Ireland
The green Atlantic island nation of the Irish, a warm, witty, storytelling people of Catholic heritage and Gaelic roots, of the pub and the craic, of traditional music, great writers, and a vast worldwide diaspora. The complete guide.
Ireland is an island nation in the North Atlantic, off the western edge of Europe, famous for its lush green landscape, its warm and talkative people, and its outsized place in the world's culture and imagination. The Republic of Ireland, an independent country since the early twentieth century, fills most of the island, with its capital at Dublin and about five million people, while the smaller northern corner, Northern Ireland, remains part of the United Kingdom. The Irish are historically a Roman Catholic and Gaelic people, known for their love of conversation, music, and storytelling, for the pub and the welcome, and for a literary tradition extraordinary for so small a nation. Above all, Ireland is a country whose people scattered across the world, so that tens of millions abroad claim Irish roots. This guide walks through the land, the diaspora, the faith, the language, the music, and the customs in turn.
Overview
Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, lying off the west coast of Great Britain and the northwestern edge of Europe, separated from Britain by the Irish Sea. The island is divided between two parts: the Republic of Ireland, an independent country covering most of the island, with its capital at Dublin and about five million people, and Northern Ireland, a smaller region in the northeast that is part of the United Kingdom. This guide describes the Republic of Ireland and the wider culture of the Irish people, much of which is shared across the whole island.
The Republic of Ireland is a parliamentary republic, with an elected president as head of state, currently Catherine Connolly, and a head of government called the Taoiseach, currently Micheal Martin, who leads the government. Ireland won its independence from the United Kingdom in the early twentieth century after centuries of British rule, and it joined the European Union in 1973 and uses the euro. The people are historically Roman Catholic, though the country has changed greatly and grown more secular. The everyday language is English, but the Irish language, an ancient Gaelic tongue, is the first official language and a cherished symbol of national identity.
A few deep forces shape life in Ireland. There is the green Atlantic land and the long history under British rule. There is the great scattering of the Irish across the world. There is the deep Catholic heritage, now much changed. There is the love of conversation, music, story, and the pub. And there is the warmth and wit of the people. The sections that follow trace these and walk through the customs.
The Emerald Isle
Ireland is famous above all for its greenness, an island so lush and verdant from its soft, rainy Atlantic climate that it is known the world over as the Emerald Isle, a land of green fields, hedgerows, and hills under shifting grey skies. It is a small island of gentle beauty: a central lowland of farmland, bog, and lakes, ringed by hills and low mountains around the coast, and edged by a dramatic Atlantic shoreline of cliffs, bays, and peninsulas, above all along the wild western seaboard.
The land has a strong pull between east and west. The east, around the capital, Dublin, is the most populous, prosperous, and modern part, long the most anglicised, while the west, facing the Atlantic, is wilder, more rural, more traditional, and more beautiful, the land of Connemara, the Cliffs of Moher, and the rugged coasts of Kerry, Clare, and Donegal, where the old Irish language and ways have best survived. Dublin holds more than a quarter of the Republic's people; other cities include Cork in the south, and Galway, the lively cultural capital of the west.
Ireland's history is written into its land. Across the green countryside lie the marks of a very long past: ancient stone tombs older than the pyramids, early Christian round towers and monastic ruins, Norman castles, and the abandoned cottages and famine memorials of a hard rural history. The island has been shaped by its position on the western edge of Europe, by its long centuries under British rule, and by the partition that divided it in the twentieth century, leaving the northeast within the United Kingdom. The green land and its deep history are at the heart of Irish identity.
The scattered nation
No fact has shaped the Irish nation more than the great scattering of its people across the world, for Ireland is a country that, for generations, sent its sons and daughters abroad in vast numbers, so that today tens of millions of people around the globe claim Irish descent, a diaspora many times larger than the population of the island itself. This worldwide Irish family, above all in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia, is central to what Ireland is and how it sees itself.
The great wave began with catastrophe. In the 1840s, the Great Famine, when the potato crop on which the poor depended failed, brought mass starvation and death, and drove huge numbers to flee the country, above all to America, in a trauma that scarred the nation and emptied the land. Emigration continued for more than a century afterward, as poverty and lack of work pushed generation after generation to leave, often forever, in the painful custom of the emigrant's farewell. Whole communities were depleted, and almost every Irish family has relatives abroad.
This scattering gave Ireland an extraordinary reach in the world. The Irish abroad kept their faith, their music, their identity, and their love of the old country alive across the generations, rising to prominence in their new lands, and the bond between Ireland and its diaspora remains deep and treasured, with millions visiting each year to trace their roots. The national day, Saint Patrick's Day, has become a global festival of Irishness, celebrated far beyond Ireland by the diaspora and by all who wish to be Irish for a day. The scattered nation is bound, across the whole world, by a shared sense of being Irish.
