I have often wondered wondered over the years how it is that people have a pride in being Irish - or part Irish - where it came from. I've wondered how it is that I can ask someone - who does not 'look' Irish - where they are from and have them come down on top of me like a ton of bricks - saying I'm Irish - I was born in this country.......... I've wondered how it can be that if that was an Irish person in another country - born in that other country and asked the same question - they would say "I am Irish." I can understand the attitude of the first kind of person here......their claim to being Irish and living here and all that - please don't get me wrong........ but I've always wondered about the rest...... and in that rest I would include my family and my friends if any od us was living anywhere else - bringing up children - our first claim would always to be Irish. Some who will have read my posts in the past will realise that I often talk of people who were protestants being good people in this country - that not all catholics were good people - that there is good and bad in all groups. Some of you will know the names of some famous Irish men - some of you will knwo what it is these people did to gain notoreity. Yet.....I live here - have been brought up here - studied our history - and there are many whose names I recognise and I know little about what they did. There are many who I never heard of. We learn all the time. I've been asking people if they heard the song 'A Nation once again' would they be able to sing a few words....mumble along.....I've yet to have anyone say no.....whether they are Irish in Ireland or a descendant... If I ask - do you know who wrote that? I've only had three people be able to tell me - and I have asked a lot of people. Someone once asked on one of the newsgroups if anyone knew a poem which had to do with Eoghan Rua O'Neill which ?Senator Edward Kennedy quoted at his brothers funeral...............I remember posting it to the newsgroups - and I think when I found it the book it was in had a differnt author to he who I know wrote it - his penname..........W.B. Yeats has actually said that that particular piece of poetry was equal to the best ever written - while at the same time saying in his speech about the author of the poem - that he was not really a great poet..... if I was to ask anyone could they name the poet - I'm sure few could. The same man who wrote 'A Nation Once Again' Thomas Osborne Davis - a protestant from Mallow in Co. Cork. Thomas Davis and two others(Catholics) - Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon founded a newspaper called the Nation in 1842. I've been reading articles from this - and all that period. For many of you - the descendants whose ancestors left Ireland during the famine...........your ancestors will hace read and heard of these articles. For all that I have read - the general concensus is that this newspaper/journal had a great part to play in irish History - in how the people felt about themselves. it is said that the ordinary people couldn't care less about anything more than survival prior to the production of the Nation. As I've read about these men, through articles published by them and others - I wonder how much of what they said was carried by your ancestors to other countries. how much of what they said or did is part of the reason why people have this pride in being Irish...... or is it all just due to genes? and dreams Jane:-)