Born in 1954

Emigration continued at a devastating rate — 40,000 people a year were leaving for England and beyond. Entire villages were emptying out. The government seemed unable or unwilling to create enough work to keep people home.

Yet those who stayed found real community. Ireland's oral tradition — storytelling, music, poetry — was alive in a way that was starting to attract anthropologists and folklorists from abroad. The Gaeltacht areas of the west preserved a culture that had survived centuries of pressure.