St. Patrick

What does St Patrick signify today, in the increasingly diverse nation that is modern Ireland?

Declan McSweeney on March 15, 2023, 4:42 pm

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St Patrick’s Day is known the world over as a celebration of everything Irish, synonymous with the proverbial green outfits. Here in England, it is celebrated far more widely than St George’s day (April 23). Yet, behind the excuse for the party lies the story of a Briton who made his home in Ireland in the most extraordinary of circumstances. I am old enough to remember March 17 as the one day of the year we had Mass in Irish …

Shared Origins

Of This Island on April 22, 2012, 4:26 pm

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At least two centuries before the great boulders of Stonehenge were placed on a windswept Salisbury Plain, and over 500 years before the Great Pyramid of Giza rose from the deserts of Egypt, Neolithic architects in the Boyne Valley (Brú na Bóinne) were laying the foundations of one of the most studied structures of the ancient world. An imposing earthen mound in County Meath (an Mhí), its original name has been lost to the jealous mists of history. But the …