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Did you know?

The Irish love a good excuse for a party. The country is legendary for its “craic” (good fun), and  “fleadhs“ (traditional music events), festivals and fairs are a massive part of cultural life whether it’s the gastronomic delights of the Kinsale Gourmet Festival or the high-brow Dublin Theatre Festival. If you’re looking for something unique or if you want to meet your match, then head to the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival. It’s Europe’s biggest singles event and one of the oldest festivals in Ireland. Puck Fair in Kerry, where a goat is crowned king, is well worth a trip, while the Ould Lammas Fair in North  Antrim draws crowds from all over the world.

Nobody really believes in Leprechauns. And even if we did, they’re not the sort of folk that we’d be happy to run into. The Leprechaun of Celtic folktales is a cantankerous, cranky little man who mends shoes for other fairies, quite different from the cheery folk created by the 1959 Walt Disney film Darby O’Gill and The Little People.

The Irish like to think that Celtic blood flows through the veins of all the great and the good.  Among those we are proud to call our own are John F. Kennedy, Davy Crockett, Gene Kelly, Grace Kelly and Ned Kelly, too. On St. Patrick’s Day, though, everyone’s Irish. So don your green and enjoy one of the many St. Patrick’s Day  festivals around the world.

The Irish accent is famed the world over for its romantic and lyrical lilt, but it’s not until you actually get to Ireland that you realize how different accents around the country can be. To start with, in the Republic of Ireland (except for counties Monaghan and Donegal) Hiberno-English is spoken, while in Ulster the form of English is called mid-Ulster English. And within these areas in Ireland there’s a huge difference in how accents sound, too. You could never confuse a Belfast man with a Dubliner, nor a Kerry man with a Galway local. But the real key to the Irish lilt is the speed in which the words come out – so listen carefully to keep up. The Irish of the north, south, east, west and midlands all love to tell a story or two and it would be a shame to miss out!

As a race, we’re proud of the Irish language. So proud, in fact, that the Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Minister passed regulations that decree only the Gaelic versions of place names and street signs are to be used in Gaeltacht areas – regions where the Irish language is officially the major language. Just be sure to bring a map with you when traveling. And to make things a little more interesting, in the  North of Ireland, Ullans is spoken. This beautiful language is a unique form of Scots-Irish and is peculiar to the Ulster region.