The Darkness Echoing

Ireland is a nation obsessed with death. We find a thrill in the moribund, a strange enchantment in the drama of our dark past. It’s everywhere we look and in all of our beloved myths, songs and stories that have helped to form our cultural identity. Our wakes and ballads, our plays and famine sites, all of them and more come together to tell our children and the world who we are and what we have suffered to get here.

Gillian O’Brien had a grandmother who tried on outfits in preparation for her funeral. Always aware of a typical Irish preoccupation with death and the rituals around it, Gillian now wants to explore this intriguing habit of ours, to be compelled to celebrate the macabre and relish the darkness of own mortality. In The Undiscovered County, she tours Ireland to find our most haunted and excitingly grim heritage sites, to discover the stories behind them and reveal what they say about us.

From war to revolution, famine to emigration, and finally, to death and ghosts, The Undiscovered Country travels around Ireland and through its history to examine the old, accepted narratives and bring newly unearthed stories from our past to life.