This study considers the extent to which economic modernisation has transformed the rural community. In doing so it discusses whether the distinctive character of rural identity has been eroded by powerful and distant political and cultural forces. This is the first full-length ethnography of an Irish community for a number of years. Since the early 1980s, the anthropological analysis of community life in Ireland has been limited to brief articles whilst major community studies have been published in other European countries. The author has regularly worked in Ireland.