Ireland
Ireland Reference library
The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland
... Frequency 1911: 543 Main location (1847–64): Antrim and Down (1911): Antrim, Down, Armagh, Dublin, Longford, Wicklow English: ethnic name denoting a man from Ireland, from Middle English Irland, Irlond, Erlond (Old English Īraland ). Early bearers: Thomas Ireland, (of London), merchant, 1604 in Irish Patent Rolls p. 72 (Moyare, Meath); Samuel Ireland, esquire, 1660 in Census and Poll p. 466 (The mershis of Dundalke, Dundalke, Louth); John Ireland, 1669 in Hearth Money Rolls (Killaley, Killead, Antrim); Gilbert Ireland, 1796 in Flaxgrowers...
Ireland Reference library
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain
... 1881: 6880; widespread in England and Scotland: esp Lancs. English: ethnic name denoting a man from Ireland, from Middle English Irland , Irlond , Erlond (Old English Īraland ). The Latin name was (H)ibernia . Compare Irish...
Ireland Quick reference
World Encyclopedia
... Second largest island of the British Isles . Ireland is w of Great Britain. The Irish Sea and St George's Channel run between the two islands. Politically, Ireland is divided in two: the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland . Land and climate The central area of Ireland is a lowland with a mild, wet climate. This area is covered with peat bogs (a source of fuel) and fertile limestone (the location of dairy farming). Most coastal regions are barren highlands. The interior of Ireland has many lakes and wide rivers (loughs). It boasts the longest...
Ireland Reference library
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable (19 ed.)
...island ’ and, by sentimental Republicans, as the ‘Four Green Fields’ (referring to the four traditional provinces). Aberdonians of Ireland See under aberdonian . Athens of Ireland See under athens . Church of Ireland See under church . Fair maid of Ireland, The The ignis fatuus . Ireland forgeries, The See under fakes . Toads unknown in Ireland See under toad . United Irishmen See under united . Young Ireland See under young...
Ireland Reference library
Dictionary of American Family Names (2 ed.)
... US frequency (2010): 14800 1 English and Scottish: ethnic name denoting someone from Ireland, from Middle English Irland , Irlond , Erlond (Old English Īraland ). The country gets its name from the genitive case of Old English Īras ‘Irishmen’ + land ‘land’. The stem Īr- is taken from the Celtic name for Ireland, Èriu , earlier Everiu . The Latin name was (H)ibernia . The surname is especially common in Liverpool, England, which has a large Irish population. Compare Irish . 2 Americanized form of Erland...
Ireland Quick reference
Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names (6 ed.)
...Ireland ( Éire ) , ( Ierne, Hibernia, Ériu, Scotia, Irish Free State ) Ireland comprises some four-fifths of the island of Ireland while the remainder is the province of Northern Ireland which is part of the UK. The existing boundary between the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ was agreed in 1925 . The 1948 Republic of Ireland Act, inaugurated in 1949 , declared Éire (in English, Ireland) to be a republic formally free of the British crown; the state’s official name was confirmed as Éire while its official description became the Republic of Ireland (Poblacht na...
Ireland Reference library
The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts
... . Ceramics see Belleek Porcelain Factory . Glass see Cork ; Round glass house ; Tower of glass ; Waterford . Textiles see Carrickmacross work ; LimErick Lace ; Mountmellick embroidery...
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A Dictionary of World History (3 ed.)
... An island of the British Isles, lying west of Great Britain. Four-fifths of it is occupied by the Irish Republic ( see ireland, republic of ) and the remainder by Northern Ireland , which is part of the United Kingdom. Settled by the Celts, the country became divided into independent tribal territories over which the lords of Tara exercised nominal suzerainty. Christianity reached Ireland, probably in the 4th century, to be consolidated by the work of St Patrick, and after the breakup of the Roman Empire the country became for a time a leading...
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The Kings and Queens of Britain (2 ed.)
... Seventh-century Ireland was divided into about 150 small kingdoms called tuatha, some becoming loosely aggregated into larger tribal units. The main tribe in the north-west was the Northern Uí Néill, in the north-east the Dál Riata; central Ulster was dominated by the Airgialla, Meath by the Southern Uí Néill, the west by the Connachta. For many centuries, the chief Irish family were the Uí Néill (named after Niall of the Nine Hostages). The extension of their power destroyed much of the tribal structure and their claim to the high-kingship of Ireland was...
Ireland Reference library
Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope
...to Ireland and its people by engaging in his fiction with the question of Ireland and of Irish distress. The answers that he could accept in his capacity as a civil servant were not always enough to satisfy his imaginative response to the ruin that confronted him in Ireland, England's oldest colony. It was a literal ruin, come on by chance in Co. Leitrim, that prompted Trollope to start his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran . The abandoned house was the sign of the failure and departure of a landlord. Such sights became so common in Ireland after...
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The Oxford Dictionary of Dance (2 ed.)
...funds. In 1974 Moriarty founded the state-funded fully professional Irish Ballet Company, which became the Irish National Ballet in 1983 . She created several works for it including The Playboy of the Western World (mus. Sean O'Riada , 1978 ). Domi Reiter-Stoffer was artistic adviser from 1974 to 1989 and created several works for the company including Lady of the Camellias (mus. Saint-Saëns , 1984 ). In 1986 Vourenjuuri-Robinson took over as director but in 1989 the Irish Arts Council withdrew funding from it, as well as from Dublin...
