Irish Reference
Sean McMahon and Jo O'Donoghue have done Irish Researchers a great service in producing the wonderful Brewers Dictionary of Irish Phrase & Fable.
Ireland's exceptionally close relationship with its rich heritage of myth, folklore, language, literature and music - a heritage nourished by and reflecting its turbulent history of foreign conquest, oppression, rebellion and civil and religious strife - makes it a natural subject for a "phrase and fable" dictionary.
Brewer's Dictionary of Irish Phrase and Fable is an entirely new "Brewer's" dedicated to the history, culture and mythology of the "Emerald Isle". Its authors have sifted through a huge amount of folkloric, mythological, literary and historical material to compile a stunning eclectic array of 6000 entries on a wide range of Irish-related topics, including words, phrases, names, titles, people, events and places - all of them intriguing and informative, some of them quirkily humorous.
The rich mix of Irish History includes: Dean Swift, the Volunteers, Grattan of the Parliament, the Rising of 1798, the Act of Union, the Liberator, Young Ireland, the Great Famine, the Uncrowned King, and entering the last Century, Pearse, Carson, the Easter Rising, the Long Hoor, his adversary the Big Fellow, Partition, the IRA and the Armed Struggle, two Bloody Sundays, the Loyalist Red Hand Commandos, the Armalite and the Ballot Box, the Jellybabies*, the Peace Process - these latter part of the catalogue of misery that was the recent Northern Ireland Troubles.
History can be a nightmare but life goes on. Ireland's writers: Goldsmith, Sheridan, Mangan, Lady Gregory, John Synge, James Joyce, O'Casey and her Nobel laureates Yeats, Shaw, Beckett and Heaney, are as significant a part of the tapestry as her bombers and gunmen. So too are her entertainers, singers like Josef Locke (born Joe McLaughlin) Enya, Bono, U2, the dancing feet of Michael Flatley, the prodigious sporting talents of Roy Keane and Brian O'Driscoll.
* = No, that isn't a typo. Jellybaby. A term used during the TROUBLES referring to the practice of concealing sticks of 'jelly' (gelignite) in a baby's buggy for transportation. The source is the popular gelatine-and-sugar sweet. From Brewer's Dictionary of Irish Phrase & Fable