and picked up the shamrock, explaining that just as three leaves can spring from one stem so also there are three persons in one God.

The Irish people, however, have not confined their fascination with St Patrick to environmental and theological legends. Down through the centuries they have invented many other stories of a curious and sometimes humorous nature. He is said, for instance, to have met survivors of the epical heroes of old Irish tradition, the Fianna, and to have obtained baptism posthumously for their fellows. It is also claimed that he blessed and cursed various parts of the country, depending on the preferences of the storytellers, and that he ordered that tavern-keepers should always give extra value for money on the day of his feast!

So Patrick, the slave-boy forcibly brought here from abroad, has become to many generations of Irish people the epitome of all that they considered best in their culture - a courageous and protective figure, proficient in miracles, scrupulous in teaching, but full of human kindness and with his own puckish sense of humour.

St Patrick's Day has always had a special meaning for the Irish. The national holiday, which falls on March 17, is an occasion of great celebration not only for the native Irish themselves but also for many- thousands of people of Irish background throughout the world. While the principal parade in Ireland is in Dublin, many cities and towns throughout the country hold parades. Parades and marching band competitions have become the order of the day, and participants come from all over the United States, Canada, Britain and Continental Europe, to join in the festivities. Word of the fun has spread to such an extent that nowadays the period of celebration has increased to a week.

Freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion are, subject to public order and morality, Constitutionally guaranteed. The State guarantees not to endow any religion. The majority of the people belong to Christian denominations. At the 1991 census, approximately 92% of the population of the Republic of Ireland were classified as Roman Catholic, approximately 3% as Protestant (including Church of Ireland: 2.35%; Presbyterian: 0.37%; Methodist: 0.14%). There is a small but long-established Jewish Community (0.04%). The remainder of the population belonged to other religious groups, many of them newly-established in Ireland (Islamic: 0.11%, Jehovah’s Witnesses: 0.10%, etc.) or claimed no specific religious beliefs.

