Is it good for Poland as Sinn Fein will win today in Northen Ireland

What you said was that Ireland was a tribal society and didn't have a sense of a single national identity - which is not true. Ireland perceived itself as a single nation long before the 18th century, a fact proven by the existence of books of Irish history dating back to medieval times, which purport to tell the history of the establishment of Ireland. Read about the Lebor Gabála Eireann (The Book of the Taking of Ireland). It was written in the 11th century. The fact that such a book was compiled so long ago, indicates that there was a concept of Ireland as a single nation/country a thousand years ago and an appetite amongst its people for a recorded history. This history already existed in oral form and would have been known throughout the whole country as it was recited in poetry form by the Bards of every noble family. Anyway, let's leave it there. If you want to bang on about it we can take it to off-topic Random.

Not much of the goings on in Ireland would affect Poland. Not a thing I would say unless we talk about Poles living there. Apart from that issue, I don't see any Ireland policies that would affect Poland.


Is not the same as the modern nation. Once we put legends and myths aside it is clear that a modern sense of national identity means something else than same tales, dancing jig rather then waltz did not make a dancer an Irish that think, act and feel in the same way as a modern Irish nationalist. The litterature on the subject is out there.


I said it about pagan Ireland and I insist that what I claim is a fact. What you claim is only your Irish legend.
Every country has the same legend about the past.

What do you mean by a modern Irish nationalist? Answer in off-topic.

Sinn Fein are modern and they are nationalist.

You're absolutely wrong.


And that's where you're completely wrong. Actually music is at the very heart of Irishness. We're intensely musical people. And we live the culture. It's not a show for tourists. It's who we have been since long before Christianity. And our pagan, ancient past has remained in the national consciousness in a way that has been lost in Poland. Most Polish people know little and care less about ancient Polish ways. You don't express your sense of national identity through music and song as the Irish do, not indeed through sports. We've been playing hurling for thousands of years. It's in the legends of ancient Ireland and it's part of our culture today. We know who we are. We've always known.

@Atch
There are folk groups/ensembles in Poland that dance and sing and wear folk costumes. Is it nationalism already?

They're all a bit fake and preserved in aspic.

In some places they're real and a living and evolving tradition.

Why? Because your history books in a high school told you so? You know that those are rubbish as in a form or propagda?



That is a typical myth buliding exercise, that this or that and spin a tale about continuity. What is now was always there. That is a nonsense. If you pick on commonalities and similarities you could theoretically conctruct exsistance of European nation.

Look those nations which were without a state during the 19th century has even stronger claims to continuity that those which can fall back onto their statehood or a dynasty.

All you see as your national stuff and the way you see yourslef stared in the 1790'. Yes they bulided on prexisting cultural, human, historical base but if you ever talk to say 16th century not to mention 12th century 'irshman' you would find it that you have little in common.

Well now, the earliest surviving references to hurling are found in 7th and 8th century AD Irish laws, which describe various sporting injuries that should be compensated. That's under the terms of Brehon Law which codified every area of Irish life in pre-Christian times and survived until the 17th century.


Firstly, I could indeed talk to him as I have a few words of Irish and the Irish spoken today is essentially the same. Secondly I know what hurling is and so would he, thirdly I know about the Fianna, the Tuath De Danaan et al and so would he, thirdly we'd share the same religion and I could reference sacred places and monastic settlements that he would know, fourthly I'd know some of the songs and music that he would know because so many of the 'tunes' as we call them have been passed down. I could discuss the difficulties facing harpers now that they've been outlawed etc etc.I'd know how to greet him and address him with proper courtesy as 'Fear Uasal' and he'd address me as 'Bean Uasal' - noble man, noble lady. We would recognize each other as Irish.

Wow that is all sorted then. I'm sure that even in the 7th century they were voting Sinn Fein, sing Irish anthem and supported Celtic.

