Hello. My name is Ardal.
It is a real name and I'm a real person.
And this is Ireland, a real place,
as well as an imaginary one.
There are just a few things about my country I could do without.
But mostly, I love it.
To help separate the myth from the reality,
I'm going to consult this old guidebook to Ireland.
It was written by the formidable Mr and Mrs Hall,
an Anglo-Irish couple
who condescended their way around the country,
examining every facet of Irish life for better or for worse.
"..idle, reckless...unprincipled."
It was the drink, James, it was the drink.
Their observations of Ireland and the Irish took root
in the minds of their English readers.
But was there any merit in them?
Are we really a bunch of superstitious, God-fearing,
whiskey-sodden chancers or are we just like everybody else?
Well, there's only one way to find out.
This time I'm looking into what makes the Irish
so distinctly, well, Irish.
In a globalised world,
can a small country hold on to a strong national identity?
And if so, what's ours?
I'm starting off in a small village in County Clare to meet
who some say are the original indigenous people of Ireland,
predating the Normans, Vikings, even the Celts.
Traditionally, they toured the country in their colourful caravans,
but nowadays you're more likely to find Irish Travellers
in settled communities, like these.
Could they shed any light on what defines the Irish?
And do you buy and sell the horses as well?
This is home to a large extended family.
And the head of the family is Michael Mongan.
Yeah, yeah.
He's a daredevil, that fellow.
Michael and his wife, Maryellen, have 14 children
and 67 grandchildren and there's great-grandchildren as well.
CHILD: Can I go on? Pick me up!
They've had to get used to living in houses like settled people do.
But home was once wherever they pulled in for the night.
And do you miss that life at all?
What was it that you liked about it though?
MICHAEL:
Do you like that life, just going from town to town?
Yeah?
I suppose on a summer night it was...
Lovely in the summer.
And did you have a plan of where you would go all did you just go
wherever your nose took you?
I mean, do you consider yourself different from the settled people?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
You were saying that the language is different.
In what way is the language different?
Cant? Cant. Yes.
A beor?
Right. MARYALLEN: We call a girl...
Is that a friendly term? That's a woman. Friendly, yes.
A lackin?
Maryellen has invited me inside her house.
This is a rare privilege indeed.
Is there a lot of coming and going all the time?
Because it's all your immediate family in the other houses?
Yes.
'Maryellen's living room reveals
'a lot about the Travellers' way of life.'
Nice pictures of horses up there.
This is a photo of a horse.
It's lovely and cosy. Is this your great-grandchild here?
Oh, that's your grandchild.
CHILD: That's the baby!
That's the baby? Yeah, look. Yeah.
It's the baby. What his name?
I don't know.
CHILD: I know his name! Jerry!
What's his name? He's Jerry.
Um... Spider-Man.
Spider-Man? He's not Spider-Man! He's Jerry!
That's a nice name for a boy, Spider-Man, isn't it?
On the walls are photos of Michael and Maryellen
when their children were young.
In 1963, a government initiative tried to force Travellers,
like the Mongans, to leave their caravans behind for good.
You can see the pride the young couple had
in who they were and where they'd come from.
Now, a great-grandmother, Maryellen is quite keen to explain to me
the traditional way in which she's dressed in the photo.
Oh, yeah.
And what would be in the basket?
Oh, you make those yourself? Yeah.
Very nice.
For many, the nomadic life of the Travellers might be over
but they've managed to hold on to many of their old ways,
including the sulky carts they use for their hair-raising races.
Do you think the community will survive,
the Travelling community, like?
Do you think the customs and traditions will be,
kind of, maintained?
No, I'd say that the Travellers' life... We're all dying out.
You really think that? Yeah.
If that's true, it'll be a sad day for Michael and the Mongans.
These Travellers talk of their love and understanding of their animals.
The affection they have for the countryside they once roamed
and for what they saw as the freedom they used to have.
It's all too easy to romanticise Travellers or indeed vilify them.
But what we all have in common is a deep commitment to family
and horses.
It's insane to try and sum up a whole country
or something as fickle as a people. That's just folly.
But there definitely seems to be a strong sense of identity here,
a lot of symbols and so forth that people broadly share.
