Stands Ireland where it did? The Shakespearean idiom is borrowed from Macbeth, with Macduff’s question (about Scotland in the play) eliciting this response from Ross, his fellow knight: “Alas, poor country, almost afraid to know thyself”.
Is this where we’re at? Who are we now? In the Ireland of the 1950s, when I was growing up, these questions were much easier to answer. It was an Ireland at the centre of which stood three great institutions – the Catholic Church, the Gaelic Athletic Association, and the Irish Press.