Jay Bee wrote:
http://www.duchas.ie/en
What a great resource! Mayo, where my grandparents grew up, is one of the 4 counties whose records have been mostly digitized thus far, and they are arranged by location, so I easily found pages and pages of records from the townlands in which my relatives lived. Some records are in Irish and some in English. It was an Irish-speaking area well into the 20th century, and was considered for Gaeltacht inclusion (like most of Mayo), but wasn't ultimately included in the formal Gaeltacht. The records are fascinating, although I've only skimmed them thus far. They cover all sorts of topics: how (and on what days) bread was made, how local places acquired their names, how holidays were celebrated, where graveyards and old ruins are located, when marriages were traditionally performed, and much more. I have a lot of downloading and reading ahead of me!