Now, whether these are real and rooted in our history
or manufactured, that's open to debate.
But one thing for sure is people in this country,
they're absolutely preoccupied with what it means to be Irish.
It's March 17th, Saint Patrick's Day.
It's instantly recognisable as the day when the Irish revel
in their Irishness.
It's celebrated in more countries around the world
than any other national holiday.
It's a day when everyone the world over is encouraged
to wear the green, a colour adopted by revolutionaries
in the late 18th century,
when they attached green ribbons and shamrocks to their clothes.
The Ireland I grew up in has been totally transformed.
For centuries, we were a nation of emigrants.
At least 70 million people around the world have Irish ancestors.
But in the economic boom of the late 1990s, all that changed.
People started to come here to settle.
In only one generation,
Ireland went from a monoculture to a multicultural society.
TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYS
Elliott and his family moved from Nigeria 15 years ago.
Today, he's one of the best Irish dancers in the country.
OK. You go on ahead. I'll follow you in.
I have to be honest. I used to scoff at Irish dancing
when I was younger and when I was older.
For me, it was always a little bit too wholesome,
a little bit old-fashioned and...
..desexified, if that's a word.
I was more of a head-banging along to Black Sabbath sort of guy.
But for Elliott here, this is a real crash course in Irish culture.
He's gone in at the deep end.
Irish dancing was one of the art forms invented
in the late 19th century to revitalise Irish culture.
As Elliott and his friend Emily demonstrate,
it's all about a controlled and rigid upper body
and quick, precise movements of feet and legs.
Fantastic.
I know you're a good footballer, I know your brothers play football.
Why did you pick dancing?
I found out that was my talent and that's what I loved.
I discovered it on YouTube and I found out that I loved
doing that more than football.
So then I kept on working towards it and I reached my goal in the end.
Did you practise on your own in front of the mirror? Yeah.
And so you knew some of the steps before you actually got lessons?
Yeah. And do you do competitions?
Yeah. All over Ireland?
All over the world. All over the world?! Yeah. Really?
When I was younger, boys weren't allowed to dance
with girls a lot of the time, so you'd end up dancing with chairs.
THEY GIGGLE That was no fun.
It was just a big bunch of boys in a room dancing around chairs.
I fell in love with a chair once. THEY LAUGH
Needless to say, the chair found somebody else and that was the end
of my dancing career.
Fact is, these days Irish dance is scarily competitive.
I wouldn't have stood a chance.
Naturally enough, the Halls have an opinion on Irish dancing.
Here we go.
"The best idea we can give of it is that it consists in striking
"the ground very rapidly with the heel and the toe
"or with the toes of each foot alternately.
"A stranger not hearing the music and seeing only the dancer
"would be likely to imagine he was killing a rat."
How dare they?
They're not really appreciating the nuances.
I'm on the lookout for what makes the Irish unique, or different.
I suppose one of the things that have shaped us
are the repeated invasions by other people.
And the internal conflicts we've experienced as a result.
Up until about a century ago,
Ireland was part of the United Kingdom.
Now, I'm in Dublin. The centre of a rebellion in 1916
that led eventually to Irish independence.
After independence, the country was transformed radically.
Well, they painted the red postboxes green.
Although it doesn't look like it, this postbox is actually green.
But it has been temporarily painted red
in order for it to be painted green again.
"Why?" I hear you ask. Good question.
Well, to commemorate those heady days of 1916, of course.
Hello, Eamonn.
And now Eamonn Dolan and I
are going to restore it to its rightful colour.
That's for you. OK, so let's go on and get you all suited up, OK.
OK, right.
I'm not allowed near a can of paint until I'm wearing overalls.
'Hm. Obviously a very dangerous mission.'
You feel like you have to walk like this when you're in one. Oh, aye.
OK, have you painted before? No, not really. Not really.
Of course you have.
Eamonn is a professional postbox painter.
And there's a certain technique I have to master.
You just go in like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're going with the curvature of the box.
Going with the curvature of the box. OK.
Like, why was it so important
that we painted these green after independence?
Well, I think... Myself now, personally speaking, you know,
it was sort of to eradicate the whole British red of Britain.
We wanted to move on, have our own identity.
