As a nation, the Irish are renowned for their blarney. Ireland has a rich cultural heritage of the written word, going back centuries: From the Book of Kells, to stories from Irish mythology: Brian Boru and the High Kings, stories of the Children of Lir, Cu Chullian and Finn MacCumhain; Samuel Becket, James Joyce and Patrick Pearse; modern writers like Colm Toibin, Joseph O’Connor or poets like Patrick Kavanagh or Thomas Kinsella; and the chick-lit heavyweights of today like Maeve Binchy and Marian Keyes.
In celebration of St Patrick’s Day, I’ve been scanning my shelves for books that celebrate Ireland’s rich cultural heritage, from the ridiculous to the sublime. First up, ‘The book of feckin’ Irish Slang that’s great craic for cute hoors and bowsies’ is an education in the finer points of Dublin street slang. Here’s a selection:
Make a hames of / I will in me hole / Having a hooley / Howaya / How’s the craic? / Janey Mack / Jaysus, Mary and Joseph / It’s banjaxed / Yer wan / Wagon / Shenanigans / Ride / Jaysus I was scarlet! / Have a puss on / Nixer / Culchie / Langered / Bollixed / Gobshite / What guff / Go and shite! / Giz a gander / Fierce bad head / Go wan yer good thing / fooster / feck / deadly / I’m only coddin’ yer / that’s brutal / Acting the maggot / Ask me arse.
At the other extreme, the more sublime use of the written word is Irish poetry, two of its finest exponents being W B Yeats and Seamus Heaney. Here are two poems, the first by Yeats, probably one of his most famous.
'He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven' by W B Yeats
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with gold and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths,
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
'Digging' by Seamus Heaney
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it
from Death of a Naturalist (1966)