Thursday, December 9, 2010

Types of Leisure Programs in Ireland

To make this a little more systematic, I’ll divide this post into two sections. First, I’ll cover the festivals and events in Ireland and then move onto the sports.

The first festival we’ll look at is the Fleadh Nua Ennis, a traditional Irish music festival that happens every year in county Clare. The festival includes traditional Irish music, dance, workshops and street entertainment. It is organized but the Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann bringing visitors from all over Ireland and abroad. It happens each year, towards the end of May and lasts for about 8 days. Below are some video’s from past celebrations. 










The second festival I'd like to bring to light is the Puck Festival. Held in the middle of August every year in county Kerry, this is one of the strangest street festivals in Ireland. The video below show what it’s all about.




Essentially, each year, people catch a goat, crown him King Puck and raise him high above the town for the three day festival. The fair consists of cattle fairs, horse fairs, Irish dancing and music and street performers. This festival attracts people from all over the world who come to Ireland just to partake in the madness. 


There are several other festivals in Ireland like the St Patrick ’s Day parade, the Cork International Choral Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival and the Galway International Arts Festival all showcasing some part of Irish culture. 


According to the Economic and Social Research Institute, the most popular games in Ireland are Gaelic football, followed by hurling, soccer and rugby. Gaelic football is quite like a combination of football, rugby and to a certain extent basketball as the following video shows.





Hurling, too is quite like a combination of several sports. As you can see in the video below, there are several elements that are similar to hocky, baseball and lacrosse. 





These are two of the most famous sports in Ireland and are quite unique to Ireland. Hurling is hardly played overseas and most of the times when it is played in other countries, it is by people who had moved to those countries from Ireland. I think it is quite nice that these games still capture the interest of the Irish people and are still a large part of their modern sporting culture. Usually globally played sports capture more interest than traditional sports and I love that that has not happened in Ireland. 

Sites I referred to in this article are listed below.



links to the videos used in order are: 


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