Hard Sense in Soft Words: Sayings from the Great Oral Tradition of Ireland

by George B. Ryan

Overview

This is a book of some of the most heartwarming, ancient Irish wisdom, from the original Gaelic. Some tales may be familiar, while others are truly lost Gaelic treasures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780871319920
Publisher:	M. Evans & Company
Publication date:	09/13/2002
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.28(w) x 7.32(h) x 0.62(d)

Table of Contents

	Foreword	7
	The monk and his pet cat	15
	Finn's hounds	17
	A horse called Papillon	22
	Nancy, Lily, and Josephine	25
	The children of Lir	29
	Bend with the tree that bends with you	43
	Every ocean has another tide	46
	Are you a witch? Are you a fairy?	48
	May I see you gray and combing your children's hair	52
	There's no fireside like your own fireside	55
	We will eat, so long as there is meat on the shin of a sparrow	61
	I might as well whistle jigs to a milestone as tell my troubles to you	67
	A closed hand is a shut fist	70
	Blarney	73
	A mouth of ivy and a heart of holly	77
	The one who stays out of it sees the most of the fight	80
	To every cow her calf, and to every book its copy	84
	The shameless thrive where the shame-faced die	87
	It doesn't take much wind to move giddy people	89
	A gentleman is a man who owns bagpipes but never plays them	92
	A witch to the senses...	95
	The river is no wider from this side than the other	100
	Lying in lavender like Paddy's pig	103
	Misfortune	107
	Falsehood goes further than truth	110
	As old as Atty Hayes' goat	114
	The herb that can't be got is the one that brings relief	116
	The stars make no noise	118
	Better to do a good deed and be boastful than do nothing and be quiet about it	121
	If it hasn't been eaten and hasn't been stolen, it will be found	124
	Background Reading	129