🚀 go-pugleaf

[An attempt at clarifying a few of the many historical inaccuracies
appearing regularly and with impunity on net.nlang.celts]

Under the terms of the 1921 treaty with Great Britain, Southern Ireland was 
essentially granted the Constitutional position which is now adopted wholesale 
by the British Commonwealth and was dubbed the 'Irish Free State' or 'Eire'. 
This position was maintained even in deValera's constitution of 1937.

We became the 'Republic of Ireland' on leaving the Commonwealth in 1948
under a Coalition Government lead by one Mr. Costello. DeValera and Fianna Fail
had nothing to do with this. The Gaelic for the 'Republic of Ireland' is 
'Poblacht na hEireann' - not easily fitted around the rim of a coin or button 
and therefore normally shortened to 'Eire' for such purposes. As a 
counter-example, consider legal tender (the punt) on which 'Poblacht na 
hEireann' appears in all its glory.

Any description of the Republic of Ireland as 'Eire' could be considered mildly
derogatory, harkening back, as it does, to colonial days and being an 
abbreviated form of the official title of the country in Gaelic, but
only by those who have nothing better to do than harp on such
trivialities.

Whether Poblacht na hEireann or Eire all it amounts to are questions of 
semantics in a language which, as taught to-day, has been so standardized as
to lose all dialectic beauty, and political quibbles which are of no relevance 
to net.nlang.celts.

	   James Beausang