1 Céad Míle Fáilte
2 Land of winter
3 The Giant’s Causeway
4 Tír na nÓg
5 Conn of the Hundred Battles
6 Nuada of the Silver Arm
7 The luck of the Irish
8 The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
9 The Salmon of Knowledge
10 St Patrick banishing the snakes
11 “How the Irish Saved Civilisation”
12 “A barbarous people devoted to laziness” (Giraldus Cambrensis on the Irish)
13 “A filthy people, wallowing in vice” (ditto)
14 The 800 years of Oppression
15 A country with not water enough to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him in.
16 The uncrowned king of Ireland
17 Home rule means Rome rule
18 The queen she paid a call on us/She wanted to see all of us/I’m glad she didn’t fall on us/She’s 18 stone
19 “Bravery’s a treasure in a lonesome place, and a lad would kill his father, I’m thinking, would face a foxy divil with a pitchpike on the flags of hell.”
20 When Irish eyes are smiling/Sure, ’tis like the morn in spring/In the lilt of Irish laughter/You can hear the angels sing
21 O Ireland my first and only love/Where Christ and Caesar are hand and glove!
22 This lovely land that always sent/Her writers and artists to banishment
23 The Irish are a fair people – they never speak well of one another
24 The whole world is in a terrible state of chassis
25 Where the breeze is sweet as Shalimar/And there’s forty shades of green
26 There’s gangs of them digging for gold in the street
27 Oh, no, ’twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning
28 There’s no place else on earth just like the homes of Donegal
29 Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone
30 (Snow) falling faintly through the universe
31 Things fall apart. The Centre cannot hold
32 A Protestant parliament for a Protestant people
33 The first official language
[ An insight into Limerick-born actor Richard Harris’s lesser known lifeOpens in new window ]
34 A countryside bright with cosy homesteads etc
35 Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind. He said/I made the Iliad from such a local row
36 The Golden Vale
37 The Golden Mile
38 The Premier County
39 Limerick you’re a lady
40 The Long Mile Road
41 The People’s Republic of Cork
42 The real capital
43 The soldiers of destiny
44 Calling Northern Ireland “Ulster”
45 Ditto “Our Wee Country”
46 The United Kingdom
47 Our Precious Union
48 Free Derry
49 Most Oppressed People Ever
50 We will not stand (idly) by
51 “Bandit Country”
52 Never! Never! Never! Never!
53 Only our rivers run free
54 Tiocfaidh ár lá
55 Every man will stand behind/The men behind the wire
56 The 70s will be socialist
57 Young people of Ireland, I love you
58 Wife-swapping sodomites
59 As British as Finchley
60 Away with the fairies
61 Fur coat, no knickers
62 Guinness is good for you
63 Dunnes Stores’ better value beats them all
64 Northside, Northside – the great, great shopping centre
65 Shaws – almost nationwide
66 The Bomber Liston
67 FLAC, SPUC, and the FCA/Free Nicky Kelly and the IRA
68 A 747 for Jackson Browne/They had to build a special runway just to get him down
69 Shergar was ridden by Lord Lucan/Sean Cannon did the backstage cookin’
70 McGraths, O’Briens, Pippins, Coxes/Massage parlours in horse boxes
71 This is heaven, this is hell/Who cares? Who can tell?/Anyone for the last few choc ices?
72 Coz Woodstock, Knock, nor the Feast of Cana/Could hold a match to Lisdoonvarna
73 Banana Republic, septic isle
74 D’Unbelievables
75 You could fry an egg on the stones here, if you had an egg
76 Gay Mitchell’s Olympics
77 (Monaghan) Champion Milk
78 Superquinn
79 Harvey Bloody Norman
80 The Clones Cyclone
81 The Celtic Tiger
82 And we’ll really shake them up/When we win the World Cup
83 You’ll never beat the Irish
84 One team in Ireland/There’s only one team in Ireland
85 A document that if made public will rock the State to its foundations
86 The boom is getting boomer
87 The best little country in the world to do business in
88 Labour’s way or Frankfurt’s way
89 The pitch is like a car park
90 The New Land League
91 “Constant Markievicz gave up his life to enable us to eradicate suppression, taxation, eviction, criminality ...”
92 Tallafornia
93 Glasnevin North
94 Boris Johnson’s bridge
95 Hurling as “our national game”
96 “The Black Death” of Gaelic football
97 Waitresses telling you your order is “perfect”
98 Conor McGregor’s presidential campaign
99 Mayo for Sam
100 Ireland is full.
[ Our Man in Havana – Frank McNally on a forgotten Irishman honoured in CubaOpens in new window ]