LITERATURE AND DRAMA IN ENGLISH

Irish writing in the English language is called Anglo-Irish Literature to distinguish it from classical English literature on the one side and literature in the Irish Language on the other. The sense of tension in the word Anglo-Irish reflects a question of national identity which has energised that literary tradition from William Molineux’s Case of Ireland Stated (l698) to the Report of the New Ireland Forum of 1983, from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) to Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds (1939). Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was a contemporary of Aogan Ó Rathaille, last of Gaelic Ireland’s dynastic poets. Though the two lived on the same island their worlds hardly touched, and there is irony in the fact that one tradition was born while the other expired. Ó Rathaille’s theme was the decay of the old Gaelic Catholic order; Swift’s theme was the humiliation of the Irish Protestant nation at the hands of the London parliament. Neither writer heard the other’s voice. Yet the development of an Irish literary tradition was to involve the mutual discovery and interpenetration of these two nations, their languages, aspirations and culture.
The first great development in the 18th century, colonial, period was almost totally Protestant, its temper classical, its perspectives cosmopolitan, its focus London with its clubs, theatres and town houses. It could be said that the English comedy of manners from the Restoration to the rise of Romanticism was the creation of brilliant Irishmen, George Farquhar, William Congreve, Charles Macklin, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The only sign of ‘Irishness’ in these writers was their affection for that comic personage - bibulous, irascible, generous, eloquent and sentimental - who came to be known as the ‘stage Irishman’.
These writers were typically educated at Protestant grammar schools and Trinity College Dublin. They gravitated to London, centre of the literary universe, and quickly became absorbed into that imperial consciousness. Swift, Steele, Burke and Sheridan were active in British politics. When Burke wrote about the miseries of Ireland it was in terms of a global responsibility that took in the French Revolution and the revolt of the American colonies. It was the duty of Augustan literature ‘with extensive view to Survey Mankind, from China to Peru’, and that perspective is reflected in the essays of Steele and the fiction and poetry of Goldsmith - though some critics have seen the withering of an Irish peasant community in his Deserted Village (1770).
With Swift it was different. His appointment as Dean of St Patrick’s, Dublin, in 1714 at once marked the end of his hopes for high ecclesiastical office and the start of his passionate involvement in politics. The problem of Anglo-Irish identity has seldom been better expressed than in his Drapier’s Letters, where he attacked Westminster for imposing its will on the Dublin parliament: ‘Am I a Free-man in England, and do I become a slave in six hours by crossing the Channel?.’ The feeling of resentment against England was a theme for pamphlet, satire and ballad through the century until the granting of legislative independence to the Irish parliament in 1782.
The new ‘Patriot Parliament’ brought not only a flowering of political thought and oratory - Grattan, Flood and Curran being the exemplary figures - but a surge of scholarly and poetic interest in that Gaelic Ireland that had seemed to be dying on its feet in the figure of Aogan O Rathaille at the beginning of the century. Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques of Irish Poetry (see page 142) made available authentic Ossianic poems which had been only glimpsed in the famous forgeries of James MacPherson a generation previously. Edward Bunting published his Ancient Music of Ireland in 1796 and Thomas Moore was setting words to these airs in his famous Irish Melodies before the turn of the century. The spirit of the French Revolution and of the Romantic Movement in literature fuelled the patriotic balladry of the rebellion in 1798. But the sense of optimism and creativity which characterised these last years of the century was crushed by the Act of Union (1800) which abolished the Irish parliament and reduced the level of cultural activity.
The decades that followed were dominated by the ‘regional novel’. Its pioneer was Maria Edgeworth, daughter of a Protestant landlord, whose powerful influence on his own regional fiction of the Scottish Highlands was acknowledged by Sir Walter Scott. In her novels, most notably Castle Rackrent (1800) and The Absentee (1812) she addressed the vexed problem of Anglo-Irish identity, especially the role of the landlord divided between the lure of London and the responsibilities of his stewardship. Apart from their literary intentions these novels were directed at an English readership in an attempt to explain the condition of Ireland. Her lead was followed by Lady Morgan, and by the Catholic novelists, Gerald Griffin, John and Michael Banim and the prolific William Carleton, born to Irish-speaking parents in Tyrone in 1794. His Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry provides the most authentic and vivid account of life among Ireland’s rural poor anywhere available.
Throughout the first half of the l9th century there was steady work in Gaelic manuscript study, folklore and translation by scholars like John O’Donovan, Eugene O’Curry and Sir Charles Petrie, and such poets as Jeremiah Joseph Callanan, Edward Walsh, Samuel Ferguson and James Clarence Mangan. Their activities centred largely on the Ordnance Survey of the 1830s, the Dublin University Magazine and later The Nation newspaper; this had been founded in 1842 to renew the cause of Irish nationalism which had in a sense been shelved during O’Connell’s campaigns for Catholic Emancipation and later for Repeal of the Union. The Nation, addressing itself to an indigenous readership and insisting on the concept of autonomous Irish nationhood, could be said to have heralded the end of ‘regionalist’ writing. The cultural dimensions of nationality had by now been adumbrated in a substantial body of poetry based on native sources, historical, social and mythological. Therefore, when William Butler Yeats found himself at the head of a literary renaissance in the last years of the century he claimed the Nation poets as his cultural ancestors:
