Ireland

Yvonne Briscoe Ireland, an elementary-school teacher and one-time referral specialist for a Montgomery County pediatric practice, died May 19 after several months of illness. She was 74 and lived in Erdenheim, and had lived for many years in Mount Airy. While living in Mount Airy, Yvonne volunteered at Deborah Heart Hospital. She was born in Philadelphia to Juanita E. and George Briscoe, and graduated from Yeadon High School. She completed her studies in elementary education at Millersville University.

President Obama's one-day visit to Ireland was a masterly orchestration of three visuals - one imaginary, two very real. Imaginary visual: the apostrophe in O'Bama . "My name is Barack Obama," he said in Dublin, "of the Moneygall Obamas, and I've come home to find the apostrophe we lost somewhere along the way. " Anglo-Irish apostrophe, Kenyan last name, American tale. Second visual, potent indeed: that imperial pint of Guinness at Ollie Hayes' pub in Obama's ancestral town of Moneygall (Irish Muine Gall , or "thicket of foreigners"!

Worth the wait: Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan is the grand finale of the Philadelphia Irish Theatre Festival. Druid theater company from Galway, Ireland, under the brilliant direction of Garry Hynes, is making a brief stop at the Annenberg Center, and anybody with any interest in McDonagh, Irish drama, or contemporary theater generally should see it while the seeing's good. The play originally was transferred from Ireland to the Atlantic Theatre in New York, where I saw it (and raved about it in these pages)

DUBLIN, Ireland - Sometimes words aren't necessary. That was the case Tuesday when Queen Elizabeth II placed a wreath in Dublin's Garden of Remembrance to honor the Irish rebels who lost their lives fighting for freedom from Britain. The queen became the first British monarch to set foot in Dublin for a century. Her four-day visit is designed to show that the bitter enmity of Ireland's war of independence 90 years ago has been replaced by Anglo-Irish friendship and that peace has become irreversible in the neighboring British territory of Northern Ireland.

DUBLIN - Sometimes words aren't necessary. That was the case yesterday when Queen Elizabeth II placed a wreath in Dublin's Garden of Remembrance to honor the Irish rebels who lost their lives fighting for freedom - from Britain. The queen became the first British monarch to set foot in Dublin for a century. Her four-day visit is designed to show that the bitter enmity of Ireland's war of independence 90 years ago has been replaced by Anglo-Irish friendship, and that peace has become irreversible in the neighboring British territory of Northern Ireland.

DUBLIN - Police yesterday arrested Ireland's most notorious Muslim convert over his reported death threats against President Obama. Police said the arrest of Khalid Kelly, 44, dubbed "Taliban Terry" by Dubliners, came 10 days before Obama's arrival in Ireland and four days after the British newspaper the Sunday Mirror printed an interview with Kelly. He is Ireland's most outspoken supporter of al Qaeda and its slain founder, Osama bin Laden. Kelly was quoted as telling the newspaper that he expected al Qaeda to kill Obama during his visit to Ireland in part because the country's police force is poorly armed.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Northern Ireland's two major parties will return to power atop a joint Catholic-Protestant government with increased support for their policies of compromise and peacemaking, electoral returns Saturday showed. The British Protestants of the Democratic Unionists and the Irish Catholics of Sinn Fein - bitter enemies for decades but, since 2007, partners in government - strengthened their hold on the Northern Ireland Assembly, the bedrock of the province's cross-community government.

US Airways flies nonstop to Dublin from Philadelphia. The lowest recent round-trip fare was about $667. Tourism Ireland Irish government's U.S. tourist discount site: http://bit.ly/5g7dYY . Walking tours Guinness podcast walking tours of Dublin: http://bit.ly/g4vN3A . Ireland's School of Falconry At Ashford Castle, County Mayo: www.falconry.ie . Videos: http://bit.ly/gYLpi1 ...

Inis Nua Theatre Company's American premiere of Dublin by Lamplight by Michael West, is an odd, charming show, showcasing an impressive cast under Tom Reing's highly stylized commedia dell'arte direction. All the actors play multiple roles and the handsome church space - set with only one chair - is used imaginatively. But why it's performed in exaggerated whiteface makeup is a mystery, unless it's just to make this old-timey melodrama seem unusual. How much you'll enjoy it probably depends on how much you know about Irish political history, Irish literature and mythology, and the founding of the Abbey Theatre.

TODAY WE raise a glass of warm green beer to a fine fellow, the Irishman who didn't rid the land of snakes, didn't compare the Trinity to the shamrock and wasn't even Irish. St. Patrick, who died 1,518, 1,550 or 1,551 years ago today - depending on which unreliable source you want to believe - has been adorned with centuries of Irish blarney. Innumerable folk tales recount how he faced down kings, negotiated with God, tricked and slaughtered Ireland's reptiles. The facts about St. Patrick are few. Most derive from the two documents he probably wrote, the autobiographical "Confession" and the indignant "Letter to a slave-taking marauder named Coroticus.