...de La Wednesday Journal:
The numbers are staggering. According to a display on "The Irish Diaspora" at the Dublin Airport, no less than 70 million people worldwide claim Irish descent-42 million in the United States alone. Since 1841, an estimated half of all people born in Ireland emigrated. The blight wiped out the potato crop each year from 1845 to 1850, and the potato was virtually the only crop. One million people died, and 1.2 million emigrated, "the single greatest exodus in the 19th century."…
…Though Gaelic (or "Irish") is the national language (found first on every sign), this long-oppressed people not only absorbed the oppressors' language, they spoke and wrote rings around it. The Irish have produced four Nobel Prize winners in literature-William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney-more than any other nation, and that doesn't even include the likes of James Joyce, Jonathan Swift or Oscar Wilde.
The numbers are staggering. According to a display on "The Irish Diaspora" at the Dublin Airport, no less than 70 million people worldwide claim Irish descent-42 million in the United States alone. Since 1841, an estimated half of all people born in Ireland emigrated. The blight wiped out the potato crop each year from 1845 to 1850, and the potato was virtually the only crop. One million people died, and 1.2 million emigrated, "the single greatest exodus in the 19th century."…
…Though Gaelic (or "Irish") is the national language (found first on every sign), this long-oppressed people not only absorbed the oppressors' language, they spoke and wrote rings around it. The Irish have produced four Nobel Prize winners in literature-William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney-more than any other nation, and that doesn't even include the likes of James Joyce, Jonathan Swift or Oscar Wilde.
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