Dáibhí Ó Cróinín

Resembling a dream – or rather a nightmare – An Cúigiú Díochlaonadh is a dark sinister book in many respects. Nevertheless, the crazy humour of this unpredictable, witty and exciting novel makes it a compulsive read right to the end . . . Murder, cat-murder, and worst of all, the stealing of a ‘word collection’!

With a short biography of Whitley Stokes including details of the discovery of the texts this is mostly an index to the manuscripts Dáibhí found. I was fortunate to study under Dáibhí in UCG (as was) and remember his contained enthuism for many things, I suspect that this was a moment of excitement that could have passed unnoticed but that these are important notes and scholarship in Irish and the Irish Language.

For serious researchers really, though the biography is interesting, Whitley show more Stokes spent most of his life in India working in a legal capacity, writing a lot of commentaries about Indian Law and also finding time to write extensive research on celtic studies. The thing that really made me smile was the fact that hidden in the documents were the lyrics for a song collected on the Aran Islands, where these had been lost, but the music was bereft of it's accompanying voice. show less

A magisterial collection of essays about Irish history up to 1167. This book had been available before as a very expensive hardback -- this paperback edition was published this year. I recommend this book for anyone interested in the archeology of Ireland, or the early history.