Proper noun

Singular Ireland

Plural -

Ireland

1. A large island in northwest Europe.
2. A country occupying the twenty-six southern and western counties of the island of Ireland. Also known as the Republic of Ireland, in order to distinguish it from the island.

Related terms

• Irish
• Northern Ireland
• Emerald Isle

Ireland (pronounced /ˈaɪrlənd/ ( listen), locally [ˈaɾlənd]; Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen); Ulster Scots: Airlann, Latin: Hibernia) is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain. Politically, the sovereign state of Ireland (described as the Republic of Ireland) covers five-sixths of the island, with Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom) covering the remainder in the north-east.

The first settlements in Ireland date from 8000 BC. By 200 BC Celtic migration and influence had come to dominate the island. Relatively small scale settlements of both the Vikings and Normans in the Middle Ages gave way to complete English domination by the 1600s. Protestant English rule resulted in the marginalisation of the Catholic majority, although in the north-east, Protestants were in the majority due to the Plantation of Ulster. Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. A famine in the mid-1800s caused large-scale death and emigration. The Irish War of Independence ended in 1921 with the British Government proposing a truce and during which the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, creating the Irish Free State. This was a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown. Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom. The Free State left the Commonwealth to become a republic in 1949. In 1973 both parts of Ireland joined the European Community. Conflict in Northern Ireland led to much unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s, which subsided following a peace deal in 1998.

The population of the island is slightly over 6 million (2006), with 4.5 million in the Republic and an estimated 1.75 million in Northern Ireland. This is a significant increase from a modern historic low in the 1960s, but still much lower than the peak population of over 8 million in the early 19th century, prior to the Great Famine.

The name Ireland derives from the name of the Celtic goddess Ériu (in modern Irish, Éire) with the addition of the Germanic word land. Most other western European names for Ireland, such as Spanish Irlanda, derive from the same source.

Ireland is a north-west European island lying to the west of Great Britain. It was conquered by England in the 12th century. The island was partitioned in 1921, Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom while the Republic of Ireland achieved independence.

Sourced

• For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad.
  • G. K. Chesterton The Ballad of the White Horse (1911), Bk. 2, line 220.

• Gladstone…spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the question.
  • W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman 1066 and All That (1930), ch. 57.

• German Bismarck said that the solution of the Irish question lay in having the Irish to swap countries with the Dutch. He added that the Dutch would make Ireland the most beautiful island in the world while the Irish would neglect to mend the dykes left to them by the Dutch and therefore would be drowned.
  • John Green Sims Whither, World? (Privately published, 1938) p. 78.
  • The attribution to Bismarck has not been confirmed.

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Mon Sep 28 19:34:29 2009