Who are the people of Ireland?

How did they spend their days hundreds and thousands of years ago?

How were they perceived and what beliefs did they have?

Emilie O’Driscoll is a content creator who focuses on the topic of the ancient Irish people and their mythology. Join us in the How to be Irish studio this week where we discuss:

• What Ireland looked like before colonisation.

  
  



• Where Halloween gets its origins.

  
  



• Whether Christianity was a good thing for Ireland or not.

  
  



• How Irish people are different from the British.

  
  

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A note on the discussion around the phrase, ‘daoine gorma’: we mentioned that the phrase is no longer used to describe black people in Irish. This is not true. ‘Daoine gorma’ is still the correct translation for black people. The origins of the term are similar in Gaeilge to Scot’s Gaelic. The word ‘gorm’ describes the reflection or iridescence as opposed to a direct translation to blue in English. The word ‘gorm’ covers a wider breadth of the colour scale than ‘blue’, hence its use in ‘daoine gorma’. Secondly, the phrase ‘duine dubh’ is used to describe the devil in Irish, hence why black person is not translated directly to ‘duine dubh’. You can read more about the origins of this phrase here.