We have amazing history and I love that.
Do you think we're different from the British then? I mean...
Well, they have their own history, as well, to be honest with you.
I mean, I love the British history as well.
To be quite honest with you. But what makes us like different?
Because, you know, we're very close neighbours.
We're a small country, but we recognised all over the world. Yeah.
Isn't that it? You know? A nation our size, what?
Under five million.
We're recognised all over the world.
We always try to be different to England.
I think that's... Yeah.
That's the main thing when we got independence
and in the decades before independence,
I think we had to invent a new Ireland... A new Ireland.
..that was very different to England.
I think that was the main... Like it was the main thing.
Did you ever hear it said that green is a very restful colour?
No. It's supposed to be, yeah. But I... I can understand that. Yeah.
It literally, physically, is supposed to make you relax.
Yeah, yeah. That's what I heard.
Apparently, it actually even...
It reduces your allergy symptoms.
Yeah. It stimulates the pituitary gland. OK.
Which relaxes the muscles and reduces your allergy symptoms.
I find... To be honest with you,
I find painting my boxes very, very therapeutic. Yeah.
Very, therapeutic. Yeah. Either way, it is very enjoyable.
I also do feel a little bit of a swelling of pride myself,
to be honest with you. Yeah.
Like this is my contribution to Irish freedom.
No, I think absolutely. 100 years too late, but there you go.
Over the centuries, when it comes to protest,
we can be quite subtle and to the point.
From the simple symbolism of changing the colour of a postbox,
to just banging a big drum.
Unique to Ulster, the Lambeg drum
is allegedly the loudest folk instrument in the world.
I can believe that.
It mostly features in Protestant Orange parades as a battle drum.
On the border between the north and south,
there's a brand-new drumming tradition in the making.
I'm being taken to meet some members of a community of a dozen or more
Irish Japanese who have settled within a few miles of Derry.
All right. How are you? You're the boss. I am.
Under the guidance of Fiona Umetsu,
they've taken up Japanese Taiko drumming.
I made them into a body. Incredible. That's cowhide, is it?
Yes. Are you allowed to touch these things? Oh, God, yeah.
You don't get bad luck?
There's something awful good about Taiko. There really is.
I kind of think of it as a force for good
and it brings people together and it brings out the best in people
and it brings out a lot of really creative energy.
I mean, that begs the question... I mean, you're obviously from Derry
and you lived through The Troubles.
In fact, probably escaped from The Troubles
by going to Japan to some extent. Yep.
But do you think that Taiko drumming has some sort of a role to play
in the sense that it's nonsectarian?
Irish drums unfortunately have sort of become segregated,
which is such a shame.
So, we do kind of refer to them sometimes
as the nondenominational drums.
It is something new that is kind of still being developed. So, yeah...
It's like you're pioneering a new tradition.
I mean, it could take off as the Japanese Irish community grows. Yes!
That's the plan! World domination through Taiko. Wow!
SHE SPEAKS JAPANESE
THEY CHANT
There's something heartening about these Irish-Japanese kids
banging out a new identity for themselves.
THEY SHOUT
Wow! That was amazing. Well done. Excellent.
Thank you! Thank you very much.
Do you want to have a go? I don't know. I don't... I don't...
Like, I don't want to ruin it. No. You won't ruin it. Too special.
We'll break you in gently.
OK. FIONA LAUGHS
OK, and you're going to bring your right hand down
and then your left hand down.
So, it's like your goalkeeping stance. Exactly.
About to save a penalty. OK. Nothing's going to get past you.
OK, so... Are you ready?
FIONA SPEAKS JAPANESE
Don't be scared of it.
OK, and then you're going to bring your left hand down.
You're kind of bringing it down like a backhand. OK. OK.
THEY CHANT
Well done, well done. All right. I have it. I got it, I got it.
You got it, you got it. You're sorted, you're sorted. No problem.
OK, so maybe rhythm's not my thing.
Unlike these guys, who are clearly marching
to the beat of a very different drum.
In a country where for so long religion divided the people,
when it came to the issue of marriage equality,
the people came together.
Thank you very much.
One of the biggest advocates for gay rights in Ireland is Rory O'Neill.
