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And yet, it's that elegant and quiet house in the heart of Dublin that, arguably, comes the closest to the visceral meaning of “wonder”

A castle named after someone who never lived there or even visited would be an oddity - Ireland, of all places, can boast such a wonderful oddity.

To meet the challenge, the owners of Bunratty Castle decided to create another magnet by building a…park.

One might wander around the Blarney grounds for quite a while until stumbling upon their westmost part marked on the map as “Rock Close”, and passing through its invisible borders. Then time stops…

She vented her frustration by exclaiming: "That's nothing but a load of Blarney - or so the legend goes - and a new English word was brought into the world, inspired by a man who just used a little help from a family friend.

Practical jokers with sharp tongues, the Irish know how to appreciate a good pun, too. Dublin's most popular entertainment area is called Temple Bar - an obvious oxymoron, isn't it?

The ultimate secret of “Ulysses”' appeal to so many people might be its multifaceted nature resulting in a chameleon ability to offer everyone exactly what that particular person seeks.

“Dubliners” were about to set the stage for bigger literary forms, and an autobiographical novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” marked the next breakthrough in Joyce's literary exploration.

One such wonder did happen to the end-of-the-19th-century Ireland, and that wonder had a first name and a family name. It was called James Joyce. When Parnell died, the wonder was 9-years-old