This book tells a history of Ireland through the examination of 100 key words from the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of the Irish Language, the most comprehensive dictionary of Irish in existence. The book is aimed at a popular audience and is intended to increase awareness and understanding of the Irish language for the period spanning the seventh to the seventeenth century, but it assumes no prior knowledge of the language on the part of the reader. It is divided into themes, including writing and literature, food and feasting, technology and science, the body, and other worlds, and each entry will explore a word or group of words related to a particular idea or object, such as ‘home’, ‘death’, ‘people’ or ‘book’. Entries are short, c. 500 words, and self-contained, so that readers can dip into the book where they please.
Sharon Arbuthnot is a Senior Researcher at Queen's University Belfast and an expert on lexicography and medieval glossaries. She has published widely on medieval Irish language and literature and her research includes an edition of 'The Fitness of Names' (Cóir Anmann) relating the stories of how many early Irish heroes got their names.
Máire Ní Mhaonaigh is Professor of Celtic and Medieval Studies at the University of Cambridge. She has written extensively on medieval Irish literature and history and on Ireland's place in the wider world. Her books include Brian Boru: Ireland's Greatest King, as well as a co-authored volume on Norse-Irish relationships, Norse Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World.
Gregory Toner is Professor of Irish at Queen's University Belfast. His many publications range across Irish language, literature and place-names, including two volumes in the Place-names of Northern Ireland series, and an edition of the medieval Irish text 'Da Coca's Hostel' (Bruiden Da Choca). He has a particular interest in digital scholarship in Celtic Studies and is the leader of the electronic Dictionary of the Irish language projec: http://www.dil.ie/.
Joe McLaren is a freelance illustrator and graduate of the University of Brighton. He has taught Foundation Illustration at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. Among his recent clients are Penguin, Faber, Random House, Orion, Folio, Oxford University Press, Vintage, The Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times.
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