A Catholic country transformed
Ireland was, for most of its modern history, one of the most devoutly Roman Catholic countries in the world, where the faith was woven into every part of life, identity, and politics, bound up with the long struggle against British rule, so that to be Irish was, for centuries, very largely to be Catholic. The Church was immensely powerful, running most of the schools and hospitals, shaping the laws on marriage and morality, and commanding the deep devotion of a people among whom churchgoing was once nearly universal.
The marks of this devotion are everywhere: in the churches at the heart of every town and village, in the pilgrimages that still draw the faithful, such as the barefoot climb up the holy mountain of Croagh Patrick and the visits to the Marian shrine at Knock, in the holy wells of the countryside, and in the religious turns of everyday Irish speech. The great feasts of the Christian year and the milestones of baptism, communion, marriage, and the funeral still order much of Irish life.
Yet in recent decades Ireland has changed with remarkable speed, becoming far more secular and turning away from the Church's former dominance, a transformation hastened by anger over grave scandals and abuses that shook the Church's authority. In a single generation the country that once banned divorce came to allow it, voted to permit same-sex marriage and to liberalise its laws on abortion, and saw churchgoing fall steeply, especially among the young. Ireland today is a far more liberal and secular society, though the Catholic heritage still runs deep in its culture, its calendar, and the identity of many of its people. The faith remains part of Irishness, but its place has been transformed.
The Irish language
Ireland has its own ancient language, Irish, also called Gaelic, an old Celtic tongue quite unlike English, which was for most of the island's history the everyday speech of its people and which remains, today, the first official language of the Republic and a deeply cherished symbol of national identity, even though English is now the language almost everyone actually speaks. The fate of the Irish language is one of the most poignant threads in the nation's story.
Under centuries of British rule, and above all after the famine and the mass emigration that fell hardest on the Irish-speaking poor of the west, the language declined steeply, retreating before English until it survived as a daily tongue only in scattered pockets along the western seaboard, the regions known as the Gaeltacht, where Irish is still the language of the community. Elsewhere it gave way almost entirely to English, and Ireland became, in daily life, an English-speaking country with its own distinctive Irish way of speaking it.
Yet the language never died, and its revival became a central cause of Irish nationalism and identity. Today every child learns Irish at school, the language has official status and its own television and radio, road signs and place names appear in both tongues, and there is a growing network of Irish-language schools and a renewed pride in the old speech, especially among the young in the cities. Though English remains the everyday language of nearly all, Irish lives on as a cherished language of the nation, a treasured link to the Gaelic past and a powerful mark of what it means to be Irish.
The pub and the craic
The pub stands at the very centre of Irish social life, far more than a place to drink, but the living room of the community, the place where people gather to talk, to laugh, to hear music, and to enjoy what the Irish call the craic, a word meaning fun, good company, and lively conversation, the whole warm and witty pleasure of being together. The Irish pub is one of the country's greatest institutions and one of its best-loved gifts to the world, copied and longed for in Irish bars across the globe.
What makes the Irish pub special is not the drink but the company and the talk. In the traditional pub, all ages mix freely, from the young to the old, and strangers are drawn easily into conversation; the talk flows, ranging over everything under the sun, sharp with wit, banter, and gentle teasing, the slagging that is a mark of Irish affection. To sit by the fire in a country pub with a pint, a tune, and good conversation is the essence of a certain Irish contentment, and the pub is where the famous Irish gifts of talk, story, and humour come most alive.
Music is often part of it, for many pubs host the traditional music session, where musicians gather informally to play. And drink, above all the dark stout Guinness and Irish whiskey, has its place in this sociability, though Irish life is far more than the pub, and drinking habits have changed. At its heart, the pub is about the craic, the warmth of company and conversation that the Irish prize so highly, and it remains a beloved centre of community life across the country.
Jigs, reels, and the trad session
Ireland has one of the richest and most beloved traditional music cultures in the world, a living folk tradition of haunting airs and lively dance tunes that is woven into the life of the country and known and loved far beyond it. Irish traditional music, played on fiddle, tin whistle, flute, the elbow-blown uilleann pipes, the bodhran drum, the accordion, and the harp, ranges from slow, aching songs and airs to the fast, foot-tapping dance tunes, the jigs and reels, that set a room alight.
The heart of this music is the session, the informal gathering, most often in a pub, where musicians sit together and play tune after tune for the love of it, the music passing from player to player in a tradition learned by ear and handed down through generations. These sessions, found in pubs across the country and especially in the west, are one of the great living pleasures of Irish culture, open, spontaneous, and deeply communal, and they have done much to keep the tradition alive and thriving.
