Ireland Travel Stories
The Angel's Trumpet - Cork, Ireland
 We drove back to Cork hoping the sun would linger in the sky a bit longer, just until it was time to head back to the airport. Word on the street is that Irish weather is far worse than English weather, and the sun is a rare luxury the Irish don't get to enjoy often. This, in turn, busts the common myth that bad weather equals miserable, cold, distant people, mainly because the Irish have a friendly, warm and inviting disposition.
If there's one thing we noticed about Cork from the evening stroll the night before, was that it's densely populated with churches. Ireland being a religious country, this didn't surprise me. I had been, however, always under the impression that Northern Ireland (UK) was Protestant and the rest of Ireland (EU) was Catholic. So I was surprised to learn that Cork had a Protestant Cathedral.
Everyone knows the violent history which surrounds Ireland with its Catholics and its Protestants, its Loyalists and its Nationalists. People in Ireland are still branded by their religious beliefs and it seems silly to hate each other over factions of the same religion: Christianity. But once you start reading and researching Irish history, you begin to understand that it doesn't really have much to do with religion at all.
Britain succeeded in subduing the Irish island thanks to Oliver Cromwell. Much of the northern part of Ireland was subsequently colonized by English Protestants, while the rest of Ireland remained mainly Catholic, a heritage left by Catholic missionaries in Ireland from the Dark Ages.
 In the 19th century, industry and manufacture in the north of Ireland began to flourish, while in the south English Protestants owned much of the land resulting in unequal distribution of wealth and resources. This made the Catholic population poor. Mistrust and bad feelings resulted from the colonization of Ireland by English settlers, following political and social segregation. Catholics were not allowed to be members of Parliament, to own land, to schooling, and any other avenue that led to wealth or self-improvement.
These economic differences heated the issue of British rule over Ireland, which the Catholics obviously did not benefit from, whilst the Protestants certainly did. This was how in the 20th Century Ireland was divided into 2 warring sides. The Protestants feared living in a country ruled by Catholic nationalists, while the Catholics wanted the Irish to rule Ireland.
Thus Ireland saw itself immersed in a period of violent guerrilla warfare between the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and the British forces. So in 1921 a treaty was signed separating Northern Ireland from the 23 free Irish counties of the south. And in 1949, those souther counties became the Republic of Ireland. continue...
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