Irish Proverbs About Love

Irish proverb is not sentimental about love, and anyone arriving from the greeting-card version of Irish will find the real material cooler than expected. What the tradition talks about is dependence, shelter and mercy rather than romance.

Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine is the line most often read at Irish weddings and funerals alike, and it is about neither: it says people live in one another's shelter, and it means it literally. The word scáth is shadow and shelter at once, and the ambiguity is the point.

Where the tradition does address affection directly it tends toward the wry. Irish has a well-developed vocabulary for love that is conditional on what you have in your pocket. The blessings are the warmer half of this page, and they are mostly wishes for a shared life rather than declarations.