Ceol-a-Palooza 🎻🪗

So, What’s the Craic?

The Craic is back on this fine August Friday, bringing you reports of the Irish at home and abroad. Today’s Craic is a belter so we hope you enjoy it as much as we did putting it together. Remember, if you pass it on, you can even earn yourself a fine Shift-branded T-shirt for your trouble. You’ll look the part when the Shift Social and Dating app launches! More on all this below.

News from Home

The Big One. The biggest celebration of Irish music and culture is now underway in Co Wexford. The Fleadh Cheoil 2025 will wrap up on Sunday after eight days of music and dancing, arts shows, craic, and a fair few pints. Ed Sheeran appeared, delighting crowds with his own take on Irish traditional music. They broke records this year, too, with an ensemble of over 1,000 musicians creating the largest ever céilí band. Guinness World Records was there to make it official. Next year, it’s on to Belfast – stick it on your bucket list.

Ach, Go On Then. Another week, another survey to remind us how class Ireland is. This time it’s the turn of Achill Island, off the coast of Mayo, which has been voted one of the world’s most beautiful islands. It is stunning, but the weather does get a bit rougher than your Hawaiis and Seychellesy-type places, so bring a sweater.

Horse Play. Irish studs are among the world’s best (we refer to horse breeding operations, not virile men), and the cream of the crop usually pops up at the Dublin Horse Show, which is taking place all week at the RDS. There’s loads of equine action, but for some reason the headlines often go to the Best Dressed Lady (their terminology, not ours) Award. If you want to see this year’s winner (she does look awesome, to be fair), check the video here.

Céadaoin. It’s passed us by, but apparently, the Netflix show Wednesday is pretty popular worldwide. Much of the series was shot in Ireland, and we have become experts at cashing in on TV tourism. Helpfully, as Season 2 launches, RTE has created a guide helping you spot all the Irish locations used in the show. See it here.

The Irish Influence

Today, we are going to highlight one of the most influential Irish people that you’ve probably never heard of – Francis Hutcheson. Born on this date in 1684 (we assume he’s dead now), Hutcheson was a giant of the Scottish Enlightenment (he went to university there), and if you decided to skip philosophy classes in college, you should know that the Scottish Enlightenment gave us many of the ethics that apply to modern societies today. Anyway, Hutcheson shaped much of that movement, often critically combating the “Father of Liberalism,” Englishman John Locke. He influenced other big names in the philosophy game, like Adam Smith (great man for the capitalism, he was) and David Hume. Yet, Hutcheson is also credited with being one of the earliest proponents of animal rights, arguing that all sentient beings deserve moral consideration. Nice one, Frank.

Cúpla Focal

Dryshite – a bore, someone who is no craic. We picked this little bit of Irish slang this week for no other reason than its existence amused us. You can try it out yourself by calling your boss a “dryshite” the next time they drag out a Zoom meeting for too long. Go on, they’ll probably respect you for it.

Blast from the Past

As it’s the Fleadh Cheoil week, we thought we would take you back in time 50 years to the 1975 version of the big festival, which was held in Buncrana, Donegal. The old video below takes a while to warm up, but it gives you an indication of the vibes of the mid-70s in small-town Ireland, as well as flavors of the old trad music. Some great haircuts, too. Oh, and look out for the fella about 45 seconds in, smoking a pipe as long as your forearm.

And One Last Thing….

Hey, did you know that Dublin’s murder rate rose 114% from 2023 to 2024? You would have learned that if you watched a recent segment on Fox News’ The Will Cain Show. It sounds staggering until you find out that the greater Dublin Metropolitan region had 12 murders in 2023, rising to 13 in 2024. One extra murder is obviously not desirable, but a rate of 13 murders per annum in a region with two million people is extraordinarily low, making it one of the world’s safest capital cities. Oh, by the way, the number of homicides in the entire country of Ireland in 2024 was 47. The Fox News segment has been called “the most brazen manipulation of statistics you’re ever likely to see,” and it even got our former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, involved. Ireland has issues, like every modern country, but Twitter is not real life, lads. Get outside and enjoy the craic.

Go on ya good thing! You made it to the end. If you enjoyed The Craic, remember to share the love. Everyone who gets The Craic will get early access to the Shift mobile app, which is coming very, very soon! And if those friends or family are doing alright for themselves, if ya know what I mean, let them know we’re still looking for investors to help us come out of the traps roaring like a Celtic Ti- eh… Horse. 🐎 Hit us up on [email protected].