SNIPPETS: 1. Small boys in suits and little girls playing after their First Communion with white dresses, pretty veils and bouquets askew surely must be one of the most delightful sights in all of Ireland. It is traditional for friends and relations to award a child a generous gratuity upon taking their First Communion. Newly-confirmed minors are likely to find themselves richer by half the average weekly wage! 2. Ireland's festivals take place all over Ireland during the summer months and are known as fleadhs. 3. When Queen Victoria of England visited Ireland she was smitten instantly. Although familiar with the loveliness of the Scottish Highlands, she pronounced the Kerry panoramas of misty lakes and grandiose mountains the finest in her Empire. 4. Carlow is a small county, the second smallest in Ireland. Its land is productive. It is sometimes referred to (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) as the county with more than its share of the "nearly famous." In years past those fortunate enough to own large holdings were prosperous and such people found time to devote their mental energies to matters other than managing their estates. Many were wealthy enough to employ professional managers while they got on with their pet, often unconventional, projects. Others, from the merchant class, in what was, and to a great extent still is, a prosperous corner of Ireland, made enough money to involve themselves in similar activities. Samuel HAUGHTON, for example was one of the eccentrics who abounded in Ireland in the Victorian era. Born in Carlow, he was a scientist and mathematician and graduated in mathematics from Trinity College before turning his attention to medicine. He is best remembered for a discovery which combined all three disciplines at which he was adept. It took some time to work out, but in the end his formula was of benefit to a tiny percentage of the population, although is stopped short of saving their lives. He worked out a mathematical, scientific and medical computation known as "Haughton's Drop." The "drop" was not one of medicinal liquid but an instruction to the hangman when dealing with prisoners sentenced to death. Until this time, the unfortunate wretches sentenced to be "hanged by the neck until dead" usually suffered from a slow and agonizing process of strangulation, something which the mob that gathered for executions thoroughly enjoyed. "Haughton's Drop," however, took the "fun" out of execution day. It determined the precise length of rope; the exact depth of fall which a condemned man of a certain weight required in order to die instantly rather than linger half-alive in front of his viewers. 5. Limerick men will come right out and tell you that Limerick women are the prettiest in Ireland. Of course, women in every county are pretty - the soft Irish climate is apparently good for the skin. The natural, wholesome outdoor looks of Irish women have become fashionable, unlike the 1950s, when farmers' daughters tended to plaster over their natural beauty with make-up and black mascara more so than they do today. The complexions of the Irish were historically differentiated into two types: the Fionn Gall ("fair foreigners") with their creamy skin, freckles and red hair, while the Dubh Gall ("dark foreigners") had white skin, raven hair and blue eyes. Today there are many variations in Ireland, but one still encounters outstanding examples of both. Women have always been ones to hold the family together. Today's Irish women, in particular, are extremely confident and "well able" for the men. They are not short of words, or wit, ability or character. In ancient Ireland, they were total equals, and Brehon Law absolutely upheld their right to divorce a husband on the important grounds that he was weak in bed. 6. In the early centuries of Christendom, a monastery, with its many trades and centre of administration, was the nearest thing Ulster had to a town. So Columba (also known as Columcille), a prolific founder of monasteries, built his first one in Derry (the most complete of Ireland's walled cities) and is regarded as Derry's founder. He built high on an island hill just off the left bank of the estuary of the River Foyle, pragmatically choosing an oak grove for his setting. The grove had previously been a place of pagan worship and the saint's men were canny enough not to chop down too many trees when they built, for the oak has always had a particular resonance in Irish mythology. "Doire," pronounced near enough "Derry," is Irish for "oak grove" and the sessile oak, Quercus petraea, is one of the great mythical trees of the island, lending to the early Irish runic ogham script its sign for "D," from dair for "oak." 7. Wexford town stands on a site occupied from the 9th to the 12th centuries by the Vikings who founded the flourishing port of of Waesfjord. Wexford is separated by natural barriers from the rest of Ireland but with close connection by sea to Britain and mainland Europe. For this reason the county has provided access to immigrants from abroad from the earliest times; to invading armies later. Now, at Rosslare, it provides ferry connections to South Wales and to Le Havre and Cherbourg in France. It was in Wexford, in 1169, that the Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland began. This was followed by settlers from England and Wales. Here, as well as the Gaelic surnames of KINSELLA, MURPHY, O'CONNOR and KEHOE can be found families called DAKE, FLEMING, DEVEREUX, FURLONG and HARVEY. For centuries Wexford has been mainly an English-speaking county. Even in the 1798 rebellion, when the county rose up against British rule, the rebels tended to be English speakers, while their loyalist opponents included Gaelic-speaking militia from the province of Munster. Today, the English language is delivered in Wexford with a unique accent. In earlier times, in certain parts of the county, people conversed in a dialect known as "yola," which bore strong resemblance to that of Somerset in England, especially regarding the tendency to pronounce the letter "S" as "Z." Remnants of the old way of speaking persist in the southern baronies of Forth and Bargy, a flat sea-bound area entwined with little roads. What makes Wexford, and Forth and Bargy in particular, different in its speech is that the dialect words are essentially English in origin, with some Flemish undertones to complicate matters.