ABSTRACT
Religion was a major constituent of popular culture and national identity in Ireland during the nineteenth century and up to the 1950s. Catholicism was centrally important for Irish society mainly because it was inextricably bound up with the sense of national identity of the majority, in contrast to Protestant Britain. Within Catholicism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Marianism, that is devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, was a world-wide socio-religious phenomenon. The Seven Sorrows of Mary and the litany of the Blessed Virgin were rich in visual imagery. Girls were marshalled into the Sodality of the Children of Mary and attended special devotions and events wearing their distinctive blue and white clothing - 'Our Lady's colours'. Older pupils, dressed as children of Mary in blue and white, followed to an open-air altar decorated elaborately with flowers. Benediction ceremonies entailed massive numbers of candles, incense and hymn singing.
