Welcome to Cork, Ireland!

For over 90 years, every September a huge crowd of people (in recent years an average of 300 000) gathers in some part of Ireland for the National Ploughing Championships. The three-day event attracts competitors from all over the world, and in 2022, the World Ploughing Championships …

The annual Horse Show in the RDS (Royal Dublin Society) in August brings up a cornucopia of childhood memories: large and unfamiliar agricultural machinery, stands selling all kinds of everything, men in bowler hats, women …

The toast “Death in Ireland!” is not a threat but a wish, an admission that for many Irish emigrants the ultimate desire is to return to (and live long enough to die in) their home country …

Surrounded by sea (and hundreds of smaller islands and islets), with around 12000 lakes and an average of 151 wet days (in the east) and 225 (in the west), Ireland offers a plethora of opportunities to get wet …

The first time Ireland was involved in European elections, a friend who worked in the European Parliament was discussing the results from the various countries on the day after the vote. “When will we get the Irish …

If you want to evoke the Irish countryside in an aroma, then the turf-scented candle is the only choice. For anyone of a certain age (ahem), the smell of turf fires as you travelled into the west of the country is as evocative …

When Greg and I were children, we and our families would meet up in his Dad’s office on O’Connell Street to watch the St Patrick’s Day parade. Memory is notoriously unreliable, but what I associate with those parades is an endless …

From 2023 on, the first Monday in February is a public holiday in Ireland in honour of St Brigid. The establishment of this ‘bank holiday’, as they are known here, was partly because Ireland has one of the lowest number of public …

This phrase, which translates as ‘Women’s Christmas’ refers to the Irish tradition where on 6 January women, having worked hard over the Christmas period, ‘got a day off’ and men took over the domestic tasks. Times have changed, but in recent years …

This Irish proverb translates as ‘better health than wealth’ – no doubt a view readers of this blog will go along with! But it also reminds me of a comment made years ago by a visitor about the Irish attitude to money. Not only had she noticed people …

This itemization is just one of several hundred “triads” found in a number of Irish manuscripts dating from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. Triads (and some heptads) were used to recall information to be passed on from generation to …

Welcome to the IFMSS 2024 blog. I, the writer, am Mary Nolan, one of the organizers of the IFMSS 2024 Meeting to be held in Castlemartyr Resort, Co Cork, Ireland. I’m the person ‘on the ground’; I live in Dublin; am an artist, a writer, an occasional lecturer in linguistics …