The Táin Bó Cúailnge, the Cattle Raid of Cooley, is the great epic of Ireland’s Ulster Cycle. Here it is retold from the early translations: Medb and Ailill’s pillow talk…

Hy-Brasil, Í Bhreasail in Irish, is the phantom island said to rise off Ireland’s west coast once every seven years. Here’s the real story: the round island on sea charts…

Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin held prisoners from 1796 to 1924: debtors, Famine-era thieves, children, convicts bound for Australia, and rebels from Robert Emmet and Charles Stewart Parnell to the 1916…

On Easter Monday 1916, rebels seized the GPO in Dublin and Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Here is the story of the Easter Rising: Home Rule,…

The Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle, Co. Cork, is said to give anyone who kisses it the gift of the gab. Here’s how the kiss works, why early writers disagreed…

The Giant’s Causeway in Co. Antrim is about 40,000 basalt columns left by a lava lake that cooled around 60 million years ago. Here’s why most columns are six-sided, the…

Ireland never had snakes for St Patrick to banish. Here’s why the island is snake-free, which ancient writers noticed it first, how a 12th-century monk gave Patrick the credit on…

Croagh Patrick, the Reek, is Ireland’s holy mountain. Here’s St Patrick’s 40-day fast as Tírechán and the Tripartite Life tell it, where the snake legend really comes from, Reek Sunday…

Clonmacnoise, Cluain Mhic Nóis in Irish, is St Ciarán’s monastic city on the River Shannon in Co. Offaly. Here’s its story, from the founding legend and the Book of the…

Glendalough, the glen of two lakes in Co. Wicklow, is where St Kevin lived as a hermit and founded one of Ireland’s great monasteries. Here are his legends (the blackbird,…

Ireland’s round towers have been called fire temples, phallic symbols and Viking hideouts. Here’s what they really were: cloigtheach, the bell house, with how to say it, when and how…

The Molly Maguires were Irish immigrant miners in Pennsylvania’s coalfields, blamed for 16 killings and hanged after trials run largely by company lawyers. Here’s the full story: the Irish origins…

The Hill of Tara in Co. Meath is remembered as the seat of Ireland’s high kings. Here’s what’s really on the hill, from the 5,000-year-old Mound of the Hostages to…

Newgrange was built around 3200 BC, centuries before the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge’s stone circle. Here’s the passage tomb inside and out: the triple spiral, the solstice roof-box and its…

Grosse Île, a small island in the St Lawrence downriver from Quebec City, was the quarantine station for the port of Quebec from 1832 to 1937. In Black ’47, as…

The Book of Kells is Ireland’s most famous treasure: a Latin Gospel book made around 800, probably by Colm Cille’s monks on Iona, at Kells or both. Here’s where it…

Skellig Michael, Sceilg Mhichíl in Irish, is the Atlantic rock off Co. Kerry where early medieval monks built beehive huts reached by 618 steps. Here’s its real history, from the…

Brian Boru rose from the Dál gCais of east Clare to become king of Munster and, in 1002, high king of Ireland, hailed in the Book of Armagh as “emperor…

Twenty Irish words and phrases that English has no single word for, from aiteall (a bright break between showers) and meitheal to cumha, dúchas and the stray sod, each checked…

Niall of the Nine Hostages is the legendary king of Tara behind the Uí Néill, the O’Neills and the O’Donnells. Here’s how medieval writers explained his nine hostages, the tale…