Rory grew up in a remote town in the west of Ireland.
He created Ireland's pre-eminent drag queen, Panti Bliss.
And together, they opened Dublin's most famous LGBT venue,
Pantibar, in 2007.
I'm lucky because I can leave here.
I asked Rory what it was like to be gay in Ireland back in the old days.
When I was growing up, you know, in the '70s or '80s,
I always felt that sort of queer people
weren't really considered Irish.
They might be sort of a bit Protestant English or something,
do you know what I mean? They were heathens.
You know, and that your Irishness was being called into question.
And I sort of had this funny accent,
so people would start thinking, "Where are you from?"
You know, there was that sort of quality.
And my queerness did the same thing. They were like...
I always felt that there was no space for a queer Irish person.
In 2015, following much heated debate around the country,
championed by people like Rory,
Ireland had a nationwide referendum on marriage equality.
62% voted yes.
Ireland, perhaps surprisingly, found itself at the vanguard
of social change when it became the first nation in the world
to vote in a referendum for same-sex marriage.
When you walk around Dublin now, you do see, you know,
gay and lesbian couples holding hands.
Which is something you almost never saw before.
And if you did, you know, they were a pretty brave, bolshie couple.
And I think after the referendum, the gay community here felt secure
in their place and they felt secure in their place as Irish people.
Because I sort of have always felt myself...
Like sometimes people describe me, say, as a gay activist.
But I always say, "Well, that's not really exactly what I was about."
What I was about was trying to expand the definition of Irishness.
I feel the referendum finally said,
"Actually, yes. You're totally Irish."
You know, that's what it sort of felt like to me.
Just six months on from the referendum,
over 400 couples have tied the knot.
Our sense of identity, it's not cast in stone.
We're open to change and that can only be a good thing.
I'm on a journey to find out what makes the Irish in any way unique.
A lot of what we now think of as being Irish was actually
forged in defiance of invading forces trying to change us.
This is Kilkenny.
Following the Anglo-Norman invasion nearly 1,000 years ago,
the native Irish population were accused of corrupting the colonisers
with their ways and wiles,
making them more Irish than the Irish themselves.
Apparently.
As a result, a whole raft of laws were passed to stop the
widespread adoption of Irishness and Irish culture.
The Halls detailed some of these laws
with a certain relish, I feel.
HE LAUGHS
"That marriage with the Irish was treason.
"That the use of Irish names, apparel or language be punished with
"forfeiture of lands or imprisonment."
This was the first real attempt to wipe out Irish culture,
including the language.
"No Englishman was to entertain any of the minstrels,
"rhymers or newstellers."
That was me out of a job.
You couldn't have your linen dyed in saffron.
Nothing too colourful for the English settlers.
"That the English should not permit the Irish to
"graze upon their land."
They even said that hurling, the old Irish game, should be banned.
And they complained about the great evils and maims that were
associated with hurling at the time.
More than seven centuries later,
the Irish revived hurling with a vengeance.
Thought to be thousands of years old, this fast-moving,
and some would say extremely dangerous sport,
was vastly different to any other sport in the United Kingdom
at the time. And that was the whole point.
Now, Kilkenny is home to one of the top teams in the country.
Players use a wooden stick called a hurley to hit
a small called a sliotar,
which can be caught in the hand and carried
for not more than four steps.
The ball can travel at 100mph -
that's the dangerous bit.
And these lads are just 14.
They dream of the ultimate honour -
to represent their county.
But things aren't going so well.
Lads, look...
..it's not intense enough, right?
It's not typical Kilkenny hurling.
It's too tippy-tappy.
Take control of the territory you're hurling in.
Mark it out in your head - "This is my area,
"and any ball comes in here, I'm taking it."
It's not intense enough, lads.
You know it's not good enough.
It's not near the level that's required.
Deal with it.
Well, look, I-I heard what they said -
I thought you were all brilliant, so...
LAUGHTER But then, I'm not coaching yous.
OK, guys, let's go again. COACH: Ramp it up, ramp it up.
Let's go, come on. Quickly, quickly.
To get anywhere as a hurler,
you need to be brave, superfit
and have lightning-fast reflexes.
There's nothing like it.
'Ned Quinn is chairman of the county team.'