Know, that I would accounted be True brother of a company That sang to sweeten Ireland’s wrong Ballad and story, rann and song
Nor may I less be counted one With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson.
The two most arresting events of the literary renaissance were, arguably, the performance of Yeats’s Countess Cathleen and Edward Martyn’s The Heather Field on a double bill in Dublin in 1899, and the publication of George Moore’s The Untilled Field (1903). Both events involve the interpenetration of the two cultures, both have resonances well beyond Ireland, and both contain in embryo the essential features of the movement. Yeats’s play, performed by an English company of actors, explored a traditional theme; Martyn’s brought Ibsen’s social realism to bear on Irish rural life. Moore, on the other hand, had returned to Ireland having made himself a reputation for adapting Zola’s naturalism to the English novel in Esther Waters. He was approached by the Gaelic League - recently founded by Douglas Hyde with the aim of reviving Irish as a spoken language - to write a number of simple stories which might be translated into Irish to act as models for its fledgling writers. As he proceeded with the task he realised that he could do for his own country what his friend, Turgenev - an exiled landlord like himself in Paris - had done for Russia in his Sportsman’s Sketchbook.
Moore remained in Ireland for the first decade of the century, long enough to write his finest novel, The Lake, and to compose his imaginative history of the literary revival, Ave, Salve, Vale, which began to appear in 1911.
Meanwhile, the theatre movement prospered. It found a permanent home in the Abbey Theatre in 1904, and by then a body of distinguished playwrights had emerged under its auspices - John M. Synge, Lady Gregory, Padraic Colum and Yeats himself. Synge was the greatest and most controversial: his Playboy of the Western World caused a famous riot on its production in 1907. His death in 1909 ended the first great phase in the Abbey Theatre’s history.
In poetry Yeats moved from that early mode of the ‘Celtic Twilight’ which had reached its climax in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) to the engaged, muscular and combative poetry of The Green Helmet and Responsibilities (1914), whose title betokens a strenuous involvement with social and political issues. His contemporary, George Russell (‘AE’), continued in that vein of Celtic mysticism which he had shared with the early Yeats, though his ‘first disciple’, James Stephens, revealed a more adventurous and experimental spirit. In 1912 Stephens published, side by side with his most mystical volume of poems, The Hill of Vision, his novel of the Dublin slums, The Charwoman’s Daughter and his classic fantasy, The Crock of Gold. His experiments with prose fiction showed the way to a succession of fantasists including Flann O’Brien, Mervyn Wall, Eimar O’Duffy, even James Joyce himself, as in the Celtic grotesqueries of the Cyclops episode of Ulysses.
Joyce chose the expatriate route towards his chosen territory, what his hero Stephen Dedalus had called ‘silence, exile and cunning’. The route had already been taken by Boucicault whose witty melodramas like The Colleen Bawn and The Shaughraun relied to a great extent on the stock figure of ‘the stage Irishman’; and by Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw who had dominated the London stage in the 1890s. After his dazzling success with The Importance of Being Earnest and The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Wilde died tragically in the last year of the century. Shaw continued to entertain London with his plays, prefaces and conversation for another fifty years.
Joyce’s devious and precarious course took him to Trieste, Pola, Rome, Paris and Zurich while he created a body of prose fiction that was to transform the novel. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man dramatised the inner consciousness of the growing artist with a suppleness and intensity of style never matched before or since in the bildungsroman. Ulysses (1922) deployed the mythic outline of Homer’s Odyssey to make its hero, a Dublin Jew named Leopold Bloom, the universal modern citizen and Dublin the archetypal metropolis ofwestern civilisation. Joyce’s relentless experiments with language and form went on to make Finnegans Wake at once the most brilliant and impenetrable prose narrative in the history of literature.
The short story continued to be a favourite vehicle for Irish writing. Daniel Corkery’s first collection, A Munster Twilight (1916), affectionately explored the ethos of his native province. His Hounds of Banba celebrated the guerilla warfare of the War of Independence in which his fellow Corkmen, Frank O’Connor and Sean O Faolain, were actively involved. Their first volumes, O’Connor’s Guests of the Nation and O Faolain’s Midsummer Night’s Madness in the early 1930’s, cast a colder eye on the armed struggle and on the quality of life in the new State. Beside them loomed the novelist and short story writer Liam O’Flaherty, whose vision of elemental life on the Aran Islands brought a new lyricism to the form. Mary Lavin’s Tales from Bective Bridge (1942), with its passionate contemplation of life in the midlands, revived a sense of organic form which looked back to Joyce and forward to James Plunkett’s evocations of Dublin in his collection, The Trusting and the Maimed (1959).
The tradition of the ‘Protestant Nation’ which Edith Somerville and Martin Ross had inherited from dgeworth, Charles Lever and Charles Lover and developed in their witty Irish R.M. series, found its next great exponent in Elizabeth Bowen (1900-1973). Bowen’s novels, A World of Love and The Last September, explore the life style of the Cork gentry in a changing social and political world. The line continued through the light satiric fiction of Christine Longford and W. J. White to the brilliant short novels of Jennifer Johnston and the fiction of William Trevor, both of whom reflect the contemporary tragedy of Northern Ireland.
The second great phase of the Irish theatre began with Sean O’Casey’s ‘three blazing masterpieces’, The Shadow of a Gunman, The Plough and the Stars and Juno and the Paycock in the 1920’s. In the same decade Denis Johnston effectively introduced the techniques of Expressionism in The Old Lady Says No. Other notable dramatists of the time were Lennox Robinson, T. C. Murray, Paul Vincent Farrell and, a little later, Walter Macken and M. J. Molloy.