School history books make it simple for simple minded and you seem to fit well into that category. So have your way I don't really care that much about your perception. lol!

I'm extremely well read in Irish history at a much higher level than school history books. That's why I understand the topic far better than you do. And I understand the difference between Irish nationalism within the context of Sinn Fein, the Celtic revival of the 19th century (which was to some extent an artificial construct), and the real, living, breathing history of a nation, which you would feel in your bones if you ever set foot in Ireland.

The Lebor Gabála Eireann (The Book of the Taking of Ireland) is a thousand years old. The Irish already understood that Ireland was a distinct country. That's why the attempted to write a history of their nation. Just because we didn't have on single leader (though we did have that sporadically) does not mean we were not a united nation. We liked as much autonomy and freedom as possible; each family liked to govern itself and its lands but within the constricts of Brehon Law.


The problem is not simplicity but complexity. It seems that the history of Ireland and the concept of Irishness is too complex for you to grasp.

You haven't learn anything. Ireland is not an exception and it has nothing to do with reading about Irish history. There is that general pattern when it comes to the creation of the modern nationalism and that pattern is the same or close enough to the pattern that spread across Europe. History is rewriten and reshaped often enought. It can't be seen as a holy writ.

In fact your last sentence is a proof that you don't understand what I'm talking about. It is better to ask questions rather then preach. If you want to know ask questions if you don't want to know - stop posting unrelated stuff.


Oh, so other nations didn't? What are you trying to say? What you saying is in fact copyright of the pattern of the modern nationalists - about continuity of people, nations, cultures and so on. It is it stable diet. What you say is what is being said for the last 200 years it doesn't mean that much. I don't say it is worng but it is not the whole truth.

It is a question of perspective, if you want to see and find something you will find it, some items and facts are blown out of the proportion or their meaning distorted by an interpretation, other that would contradict certain narrative are either left out out or it signifance diminished.

I'm not saying those all are fairly stories but you need to be careful what you read into it. The way people had seen themsleves in the past often is overlooked and read in the same way they see themselves at the present. Which is an incorrect perspective.

No, it isn't. We engaged in centuries of armed struggle against the English. We didn't just wake up one day in the middle of the 19th century and decide we were 'Irish' and should have our own independent nation. I've posted about this in the off-topic just now so I'll link you to it.

polishforums.com/off-topic/poland-random-chat-74400/114/#msg1856998

True,however I'd substitute British for English since the ruling class of Britain were as often French or Scots as English.

I know - and you'd be right :) But we, the Irish, always refer to the English/England or 'the Brits'. The English is the term used when talking about older Irish history and the Brits is used more for the 19th century onwards.

So what? Burgundy, Bretania all were at war with France or a war of rebelion and so on. That only genral prattle there alway was some reason or other.

Read our history and you'll know what. Too lazy to read it in detail? Don't try to debate it with somebody who knows it inside out - and not from school history books. Not interested in reading it? No problem. Just don't try to educate me, of all people, about something of which you are almost entirely ignorant.

If you do want to read about the roots of Irish nationalism, as you refer to it, I'd suggest this book:

And so began the Irish Nation: Nationality, Nationalism and National Consciousness in Pre-Modern Ireland
by Brendan Bradshaw

As the author says, it was from the mid-15th century that something akin to 'national consciousness' began to emerge: Bradshaw pinpoints the 1460 Irish Parliament, in which it was declared that Ireland was independent of laws passed in England, as being a key moment, because of the claim for Ireland as its own entity, and the Old English community's apparent identification of Ireland as their 'homeland'. By that time the Normans (the Old English) had adopted the Irish language, customs and in some cases Brehon laws and objected to being 'ruled' by England.

Stop with your talking points> ? Your Brehon laws do not make a modern nation. It makes you one of many people during this time in the history of Europe that prefered to be a separete identiy, some are now part of a bigger country some are separete nations and some do not exist today. That was a complex process and vieving it by the modern lences of a modern nation only prove my point!

look give up some things are not for evreyone - you struggle - don't - just give up.