It really doesn't bear any resemblance to any other game,
does it? No, no.
And what is a uniquely Irish about hurling, in terms of its character?
The players playing have very little concern about being injured
or anything. There's a lot of physical contact in it.
I think it appeals to the Irish psyche.
There's an element of danger in a game of hurling all the time.
And there's no feigning injuries?
HE CHUCKLES Oh, no.
No. No diving? No, no.
If you want to be despised in the GAA,
you go down and pretend you're injured.
You actually get up and pretend you're not injured.
You don't give in to the other fella to say that he had injured you.
Selfless bravery?
Yeah, perhaps that's the quintessence of the Irish psyche.
No-one is more passionate about this game than the Irish mammies,
another great Gaelic archetype.
Can I just ask you all, do you actually want to be here,
or do you have to be here?
Well, I want to be here. I want to be here. I want to be here as well.
Really? ALL: Yeah.
We don't go on holidays in the summertime when the hurling
season is on.
You plan your holiday around the championship,
or whatever is going on.
Would you not be worried at all?
I mean, it's clearly, like, a dangerous game, in some ways.
They do wear helmets. Yeah.
That's what's they grow up with.
We don't know any difference, really. They don't get many injuries. They don't.
I have to say, none of mine ever had anything serious.
A few bruises here and there, but nothing major - no broken bones.
Bruised egos, I'd imagine?
Oh, plenty bruised egos.
Oh, plenty over the years.
But, you know, it's all part of life and growing up,
and I think it teaches them, really.
They say that hurling is the fastest field game in the world,
but there's something that moves even faster across the Irish grass.
Quite simply, horses are synonymous with the Irish.
Whether it's the Travellers with their piebald horses and home-made
carts, or the thoroughbreds of elite racing,
we Irish do love a horse.
Even the Halls noticed it -
they tell the story about a Mr Sullivan,
a real-life horse whisperer who was able to tame the wildest of
horses by simply whispering in their ear.
Buyers come from all over the globe to invest in our bloodstock.
But their pockets need to be well-lined.
The highest price paid for a thoroughbred was £12 million.
I'm no horsey man - I don't even have a waxed jacket - but I might
as well have a flutter.
I've backed a British horse,
Blood Moon.
Just like the name.
This meeting at Naas Racecourse near Dublin
is a typical everyday event in Ireland.
There are more racetracks per head of population here than
in any other country in the world.
Now, I've come here not to make my fortune, although that'd be nice.
I'm here to find out what it is about Ireland and the
Irish that breeds arguably the best racehorses around.
I've no idea which one was Blood Moon, or what happened to him.
Oh, I haven't a clue what I'm doing.
But why are we Irish so good at breeding winners?
It's the one pursuit, I feel, that Ireland can stand up and say,
Right, we are a world leader here, bar none.
"We can go round the world and we are a number one."
Tom Ryan is the racecourse manager.
I've done a good bit of travelling through the world.
I spent a bit of time in America on the breeding side of things, you know?
And anywhere you see a congregation of horses - mostly racehorses -
you'll see an Irishman, somewhere.
It doesn't matter how far away it is.
How did we get to that position?
The number one thing, I believe, was the climate.
You know, you can grow the grass, and it keeps the horses sound,
and let them prosper and grow, you know, and breed well.
So you're saying an Irish horse is a happier horse than anywhere else?
This climate, I mean, it's cool, there's no extremes.
You know, it's all about the grass, in my book, really.
COMMENTARY BLARES OVER TANNOY
Bocca Baciata, that's mine.
JOCKEY ROARS
Another loser.
Bocca Baciata - stupid name, stupid horse.
HE SNORTS
The most famous person I ever hired a pair of binoculars to,
besides yourself, was Jimmy Carter.
The former US president? The president. Yeah.
And he was a really nice man.
He hired them, went off - apparently, he likes his horses.
That was... I didn't ask him for I'D or to sign anything, you know.
You took him on face value. That's fairly incredible.
Thanks a million, George, OK? Right, Ardal.
Cheers, nice to meet you. Thank you.
That's better. Now, I can't go wrong.
Ah, yes.
The man in the blue blazer is one of Ireland's greatest trainers.
