9781422278017

IRELAND’S GEOGRAPHY & LANDSCAPE

Shamrock Perhaps the best-known legend of St. Patrick involves the shamrock, the little plant that is famous throughout the world as the national emblem of Ireland. After training as a priest, then becoming a bishop, Patrick arrived in Ireland in 432 CE and immediately set about trying to covert the pagan Celts who inhabited the island.

Having previously lived and worked there, during his period of slavery in Ireland, he would have been well aware that the number three held special significance in Celtic tradition (and, indeed, in many pagan beliefs), and he applied this knowledge in a clever way. He used the shamrock, a three-leaved clover that grows all over the island, to explain the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity; i.e., the doctrine that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are separate elements of a single entity.

fewer holidaymakers and tourists than Wicklow or Kildare (also once within the Pale), despite the fine stretch of coast and numerous pleasant seaside resorts like Black Rock on Dundalk Bay and Bettystown, south of Drogheda. The South and Southeast The original Gaelic name for Ireland’s southeastern corner is Cuan-na-groith , “haven of the sun,” and it is well deserved. This region of fine river valleys, fertile agricultural land—perhaps at its finest in the Golden Vale in Tipperary— 14