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The legendary warmth and hospitality of the Irish come alive in this collection of traditional blessings, classic verse, and beautiful images from the Emerald Isle. Irish Blessingscaptures the spirit and spirituality of the Land of Welcomes in the words of its saints, the verse of its poets and songwriters, and the good wishes of its people---for the health and bounty of the land, a happy home, and a pleasant journey---that have been handed down from generation to generation. With more than 50 stunning photographs from throughout Ireland, Irish Blessings is a timeless tribute to the beauty of the land and the character of its people.
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Clusters of white cottages huddled in a fold between hills of an unbelievably rich green . . . villages of a single street, dazzling in their array of color washes and picturesque shop and bar signs. . . . Such are the villages of Ireland, the most beautiful of which are captured in Hugh Palmer's evocative photographs and Christopher Fitz-Simon's sensitive commentaries. Beautiful though many of the villages of Ireland undoubtedly are, they are also working, living communities. The vibrancy and warmth in a village bar or local shop proclaim a culture not yet submerged under mass tourism or the rash of vacation homes that have blighted so many of Europe's prettiest villages and robbed them of traditional ways. Following the divisions of the ancient provinces--Ulster, Leinster, Connacht, and Munster--the journey is full of fascinating rural gems, some famous and others less well known. There are the coastal villages of Cork with their handsome houses of many hues sloping down to a sea that so many Irish crossed to found other communities in the United States. Roscommon and Galway are proud of their medieval churches, while Ulster villages look toward the Atlantic and seem to be girding themselves against the rigors of the northern climate. Literary and historical associations abound, as in Ardagh, site of pre-Christian settlement and the place where Oliver Goldsmith was inspired to write She Stoops to Conquer. The latest volume in the best-selling Most Beautiful Villages series, this extraordinary visual and verbal record of the Irish village is completed by a guide to the most important sites, markets, hotels, and restaurants. 258 color photographs.
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The history of Ireland, at least from the advent of photography to the start of WWII, is solemnly rendered here by Sexton, a photo archivist. The book begins with harrowing images from the dawn of photography in the 1840s, which also happened to be the start of the potato famine in Ireland. Two categories of people often overlooked in early photography, the poor and women, are very much in evidence here, as they bore the brunt of suffering in the Irish countryside. The text, by historian Kinealy (This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52), offers a general summary of the living conditions and political situation in Ireland up through the 1930s. The photos are abundant in number (271 b&w and sepia prints) and numbing in overall effect; the text is standard analysis. Together, however, the two merge into an eloquent portrait of a long century of struggle in what was one of Europe's poorest countries. Yet there's more than hardship here, including a portrait of James Joyce, thriving turn-of-the-century markets, and a handsome shop (with "shopgirls") in the Curragh, County Kildare. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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