"Have we lost some of our Irish character? Well, yes, but that's something which is more observed than judged," playwright and author Declan Hughes told me over drinks in Temple Bar, the epicenter of Dublin's manic nightlife scene. "It's a fact that we've become more consumerist and American in practice, but for a country obsessed with the past, that's a good bromide—we no longer have to believe that we can do no better." Unlike most of his contemporaries, Hughes stayed in Ireland and founded a theater company. His two recent hard-boiled detective novels, which feature organized crime, drugs, and corruption, could never have been set in Ireland even a decade ago. "The idea of some beautiful past that we've lost is mostly fantasy," he said. "But some of what we have lost is what New York or London wanted us to be—a dark, backward, priest-ridden, and poetic place of deep emotion. Does the old Ireland still exist? It probably does and it doesn't. You go searching for it and it disappears."

In Medieval Ireland, hospitality was based largely on the belief that failing to extend a warm welcome to whoever happened upon your doorstep could have disastrous consequences: In an age when satire was thought to have the power to kill, it was safer to be an agreeable host. An early Irish tale recounts a woman's attempt to discourage a group of would-be houseguests by following her welcome with a warning that inside her home were "a slender restless wet-shanked cat and…a boorish bare gray blear-eyed hag and a continuously stinking fart-streaming putridness perpetually stinking out the house."

Fortunately, Irish hospitality has come a long way in the intervening years, and in terms of creature comforts, Ireland has never offered more pampering. Ma-and-da bed-and-breakfasts are closing shop as flashy new hotels and resorts go up around the country at astonishing speeds: Five years ago, there were four destination spas in Ireland; today there are eighty.

John McKenna, who, with his wife, Sally, publishes the Bridgestone series of hotel and restaurant guides, has an especially good vantage point from which to observe the shift away from the tradition of B&Bs and small inns toward large, luxury resorts. "With the explosion of new hotels, the country is now awash in properties that have four-star amenities but no connection to Irish culture," he said. "On the other hand, our country houses are being taken over by the first generation of Irish to travel widely, and they're bringing home a kind of dynamism that's very refreshing."

He could have been talking about Justin and Jenny Green, both in their early thirties, who have helped manage fine hotels in England, Bali, Dubai, and Hong Kong. Now they're putting their training to very good use in County Cork at Ballyvolane House, the stately eighteenth-century home on the Blackwater River where Justin was raised and where his parents welcomed paying guests for twenty years. "When I was growing up, we stored our lawn mowers in the living room," Justin recalled, pointing out the oil stains still visible on the floor. No more. The living room today is an elegant salon where guests staying in one of Ballyvolane's six bedrooms gather to get a little lubricated before proceeding to the formal dining room for a feast of local meat or fish, some of Cork's famous cheeses, and vegetables from the garden.