'What killed the old Ireland was not only television, but the motor car,' Sean proceeded, as if reading my mind.

I started to draw it, and I kept thinking of my grandmother in old Ireland.

But you'll find in old Ireland there's good men and dogs.

"The chief was telling me some of his family's ancestral stories about old Ireland."

Dear old Ireland was nice for the tourists, but not for us.

"I was given the tiniest little taste of the old Ireland," he said.

Yet the unexpected thing, to anyone more accustomed to an older Ireland, is that it all happens without fuss or fluster.

"Aye-and a grand day for old Ireland," said the captain of the new.

There should be signs on the land that the old Ireland had vanished.

Gone is the old rural Ireland of "cottage, donkey and church," as one painter put it.