Articles
The sayings carry their own pages; these essays carry the stories around them. Where the famous wordings come from, how to choose one for a moment that matters, and why this site is as strict as it is. Every Irish phrase in every article is a sourced record from the collection, linked to its citation. Where something popular is not attested, the article says so instead of quoting it.
- “May the road rise to meet you”: the surprising history of Ireland’s most famous blessingThe best-known Irish blessing in the world is half real. The dictionaries print a road blessing: just not the one on the tea towels.
- How to choose an Irish blessing for a weddingA card, a speech and an engraving want three different kinds of Irish. How to tell which is which, using sayings you can actually check.
- Irish blessings for a funeral or memorialThe words Irish actually uses when someone dies (prayers, and proverbs that do not pretend to console) and how to get them exactly right.
- What the fada doesIt looks like a decoration and behaves like a letter. What the little acute actually does, and why we treat a missing one as a broken word.
- “We live in each other’s shelter”: one proverb’s long lifeOne word means both shadow and shelter, and the whole proverb lives inside that double meaning. The line modern Ireland reaches for first.
- Why everything here is citedA dictionary abbreviates its own headwords. A government page misspells a proverb. Copying carefully is harder than it sounds, a tour of the traps.