Competing Irishness: The Dublin Horse Show and the Tailteann Games, 1924

This paper examines the Dublin Horse Show and the Tailteann Games as competing cultural arenas through which notions of Irish identity were performed, contested, and redefined in the twentieth century. While the Horse Show projected an image of Ireland embedded in Anglo-Irish traditions, international equestrian prestige, and elite display, the Tailteann Games foregrounded revivalist narratives of Gaelic heritage, physical culture, and national distinctiveness. By comparing their organisation, symbolism, and reception, the study highlights how these events reflected divergent visions of “Irishness," one outward-looking and cosmopolitan, the other culturally nationalist and rooted in revivalist ideals. The analysis underscores how both spectacles operated as stages for identity negotiation, revealing the multiplicity and tension inherent in modern Irish cultural life.