The contemporary theatre also displays both talent and vitality. Brian Friel, who had already achieved an international reputation with Philadelphia, Here I Come (1964), reached new heights of excellence with Translations, The Faith Healer and Making History (1988). Thomas Murphy, who had an early success with Whistle in the Dark (1961), scored a hit with his brilliantly experimental Gigli Concert (1983). His Bailegangaire (1985) was given its premiere by Druid Theatre Co. with Siobhan McKenna. This was followed by Too Late for Logic in 1989. Hugh Leonard, one of the few to conquer London and New York at the same time, has crowned his achievement with two brilliant sister plays, Da and A Life (Da has now been filmed). Other notable contemporary playwrights are Frank McGuinness with Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards The Somme (1985) and Innocence (1986); Michael Harding with Strawboys (1987) and Una Pooka (1989); Dermot Bolger with The Lament for Arthur Cleary (1989) and Blinded by the Light (1990).
The most daring of experimental dramatists has been Tom MacIntyre whose theatrical rendering of Kavanagh’s Great Hunger on the one hand, and of the inner workings of Swift’s creative psyche in The Bearded Lady on the other, have called forth the Abbey’s full resources of dance, mime, music, feature, costume and decor. The works of Thomas Kilroy (Talbot’s Box), J. B. Keane (The Field), Graham Reid (The Death of Humpty Dumpty) and Bernard Farrell (I do not Like Thee Doctor Fell) continue to sustain the liveliest period of Irish theatre since the death of Synge.
After the death of Yeats the world of poetry was divided between Austin Clarke and Patrick Kavanagh. Austin Clarke (1896-1974) moved into his great period in 1938 with a volume of lyrics, Night and Morning. His poetry was especially notable for its range of prosodic resource and the intensity with which it rendered what he called ‘the drama of racial conscience’. Kavanagh (1904-1967) is considered by many to have written the greatest long poem of contemporary Ireland in The Great Hunger with its tragic hero, a small farmer in Monaghan.
A number of outstanding poets began to publish in the 1960’s - Thomas Kinsella, John Montague, Derek Mahon, Richard Murphy, Anthony Cronin, Michael Longley, Eavan Boland, Brendan Kennelly, and Seamus Heaney. Kinsella’s Nightwalker (1968) and Montague’s The Rough Field (1972) addressed in very different idioms painful questions of personal and national identity. The former’s Butcher’s Dozen was a controversial public response to the Widgery inquiry, while Montague’s long masterpiece remains a pertinent reflection on the tangled inheritance of Northern Ireland. Mahon, Longley and especially Heaney have evolved sophisticated responses to the matter of Northern Ireland with each in his own way facing the equally bleak questions of identity posed by the common human inheritance of a terrible century. Seamus Heaney (b. 1939) is Ireland’s best known poet of the present day, noted for his lyric evocation of the Ulster countryside with its tragic underdeposit of history. He has been Oxford Professor of Poetry and presently teaches at Harvard. Among his works are Station Island (1984) and Seeing Things (1991). Brendan Kennelly and Paul Durcan have garnered huge followings for poems that, in their different ways, offer a radical critique of modern Irish life. Michael Hartnett stands out as a poet whose unillusioned lyrics reclaim for the English language tradition characteristic themes of the part-submerged high-Gaelic tradition. All of these poets work in the central, lyric, tradition which comes down to us unbroken from the Gaelic, mediated through Yeats in the English language. Eavan Boland, a lyric poet with a keen sense of history and its exclusions, gives these inheritances a new cast, examining her life as a woman and Irishwoman of the late twentieth century from a considered feminist perspective. Her work has been influential in empowering a new generation of women poets.
The towering figure in fiction as well as drama after the death of Joyce was the Nobel Prize winner, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). Beckett’s first novel, Murphy (1938), launched him on an exploration, at once bleak and hilarious, of humanity’s absurdity sub specie aeternitatis, reaching its climax with the great trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. Other versions of the absurd were pursued by his contemporary, Flann O’Brien (1911-1966) in At Swim - Two-Birds and The Third Policeman. Benedict Kiely and Brian Moore both began their writing careers in the fifties and have since kept in step in the range and variety of their themes and their experiment with fictional form. In the sixties The Barracks and The Dark marked the appearance of John McGahern as a remarkable novelist. Of the older generation, Aidan Higgins and Edna O’Brien have constructed memorable Irelands in their different ways, but the rising generation of prose writers, most notably Dermot Healy, Evelyn Conlon, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin, and Glenn Patterson, are all striking out into individual territories, apparently uninfluenced by their older contemporaries.
The seventies saw Francis Stuart’s crowning achievement in the novel, Black List, Section H, a psychological self-portrait of great intensity. It was also in this decade that John Banville published the first of his subtle, reflexive fictions, Long Lankin. He has since completed his trilogy, Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter, in which he dramatises the birth of modernism in human consciousness. His novel The Book of Evidence was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1989.
Ireland in the 1990’s is celebrating a second literary renaissance. With the writers of the 1960’s still for the most part vital and publishing, there is now a new generation of considerable talent coming through: in prose Hugo Hamilton, Dermot Healy, Patrick McCabe and Roddy Doyle - winner of the 1993 Booker Prize for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - have appeared to considerable critical acclaim as have, in poetry, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon and Medbh McGuckian from the North, together with Eiléan Ni Chuilleanain, Paula Meehan, Thomas McCarthy, Philip Casey and Matthew Sweeney from the South. In theatre, Sebastian Barry, Dermot Bolger, Declan Hughes, Billy Roche and Marie Jones are already playwrights of considerable achievement.

