A Brief History of Ireland

Editor’s Note: In March 2025, to kick off  The Cliff Dwellers Irish Celebration, Members gathered for a buffet dinner which, not surprisingly, included corned beef and cabbage. There followed an evening of Irish history, jigs, poetry, and song. The fun began when the certifiably Irish Pat Savage introduced Cliff Dweller Pat Whalen to enlighten the crowd with a brief history of Ireland. To the astonishment of all, Whalen proceeded to pack the entire history of Ireland from the Ice Age to the present into a 15-minute discourse. All agreed it was an amusing triumph of compression that fortunately fell well short a windy exegesis of tendentious scholarship. Nike Whitcomb, Joan Pantsios, Michael Burke, Peter Blatchford, Richard Nystrom, Mary Nell Murphy then took the stage with blessings, limericks, poetry, and song. Throughout the entire evening, Peter Brady sang Irish tunes accompanied by his guitar.