The Irish Calendar: Samhain, Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasadh
Four festivals. Four pivot points in the Irish year. Four Irish words most people spell wrong. What each festival actually meant and why the etymology matters.
Traditions
Caoineadh: The Irish Lament Tradition Most Poets Have Never Read
In 1773 a woman stood over her murdered husband and composed the greatest poem written in these islands in the eighteenth century. Here is the tradition that produced it.
Dinnseanchas: The Irish Poetry of Place
Before Heaney on bogs, before the Nobel for a poem about a forge, there were 176 medieval Irish poems whose only job was to explain why a place was called what it was called.
The Irish Calendar: Samhain, Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasadh
Four festivals. Four pivot points in the Irish year. What each festival actually meant and why the etymology matters.