First thing that comes to mind when you think of Ireland

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Leprechauns

The quaint and lilting accents.

Folk tales of unicorns, faeries, and leprechauns... although leprechauns are supposed to be a derogatory stereotype of Irish people in general. They were pretty funny in the Harry Potter books, though.

Banshees, which are female ghosts who scream and wail a lot. For years I've heard or used the phrase "scream like a banshee", but never knew exactly what it was. I remember an action figure from The Real Ghostbusters called Banshee Bomber, which was a so I guessed it must have been some kind of ghost. But it looked like a hideous flying monster that puked out slime on the other characters.

Pots of gold and rainbows.

The color green. and lots of it.

The Blarney Stone.

Castles.

Limerick poems, and the town Limerick which they are named after.

I actually have an old Dennis the Menace comic, where he and his parents visit Ireland and there was lots of educational stuff about the country like some of the things I just mentioned. There was a series of comics like this. Of course, if it featured the English Dennis the Menace instead of the American one it would very likely have been a lot less educational and he'd be lucky not to be kicked out of the country by the end.

Stereotypes like always getting drunk and getting into fights. And, of course, leprechauns

There's actually a college where I live where they have the green, white and orange colors from the Irish flag and their mascot is a leprechaun, whose picture has him in the "fighting Irish" pose. My brother and I visited the college a few months ago and this is what their store was basically like. This isn't surprising though, since the industrial part of our city once had a lot of workers from Ireland in the early days.

That Porky Pig Cartoons where he was traveling through Ireland, sought shelter at a castle during a dark and stormy night, and the keeper of the castle was really two leprechauns pretending to be a human, and they think Porky wants to steal their gold so they beat him up and made him wear magical green shoes that forced him to dance an Irish Jig for eternity and then it turned out to be just a horrible nightmare... except it wasn't, but poor Porky had to go see his psychiatrist. It was probably the first cartoon I saw that showed leprechauns being evil. Well, maybe not "evil", exactly, but if they even think you're after their gold... and their torturing and psychologically scarring Porky really went past the usually harmless pranks I've seen them play in other cartoons and non-horror movies and stories.

There was also an episode on Tiny Toons similar to the Porky Pig cartoon except there is a young girl in the castle who warns the main characters about the banshee that haunts the place, and of course she turned out to be the banshee at the end, or something, but I don't remember much of it.

"Whale oil beef hooked."

Leprechauns for me too.
Belfast; Northern Ireland, The Orange and the Green (both the song and the situation)
Celtic

Irish Republican Army

James Joyce
Riverdance
Angela's Ashes

Bloody Friday

Home, history, legacy, identity, passion, progression, peace, creativity, culture, nature, rain, rugged beauty.

what amity and Istomin said. Plus potatoes.

^^But of course... how could I forget spuds!

Irish Potato Famine

Celtic gold
Skeletons of giant elks
Lee Enfield short magazine rifle
The post office on O'Connell Street
The Irish Writers' museum and James Joyce's typewriter
The garden of remembrance for Irish Martyrs
Trinity College and the Book of Kells
Dublin Castle
Donegal Town
Proper Guinness
Loads and loads of mashed potatoes

How could I forget the potatoes!?!

And we just celebrated a holiday with a Irish tradition - carving Jack-o-Lanterns. According to an Irish legend, Jack was a man who was so nasty he wasn't allowed into heaven, but the devil didn't want him either. In Ireland people would carve jack-o-lanterns into turnips, but when they immigrated to North America pumpkins were more common at the time.

That touching event in Canadian history where Irish orphans were brought to foster parents in Quebec. The children wanted to keep their last names as it was their dying parents' final wish. The French foster parents were okay with this, and even now there are families in Quebec with Irish last names. Thanks to those Heritage Minutes I used to see on TV I learned about my own country than I ever did in school. Especially in school.

My ancestors,Guinness,Bushmills,Gaelic,haunting sad songs,the murals in Northern Ireland,Bobby Sands,Yeats,The Wind that Shakes the Barley,U2,and a thousand shades of green.

Potato famine
IRA
U2
Protestant vs. Catholic
Bloody Sunday
Frank McCourt
Erin Go Bragh

1981 Irish hunger strike