James Joyce

Dublin -- George Bernard Shaw did a lot more for Ireland than James Joyce, Oscar Wilde or even U2, and that is saying something in view of the phenomenal success of the popular rock group.So what has Ireland ever done for George Bernard Shaw?The question is pertinent these days, and getting more so as th Allied Irish Bank, which owns Baltimore's First National Bank of Maryland, closes in on the property at 33 Synge Street in the Portobello section of Dublin.This yellow brick dwelling, with its glistening black door, three front windows (one down, two above)

For an increasing number of Dublin-bound travelers, a sojourn in Ireland's capital means not only a literary pilgrimage to the shrines, homes, haunts and former tippling places of such Irish literary figures as James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde and Brendan Behan. It also will mean exploring Dublin's teeming, exotic, stylistically hydra-headed local music scene.Over the past few years, this ancient metropolis has been transformed into a major world music center, largely because of the international breakthrough of such Irish musicians as U2, Sinead O'Connor, the Hothouse Flowers, the Waterboys, Clannad and Bob Geldof, not to mention internationally acclaimed veterans Van Morrison and the Chieftains.