Mad Gael Productions

06/10/2026

06/10/2026

Just a month away!

06/10/2026

Saint Kevin walked into this valley in the 6th century looking for solitude — and instead built one of the greatest centers of learning in the medieval world. 🦌☘️
Glendalough — from the Irish Gleann Dá Loch, meaning Valley of the Two Lakes — is one of the most hauntingly beautiful and historically significant places in all of Ireland, a glacial valley in the Wicklow Mountains that has been a place of pilgrimage, scholarship, and spiritual seeking for nearly fifteen hundred years. Saint Kevin, a monk of royal lineage who rejected the privileges of his birth to live as a hermit in the Wicklow wilderness, established his first cell here around 570 AD, living alone in a cave above the upper lake in a silence so complete that, according to legend, a blackbird once nested in his outstretched hand during prayer and he held the position without moving until her eggs had hatched. From that solitary beginning grew one of the most important monasteries in early Christian Europe — a city of learning that drew students from across Ireland, Britain, and the continent during the golden age of Irish Christianity.
At its height, the monastic city of Glendalough housed thousands of monks, scholars, and students, its scriptorium producing illuminated manuscripts of extraordinary beauty, its teachers sending graduates across Europe to found new monasteries and keep the light of learning alive during centuries of continental darkness. The Vikings raided it repeatedly — it was burned at least four times between the 8th and 10th centuries — and each time the monks rebuilt. The English finally suppressed it in 1214, but pilgrims never stopped coming. They still come today, hundreds of thousands every year, drawn by something in this valley that no amount of history has managed to diminish. 📜🌿
Have you visited Glendalough? Does the valley of County Wicklow run in your family's roots? Share your connection in the comments and follow for more stories of Ireland's sacred places and the extraordinary people who built them. ☘️✨

06/10/2026

Every country has folk music. Only Ireland has the uilleann pipes.

The uilleann pipes — pronounced ILL-in, from the Irish word for elbow — are one of the most complex and distinctly Irish musical instruments ever created. Unlike bagpipes which are blown by mouth, the uilleann pipes are powered by bellows strapped to the player's arm and pumped with the elbow, leaving the mouth completely free.

This makes them capable of something no other bagpipe in the world can do — playing two full octaves, producing a sound that is softer, more nuanced, and more expressive than any other pipe instrument. In the hands of a skilled player the uilleann pipes can produce a sound that is simultaneously mournful and joyful, ancient and immediate.

They developed in Ireland during the 18th century and became central to Irish traditional music. During the worst years of the Penal Laws when Irish culture was actively suppressed, traditional music went underground — played in private homes, at crossroads, and at wakes. The uilleann pipes survived because the people who played them refused to stop.

UNESCO added Irish traditional music to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2023, in part recognizing the unique cultural significance of the uilleann pipes.

Have you ever heard the uilleann pipes played live? Tell us below. 👇


First comment:

06/09/2026

🟢 Erin Go Bragh 🇮🇪

“Ireland Forever” - a phrase carried through generations, from old banners and rebel songs to parades and gatherings across the world.

Simple words, enduring meaning.



📸 Irish Roots

06/09/2026

☘️ There's an unwritten rule in a real Irish session that most visitors don't know until they've broken it. You don't request songs. You don't interrupt between tunes. You don't put your drink on the musicians' table. You listen, you absorb, and if you're very lucky and the session is going well, someone might nod at you to join. That nod is one of the highest social honors an Irish pub can offer.

The session isn't a performance. That's the thing that takes outsiders the longest to understand. The musicians aren't playing for the room. They're playing for each other, and the room is privileged to be present for it. The tradition stretches back centuries, to a time when music was how Irish communities processed everything, grief, celebration, resistance, and memory, all of it carried in the same reels and slow airs that are still being played in the same corners of the same pubs today.

The diaspora carried it everywhere. You can find a real session in Boston, Chicago, Sydney, and Montreal if you know where to look and what to listen for. And when you find one, the etiquette is the same as it's always been. Sit down. Order a pint. Close your mouth and open your ears. Drop a comment and tell us where you found your best session outside of Ireland. Follow The Irish Remembered for more. 🎵☘️

06/09/2026

☘️ The perfect Irish Coffee

Preheat your Irish coffee glass by filling it with boiling water for 5 seconds, then pour the water out.

Add 1 teaspoon of brown sugar and a good measure of Irish whiskey into the warmed glass.

Fill the glass to within 1 cm of the brim with hot, strong black coffee. Stir well to dissolve all the brown sugar.

Carefully pour lightly whipped cream over the back of a spoon so that it floats on top of the coffee.

Do not stir after adding the cream; the best flavour comes from drinking the coffee and Irish whiskey through the cream. The final step .... Enjoy 😍

06/09/2026

☘️ National Botanic gardens Kilmacurragh County Wicklow, looking absolutely beautiful in the sunshine.

Photo Credit 📷 Mark Meyer

06/09/2026

Dunluce Castle, a historic fortress dramatically perched on the edge of a basalt cliff in County Antrim, Northern Ireland 🇮🇪