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Turn the pages of the guide.
 
What is a Personal Planner?
Other Resources
PaddyNet's Island: all about
Ireland's folklore, literature, and mythology.
Irish Things: a
massive and opinionated collection of Irish links. Lots of personality
here.
Seamus
Heaney: the recent Nobel laureate reads his poetry at this website.
Guinness Brewing: an excellent beer complemented by an excellent website.
Ulysses for Dummies: if you skipped this Joyce opus like the rest of us, get a humorous thumbnail sketch of Stephen, Molly, and Leopold from this website.
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The Berkeley Guides:
Berkeley Guide to Europe:
Ireland
Until Columbus stumbled upon the not-so-New World in 1492, Ireland was on the very edge of the European universe. To the merchants and explorers who chanced upon this storm-battered isle, Ireland was a wild, indomitable place, mysterious and brooding; a land that, viewed from afar, appeared to rise in defiance from the water. To the medieval mind, Ireland was only a short sail away from oblivion.
The history of Ireland really is the history of its many conquerors, be they the Celts, Vikings, Anglo-Normans, or British. The arrival of the Celts, a Continental tribe of warriors, in the 6th century bc, spurred Ireland's Golden Age, a time of Druidic learning and bardic poetry, a time when ferocious warriors roamed in search of honor, glory, and, of course, heads (head-hunting was a common Celtic practice). The next wave of conquerors, the Christians, appeared around the 4th century ad. While continental Europe languished in the so-called Dark Ages, Ireland became a beacon of enlightenment. Christianity and the Catholic church are still pervasive forces in Ireland. The Virgin Mary is Ireland's true queen. She appears in the unlikeliest of places--in glass-enclosed shrines, in run-down Dublin apartments, at the intersections of country roads, along stone quarries, and carved into green hillsides.
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