ABSTRACT
Thus far, heritage has been broadly referred to as the tangible and intangible aspects of cultural patrimony handed down through the generations-simply put, the inherited past. It is a far more complex issue than that, often engendering emotional responses to its very existence-or any real or perceived threats to its existence. Tourists to Ireland are often overwhelmed by the heritage landscapes that surround them; so, too, they can be oblivious to the symbolic importance of the heritage to the Irish themselves. Signs written only in Irish in the Gaeltacht region are many times seen as quaint, an anachronistic nod toward the “old ways” and not as a symbol of the multilingual Ireland of the new millennium or as a way for native speakers (or the government) to delineate a speci c cultural area. Trim Castle and other such buildings are understood as “Irish” despite explanations by tour guides and written signposts pointing out their position in the past as strongholds of the invading forces of a foreign country only recently purged from Irish shores. Sites of the ancient past exist in many visitors’ minds as somehow emerging organically from the earth-a past so far removed from their understanding as to have simply happened; the people who built and maintained the sites for generations are imagined as inherently different from people who live today. Cultures who built Newgrange or Carrowmore for the burial of their dead and to mark out territories are seldom compared to 21st-century
cultures who build enormously costly buildings to house the living and to symbolize their own bounded territories.