William McCreery trains the horses of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid,
one of the wealthiest men in the world.
He has ten stud farms here. Yeah.
Most of his... All his best progeny are raised and grazed here. Yeah.
But why Ireland? Like, what's so special about Ireland,
or Irish trainers like yourself?
We have the best ground here.
The best soil type here. Yeah? Yeah.
Unbeknownst to yourself,
a lot of Irish people have horses in their blood. Yeah.
And A lot of Irish people, their first time touching a horse,
they touch them very gently. Yeah. Foreigners don't, you know?
We just have it in our blood that you don't even know about it. Yeah, yeah.
You'd have it and you wouldn't even know it. Yeah, yeah.
Because sometimes a foreigner will touch a horse and he'll slap them.
Yeah, or be afraid of horse, even? Yes. An Irish lad will pat it.
It's probably cos we all go back to a caravan at some stage.
ARDAL LAUGHS Yeah.
McCreery is here to see his horse run.
But as always, success is down to both the horse
and the jockey who rides him.
ARDAL: And is this a horse that you'd have high hopes for?
MCCREERY: Yeah, I do, yeah.
And we'll train him at home to follow a horse,
and then come out and put on the turbo.
Hopefully, the turbo, you know?
You brought the turbo?
Well, we brought the turbo,
but we don't know if the jockey can engage it. ARDAL LAUGHS
He's ridden him twice last year, so he knows the horse well. He knows him well, yeah.
'They're out there somewhere.
'Ah, there they are.'
COMMENTARY BLARES OVER TANNOY
'Aridity is William McCreery's horse,
'but I sense things aren't going very well.'
No, and he's just...
He's not giving him a hard race here.
'These binoculars are fantastic.'
That's Dermot Weld wins it again.
So what was the...? What was the issue there?
Erm...well, I hope the ground.
I hope the ground, you know, held him up,
because he wasn't too hard on him. You know? Right, right.
And he turned in in a lovely position,
but I hope the ground just collared him, you know? Yeah, yeah.
Yes, I also hope the ground was to blame, for the jockey's sake.
Like hurling, it's a fiercely competitive sport.
INAUDIBLE
McCreery believes that we Irish are able to coax our horses
into winning because we've acquired a special affinity with them.
Although I'm not sure it's something I've quite achieved yet.
It's one thing the Halls were right about -
we are half human, half horse.
I'm in Dublin, following in the footsteps of Mr and Mrs Hall,
who travelled the country back in the 1840s.
More than anything, it was the peculiarities of
Irish culture and identity that they were most keen on.
Like their Victorian countrymen,
they associated Irish cuisine with the potato.
For them, it was the root of our misfortune.
They reckon the accursed root is, if not the originator,
the sustainer of Irish poverty and wretchedness.
Well, I'm going to find out if this "accursed root"
has any place on Irish tables today.
This is Gallagher's Boxty House, modern Ireland's temple
to the humble spud.
Chef, Padraic Og Gallagher,
is taking me back to how the potato was first served in Ireland.
Some lumpers cooked, huh?
This is the way the families would have had them.
Yeah, or even in a wooden bowl, strained out.
If you had an acre, you could grow enough for a family of six,
eating 12 pounds of potatoes a day - like five kilos of potatoes a day,
every day.
Breakfast - potatoes. Wow. Lunch - potatoes.
Three meals a day - potatoes. Potatoes. That was it.
And that's all they had to eat.
But, you know, they would have eaten these with the centre raw.
So they would just parboil them? Parboil them, yeah.
So the outer half would have been kind of fluffy and...?
Yeah, and the inside would have been raw.
What was the thinking?
Second digestion, when they're working the field.
They would have said that, if the potato was cooked too much,
they wouldn't be able to do a day's work.
And that was it, so an hour and a half or two hours later,
they get a salient feeling from the fact that the raw potato was
mixing with the juice in their stomach, or whatever.
I haven't experimented with that one yet, you know? Yeah, yeah.
200 years ago, poverty was rife in Ireland.
The potato was about the only food people ate.
Then the potato blight hit, destroying the nation's crops,
and resulting in famine.
A million people starved to death,
and at least a million more were forced to emigrate.