ATTRACTIONS AND SIGHT SEEING
Dublin
Dublin has become a hot spot on the world tourism scene. This stunning city has always been worthy of this, but it seems that the world is finally recognizing the merits of Ireland's capital. There is no doubt that Ireland's rapid emergence as a high-tech powerhouse has contributed to the increasing popularity of this island nation, but Dublin's appeal doesn't just lie in anything that contemporary. The joy of a visit here is not so much about tangible sights and attractions (although there are plenty of these), rather it is in the general feel of the city, its centuries old tradition of true hospitality, and its efficient and well-run tourism infrastructure.

In a word Dublin, and Ireland as a whole, is all about charm - the unique style of Irish charm that inspires all fortunate enough to experience it. A trip to Dublin will rejuvenate tired spirits. Though visitors will likely spend hours pounding the pavements in pursuit of all the wonderful experiences Dublin has to offer, a visit here leaves visitors mentally stimulated and alive.
Apart from the non-discernible attractions, there is also an endless list of historical, cultural and leisure-oriented places and tours to choose from. Perhaps the most notable though is Dublin's tremendous entertainment and nightlife scene. Whether sitting in a cozy pub sipping on a Guinness while chatting to real Dubliners, or watching a first rate Celtic oriented stage performance, evenings in Dublin are certain to be memorable.
The Temple Bar area, south of the river, is the focal point for Dublin's bar and pub scene. A wonderful time can be had for at least one evening on a pub-crawl through this rejuvenated district. A pint or more of the Guinness never tastes better than in Dublin itself, but even for those who don't enjoy Ireland's almost sacrosanct national beverage (with Irish whiskey a close second) the warm and friendly atmosphere of the Irish pub is still well worth experiencing.
HISTORY AND CULTURE

