A complete, stroke-by-stroke guide to producing Celtic calligraphy. Learn how to create each leter of the alphabet in the age-old Celtic manner. Crystal clear instructions also cover pens, inks, work surface, paper and lines, how to hold the pen and more. 38 full-page plates plus 8 illustrations.

If an Irish person said to you, "Gimmie that yoke," would you think they were talking about an egg? If so, 99% of the time, you'd be wrong. How about banjaxed, bockety or craic? Any idea what they mean? The Little Book of Irishisms is for anyone who wants to understand the Irish, not just our words but how we are as people, relaxed about some things, picky about others. It's also for those who'd like to sound Irish, even just for Paddy's Day. You'll learn tricks to Irishify your chat - and how to avoid those clangers that people think we say but never do, like the classic, "Top of the morning to you." If you're coming to Ireland and want to fit right in, this book's for you. If you can't make it, here's a way of visiting in spirit. "Go on, go on, go on. You will, you will, you will," to quote the infamous Irish comedy, Father Ted. The Little Book of Irishisms is the perfect novelty gift for St. Patrick's Day, as a Christmas stocking filler, or at any time to someone who appreciates what it means to be Irish.

This major illustrated study investigates farmhouse and cabin furniture from all over the island of Ireland. It discusses the origins and evolution of useful objects, what materials were used and why, and how furniture made for small spaces, often with renewable elements, was innate and expected. Encompassing three centuries, it illuminates a way of life that has almost vanished. It contributes as much to our knowledge of Ireland's cultural history as to its history of furniture. Lavishly illustrated with a mass of the author's own photographs, mostly in colour and many previously unpublished, it draws on several decades of fieldwork, underpinned by academic research. It looks at influences such as traditional architecture, shortage of timber, why and how furniture was painted, and the characteristics of designs made by a range of furniture makers. The incorporation of natural materials such as bog oak, turf, driftwood, straw, recycled tyres or packing cases is viewed in terms of use, and durability. Chapters individually examine stools, chairs and then settles in all their ingenious and multi-purpose forms. How dressers were authentically arranged, with displays varying minutely according to time and place, reveal how some had indoor coops to encourage hens to lay through winter. Some people ate communally or slept in outshot beds, in the coldest north-west, this is illustrated through art as well as surviving objects. Hanging cradles and falling tables are discussed. A chapter is devoted to the hearth and the shrine, another focuses on small furnishings, such as horn spoons, wooden drinking vessels, basketry, tin-ware, aluminium, coarse earthenware and spongeware pottery.

From the snug of the 'Shaky Man' (probably the nearest pub to Guinness Brewery in Dublin) Brendan Behan take us on a tour of his native country. Not very much topographical information is imparted perhaps and even the Georgian architecture for which Dublin is deservedly famous is scarcely mentioned: 'Good architecture, ' Mr. Behan reports as architect friend as saying 'is invisible.' Mr Behan is less interested in things than in people and a galaxy of characters and stories about the inhabitants of that Augustan city cross his pages. But Brendan has been outside Dublin from time to time as London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Montreal, San Francisco and Mexico City can well witness. His investigations among the aborigines of those famed cities are not his concern in this book, however: those anthropological investigations must await another occasion for the telling. Here he regales us with his views on Dublin, the North of Ireland, Galway and the Aran Islands and the counties of the south - always with an eye on the people and their habits rather than on the places themselves. He was accompanied on many expeditions by Paul Hogarth, whose drawings complement the spirit of the text as no other artist's could have done. Intellectuality stimulating, Mr. Behan discourses on the evils of drinking potheen, the mores of Limerick girls, storytellers in the last bastion of Gaelic culture on the Aran Islands, the Irish middle-classes and what he calls 'the Anglo-Irish Horse-Protestants.' Enlivened with song, poem, story, and Paul Hogarth's drawings, this book tells a lot about Ireland but tells us even more about that fascinating human Behan.