The UK and people living there

   Breton is spoken by about 1 million country people in the French province of Brittany.

                                                    The Irish as they are.

    There is an old Irish saying that Ireland must be the cleanest place in the world. Because God washes it every day. An Irishman doesn’t really expect it to rain every day, just every other day.

   There is a beautiful place in this country- the Giant’s Causeway – eights wonder of the world. The Causeway is a strange geological feature – the result of volcanic action. The Irish thought differently – this was giant’s work, the work of the giant Finn McCool, the Ulster soldier and commander of the armies of the King of all Ireland. Finn was extremely strong. On one occasion, during a fight with a Scottish giant, he picked up a huge piece of earth and threw it at him. The earth fell into the Irish Sea and became the Isle of Man. The hole it left filled with water and became the great Ireland Sea of Lough Neagh. People said that Finn lived in the North Antrim coast and that he fell in love with a lady giant. She lived on an island in the Scottish Hebrides. And so he began to build this wide causeway to bring her across to Ulster.

   No event in Irish history has had a deeper effect on Irish national feeling than the Great Famine of 1845-1849. In the 19^th century most of the Irish dependent on agriculture – indeed, most of them depended on simple potato –farming for their survival. The poor peasants made their living from tiny pieces of land and had to pay high rents for this land. Potatoes were their main food and when the potato harvest was bad for 4 years is succession, there was a terrible famine in the country.

   The Great Famine left one million dead and forced another million to emigrate to the United States of America. It also left bitter feelings towards the British Government because they had not done enough to help the poor people during the famine.

   Ireland is famous for its writers and poets.

• Jonathan Swift – the greatest satirist in the history of British literature.
• Thomas Moor – an Irish poet
• Oscar Wilde – the writer of many poems, fairy tales, plays, critical essays and the novel ‘The picture of Dorian Grey’.
• George Bernard Show - wrote such important plays as “Pygmalion”, “Candida”, Caesar and Cleopatra”, “Man and superman”.

   And many other famous people.

People of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are different in their traditions and customs, their history, manners, opinions and views but they are united by one common thing – they are proud of their Motherland and love it.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

                                             Literature.

1. V. F. Satinova “Read and speak about Britain and the British”, Minsk, 1996 г.