Was that their fault?
You know, there's an opinion that, like, you know,
they should have tried to grow something else.
Why couldn't they grow something else?
Because, first of all, the potato is...
You just need to grow the potato.
You don't have to take it to the mill,
you don't have to pay a miller to mill it.
It's not like a grain, you just grow it, and you grow it again.
You keep some of these for next year,
and you just put them in the soil, and they grow again next year.
Very simple.
And the potato gave them everything they needed.
So, I suppose the question would be, "Why would you grow anything else?"
Yeah. You know?
Padraic has resurrected the potato from its accursed past.
It's now the raw ingredient of 1,001 gastronomic creations,
built around the traditional Irish boxty, or potato pancake.
Wow! This is your boxty pancake.
Made of grated raw potato, cooked mashed potato,
and we use a gluten-free flour in it.
And these are... Have you tasted these? Mm. They're gorgeous.
It's a pancake, thinly sliced, and deep fat fried. Oh, my God.
Boxty pancake, so again, you've about 70% potato in there. Yeah.
And that's just... They are nicer than chips.
Nicer than your regular skinny fries.
They're much nicer than chips. Mm. PADRAIC CHUCKLES
This is the loaf. It's the boxty loaf, boxty bread. Potato bread.
Potato bread. 60%, 70% potato in it. Look at my fingers, my God.
Mess here.
'Oh, Padraic's food was so good,
'I found it increasingly difficult to focus on what he was saying.'
I feel like a bit of a savage, so early in the day...
'990 potato dishes later, we finally ended up with something to drink.'
I think we should have a wee drop of poitin. Just to round it all off.
Yeah. Lovely. I suppose you know what poitin's made from, do you?
There would be a potato content. I think there might be, indeed.
Creator, they call it. Yeah? Yeah. The original? A drop of the creator.
Well... No, this is completely legal.
Slainte. Slainte.
'Now, people, this innocent-looking liquid
is to be consumed with great care.
It is poitin - potato whiskey - and it's probably
the most wicked thing you can do with a spud.'
Tastes great. 'Alas, I can't possibly say no,
'especially in the presence of a connoisseur.'
Yeah, there's a... There's a warming quality to that.
When the Halls were travelling around Ireland in the 1840s,
the pub, or tabhairne, was the focal point of most communities,
with ten million gallons of whiskey and poitin consumed annually.
The Halls were very concerned about our drinking habits,
especially the illicit liquor, poitin.
They described it as the shame and the bane of Ireland,
and were huge fans of the temperance movement at the time.
But we've always been a bit ambivalent about the drink here.
We resent the stereotyping - of course we do -
but we sometimes revel in the reputation,
and for every hardened drinker,
you'll find people who don't drink at all,
and I'm about to speak to one of those guys now.
He just happens to own his own distillery.
For centuries, poitin was illegal,
and distilled in secret using primitive techniques.
'Echlinville Distillery is on the eastern shores of Strangford Lough.
'It's the first official distillery in Northern Ireland
'in over 125 years, and it makes legal poitin.'
It's like a whiskey-producing saxophone,
that's what that looks like.
'Chief distiller is Shane Braniff.'
This sounds like one of the greatest jobs in the world.
In truth, I have never drank.
I've never drank alcohol.
But surely, as a distiller, you must taste it.
Erm... As a distiller, I would taste the spirit coming off the still.
Erm... Tasting is very, very different to drinking.
Shane is so proud of his tasting ability,
he's considering insuring his own tongue.
So we'll go down here now,
and we'll head down and have a look at the spirit coming off.
I want to try some of this notorious brew myself,
but Shane has warned me to be careful.
I'm going to be sampling almost pure alcohol.
So, I'll just get you a little sample here.
Is it strong at this stage? Oh...
It's, erm...
Now, this is only a rough guide here, but do you know what?
It's coming off just above 85 ABV, so it's strong, aye.
Don't be knocking this back.
So the spirit that's coming off here now should be very, very sweet,
very, very pure, and it should be full of character and flavour,
so just on the edge of your tongue or on your lips.
Don't drink it. OK.
Purely in the interests of scientific research.
Je...
Now, really...
EXHALES SHARPLY COUGHS
I actually think my tongue melted.
