7. Bríd Thoirdhealbhaigh in the original. The name Toirdhealbhach is customarily shortened to Terry in the Gaeltacht.
8. Seán Péin in the original; a comic mishearing for champagne.
9. The rope whip with nine knotted lashes that would figuratively await her; i.e., she would be most unwelcome.
10. Fictional woman of great beauty in one of the great Celtic romantic legends.
11. The “battle” in which nearly all of the Fianna were killed by the sheaves of corn they were busily binding and throwing back over their heads, inadvertently killing one another in the process. A little fellow of the underworld called Tufty Mouth (Cab an Dosáin) was the sole reaper!
12. One who goes from fair to fair and from farm to farm buying up cattle in small lots, to sell to bigger dealers.
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1. Nelson’s Pillar, blown up by an Irish republican faction in 1966.
2. A garbled and parodic version of widely known folklore about Oliver Cromwell.
3. What looks like a typing error is in fact a play on words. Seilg (Shellig) means “pursuit,” and Seilg Mhichíl (Shellig Michael) means Pursuit of Michael. As St. Michael is being pursued by the Devil between Conamara and the Aran Islands the author invents his own island, Seilg Mhichíl (Shellig Michael), which looks like and sounds like the real Skellig Michael (Sceilg Mhichíl) off the Kerry coast, famous for its ancient monastic settlement of beehive huts. Sceilg means a steep rock.
4. Poill Tí Lábáin in the original. The caves are actually north of Oughterard.
5. Abhainn Ruibhe in Oughterard, east Conamara.
6. One of the very low tides that occur once a fortnight, exposing a wide area of the shore.
7. Feamainn ghaoithe, loose floating seaweed brought to land by an onshore wind.
8. Seaweed, timbers, and other goods thrown up on the shore would be claimed by tying a string to them or putting a stone on them.
9. Sharpened sticks used to pin down thatch on a roof.
10. Thin stems of pollarded willows, cultivated for basket-making.
11. An undisciplined force of British soldiers, named from their mixed uniforms, that terrorised parts of Ireland during the War of Independence.
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1. Ní dhearna luí fada riamh bréag (a long time laid up never lied) is an old saying, meaning that a long spell of being confined to bed ends in death.
2. Under his arm; ascaill is the Irish for armpit.
3. Spread it to dry.
4. A government scheme of employment in cutting and distributing turf during World War II.
5. A parody of a folktale well known in Conamara as well as the Aran Islands, usually told as concerning Sts. Enda and Brickan dividing the largest of the three Aran Islands between them.
6. The dominant Celtic race element in ancient Ireland.
7. There is a theory that two saints of the name of Patrick evangelized Ireland.
8. Aphosphorosis. Phosphate deficiency causing lameness in cattle.
9. A strap passing under a horse’s or donkey’s tail.
10. To empty the water out of Tobar Bhriocáin in Ros Muc was regarded as a way of putting a curse on someone.
11. The penitential rituals associated with the pilgrimage to Lough Derg in Donegal are very severe.
12. Euphemism for dying.
13. A nationalistic youth movement on the lines of the Boy Scouts.
14. A military organisation dedicated to the fight for Irish independence.
15. Technical or vocational school.
16. Spelling reform of the Irish language, 1948.
17. It was customary for Catholics to abstain from eating meat on a Friday.
18. Dublin slang for blackguard.
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1. In the old Irish script, a dot placed over a consonant, indicating a softening of the sound.
2. A small shore fish.
3. A long drawn-out story.
4. From a collection of obscure prophesies attributed to St. Columkille and widely circulated in books and by word of mouth.
5. Dúil Aeir, air as one of the four elements, in the original; sounding like “de Valera.”
6. Mountainous region on the northeast of Conamara, settled in medieval times by the Norman-Welsh Joyces.
7. Putting sods of turf leaning against one another and across one another on the turf bank to dry after being cut.
8. The “stray sod,” a patch of ground said to make you lose your way if you tread on it. The remedy was to turn your coat inside out.
9. “Typhus Outbreak in Spiddal … Dr Charles McConn, acting County Medical Officer[,] … is striving to subdue the outbreak …” (Irish Times, 14 November 1942).
10. A lay Catholic organization founded in 1921.
11. A fight in which no one is hurt.
12. Ó Cadhain overheard this, on a bus in Dublin, when Cré na Cille was being serialised in the Irish Press: “This Ó Cadhain fellow. A right galoot if ever there was one. A Joycean smutmonger.”
13. An often imitated and parodied phrase from An tOileánach, translated as The Islandman, Tomás Ó Criomhthain’s account of life on the Great Blasket Island, Kerry.
14. A Cistercian Abbey in Co. Waterford.
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1. A happy, light-hearted song.
2. Thought to be a garbled version of “By Christ’s Bloody Tears and Wounds.”
3. Given Extreme Unction (or the Last Rites) by the priest, in expectation of death.
4. Jesus.
5. Resounding blows.
6. German cruiser damaged in battle and then scuttled, 1939.
7. The following passage in the text involves elaborate wordplay in Irish, French, and Breton, a language Máirtín Ó Cadhain studied.
8. Conn, Mogh: mythical heroes who divided Ireland between them.
9. Áth Cliath, the ancient name of Dublin. The word Dublin comes from Dubh Linn (black pool).
10. An esker or ridge of glacial deposits that runs nearly all the way across Ireland and provided a convenient way across the bogs; it also was the boundary between the two halves of Ireland.
11. French for male cat (tomcat).
12. “Gast” is Breton for prostitute/whore. The Irish word “gaiste” means snare.
13. From the Breton expletive “Gast ar c’hast,” which means “whore of whores,” used for emphasis to show astonishment or disbelief (… in the gast of a gast I am: in the snare of a whore I am).
14. Modern Breton: gast: a woman who has a stall of holy objects — a humorously deliberate and false etymology of the word “gast.” The pardon was a local religious festival, like the Irish “pattern,” in Leon in northwest Brittany, a region renowned for its priests and piety.
15. Gwened is the name of the town and diocese of Vannes in southeast Brittany (not to be confused with Gwynedd in Wales).
16. Pangur Bán, name of a cat in a celebrated medieval Irish poem.
17. To speak of an animal (or a person) without adding God’s blessing was held to put the evil eye on it, that is, to bring it bad luck.
18. The 11th of November. There was a custom of spilling blood in honour of St. Martin, which involved killing a fowl or animal and making the sign of the cross with the blood on each forehead and door. This meant that even the very poor ate meat at least once a year.
19. Confetti.