Dr Tomas Buitendijk is a postdoctoral researcher in UCD’s School of Biology and Environmental Science working on the Ecostructure project. Tomas spoke to James L. Smith about the formation of the North Bull Island behind Dublin Bay's North Bull…

The school book for Newtown in County Tipperary contains the tale of Petticoat Loose, a woman spirit or revenant thought to haunt certain places across the southern half of Ireland. The tales, although diverse, detail her evil deeds, confrontation…

In the school book for Wexford town, gathered by teacher Victoria M. Sherwood, we find this transcribed clipping from the Wexford Free Press paper, describing the origins of the magpie in Ireland: It is said that the first magpies that came to…

Wexford and its slobs were walled off from the harbour and reclaimed from the sea in the 1840s, forming a polderland that has become a hotspot for biodiversity. The North Slob is now home to the Wexford Wildfowl Reserve, 200 hectares of flat…

Legend goes that St Patrick, a Christian missionary to Ireland in the fifth century, used the leaves of the shamrock to explain the concept of the holy trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Ireland's tourism identity has long used the symbol of…

On September 8th, 1397, the Catalan nobleman Viscount Ramón de Perellós set forth from Avignon with the blessing of Antipope Benedict XIII on a journey that would take him across the English Channel, the Kingdom of England, into Wales and then…

In years gone by in Ireland, there had to be taxes paid on certain goods as tobacco and wine coming from foreign lands to Ireland. But the people who were poor at the time they could not afford to be paying tax on these goods. They often decided to…

The folklore gathered at the Irish Schools’ Collection contains many tall tales, strange happenings and stories of the supernatural spanning the length and breadth of Ireland. The example below, reported by Lill Dempsey of Ballyboher, County…

The Tuskar Rock Lighthouse stands on a rocky islet 11.3km or 7 miles off the south east corner of the island of Ireland. The lighthouse was constructed to warn ships of what has long been a graveyard of sailors, part of a band of treacherous waters…

The coastal folklore of County Wexford is punctuated with shipwrecks, stories of assistance rendered and loss of life despite the best efforts of rescuers. The wreck of the Alfred D. Snow stands out across the lore of a wide variety of communities…