Weird Ireland’s Brinsley McNamara on Strange Emerald Isle stories

Brinsley McNamara is the creator of Weird Ireland, the popular instagram and TikTok account that shows some of the weird and wonderful parts of Irish history, culture and daily life.

Weird Ireland has grown since Brinsley started documenting these interesting parts of Irish history, tradition and culture in 2024. There is now a podcast and a book that tells many of the different stories about different places in Ireland. They range from mildly curious to downright bizarre.

We caught up with him to find out a little bit more about Weird Ireland: the person behind it, and the Irish history, traditions and stories that he’s discovered.

How did Weird Ireland come about? Are you someone who’s got an interest in weird and unusual things, or are they just things you stumble across?

Brinsley: The whole exploring old stuff in the countryside I was doing my whole life anyways I just wasn’t putting it on social media til a few years ago.

In November 2020 I started an Instagram account called ‘Weird Westmeath’ (that’s where I’m from) just documenting stuff I thought was fun and interesting in the county with photos and a kinda witty punny caption then moved on to video a couple years later. Weird Ireland was the natural evolution of that.

Do you think there’s a reason that Ireland has so many different weird, wacky and quirky things going on?

Brinsley: Everywhere in the world I would say is equally weird and wacky and quirky, it just so happens Ireland’s where I’m from so Weird Ireland I made! Were I from Spain or Sri Lanka I probably would have made Weird Spain or Weird Sri Lanka!

Weirdness is a matter of familiarity with a place or lack thereof. There’s an expression ‘a normal person is just someone you don’t know very well‘ and I think that applies to places too. If you think somewhere is ‘normal’ it’s only because you don’t know that place very well, once you learn the local stories and lore you’ll learn a lot of interesting and unique stuff about anywhere.

Ireland’s certainly got a lot of what could be called peculiarities once compared to other places (the amount of holy wells comes to mind and even the phenomenon of holy wells in general).

However, if you were to travel to Bhutan you’d come upon lots of public paintings of phalluses on houses and the like. They do it for good luck (look it up if you like, it’s a thing), but normally visitors to Bhutan think this is really weird. Do the locals too? Course not, they see them everyday. Do Irish folk think holy wells are weird? Some yes, many no, sure they’re so common.

So yeah it’s a reflection of familiarity or lackthereof, weirdness that is.

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What are some of your favourite things that you’ve discovered so far? Has anything been particularly memorable?

Brinsley: It’s got to be New Years Eve 2024 turning into 2025. NYE isn’t as huge a celebration in Ireland as it is in some other countries (I used to live in Scotland, it’s big there). But I really wanted to celebrate the New Year somewhere interesting. So I went looking, and found that Portmagee, County Kerry has what’s got to be Ireland’s weirdest NYE tradition.

Portmagee is not a big place, I counted 2 pubs, 1 shop. However, every NYE since the 18th century they’ve had this tradition where about 10 minutes before midnight an ‘old man’ with a fake big beard and grey wig and crutches walks up and down the street of the town while the crowd gathers.

Just before the countdown to midnight you hear a big ‘BANG’ and the old man falls over and is carried off. The crowd counts down to the new year, and down the street a door opens and out comes a young person dressed in all white with a black bowler hat and walking stick. They walk the street and get hugs off the crowd before making a speech. The ‘old man’ represented the old year going, and the young person the new one.

Anyways, me and the guys went down for it and had a ball of a time.

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You’ve talked about some of the weird food and drinks you can get in Ireland, like how Supermacs will serve a cup of milk. What’s been the weirdest food-related thing you’ve come across?

Brinsley: Hmmmm, don’t know if I’d call it the weirdest but my favourite I’ve come across are rissoles from Wexford town.

Rissoles are basically like deep fat fried potato cakes, and seemingly they come from chippers down there not wanting to throw away the previous day’s chips, or fry them again (they’re not as good the next day) so instead they made them into rissoles.

Nowhere else in Ireland can you get something called a ‘rissole’. There’s not dissimilar fast foods in other parts, but only if it’s from Wexford town can it be called a rissole. Anyways, they’re unreal, salt and vinegar on them, 5 stars check em out.

How do you find out about some of the places you visit and things you’ve seen? Do you have any advice for anyone who also wants to find some of the weird places in Ireland?

Brinsley: It’s funny, often someone asks me about a specific thing I’ve covered in a video and how I heard of it and a lot of the time I have no memory of how I heard of something.

New Years Eve in Portmagee I read about on Reddit, the Wexford rissoles I think someone commented on one of the videos saying to check them out is how I learned, some things i’ve just known about for years, some of them honestly I just stumble upon when driving.

Between getting tips off followers, reading, and talking to people in real life is probably how I learn a lot of stuff.

Advice for anyone who wants to find some weird places in Ireland? Follow Weird Ireland on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, follow the Weird Ireland Podcast wherever you get podcasts, check out the link in the Weird Ireland social media channels bio to bag the book ‘Weird Ireland: An Unofficial Guide to the Island’, all these full of useful tips of places to visit and way more to come.

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You started Weird Ireland back in January 2024, has there been anything you’ve learnt over the last 2 years that has really surprised you?

Brinsley: It’s surprised me to learn that despite Ireland not being all that big a place (in comparison to other countries) and not having a massive population still the traditions of the country are quite locality based.

St John’s Night bonfires? West of Ireland thing, Mayo, Roscommon, Galway etc, even in Westmeath next to Roscommon I’d never heard of them.

Biddys Day the 1st of February? It would have been more widespread at one time, but now is pretty restricted to south west Ireland (Kilorglin, County Kerry has a big celebration for it).

In certain parts of the country there’s a similar tradition for Mayday, and I even learned that until the 19th century south east County Wexford had its own language that wasn’t English nor Irish (Yola it’s called, in fairness it was related to English, as a language isolate from Middle English).

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Why do you think it’s important that people learn and know about all these cool little strange facts and places?

Brinsley: I’d say it’s important because it’s history as much as it’s fun weird facts. Just more local, it gives you the character of the place you’re visiting, or are from even! Plus they’re fun and great conversation starters.

What are your plans for the future? Is there anything exciting that we should be looking out for?

Brinsley: I’d love to make documentaries for radio or tv and I’d love to make more content outside of Ireland and not pertaining to Ireland. I have another channel on Instagram just for that. Everyday is exciting so keep your eyes peeled and take it all in, all the time.

Make sure to follow Brinsley McNamara on @brinsleymcnamara (for non-Irish content) or @weird.ireland on Instagram, or @weirdireland on TikTok for content related to Irish history, facts and well, Weird Ireland.

The Weird Ireland podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms. Weird Ireland: An Unofficial Guide to the Island can be purchased from a wide range of retailers, more information can be found here.