Narrative Lab

The Book of Many Irelands

Produced by Narrative Lab

In April 1998, heritage worker Aisling Keane returns to a divided border community to prepare an exhibition about a nearby ringfort. Carrying her grandmother Moira’s notebook of fairy stories, Aisling wants to prove an unbroken line from ancient Ireland to the present. Local historian Ciaran Bell challenges her certainty. As they follow the site’s changing meanings through Christianity, monastic learning, Viking Dublin, medieval lordship, plantation, famine, revival, independence, partition, and the Good Friday Agreement, they must decide whether truth requires them to silence inherited stories—or to tell them more honestly.

3 chapters · ≈ 2,616 words · ≈ 12 min read