Fact checking/correcting Irish tour guides

Jellybaby_1 · 16-10-2025 06:30PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909957#Comment_123909957

Oh, I'd actually like to see that!

pinkypinky · 27-10-2025 10:32PM

I did a tour of the Little Museum of Dublin not long after they first opened and they were repeating the myth about DeV not being executed because he was born in America. I wanted to correct but my mother wouldn't let me! I did mention it to him afterwards.

The worst I ever experienced was an official tour guide in the Colosseum, where they told the group the wrong dates for when it was built, about which there is no ambiguity. It made me reconsider everything I ever hear on a tour!

Jellybaby_1 · 28-10-2025 07:15PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123942647#Comment_123942647

I agree about the (award-winning!) Little Museum of Dublin. But again, actors are used and then fed to the wolves!! Very unfair on them.

kildarejohn · 29-10-2025 05:36PM

To return to the first post in this thread, was the guide perhaps correct to say Ireland were neutral in WWI? - in other words is there any historical record of an official statement by Dail Eireann between 1916 and 1918 stating which side the Provisional Government was on?

pinkypinky · 29-10-2025 05:50PM

Ireland was not an independent nation at any stage during WWI so whether someone made a statement or not is irrelevant. The first meeting of Dáil Éireann was not until 1919.

The Continental Op · 29-10-2025 05:52PM

I know several guides. They are all poles apart. One has a degree in the subject they gave guided tours about, another is a local historian who is happy to make things up and another two who are definite crowd pleasers who do really well in tips but I wouldn't believe a word they say.

Knowing this to be brutally honest I wouldn't quote any of them other than to say "a tour guide said".

My take on this is that being a tour guide is a performance and you are rarely judged on accuracy.

kildarejohn · 29-10-2025 06:10PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123946672#Comment_123946672

You're right of course. I was being rather tongue in cheek. While the Dail did not sit, the Republic was proclaimed in Easter 1916, and there are several cases where republicans stated "as a citizen of the Irish Republic I refuse to recognise this court", so arguably the Republic was in existence from 1916 to 1918. If the guide had been aware of these facts he/she could have debated the issue.

Peregrinus · 30-10-2025 02:05AM

Well, the proclamation of the Republic in 1916 did include an explicit reference to "gallant allies in Europe", meaning Germany. So even if you take the view that the Republic was in existence during the Great War it wasn't neutral; it was allied with the Axis states.

walkonby · 30-10-2025 04:57AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123947731#Comment_123947731

with the Central Powers, not Axis

ancapailldorcha · 14-11-2025 11:03AM

I remember getting a tour of Kilmainham Gaol. She ended every sentence with an upward inflection, as if asking a question. She also made several errors including stating that nobody knew what happened to the bodies of the 1916 Rising's leaders.

Fact checking/correcting Irish tour guides

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