Ireland Reference library
Mark Thornton Burnett
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
...are still haunted by ‘Irish’ ghosts. King Lear and Othello present themselves respectively as dramas preoccupied with the unity of ‘Britain’ and the nature of hybridized identity, areas of concern with multiple Irish associations. The Tempest might also be seen as having an Irish dimension, since the island, like Ireland, is in the process of developing from a kingdom to a colony: it is a domain caught between two territorial vocabularies. If Ireland was of interest to Shakespeare, Shakespeare has certainly been of interest to Ireland. Over the course of...
Ireland Reference library
The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance
... . The English lordship over Ireland was established by Henry II in 1171 , and colonization of Ireland gave England control of around two-thirds of the island by the end of the thirteenth century. English energies were largely focused on France in the fifteenth century, however, and, although the Pale around Dublin was established, the rest of the island remained largely under the control of Anglo-Irish lords. The separatist impulses of that community were expressed in the declaration of parliamentary independence in 1460 , a move countered in 1494 ...
Ireland Reference library
Richard Corballis
The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature
...of New Zealand Irish, remarked that ‘Ulster was a shadowy place. England and English things were always before my eyes…’. Nineteenth-century journals such as The Freeman's Journal , The Tablet and The Irish Catholic were based —in name, policy and format—on Irish models. Visiting fund-raisers for the Irish nationalist cause (the Redmond brothers in 1883 , John Dillon in 1889 , Michael Davitt in 1895 ) met with a generous response. Irish plays (e.g. by Boucicault) were often performed. And the literature of the New Zealand Irish was modelled on...
Ireland Reference library
Edel Bhreathnach
The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity
...the Irish, is clearly Welsh Gwˆyddyl , meaning ‘wild men, forest people’. Ireland was where the limits of the habitable earth were fixed. This theme of Ireland being at the ends of the earth is echoed by S. Patrick and by S. Columbanus . The latter transformed this apparent disadvantage into the fulfilment of a momentous biblical prophecy: the conversion of the Irish to Christianity heralded the Second Coming, as Christ’s message had now spread to the ends of the earth. As contacts with Ireland increased in Late Antiquity, and especially as the Irish were...
Ireland Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature
...as Children's Books in Ireland and the recently formed Irish Society for the Study of Children's Literature. See also Fairy Tales and Folk Tales ; Irish Mythology ; Legend ; Myths ; United Kingdom ; and biographies of figures mentioned in this article. Celia Keenan Anderson, Celia Catlett , and Robert Dunbar , guest eds. The Lion and the Unicorn 21.3 (September 1997). Special issue on Irish children's literature. Coghlan, Valerie , and Celia Keenan , eds. The Big Guide to Irish Children's Books . Dublin, Ireland: The Irish Children's Books Trust,...
Ireland Reference library
Paul A. Townend
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...Army ; Northern Ireland ; Potato Famine, Irish and Scottish ; and Troubles, The . ] Bibliography Akenson, Donald Harman . The Irish Diaspora: A Primer . Toronto: P. D. Meany; Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, The Queen's University of Belfast, 1993. Boyce, D. George . Nationalism in Ireland . 3d ed. London: Routledge, 1996. First printed in 1982. Still the definitive overview of the development of the nationalist project in Ireland. Donnelly, James S. The Great Irish Potato Famine . Phoenix Mill, U.K.: Sutton, 2001. Ferriter, Diarmaid . The...
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A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology
...the calamitous decline of the Irish language. The 1911 census recorded that only 17.6 per cent of the population could speak Irish to any degree, certainly a smaller number at independence eleven years later. The Free State Government (which became the Republic of Ireland, 1949 ) made a knowledge of Irish a requirement for schools and for applications to civil service positions, a policy that continued until 1973 , and also created financial and other incentives to native speakers to remain in the Gaeltacht or Irish-speaking regions. With the 21st...
Ireland Reference library
Lyn Innes
The Oxford Companion to Black British History
...Africans came to Ireland mainly as students, clerics, nurses, doctors, and refugees. Black musicians have also made an impact in Ireland: the African‐Brazilian–Irish rock musician Phil Lynott ( 1949–86 ) is now commemorated by a statue in Dublin's city centre, and the African‐Irish music group De Jimbe became popular in the 1990s. The 2002 census recorded over 20,000 people of African birth living in Ireland. Lyn Innes Fay, William , The Fays of the Abbey Theatre (1935) Hart, William A. , ‘ Africans in Eighteenth Century Ireland ’, Irish Historical...
Ireland Reference library
Maria Luddy
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...Ireland. It was not until 1916 that the first Catholic suffrage organization was organized in Ireland. It augmented the numerous other national and local societies that existed by this time. The suffrage cause never gathered many supporters in Ireland, and the Irish Citizen , the newspaper of the Irish Women's Franchise League, estimated in 1912 that there were around three thousand women suffragists in Ireland. It has also been estimated that in 1912 the proportion of Catholic to non‐Catholic suffragists in Ireland was roughly one to two. Irish...
