Monday 18 July 2016

Tour Information

Today was Don's first day of meetings and I had a full day tour. We began with the Kingdom of Mourne in the County Down. These are the highest mountains in Northern Ireland. Here we saw gorgeous mounds (mountains) and farming areas divided up by stone walls making the area look like an undulating patchwork quilt. Gorgeous. 

On the way the tour guide was very talkative and explained some things about Ireland. Here are some of my notes....

Irish accents are difficult to understand. Basically the Irish change the vowel sounds. For example:  o to a - hole sounds like hale.  A to e - flag sounds like fleg 
Th is optional - mother becomes mor, brother becomes broer. 

Before the Troubles began in Ireland in the 20th Century the Protestant population was a small % of the overall population but they had 100% of the power in government, and owned 97% of the land. 

The population was 90% Catholic in Ireland except for North East part that was predominantly Protestant. 

Today the Republic of Ireland is 91% Catholic and Northern Ireland is 57% Protestant. Within Northern Ireland, County Down is a 50/50 split between Catholics and Protestants and 
County Antrim is mostly Nationalist (Protestants). 

Ireland is the same geographic size as South Carolina.












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