Bound up with the music is Irish dance, from the social group dancing of the ceili to the famous Irish step dancing, with its rapid, intricate footwork and still upper body, which burst onto the world stage and won admirers everywhere. The harp, an ancient symbol of Ireland, appears on the nation's coins and emblems. Irish traditional music has also blended with rock and pop to produce singers and bands of worldwide fame, and the country has given the world a remarkable amount of popular music. From the pub session to the concert stage, music is one of Ireland's deepest joys and proudest exports.
A nation of writers
For so small a country, Ireland has produced an astonishing wealth of great writers, holding a place in world literature out of all proportion to its size, and the Irish take deep and justified pride in their literary genius. The island has given the world four winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature and a host of the most celebrated names in English writing, and the love of words, story, and language runs through the whole culture.
The roll of Irish writers is extraordinary. Dublin alone gave the world James Joyce, whose great novels reshaped modern literature; the playwrights Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, masters of wit; the poet William Butler Yeats; and Samuel Beckett, the spare genius of modern theatre. The poet Seamus Heaney, the playwrights and novelists of more recent times, and a flourishing of new Irish writers have carried the tradition on, and Ireland's writers remain among the most admired in the English language.
This literary brilliance grows from a deep cultural love of language and story. Ireland has an ancient tradition of the storyteller and the poet, reaching back to the bards of Gaelic times, and a delight in talk, wordplay, and the well-told tale that fills everyday speech as much as great literature. Dublin is honoured as a world city of literature, and the works of its great writers are celebrated and walked in its streets. The gift for words, whether in a Nobel-winning novel or a sharp remark in a pub, is one of the defining glories of the Irish.
Hurling and the Gaelic games
Ireland has its own native sports, the Gaelic games, which hold a place in the life of the country that no imported sport can match, woven into the identity of every community and county across the island. The two great games are hurling, an ancient and thrillingly fast field game played with curved wooden sticks and a small ball, often called the fastest field sport in the world, and Gaelic football, a fast, high-scoring game that mixes elements of soccer and rugby. A version of hurling for women is called camogie.
What makes the Gaelic games so beloved is their deep roots in local community and their fiercely amateur spirit. They are run by the Gaelic Athletic Association, founded in the nineteenth century as part of the revival of Irish national identity, and they are played, even at the highest level, by amateurs representing their own parish and county, for honour rather than money. Loyalty to one's county runs deep, and the great matches of the championship, leading to the All-Ireland finals in Dublin, are followed with passionate intensity across the land.
The local Gaelic games club is a pillar of community life in town and village, especially in rural Ireland, a centre of identity, pride, and belonging that binds the generations. The games carry a strong sense of Irishness, tied to the language, music, and culture of the nation. Alongside them, the Irish also love soccer, rugby, horse racing, and golf, and follow their national teams with passion. But it is the Gaelic games, hurling above all, that are uniquely and proudly Irish, the native sports at the heart of community life.
Saint Patrick and the festivals
The great national festival of Ireland is Saint Patrick's Day, the seventeenth of March, the feast of the patron saint who is said to have brought Christianity to Ireland, and it has grown from a religious holy day into a vast worldwide celebration of all things Irish. In Ireland it is marked by parades, music, and festivity, with the country and its people decked in green and the shamrock, the little three-leaved plant said to have been used by Patrick to explain the faith; and around the world, carried by the diaspora, it has become a global party of Irishness, when cities everywhere turn green for the day.
Ireland's festive calendar is rich with other old traditions, many blending the Christian and the far older Celtic past. The festival of Halloween itself has its origins in the ancient Irish festival of Samhain, the old Celtic feast marking the turn toward winter, when the boundary between the living and the dead was thought to thin, a heritage Ireland gave to the world. The first of February brings the feast of Saint Brigid, Ireland's other great patron, an ancient day of spring with roots older than Christianity.
Christmas is the great family festival of the Irish year, kept with deep warmth and its own customs, such as the candle in the window and, on the day after, the old tradition of the wren boys going from door to door. Throughout the year, towns and villages keep their patterns, their fairs, their festivals of music and the arts, and their local saints' days. These festivals, mixing faith, folklore, and the love of gathering, fill the Irish year and bind communities at home and the diaspora abroad.
Stew, soda bread, and the pint
Irish food is hearty, homely, and rooted in the produce of a green farming island, built on excellent meat and dairy, on potatoes, vegetables, oats, and the fish of the surrounding seas, simple traditional cooking that has been joined in recent years by a lively modern food revival. The potato holds a special, fraught place in the Irish story, once the staple food of the poor and the crop whose failure brought the famine, and it remains central to the Irish table.