Of course its good. Every chaos on the west of Europe, Britain included, suits Poland. Bigger chaos, bigger chances Poland to escape unharmed from madhouse that is EU.

Unfortunately my dim witted friend, Poland is not strong enough to leave the EU and Poles know that and wont leave.

Would Poland rather cuddle up to an expansionist Russia then, and by its tasteless megalomaniac dictator, or be run by Kaczyński's cat.

Sinn Fein would say; one island, one nation. The same is in Poland . One Poland, one nation. There is no place for russia in Poland.

So according to you, who has never been to Ireland and never read any Irish history, all the professors, scholars, historians and academics are completely wrong in their understanding of our own history. Cziekawe ....


Brehon law is the oldest European legal system and evolved over centuries into a highly complex code for which lawyers received professional training. This is not some loose 'tribal' system. Originally these laws were handed down by word of mouth, passed from master to student in oral repetition, but from the seventh century onwards they were written. One of the most important written sources of the Brehon law is the manuscript Egerton 88, now in the British Library copied in the 16th century at the law school of Cahermacnaghten on the Burren, in Co Clare. These law schools educated their pupils from the age of seven years right up to adulthood, to a very high standard, impressing one of Queen Elizabeth's envoys who remarked that the young pupils spoke Latin as if it were their native tongue.

As I've already said, read some of the many histories of Ireland written by the people who lived at the time and see what their perception of Ireland was.

If you don't believe the experts, perhaps you'll believe our old friend Wikipedia:

'Irish nationalism is regarded as having emerged following the Renaissance revival of the concept of the patria and the religious struggle between the ideology of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. At this early stage in the 16th century, Irish nationalism represented an ideal of the native Gaelic Irish and the Old English banding together in common cause, under the banner of Catholicism and Irish civic identity ("faith and fatherland/motherland"),[10] hoping to protect their land and interests from the New English Protestant forces sponsored by England.'

Polish Daria Gapska is the new Miss Northern Ireland. Thank you Ireland (North).

In October last year the EU proposed several changes to the protocol including red and green lanes for goods going to the 26 counties, the UK have yet to respond. The vast majority of elected representatives in the six counties support the agreement. The vast majority of UK MPs also voted to adopt the agreement.

The EU have shown themselves to be flexible they want a mature trading relationship with all third party countries and are awaiting a reply.

@Barney
The new British prime minister has a real problem.

Every few weeks a new prime minister?

Yet the EU won. 😎

you have no future in diplomacy....

Did you think it was a win/lose thing?

There was me thinking we'd all won, by moving forward, getting Von der Leyen to back down from her posturing and introducing a system that we all wanted. As Barney said, the EU are flexible, and they have been flexible here.

In Northern Ireland where the majority of people identify as British, they are now free to participate fully again in the economic life of the UK. The minority there who identify with the Irish Republic don't have a hard border which is what they want. This is precisely what was negotiated all those years ago by Tony Blair and Mo Mowlem.

There will be far fewer pointless checks on goods travelling between NI and the mainland, and British businesses on both sides of the water have welcomed it. The Irish Republic is fine with it too.

As our next Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer said in parliament this evening: "It will enable the people of Northern Ireland to participate more freely in the economic life of the UK. It has our full support. The protocol will continue to ensure there is no physical border on the island of Ireland. That is essential. We know that any physical border would be a source of tension, a physical manifestation of new barriers between communities in Northern Ireland and economic life in the Republic. This agreement will allow us to move forward as a country, rather than be locked into endless disputes with allies."

The only hurdle is to prevent the brexit-supporting wing of the Tories and the DUP in NI one one side, and Macron on the other from scuppering it. There will be a busy couple of weeks ahead.

edit: The Attorney-General has just said that she doesn't think they'll need to vote on it. This means it'll be ratified and we can watch Macron seethe.