THIS IS IRELAND

[Music] this is Ireland 32 green counties saying Cades Mila Fulcher a hundred thousand welcomes the government of Northern Ireland administers six of the counties the other 26 are in the Republic of Ireland there's beautiful wild Donegal and Kalani with his lakes and there's Galway and Limerick and Kerry and dairy and none of them at all is a long way from Tipperary green and silent that's the way you find the countryside just as it was when the gains lived here with the long fair hair and breastplates of iron fifteen hundred years ago when sympatric came to teach the Gaels to be Christians this was just the way he found things green and silent green in the country and green in the city [Music] [Music] Green forever but the silence we left that out Chandra with the gorse and the Heather when you fly across the Atlantic Ireland is your first sight of Europe now you're over Dublin our capital the gales of the settlement here on the River Liffey back in the Christian era and who knows how long before when Viking raiders took over the town of the 19th century it began to grow today Dublin has three racetracks 27 golf clubs 166 churches and some of the world's great theatres Trinity College goes all the way back to 1500 and 91 that's when it was founded by the first Queen Elizabeth it's library holds a vast collection of books and manuscripts ancient and modern in the days of sympatric Ireland became a great center of Latin learning monks spent their whole lives doing the painting of these Bibles some called a book of Carol's the most beautiful book in the world and here is this oldest of all Irish hops made 800 years ago the Irish have always been good at making music and here's something else they know how to make whiskey has been distilled in Ireland since 1757 some say they invented it in Gaelic it's called the water of life Irish beer is called stout it is dark and strong it's made in Europe's largest brewery which exports more than any other brewery in the world of course there's a property left it's not exported some of that turns up in the pubs there are 700 pubs in Dublin one for every thousand inhabitants plenty of room for everybody to relax and Bend an elbow and talk for the Irish are great talkers in the pub conversation is the salt of life and living and a man lights a new story from the one that went before ah if talk were taught he'd have the makings of a no-account according to statistics an Irishman is a rare creature and no other country in Europe has so few people just four million altogether but I what individuals you find [Music] this man will help you park if you want to stop here it's the Bank of Ireland now two hundred years ago it was the house of parliament [Music] you call back Dublin's most glorious days when you drive along the North Shore of the River Liffey the Custom House dates from the 1700 and 80s so does the four courts the seat of our High Court of Justice [Music] st. Patrick's Cathedral founded in eleven hundred and ninty in honor of Ireland's patron saint Jonathan Swift who wrote Gulliver's Travels was once the minister in this Cathedral the man who lived here was a poet a dramatist and a width that few could match Oscar Fingal Oh flirty wills wild in this house George Bernard Shaw who wrote Pygmalion was born later Pygmalion came to America as my fair lady here where the houses come down to me to Dublin Bay another great writer used to stroll novelist James Joyce he lived here in the old stone Martello tower now it's a museum with a collection of Joyce's belongings the dark hills and little lakes of County Sligo are woven all through the poetry of William Butler Yeats in the shadow of Ben Baldwin where he dreamed in his youth is the village of drum cliff population 300 drum cliffs tree-lined churchyard always seem to Yeats the most peaceful place in the world and it was there that he chose to be buried his only monument is a slab of native limestone with a line of his poetry carved on it the 35th President of the United States was Ireland's most famous grandson his great-grandfather was born in this cottage in Duncan's town near in Arras County Wexford [Music] the monastery atomic noise is a ruin now once it was a busy city in itself a devout City with a hundred crosses the minstrels called it under the process the old kings of Ireland are buried here on the rock of cashel the Great King Angus was baptized by said Patrick himself and it was here also that Brian Boru was crowned he won a great victory over the Vikings in 1014 after the Vikings the Normans landed on the Irish coast and fought their way inland this was the first of a multitude of castle fortresses they built after the Normans the anglo-saxons invaded and seven hundred years of struggle between Irish and English began the Irish built Blarney Castle with walls eighteen feet thick as a stronghold in that struggle people come here today to kiss the Blarney Stone and have the gift of the gab forever now isn't that worth a crick in the back even Lourdes must make a living and some Irish castles are hotels today at bunratty castle you can sit at a nurse table and eat stuffed Boar's Head in authentic medieval style your toast in honey wine might be launching a job your health forever there are 40,000 forts and castles scattered across Ireland Ashford Castle is a sportsman's favorite because of the brown trout in lake kharab nearby and the game birds in its woodlands and the salmon in its rivers on the shores of these lakes and in the hinterland of the rivers the archaeologists have discovered wonderful treasures of pottery and jewelry and weapons once used by prehistoric men [Music] and this is the sovereign view of the islands of la colline which you command from the ancient tower of ross castle from here it's just five miles to Kalani tub and with a horse like this you can make it in two that is of course unless you're held up by rush-hour traffic like this [Music] what's the hurry when time was made to say and carry that was plenty ever to go around [Music] Ireland is only 300 miles long as the crow flies but it has 2,000 miles of coastline because of the many bays and inlets and coves the Gulf Stream washes the southwest corner of the island so the climate is mild and the flowers subtropical this town is Glenn garish at the head of pantry bed in the north the coast turns wild and rocky according to legend the Giant's Causeway was made by the giant Finn McCool according to geologists cooling lava had more to do ins [Music] connemara is Ireland's wild west imagine the surprise of the inhabitants of these lonely cottages on the day when the first plane ever to fly across the Atlantic Ocean landed here in 1919 this is a monument to the pilots the main city of the West Coast is Galway it's Church of st. Nicholas dates from 1320 Christopher Columbus once came to pray in it in 1493 always Merrill Lynch condemned his own son to death for the murder of a Spanish guest and when no one would carry out the sentence he hanged the youth himself so that the law might be fulfilled some say this for the term Lynch law came from a dozen kinds of seabirds swirl around the cliffs of mohr which rise 700 feet sheer from the ocean on the coast of clare lobster many little boats made of wooden slats and canvas ride the waves of the open ocean rugged and independent but how warm their hearts for there are no strangers here only friends you haven't met yet ourselves we call it the island of short grass and long friendship where the rain comes down only when God senses and you can feel peace dropping slowly on the land with the sunset heavens reflection we sometimes call it yes this is art [Music]