The Luck of the Irish in the New Year Irish families have been known to set a place for deceased loved ones who died the year before at the New Years Feasting table and also to leave the front door ajar for them. 2. The 1st...
Grosse Isle was another tragedy made possible from the great famine, a mass death and heartbreaking tale of desparation continued from Ireland across the sea. Any local from Dublin will tell you there was no famine but there was … “a potato blight which destroyed the only...
The violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland cannot be overlooked in Irish history so this post is dedicated to that subject. In honor of the loyal readers of Celticthoughts.com,. There are over 900 now and the numbers grow consistently day by day, I am running...
America was built by the Irish. I’ve said that before but did you know the grass-roots of this fine country, the very fiber of America, the existence of the American government, the life blood that makes America great is due largely in part because of Irish...
A landlord is a man who has property or keeps lodgings to whom tenants pay a fixed rent. The operative word here is fixed, something an Irish landlord had complete will to establish as he wished, often using his immense power to do just that. Many Irish...
St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland is shrouded in so many fantastical stories that one wonders if he was a man at all. The real Patrick was a simple human being who was kind, gentle, courageous, and confident in his beliefs. True, he was...
Need a matchmaker? Everyone wants to fall in love and its been that way since the beginning of time. Nothing has changed about the desire but what has changed is how we go about it or how often we try and try again only to...
Celtic people measured time not by days but by nights. beginning at dusk instead of dawn. With Samhain when the crops were waning. Beginning on Oct. 31st. Not Jan 1st. One of the reasons for beginning with evening, is the Celts’ reverence for the moon...
My father was extremely proud of being Irish, though I would learn later in life, that were are also part Polish with a smattering of Russian in the pot too. See my post on the Polish Jews in Ireland. Polish is one of the most...
The Celts believed water had magical properties, hence the holy wells of Ireland. One reason might have to do with how the water got here. Though there are many myths about the beginning of civilization, one theory is that the world was covered in water, flooded...