Dublin has its origins as a Celtic settlement on the shores of the River Liffey. Its official Irish name Baile Atha Cliath means town of the Hurdle Ford, and the ford can still be located today. However, it was the invading Vikings that turned Dublin into a significant community and trading port centred around a small black pool. The Vikings that founded Dublin (from dubh linn, also Irish for black pool) remained and intermarried with the Irish. The pool remained with the ongoing invasions of the Anglo-Normans and then the English, since then it has virtually disappeared and runs underground close to St. Patrick's Cathedral before returning to the Liffey in what amounts to not much more than a trickle - somewhat undignified for the body of water for which this great city was named.

Starting in the 1600s Dublin, though predominantly Catholic, was important in the protestant reformation. Theologians such as Church of Ireland Archbishop James Ussher left their mark - he was best known for dating the exact age of the planet!
By the 1700s Dublin was the second largest city in the expanding British Empire. Dublin was the beneficiary of the incredible Georgian style of architecture of that period.
Fortunately more of this has been preserved in Dublin than anywhere else. There was actually a law at the time that required that streets be made wider and more accessible and this certainly contributed to Dublin's magnificent Georgian legacy. This was also a time of literary achievement; Jonathan Swift - a Dublin cleric was one of the greatest satirists of the time. His most famous work is Gulliver's Travels.
Sadly politics soon interfered with the spirit of the city, and the 1801 Act of Union, which basically took away any vestiges of independence from England. Much turmoil and some regrettable atrocities occurred over the next century. This culminated in the Easter Rising of 1916 - the remnants of the shrapnel from this can be still be seen at the Post Office Building on O'Connell Street. Peace came in 1922, but then Ireland suffered a particularly tragic civil war. Many landmark buildings were damaged through the years of conflict, but nearly all have been beautifully restored.
Through the next 50 years Dublin was somewhat bruised from all the tumultuous events. But slowly a new proud and independent Ireland emerged, and Dublin was the keystone of this renaissance. Membership in the European Common Market certainly was a massive benefit to the economic development of the country and its capital. Various grants and an efficient government policy, which seems to know where to draw the line between interference and healthy stimulation, transformed what had been a rural based and relatively poor and backward economy and infrastructure (by the standards of Western Europe) into a high tech powerhouse. The Celtic Tiger - which is what the world has dubbed Ireland's economy because of its unprecedented and rapid growth - has transformed the city, and now Dublin is enjoying prosperity perhaps even greater than that of the Georgian era.

Dublin's renaissance is more than just economic though. The world fascination with anything Celtic, that began in the late 20th Century and still continues unabated, has really focused attention on the city. At the same time there has been a revival in traditional aspects of Irish culture and there has also been a quiet social revolution, especially in Dublin. The great power of the church has diminished and Dubliners, particularly the younger generations, are questioning social issues that the church had previously taken a strong position on. What was formally considered irrefutable is now widely debated on an ongoing basis. This is reflected in the mindset and attitudes of the people, which has been passed on and has certainly enhanced the ambience of this great city.

Belfast
Seventeenth-century Belfast was only a village. With the influx, or “plantation,” of Scottish and English settlers, Belfast boomed, spurred by the success of the local linen, rope-making, and shipbuilding industries. The Industrial Revolution took root with a vengeance. While the rest of Ireland remained rural, Belfast earned its nickname, “Old Smoke,” when many of the brick buildings you'll see today were built. The year 1888 marked the birth of modern Belfast. After Queen Victoria granted city status to this town of 300,000, citizens built its centerpiece, City Hall.

Belfast is the birthplace of the Titanic (and many ships that didn't sink). The two huge, mustard-colored cranes (the biggest in the world, nicknamed Samson and Goliath) rise like skyscrapers above the harbor, as if declaring this town's shipbuilding might. It feels like a new morning in Belfast. Security checks, once a tiresome daily routine, are now rare. What was the traffic-free security zone has shed its gray skin and become a bright and bustling pedestrian zone. On my last visit, the children dancing in the street were both Catholic and Protestant—part of a community summer-camp program giving kids from both communities reason to live to