Aye, seriously. Will you have a look?
SHANE LAUGHS
In spite of - or maybe because of - its former illegality,
poitin has become one of Ireland's most famous spirits.
The secret recipe for this particular brand
was formulated by David Mulligan and Cara Humphries.
This book I've been reading, though, the Halls, you know,
they were very down on it. They would not like you guys.
They just thought that home-distilled stuff was the
bane of Irish life, that it was the cause of every misery,
every misfortune going. Are people still distilling it?
Oh, yeah, plenty people.
Plenty people still distilling it, and it's really passed down
generation to generation how they do it, you know?
But our main research was just collecting as many as we could,
you know, and drinking as many as we could.
How do you find these people?
They find you, funnily enough, once you put the word out, you know?
Everybody's got a story in Ireland, everybody knows somebody.
You'll never meet the guy who made it.
No-one'll ever admit to making it,
but they can get you a bottle fairly handy.
Yeah, and it usually comes in an old lemonade bottle.
Lemonade, or an old whiskey bottle, an old wine bottle.
It was definitely a labour of love in the beginning.
A lot of experiments, a lot of distilling, and...
A lot of long days, yeah. ..a lot of potato peeling.
Lot of hanging out with Shane. Yeah.
What other purposes were people using poitin for?
Oh, God, there's 101 different uses.
You still get a lot of county footballers using it,
rubbing it into their muscles and stuff, when they've cramps.
That's a genuine thing? Aye, and then the animal thing.
I've heard that there was a horse that was so sick,
they had to put it down, and they didn't want to shoot it,
so they gave it a bucket of poitin,
and the thing ended up living for another two years.
And you don't drink at all! No, no, no, I...
Which is kind of bizarre for somebody who's peddling.
Yeah, I know, I know, I know,
sometimes I find it hard to sleep at night, but...
I love to see people drinking, you know?
I really, really do. I'm not surprised!
You wouldn't be living in this house otherwise.
Fortified on poitin, I've travelled to the opposite end of the country,
to complete my investigations into Irish identity.
I'm being escorted to one of the most mysterious places
in all of Ireland.
And I'd just like to show you the entrance, right over here.
'Looks like I'm about to enter another dimension,
'with only the vaguest notion of what to expect.'
I'll let you experience that by yourself, now.
You're not going to leave me here on my own?
Is this a trick?
This was once the site of a souterrain,
an ancient underground passage,
a secret tunnel for entering or leaving a hidden fortress.
And this is where the secret souterrain rejoins the world above.
This is the Sky Crater, an astonishing modern artwork,
built on the site of an ancient ringfort.
It's a little bit... It's a little bit, er...
I'm a little bit scared,
because it does look like I'm about to be ritually sacrificed.
'The Sky Crater was designed by American artist, James Turrell.'
There's a little headrest there.
'What's the point of it? Well, it's an observatory.
'A place to observe the universe out there,
'and the universe within oneself.'
I remember as a kid,
that you'd often lie in the park and look at the sky.
You know, there's something to be said for that, I think, so...
I mean, this forces you to do that,
because that's all there is to do in this crater.
So I think that's maybe kind of one of the ideas that the artist had,
is that he gets you to stop and think,
and contemplate and maybe reflect on the meaning of life.
What you see is the green hills, the blue sky, and the white clouds.
This view of Ireland that I'm looking at now is exactly
the same one the Celts saw and the Vikings saw,
and the Normans and the English saw.
In that sense, the country hasn't really changed at all.
You might be able to get the same effect by just putting one of
those dog flea collars over your head, so if you can't come here,
just lie in your garden, with a flea collar like that.
Next time, I'll be heading into uncharted waters in Donegal,
in search of Irish myths and legends.
Nobody knows about this.
It's completely hidden away, this architectural treasure.
I'll be practising my sword-fighting skills in Belfast.
You never know when you might need them.
I mean, I think it's a good way to start the day - just to hold one.
Yeah. And just wave it around on your own.
You don't need to tell anyone.
And I'll be awestruck by a legendary beast
who's just landed a new job.
She's an actual officer in the Irish Army? Yes.
She's messing with me. No!
Subtitles by Ericsson