The classic dishes are warming and unfussy: Irish stew, of lamb or mutton slow-cooked with potatoes and onions; bacon and cabbage; the hearty cooked breakfast of bacon, sausage, egg, and black and white pudding; and colcannon and champ, comforting blends of mashed potato with cabbage or onion. Irish soda bread, made without yeast, is a beloved everyday loaf, and the rich butter, cheese, and cream of Irish dairy are among the finest anywhere. Seafood is superb along the coasts, from oysters to smoked salmon.
Ireland's most famous contributions to the table, though, are its drinks. The dark, creamy stout Guinness, brewed in Dublin, is a national emblem, drunk the world over and best, the Irish say, at home; and Irish whiskey, one of the great whiskeys of the world, has been distilled on the island for centuries. In recent decades Ireland has become a surprising centre of fine modern cooking and artisan food, but the heart of Irish eating remains the hearty, homely fare of the farmhouse table, shared with family and washed down, often, with a good pint.
The hundred thousand welcomes
The Irish are renowned around the world for their warmth, friendliness, and hospitality, a people quick to welcome a stranger, fond of conversation, and gifted with charm and good humour, and this welcoming spirit is captured in a cherished old Irish greeting, cead mile failte, meaning a hundred thousand welcomes. Visitors to Ireland almost always remark first on the friendliness of the people, the ease of falling into conversation, and the genuine warmth of the welcome.
At the heart of the Irish character is a love of talk and of company. The Irish are great talkers and storytellers, valuing the art of conversation, the well-turned phrase, and the good story above almost anything, and a stranger may find themselves drawn into a long and lively chat in a shop, a pub, or a bus queue. Bound up with this is the famous Irish wit and humour, quick, dry, self-deprecating, and fond of teasing and banter, and a gift for not taking oneself or life too seriously.
Irish manners are warm and informal, with first names used easily and a relaxed friendliness, though courtesy, modesty, and good humour are valued, and showing off or self-importance is quietly disliked. Hospitality is generous, and a guest will be well looked after; the response to thanks is given freely. For a visitor, the keys to Ireland are openness, a readiness to chat and to share a laugh, a modest manner, and an appreciation of the craic. The warmth and wit of the welcome are among the most beloved features of the Irish.
Family, the wake, and community
Family lies at the centre of Irish life, and family ties are close, warm, and enduring, with strong bonds between the generations and a deep sense of loyalty and belonging, even as Irish families have grown smaller and more modern than in the past. The family gathers for Sundays, for the great festivals, and for the milestones of life, and the bonds of kinship reach out, through the diaspora, across the whole world, so that family connection is felt even at great distances.
Among the most distinctive of Irish traditions are those around death, above all the Irish wake, an old custom in which the body of the person who has died is kept, traditionally at home, for a day or more before burial, while family, friends, and neighbours gather to pay their respects, to share food and drink, and to remember the dead with stories, music, and even laughter as well as grief. The wake, and the great gathering of the community for a funeral, show the Irish way of facing death with togetherness, and the support of the whole community for the bereaved is a deep and treasured custom.
Community runs strong in Ireland, especially in the towns and villages and the rural countryside, where neighbours know and help one another, and where the parish, the local Gaelic games club, the pub, and the church bind people together. There is a strong tradition of looking out for neighbours, of turning up in times of trouble or loss, and of belonging to a place. Family and community, the bonds of kin and neighbour and parish, are at the heart of Irish life, and a source of its warmth and strength.
The nation today
Ireland today is a prosperous, modern, and confident nation of about five million people, a parliamentary republic governed from Dublin, with an elected president, Catherine Connolly, as head of state and a Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, leading the government. Once one of the poorer countries of western Europe, Ireland transformed itself in a single generation into one of the wealthiest, its economy booming in the era known as the Celtic Tiger and built today on technology, pharmaceuticals, finance, and trade, with many of the world's biggest companies basing their European operations in Dublin. A committed member of the European Union, Ireland has become open, outward-looking, and increasingly diverse.
The nation has changed profoundly and faces new questions. The country that emigrants once fled has become, for the first time, a land of immigration, drawing newcomers from across Europe and the world and growing more multicultural, which has brought new energy along with new debates. The rapid liberalisation of a once deeply Catholic and conservative society has remade its laws and attitudes. Ireland weighs a severe housing shortage and high costs, the management of its booming economy, and its relationship with Britain and the wider world.
The island's long division remains part of the picture. The decades of violent conflict in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles, were brought to an end by the peace agreement of 1998, and the guns have largely fallen silent, though the question of the island's future and the relationship between its two parts endures. Through all its transformation, Ireland holds to the identity built over its history: the green land, the scattered global family, the heritage of faith and the Gaelic past, the love of music, words, and the craic, and the warmth of its people. Modern, wealthy, and proudly Irish, the nation carries its deep traditions into a confident new age.