'NEW' IRELAND RETAINS ITS MYSTIQUE

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DUBLIN, Ireland – While reporting stories on contemporary Ireland, lines that W.B. Yeats wrote nearly a century ago kept coming back to me:

"Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, / It’s with O’Leary in the grave," he wrote in support of a labor strike in 1913.

The rural Irish life, romanticized in such films as the 1952 John Ford classic "The Quiet Man," starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, or the "emigrant Irish" depicted in Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s "Far and Away" can seem like relics of the past when viewed against the growth of the country’s cities and huge influx of immigrants.

For many years, Ireland suffered from wretched poverty and religion-based violence – hardships that built the nation’s character and fed the country’s unmatched literary heritage.

"It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while," wrote Frank McCourt in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1996 memoir "Angela’s Ashes."

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/17/774942.aspx

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There is a video that goes with this story. I'd really recommend it personally. I found it to be quite accurate as to the state of affairs in Ireland at this time.

video link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23657615#23657615

On edit: Be certain to read some of the comments. They are absolutely PRICELESS!!! :D :D :D :evilgrin: ... the times they are a changin' alright!