Cultural institutions
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Belfast is the site of the Ulster Museum, the national museum and art gallery. Londonderry and Armagh also have galleries with permanent collections. The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra provides a particularly interesting link with the peasant origins of Northern Ireland and includes an open-air folk museum.
Of other cultural institutions, perhaps the most notable is Armagh Observatory. Founded by Archbishop Richard Robinson (Lord Rokeby) in 1790, it has remained an independently governed institution, though it receives considerable state aid. Along with the separate but related Armagh Planetarium, the observatory offers extensive public programs and has one of the few astronomy libraries in Britain and Ireland. A major collection of Irish literature is housed at the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. There also is a major maritime museum, the Harbour Museum, in Londonderry.
Sports and recreation
The people of Northern Ireland participate in the same sports that are played throughout the United Kingdom. Most athletes in Northern Ireland compete in the Olympic Games as part of the United Kingdom team (though many Roman Catholics join the national team of the republic of Ireland). Northern Ireland, like the other constituent members of the United Kingdom, fields a separate national team for World Cup football (soccer). Among the most notable footballers from Northern Ireland are Danny Blanchflower, who starred when the Northern Irish reached the World Cup quarterfinals in Sweden in 1958; the flamboyant George Best (called the “fifth Beatle” during his career in England); and the seemingly ageless goalkeeper Pat Jennings, whose career spanned decades from the 1960s to the 1980s. In addition, Rugby Union football is especially popular, and players from the Ulster team join the Irish team for international matches. Moreover, the Gaelic games—including such traditional sports as Gaelic football, hurling, and handball—have gained significant popularity, though confined primarily to the Catholic community. Sport fishing is among the most popular recreations, and the plentiful bream, roach, salmon, and trout attract fishing enthusiasts from throughout Europe. Northern Ireland’s hill-walking courses and excellent beaches might also attract much greater numbers of tourists were it not for the region’s political instability.
Media and publishing
Northern Ireland is serviced by both state and commercial broadcasting. In addition to relaying its national programming, the British Broadcasting Corporation operates two regional radio services (Radio Foyle and Radio Ulster) and has television studios in Belfast. There are numerous independent radio stations and an independent television service (UTV). Northern Ireland shares the British press, but several daily newspapers (e.g., the Belfast Telegraph and the Irish News) are published in Belfast.
For further discussion, see the cultural life section of the article United Kingdom.
History
Out of the 19th- and early 20th-century ferment that produced a sovereign state of Ireland to its south, Northern Ireland emerged in 1920–22 as a constituent part of the United Kingdom with its own devolved parliament. Northern Ireland’s early history is the history of the traditional Irish province of Ulster, six of whose nine counties Northern Ireland now embraces.
Early Ulster
Ireland’s northernmost provinces have some geographic distinctness. A diagonal line from the northwestern point of Donegal Bay to the southeastern point of Dundalk Bay marks the narrow waist of the island. A belt of hills, lakes, and forests along this line provides a natural border to the north, discouraging access to or from it. During the early Common Era (in the 5th and 6th centuries), the region had a distinctive culture, known under the Celtic name Ulaid (Latin: Ultonia; English: Ulster). Its political centre was at Emain Macha, or Navan Fort, near the present-day city of Armagh. The most successful Christian missionary in Ireland, the 5th-century Patrick, was predominantly based in the north and associated with its rulers. He established his ecclesiastical centre near Emain Macha, at Armagh, which is still the primatial see of both the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and the Protestant Church of Ireland.
Mythic history
Ulster is of special importance in the mythic history of Ireland because its rulers and their champions played a prominent role in the rich Irish sagas of the Middle Ages. The Ulster cycle of these tales deals with the exploits of a King Conchobar and the prodigious warriors of the Red Branch, the most celebrated of whom was Cú Chulainn. The best-known tale of this cycle is the Táin bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), which recounts the invasion of Ulster by Queen Medb of Connaught (Connacht, the traditional western province; literally, the “descendants of Conn”) in pursuit of a legendary bull. Eventually the men of Connacht are repulsed by the Ulstermen and their spectacular hero, Cú Chulainn.
The oldest manuscript of the Táin, known as The Book of the Dun Cow, was compiled in the 12th century and contains language dated to the 8th century. However, it is widely assumed that the story existed in oral form for at least several centuries previously and that it includes descriptions of practices current in Celtic society in Ireland or Britain or in continental Europe as long as several centuries before the birth of Christ. If it is mythic with respect to particular persons and events, the Táin is nevertheless an invaluable source for the early history of Irish society.
Gaelic Irish and Anglo-Normans (c. 600–c. 1300)
The post-mythic history of Ulster dates from the 7th century, when it begins to be available from Latin documents and chronicles created by churchmen. By that time the 100 or more tuatha (clans) of the island had loosely grouped themselves into the five provinces of Ulster (Ulaidh), Meath (Midhe, which later dissolved), Leinster (Laighin), Munster (Mumhain), and Connaught (Connacht). By the 8th century, Ulster was dominated by a dynasty called the Uí Néill (O’Neill), which claimed descent from a shadowy figure of the 5th century known as Niall of the Nine Hostages. Divided into a northern and a southern branch, the Uí Néill asserted hegemony as high kings, to whom all other Irish kings owed deference. In the early 11th century the king of Munster, Brian Boru, effectively challenged the high kings of the Uí Néill dynasty and thereby ended Ulster’s political dominance in early Irish history.
Munster’s dominance was short-lived. In the mid-12th century an incursion of Norman adventurers from England, South Wales, and continental Europe greatly complicated the island’s political pattern. The Norman beachhead was in Waterford in the southeast, but from there they struck out both north and west. By 1177 a force of several hundred men under John de Courci, advancing north from Dublin, had established itself in northern County Down and southern County Antrim. They built formidable castles at Downpatrick and Carrickfergus and established the northeast coast as the heart of Norman Ulster. De Courci became so threateningly independent that King John of England created an earldom of Ulster in 1205 and conferred it upon the more submissive Hugh de Lacy, who became known as the earl of Ulster. The title passed to the Norman family of de Burgo, which was joined in the coastal sections of Down and Antrim in the late 13th century by Anglo-Norman families with names such as Mandeville, Savage, Logan, and Bisset. The hinterland of Ulster remained imperviously Gaelic. (For the subsequent fortunes of the Norman colony and the resurgence of Gaelic society in the 14th and 15th centuries, see Ireland: First centuries of English rule [c. 1166–c. 1600].)